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How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

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Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#41

Post by ChrisClark »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

(Re-posted at the suggestion of dang.) As someone who develops on both iOS and Android, and uses an Android phone, there was a lot in this article that I agreed with. Particularly Apple's prioritisation of beauty over design. One weakness was the discussion of undo and Android's supposed strength due to its dedicated back button. This didn't convince me: the back button on Android sometimes undoes operations, but oft…

Yeah, the back button can definitely be inconsistent and has annoyed me countless times, but at least it's there.

I recently got stuck in a Youtube video on an iPad because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the video list. Turns out I had to swipe down on the video page with 3 fingers or something to go back.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#42

Post by [deleted] »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #25
jlg23 wrote: post #4

The article describes the issues I had with discoverability very well: As a European I always refused to pay the insane prices for apple products there. When I finally needed a mp3-player to survive daily commutes in public transport, I got an ipod touch. Without any printed documentation, I had to ask experienced apple users how to perform certain actions.

As a new Macbook user this year one of my favorite examples of this is screenshots. On Windows I've always had a prt scrn keyboard button, Macbooks forego that. As of windows 7 I think, there was a program to screenshot a portion of the screen or a specific window, Apple don't have one of those. All the screenshot commands (screen, window, portion) are behind a 3 key keyboard shortcut that I have to look up all the t…

[deleted]

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#43

Post by scintill76 »

jakejake wrote: post #36
Sfi81 wrote: post #3

Agree with much of the article. I personally find Apple iOS devices completely unusable because I have to constantly try to guess what kind of action or gesture will achieve what I want to do rather than being obvious. The same for several apps which appear to have become successful first on iOS before being ported to Android. I find remembering these gestures and actions an unnecessary cognitive load.

If you put an iPhone in any 5-year olds hand they seem to have no trouble figuring it out.

This is a common refrain, but is it possible that adults have learned valid paradigms that make using the iPhone as it is today, more difficult? If you want to design for 5-year-olds and have them retain that forever, I guess it can work, but maybe it's a design failure if the people who actually buy your product have a harder time using it.

To use another analogy, it's somewhat like saying "Well, people literate in a left-to-right language have no problem using it." Great, but presumably Apple was aiming for a global audience, so pointing out success stories in some subsections of that audience does not mean they succeeded overall.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#44

Post by micampe »

ThomPete wrote: post #12

All interaction is learned nothing is purely intuitive and so their critique seems awfully nit-picky but ultimately trivial and based on an older paradigm than the one I think apple is trying to achieve. I am frankly surprised that people I normally admire would launch such a critique. The touch display did more good for usability than any interface design or metaphor did the previous 20 by simply removing the layer…

This is what Tog and Don Norman have been saying for more than two decades now, so I’m not sure how you can be surprised by what they said. They have always advocated for an extremely “literal” and explicit design of user interfaces.

It’d be interesting to see HN’s reactions to Tog’s articles explaining how the mouse is more efficient than the CLI.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#45

Post by robotresearcher »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #19
ThomPete wrote: post #12

All interaction is learned nothing is purely intuitive and so their critique seems awfully nit-picky but ultimately trivial and based on an older paradigm than the one I think apple is trying to achieve. I am frankly surprised that people I normally admire would launch such a critique. The touch display did more good for usability than any interface design or metaphor did the previous 20 by simply removing the layer…

The strangest thing for me is that my 17 month old seem to pick the interaction with an iPad or Apple TV way more naturally than I could. She's not afraid of experimenting, and she's not overthinking what's happening or not — and since other children (same age or older) seem to "get it" as fast, I would say they're on something. I'm more weary of the ergonomics of their products : what's good for a toddler (the Apple…

Right. Kids are not worried about the consequences of screwing everything up. The stakes are too high to mess around with work email or calendaring. You just can't click and see what happens, unfortunately. The brilliance of dropdown menus is the ability to rummage without triggering events.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#46

Post by ThomPete »

blub wrote: post #22
ThomPete wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what gestures and what metaphors you are talking about. Touch something on the screen is not a metaphor it's the closest to what you would do in real life. This is why kids and people less experienced with computers have such an easy time picking them up and start using them.

