‘The Little Hamburger They Use on the Top’

Matthew Panzarino spoke to Eddy Cue about the launch of the Apple Music public beta for Android:

Apple Music is a beta on Android, which means it’s missing a couple of features. Music Videos are not available on Android, and neither is signing up for a family membership within the app. If you already have a family plan purchased elsewhere, you can log in with an authorized Apple ID to get access.

Cue says they decided to go with the standard Android conventions when designing Apple Music.

“It’s a full native app, so it will look and feel like an Android app. The menus will look like Android, you know the little hamburger they use on the top. It’ll definitely feel very much like an Android app,” says Cue.

He makes the case that the best experience for an Android user would be to feel familiar with Apple Music right on launch. “We wanted customers on Android to naturally be able to use it — what they’ve learned and how they interact is common. Things as simple as [that] the share icon looks like an Android share icon; the menu structure being where it is; these are things that most Android customers are familiar with. We wanted to make sure that they felt very familiar with Apple Music when they sat down to use it.”

Trying it out on my Moto X, it feels more like a native Android app than Google’s apps feel like native iOS apps, but that just could be that I’m so keenly attuned to idiomatic iOS UI conventions. I wouldn’t be surprised if Android UI-super-tasters see Apple’s Music app the way I see Google’s iOS apps: foreign. But for example (in addition to the sharing icons and hamburger menu): Apple Music for Android uses Roboto, the Android system font; Google’s iOS apps use Roboto, the Android system font.

★ Tuesday, 10 November 2015