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iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

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Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#131

Post by _acme »

epistasis wrote: post #40
inetknght wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contextual menus were in Classic Mac OS since at least OS 8.0. If memory serves, there were also extensions (who remembers those?!) which provided them prior to 8.

It's funny, I only ran Mac OS 9 for a few months while I waited for OS X, so I couldn't even remember if Class Mac OS utilized them! I also tried to search for how much NextStep used right-click contextual menus, but that's also something that's pretty difficult to find.

A right-click under NeXTSTEP brought up the full menu, which could also have sub-menus 'torn off' and pinned to the screen. The NeXTSTEP menu system was remarkably advanced and efficient.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#132

Post by Max_Mustermann »

passivepinetree wrote: post #71
dceddia wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of magical things are still hidden behind modifier keys. Option-click the wifi icon: special diagnostics info Option-click the bluetooth icon: diagnostics info Shift-Option-click the bluetooth icon: debug menu Hold option while resizing a window: resize from both sides at once (see gif: https://twitter.com/dceddia/status/859518600931143680 )

Thanks for posting this; I had no idea about any of these. Is there somewhere where tips like these might be compiled?

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/400/please-share-y...

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#133

Post by simonh »

hendersoon wrote: post #18
simonh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only really important question is whether it does anything better than other tablet operating systems. For the iPad, that's what really matters - becoming the best tablet OS it can be. Anything else would be a distraction.

Microsoft would disagree, and they have been astonishingly successful with the Surface Pro line. The iOS11 desktop features are a vindication of Microsoft's original Windows 8 vision. Microsoft didn't /execute/ on that vision particularly well in either Win8 or Win10, but the convergence between handheld and desktop does offer some tangible advantages. It isn't all marketing BS.

Astonishingly successful? IPads out sell surface by 6 to 1 in revenue and 10 to 1 in units. And unlike surface, people actually use them primarily as tablets. Surface's success is almost entirely as a laptop with a secondary and relatively little used tablet mode. That's hardly been threatening to the iPad.

Microsofts vision of that convergence, of how to provide desktop class features in a tablet, is literally to put the WIMP desktop into a tablet. That's a completely different and fundamentally incompatible vision of how to make an advanced tablet UI to what we see in iOS 11, which is a complete and utter refutation of Microsoft's approach.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#134

Post by seanwilson »

sanbor wrote: post #122
seanwilson wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found installing apps on desktop completely unintuitive as well. You double-click a downloaded package, see a window containing the app icon (...why?), drag and drop the icon into your app folder usually with no feedback after then you have to manually launch the app e.g. using cmd+space. Why not just have a "do you want to install this app?" dialog when you click on the app file the app launches after?

You can just open the app without installing it.

It's just not intuitive though is the point. You've already double clicked the app icon, now a window appears with the same icon that you have to double click again to launch it? I moved from Windows to Mac after a long time hearing about how great Apple usability was and I could never understand the logic behind the app install workflow.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#135

Post by ry_ry »

> If somebody tries to join your Wi-Fi network and has an iOS device, you get a prompt asking if you want to share your Wi-Fi password.

How does that work?

Will it happen on Corporate WiFi networks, and if multiple iDevices are connected will they all recieve the same prompt?

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#136

Post by thirdsun »

seanwilson wrote: post #134
sanbor wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just open the app without installing it.

It's just not intuitive though is the point. You've already double clicked the app icon, now a window appears with the same icon that you have to double click again to launch it? I moved from Windows to Mac after a long time hearing about how great Apple usability was and I could never understand the logic behind the app install workflow.

So, I guess you also hate zip files too?

You didn't double click the app icon - you double clicked the container that contains the app you are about to open or move/install to your apps folder. I think the drag and drop approach to installing apps is as easy as it gets.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#137

Post by thirdsun »

blowski wrote: post #24

I tried iOS 11 on the latest version of the iPad Pro 9.7" and iPhone 6S. I've actually downgraded back to iOS 10 because the beta was still too buggy for day-to-day use. The existing 'multi-tasking' on the iPad Pro is fiddly, and this was no easier. Apps were locking themselves to the Dock and I couldn't work out how to remove them. Switching between apps was far from "Cmd + Tab" of the desktop. A lot of apps that I…

> A lot of apps that I still use but haven't been updated in years broke because they're not 64 bit.

While your other points are valid for a beta OS, this one can't really be used as criticism towards Apple. You can't blame them for developers that abandone their apps.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#138

Post by coldtea »

wildmusings wrote: post #6

It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.

What change?

First, Apple shunned right click because it was difficult (in early computing era 80s and early 90s) for the common user to use -- in tests few used it, and even today, even in Windows land, most common folk can't master it.

Not because it "hid functionality". It was the inverse cause and effect actually: since Apple only had single-button mouse, they didn't want developers to make things only available in context menus, so they forced them to make them easily available for left button access. But the first consideration was how users interact with the mouse (and lack of right click skills in the average non computing savvy masses), not the hiding of functionality. They still offered control-click for right click and supported optional two button mice for advanced users since like forever.

Second, regarding hiding functionality Apple has since forever had all kinds of hidden options in menus, only available when you open the menu and press Option/Alt or click Option/Alt somewhere -- and other such cases of advanced (but hidden) features.

They never had an issue with having such hidden functionality, that you could use only once you knew it was there, meant for more advanced users.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#139

Post by coldtea »

notadoc wrote: post #44
wildmusings wrote: post #6

It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.

Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for? Why is it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way? iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the loc…

>Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by 3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for?

Perhaps for me, who am not confused.

Re: iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine

#140

Post by coldtea »

canuckintime wrote: post #81
bennyg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D touch on the keyboard to move the cursor around makes up for every grievance I ever had about it to begin with.

That's correlation not causation; the iPads don't have 3D touch but still have cursor control in the default keyboard. Indeed Apple tying 3D touch to cursor control on the iPhones makes me resent it more because they then removed the feature from the iPhones without 3D Touch.

>That's correlation not causation;

Or, more accurately, "that's orthogonal".

But the reason the iPads have it without 3D touch is because they have much larger screen estate (and also because they lack 3D touch).

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