iPhones are hard to use • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#541

Post by monkeynotes » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #533

monkeynotes wrote: post #499

Most people know it's controversial to say "iPhones are hard to use" because most people feel that the iPhone, perhaps more than any other technological innovation in the past 20 years, made technology easy to access, use, and integrate with their lives. To say 'iPhones are hard to use' and then point out all the small edge cases of use as significant flaws is hyperbole in bad faith. The author is caught up in his ow…

Or maybe "making the setup process easy hides some really important (and even safety critical) functionality". Or "popups are still bad and apparently we still need to say it" (referring to the wifi one). Or maybe "some current edge cases should be center cases". I don't think that his point is an overly broad indictment of the iphone so much as an analysis of where many of its more common flaws actually lie. I've se…

Do you really believe "iPhones are hard to use" faithfully represents his overall critique? Objectively iPhones are not hard to use. Do you really feel that an iPhone's ease-of-use is reasonably compared to a "handheld engine-diagnostics module for Daewoo cars"?

The fact that an iPhone can literally be used out of the box with no user-manual (unlike an engine-diagnostic unit) is testament to its simplicity. I don't even know why I am arguing this point.

Does iOS get everything right? Nope. Is an ongoing conversation about UX important? Of course. My point is not that the author may or may not bring up some valid points, it's that he hung his whole piece off of an self serving, insincere title and sensational premise.

More and more we are declaring that there is so much noise on the web that it's ok to bait users with nonsense titles. Just a couple comments down someone advocates this. If you let principles like sincerity and honesty slip just to get attention you've let a piece of your integrity go which in turn mars what you are actually saying.

If what you are saying isn't interesting enough to warrant an interesting title, maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are, or what you have to say is less important than you think it is. Either way, don't hijack the attention of others to validate your own ego, work harder and earn the attention honestly.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#542

Post by mszczepanczyk » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #208

mszczepanczyk wrote: post #180

A couple of things I absolutely hate about Apple's products: 1. Whenever switching an app in iOS and going back to the same app I don't know if I'll find it in the same state as before, even after only few seconds. It's unbelievably annoying to read an article opened in embedded browser in Facebook app, check something quickly in Chrome and be forced to look for the same article again. 2. Some apps don't allow me to…

> Whenever switching an app in iOS and going back to the same app I don't know if I'll find it in the same state as before, even after only few seconds. It's unbelievably annoying to read an article opened in embedded browser in Facebook app, check something quickly in Chrome and be forced to look for the same article again. Apple would very much like you to have the experience that apps do not change when you leave…

> Apple would very much like you to have the experience that apps do not change when you leave them. There are a couple ways that apps break this model, though: if they use a lot of memory, iOS will kill them in the background. In any case, apps are supposed to have state restoration to get back to where they were when you last left it, but few apps implement this correctly.

You're probably right. But Facebook isn't just some random app - it's used by around half of all iPhone users, and Apple is known for lengthy acceptance process in their app store. They should be able to detect such cases. And if Facebook doesn't implement the model correctly who will. Also, switching apps is such a common pattern it shouldn't be garbage collected that fast in the first place.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#543

Post by MadWombat » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #178

My mum is 68 now. I first got her a windows phone. I taught her how to make calls. That was it. Then a month later I got a string of text message. Hello Son Is This Working ? She worked out how to send texts. I upgraded her to an old iphone. I sent it to her in the mail. She worked out everything including how to take photos. I told her about LINE and she found the App Store and downloaded it. Her phone died so I bou…

I don't know. I am a senior developer in my 40s. I have been using Android since G1 phones came out. The few times I tried to use iPhones I couldn't do anything, pretty much everything I needed was counter-intuitive and I had to ask someone. How to switch to a different app? How to go back to previous screen? How to change wifi or other settings? How to setup or switch on/off an alarm clock? And many other things that I just couldn't find.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#544

Post by jpttsn » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #465

jpttsn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely that’s wrong. If Apple makes a “bad” UI but all other UI is even worse, then Apple is still the pinnacle of usability.

Saying “Usain Bolt Too Slow” is obvious clickbait.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#545

Post by MaxBarraclough » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

MattSayar wrote: post #530

monkeynotes wrote: post #499

Most people know it's controversial to say "iPhones are hard to use" because most people feel that the iPhone, perhaps more than any other technological innovation in the past 20 years, made technology easy to access, use, and integrate with their lives. To say 'iPhones are hard to use' and then point out all the small edge cases of use as significant flaws is hyperbole in bad faith. The author is caught up in his ow…

But then nobody would read it

Well sure, the profit-motive explains clickbait (or in this case, wanting readership; I see no ads).

We should still keep it off HN. I expect the headlines to work for me, not for the author.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#546

Post by PascLeRasc » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

One thing I'd think could be useful would be switching the language based on Touch ID, so family members or partners who speak different languages could pick the device up and feel at home.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#547

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #478

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…

>>Language? I'd quite like to be able to change that frequently. > That's an outlier request, if I ever saw one I've lived in similar households. In KDE one can change the language on the fly for any arbitrary application or the desktop manager. The Russian-speaking girlfriend, the Hebrew-speaking children, and the Spanish-speaking regular can all use KDE comfortably. I was actually surprised when I had to use an Eng…

[deleted]

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#548

Post by csours » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

> "Scroll to the top by tapping the clock. (Who would possibly discover that by accident? Somebody had to tell me about it.)"

Dang, this finally explains a "bug" in one of our apps. (We primarily do web apps, so we don't have in-depth knowledge of platforms)

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#549

Post by jacobush » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

JiNCMG wrote: post #522

jacobush wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Why? It's literally the whole reason for that article. It's "hidden" because these older people are too scare to even click on a setting button.

Maybe I suck at the Socratic method. Maybe the onboarding should be much easier. I think that if people must ask a friend to set up the phone, something has failed. It should just work and setup should be optional. If you wanted to migrate all your data and settings from a previous phone, you should be able to do that later, without wiping your phone. There's a lot yet to do in UX, not much explored. Apple really owns the "slick" game but they could spend some effort on the next billion customers.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#550

Post by emdowling » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

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…

I feel the same way, but in reverse.

I've been using iOS since the iPhone 3G and have built apps for it. I know iOS inside out. I recently started a new job where the vast majority of our customers use Android. I therefore chose my work phone to be Android, so I could use the same platform that our customers use.

Wow - is it confusing! Nothing is intuitive, and I genuinely find it very hard to use and get into a rhythm with. It's a Galaxy S9, so hardly a "bad" Android phone.

My takeaway is that so much of the way we use our devices, especially our phones, becomes muscle memory. Android is not badly designed, neither is iOS, it's just that I've built up a decade's worth of muscle memory, coming from hundreds of interactions a day with the device, that switching to a different paradigm is going to feel jarring.