Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator • Hacker News Board

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#331

Post by smt88 » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:18 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #325

im3w1l wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well everything nowadays is slowed down by the 20 abstraction layers, so I wouldn't be that surprised if someone managed to make one slower than a 35 year old calculator.

Maybe we should start worrying about "animation creep" as much as we do feature creep or other kinds of unnecessary complexity.

One of the main reasons I don't use iOS or macOS anymore is because of the animations. Even very, very short animations make the whole experience excruciating for me. It feels slow and unresponsive.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#332

Post by alpaca128 » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:25 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #320

suckerburg wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the iphone 4 antenna issue happen under Jobs? With him claiming you're holding the phone wrong or something like that.

You mean the iPhone 4 antenna non-issue? Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS. The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.

A relative's phone calls got disconnected very regularly until she covered the antenna with tape. If nobody in the real world had any issues with it nobody would have discovered it in the first place.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#333

Post by eps » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:27 AM UTC

ship_it wrote: post #252

laichzeit0 wrote: post #228

Let's just be frank: If Jobs was in charge, everyone that remotely touched that app would pulled into a room, berated and told how fucking dumb they are, and told to pack their shit and find another job. Remember, he was obsessive about the first calculator app and hand-tuned it to his liking, so it's not hyperbole to suggest that he would be fucking livvid. [1] Asshole, but perfection requires assholes. Apple is reg…

> perfection requires assholes? Wait, wat? How?

To enforce critical assessment of one's work with people who are not inclined to do that on their own.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#334

Post by pavlov » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:27 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #273

kemayo wrote: post #53

People are talking about "lag" and performance, as if this was a "the system can't handle it!" issue. This is a misleading description. The actual issue is that some developer at Apple screwed up their animation configuration when implementing the calculator redesign, and nobody tested adding more than two numbers together quickly. Multiple failures, none involving system performance. What's happening is: the operato…

This shows how important UX really is. UI can be all glam and shiny, but the software with the most accessible of UX wins, more often than not. I always come back to the example of WhatsApp and how it took on SMS, IM, and emails and won. People claiming WhatsApp went in mobile first are getting it only partially right. WhatsApp defined itself as a replacement for SMS: No login passwords, no chat history, cross platfo…

A really important element of WhatsApp's global success is that they had a Java ME app for featurephones.

US-centric competitors would only support iOS and Android, whereas WhatsApp was running on the hundreds of millions of 2003-2010 vintage Nokia/Samsung featurephones that were in daily use in India, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.

That is also part of UX. When it comes to messaging apps, Snapchat is one extreme of the spectrum -- iPhone-focused, cryptic UI, teen-oriented, majority of users in USA -- and WhatsApp is the very opposite. Both are successful examples of UX focus.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#335

Post by dep_b » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:30 AM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #329

mcny wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My professor likes to tell this story about keyboard buffers that I never quite understood. Basically, in this old time terminal setup he would start typing the password before the prompt showed up or something and when it did, it would just sail through. Sort of like how I can apt upgrade while apt update is still running but fancier and a couple of decades before...

You can still do this in at least some shells. PowerShell buffers input if the running program doesn't capture it. If I have a build and execute commands in the history, I can hit up-up-enter twice in a row to start the build and queue the execution command.

I remember people doing that on an AS/400 ramming keystrokes for 5 seconds and then waiting 15 seconds for the system to arrive in the right screen, sometimes even already filling the fields from muscle memory. The first five lines of address data were already entered before the screen loaded.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#336

Post by vanderZwan » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:31 AM UTC

mcny wrote: post #324

whalesalad wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your solutions are a little off the mark. Treating the animation as the problem is merely treating the symptoms. What needs to happen here is pressing the button needs to immediately register the press elsewhere in the code. The UI animations and the button tap should be decoupled entirely. Then the user can tap away as fast as their heart desires and only the animations are going to continue on. That’s an easy probl…

My professor likes to tell this story about keyboard buffers that I never quite understood. Basically, in this old time terminal setup he would start typing the password before the prompt showed up or something and when it did, it would just sail through. Sort of like how I can apt upgrade while apt update is still running but fancier and a couple of decades before...

That "old time" hurts a bit.. I haven't tried this recently, but I distinctly remember doing this in the early versions of Ubuntu.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#337

Post by vanderZwan » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:33 AM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #334

ignoramous wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows how important UX really is. UI can be all glam and shiny, but the software with the most accessible of UX wins, more often than not. I always come back to the example of WhatsApp and how it took on SMS, IM, and emails and won. People claiming WhatsApp went in mobile first are getting it only partially right. WhatsApp defined itself as a replacement for SMS: No login passwords, no chat history, cross platfo…

A really important element of WhatsApp's global success is that they had a Java ME app for featurephones. US-centric competitors would only support iOS and Android, whereas WhatsApp was running on the hundreds of millions of 2003-2010 vintage Nokia/Samsung featurephones that were in daily use in India, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc. That is also part of UX. When it comes to messaging apps, Snapchat is one extreme of the sp…

> cryptic UI, teen-oriented

These things go hand-in-hand by the way. And that's not a complaint, it's just funny how "only teens bother to figure this out" can be an honest-to-goodness feature under specific circumstances. Especially if you (basically) need to be "introduced" to a program and all of its quirks through your friends.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#338

Post by grzm » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:42 AM UTC

plainOldText wrote: post #156

grzm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the described bug is a very frustrating bug. As for old squares vs the new circles, that's an aesthetic choice I'm sure some will like and some won't. My impression is that the old UI is more in keeping with the HP calculator it emulated. Personally it's not something I'm overly concerned about but I can understand how some may be. (Don't get me started on the Contacts icon which I can never seem to be a…

Here's how I see it: I look at a button as defined by its shape as "perceived touchable area". A circle enclosed in a square has a smaller area than the square enclosing the circle. You're seeing the new buttons as circles (thus smaller area), even though behind the scenes (as your little experiment has demonstrated) the buttons are still squares (real touchable area) on a grid. I would also argue the eyes have a har…

I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think at the end of the day this ends up mattering much, if at all. For example, when trying to press the buttons quickly to reproduce the bug, I didn’t feel the slightest need to be precise. Similarly, if the buttons were physical, I believe they’re large enough that people wouldn’t feel much (if any) need to be more precise due to the inherent “slop” buttons have. Though, if you have reference to UX tests that show otherwise, I’d be interested in reading it.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#339

Post by patwolf » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:43 AM UTC

Another UX issue I've seen with the iPhone calculator:

My wife is a nurse and uses the iPhone calculator to calculate doses. She performed a calculation like

It did give the correct answer of 1.5. However, there was no animation or blanking out of the display to easily distinguish between the operand of 1.5 and the result of 1.5. She thought it was a bug and wasn't giving her an answer. I always thought it was a little scary that such a horribly designed calculator was being used by so many medical professionals.

Re: Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator

#340

Post by jasongill » Tue, Oct 24, 2017, 11:43 AM UTC

andrewf wrote: post #12

Similar issue (seen in iOS 10 as well): when setting an alarm, swipe the am/pm selector and then hit "Done" before the animation completes... Yeah I missed a meeting once.

This one gets me all the time - if the system thinks the "wheel" is still moving, it doesn't update the value. So I am always having my alarms go off at the wrong time for the same reason - I set them in a hurry and click Done while the "wheel" is still animating but my selected time is in view, and the time I wanted doesn't register.

I'm not sure why it doesn't just set the time to the number that is mostly in the selection box and is being "snapped" to, instead of waiting for the animation to stop