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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

631–640 of 652 posts

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is flat-out untrue. There are several orders of magnitude more Android users that have been infected with malware than iPhone users. In fact, there have even been Android phones that were compromised within the supply chain and released into the wild. You're either being disingenuous or you're using a very narrow definition of "infected".

Prove it. I showed half a billion infected iOS users. Show me anywhere close to as many infected Google Play users.

I don't really need to prove it since you're claiming that 500 million "potential" installs somehow equates to "half a billion infected iOS users". They got the 500 million number from the number of users of WeChat in China. Unless every single WeChat user in China and every user of those apps downloaded that update (which was pulled in less than 48 hours), that 500 million is a maximum number. Additionally, because iOS apps are sandboxed, uninstalling or updating the app removed the malware completely from those devices.

Now let's compare that with Android and Google Play. According to Nokia's Security Intelligence lab, 74 percent of malware attacks are on Android devices. In 2017 alone, the largest confirmed Android malware attack was for 40 million users. That's verified installs. (http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/no...) If 40 million users were hit off of one app and there are 8.5 million infected installers on the Google Play store (https://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/PDFs/technical-pap...), it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you're quickly getting past the 1 billion active malware installs that would double the single incident you cited (which, again, assumed that the worst case happened).

Additionally, you're completely ignoring the fact that the vector for the attack was the developers of those apps themselves who downloaded Xcode from a random site on the internet. They issued an update and the malware was removed. On Android, on the other hand, the only action taken was the removal of those apps from the Google Play store which means that the apps remained installed on all the devices they had infected.

The rarity of attacks on the iOS front alone makes your statements both misleading and disingenuous. Android is also installed on far more phones than iOS is so we're only even dealing with the malware that's been confirmed and discovered. There's likely an order of magnitude more malware installs out there that are silently doing their thing.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove it. I showed half a billion infected iOS users. Show me anywhere close to as many infected Google Play users.

I don't really need to prove it since you're claiming that 500 million "potential" installs somehow equates to "half a billion infected iOS users". They got the 500 million number from the number of users of WeChat in China. Unless every single WeChat user in China and every user of those apps downloaded that update (which was pulled in less than 48 hours), that 500 million is a maximum number. Additionally, because…

It's not potential: that's the reporting granulariy provided by the App Store. So you got orders of magnitude fewer users infected on Google Play devices (both your links are for non Google Play Chinese phones). Those half billion infected users were infected for a long time before Apple was finally notified and removed the apps from the store (but not from users' phones) in 48 hours.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#633
post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I can definitely see where you are coming from there. The more that I think about it, I would be just as annoyed if this were coming from a major news publication.

But I see his blog as one dude's opinion, who just happens to also be a good writer. Its hard for me to blame such a person for clickbait when I can't really see how they would even derive significant personal benefit from such clickbait.

As to your comment about the Daewoo engine diagnostics module, I've never used that one specifically, but you might be surprised at how easy some engine diagnostic tools are to get started with. And also how powerful they are if used really well, and how frustrating (and incorrect) they are if used for marginally more advanced things without a basic level of knowledge. The analogy worked pretty well for me.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#634
post #425
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't be downvoted for this. I was missing new apple features for years, until I started browsing the apple subreddit. There are a lot of hidden features. Seems there is a good manual online, but it's poorly advertised. The new features are often mainly announced once when you first open a system app after an ios update. I've seem my parents repeatedly close them in a rush to get to the app. There's no "show…

> There's no "show me these tips later" option either, so they never learn the new features. There is a Tips app which is visible on the Home Screen that contains general information such as "Welcome to iPhone" and "What's New" that contains tips on how to use the new features. The app sometimes even nags you with "Tip of the Day" notifications.

Tips is nice, but it only has a fraction of the info that is displayed on those splash screens. That info is displayed exactly once.

It's a mystery to me why they don't have a list of tips for each stock app in the tips app.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#635
post #594

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!

Apple hides tons of stuff - often so well that they go missing for years. I hate to admit this (I'm an 8-time tech CTO), but I thought that Apple had made the bonehead decision to completely remove the iOS search feature after swiping to the left from the home screen stopped working (iOS 6?). It was literally years (at least iOS 10!) before I accidentally invoked the absolutely opaque "swipe down from the middle of a…

I had a Palm Pilot, Palm III and Treo, followed by BlackBerry. It wasn’t THAT great, poor graphics, slowness and weird quirks (also graffiti) but I agree it was visionary compared to everything else in the 90s. the blackberry was pretty amazing in 2000 and as a phone was a step up circa 2005. Though the Palm Pre had some great ideas we Are seeing now in iOS and Android. iOS became really good at calendar and contacts by around 2010 if I recall but I lived with it from 2007 onwards.

Whenever a key feature in iOS seems missing I just google for where it went. iOS search is so essential that I couldn’t see it ever removed...

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can do this from Control Center. 3D-Touch the widget group with airplane mode and the antenna toggles in it, and it will expand to include a Personal Hotspot control. Of course, this is completely undiscoverable...

Interesting. Couldn't under ios10, but I've bitten the bullet and downgraded to ios12 and yes, it's right there, cool.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#637
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. I stopped reading when I saw that. What exactly is "Windows autism" exactly? My autistic son would like to know... And I would encourage you not to say it in private contexts with friends either.

> And I would encourage you not to say it in private contexts with friends either. Not sure it's any of your business what he says to his friends in private, even if you have an autistic son.

The point was that I don't believe anyone should act to normalize a behavior, in any context, of using a medical disorder as a metaphor for anything, in this case, software usability concerns.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#638
post #245
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 get that, but I do think that saying that text size is an advanced feature is just not true. Loads and loads of people are older than 40. Loads of people just have weaker eyesight. Apple has really good accessibility tools, and it would make a _lot_ of sense for there to be a dedicated part of the onboarding for accessibility.

Couldn't optimal text size be determined by the camera (squinting) and machine learning?

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really need to prove it since you're claiming that 500 million "potential" installs somehow equates to "half a billion infected iOS users". They got the 500 million number from the number of users of WeChat in China. Unless every single WeChat user in China and every user of those apps downloaded that update (which was pulled in less than 48 hours), that 500 million is a maximum number. Additionally, because…

It's not potential: that's the reporting granulariy provided by the App Store. So you got orders of magnitude fewer users infected on Google Play devices (both your links are for non Google Play Chinese phones). Those half billion infected users were infected for a long time before Apple was finally notified and removed the apps from the store (but not from users' phones) in 48 hours.

Since we're talking orders of magnitude...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really need to prove it since you're claiming that 500 million "potential" installs somehow equates to "half a billion infected iOS users". They got the 500 million number from the number of users of WeChat in China. Unless every single WeChat user in China and every user of those apps downloaded that update (which was pulled in less than 48 hours), that 500 million is a maximum number. Additionally, because…

It's not potential: that's the reporting granulariy provided by the App Store. So you got orders of magnitude fewer users infected on Google Play devices (both your links are for non Google Play Chinese phones). Those half billion infected users were infected for a long time before Apple was finally notified and removed the apps from the store (but not from users' phones) in 48 hours.

>XcodeGhost potentially affects more than 500 million iOS users

That's cited directly from the article you posted. You're full of it and you know it.

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