Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jnd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 509 posts

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

#111

Post by hug »

lostmsu wrote: post #80
CamperBob2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Off the top of my head, do a highlight pulse on the two snapped edges, and over the app window raise an ephemeral notification "New window snapped, click here or press [hotkey] to undo".

This is just the first thing I have thought of. There are probably better options that require a little more thought.

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

#112

Post by ryall »

xvector wrote: post #102
vardump wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so confused and panicked once I accidentally overwrote some text from an important note on an iPhone. For a few minutes I desperately searched for any menus, long presses, weird nearly hidden menus, finger gestures etc. but couldn't discover anything . Apparently there was no way to undo! After some googling I found out you have to shake the phone a few times. Seriously? I think there must be a lot of people wh…

The gesture is now a two-finger swipe back. For some reason Apple couldn’t be bothered to add an “undo” to the cursor dialogue though.

Thanks for the two-finger tip, just lost a whole block of text in slack ;)

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

#113

Post by cmrdporcupine »

When Jobs came back to Apple, and continuing after his passing, there seems to have been a conscious decision away from "the computer for the rest of us" (aka 'entry level' 'easy' computer, and thus hard to sell to the aspirational) branding to various forms of luxury branding. The point of the UI in the iOS and OS X era is not so much to be easy to use, but to provide a consistent luxurious experience. A kind of marketing sheen -- like the styling of the interior of a BMW or Mercedes -- more than a UX approach.

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

#114

Post by spike021 »

hs86 wrote: post #25

I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…

To be fair, many people don't really know how to multitask on Windows or Mac OS (alt-tab, cmd-tab, etc.) either. It's not like the buttons have icons or anything on-screen to emphasize the key combo can be used to multitask.

Not trying to defend Apple, but really just that interfaces in general haven't always been perfect and still have issues, not just one (mobile) platform.

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

#115

Post by ecaradec »

spike021 wrote: post #114
hs86 wrote: post #25

I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…

To be fair, many people don't really know how to multitask on Windows or Mac OS (alt-tab, cmd-tab, etc.) either. It's not like the buttons have icons or anything on-screen to emphasize the key combo can be used to multitask. Not trying to defend Apple, but really just that interfaces in general haven't always been perfect and still have issues, not just one (mobile) platform.

People can still multitask using mouse only. It’s ok to have a hidden fast interface if you have a discoverable slow interface.

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

#116

Post by microtheo »

I just made the move from Android 10 to iOS 13. I was shocked how complicated the process was. Not saying that one is more intuitive than the other.

But man...

No back button. The password manager didn’t integrate well. The keyboard didn’t adapt to the language I was typing in. Parameters were hidden in the settings app but sometimes also in the app itself. Force touch is impossible to predict without trying it (actionable notifications). The cloud is incompatible (I lost my WhatsApp history). The lock screen and the notification panel look the same but don’t show the same information (some notifications only show up in the nOtification panel). What the hell... the notification panel looks like the lock screen... Some control are stuck on an inaccessible and not obvious corner (abort the reorganization mode of main app starting panel).

I felt a bit stupid and understood the frustration of my 70 year old mother trying to learn how to use an iPhone. How am I supposed to explain it to her if it doesn’t make sense to me?

Nothing in the tech is really intuitive unless you truly know the product.

I felt hopeless and a bit depressed for y couple of days.

Thank god the hardware is gorgeous and the product feels great! :)

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

#117

Post by poglet »

pottertheotter wrote: post #54
hs86 wrote: post #25

I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…

It seems to be pretty pervasive everywhere. I'm a longtime iOS user, but have been helping my mom with some stuff on her Android phone. Most of the things I have been helping her with involve me working in the phone settings or Google apps. I've found them very confusing to navigate, and there's little clue as to what should be clicked on. It took me a while to realize that what I was looking at wasn't a list of feat…

As a long time Android user, I really like that on Apple you can go to Settings app and have a list of settings for all installed applications. Settings on Android can be confusing, especially when it comes to things like the "Google" app.

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

#118

Post by chrbarrol »

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

My first Apple product was a iPad Pro I got last year. I consider myself quite tech savvy, but the gestures was a huge pain-point when learning the device, to the point that it soured the whole experience for me:

When trying to find the WiFi toggle button (which is accomplished by "pinching" the screen) I basically just tried every possible gesture until I found the right one (I know that some gesture opened it from watching others). By far the worst and most memorable UX problem of the year.

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

#119

Post by dmitriid »

lostmsu wrote: post #80
CamperBob2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Popup at the bottom of the screen "Autolayout applied. [don't show again checkbox]"

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

#120

Post by WillYouFinish »

dmitriid wrote: post #71
Nextgrid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bein…

That was fun to look at, but I see you also have an issue with UI/UX on your website: you cannot easily reach the footer when scrolling down because of that infinity scroll.
Post reply on HN