Thanks for posting this. I completely agree, and I think that “put this in front of someone who doesn’t have prior experience of this device” is an acid test for design.
The other replies frustrate me as much as Apple’s design direction, in that they “get it” even less than Apple.
Bad design is not that I can’t figure out how to copy an image from mail. That’s annoying, that could be better, but you’re not even seeing the wood for the trees at that point - it’s the fundamental concepts of design that escape most people.
Like, what do these rows of icons even mean? What do they do? Why is it that tapping on them opens a window with their name in? Is that the right design? What does your user actually want to do, how are you guiding them?
There’s this conceptual clarity to design, and when you see it you shout “yes!” And when it’s absent you mumble a lot, and most nerds cannot even recognise those two modes, let alone approach devising the concepts that underly the clarity. The dead giveaways are the minor pedantic points vs how the entire paradigm is designed.
Android, for example, has this home screen versus the app grid, and it’s not clear why that exists. It seems like a hangover from desktops - here’s my “desktop display” and here’s my “app bank” and no designer would ever think of inventing that paradigm if they were truly reimagining how a omnitool should work. A mobile device isn’t “computing in your pocket”, it’s “a tool that allows you to do things that can change its face and use a network” and you go from there.
This is what Apple get and others don’t, but that should really be past tense as Apple have completely forgotten the thoughtful and deliberate design they’ve always made. Hold and press an icon and you can “share app”, you waaat, like how is that even a feature. Imagine you’re using a penknife and you can “share blade” or you can “share this channel” on a TV. You just totally don’t get it at that point, you’re not designing for the user at that point (cue comments of “yes, I love sharing apps that way” from the 0.0001%).
Despite their nosedive, Apple devices are still the best, and it just feels like we’re waiting for them to get so bad that Android is a cheaper version of awful, and no other company is coming to save us. Someone, for the love of god, start an electronics company that is dominated by a small team of great designers.