





Dear Mr Cook and team,



I follow Apple closely since 2009 when I bought my very first iPhone, the iPhone 3G. It was the greatest experience I have ever had with a smartphone. Later that year I also bought an iMac. It was the first one with an 21.5-inch widescreen display. Since then there has not been a single Apple product that I didn't buy. Today, I use an iMac for work, as well as my iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. I have always liked how all these devices work together effortlessly and seamlessy.



I literally loved Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall for what they have created here and I was getting excited for every Apple Keynote.



Two years ago it was time for a design change for iOS. I looked forward to the WWDC 2013 keynote and I liked what I saw. It was more than I expected. A bold redesign and not just a few changed pixels. None of the less, there were some rough edges and there still are. UI issues, performance issues and more.



In this article I'd like to cover a lot of issues and I will focus on iOS for now but a lot of the missing attention to details can be found in watchOS and OS X, too. This is certainly not a rant and I don't scream THIS DESIGN IS SHIT, GO BACK TO iOS 6!!. Most of my suggestions are subtle fixes and small feature additions that make life on iOS more delightful. I'm an app developer myself and I can assure you that these small changes can be realised in under 14 days.



I just hope this serves as an inspiration for the Apple Design team, since I have always liked the attention to detail that you guys had. It never stopped and it shouldn't stop now. But it sure feels like this is happening since 2013. I hope you listen to some feedback from one of your most loyal customers and I think I'm not alone with this.





First, I will talk about iPhone issues. Most of these are also issues on the iPad, but the iPad section will only discuss iPad specific problems. I obviously can't discuss every single design flaw but you should get the idea.



You can open all images in a new tab to see them bigger.



Thank you for your time.





Dear Mr Cook and team,I follow Apple closely since 2009 when I bought my very first iPhone, the iPhone 3G. It was the greatest experience I have ever had with a smartphone. Later that year I also bought an iMac. It was the first one with an 21.5-inch widescreen display. Since then there has not been a single Apple product that I didn't buy. Today, I use an iMac for work, as well as my iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. I have always liked how all these devices work together effortlessly and seamlessy.I literally loved Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall for what they have created here and I was getting excited for every Apple Keynote.Two years ago it was time for a design change for iOS. I looked forward to the WWDC 2013 keynote and I liked what I saw. It was more than I expected. A bold redesign and not just a few changed pixels. None of the less, there were some rough edges and there still are. UI issues, performance issues and more.In this article I'd like to cover a lot of issues and I will focus on iOS for now but a lot of the missing attention to details can be found in watchOS and OS X, too. This is certainly not a rant and I don't scream. Most of my suggestions are subtle fixes and small feature additions that make life on iOS more delightful. I'm an app developer myself and I can assure you that these small changes can be realised in under 14 days.I just hope this serves as an inspiration for the Apple Design team, since I have always liked the attention to detail that you guys had. It never stopped and it shouldn't stop now. But it sure feels like this is happening since 2013. I hope you listen to some feedback from one of your most loyal customers and I think I'm not alone with this.

iPhone

Home screen ISSUE Thin text and icons without shadows look great on a very clean wallpaper. But who uses a clean wallpaper? Most images have millions of different color combinations and distractions.

SOLUTION Some subtle shadow behind the icons makes it look way better, doesn't it? It's much clearer where the icon ends and the wallpaper begins. It's also a possiblity to make the shadows more subtle to take away a "too heavy feel". The labels don't necessarily need shadows but this would be great, too.



Messages ISSUE One small UI quirk can be seen in this video when tapping the 'Details' button. Normally, when navigating to a new view in a navigation controller it shouldn't move the view over the navigation bar. Keep an eye on the navigation bar at the top to see it. SOLUTION In this second video you see the behaviour in the Settings app (and the rest of the system for that matter). This should be used in Messages as well.



ISSUE After you tapped the Details button you can see that the navigation bar divider line's height is 1px (standard). If you scroll the view and scroll back to the top the table view divider sits right under the navigation bar divider and it looks like a 2px line now. It's more noticeable if you try it on a device. SOLUTION Use the contentInset method of UITableView to prevent the cell divider line to show directly underneath the navigation bar.



Calendar ISSUE When you tap the Inbox button in the Calendar app and you have no new or answered calendar invitations, you see these two screens. Why do the have a different styling?



SOLUTION

Use the same styling for both views.



Camera SUGGESTION The camera uses black bars when taking photos at the top and bottom. Why not use blurred bars and a better mode selector?





Maps ISSUE The 'Done' button in the top right corner of the Favorites section needs to be bold UIBarButtonStyleDone.





Weather ISSUE When adding a new location in Weather there should be separator lines (using UIVibrancyEffect) and a bigger tap target of 44px. A dark keyboard would fit great, too.





Reminders ISSUE When you launch the Reminders app the search bar is gray at first and than flashes to display the translucent search bar. You can see it in the following video if you keep your eye on the search bar at the top.



ISSUE All Reminders cards stack on top of each other. As you can see in this screenshot, the divider lines from the card shows just above the other card. This could easily be solved by moving the cards up a bit.



Also, you can see that the cards are not aligned perfectly. On the left side it flushes with the border and on the right side there is a 1px gap.



SUGGESTION When you hit "Edit" on one of the Reminders app lists it currently shows the options for setting a color and share it.



I think that the Edit button should only act on the items on the list and I would rather use a info button in the bottom right to access those options. Tap the info button and the card flips around to show the following options:



SUGGESTION Reminders does have a right-to-left swipe gesture to delete or view more. A left-to-right swipe could be used for marking items as completed.





Clock SUGGESTION The Clock icon could get some inspiration from the Apple Watch icon. This also creates a consistant design across all devices. Optionally, it could display numerals but the design could be adopted.



ISSUE Some small design tweaks. White background color and full separator at the end of the list.



ISSUE When you swipe to delete on a clock it disappears and if you slide further the grayish background is showing through the cell.



ISSUE When you add a new clock and there's no result, the label is not centered vertically in the cell. The color of it should be light gray, too.



SUGGESTION Some tweaks to make the buttons look more button-y and nicer. Also saves some space for the list of rounds. The same button design can be used for the Timer.











Stocks ISSUE When adding a new stock in the Stocks app the dark keyboard should be used, just like I suggested for the Weather app. The selection color looks bad on the black background.





Voicememos SUGGESTION Voicememos is by far the most difficult to use iOS app I've ever seen. I completely overhauled it. It's so simple it should be understandable without further explanation. You tap to make a recording. You tap to play it. Easy.





FaceTime ISSUE When you scroll all the way to the top, the search bar is sticking out.



ISSUE There's no divider line below the navigation bar throughout the app. A simple fix makes it look better, right?





Safari ISSUE When scrolling in the Favorites view the topbar of Safari is not translucent. The bottom toolbar is, though. Should be an easy fix for consistency.



ISSUE In tab view you can close pages by swiping them off the screen. You can only swipe to the left however and not to the right....



Contacts ISSUE The headers (A, B, C, etc) don't have divider lines. Additionally, they're not using the full width and the divider lines of cells are not edge to edge, too.



ISSUE The search bar is fixed to the top and doesn't scroll with the table view. This doesn't match the behaviour in other system apps. ISSUE When bringing up your Medical ID, either from your contact card or from the lock screen, it has a black status bar instead of a white one.





iCloud Drive ISSUE Just like in Contacts, the search bar is fixed to the top and doesn't scroll with the table/collection view. This doesn't match the behaviour in other system apps.