Apple has always been known for its sleek, stylish design throughout its entire product collection, ranging from the iPhone to the iMac. Although beautiful to look at with its brushed aluminium and space age materials, the beauty doesn't just stop there. With a release of IOS 7 in 2013 Apple products underwent a complete restyling of the interface which ditched the beloved 3D looking icons, and swapped them for nice, 2D, simple icons.
IOS 7 & IOS 8 Screen Comparison
Dubbed the biggest IOS release ever, the IOS 8 is the latest release of Apple's iPhone software and still boasts the clean, sleek styling that the IOS 7 implemented. The new IOS still has all the features iPhone users know and love but many added features including, A new smart keyboard, added photo library features, voice messaging in iMessage, a new health app, family sharing, iCloud drive, not to mention a dozen other features. For a full look at all the cool new features and how they work, you can head over to the iOS web performance review.
But from a true design perspective although not so different from the IOS 7 design, we still believe this current interface is lovely to look at, not to mention much simpler to use, the term less is more really suits IOS 8. This reductive clean design is now being seen everywhere from websites, tablets, phones, games consoles, pretty much anything with an interface.
IOS 8 uses nice clean colour pallets which contrast but also complements one another, each app looks like an interesting little gem for you to open and explore.
The ISO 8 Clean, Slick 2D Interface
Another nice design feature is the semi opaque menu bars and control centre. This is a nice effect which allows you to be able to slightly see the apps through the control centre. This not only is a handy tool to access features on your phone, and make quick changes on your phone, it also looks great while it does it. the fact it still allows you partially see what is going on in the background, is great as it does not allow the user to be disjointed from what they are doing.
The new ISO 8 semi opaque menu bars and control center feature
An added feature in IOS8 is the possibility to install third party keyboards. This means you can download various keyboards, some that allow you to put photos behind them, keyboards which display Emojis (Smiley faces), ones you can change the colour or layout, and so on.
The new third party keyboard, exclusive to the ISO 8 update
The reductive interface not only looks good but is also technically sound. This is due to the phone being able to process these simple graphics much quicker and with ease, allowing for a faster cleaner experience. This same principle also carries over to other platforms including websites by optimizing web performance. We don't see this minimalist reductive design changing for some time, even with the possibility of things getting even simpler.