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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

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331–340 of 652 posts

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#331

Post by teekert »

Ok, so we put the change font button always in sight? What else are we going to put in the UI?

I also thought I needed the Gmail app? didn't Google stop with any open protocols? (xmpp, imap, carddav?)

An iTouch? Please... And should Apple change their core UI for everyone because some people are almost blind? Sure they can be accommodating, perhaps a button can be placed somewhere, or better a Siri instruction for people with poor sight to activated a more clear UI. But don't change the UI for everyone because of this.

Would Siri understand a mispronounced street name? Who asks their phone for directions anyway? And why does she need help when the street is already on her screen? What at that point would help her? Seems like the iPhone was pretty helpful.

Ok, I'm starting feel sorry I even gave this any attention so I'm going to stop.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#332

Post by edwinyzh »

I think the UX of the iPhone's text message app can be improved, in that after I come back from a conversation to the list, it has no visual clue for me to identify which was 'currently selected'. sometimes the text messages are similar and hard to distinguish them from each other in the list view.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#333

Post by TeMPOraL »

graeme wrote: post #181
kbenson wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like to explain away Apple's success as merely the product of "fanboys" they've had for decades, as though the same 10 million guys who bought the first iphone are somehow responsible for the 50+ million phones apple sells each quarter. Given the world's fashion industry is worth trillions , it will take a more persuasive argument than that to convince me it's not heavily influenced by people's perception of…

Do you mean fashion, or luxury? Fashion and apparel is 1.2 trillion. But that includes clothing , which is a necessary item. The luxury goods industry, by contrast, is only worth 250 billion. https://www.statista.com/topics/1110/global-luxury-goods-ind... I feel your analogy is not very well founded.

> But that includes clothing, which is a necessary item.

In XXI century, in a western country, a smartphone is pretty much a necessary item too. Not on the clothing level yet, but it's definitely not a luxury category.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#334

Post by TimTheTinker »

rangibaby wrote: post #286
karmakaze wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem lies in what's semi-advanced to one is critical or basic to many others. Apple has been known to hide (aka. make subtle) basic operations. How often have you wanted to load a page in 'desktop mode' in mobile Safari? It's there, just invisibly so. The UI does not teach in the name of clean/minimal design which is Apple's way: form over function. Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut ke…

Steve Jobs was heavily against hidden functionality (sorry there is a word for it I can't remember off the top of my head). It's why Macs had one-button mice for so long. It wasn't until the third major revision of the OS that iPhones got copy+paste!

I think the word you're looking for is discoverability (or perhaps visibility).

The problem with Solaris, Windows, and other desktop workstations at the time was that the second (and even third) mouse buttons were required for many workflows, especially in applications---i.e. a lot of functionality was only available from the right-click menu or via the middle mouse button. This introduced a lot of unnecessary complexity to computer use, especially for new users, because of low visibility and discoverability.

Even today, Mac hardware never has a visible 2nd mouse/trackpad button. Sure, you can click a trackpad with 2 fingers or tap on the right side of a mouse to get a context menu, but keeping the buttons invisible forced these shortcuts to remain just that, and not an essential requirement to get the job done. Windows apps today follow this rule as well -- never make right-clicking the only way to execute a particular function.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#335

Post by em500 »

karmakaze wrote: post #129
varenc wrote: post #110

Most of this article just lists semi-advanced features that people don't know about. I think that’s Apple’s intention... Having every feature and option up in your face can reduce usability and make simple tasks harder for the average user. Apple wants a product that's easy for anyone to use and that often means keeping non-essential features out of the way. I’d be more interesting in seeing feedback for Apple on how…

The problem lies in what's semi-advanced to one is critical or basic to many others. Apple has been known to hide (aka. make subtle) basic operations. How often have you wanted to load a page in 'desktop mode' in mobile Safari? It's there, just invisibly so. The UI does not teach in the name of clean/minimal design which is Apple's way: form over function. Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut ke…

> How often have you wanted to load a page in 'desktop mode' in mobile Safari? It's there, just invisibly so.

Not a single time in the past 5 years or so. What's your point?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#336

Post by JayXon »

new_here wrote: post #275

This is another case of Apple being held to a higher standard than competitors in the market. Apple literally revolutionised the smartphone market with the simple usability of the iPhone. Of course, there are things that can be improved (with many decent suggestions from the author that most power users would agree with) but based on the author’s mild annoyances and casual observations that elderly, visibly challenge…

> This article reminds me of the time when the iOS alarm clock app had a bug that caused the alarm to go off one hour later on some random Sunday and it made headlines in all the tech press.

Android alarm going off one hour earlier in Brazil also got some press attention today. https://androidcommunity.com/brazils-dst-change-inadvertentl...

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#337

Post by TeMPOraL »

brianpgordon wrote: post #272
codetrotter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the Android phones came on the market, I was extatic. Linux, in my pocket! However, Android did not live up to my expectations at all. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but Android was not it. After a while I came to understand that for me personally Android was a bad fit, and everything I had envisioned about running Linux on my phone was ill-adviced. Linux and FreeBSD are my main two operating systems I run…

> I don’t really understand what kind of “advanced” things you are referring to not being possible on iOS. Could you expand on that? I could give you one. An actual user-accessible filesystem instead of having only iCloud plus siloed app-specific storage. (No, Apple's eventual capitulation to include a "Files" app which just aggregates files from different apps doesn't count.)

Seconded. Hiding the filesystem is both destroying productivity and fucking up people's mental model of computing. I hate when people build abstractions that lie to you about the way things work - because lies are always inconsistent, they'll eventually leak and confuse people.

Proficient users aren't born, they're made. Or, increasingly, not made, thanks to contemporary UX trends.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#339

Post by cududa »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #262
rtpg wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but I do think that saying that text size is an advanced feature is just not true. Loads and loads of people are older than 40. Loads of people just have weaker eyesight. Apple has really good accessibility tools, and it would make a _lot_ of sense for there to be a dedicated part of the onboarding for accessibility.

Text size is part of the onboarding now.

It has been since the 6/ 2015

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#340

Post by fit2rule »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #262
rtpg wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but I do think that saying that text size is an advanced feature is just not true. Loads and loads of people are older than 40. Loads of people just have weaker eyesight. Apple has really good accessibility tools, and it would make a _lot_ of sense for there to be a dedicated part of the onboarding for accessibility.

Text size is part of the onboarding now.

If its important enough to put in on boarding, its important to have it handily available through easy to access means during regular use.
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