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iPhones are hard to use

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#341

Post by jtokoph »

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.

I bet the end users are not setting up the phones themselves and the younger people doing the setup skip all of the prompts except WiFi.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#342

Post by submeta »

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!

> hidden functionality

Easter eggs?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#344

Post by submeta »

bb88 wrote: post #302
reitanqild wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That doesn't make sense at all to me: The right click button on a mouse is visible. The Mac way of hiding it behind the ctrl key was non-discoverable and non-obvious to me.

Or under pull down menus... or context menus... or... Force touch just seems like a different form of right mouse clicking.

I know a few people who - even after trying - can't make "force touch" work properly. I love it and try to show them. But they can't seem to make the effort to learn it.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#345

Post by simonh »

jtokoph wrote: post #341
bonestamp2 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text size is part of the onboarding now.

I bet the end users are not setting up the phones themselves and the younger people doing the setup skip all of the prompts except WiFi.

Not if you do it in an Apple Store, at least in my experience.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#346

Post by vlovich123 »

Bud wrote: post #167
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but honestly, where does Apple list the instructions for using iOS as well as the preinstalled apps? They believe their product is so easy to understand that people will just get it. But then they go and change things like where they put the autobrightness switch and even seasoned iOS users have to hunt for it. Or go on Reddit. They just changed the battery page in settings. Where's the tutorial? An obvious place…

In the user manual. Which is, btw, one of the very best user manuals you will ever see. It's very easy to find, and the fact you haven't found it tells me you probably didn't bother searching, since almost any Google search finds it instantly: https://support.apple.com/manuals/iphone And no: Apple does not "believe their product is so easy to understand that people will just get it". You just made that up. It's...sur…

Having actually asked this question of Steve Jobs at a town hall for interns (& having worked at Apple later as a full time employee) and it is 100% in the DNA of Apple to try to make things intuitive without needing to reference a manual. There's a reason they don't include anything more than a getting started guide. That a manual exists and is high quality isn't proof that they intend or even expect the typical user to use it. A lot of it could also be for SEO purposes so that if you're searching for a question the top hit could be directly from the manual rather than a random blog post.

I have a feeling they also rely on less tech savy users buying in-person at the Apple Store where their sales staff can do whatever custom 1:1 training is required.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#347

Post by simonh »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #334
rangibaby wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compl…

There were no other desktop workstations at the time, Solaris and Windows didn’t exist for years.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#348

Post by usaphp »

> The gold standard here is Undo. You have to shake your iPhone (or giant iPad Pro) to undo an action.

The most useless of the bunch, maybe that's why nobody even bother to mention it?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#349

Post by airnomad »

I think the big part of the problem is that people don't know what their device or software can do and what is possible to do with it.

Once you show people how to use a certain feature they get on quite easily.

Insane amount of productivity is lost because a lot of people don't feel comfortable with their digital tools and think they have to live with whatever default settings are.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#350

Post by wingerlang »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #337
brianpgordon wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What do you need the filesystem for on your device?

I've had direct access to my filesystem on my iOS devices since 2012 and it is very very rare that I use it. And when I do it is mostly for fun and exploration, nothing a normal user would be doing anyway.

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