How Google’s Material Design is kicking iOS ass
Google introduced “Material Design” with next-gen version of Android L a few month ago. Let’s talk about the evolution over the years between Android and iOS.
Hi there, my name is Max and I’m a french UI Designer from Bordeaux. I am this kind of person thinking Apple is doing the best products, hardware and software working together. But I’m a bit disappointed the path Apple takes since Job’s death. Seriously, we cannot tell a bigger phone as a revolution, Samsung did it a few years ago and dammit it seems like the cheapest solution they found. But the hardware is not the head subject right now.
Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 with a brand new technology, smartphones. New screen sizes and new interfaces to understand and to design. Android came after with a very ugly interface as you can see below.
I thought nothing in the world can make me buy an Android phone instead of my revolutionary iPhone. But I was wrong.
We assisted recently to a mobile UI revolution in terms of design. Skeumorphism is ugly and weird. Who want to create interfaces with shapes and texts and add to this beautiful flat UI kind of glass effects and other textures today ? Nobody, that’s clear. But it was like this for 5 years and, as a designer, I cannot deny the fact it was cool.
When iOS7 came out, there was lots of controversies about buttons designed like labels, gradients on icon like if you were on drugs and many other things. In fact, I was thinking this new version was pretty cool on the general aspect.
A few months ago, Google gave a conference about brand new Google Material Design. I watched a part of the keynote and read the guidelines and after a couple of hours, I finally was convinced Google made a better interface than Apple. Buttons just seems like buttons, there’s no issued with typography weight or even weird gradients.
Material Design is pretty simple to imagine and it is the same with usability. Every part of the interface is smooth and connected with light animations and transitions. Each detail is delightful (even the keyboard and the calculator !!) and this is glad to use…
There was still a question. What should I do ? Stay with my iPhone, really cool and working fine, or should I wait for the next generation of Nexus phones ? For the moment, I decided to keep my iPhone and wait (maybe dream, I think it is more appropriated) about Google + Macintosh interoperability. Messages, photos, mails, and all this kind of stuffs are synchronized between my Apple devices and Google cannot do this at the moment. I hope one day, ChromeBooks become real computers and not just web-browsing devices.
I really think the only force of Apple today is the ecosystem they created between their devices but I’m pretty sure Google can do it better – they already did it about designing interfaces – and they will do.
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