Apple changed the iPhone 10 years ago — and we’re still feeling it today

Entering WWDC 2013, Apple had a lot to prove. The company was still licking its wounds from the poor launch of Apple Maps in iOS 6, and complaints about the increasingly stale design of iOS were mounting. Although the iPhone had proved to be a hit by then, iOS was starting to feel outdated. Remember the Notes app like Notepad? Weird linen background behind Notification Center? Felt-ish green background of the Game Center app? When compared to things like Microsoft’s very flat and for the time very modern Windows Phone Platform (RIP), it seemed like iOS was in need of a shake-up.

So it came as no surprise that, on June 10, 2013, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced what is probably Apple’s most important iOS update ever: IOS 7, But he didn’t stop on stage, quickly giving the spotlight to a video narrated by Jony Ive, Apple’s then-SVP of Industrial Design, who had taken over software design from ousted iOS exec Scott Forstall just a few months earlier.

“I think there is a deep and enduring beauty in simplicity. In clarity. In efficiency,” I say at the beginning of my video. “True simplicity is derived from too much by the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It’s about bringing order to complexity. iOS 7 is the clearest representation of these goals.”

The video revealed a modified operating system. iOS 7 will change the way almost everything looks, discarding skeuomorphic designs in favor of a more modern appearance. Many of those changes felt radical at the time — simplification, freeing up space, and pushing too far in the direction of a digital-first design language — but much of what was introduced in that release is yet to be seen by us. serves as a base. iPhone today.

iOS 7’s changes were immediately apparent. The iPhone’s homescreen was much brighter, thanks in large part to Apple’s completely redesigned app icons, which were flatter and filled the screen with bright red, green, and blue hues. Apple added transparency throughout iOS to give the operating system a sense of layers. Even the signal bar was reevaluated, being replaced by five circles.

The new design also felt less cluttered. Apple (at first) changed the font to Helvetica Neue Light, a very thin typeface. That flat design and thin fonts carried over to Apple’s apps, which were changed to match the new aesthetic and better support swipe gestures. And apps use up a lot of white and empty space. “We just completely ran out of green!” Craig Federighi quips while introducing iOS 7 on stage.

The new design wasn’t a hit from the jump. The Same Day Apple Revealed iOS 7, Joshua Topolsky of the verge former editor-in-chief, called the redesign “simply confusing” and criticized things like the design of many app icons (“The message word balloon is so bloated and large compared to its precise point that it seems that it will fall over”) and how Apple added weird new icons inside apps (iOS 7 introduced the weird “box with an arrow pointing down” design for sharing).

Apple listened to the complaints and made some minor changes between the June reveal and September release of the operating system, including updating the font to the more legible Helvetica Neue and enlarging the battery and cell signal indicators on the lock screen. But the overall design philosophy was still there, however you like it; When everyone got iOS 7 on their phones, they still saw weird blobs that now somehow represent Game Center.

I think David Pierce said it best in his September 2013 review of iOS 7: “Apple is on a mission to convince buyers that it’s still relevant, still innovative, still interesting. iOS 7 is a big step forward to that effect.” , is full of sweeping changes, and there’s real power in seeing something fresh and bright, but in the end the new visuals don’t offer much change beneath the surface. Not yet, anyway.”

That last line is important – because now we know how important it really was. “A lot of the criticism surrounding iOS 7 centered on its initial implementation: fonts too thin, inconsistent iconography, uninteresting animations taking too long,” said Janam Trivedi, a design engineer at The Browser Company. ledge, “But that’s to be expected with any new design language—it takes time to bake in.”

While Apple has refined many elements of the way iOS looks over the years, overall, the core ideas remain. Apple’s app icons are still pretty flat. There’s still a lot of white space in apps and even some translucency, like in Safari and Messages. “Over the years, the design language matured, and iOS 7’s novel elements became fundamental parts of all Apple design today: blurriness, translucency, liveliness, interactivity, animation, depth,” says Trivedi.

We shouldn’t forget that iOS 7 also introduced new features that have since become iOS staples. The addition of the new Timeline Control Center felt revolutionary – finally, an easy way to turn on Airplane Mode! — and while it was a mess at first, it got a major redesign with iOS 10 and another with iOS 11 that turned it into the much smoother panel you might recognize today. iOS 7 added AirDrop, which has become an incredibly useful way to share things between Apple devices. The iOS 7 Camera app lets you switch between things like Photo, Square Photo, Panorama, and Video modes with a swipe, which you can easily do with the app.

After all this time, though, people are getting itchy; More people use an OS now than in 2013, and there’s a growing desire for change and personalization. This is probably why we’ve seen people jump through hoops to customize their iPhones and why Apple has given users some design control with iOS 16’s awesome lock screen tools. And even though Apple still largely eschews skeuomorphism, we’ve recently started to see some app designers — like in browser company – Having some fun with it again.

Apple probably played it Very Recently safer with the design of iOS. “Even today, after a decade, I can’t believe the iOS 7 design style is still present in newer iOS versions,” tells Enid Hadaj, an indie iOS developer. ledge, “Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between them because they look so similar.” But for the most part, iOS just works, so Apple probably doesn’t need to rock the boat.

To end my intro video, Ive said something that sounded like typical Apple inspiration: “Together, we see iOS 7 as defining an important new direction. And in many ways, a beginning.” Ten years later, it turned out that he was right.