Clear Version: 1.0.1 Review | iPhone and iPad Productivity App | Macworld: “I don’t object to Clear’s efforts at using non-traditional actions; I support a developer’s right to be clever, and I freely admit that it’s both fun and cool to drag down to create a new task, or pinch to go back up a level. But it sometimes feels, perhaps, cuter than necessary. Is it really a benefit to lack buttons like New Task or Back?”
(Via . Macworld)
I’m glad Lex Friedman had the guts to say this. He seems to be the only one. From the press going around Clear over the past few weeks, you’d think Realmac had invented the wheel, or something.
Now, I do like Clear; I find it great for entering quick lists of tasks, now that I’ve gotten the hang of it. But all the praise it’s getting for it’s “brilliant” UI seems to be more of a piling on of designers stroking each other than anything else.
Yes, simplicity is always a goal. Yes, the Steve Jobs philosophy of removing rather than adding is a great driving force. But there is such a thing as taking it too far, and I think Clear is just on the cusp of taking it too far.
There’s a point where you make the thing so simple that it becomes less useful than it could be.
All the raving about the pinching for everything in this app is just weird to me. Pinching on an iPhone is not something I want to be doing all the time. For starters, I have to use two-hands to pinch, and that already is a big fail on a phone. And 9 times out of ten, when I’m trying to pinch something open, Clear mistakes my pinch for something else, or does nothing. So I’ll come out and say it: the pinching in this app sucks, to be frank.
As soon as I realized that I could accomplish all the same things without pinching I was happier. But that in and of itself is practically an admission that pinching constantly is awkward. So why base your whole UI on it?
And while the app is clever in its use of minimalism, you can’t honestly say that it’s intuitive. The tutorial that comes at first launch is nice, but it’s also absolutely necessary; this app is not easy to figure out without it. Hand Clear over to someone without that tutorial, and he or she would be lost. Heck, I know a few people who watched the tutorial and STILL didn’t get it.
Friedman is right on when he says “you can expect to make the wrong thing happen with alarming consistency.” I’m constantly swiping the wrong way and deleting, rather than checking off, a completed task. And pulling down to go back up in the hierarchy (while better than pinching) is somewhat of a “crapshoot” as he puts it. I’m very often creating new tasks whether I intended to or not.
And don’t get me started on the character limit. There’s no reason for it, other than someone on the design team didn’t like the way longer tasks “looked”. Aesthetic over function. Not a good thing.
I get that this is a 1.0. I get that Clear will be adding an iPad and Mac version soon, and I assume, synching all your tasks between them. That’s good. I’m sure even some of these weird quirks will be overcome. This app is coming from a great development team with a good track record, so it’s likely the app will get even better over time. But in it’s current state, it’s more interesting and promising than it is great.
And I would still even recommend Clear to some people, because it is very good for entering tasks very quickly, and it’s only 99 cents, for crying out loud. But hailing it up as the most amazing example of super-duper designed app genius seems a bit over the top to me. It’s a solid app with some decent innovative thinking behind it. Let’s just leave it at that.
