Ui Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

How Apple introduced brushed metal

by Dave Caolo (Mar 11th, 2013)

Remember when "brushed metal" dominated the look of Apple's software products, including OS X? Stephen Hackett at 512 Pixels does, and he's put together a look at its origins. Brushed metal didn't debut with Mac OS X 10.3, as many believe. Instead, Hackett notes, the UI motif first slipped onto ...

Daily Update for February 4, 2013

by Steven Sande (Feb 4th, 2013)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player ...

The future of Apple UI

by Steven Sande (Feb 4th, 2013)

Now that Scott Forstall is no longer in charge of iOS and Jony Ive is overseeing both product design and user experience, signs are pointing to a major overhaul of the user interfaces for iOS, OS X and the Apple-created apps that are part of the operating systems. Wired's Christina Bonnington ...

Google Maps for iOS design details

by Steven Sande (Dec 14th, 2012)

With Google Maps for iOS now in the hands of millions of users, it wasn't surprising that someone took a look at the app from the viewpoint of a designer. Sacha Greif, a designer and developer living in Kyoto, Japan, did that just. Greif was impressed with the attention to detail in Google's ...

Skeuomorphic iPad app design

by Steven Sande (Dec 10th, 2012)

Love it or hate it, the skeuomorphic school of iPad app design is here to stay. Even though skeuomorphism proponent Scott Forstall is no longer with Apple, we don't expect to see the fad of replicating the look of analog devices in digital apps to pass anytime soon. Chris Spooner at Line 25 has ...

Resizable app icon concept: iOS meets Windows Phone 8

by Randy Nelson (Nov 1st, 2012)

Visual and user interface designer Max Rudberg has cooked up his own take on how a future version of iOS could be updated to offer app icons that can be resized to offer more information and features. Specifically, the video below shows the Settings icon being expanded into a pane that occupies ...

University of Calgary experimenting with one-handed iPhone gestures

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jul 5th, 2012)

A research team from the GroupLab at the University of Calgary is working on a set of new single-handed gestures for the iPhone called the the Fat Thumb interaction technique. This technique lets you hold your iPhone with one hand and use your thumb to interact with the UI. The team conducted ...

iOS 6 adds some great eye candy to new Music app

by Mike Schramm (Jun 14th, 2012)

While Apple talked about a few new iOS 6 features during the keynote here at WWDC, there are always plenty of new features hidden in the operating system, some that we won't even fully hear about until the OS actually goes out to the public. But here's one found by the guys over at the ...

Compelling idea for moving files from Mac to iPhone

by Kelly Hodgkins (May 4th, 2012)

We've all faced the difficulty of moving a file from our Mac to our iPhone. There's iCloud, Dropbox and a host of other services to help us tranfer these files, but there are no solutions as elegant as the concept devised by interaction designer Ishac Bertran. His idea for proximity-aware ...

DevRocket is a Photoshop plugin for iOS developers

by Mike Schramm (Apr 30th, 2012)

This might be of limited use, given that most of our readers are, I'd guess, iPhone users rather than iPhone designers. But if you find yourself mocking up iOS apps in Photoshop often, then Dev Rocket might be just for you. It's a Photoshop plugin that makes it easy to layout and mock up iPhone ...

Google updates Google+ mobile UI

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 13th, 2012)

The Google+ mobile website is easier on the eyes thanks to a redesign Google rolled out on Monday. The new UI is available on any mobile device, including the iPad which still does not have a native client. Comments on the redesign suggest the web UI improves performance on the tablet device, but ...

HTC completes workaround to get past Apple's patent ban

by Kelly Hodgkins (Dec 21st, 2011)

HTC said it was pleased with a recent patent infringement ruling from the ITC, because it involves a simple UI element that was easy to fix. It appears the company was not exaggerating as the workaround is already completed. HTC infringed patent (#5,946,647) which describes a "system and ...

Apple to improve Notification Center with fresh talent

by Kelly Hodgkins (Dec 14th, 2011)

Apple is looking outside its ranks and hiring a college student to help revise its iOS notification system. This isn't any college student. The new hire is Jan-Michael Cart, the whizkid who created a clever mocked up Notification Center redesign and then posted it to YouTube. Cart will join ...

On UI inconsistency in iOS 5

by Chris Rawson (Dec 6th, 2011)

A while back, designer Jake Marsh commented on an inconsistency in Apple's use of linen textures in iOS 5 (hat tip to Daring Fireball). In both OS X Lion and iOS 5, the linen texture is "underneath" other UI elements in almost every instance. In Lion, linen textures lie beneath the Mission ...

Why Siri is like skeuomorphic UIs: the magic is just skin deep

by Richard Gaywood (Dec 1st, 2011)

By now you've probably heard of the widely reported case of Siri's alleged pro-life stance. Walking the dogs this morning, I thought through what I hoped would be an interesting blog post about what I feel this means about Apple and our relationship to technology. I see an interesting link here ...