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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)

#121

Post by paggle »

vardump wrote: post #58
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…

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…

Did you google on a separate device or was it able to preserve the undo stack even through app switching etc?

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

#122

Post by paggle »

ajmurmann wrote: post #88
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…

I once shook my phone because I was annoyed by autocorrect repeatedly messing up. The shaking undid more than half the text I had written. I couldn't find a way to redo.

I tried it and got an “Undo Typing” confirmation. Did you?

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

#123

Post by darkteflon »

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…

Agree. Catalina was what ended it for me. I understand that mobile OSes need to change somewhat generation to generation as we’re still scratching around to figure out what works and what doesn’t. I don’t want or need that for my workstation though. I built a tower, installed kubuntu 18 LTS and don’t intend to upgrade until they stop supporting it. It made sense for my workflow and I’m happy with how it’s worked out.

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

#124

Post by iamleppert »

iOS was never designed to be a general computing platform. It was designed to be minimalist mobile consumption only and light interaction.

You can tell this in the original iOS which lacked multi-tasking completely. Only later was it shoe-horned in (along with undo, copy/paste, the concept of a cursor, etc)

The result of what we have now has been an iterative journey, the product of a bunch of user requests who insist on trying to create the same experience on a mobile phone with limited and far different interaction modalities.

At a certain point, you need to know when to stop and just open up your laptop rather than cursing something that was never originally designed for the task you’re trying to accomplish.

Right tool for the right job!

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

#126

Post by boiler_up800 »

Disagree with this wholeheartedly. iOS is the only platform I used which seems to make regular usability upgrades. Not new features but actual workflow improvements. I used iOS to get 70% of my work done and it all works together very nicely. You might call me a technical user though. I watch all the keynotes and learn to use the new/different features.

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

#127

Post by cdubzzz »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #87
drusepth wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I constantly use: Slack, Datadog, Gmail, Sentry, JIRA, Confluence, Google Cal, IDEA. And that’s excluding the apps. CityMapper, Google Maps, Amazon, WhatsApp. Every day there’s something new released in one of those apps. I can barely keep up with my email stream - you are either not using enough apps or you have too much free time on your hands.

OP literally started with, “your opinion here is completely valid” and shared a valid opinion and you responded with, basically, “you’re doing it wrong”.

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

#129

Post by lostmsu »

dmitriid wrote: post #119
lostmsu wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]"

What if it happens to many windows at once? What if they end up covering each other? Are you sure user wants to see that popup he'd hardly ever use every time he starts an app?

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

#130

Post by sjy »

poglet wrote: post #117
pottertheotter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a great idea, but so often it’s just one of multiple locations where app settings are located.
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