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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#51

Post by Thriptic »

threeseed wrote: post #38
rkho wrote: post #20

A number of years ago, I was employed by an Apple Retail store. I don't know how it is now but when I started (in 2010), they would hold employee-led workshops on the basics of iOS devices and how to customize them. By the time I left, they had completely revamped those workshops to be mere Q&A sessions. My biggest gripe about these Q&A style workshops is that most of the people attending weren't aware of what questi…

> weren't aware of what questions to ask. This seems completely fine to me. The idea is to help people solve their problems. Not give them solutions for problems that never had in the first place.

Most people don't even know that they have a problem because they are unaware of what they should be able to do. They think that any preventable annoying behavior is the natural state of the machine. I was spending time with my parents awhile back and happened to look over to watch my mom try to communicate some content from a website she was looking at to a friend. She would go back and forth from the browser, to the message, to the browser, to the message, reading and typing. I asked her "Does that site block copy paste? Why aren't you copy pasting?" She gave me a blank look. I showed her that copy paste was a feature and it blew her mind.

She didn't think that she had a problem because she didn't expect copy paste to even be a function on a phone (as she is not a confident computer user either).

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#52

Post by nrb »

bobthepanda wrote: post #39
pcmoney wrote: post #21

Ok, I need to say it. This article just has iPhone in the title to get more views. This is a problem with not just all smartphones but all rapidly evolving technology products. Do you think you could hand an android phone to one of those example cases and have them do any better with it? Also half of the time I am in an apple store I am helped by someone who needs to use the accessibility features to check me out/in.…

Just because all companies handle the problem space really badly, doesn't mean we should excuse it. Apple products, as far as I can remember, do not come with any sort of manual describing the nifty little shortcuts that they have. Even as someone who did IT support and handled a lot of iPhone troubleshooting constantly, I got blindsided by lots of small things, like when they switched the force reboot from power+hom…

The “Tips” feature (Swipe left from home) points you right to the User Guide downloadable from the Books app for the device. It also prompts you with this info shortly after you finish setting up the device. It’s a 600+ page manual that describes every single button, gesture, function, menu, for every preinstalled app on the phone.

There’s a section that describes most everything that has changed in the newest iOS release.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#53

Post by jpeg_hero »

marklubi wrote: post #46
rrauenza wrote: post #37

My biggest difficulty is moving the edit cursor when trying to edit text. It takes too many tries to get it exactly where I want. I wish they'd add cursor keys...

For iPhone, you can force-press on the keyboard (on newer phones), or just long-press on the space bar. On an iPad, you can use two fingers on the keyboard

Yup! perfect example of what the blog post author is talking about (I knew force touch but not space bar / two fingers- thanks for that, super useful on iPad )

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#54

Post by Izkata »

donatj wrote: post #17
starpilot wrote: post #4

Are any of these issues handled better on Android phones?

I currently own both Android and iOS devices, and have used both for years. I think the single "Omni-Pull Down" from the top works way cleaner than the now 3 seperate pull from side of screen actions. I actually find pulling up from the bottom difficult and frustrating. Swipe to dismiss, tap to open makes so much more intuitive sense than swipe to open. Text editing / selection does what I expect way more often. Andr…

> This one is controversial, but I think a visible always available back button is a huge accessibility win even if it's sometimes inconsistant in behaviour.

I not only agree, I'm still disappointed they got rid of the menu button. Used to be a single consistent, visible, always-there interface across apps that now is done in several different ways.

And now in the newest Android, the back button will be appearing/disappearing/changing direction. Not nice.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#55

Post by JCSato »

screye wrote: post #32

I have been an android-windows user for the longest time, and using Apple devices is among the most difficult things I've had to do. I have used windows phone, linux, chrome OS, Blackberry's palm-like UI over the years, but I have gotten the hang of each over a small period of time. Apple devices however, are simply counter intuitive for me. Apple seems to design UI for 2 types of people. 1. Old Apple users 2. The pe…

I'm the same way. I've gotten used to using a Mac for work; there are the few things I need to know how to run, and I've more or less figured those out. Even after that, though, I was utterly useless last week trying to send an email for my mom on her iPhone.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#56

Post by [deleted] »

pcmoney wrote: post #21

Ok, I need to say it. This article just has iPhone in the title to get more views. This is a problem with not just all smartphones but all rapidly evolving technology products. Do you think you could hand an android phone to one of those example cases and have them do any better with it? Also half of the time I am in an apple store I am helped by someone who needs to use the accessibility features to check me out/in.…

[deleted]

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#57

Post by rconti »

donatj wrote: post #17
starpilot wrote: post #4

Are any of these issues handled better on Android phones?

I currently own both Android and iOS devices, and have used both for years. I think the single "Omni-Pull Down" from the top works way cleaner than the now 3 seperate pull from side of screen actions. I actually find pulling up from the bottom difficult and frustrating. Swipe to dismiss, tap to open makes so much more intuitive sense than swipe to open. Text editing / selection does what I expect way more often. Andr…

I'm not sure the last time iOS bugged you about wireless networks by default. 8 years ago?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#58

Post by lightyrs »

TheKnack wrote: post #50

> If Apple actually cared about accessibility (it does not), on the setup screen for every iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch would be a step you could not skip wherein you have to choose your preferred text size. iPhones literally do have an unskippable screen during setup that prompts you to choose a text size https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/xlarge/pu...

Display Zoom is a different setting than Text Size.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#59

Post by jpeg_hero »

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #47

>What can press-and-hold do that people don’t know about? >Directly move a scrollbar. (Fails most of the time due to tiny narrow hotspots you’re expected to hit on the first go.) I couldn’t get this to work. >Show a magnified absolute-centred duplicate of nearly anything onscreen you cannot actually manipulate, like whatever is in the title bar. (Try pressing and holding on the battery icon.) Neither this one. Do I n…

I couldn’t get either to work too. Maybe they took them out in iOS 12? I have scrollbarred before on prior Ios releases

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#60

Post by chrissam »

A lot of this seems valid. At the same time, I think massive customer misuse/misunderstanding is the reality for almost all widely used software.

Maybe I'm projecting, but the "solutions people" at the company where I work have endless horror stories of how "people actually use our software".

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