Last year, after Twitterrific 5 launched, I loved the pure, Vader black look so much I changed my wallpaper to get the full-on blackout look. Then, in June of this year, Apple showed off iOS 7 and it was, for the most part, whiter than Storm Trooper white. Now, Twitterrific 5 has updated with a new, iOS 7-friendlier design, and just looking at it in black suddenly felt… heavy.
So, I tapped into Settings and flipped the switch to the white theme. And then the skies opened up. Well, not really, but everything looked and felt light and open and what Apple was doing with the whiteness of iOS 7 suddenly made sense.
It’s the difference between traditionally white paper pages and traditionally black electronic monitors. On the former, text and color seems to punch out, to float, to soar as if on clouds. On the latter, text and color seems to burn through, to emerge from the deep, to live inside shadow. The feeling is viscerally different, and the transition not only to Retina displays, but to dynamic, object-oriented interface seems to make everything old media seem new media now.
I won’t switch to a white wallpaper, because the parallax effect in IOS 7 is so still so delightful I’m not anywhere nearly ready to give it up, and parallax requires something to orient against for it to work. But I’ll be keeping Twitterrific 5 in white mode, and likely any other app that gives me the option, for the foreseeable future.
I wonder if app designers will feel the same way, and, following iOS 7, if apps will become, if not whiter, than brighter and lighter by default as well?
