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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)

#481

Post by vardump »

paggle wrote: post #121
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…

Did you google on a separate device or was it able to preserve the undo stack even through app switching etc?

Yeah, luckily I had also an Android flagship device with me. Didn't indeed dare to switch apps at that point!

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

#482

Post by DonHopkins »

robomartin wrote: post #446
DonHopkins wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's hilarious! 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 b…

The crashed car prank is epic! Sounds like something Bertram Gilfoyle would do to Dinesh Chugtai's Tesla.

I wrote a "Flakey Keyboard Simulator" in 6502 assembly on the Apple ][ to drive my brother crazy.

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

#483

Post by scarface74 »

FabHK wrote: post #479
scarface74 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Now let’s see where he is wrong What kind of design philosophy requires millions of its users to have to pretend they are disabled in order to be able to use the product? You both get the option to decide what size text and display you want when you start your phone for the first time and the option to change the zoom isn’t under “accessibility” in settings it’s under “Display and Brightness” as are they other…

That article was published in 2015, and the HN submission ends with "(2015)". > But the back link is system controlled when you open an app from another app on iOS. It is not controlled by the app. That's the back link to switch to the previous app, but it does not let you navigate within an app. Having said that, yes, that criticism mostly applied to the "flat" iOS 7 (released in 2013), and some of the problems Appl…

Unless I am going crazy, the (2015) wasn’t there originally.

The functionality of a universal back button was never consistent with Android.

Besides, the entire tenant of the original iPhone and every smart phone thereafter was to get rid of buttons and let the UI decide what made sense in certain contexts.

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

#484

Post by sjy »

Nextgrid wrote: post #300
sjy wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d take the complaints about iOS 13 text editing with a grain of salt. I’m on board with most of the criticisms of iOS 13, including that the new text editing functionality is hard to discover, but now that I am familiar with it I would not want to go back to the old UI.

Just curious, which parts of the new UI do you prefer compared to the old one? To me it seems like a huge loss in functionality (loss of the "long press + magnifying glass" method) with subpar alternatives being offered ("picking up" and moving the cursor without seeing what's under your finger, hold space bar to get a rudimentary touchpad, etc).

I never liked the magnifying glass method. I don’t need to zoom in, I just need to put my finger somewhere other than directly on top of the text I’m trying to edit (the “pick up” method does succeed at this, although it’s not immediately intuitive). So from my perspective, I lost one subpar method and gained two slightly less subpar methods.

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

#485

Post by FabHK »

scarface74 wrote: post #483
FabHK wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article was published in 2015, and the HN submission ends with "(2015)". > But the back link is system controlled when you open an app from another app on iOS. It is not controlled by the app. That's the back link to switch to the previous app, but it does not let you navigate within an app. Having said that, yes, that criticism mostly applied to the "flat" iOS 7 (released in 2013), and some of the problems Appl…

Unless I am going crazy, the (2015) wasn’t there originally. The functionality of a universal back button was never consistent with Android. Besides, the entire tenant of the original iPhone and every smart phone thereafter was to get rid of buttons and let the UI decide what made sense in certain contexts.

> Unless I am going crazy, the (2015) wasn’t there originally.

Quite possibly, it's often added later.

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

#486

Post by m463 »

neor wrote: post #331
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…

I fully agree, there is a steady decline in usability and its a bloody shame because for years the usability is what set Apple apart from the others. A few things which hugely annoy me; - Saving a photo from iMessage.... the option has disappeared. I get a popup to airdrop the file, interact with some apps and a huge copy button. In fact, I can scroll down in this menu but there is not a single visual indicator that…

> Saving a photo from iMessage....

I hate that apple doesn't let you export your iMessage history.

It's self serving on many levels.

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

#487

Post by 29083011397778 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #308
JadeNB wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have one of the few Android phones with a physical keyboard What phone? Do you recommend it?

BlackBerry KeyOne or Key2. I have the KeyOne and would recommend the Key2. Typing is not any faster than on glass, but it's purposeful and generally error-free, which is a much better experience in my opinion. Also, you don't need to look at the keys.

It must be a KeyTwo - Currency as control key isn't an available option on my KeyOne. Agreed about error-free typing, as well as it's usefulness for SSH.

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

#488

Post by Tagbert »

smcl wrote: post #415
Razengan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes! What on earth is this for? I would presume that it's an overreaction to cover their asses if users get "hacked", and also a more aggressive DRM authentication to keep making sure you paid for all those apps/books/songs/shows.

So there are additional layers of security which I appreciate. But this is different - the iCloud login prompt repeatedly pops up every now and again. Sometimes after an action, sometimes on its own. I had it before on my iPhone 6S when I upgraded iOS at some point ... then it randomly stopped.

I think that is a problem with session management across multiple backend systems that are not updated quickly enough when you are first setting up. Each one thinks that it is the first time you have authenticated.

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

#489

Post by miffy900 »

threeseed wrote: post #8
meerita wrote: 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…

Not sure why you are talking about iOS7 since it was released 7 years. But anyway the reason Apple doesn't allow for customisation of the home screen is because it adds complexity. And given they are trying to sell to people who are computer and technology illiterate you don't want complexity.

Compare iOS 7 to iOS 13 and despite the time that separates them, are still very similar, but compare iOS 13 to iOS 6 and the difference is night and day. iOS 7 is still pertinent to bring up when talking about iOS software usability because they changed so much in one version; much of the changes in iOS 7 set the direction for future iOS versions, and for better or worse, those iOS versions have inherited iOS 7's design language.

I always wonder what iOS 13 would look like if they didn't dump iOS 6's design so thoroughly.

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

#490

Post by frosted-flakes »

29083011397778 wrote: post #487
frosted-flakes wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BlackBerry KeyOne or Key2. I have the KeyOne and would recommend the Key2. Typing is not any faster than on glass, but it's purposeful and generally error-free, which is a much better experience in my opinion. Also, you don't need to look at the keys.

It must be a KeyTwo - Currency as control key isn't an available option on my KeyOne. Agreed about error-free typing, as well as it's usefulness for SSH.

I use right shift as the Control key on my KeyOne. The Key2 has the quick-switch key in place of right shift, so the extra options were moved to the currency key.
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