When Xojo does iOS, this is what we’re up against folks. So, get planning!
I might not have the imagination for this…
[quote=96696:@Gavin Smith]When Xojo does iOS, this is what we’re up against folks. So, get planning!
http://www.mobile-patterns.com
http://iphone.meer.li[/quote]
Even before the UI, an iPhone application is an idea for a program that is useful in the pocket. Then because of the extremely small screen real estate, creativity becomes necessary to distinguish an app.
However, iOS is not limited to the iPhone. I am convinced a wealth of desktop applications have their place on iPad, where design does not have to be as extreme. Even if apps could not be ported from Mac to iPad without adaptation, as the latter does not support windows.
All that said, maybe by the time iOS becomes available for real, we may have an iOS 9 
One good thing about the flat and minimalist styles of iOS is that there are fewer complicated assets to create. You don’t need to be a graphics wizard to create the assets for these UIs anymore.
The flipside is that every item of the UI requires much more careful planning and designing.
By completing my first iOS iPhone application not too long ago, I found out that a lot of design has to do with ergonomics. Never before had I realized how much assets we all gained by following Apple UI design guidelines. The very small screen leaves no chance for half baked interfaces and controls. Everything has its place. It had been a long time since I had worked as much on the very drawing of the future interface with a mockup graphic, before actually starting coding.
True, the flat design seems easier at first glance, but any spec looks terribly ugly.
It’ annoying, that apple do not support an inbuild blur-class.
the blur is the central style-element in iOS 7, but if want to adopt this you have to write it on your own.
And I wonder what’s the next big style-thing. If blur is out, like glass or gradient.
What do you mean ? To me, blur means ‘not sharp’ ?
UI design for small screen is hard. I am finalising the new Xippets responsive website and found it easier to design for small screens first and then when that was polished, large screens. You find you have to drop/hide or omit certain elements to end up with an uncluttered UI. That said it has to be functional and have enough features that it does not become uninteresting to use. It’s really quite hard and requires a different way of design and thinking.
I find the iOS interface to be much closer to the web interface than to Mac OS X. It is page based to start with. No windows, elementary message boxes.
So, instead of having several windows each packed with options, one has to make due with a screen by screen navigation. The absence of menu bar makes the use of buttons more prominent. But when menus and submenus allow dozens of choices, buttons limit the user to 4 of 5. It requires a much more synthetic approach.
Sure, there are the rolling wheels and “listboxes” such as the contacts list, but still, each leads to a new screen with few choices, not to mention the keyboard taking the screen bottom half.
I understand how portable devices UI can influence system developers thinking to lead Windows to Metro and Mac OS X to the Yosemite flat look. Somehow, the more one goes into a minimalist UI, the more the “old” desk metaphor seems crowded. But hey, real world desks are too, aren’t they ?
@Lars: Blur? Which apps are you using?
[quote=96781:@Gavin Smith]One good thing about the flat and minimalist styles of iOS is that there are fewer complicated assets to create. You don’t need to be a graphics wizard to create the assets for these UIs anymore.
The flipside is that every item of the UI requires much more careful planning and designing.[/quote]
You’re correct. Half of these are these days frowned upon by designers because they go against the grain (bit of skeuomorphic reference there) of the flat trend. Having said this, though, if an app works with a design like this then that’s what matters, rather than conforming to the containing design language.
The other flip side of this is that while Xojo handles graphic images acceptably (png transparency), it has no language for shapes and vector objects.
When I’ve finally mastered custom controls with graphics the fashion trends move away from this and into flat controls and resolution-independant vector images and people start going on about paintcode, where the closest I can get to that is using custom graphic fonts as a way to have vector images in my Xojo apps (obviously, forget about drawing myself). We lost PICT vector support right when we needed it 
I have/am subscribed to a feedback case asking vector image support in Xojo, but I can’t use Feedback behind this company’s proxy solution to try and find the ID and share it.
EDIT: I just realized PaintCode should be able to export CGPaths. I’m pretty sure Macoslib supports these. It wouldn’t be cross-platform but might work in my situation. I’ll do some testing and report back.
PaintCode is awesome for iOS interface design.
You design your interface in a graphic type editor and it exports the Objective-C, C# or (in beta testing now) Swift code for your design.