Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Saving a photo from iMessage" I feel like I see the root of this problem everywhere in "card"-based UIs. The share button opens a "card" on top and you can move the card up in the view. There should definitely be some consideration for how to represent that there's more "card" outside of your screen.
The simple solution is to design the card so that, at all display layouts, the last visible item is cut off -- it goes a long way toward saying "there's more in this list". The new share sheet in iOS/iPadOS 13 is not great -- the two rows of horizontal scrolls (one for contacts, the other for apps) was much more discoverable.
Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
441–450 of 509 posts
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pressing hard on a UI element, like an app icon[0], tweet, etc will show certain actions. On the newer models without a pressure-sensing screen, you can hold the UI icon for about a second to perform the same thing. 0: https://imgur.com/a/wOTDT3s
They disabled the pressure sensing on old devices in iOS 13 so it wouldn’t feel like a downgrade on newer phones without pressure sensing.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#443The 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…
They really need an option to tell it "Yes, I have an Apple/iCloud ID that I want to use with this device, and I can even tell you that ID now, but my password is a strong password in my password manager and I really do not want to try to type it right now...so how about we just finish setting things up without it, and then as soon as I get my password manager installed I can get that password for you?"
It should then finish setup without further Apple/iCloud ID prompts, deferring setting up things that need it.
Furthermore, it should but on icon on the front page named "Finish Setup" or something like that which kicks off finishing setup of everything that needs your Apple/iCloud password.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#444Apple has fallen into the same trap that Microsoft has -- changing their UI not to advance the state of the art, but just for the sake of changing it so they have something new to sell.
I’d play the devils advocate re. it being a “trap”. People get bored of things. Changing UI for the sake of changing UI is a sensible business decision if it scratches the customers’ novelty itch. At least a good short-term decision.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#445The 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…
> I had to enter the Apple/iCloud account credentials multiple times at different points before it stopped asking me to sign in again They really need an option to tell it "Yes, I have an Apple/iCloud ID that I want to use with this device, and I can even tell you that ID now, but my password is a strong password in my password manager and I really do not want to try to type it right now...so how about we just finish…
They do have that, but it may ask you to sign-in again when you download apps, books, music etc. or sometimes seemingly at random.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There's a much more evil prank than that: A user was having a really bizarre problem: They could log in when they were sitting down in a seat in front of the keyboard, but when they were standing in front of the keyboard, their password didn't work! The problem happened every time, so they called for support, who finally figured it out after watching them demonstrate the problem many times: It turned out that some jo…
What's sad in this little sub-thread is to watch people down-voting and taking this too seriously. These are healthy jokes, just good fun. Nobody is saying Macs are bad or inferior in any way. Heck, I own a bunch of them, PC's as well. Lighten-up people!
...and then there was this time when I spent a full hour with an x-acto knife above the dropped ceiling carefully, silently, carving a hole right behind one of my co-workers to drop a firecracker right behind him. Yeah, that's how we rolled.
I have a feeling that today's workplace has become far more rigid and intolerant of, well, being human. People would get fired for probably every single thing we did back then...like wiring-up a fire extinguisher to discharge into someone's crotch (male coworker, 'cause someone is likely to assume the worst) when they sat at their desk. Or how about jumping out of the bushes with two water hoses to hose down someone when they got to work? There's more...we had lots of fun and worked 14 to 16 hour days. That was twenty years ago, we are still good friends.
Oh, I have to mention one more. I bought a new car and proudly showed it off to everyone in the team at the time. One of the other engineers rented a crashed version of exactly the same car from a junk yard. He had the tow truck swap my car for the utterly destroyed car in the parking lot. He also swapped the license plates. My car was towed and parked around the corner. Imagine my reaction when I came out of the office to get lunch and my car looked like Optimus Prime stomped on it! It was absolutely hilarious beyond description.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d play the devils advocate re. it being a “trap”. People get bored of things. Changing UI for the sake of changing UI is a sensible business decision if it scratches the customers’ novelty itch. At least a good short-term decision.
How much of the "novelty itch" is something put there by software-company marketing to drive sales?
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two separate points: 1. You can largely escape the trifecta by hiding advanced customization options inside of the Terminal, where they're 100% invisible to anyone who isn't explicitly searching for them. 2. For a long time, Apple's way around the problem was to have different platforms for different markets. The iPad was a simple computing platform for very casual users, and the Mac was the more capable option for m…
The Terminal/NSUserDefaults system is useless for navigation and discoverability of optional settings. How would I see all the options available for an app? We're back to googling and peer support. > For some reason, Apple has now decided that their simple platform needs to be as capable as the more advanced platform. Because they were getting crap for it.
Googling and peer support is much more acceptable for advanced actions than simple actions.
If I need to Google how to disable labels in the dock, that's probably ok. If I need to Google how to turn down the brightness of the iPad...that's not great.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still could set up a study where you have tasks that users must complete and you get countable results. But this would quickly get expensive, so you need a sponsor. This could either be Apple, Google, or some other company in the market interested in making their opponent look bad. And I wouldn't take such a study for granted.
Not only expensive but making a comprehensive one that people actually finish is practically impossible. And there are many many further aspects that make the measurement non-reproducible - and so unreliable - or biased.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
The danger with data is it can keep you trapped in a local maxima. Also there's the whole thing with a lot of users seeming to be more and more annoyed with telemetry.
THIS. So many people don't realize that true innovation cannot come from existing data.