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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#451

Post by schrodinger »

ovi256 wrote: post #407
coldtea wrote: post #377

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. 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…

It's not an outlier for me. Most people I know switch between English for work and international friends and the local language for mostly everything else. I'm switching languages I type in every whatsapp conversation. On an older Android version that doesn't track per chat language, I have to switch the keyboard every single time. Three languages. And I happen to know more.

You’re talking about switching the keyboard language, which is easy to do all the time. The parent is talking about changing the language of the entire phones UI, which seems like something you’d do significantly less frequently than changing the keyboard.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#452

Post by carlospwk »

These aren’t necessarily only iPhone “issues”, they apply to other mobile devices as well. Balancing which settings are visible and which aren’t is tricky. But one thing I’m upset with and that’s the death of the manual. I shouldn’t have to rely on 3rd party life hack style videos and articles to figure out useful features. I’m not expecting (or wishing) to see 100+ page paper manuals to make a comeback, but I’m also not happy with flimsy, pretty support pages which only scratch the surface. I want to see detailed and well designed documentation with useful illustrations on how to do things.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#453

Post by MerlinDE »

Most of the points in this article are just wrong (e.g. font size asked for and configured during initial setup; WiFi alerts are not enabled by default).

Apart from that, I agree that iOS has too many hidden features and — first and foremost — too many interactions that you must know exist and you can’t find by just glancing at the screen (which is defined as mandatory in Apple‘s User Interface Guidelines).

So, yes, their products get worse. But, no, not like described in this article.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#454

Post by jon889 »

mrzool wrote: post #43
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.…

> This article just has iPhone in the title to get more views. This article has iPhone in the title because it talks specifically and exclusively about iPhones. Of course there's always a lot of improve with UI and UX on all devices, but this article focuses on iPhones.

Almost all of it can be applied to not only Android phones but also Mac, and Windows. The problem is that everyone needs a slightly different set of features to be at the front. There is no way any software maker can surface the features a user needs for everyone. At some point the user has to take responsibility and learn the tool they bought. If it was anything from a coffee machine, to a tractor, the user has to learn how to use it, and also use it all to it’s full capacity. With accessibility issues this is harder I know, and yes Apple should put text size settings in the set up process.

Also maybe phones could be more proactive in pushing the user to do stuff differently. Eg if the user keeps googling Facebook to get there it could suggest typing directly or showing a message about what bookmarks are.

But the title of this article is definitely click bait. I know I clicked on it indignantly thinking “maybe but no more than other phones”. Whereas if it had been “phones are hard to use”, then “lets look at the iPhone”, the chances I clicked on it would’ve been lower as I would’ve though “yeah you’re probably right”

It’s actually a pretty good article, that made me think about my job, just would’ve been nice to see examples from other platforms for comparison.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#455

Post by duckerude »

bspammer wrote: post #446
akuji1993 wrote: post #343

I'm okay with Claudia being banned from the page. I still would like to not get reminded every time I set down my mouse on your site...

Not sure what you're talking about, I don't see any mention of a Claudia on the page.

It's a title attribute on the body element. It can show up as a tooltip when you rest your cursor on the page.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#456

Post by stereo »

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…

This, unfortunately, is slowly going away. The Home app in the new macOS, which has been ported over from iOS, is unusable if you don’t know how to two-finger-tap.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#457

Post by Khaine »

nilkn wrote: post #91
reaperducer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D Touch seems to be the Touch Bar of the mobile world. Both are great ideas, but only sparsely exploited even by Apple, itself.

For what it’s worth, I use 3D Touch pretty much every day. The number one usage for me is moving the cursor around while editing text. I actually did it while writing this post; I decided I wanted to add a comma after “worth” at the beginning and did so easily with this feature.

3D Touch is great when it works. But sometimes it just doesn't. I know on my 6S, there are times where 3D Touch stops working until I restart my iPhone. It is so frustrating that it sometimes works/sometimes doesn't and if you push to hard it's another gesture altogether.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#458

Post by NeedMoreTea »

chrishannah wrote: post #439
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think if someone can't use a device properly, that it's the manufacturers fault for making it hard to use. It absolutely, completely is. What pointers to the hidden features, or more information, are built into the very trivial onboarding phones provide? What quick reference leaflets are in the box? What brightly printed card with a QR code to the downloadable beginners guide, or full manual is there? What…

> None at all. There's a mini user guide in every iPhone box. Also, Apple includes the Tips app by default on iPhones, that continuously prompts about features, and guides on how to use them.

There's a card with the buttons named, and a few lines of small print on the back in silver grey print on grey, that is so short of contrast it's almost impossible to read in perfect light. 50% of the space is unused so a much larger font was possible. Hardly a mini user guide though - a card with one image and 3 or 4 sentences on the back.

Only other things in the box were a sticker or two, and a single sheet of absurdly microscopic print with warranty and regulatory info etc.

My recollection, which may be faulty as it's been a while, of the tips app is it included mostly bits of trivia but nothing particularly useful or substantive. Basically just tips - not especially surprising.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#459

Post by Lio »

When I think about iPhone useability issues I'm always reminded that it still doesn't have an easy way to undo autocorrect mistakes.

The best you can do is shake the phone and if you don't drop it it might undo for you ...or it might just redo the bogus autocorrect when you retype the word.

Whole websites are devoted to ridiculing people for sending text messages with "hilarious" autocorrect errors in. Still Apple can't or won't improve it.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#460

Post by pvinis »

nilkn wrote: post #91
reaperducer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D Touch seems to be the Touch Bar of the mobile world. Both are great ideas, but only sparsely exploited even by Apple, itself.

For what it’s worth, I use 3D Touch pretty much every day. The number one usage for me is moving the cursor around while editing text. I actually did it while writing this post; I decided I wanted to add a comma after “worth” at the beginning and did so easily with this feature.

I also use it every day, but for apps. Many of the apps I have on my home screen, have "shortcuts", not in the new siri way, but in the "do something/go somewhere quickly in the app" way. I used it to call a person, I use it to open a new tab on Firefox, I use it to add a new todo item, I use it to go to a specific tab on an app. I would be very sad if it goes away at some point..
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