Even before apple introduced the 3D Touch for trackpad feature, there was a Jailbreak tweak called SlideSelection. IMHO it was an even better solution. All you had to do was drag your finger left from the backspace key and the caret would start gliding. This was faster than having to force touch or touch-wait on spacebar. Also for selection you could double tap backspace and slide your finger.
My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
361–369 of 369 posts
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Oh wow, I never knew this existed. iOS UI in a nutshell.
I hear this complaint a lot, but what is the solution exactly? Cramming labeled buttons for every possible action onto every screen? There's not a lot of space to work with, and even less when the touch targets have to be large enough for a big fat thumb to press accurately/reliably. You can do most of the things that most users need to do just knowing how to tap icons and swipe up to go home. I don't think it's such…
Unobtrusive GUI indicators - small tabs that suggest pulling, textures to suggest numbers of fingers or tapping actions etc. Add a menu item to turn visual hints off if desired, but have the UI be discoverable by default.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#363I 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…
> you can long press on the space bar till you get haptic feedback, then you can move the caret around freely. However, if you want to select text, you need to use a second finger on the keyboard after you start moving the caret around
Now how as a "user of apple products for 8 years" was I supposed to guess this ? Thank you ! You made my day !
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is zero discoverability The shortcuts associated with menu items are shown in the menu item. I realize that there other discovery problems with keyboard shortcuts (on all platforms) but there is non-zero discoverability for "the most basic things" on Mac OS. Gesture discoverability is much closer to zero, IMHO.
Mac OS Help menu search is spectacular for discoverability. Start typing what you want and it pops up the menu with an arrow and it shows you the shortcut. Everyone else does it worse, except maybe the VSCode command palette.
This is the only thing I miss about macos. Last Mac used was snow leopard and I _still_ sometimes find myself wishing for menu search on Linux
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one thing I remember was buying the phone when the model was like 6 months since launch, pressing on an app icon on the desktop and randomly getting either the 'move the apps' state or the context menu with apparently no logic to it. And nothing's changed since then. Sorry. It's too confusing.
but what you are describing here exists on newer models as well, sans force touch.. long press.
On my xs when i think i long press i can get Two different results… and they seem random to me.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#366I 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.
3D touch failed because it wasn't on all iOS devices.
The end. (I didn't even know about it until I finally switched to an iPhone Xs after years and years of lowest tear iPhones).
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hmm That seems a valid and desired behaviour. If I want to exit app, I press home button. But if I want to go back one step... I press back button. It takes me back one step. It's like the Go-mode of undo :-). Previous page or form in a browser, back several layers of menu in app or game. I may be writing an email then press back to go back to main mail screen. Etc Basically for me, Android back button does exactly w…
Ah, I see now that I didn't make myself clear in my previous comment. I am not criticizing the back button functionality per se, but rather the way that many apps have things set up so that it requires more, sometimes a lot more, presses of the back button to back out than it took actions (taps, swipes, whatever) to get somewhere. While this may perhaps be useful in some cases, in my opinion it is often done in a classic 'nagware' fashion, to make it more difficult to leave the app.
When I press the home button, this often doesn't close down the foreground app entirely, so after a while of doing this I will end up with lots of apps running in the background, which I don't like because often they keep consuming power even when backgrounded and may also continue gathering data about me that way.
I am aware that apps can also install and run background services separately from the app, but in my experience, the apps that I use tend to also shut down these services, as long as I exit the app entirely, using the back button.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can turn it off in settings somewhere. I really do enjoy albums ending, and think it is a poor UX choice to go to radio mode when an album is complete. However, for playlists, I think it is nifty, but afaik you can't have it both ways. It really should be a per playlist toggle at the bottom "continue on radio when all songs in this playlist have finished playing."
You can turn it off with the infinity symbol. As far as UX choice I find radio mode helpful as I'm a painter and my hands are occupied and I'm usually in a focused mode.
When I'm telling Siri to play something, I need to manually open the app every time and push this little button. Like multiple times a day I need to set the "Tim Cook, don't fucking change my music on me" button which I did not had to formerly do.
For me, that's poor UX and fucked up good product (iTunes.app).
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is zero discoverability The shortcuts associated with menu items are shown in the menu item. I realize that there other discovery problems with keyboard shortcuts (on all platforms) but there is non-zero discoverability for "the most basic things" on Mac OS. Gesture discoverability is much closer to zero, IMHO.
what you mean most people don't go explore every single page of the System Preferences when they get a new computer and look at all the helpful animations in the Gestures pane, I'm shocked (yeah this is the computing equivalent of a locked file cabinet in a disused toilet stall in a dark basement with a sign on the door that says "Beware The Leopard")
macOS help menus are incredibly useful, system preferences is helpful, and support.apple.com actually has some useful guides. Apple also provides free training sessions at Apple Stores, and free remote support 24/7 AFAIK through AppleCare.
What do you expect? Unskippable videos when you first set up a mac followed by a mandatory test that you have to pass before you can use the computer?