“Matias Duarte, Android’s head of user experience… sits down at the head of the table. I ask him to start by telling me what’s been happening between Honeycomb, his first big project at Google, and Ice Cream Sandwich,” Joshua Topolsky reports for The Verge. “Matias explains… ‘Honeycomb was like: we need to get tablet support out there. We need to build not just the product, but even more than the product, the building blocks so that people stop doing silly things like taking a phone UI and stretching it out to a 10-inch tablet.’ It’s obvious that products like the original Galaxy Tab, with a bastardized version of Android for phones, annoyed him.”
“Then he pulls a dark gray slab out of his pocket and flicks on the screen. The Galaxy Nexus,” Topolsky reports. “The interface of the phone is completely new. It looks a lot like Honeycomb, but also shares much in common with Google’s new aesthetic that it’s been pushing for its web products. It’s clean and modern, and the company has removed the overly masculine, Tron-like feel to the OS. ‘Across the board Google and Android is taking design a lot more seriously,” Matias says, and points out that Roboto is used throughout the system. “There’s this thing that’s happening right now in user interface design that I find kind of shackling. The faux wood paneling trend, and the airport lavatory signage trend.’ He laughs when he says this and pulls up a slide on his computer, a split screen of an Atari 2600 and… airport lavatory signage. It’s an obvious dig at both Apple and Microsoft.”
Topolsky reports, “I ask why he came to the company in the first place. ‘I came here because they’re winning, but also because I could not stand the thought of there being another decade of being trapped in one paradigm, of being trapped in the past just because somebody manages to grab maximum marketshare, and then that’s the thing everybody uses with incremental evolution.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Matias could use a refresher course. All he needs to do is look at the state of Android before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007 and the way Android badly mimicked iPhone’s UI after. He’s already following Apple and he doesn’t even seem to know it.
And, if he thinks building profit-less market share by running endless BOGOF offers – giving away every other phone or sometimes even more than that – is “winning,” then he’s seriously misguided.
Apple owns the *ahem* Lion’s share of smartphone (and tablet) profits (#1 in the world), not Google or any other company that’s clearly and blatantly following Apple’s lead.
And, BTW, Duarte also lifted his “soul of the machine” idea directly from one Steven P. Jobs. Read more here
He feels giving away an OS is winning? He feels a messy, confusing interface is leading edge? Another desperate attempt to push a failing tablet OS.
He probably applied for a job at Apple, and they told him he wasn’t good enough.
I felt I was reading the incoherent ramblings of a total asshole. Duarte, you’re the biggest asshole in the universe. 3 million Android tablets shipped, not sold, vs Apple’s 40 million iPads sold to date. A retard talking out of his ass in every sense of the word.
Again, BLN can’t post anything without having to resort to the lowest level of language.
Really? You should rinse your head more with toilet water drawn from your water closet.
Bln…lowest common denominator again? We’re doomed.
Why bashing BLN? He’s not hurting anybody. Just practicing his first amendment rights.
Not only not hurting, but actually helping by giving voice to primitive urgings felt by many of us but constrained by the better angels of our nature; besides he is often right about assholes’ behaviors
I just wish he would practice them somewhere else.
Your comment sounds silly. These people are obviously practicing their first amendment rights as well. Whenever you stay something stupid, be prepared for people to tell you how stupid it is. Free speech goes both ways.
Thats not to say I didn’t agree with BLN (I did), my comment was more a general idea of people being free to refute others ideas and/or the way they express those ideas, as all being part of free speech.
This is a world wide forum. Most don’t know what a first amendment right is.
“I came here because they’re winning, but also because I could not stand the thought of there being another decade of being trapped in one paradigm, of being trapped in the past just because somebody manages to grab maximum marketshare, and then that’s the thing everybody uses with incremental evolution.’”
Isn’t that a contradiction? How could anyone be “trapped in one paradigm” if Android was “winning”? Or is it okay as long as that “one paradigm” is the one he’s backing?
“building profit-less market share ”
Umm MDN, Android is making a profit for Microsoft. 🙂
Google guys finally figured out the implications of Siri+Wolfram/Alpha regarding Google’s future, and they’re upset.
what a douch!!
Google should have named their OS “Mongoloid.”
1 Damn near spit out my coffee!
First, that would be an insult to people who suffer that affliction. They were born that way and had no choice in the matter.
Android was intentionally designed to be what it is.
