Even since I can remember I’ve always been curious about trying out all kinds of software, checking out different operating systems, and improving my own user experience through customizing them. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to test all the major mobile operating systems out there, and learn about their intricacies. One of the OSes that I’ve tried is now long dead, but still holds a special place in my heart is Windows Phone.

即使我记得我一直对尝试各种软件，签出不同的操作系统以及通过自定义它们来改善自己的用户体验一直感到好奇。 多年来，我有机会测试了所有主要的移动操作系统，并了解了它们的复杂性。 我尝试过的操作系统之一已经死了，但在我心中仍然占有特殊地位的是Windows Phone。

I’m currently an iPhone user, and for at least the past two years before every WWDC I’ve been crossing my fingers and hoping for an announcement of some improvements to the way the home screen works. After so many years icons have become boring, and—even more importantly—the way we interact with our phones has changed so much over the years that the information presented to us on our home screens requires thorough rethinking.

我目前是iPhone用户，至少在过去的两年中，在每个WWDC之前，我一直在指责，并希望宣布对主屏幕工作方式的一些改进。 这么多年后，图标变得无聊，而且更重要的是，这些年来，我们与手机互动的方式发生了巨大变化，以至于需要在主屏幕上呈现给我们的信息需要进行彻底的重新思考。

I’m well aware that Android is the best place for home screen experiments, but even though I can choose from a large selection of launchers, often customize them the way I want, the problem that I have is that the rest of the OS remains the same, doesn’t play well visually with the way the launcher looks, and that — as a designer — I simply cannot accept.

我很清楚Android是进行主屏幕实验的最佳场所，但是即使我可以从众多启动器中进行选择，并且经常按自己的方式自定义启动器，但我遇到的问题是其余的操作系统仍然存在同样，在发射器的外观上无法很好地发挥视觉效果，而作为设计师，我根本无法接受。

After years of using Android phones, I’ve decided that visual coherence is more important to me than being able to change the way the information on the home screen is presented, and so I switched back to Apple about two years ago.

在使用Android手机多年之后，我认为视觉连贯性对我而言比能够更改主屏幕上信息的显示方式更为重要，因此大约两年前，我改回了Apple。

Even though the newly introduced widgets look quite different than their counterparts in Windows Phone, I think the idea is pretty much the same. They’re structured in a grid, they come in a few different sizes, they provide you with a snippet of information from the app that they represent, you cannot interact with their content — tapping them opens an app.

尽管新引入的小部件看起来与Windows Phone中的小部件完全不同，但我认为想法几乎相同。 它们以网格的形式组织，具有几种不同的大小，它们为您提供了来自它们所代表的应用程序的信息片段，您无法与它们的内容进行交互-点击它们可打开一个应用程序。

One major gripe that I have with the way widget look in iOS 14 is the inconsistency. If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess that they come from different designers and developers. Android suffers from exactly the same issue, their widgets are completely all over the place. I know it’s not an easy job given that the information inside a widget needs to make sense in the context of its app, but if Microsoft’s managed somehow, I’m hoping Apple won’t drop the ball on this one and make some significant improvements in this area before iOS 14 goes stable.

我对iOS 14中的小部件外观的主要抱怨是不一致。 如果我不知道更好，我猜他们来自不同的设计师和开发人员。 Android遭受完全相同的问题，其小部件完全无处不在。 我知道，鉴于小部件中的信息需要在其应用程序的上下文中有意义，这并不是一件容易的事，但是如果微软以某种方式进行管理，我希望苹果公司不会在此问题上做出重大改进在iOS 14稳定之前，就可以在此区域使用。

What made Windows Phone’s home screen so amazing to me and so unique was the approach to displaying notifications. You’d get information about the number of unanswered calls inside your Phone tile, you’d see snippets of unread messages in your Messaging app tile, and so on. I do realize that it’s uniqueness was one of the reason for its downfall, yet I’m still hoping that we’ll eventually see some more changes done to how home screens work.

使Windows Phone的主屏幕对我如此惊奇并如此独特的是显示通知的方法。 您将获得有关“电话”磁贴中未应答呼叫数量的信息，以及在“消息传递”应用磁贴中看到未读邮件的片段，依此类推。 我的确意识到它的独特性是它垮台的原因之一，但我仍然希望我们最终会看到对主屏幕工作方式所做的更多更改。

Another thing that I think was pretty great about Windows Phone was the animation. Microsoft’s designers, at least in the earlier days of Windows Phone, were very meticulous about how things moved around the phone screen in order to draw your attention to certain elements of the interface, and let your journey through consequent screens understandable and easily navigable. Apart from that every tile would behave in a certain way. The contact app tile, for example, contained a set of tiles that would rotate different contact images, the Photo app rotated your favorite photos, the calendar app rotated between current date and your upcoming appointments. It brought a lot of life to the screen and let you acquire a lot more info from a tiny portion of the screen than you normally would.

我认为Windows Phone的另一个优点是动画。 微软的设计师，至少在Windows Phone的早期，对于事情如何在电话屏幕周围移动以吸引您对界面的某些元素的关注非常细致，并让您轻松理解并轻松浏览随后的屏幕。 除此之外，每个图块都将以某种方式表现。 例如，联系人应用程序磁贴包含一组磁贴，这些磁贴可以旋转不同的联系人图像，照片应用程序可以旋转您喜欢的照片，日历应用程序可以在当前日期和即将到来的约会之间旋转。 它为屏幕带来了很多生命，并让您从屏幕的一小部分获取了比平时更多的信息。

It might be a little hard to imagine what a lot of this really looked like, and there’s not a lot of good reviews that focused on the software side of things, but if your memory’s hazy or you haven’t had the chance to check out the Windows Phone OS on your own, be sure to watch the video I link to below.

很难想象其中有多少是真正的样子，并且没有很多针对软件方面的好的评论，但是如果您的内存模糊不清或者您没有机会查看Windows Phone OS，请务必观看我链接到下面的视频。

I’m kind of hoping that Apple will be headed in that direction, and that we’ll see a lot more widgets for their system apps in the future. I’m also hoping that this change will prompt other companies (well, company, there’s not a lot of competition in the mobile OS market, unfortunately) to slowly start moving away from icons and coming up with ways to design better home screens.

我希望苹果能够朝着这个方向发展，并且将来我们会为他们的系统应用看到更多的小部件。 我也希望这一变化将促使其他公司(很不幸，公司在移动操作系统市场上没有太多竞争)慢慢地开始脱离图标，并提出设计更好的主屏幕的方法。