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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#411

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Bud wrote: post #164
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…

"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.

Exquisitely thin keyboards that don't work reliably, missing ports that need dongles, a touchbar that doesn't really add much and sometimes gets in the way, super-thinness at the expense of extended battery life, and a missing headphone jack are all examples of form over function.

Meanwhile a function-motivated Finder in MacOS would not look anything like the clunky dinosaur we seem to be stuck with.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#412

Post by azag0 »

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.)

We must use the phone in very different ways. I spend hours a day in a terminal, so I live by a file system on a computer. Yet I've never felt the need for a filesystem on an iPhone.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#413

Post by edanm »

I think this article doesn't grapple with just how hard it is to solve any of the problems it brings up. Of course if you're sitting next to someone, observing them doing something wrong, and telling them exactly how to solve it, then you can improve their process. You can say the same thing about how most people use computers - it's even a meme that techie folks have a hard time watching non-techies use computers because they never use shortcuts etc.

The problem that Apple has to deal with is how to teach people without having 1-on-1 time with every single user to watch what they're doing, and this article offers no solutions for almost anything. (Except for asking for a few things to be part of the on-boarding process, which semi-solves some issues - text size is now part of the on-boarding process, but often, the person using the phone is not the same as the person setting up the phone, especially with older users I imagine).

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#414

Post by rimliu »

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…

Very strange experience. As far as sharing anecdotes go I have witnessed two people coming to Apple without previous experience and having zero problems. You yourself state how happy you were to go back to familiar land of Android. So it may be, that Apple is not an issue here.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#415

Post by isostatic »

coldtea wrote: post #377
fit2rule wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language? I'd quite like to be able to change that frequently. I see no good reason to have mono-culture enforced by the OS. There are three languages spoken in my household, by various family members. Changing the language dynamically for them would be a benefit, not a hindrance. Text size? Same - I often have to show something to my elderly family members, but digging deep into the menu's to find the Text Size sett…

> Language? I'd quite like to be able to change that frequently. I see no good reason to have mono-culture enforced by the OS. That's an outlier request, if I ever saw one, and the accusation is absurd (they give localizations for the OS and tons of things like Siri for dozens or hundreds of languages, so to say they ..."enforce a mono-culture" because they don't allow one to see Spanish one day and French the next o…

Having a customisable control centre might be good. I often turn mobile data on and off (when I'm abroad), and it's a minor pain going into settings. On the other hand I hardly ever touch Bluetooth, and never use airdrop or airplay mirroring.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#416

Post by function_seven »

matt_j wrote: post #364
CamperBob2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same here. I just learned yesterday that iOS 12 allows you to rest your finger on the space bar to begin moving the cursor like you would a mouse. Use another finger to tap the keyboard (anywhere) to start and end selection mode.

It's a lot easier than trying to precisely aim your fat meat fingers on the itty bitty text!

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#417

Post by codetrotter »

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.

I am not sure that the way files are usually presented is actually that much better.

You and I know that a file is data and a file format is defined by the structure of the data.

Most regular users I have talked to don’t know this. If you ask them what a file format is they will say that the file format is determined by the extension of the file.

Even with a file system presented to the user you still end up with most people not having a real understanding of what files actually are.

Likewise, a lot of users will insist that certain file formats “belong” to some particular program, just because the extension associated with the format is handled by that program on their computer.

Furthermore, most users have no idea what really happens when you open a file in a program.

In fact I would bet that at least some are completely unable to distinguish the data of the file from the interface that they are using to edit the file.

A file system is a powerful abstraction, but I don’t think it teaches the “truth” on its own.

Neither do I think knowing about files is the most important for someone wishing to understand computation.

The most important to understand is what a data format is, and knowing that knowing the details of the byte-level structure of the data is what allows software to be implemented to interact with and optionally transform that data.

Furthermore, I wish more people knew some fundamental things about data like

- the difference between text and an image of text

- the difference between bitmap and vector graphics

- the difference between lossy and lossless compression, and how these work

- why some formats are hard to work with, for example extracting data from PDF files

Etc.

Understanding these things does not require a user visible fs, nor will a user visible fs help most people understand these things for reasons I stated earlier in this comment.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#419

Post by Ntrails »

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…

sorry to off topic - but how do you get safari to force desktop? I've been hacking URLS

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#420

Post by rienbdj »

fit2rule wrote: post #374
coldtea wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. What's important for setup is not important everyday. Some things you just need to be able to set once and forget. No reason to put those things front and center.

Language? I'd quite like to be able to change that frequently. I see no good reason to have mono-culture enforced by the OS. There are three languages spoken in my household, by various family members. Changing the language dynamically for them would be a benefit, not a hindrance. Text size? Same - I often have to show something to my elderly family members, but digging deep into the menu's to find the Text Size sett…

Language can be changed in the keyboard quickly and easily.
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