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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

#141

Post by iSnow »

spronkey wrote: post #111
dpkonofa wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Problem is the novice-expert transition in Apple devices is nonexistant. To become an expert you basically have to read a manual, or do things that a) have no affordance, b) have no clear feedforward, c) have an unknown effect and may be destructive, with no clear undo. It's very poor design.

>It's very poor design.

No, it's Windows/Linux-bias on your part. In the old time, every (and I mean every) medium-level Mac user knew that you can unlock a lot of additional functionality with the option-key. People today just seem to assume the Mac UI is built on the absolute same principles as the Windows UI, which is not true.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#142

Post by iSnow »

qyv wrote: post #106
dpkonofa wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Two hands? The alt-button is 3cm from my trackpad.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#143

Post by iSnow »

marssaxman wrote: post #51
scintill76 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've certainly noticed that my decades of touch-typing experience make it much more difficult for me to enter text on a buttonless touch keyboard. I'm constantly growling and swearing at the machine and deleting words and typing them over, because I can't shake the habit of watching the text as I type instead of the buttons I'm trying to push. Someone who had never learned to type properly would be unlikely to have t…

Maybe embracing the system and its physical constraints instead of fighting it would help, in that case using something like swype that is both fast and completely different from typing (makes it easier to transition).

At least that worked for me and I am typing without looking at the keys too.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#144

Post by hussong »

robbyking wrote: post #52
mikepalmer wrote: post #32

"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…

> I am always cursing after swiping in some direction by mistake. Spotify is the same way. If you swipe the wrong way when trying to queue a song it removes the song from your library without the (shake) option to undo. It's infuriating.

Also, the app gets slower and slower with every update, having become mostly useless on older hardware, to the point where it reminds me of my grandma's radio, where you had to warm up the tubes for a minute before you could listen to music...

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#145

Post by fkistner »

iSnow wrote: post #140
jonahx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good article with data from facebook and others on the value of discovery over cleanliness: http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/ It contradicts current trends and the preferences of many designers.

I think that guy is seriously wrong, not every hidden part of a user interface is evil. The hamburger menu tells the user that he will find the first-level navigation if he taps it. It is about as bad as a right-click context menu on the desktop.

Indeed, and that's why Apple discourages the use of a contextual menu as the sole means to offer functionality as well [1]:

  Always ensure that contextual menu items are also available as menu commands.
  A contextual menu is hidden by default and a user might not know it exists, so it should never be the only way to access a command.
  In particular, you want to avoid using a contextual menu as the only way to access an advanced or power-user feature.
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserEx...

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#146

Post by gambiter »

enraged_camel wrote: post #26
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.

"Completely unusable"? Don't you think that's a bit over the top? I don't know any advanced features but I can use all apps just fine. Pinch-to-zoom and a few swipe types are sufficient for most use cases. Edit: why the downvotes? I didn't say anything controversial. If you disagree, write a reply.

HN is so anti-Apple it's not funny. I've noticed if an argument makes Apple better, no matter how reasonable you are, you tend to get downvotes.

Anyway, I agree with you. (There are two of us!) Apple's stuff is built to be easy enough for a know-nothing user to get the basics done, and depending on your skill, you gain access to more and more over time.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#147

Post by pedalpete »

commandar wrote: post #117
pedalpete wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

>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. It was done to force developers to expose actions through the menu bar and thus be consistently discoverable to the user.

I would have thought graphic artists were using tablets by then? But it is a perfect example of Apple knowing their customer, and me not being it ;).

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#148

Post by marssaxman »

jmfayard wrote: post #135
marssaxman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just that I never got on the iphone bandwagon, but I've never found anything about the Android UI confusing or frustrating, other than the inherent frustration that comes with the limitations of a tiny touchscreen-based interface. What exactly do you have in mind?

I agree, I find that overall the android user experience is enjoyable and polished, not that you can't find anything important to criticize, but way above average for sure. On the other hand, I also know a lot of people having a mediocre feeling with it. This is an interesting perception gap to investigate. And I would suggest that a big reason of that is that there much more Samsung customers than Nexus owners.

Interesting. I used to have a Galaxy Nexus, which was made by Samsung but configured by Google (it was the Christmas phone the year I worked there), and currently have a Moto X, and those are the only Android devices I've used. Perhaps not a typical experience, then, since I haven't had to deal with manufacturer-locked crapware and the like.

Re: How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

#149

Post by richardbrevig »

mrks_ wrote: post #11
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.

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 speculate that these hidden functions are a way for Apple to hold consumers hostage to their platform.

Whether on purpose or not, it's definitely a form of switching costs. It's the same reason I stay on windows. Though windows 8 changed so many things I basically had to learn all over again. I can't do basic tasks at times and have to Google instructions for how to do them. Simply because they changed the interface.

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