It's sad to see that many people here in the discussion are not trying to critically assess the subject matter in proper context and rather targeting the article author about his bias or why he dedicated a whole paragraph to a certain issue. Seriously?
We can all do much better than this.
iPhones are hard to use
361–370 of 652 posts
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? The initial setup is for the things you set once and never need to change. I tell my phone I want it in English during on boarding - and then I never need that setting again.
Eyesight changes over time. People learn new languages, and want to switch. Making these decisions for the user and then forcing them forever is decidedly un-user-friendly.
Or, you know, the person can search for 1-2 minutes how to change the font, when they need to, if and when their "eyesight changes" enough during their years of using iPhones to warranty it.
Better than cramming every such feature as a first priority, and making a UI that's confusing for everyday use.
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#363Title should have been "iPhones are hard to use - For old people", it's bad for them, but it's not the fault of the iPhone itself, I bet if you give them any other piece of technology it will be equally hard for them.
You are right in pointing out that it could be better, I think that the "Tips" app can have a dedicated section for accessibility features and video tutorials on how to use certain features of inbuilt apps.
They could also have an app dedicated to Accessibility features, pull out the existing accessibility settings from Settings app and show them one at a time in a UIPageViewController inside that app.
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Easy to complain about copy/paste functionality, but how else would you implement it? I agree with most of the criticisms in the article, but copy/paste is just one of those things that is never going to be 100% reflexive or intuitive on a touchscreen.
I know how to copy/paste on an iPhone and it's still an insufferable operation. I don't know if my fingers are fatter than the average but I find it next to impossible to select anything, or even place the cursor at the end of a word instead of selecting an entire word for that matter.
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#365Most 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…
>The problem lies in what's semi-advanced to one is critical or basic to many others.
Well, that's not a dictum to design UIs by. This way everything becomes "critical".
At some point you just use statistics, and if something is critical to fewer people, you can give it lower priority anyway than what most want to use everyday.
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#366Re: iPhones are hard to use
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You can put it in control center and have it be about as easily adjustable as brightness. It‘s not there by default and hard to discover, but adjusting your text size all the time really is a bit of a niche feature.
I‘m really not sure what else Apple could do other than:
- Asking during onboarding
- Putting it in Display as well as Accessibility settings
- Having a control center button
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#368Earlier 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!
> 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.
The idea wasn't to hide or show the context menu -- but to have those actions NOT need the context menu.
E.g. to delete you didn't need to "right click, send to trash". You dragged the item to the trashcan.
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eyesight changes over time. People learn new languages, and want to switch. Making these decisions for the user and then forcing them forever is decidedly un-user-friendly.
Or, you know, the person can search for 1-2 minutes how to change the font, when they need to, if and when their "eyesight changes" enough during their years of using iPhones to warranty it. Better than cramming every such feature as a first priority, and making a UI that's confusing for everyday use.
You didn't read the article? Even though its buried there, in the system prefs, people who need to change such settings still cannot find them. That's the point: the UI is already confusing for everyday use, and we honestly expect better of Apple.
Re: iPhones are hard to use
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Form over function" is not "Apple's way". Apple's way is function, period, paragraph. And often, what "function" means is, don't bury the user under 200 options they will never use. Make choices. Be willing to say "no" to having every single option front and center. Added to this is the obvious point that with a touch interface on a small screen, you cannot make everything obvious. It's impossible.
is that what putting usb ports on the back of an iMac is? function, period, paragraph, and publication?
>is that what putting usb ports on the back of an iMac is?
Yes, why not? Tons of PC laptops had it that way as well, even industrial-style all-function PCs.