The physics of iOS 7

As soon as iOS 7 made it into the hands of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users, we began to hear scattered reports of people becoming physically sick when watching the parallax view and zoom in/out animations. Apple quickly responded with a way to turn off the animations to help those who were getting motion sickness, but the fact remains that the animation was very real to some people. John Herman and Jake Levy at BuzzFeed FWD decided to look into how fast those icons and apps appear to be moving towards or away from you, and their results are quite fascinating.

Levy notes that items further away from you appear smaller and calculated that an icon before a zoom appears to be about 5.33 feet away. Timing how long it takes an icon to zoom into a full screen app and vice-versa (0.8 second), Levy was able to calculate that the icon appears to move towards you or away at 6.6 feet per second or about 4.5 mph — about the speed of a slow jog.

Next, Levy looked at icons placed in folders, and determined that they appear to be 24.62 feet away. That means that they “move” about 19.29 virtual feet in the same 0.8 second, or are zooming in or out at a virtual 16.4 miles per hour.

iOS developer and brony Steve Streza responded via Twitter to the BuzzFeed post, and noted that, “Those animations are based on spring physics. So it’s like you stretched a spring from you to the folder and then let go… Animations pre-iOS 7 were based on sine wave curves. iOS 7 animations have a more gradual decay.”

With all of this animated movement, it’s no wonder that some people seriously want to hurl while they’re using their iOS 7-equipped devices. Be sure to take a gander at the BuzzFeed animations that demonstrate exactly what they’re talking about.

[via The Verge]

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