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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#461

Post by Piskvorrr »

vbezhenar wrote: post #438
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…

I'd like to use different languages for different applications. I'm using Russian and English languages interchangeably on my phone. Luckily many applications nowadays have separate language setting, but not all. That's not an outlier request. I hate that English-dominating CS monoculture that thinks that everyone is like them. It caused great headache of 8-bit encodings which the rest of the world had to deal with f…

Yup. "ASCII is mostly OK if you're USian and only use English, therefore no problem exists."

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#463

Post by myspy »

lukeschlather wrote: post #270
wvenable wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went from iPhone to Android and struggled but now I have serious trouble using iOS devices. I'm now convinced the greatest UI innovation this century is the Back button. If IBM PC keyboards had a big dedicated "back" key the world would have a been a much better place.

I very rarely use iPhones but when I do I have no idea how anything is supposed to work without a back button.

The problem is that the definite way to go back on the iPhone is to swipe over the screen from left to right. That gets you back to where you come from every time.

The other problem is that no application trains the user doing this with for example an animated hint.

Knowing and using that makes the back button for users without disabilities superfluous.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#464

Post by djtango »

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…

I recently had to help my mother with some tech support. One of the things I needed to do was turn off the device - I had to actually Google how to turn off an iPhone X.

This is after me owning 3 generations of iPhone (3S-4S) and an iPad AND the family owning one of every main iPhone since 3S.

Is turning off the device an advanced feature?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#465

Post by majewsky »

jpttsn wrote: post #278
mrzool wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A name drop no less. “McDonald’s is dead cows.” “Too much Smirnoff will get you drunk.” It implies comparison to the competition, and cheats it’s way in front of an audience that wants to compare products.

It's still justified because Apple prides itself as the pinnacle of usability. It's one thing if $RANDOM_ANDROID_OEM builds a bad UI. It's a whole different thing if Apple builds a bad UI.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#466

Post by bazzargh »

kalleboo wrote: post #309
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? Personally I'm still pretty annoyed you can't replace the default url handlers for stuff like Maps and Mail. Every time Apple Maps pops up I curse them.

on the maps front it annoys me they're all silos, and there isn't, at the very least, easy switching between map apps for the same coordinates&zoom. The location api exposes a notion of 'here'/'location', I want a shared notion of 'there'/'destination' (useful not only for mapping, but eg transport apps).

Pipe dream level: Apple Maps gains api-accessible import/export of geodata, (POIs, tracks, layers...?), so opening any compatible map app can both open at the 'there' location and can display the shared geodata.

(typically I use google maps for urban stuff, maps.me for pre-downloaded offline maps and POIs, ordnance survey for uk outdoors, michelin maps for france (the search is terrible, but having roads marked as scenic is fantastic), bikehub for cycle routes... and more. I switch maps a lot...but never to Apple Maps)

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#467

Post by Piskvorrr »

submeta wrote: post #344
bb88 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you saying they are...holding it wrong?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#468

Post by Lio »

RandallBrown wrote: post #224
IggleSniggle wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s odd. On my iPhone, moving the cursor is activated with long touch, and 3D Touch does nothing...and yet I do have 3D Touch

The long touch cursor movement is different than the 3d touch cursor movement. With a long touch, it brings up a loupe that magnifies the text. With 3d touch it lets you use the keyboard almost as a trackpad to move the cursor around.

That's not the full story. From iOS 12 you can do the long touch on the spacebar and get the same functionality as the 3d touch on the rest of the keyboard.

Great for me as 3d touch is so flaky on my iPhone since I got the screen replaced.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#469

Post by myspy »

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #140
devinus wrote: post #28

I recently switched to iOS from Android after years on Android. I'm coming from being a daily macOS user for almost a decade. I would argue that iOS should no longer be considered the more "user friendly" of the two. That might have been the case years ago, but iOS seems to expect prior experience with what I can only guess are iOS paradigms specifically. Almost every important action I need to take in an iOS app is…

I agree. Android seems to have more consistent UX for apps regardless of developer. Back button is such a key input that I always feel trapped in iOS, where as on Android everything feels intuitive and multitasking is a breeze.

Swiping on the screen from left to right is the iOS back button.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#470

Post by wycy »

With the new FaceID features, I could see it being a nice touch if iOS were to ask users if they want to increase text size if it senses the user always holds the phone ridiculously close to their face and/or constantly squints.

Beyond that, I don't know how much of a responsibility it is for the phone to push its accessibility options on everyone after initial setup.

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