Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

fastcodesign.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#101

Post by vacri »

MCRed wrote: post #53

It's sad to see Norman and Tognazinni-- men whose books I've read-- giving themselves a bad name. The bashing Apple bandwagon has been going on for 35 years now, and while being able to put up a headline like that guarantees publication, the quality of the articles below them has not improved. Clearly this is an article written by guys who have not been regularly using other products to see the competition- the lack…

You're projecting your own agenda onto the article. The article's starting point is comparing the Apple products to previous incarnations of Apple products.

> Further, they made a new font that is readable at all sizes AND an OS that lets you dynamically change the size of the fonts in your settings and have it work across applications.

Here's a clear example - in your haste to throw your agenda on top of the article, you've missed that the article talks about this exact feature, and that it doesn't work well: on many app screens, this option made normal fonts so large that the text wouldn’t fit on the screen.

It's a long article, sure, but that comment is only about 10% of the way in.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#102

Post by rustynails »

dpkonofa wrote: post #65
mrks_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This issue has been getting worse in OS X, too. I find myself continuously finding hidden functionality by holding in the option or command button while clicking or dragging. Frankly, and this may just be cynicism, I speculate that these hidden functions are a way for Apple to hold consumers hostage to their platform. If someone spends a few years learning all the idiosyncrasies of OS X and iOS, they may be too intim…

I don't think so. The functionality is hidden on purpose to keep from distracting novice users. Every program's basic functionality is accessible without any modifier keys. If you're "finding" new features, it simply means that you're past the stage of a novice user. Most of these hidden commands are variations too, so they even make sense logically. I'm curious if there's a specific "hidden" function that you're ref…

I think something has happened at Apple. I would consider a playlist or dynamic filter (eg. Rock songs or Beatles songs) would be a beginner's desire. It's one step beyond "play". Yet, the new Apple Music app is highly cryptic. It's been engineered to steer you toward the new subscription service. Usability for novices and pros has been crippled. I could say similar about Apple maps. It just doesn't work properly. Google has really taken the crown here. It's sad to see Apple lose focus when they've held the benchmark so high for so long.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#103

Post by unfamiliar »

bhanu423 wrote: post #90

I have tried to use a Mac on several occasions but I see so much to adapt to. The apps still crash, some applications still feel slow, gestures/click pattern using 1-2-3-4 fingers, window system is not really obvious. It can obviously be learned but I find linux to be more much obvious and user friendly than Mac specially GNOME which is my current favorite. In any case windows has come a long way from windows xp to w…

I can't speak for Windows, but Linux is miles behind OS X in terms of usability in my opinion. The trackpad gestures are fantastic and very intuitive for me to the point where I hate using a crippled trackpad on linux. I can see the appeal of Gnome, which is very simple and intuitive to use. But modern gnome is adopting more and more features of the OS X window management system, like ctrl-tab switching applications rather than windows, the addition of indicator applets, the windows-and-dock overview screen (whatever they call it). From all the complaints I hear I don't think there's anything particularly difficult about OS X file management and window management other than "its different from what I'm used to."

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#104

Post by unfamiliar »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #5
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.

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.

Imo all they have to do to get the new music app to work is to copy-paste the old iPod user interface into the Music app and add a decent search field. I don't know why that's such a hard challenge for them.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#105

Post by PhasmaFelis »

> It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended.

I think this is the best summation I've seen of the value of a well-designed GUI interface as opposed to the most common implementations of the command line. Obviously not everything can be plausibly translated to CLI, but I wish there was more effort to combine the power of CLIs with, especially, the discoverability and feedback of GUIs.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#106

Post by qyv »

dpkonofa wrote: post #66
mistercow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Mac OS since it was System 6, and I feel like power user features have been commonly hidden behind things like "hold option" for about that long. The difference now seems to be that it's not always power user features. Example of a good feature to hide behind "hold option": removing the "..." from "Sleep...", "Shut Down...", etc. in the apple menu, meaning that selecting them won't prompt you before e…

Why is that a bad feature? It seems pretty logical to me that clicking "Option" would give you a variation (another Option ) of the chosen operation. In that case, clicking the green "full screen" button gives you a "full screen" on the current desktop instead of creating a new one.

Because requiring the use of two hands on two different input devices to access a feature that is not advertised to the user in any fashion is completely and utterly unintuitive.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#107

Post by PhasmaFelis »

dpkonofa wrote: post #66
mistercow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Mac OS since it was System 6, and I feel like power user features have been commonly hidden behind things like "hold option" for about that long. The difference now seems to be that it's not always power user features. Example of a good feature to hide behind "hold option": removing the "..." from "Sleep...", "Shut Down...", etc. in the apple menu, meaning that selecting them won't prompt you before e…

Why is that a bad feature? It seems pretty logical to me that clicking "Option" would give you a variation (another Option ) of the chosen operation. In that case, clicking the green "full screen" button gives you a "full screen" on the current desktop instead of creating a new one.

The first is a power user function that few people will want, and those who do will know to go looking for it. The second is a function with common utility, arguably more utility than the default use of that button,* and most people who would want to use it will never know it exists.

*Especially on recent versions of MacOS, where fullscreening an app moves it to a different desktop.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#108

Post by Silhouette »

ThomPete wrote: post #46
blub wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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

But there is a scale of how easily something is learned, and a UI with more or better affordances will be easier to learn than one with worse or fewer affordances.

As someone who designs a lot of UI, I was nodding through much of this article. The most obvious part I disagreed with was the idea that they are at least making things more attractive as they damage usability. If those comments referred to the current trend for bland, homogenous, flat UIs, then I find most of these much less attractive than those we had just a few years ago. Almost everything looks the same now, and that look is so dumbed down that to me it feels like the digital version of painting a big canvas solid blue and then selling it for $100,000 as "modern art".

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#109

Post by pedalpete »

sorenjan wrote: post #9

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.

The company that didn't want the second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality in context menus always hid the functionality behind a keypress-mouseclick. How this was ever better for the end user is beyond me.

My theory has always been that Apple liked the design aesthetic of a single mouse button and and aesthetic won out over actually good design. From my experience this is the Apple way.

I came to this conclusion after buying my first Mac about 10 years ago. It had a corded mouse which plugged into the keyboard. A nice aesthetic, though I questioned a corded mouse on a $1500 desktop in 2006. Upon my first navigation across the screen, it was apparent that the cord on the mouse was too small to cover the area of the screen. Very poor design, but the shorter cable didn't leave a mess of cable on the desk. Good aesthetic, bad design.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#110

Post by pedalpete »

jasonlotito wrote: post #75
jakejake wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Incorrect. I have a 5-year old here, and they do have trouble figuring things out. What they learn are simple patterns the bring success. There are some things that are simple. Press the home button to go back to the screen with the boxes. Press a box to open the thing that plays kids singing! Yay. But then none of what they are dealing with, for the most part, is made by Apple. They are using apps built by others, a…

Can you elaborate on the windowing issue? I don't have a mac anymore, and always disliked the menu at the top of the screen UX (which is the same as my Ubuntu). I'm not sure what the windowing issue you're referring to is.

Also, how is OS X moving away from UNIX? Or is it that major companies are moving away from UNIX? I'm not sure I've seen evidence of either of these.

Post reply on HN