I’ve been mulling over Federico’s excellently well made iOS 11 concept video, and I wanted to reflect on some thoughts from a few of his larger ideas.
On his app picker idea, Viticci says:
A revamped app picker design based on these principles would greatly increase the usability and speed of Split View, but it would also introduce a different set of trade-offs and usability concerns to be addressed by Apple.
Simply put: yeah, I love this. It has rough edges as Viticci notes, but overall it would be a vast improvement even without further refining.
On his Shelf concept, Viticci says:
The Shelf would sit above apps (both in full-screen mode or Split View) and it’d be revealed automatically when the user is dragging an item towards the top of the screen. The Shelf would come down and display previously saved items as thumbnail previews; by default, new items are dropped into the leftmost side of the Shelf, though users could choose to drop an item between existing ones, or on top of another item to create a folder.
I don’t understand this idea at all. I’ve been trying to see the utility of it, but honestly I think it is a very user specific thing that Viticci would see far more utility in than most people. Further, I think it is clunky and confusing. I vote no.
On his drag and drop idea, Viticci says:
On the surface, native drag & drop between iPad apps would feel immediately intuitive. Users could select any piece of content – an image, some text, a link, or a document – and long-press with one finger until the content lifts up and can be dragged away.
Yeah, absolutely this should be in there. See also Viticci’s point about how iOS is all about direct manipulation and the lack of something like this is often more confusing than anything else. This would be great.
On file management, Viticci says:
The next logical step for Apple is to turn their scattershot implementation of document pickers and providers into a true Finder layer that can work with every app and be more cohesive and intuitive than what we have today.
Uh, get the fuck out of here with Finder on iOS. While it’s true that file management on iOS needs help, to think that Finder is the solution is just incorrect. If you truly want, or think you need, Finder on iOS, then the Mac is a great option, but even there most argue for Pathfinder, and not Finder (spoiler alert).
What would actually be a better solution would be to have iOS hide files over X date in age (my guess is 30 days is a sweet spot). Sort by most recently opened, or modified, and then allow a robust searching of the rest of the files. This would have the benefit of also not having to store the files on your device, but rather in iCloud for the older files. I highly doubt most users need files over 30 days of age, and I highly doubt those that do need them, would be unable to find them quicker via searching than tapping and scrolling.
The days of manually managing your file system should be long over. Fuck that shit. If you want to do this, use something like DEVONThink or Together.
By and large, there are a lot of great ideas in here, but most of them are a lot smaller changes than it might seem once they would hypothetically be implemented. Still, what an amazing video he put together, top notch. Just, for the love of iPad, no Finder on iOS.