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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)

#261

Post by Wowfunhappy »

darkteflon wrote: post #123
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.

> 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.

...do we though? The iPhone came out more than a decade ago now, and I feel like we got it pretty darn figured out around 2015 or so.

Newer versions of iOS have brought some improvements, but also a lot of miss-steps, and performance decreases on older devices (the only place you'd notice).

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

#262

Post by zapzupnz »

mihaaly wrote: post #163
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.

I am going to be a little rough, but no-one cares about your difficulties! Especially when your inability of producing intuitive - or easy to discover - features blocking users instead of helping! A tool should help users not being the poor man's self advertisement medium! Otherwise there's no point using those. Do it properly or find a living where you are competent! Again, sorry for being rude, but hopefully it hel…

The rude user perspective. Don’t be so presumptuous as to think your rude virtual exhalation of breath could represent all users.

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

#263

Post by bangonkeyboard »

SiVal wrote: post #239
Hackbraten wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This appears to be fixed on iOS 13. Actions are now arranged vertically. The app bar above the actions still scrolls horizontally but it now hints at that by cutting off icons.

Yes, and since there are so few varieties of screen size, having it cut off perfectly with no ugly hints (scrollbar, cut-off icon, or even off-centered item) is no accident and shows much higher they prioritize better-looking over more-useful. When I got my first iPhone, my first touch screen device, I noticed their beautiful little slider switches for all the settings. They didn't work very reliably, though. I would…

UISwitches can be dragged by design. Prior to iOS 7, when dragged they followed the position of your finger directly, like physical switches. Post-iOS 7, they only animate after your finger has moved past a threshold, but the toggle graphic expands when held to indicate that it is still draggable.

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

#264

Post by asaibx »

gryfft wrote: post #220
nicoburns wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No need for a physical keyboard -- if you have Hacker's Keyboard installed it comes with a Ctrl key, and Ctrl-Z works as expected.

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

#265

Post by spike021 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #234
spike021 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps so, but Apple _is_ the one consistently touting their design, UI, UX strengths. “It just works”, “we made it better”, etc.

I wouldn't necessarily call that a blanket statement, though. I'm sure they don't mean power user functions are easy to learn. I think at that point there's just a general expectation that those who will be power users / need that type of functionality will be more than capable of figuring it out.

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

#266

Post by gnicholas »

saagarjha wrote: post #182
anoncake wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloat?

Many recent updates have actually reduced bloat. One of my apps shrunk by more than half as Swift libraries moved into the system.

Yeah after app thinning was enabled, most apps became much smaller because you weren’t forced to download assets meant for other device sizes. But these days I think most app updates are bigger than previous versions. Would be interested to hear about exceptions to this hypothesis, and reasons why!

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

#267

Post by oneplane »

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…

At the same time, people comment about 'hidden' features nobody tells them about. I support there is no 'one size fits all' scenario here.

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

#268

Post by bbarn »

There's one key difference in modern, big company software, vs. the software of yesteryear, in my opinion - 20 years ago, most software was written by people who would use the software. Today, software is written and designed by people completely disconnected from the user, or, in the case of things like apple, people whose status as a designer matters more (legitimately) than what they design.

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

#269

Post by paulcole »

dahfizz wrote: post #256
Zarath wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying you took the pedals out of a car and people couldn't drive, it's to be expected unless they are driving a Flintstone's car.

You've missed the point. For Macs, the mouse is the pedals of the car because you absolutely need the mouse yo do basic things. On my Linux setup, I could do just fine without a mouse because I have multiple ways of doing the things I need to do

Yep, this is why so many cars come with a backup set of pedals in case the first set is disabled in a prank. Great to have multiple ways of doing the things that need to be done.

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

#270

Post by paulcole »

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 mean you went from never having owned (and presumably used) an iOS device to figuring out the task in 10 minutes. Seems pretty good to me.
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