My youngest sister , born in 1968, has Down Syndrome. Mongoloid is a long obsolete term. I love her dearly, and she is a constant reminder that I have nothing, not a thing, to bitch about. I nevertheless had to laugh out loud at MacIifx’s post. It is damn clever. My rule is that you make fun of everything, including yourself.
“They were born that way and had no choice in the matter.”
True, but their parents did.
Not in 1968.
MacIIfx that has to be be funniest succinct post I have read in a log time.
For those of you that don`t know what Android looked like before the iphone….
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/12/a-visual-tour-of-androids-ui/
should be a sticky
I guess its hard for a loser to know they’re losing
I don’t agree with most of what he’s saying but he’s got a point about the new UI on some of the apps. Find My Friends is an example.
He’s an idiot. The bathroom sign thing he’s talking about is actually a good idea. It makes apps immediately recognizable. App icons should be somewhat simplistic while conveying immediately what they are about. The Find my Friends icon is a perfect example. It has two stickmen holding hands on a light brown background. The brown is unique enough and the two stick men are immediately recognizable.
Find My Friends icon —> http://tinyurl.com/3temf4o
As far as the faux leather thing, thats totally up to taste. I personally like the way its implemented in the iPhone. Also if I had to trust Steve Job’s taste over googles, I’d take Steve’s any day. Luckily I have my own good taste to fall back on.
Have you seen Roboto? You can download the font somewhere. Warning!: It will hurt your eyes. Edges just don’t line up with the pixel grid.
What’s funny about Roboto is that it is basically an exact rip off of Helvetica, but with really stupid capital “O”s that look like zeros. They should have just used Helvetica.
Of course, Apple originally used Helvetica before switiching over to Helvetica Neue, and Google would NEVER copy Apple… so… they made a font that is a near exact copy Helvetica, which is what Apple used on the iPhone.
Ok. Good work Google.
Kind of like Microsoft and Arial?
Yes, but in MS’ defense (did I really just write that?) they didn’t actually create Arial, Monotype did.
Oh, and the capital “O” in Arial doesn’t look stupid like it does in Roboto. 😉
Was anyone else following a live blog? They revealed several discoveries they made while making ICS such as that virtual buttons are better than hard buttons and hardware and software should be made together. Really!? Who would have thought that.
lol yeah I thought the same thing. Kinda like “Seriously… you just now ‘stumbled’ on this discovery google!?”
The impression I got from reading this piece is that ICS is going to be the first release of Android where the UI and end user experience are the focus. Kinda scary to think that was not first and foremost to begin with def not the first company to not see the light until later down the road.
Apple should throw some cash at him and hire him.
There are aspects of this guy that remind me a lot of Steve Jobs.
I agree; it sounds like he’s with the wrong company:
“It’s obvious that products like the original Galaxy Tab, with a bastardized version of Android for phones, annoyed him.”
Maybe he’ll be one of those people who quits and writes an open letter on how much better Google could be.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101876
I disagree, he sounds like an idiot to me. He’s just an opinionated idiot.
He knows it. He just can’t go out and admit it.
Google.com is about as bland and uninspiring as u can get! All that money and that’s all they got? Android sucks! Period!
Not a Google fan, but the design doesn’t seem to be hurting the profitability of that site.
some of Apple’s current design reminds me a bit of a certain Houston hotel is stayed in back in 1973, from a first glance it all looked very posh with wood panelling everywhere…then you looked closer…all plastic.
So some of Apple’s design just looks a tad ‘faux’. Now maybe that’s fine in the good ‘ol USofA, but here in Blighty we don’t like having Americana shovelled down our throats all the time.
OK?
Can someone give me his address so I can go bitchslap the guy? Maybe wipe off his ugly ass smile and teach him a thing or two about bullshitting.
“… Matias says it’s got a higher pixel density than the iPhone, but when I do the math, it turns out he’s wrong. ”
Ouch! Lying to the reporter interviewing you is generally not a good idea. Unfortunately the interviewer just lets it slide.
Wow that guy is one cocky douchebag. I bet 10 seconds in a room alone with SJ would melt this morons brain! Wish SJ was around to put this braggart in his place.
As I read this I kept thinking, “what would Monkey-boy Ballmer sound like if he was forced to attend eloquence and public speaking classes?” The answer of course is this bozo. Duarte’s speaking might be more intelligible, but he’s still speaking much of the same schlock that comes out Ballmer’s mouth!