71–80 of 149 posts
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.
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…
Low reliance on Fkeys is also great for two reasons: 1) It makes it easier to use keyboards with Fkey rows (like my beloved HHKB) 2) It frees up an entire row of keys for me to use without worry of overriding system shortcuts — for instance, I have F1 assigned to Spotlight, F2 assigned to a drop-down terminal, F3 assigned to quick open in Xcode, F4 assigned to search documentation in Dash, etc etc.
"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people do…
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.
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.
But then none of what they are dealing with, for the most part, is made by Apple. They are using apps built by others, and some apps are just incredibly confusing.
Apple is rife with UX problems. Just look at the newest device they came out with, the Watch. Two buttons that are positioned in a way that constantly have them activating when I lift my hand up. Why do I have screenshots of my watch every day littering my computer? I mean, I cannot fathom someone used this and didn't have this issue.
The Watch is a beta device, and everyone I've met with one has agreed with that sentiment (both techies and non-techies alike).
This doesn't even begin to touch their software, or the OSs themselves. Here is a company that still can't get windowing right.
The only reason I still use their products is because OS X is built on UNIX and is supported by major companies, but even that is going away, so there is less incentive.
I've long found it strange that the same company that didn't want a second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality in context menus now hide so much functionality behind gestures with a varying amount of fingers. This started while Jobs where still at Apple, so it can't be blamed entirely on his successors.
I disagree a bit with this assessment of Apple's intentions. It wasn't that they didn't want a second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality because you could always hold down the Control key and click to access those functions, even on a single button mouse. The issue (and where I think the design is really thoughtful) is that it's never required to use that second mouse button (or Control) but…
"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people do…
"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people do…
So many things have become undiscoverable in the name of "clean" interfaces. Apple's not alone in this.
I've long found it strange that the same company that didn't want a second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality in context menus now hide so much functionality behind gestures with a varying amount of fingers. This started while Jobs where still at Apple, so it can't be blamed entirely on his successors.
I disagree a bit with this assessment of Apple's intentions. It wasn't that they didn't want a second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality because you could always hold down the Control key and click to access those functions, even on a single button mouse. The issue (and where I think the design is really thoughtful) is that it's never required to use that second mouse button (or Control) but…
maybe this is showing my age, but that came relatively late in the history of Mac OS
But I otherwise agree and do like the approach of basic/necessary UI as simple as possible, optional/advanced UI gracefully hidden
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. Context is everything. It's been the same 3-key shortcut since 1984, so I never have to think about it. The command-shift-number pattern was used for a good handful of common system-wide functions on the classic Mac OS, so it was just a matter of remembering which digit corresponded to which action. They were basically function keys, since the original keyboards didn't have physical function keys.
I'm in the same boat. I've used both Macs and PCs for years and I find the Mac's shortcuts to be easier to remember and, overall, more useful than the PC's. PrintScreen to capture the whole desktop is nice and easy, but anything outside of that is a pain in the ass. I love that Cmd+Shift+4 lets me select an area of the screen with 1 hand. I'd be hard-pressed to remember, much less find, if Windows has suddenly added…