I’ve been looking closely at iOS 7, and like many designers I have mixed feelings. Some of the changes, like the expanded use of motion, are a breath of fresh air. Animation is coming to the forefront and will only be further explored in the years to come. And that’s very exciting. In other areas, meanwhile, such as the heavy reliance on type rather than icons, the over-reliance on plain white backgrounds everywhere, and the lack of clear separation between elements such as the status bar and the…

I surprised myself last week by working up yet another new version of x2y. I thought it would be a few months before I had a chance to finish up the optimizations and polishing I wanted to do for 1.5. But another project required me to do some research into animation in UIKit, and thus I couldn’t resist bringing some of that fun into x2y as well. A short while ago, Foster from Mysterious Trousers wrote a nice piece about the “visceral” elements of some apps. The little…

When I released x2y 1.0 last year there were only two major features it didn’t have that really bothered me. The first was full iPad support, which I managed to add in version 1.2. The second was the ability to customize your Common Aspects list. That is being added today in version 1.4. Michael Simmons says you should “plan your 2.0 but ship your 1.0.” And that’s pretty much what I did. While the last thing I wanted for x2y was for it…

I made a few small tweaks to x2y this week. Haven’t had time to work on any major new features lately, but there is always room for small improvements. I realized that somehow one of the ratio separators (the colons between the numbers) was out of alignment on the iPad. Actually, the separator was in the right place, but the two number fields it separated weren’t. One of those tiny little details that was extremely embarrassing to me. You stare at a screen for weeks, trying to make…

The first big challenge in designing the iPad version of x2y was the placement of the controls. Looking at all that screen real estate, you are tempted to concentrate only on the visual aesthetic and forget that you want the design of the app to conform to the users’ hands as well his or her eyes. This is why it’s essential when designing an app to mock it up and get it onto the device as early in the process as possible. Tap around and see how comfortable (or…