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

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211–220 of 509 posts

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

#211

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…

You’re not old. Apple has a software problem these days.

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

#212
My biggest gripe is how ridiculous bluetooth connection is on iPhones. Apple for some dumb reason decided to remove headphone jack before making Bluetooth connections easy and convenient. How does this make any sense? It still is bad - long pressing bluetooth button still takes multiple steps and is buggy (doesn't register, or long pressing leads to mistakenly pressing on the following pop up screen listing the available connections).

There should've been software/interface changes before ever even thinking to make hardware changes (removing headphone jack).

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

#213
post #133

I have a desktop Windows only product that I sell (10s of thousands of clients). It does not have the most eye pleasing UI design but it is very functional and ergonomic. All possible actions are clearly visible and / or discoverable. And every action can be accessed in less clicks then in any of competitor's products. I actually get some praises for it. Still every once in a while I get support email telling me that…

> beauty trumps usability/ergonomics

That is just... Why is this person a designer if they don’t want to design? They should have become a painter or a musician.

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

#215
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.

Let's not pretend this is a matter of how Apple "couldn't be bothered". Everything like this is an affirmative choice. All such choices (or their alternatives, like what is being asked for here) have both costs and benefits.

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

#216
post #187
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…

There are many things that are missing that are obvious, such as being able to organize the icons on your Home screen as you wish like you can do in Android, This is bad on a mobile operating system. I had the displeasure of trying a device running Android's default UIs a few weeks ago: it felt like a Fisher-Price toy. Apple's model of organization is better in every way.

You could just organize things Apple's way if you wanted to though.

Sometimes it seems like Apple's lack of choice is the primary reason people prefer Apple.

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

#217
post #58
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…

Android is even worse in this regard. There really is no way to undo changes in text fields! I'm generally a happy android user, but I find it absolutely infuriating that this hasn't been implemented. Text editing on phones is fiddly, and I've lost quite a few comments/messages due to this issue.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that's press and hold on the keyboard to move the cursor without your finger being in the way so you can never figure out where the cursor is going to land in "teh".

You could always figure that out thanks to the maginfication you had. The took that away

For me the magnifier didn’t help since the cursor would always move as I lifted my finger.

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

#219

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

This is fucking horrible. Worth an episode in Silicon Valley horrible. What I hate most about the new Apple devices is that I always do something that produces a gesture or a hidden function. Grab iPhone quickly by the sides - get a screenshot. Swipe with four fingers looking North shaking - get something else. Who the hell needs all this crap?

Or just use the long-press menu like you have been for ten years? Nothing changed.

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

#220
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…

Android is even worse in this regard. There really is no way to undo changes in text fields! I'm generally a happy android user, but I find it absolutely infuriating that this hasn't been implemented. Text editing on phones is fiddly, and I've lost quite a few comments/messages due to this issue.

I have one of the few Android phones with a physical keyboard and I have the dollar sign key mapped to ctrl. I was pleased to discover ctrl-z works the way it should. This doesn't help the vast majority of users, I know, but it's one more thing I love about having a physical keyboard on my phone.
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