The enforced restraint breeds elegance and I am glad Apple’s implementation has ended up being more inspired by Windows Phone Live Tiles than the Android widget system. I certainly don’t feel an immediate compulsion to ask for more. I know some people are already anticipating that Apple adds support for buttons and interactive controls in widgets in the future, but I’m not yet convinced they have to. Apple has set a high standard of beauty with the design of the built-in widgets and I look forward to seeing what the developer community does. Whereas the Watch has to lean in to the true black nature of its background, widgets on iOS 14 can explode with colour and vibrancy to complement the surrounding app icons and wallpaper. It makes iOS 14 widgets feel a lot like Watch complications. The decision to disallow any interactivity apart from tapping to launch the app is an interesting one. The stringent size options (either 2x2, 4x2 or 4x4) basically encourage that kind of usage pattern. I don’t expect people to flood their home screens with widget after widget, I reckon most people will settle on a couple to put on their first page and that will do just fine. You can finally have a weather icon on your home screen that actually reflects the current weather conditions. The small 2x2 widget is basically answering those demands. For the longest time, people have wanted the ability for app icons to be dynamic, like Clock and Calendar. The whole system feels like a modernisation of the macOS Dashboard, complete with a ripple animation when adding new widgets from the library. Widgets on the home screen are just perfect. iOS 14’s brilliance is going to make quick work of pushing the troubles of iOS 13 into distant memory. In stark contrast to last year, I do not see anything in iOS 14 that is so bad I think they need to retrace their steps. It was not a good look when every point-update was congratulated for reverting something that had been launched in 13.0. Myself and many others shared our grievances on these matters over the summer, Apple shipped them without changes, and they were indeed received poorly. Things like the changes to text selection, the naive grouping of accessory features in Home, and the inane layout of the Mail toolbar. Many of the features introduced in iOS 13 were simply mistakes in direction, even if they worked. The iOS 13 cycle is overshadowed by the bugginess of its debut but it had fundamental product problems from the beginning.
Apple advanced each of its operating systems significantly, often adding features that people have been asking for a long time. In fact, I’d place the 2020 conference as one of the best WWDCs ever.
I’m not sure I could point to anything specific in the new software that feels particularly novel. There are times when Apple pushes boundaries and times when they don’t.
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