What's Wrong With Xiaomi?

MIUI 6 has been announced! It's astonishing that it's design language is almost replica that of Apple! When Mi Pad was announced, Hugo Barro mentioned "If you have two similarly skilled designers, it makes sense that they would reach the same conclusion," he argues. "It doesn't matter if somebody else has reached the same conclusion" about, for example, a 4:3 screen ratio being preferable to the more cinematic 16:9 that most Android tablets offer. Mi is focused on making the best products that it can and refuses to shy away from a good idea just because Apple might have done it already. "We're not copying Apple's products. End of story."  Does that means that they have almost an entire team that have the similar creativity and skill set to those from Apple? From their products, to their OS layer and their website? This cannot be coincidence...

iPad Mini
Mi Pad

Let's take a look at some of the screenshots of MIUI 6 versus that of iOS 7.

Settings, MIUI6 (left) vs iOS7 (right)
Search, MIUI6 (left) vs iOS7 (right) 
Calendar, MIUI6 (left) vs iOS7 (right) 
Calculator, MIUI6 (left) vs iOS7 (right)
Mi's products' main selling point is cheap and value for money. They shouldn't have to try to imitate Apple in doing their products, website and even their presentation. In China, there are many skilful and creative people, they can definitely do one better than Apple!

Xiaomi's Leijun with his One More Thing in recent presentation...
Jobs' One More Thing in his trademark presentation...


Comments

Anonymous said…
Side by side screenshot of UI is not the same.

How different can a keyboard or calculator design be?

Settings layout also looks different.

Don't really see these example as supporting your article point.