Sure, touching is the easy part, but there are now quite a few gestures available: * Four finger swipes on the iPad to go to the task manager or switch between apps. * Swipe from the left to go back in a navigation controller. * Swipe from the top to activate the notification center. * Swipe from the bottom to activate the control center. * Swipe list elements right or left (but not from the edge) to delete or perfor…

All interaction is learned. There is literally nothing that is obvious to the unexperienced thats not the discussion here.

The question is whether the metaphor model that Don & co are advocating is a better one and to which I would argue it's not because that too rely en metaphors to be learned.

The touch metaphor is litterally the way into the interface (ahh i can touch things, ahh i can also swipe things etc.)

In the classical universe you had several layers of abstraction between the user and the content. Apple is trying to make it as close to a one to one relationship they can. Your examples are about something completely different.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#47

Post by ThomPete »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #19
ThomPete wrote: post #12

All interaction is learned nothing is purely intuitive and so their critique seems awfully nit-picky but ultimately trivial and based on an older paradigm than the one I think apple is trying to achieve. I am frankly surprised that people I normally admire would launch such a critique. The touch display did more good for usability than any interface design or metaphor did the previous 20 by simply removing the layer…

The strangest thing for me is that my 17 month old seem to pick the interaction with an iPad or Apple TV way more naturally than I could. She's not afraid of experimenting, and she's not overthinking what's happening or not — and since other children (same age or older) seem to "get it" as fast, I would say they're on something. I'm more weary of the ergonomics of their products : what's good for a toddler (the Apple…

No only that it's also your parent's who know don't have to work through layers of abstraction to understand how to manipulate something.

Meet my mom:

http://000fff.org/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-at-com...

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#48

Post by puranjay »

nostrademons wrote: post #20

Much of this may be a reaction to the technology market maturing, with many more people being intimately familiar with how to use technology and new features spreading faster by word of mouth. When the Mac came out, you had to teach people how to use a computer through the interface. Few people had prior experience with them, and it was unlikely that they'd be able to sit down with you and explain it. Now, it is a fa…

I've been helping my 64 year old mom use her smartphone. She has never used any computing device before and it's eye opening watching her work. Things we take for granted are a confusing mess for her.

And the author is absolutely spot on: thin fonts and low contrast are a terrible choice as far as user experience goes. My mom can't read her screen without her glasses and holding her phone close.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#49

Post by semi-extrinsic »

jcranmer wrote: post #21
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, for me, the iPod ('classic') remains one of the greatest products Apple created. They managed to get so much of it right, almost uniquely. Hardware and software working very well together. Of course, it had a very specific function, which makes the task much easier, but I just wish they could follow it up with something remotely approaching as nice an experience.

I've been wanting to replace my iPod Nanos for a few years now (they're 10 years old already, and the batteries are starting to go), but everything nowadays is touch-screen, and so completely unusable for me. Why? With that tactile single click-wheel, it was very easy for me to put the iPod in my pocket and not look at it for the entire flight, even when I wanted to skip the next song or replay or pause.

FYI there is a big market for non-touch music players if you know where to look. Over at HeadFi [1] you can find a large amount of reviews and discussion of players from iRiver, Sandisk, Sony, together with more niche brands like Fiio and HiFiMAN.

[1] http://www.head-fi.org/products/category/digital-audio-flac-...

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#50

Post by mcintyre1994 »

grishas wrote: post #30
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a new Macbook user this year one of my favorite examples of this is screenshots. On Windows I've always had a prt scrn keyboard button, Macbooks forego that. As of windows 7 I think, there was a program to screenshot a portion of the screen or a specific window, Apple don't have one of those. All the screenshot commands (screen, window, portion) are behind a 3 key keyboard shortcut that I have to look up all the t…

Mac OS X has always shipped with a screenshot utility called "Grab". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grab_%28software%29

Ha you're right, thankyou! In my defence, the first Google hit for OSX screenshot is this Apple page [0] that doesn't even mention that utility - and "screenshot" in Spotlight doesn't suggest Grab. It's in the "Other" folder of Launchpad which I don't think I've ever opened.

But really, thanks - this is really helpful :)

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