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Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

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Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#71

Post by dmitriid »

Nextgrid wrote: post #44
afandian wrote: post #19

I remember as a child showing my mother how to do stuff on our family Mac with OS 7.5 and being baffled that she didn't 'get' the UI. A decade ago I wrote some Cocoa stuff and read the HIG religiously. Now I'm in my 30s. I can't work out how to do stuff on my iPhone (Android makes perfect sense). mac OS, of which I have used every major version of since 6, is starting to break with the mental model I understand and i…

Do they even read the HIG themselves anymore? The latest iOS is a shit-show and full of inconsistencies between iPhone, iPad, and whatever you think would be considered “common sense”.

If you think iOS is a shit show, I give you App Store on MacOS [1][2] :)

If there was a competition on how many guidelines you can break in a single app, this would take all the prizes home.

The addition of Apple Arcade only increased the amount of WTFs.

[1] There are Apple HIG, and then there is MacOS App Store https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P

[2] Here's a quick and easy way to see which apps are currently being downloaded in app store https://grumpy.website/post/0SU9WNFXB

[3] Apple Arcade was made to explore https://grumpy.website/post/0SpwtkNB_

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#72

Post by dmitriid »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #60

New gestures introduced in iOS 13: Copy: three-finger pinch Cut: three-finger double pinch Paste: three-finger pinch out (expand) Undo: three-finger swipe left (or three-finger double tap) Redo: three-finger swipe right Shortcut menu: three-finger single tap

While doing all that they broke "slide finger across screen to move cursor easily"

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#73

Post by scarface74 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #64
scarface74 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the Mac needs a few things. - a low power mode - a restricted data mode - a modern scripting interface , basically port Workflows to the Mac

> - a modern scripting interface , basically port Workflows to the Mac What’s wrong with AppleScript? Genuine question as I don’t use macOS.

AppleScript is like the uncanny valley of programming languages. It tries to be English like but it ends up being more verbose and trying to figure out the right syntax is obtuse.

It’s also been around since the early 90s and was the spiritual successor to HyperTalk - which was much better because it had a smaller domain.

Apple dismantled the original automation team (https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1359425) years ago.

Workflow is much more modern and is already partially ported to the Mac.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#74

Post by chrisseaton »

mihaaly wrote: post #41
chrisseaton wrote: post #2

Is anyone trying to back this up with a proper scientific study of whether users find it easier or harder to use? Seems just like opinion and debates about aesthetics otherwise? If I wanted to claim that JavaScriptCore was getting slower and I didn't post any data to back that up people would laugh me out of the conversation.

As long as we miss SI unit for the "hard to use" attribute we will have to fall back to user opinions and debates - and potential randomly constructed half cooked polls. The opinions and debates are not looking well for Apple though.

> we will have to fall back to user opinions and debates

So what's the point? If it's all just random subjective opinion why are we indulging in it? If you can't even demonstrate any issue in the first place then why bring it up?

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#75

Post by mellowdream »

I've wanted to like Apple's way of doing things for years - Unix-like and support for MS Office, "ecosystem" integration - but every time I've used their products I've returned them or passed them off to my family members hoping they'd get more use out of them.

Nowadays, I get more questions than ever asking for help on how to do X Y or Z thing that seems really trivial on Android/Linux/Windows systems (like copying files without iTunes/iCloud, a frustration I remember dealing with even almost 10 years ago). It's now to the point where I just recommend 3rd party apps and alternatives for basic utilities for Apple's macOS and iOS to my family.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#76

Post by drusepth »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #42

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What…

Your opinion here is completely valid and probably pretty widespread, but I feel almost entirely the opposite. Every time I get one of those "what's new" pop-ups in an app I already enjoy, it feels like Christmas morning for me and I almost always immediately go try out the new feature(s). I don't think I would find most of them (or wouldn't find them as quickly) for most apps without a nudge saying what to look for.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#77

Post by tasogare »

t34543 wrote: post #12
josteink wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple hasn't fundamentally changed the UI on iOS or OSX since the initial releases apart from say the iOS look & feel refresh and gestures to support iPhone X. So for the iPhone alone Apple has changed the 1. look and feel to be more “modern” (which means showing less accordances), 2. fashionably removed the very affordable home-button for no functional reason and 3. replaced it with non-discoverable, complex gestu…

I’m increasingly frustrated with iOS 13 text selection, copy, and paste semantics. I had the first iPhone and I remember it was really good at selecting text. A far cry from the painful experience today. Rearranging icons is also pretty awful, it takes me multiple tries to move something into a folder and then rearrange said folder.

I still don’t get it either. Apple platforms are full of bizarre gestures and 4-keys shortcuts but it didn’t creep to the most basic features until now.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#78

Post by atraktor »

They made lot "invisible" improvements in 10.15 (apfs is finished, kern speedup, metal, ml, fonts on 4k etc..) but not sure about this iOS look on my MacBookPro, Now my os look like web page from '98. Way too flat. Icons are broken on toolbar, hated how it looks.

Suggestion:

1. One Pro OSX version for Pro users (cut all services that eat ram and can be security hole) and add more options for advanced users.

2. Cut price around $800 or if you can cut more without damage in "real" performance and quality. Because not all apps use all power anyway.

3. And most important, fix broken flat UI, find balance. We have lot talented designers without job.

4. Don't break old apps with new update, find way for LTS.

MacOS is still my favourite BSD distro and mac from 2013/15 is perfect HW. So, if you do not know how to improve it, then keep what works and what users like or ask.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#79

Post by mellowdream »

meerita wrote: post #5

Apple made a huge mistake when it launched iOS 7: it failed to improve its UI. I don't know if it was a matter of the best and most capable designers leaving the company or bad decisions by the managers, but the truth is that iOS 7 was never a good UI for iPhones, especially the biggest ones. There are many things that are missing that are obvious, such as being able to organize the icons on your Home screen as you w…

It's SO nice hearing that I'm not the only one who thought this - it was actually around this release that I just gave up on iPhones and moved to Android phones. The amount of fiddling/setup/googling I've had to do since has been dramatically less.

Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

#80

Post by lostmsu »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #65
lostmsu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A contrary indie developer perspective: some features are just really hard to discover even when you know what are you looking for. I don't have time for making those introductions, and end up getting feedback requests for some features my app already has.

A contrary indie developer perspective: some features are just really hard to discover Maybe tackle this problem first, then fall back to exposition. One suggestion might be to start by removing hieroglyphic icons, or at least augmenting them with text labels.

> Maybe tackle this problem first, then fall back to exposition.

You assume it can be tackled. Here's a concrete example:

The tool automatically snaps new windows to where user wants them to be. Rarely the user wants to undo that. The core functionality (autosnap) does not require any visible interface whatsoever. If I want user to see the undo button, I have to place it somewhere over his app's window, which bloats the interface (the undo is uncommon), or outright impossible, since some windows have custom titlebars.

So there's a hotkey, configurable in settings. How can you make it more discoverable?

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