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My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

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Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#331

Post by colinmhayes »

trebbble wrote: post #269
NikolaNovak wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda agree, but also... NOTHING about modern phones is "intuitive". Every time I have to introduce a modern phone to a 70yo+ family member, I come to that realization promptly. Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left and top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are three lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear icon, and they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's no…

> Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left and top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are three lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear icon, and they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's no real unified "Back" button - chase it down from application to application with different context and result every time. On Android, unified buttons (including reliable and predi…

Basically couldn’t disagree more. The swipe up makes it faster to switch between programs and saves space for the screen. I guess I just don’t have much sympathy for old people. Everyone in family, including the 90 year olds figure out the new gestures easily enough.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#332

Post by homonculus1 »

failTide wrote: post #240
torstenvl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Machines and software that interrupt users are Kafkaesque torture devices. Hell is full of Clippies and microwaves that repeatedly beep for eternity.

There's got to be a tactful way to do this without interrupting users. If anyone's got some good examples I'd like to take a look.

It's just fundamentally a bad idea. Software should never, ever bother the user during use about how it's being used. That's what tutorials and documentation are for.

No matter how clever and subtle you think you're being, you're still just redirecting the user's attention from the task at hand toward the UI itself. No matter how ignorable, dismissable, or optional it is, it's an abysmal UI failure and it shouldn't even happen once. Make the feature right in the first place and you won't have to resort to nagging.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#333

Post by GuB-42 »

Slightly related but a feature that I miss is the short lived "Air View" in Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5. It allows you to trigger actions by hovering your finger above the screen.

Samsung implementation was a bit gimmicky, gimmicks were the hallmark of Samsung during that time, but it is extremely useful for one thing: hover targets on web pages. It actually makes sites that are completely unusable on other phones usable again, and not only that, it is very intuitive.

And the best part is that it costs next to nothing to make and it doesn't take any space or make anything more fragile, if I am not mistaken it is just a few tweaks on the way the capacitive touchscreen sensor is driven. So why not keep it? UI wise Samsung was a bit clunky but it doesn't mean it doesn't have potential.

3D touch on the other hand is probably a bit more expensive as it requires extra components (pressure sensor). Also, pressure sensitive devices have a long history of being failures, but contactless tech is used all the time, the closest would be digitizers, they all support hovering and it is put to good use. I don't have anything against 3D touch, I think it is nice to have and cheap, the ability to use your phone as a scale is also a nice gimmick but between 3D touch and hovering, I would have bet on hovering. In the end, we have neither...

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#334

Post by Dylan16807 »

mrtksn wrote: post #328
Dylan16807 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a magic in general availability. I think, if all Apple devices had it, it could have been possible to rely on its existence and build the UI with that assumption in mind. With just some devices having it, you need to have few versions of the UI to handle each case. The way you get there is by putting it into everything for several years. Cutting it after three is the opposite of working for that greater ca…

What if it's not feasible on iPad?

There's a capacitor layer behind the screen and there's a tiny actuator for vibration. I don't see how it wouldn't be.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#335

Post by acka »

nfriedly wrote: post #286
trebbble wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left and top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are three lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear icon, and they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's no real unified "Back" button - chase it down from application to application with different context and result every time. On Android, unified buttons (including reliable and predi…

FWIW, the iPhone SE still has the home button - https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/ Although, they've overloaded it's use - single press for home, double press for app switcher, fingerprint sensor, etc. (Or maybe that's what you were referring to with iOS 6/7?) Agree with you in general, though: the single, physical home button that always did what you expected was great. Android's back button usually takes you back to…

The need to press back multiple times to get back to where you were before entering an app seems to be becoming the norm in many apps of late. I'm pretty sure it is yet another 'engagement trap': the app makers don't want you to leave so they can show you more ads, collect more data about you to sell on, etcetera.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#336

Post by nfriedly »

acka wrote: post #335
nfriedly wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the iPhone SE still has the home button - https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/ Although, they've overloaded it's use - single press for home, double press for app switcher, fingerprint sensor, etc. (Or maybe that's what you were referring to with iOS 6/7?) Agree with you in general, though: the single, physical home button that always did what you expected was great. Android's back button usually takes you back to…

The need to press back multiple times to get back to where you were before entering an app seems to be becoming the norm in many apps of late. I'm pretty sure it is yet another 'engagement trap': the app makers don't want you to leave so they can show you more ads, collect more data about you to sell on, etcetera.

Yeah, I usually uninstall that shit. I keep Instagram around specifically because my wife likes to send me things and is disappointed if I don't notice them. But I ignore basically everything else in the app aside from what my wife sends me.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#337

Post by mrtksn »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #334
mrtksn wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's not feasible on iPad?

There's a capacitor layer behind the screen and there's a tiny actuator for vibration. I don't see how it wouldn't be.

For some reason, no iPad had it. Maybe it becomes problematic on large screens, maybe the user experience degrades on large screens because of simple physics i.e the the strength needed for applying pressure becomes uncomfortable since it will act as a lever in the hands of the user?

Maybe the force the user can apply when iPad is on a table(no lever effect) and when is handheld(strong lever effect, user needs counterforce on the other end of the screen to achieve firm press) is far too different to reliably activate the gesture?

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#338

Post by ghoulishly »

voqv wrote: post #122
avnigo wrote: post #36

I had a feeling this was gonna be about 3D Touch just from seeing the title. It was definitely one of my favorite features, and Force Touch isn't a drop-in replacement. With 3D Touch anywhere on the keyboard, you could apply pressure to start moving the caret (text cursor) around, but what was even more useful was being able to apply a little bit more pressure to start selecting text with incredible precision . With…

I will probably soon add an old 3D Touch iphone to my small Human Machine Interface hall of fame along with the old click wheel iPod Classic. They probably removed it because nobody was using it and they couldn't figure out how to teach people, while spending extra $ to add it into phones.

I’m curious to hear what else lives in that collection

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#339

Post by jonathantf2 »

tgv wrote: post #31
jonathantf2 wrote: post #14

I miss the squeeze feature on my old Pixel 2 - I used it all the time and it was awesome. Shame they removed it

What's that? I'm another iPhone user who likes 3D touch, and I've seen a few Androids, but I've never heard of a squeeze function. Do you trigger some function by squeezing the sides?

You could squeeze the bottom half of the phone to trigger the Google Assistant, can't remember if it was remappable or not.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#340

Post by chihuahua »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #258
xt00 wrote: post #209

Maybe I’m in the minority here but I really did not like the feature and many people I tried to explain the feature to were confused that it existed.. “no no don’t tap the screen, you need to PUSH on the screen to make it do the action”.. and I would get a look like “huh?? Push on the screen? Why what’s that gonna do..” people saying pushing hard on the screen is intuitive seemed to live in a different bubble of peop…

I kinda agree, but also... NOTHING about modern phones is "intuitive". Every time I have to introduce a modern phone to a 70yo+ family member, I come to that realization promptly. Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left and top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are three lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear icon, and they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's no…

Thank you, I didn't know about "swipe from top left" until I read your comment. I've been using an employer-provided iPhone for about a year and never knew about this.
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