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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)

#281

Post by BurningFrog »

robomartin wrote: post #136
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…

A couple of decades ago I worked at a company that had about 200 Mac's and a similar number of PC's. One of our favorite practical jokes was to disable the mouse on Mac's. The victim quite literally could not do a thing with the computer until the mouse was re-enabled. In sharp contrast to this most Windows users could function reasonably well without the mouse. This, of course, was a long time ago. My guess is that…

Yeah, if you break a machine it will stop working.

Glad my work isn't impacted by such pranks!

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

#282

Post by everybodyknows »

asaibx wrote: post #264
gryfft wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Klaus Weidener Hacker's Keyboard?

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

#283

Post by KukicAdnan »

saagarjha wrote: post #149
paggle wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You get that and then accepting it deletes a large portion of the text.

That's what Undo Typing does...

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

#284

Post by wwweston »

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…

On one hand, yes, tour pop-ups are often an admission that discoverability has been neglected, and every time a product discussion goes the orientation-popup direction it should trigger some reflection on that.

On the other hand... well, for example, I have a puzzle game concept I’ve worked up a prototype for and everyone I show it to needs some things explained that I haven’t been able to figure out how to just make a discoverable part of the UI.

Outright replacing visible affordances with gestures is wrong 9 times out of 10, reorganizing UX in a way that needs a walkthrough is annoying... but sometimes I don’t see another way to get certain things across?

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

#285

Post by wruza »

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…

And when you shake it, in russian language it asks “Don’t apply typing of text” with buttons “Don’t apply” and “Cancel”. Years before its title was “Don’t apply (Input)” with same buttons.

Maybe because in russian Undo == Cancel and they had no courage to make it “Undo”: “Yes” - “No”.

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

#286

Post by zouhair »

nicoburns wrote: post #217
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…

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.

This is the main reason why I use Hacker's Keyboard[0] when writing notes, because it has a full on functional keyboard with all modifier keys. Especially CTRL-Z and Arrows keys.

[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketwork...

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

#287

Post by Razengan »

The iPad was my gateway into the Apple orchard. I had never purchased an Apple product until about a decade ago, when I got the first Retina iPad as a gift for someone who didn’t use computers. I was so impressed by how intuitive the device and OS was for them, that I installed macOS in a VM on Windows to try iOS development. I fell in love with macOS (back during Lion) shortly before getting my first MacBook and leaving Windows forever behind, never to return.

Fast forward to a month ago. I purchased one of the newer low-end iPads as another gift for someone else who didn’t use computers.

It was depressing.

The setup process was kinda annoying. No, we don’t want Apple Pay, thank you. I had to enter the Apple/iCloud account credentials multiple times at different points before it stopped asking me to sign in again.

There were a lot of bugs in the system UI and the preinstalled apps.

I had to disable the multitasking gestures because they would be confusing for a new user.

They have removed labels for the Dock icons with no way to restore them, so I had to keep apps with less obvious icons out of the Dock, so they could have labels. Because a flower for photos is not a connection that many people can intuitively make.

I had to explain that dragging down from the right corner of the top edge brings up the brightness control.

Dragging down from anywhere else on the top edge brings up the notifications.

Dragging down on a blank part of the home screen’s background, away from edges, brings up the search bar.

Fuck.

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

#288

Post by JohnTHaller »

Razengan wrote: post #287

The iPad was my gateway into the Apple orchard. I had never purchased an Apple product until about a decade ago, when I got the first Retina iPad as a gift for someone who didn’t use computers. I was so impressed by how intuitive the device and OS was for them, that I installed macOS in a VM on Windows to try iOS development. I fell in love with macOS (back during Lion) shortly before getting my first MacBook and lea…

Oh, you want to updates your apps? That's easy. Open up the App Store and then click on your profile picture.

Wait, what?

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

#289

Post by TechieKid »

remarkEon wrote: post #271
CydeWeys wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the mouse to switch to a given program in the take bar isn't necessarily slow. It's actually faster if you have a decent number if windows open; clicking on exactly the right one straight away is faster than repeatedly pressing Alt-Tab and seeing if the new window brought to the foreground was the right one.

Im sure you know this but in Windows 10 if you hold down Alt after hitting Tab the first time it’ll display which windows you already have open, and hitting just Tab again will cycle though them. You can even hold down Shift as well to cycle through the list of icons but in reverse.

I'm sure you know this, but, I think at least since Windows 7, while having the Alt+Tab "popup" open, you can use the arrow keys while holding Alt down to directly navigate to the window you want to open. Very useful if, like me, you have 20 windows of browser tabs open, and the application you want is in the middle of the list.

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

#290

Post by zentiggr »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #288
Razengan wrote: post #287

The iPad was my gateway into the Apple orchard. I had never purchased an Apple product until about a decade ago, when I got the first Retina iPad as a gift for someone who didn’t use computers. I was so impressed by how intuitive the device and OS was for them, that I installed macOS in a VM on Windows to try iOS development. I fell in love with macOS (back during Lion) shortly before getting my first MacBook and lea…

Oh, you want to updates your apps? That's easy. Open up the App Store and then click on your profile picture. Wait, what?

Wow, that's seriously dysfunctional. I get that Apple doesn't do UX testing but maybe they could do some UX testing?

Getting at least one user's opinion about a redesign might have nipped some of this in the bud

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