Tiny signs that, to me, show that an iOS

November 28, 2021, 9:38 pm
Tiny signs that, to me, show that an iOS
Tiny signs that, to me, show that an iOS apps probably being designed and engineered primarily for cross-platform alignment at the expense of familiarity within the platform. A of some of the more common ones Ive seen lately in the wild:

I`d argue that`s not the case 99% of the time, but rather that Android devices are often just told to eyeball iOS designs. It`s not cross-platform in mind at all

Using vanilla UIKit will probably result in many bugs/slow development due to inevitable growth in complexity of procedural UI and lack of hot reload. SwiftUI potentially addresses first of these, but still loads of bugs/glitches (and SwiftUI 3.0 is iOS 15+/MacOS 12+ only).

Is that a problem? For consistency with other icons used in app this style of arrow might be better than a chevron.

I agree with you on this thread but consider this (which you likely have): how many Android apps have been designed to look like iOS because that`s the first or only design done, at the expense of platform familiarity?!

good thread

The worst thing is the fact that asking for the reason why both app should look the same and the answer is just to don`t have to create different documentation and save cash with designers: WTF if you don`t want to create just another doc explaining the little dif in iOS

When I see that for me it`s no longer an app but a less useful webpage. Why even bother uploading it to the appstore

This is why at every company I ever worked at, I made getting an Android phone (being an iphone user) a requirement for me to accept the position, to stay familiar with both platforms.

This one is the biggest pet peve for me, it`s awful behavior.

most of the UI was custom, i even had to write a custom navigation bar with push/pop functionality

ive had a few apps done in the past that didnt follow Apples guidelines at all (mostly material design) yet the client wanted them to be native :/

The app for my gym is a cross-platform abomination that hit all your points. It was years after the iPhone X before they moved the (fake) tab bar away from the home indicator. Presented views are faked as overlaying content and the stuff underneath responds to VoiceOver. Badly.

To be fair, sometimes cross platform common denominators are the right solution. But I consider them an exception, not a baseline, because theyre a bet that the common denominator stays aligned with the platforms best in class. Not the best odds.

When making a case for cross platform alignment being cheaper, its important to understand *why* its positioned as cheaper. More often than not, its because entire classes of long-tail features arent being considered (usually accessibility related, often UX related).

For all of the above, you get the expected behaviors for free (and more) with UIKit. Most of these examples require active ongoing investments of energy to do otherwise.

Lack of scroll indicators, scroll to top behavior on status bar tap not working, and forgetting the selected state when popping a view controller. All comes for free with standard native components.

Not supposing swipe to dismiss (horizontal and vertical), either due to custom navigation controllers or not using modern modal presentation APIs that handle swipe down to dismiss. And its not easy to recreate this in a way that feels consistent with the OS.

Native-like web view experiences that dont provide reasonable offline behaviors. Most typically represented by activity indicators on every page load. Note: even Safari/Chrome actual web browsers dont do this when loading new pages ; why is it acceptable for native apps? bar titles that dont grow in size up to the XXL Dynamic Type setting (recent iOS versions only). Easy to get this one wrong if youre using custom fonts in your navigation bar title. view items that dont identify correctly as buttons in VoiceOver. This behavior comes for free if your cells have a disclosure accessory. Easy to misconfigure even if using UIKit though, admittedly, especially if you have button cells with no disclosure. experiences trying to pass as native experiences. Lots of ways to identify this, with the easiest test being the ability to select labels that should be static. using standard system highlighting behaviors (or any highlighting behavior!) on tap, especially in lists where the correct behavior comes for free. Screenshot here shows the default behavior: non-standard, custom icons for fairly common action patterns. Most commonly seen in the more and share icons. iOS uses to mean more, like an ellipses. Dont make them vertical. other platforms back button icons instead of the standard back chevron.
 
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