I agree with most of the stuff the author is mentioning. But i think most of his points only apply to large devices (iPads, and Macs). Small devices such as iPhones and Apple Watches are so limited in their screen real-estate that helpful UI decisions - e.g. putting labels next to cryptic icons - will only clutter up the UI, making the user even more distracted.
Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
231–240 of 509 posts
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#232I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…
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…
> 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.
This doesn’t sound right. I once installed a corrupted version of OS 10 Jaguar on my laptop that resulted in a non-functioning mouse and touchpad. I managed to reinstall the old OS using only the keyboard. Prior to the post-Snow Leopard era when they started stripping down the file system and muddying the navigation, OSX’s interface was really easily navigable.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#233I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…
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…
That's like saying you took the pedals out of a car and people couldn't drive, it's to be expected unless they are driving a Flintstone's car.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#234I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…
To be fair, many people don't really know how to multitask on Windows or Mac OS (alt-tab, cmd-tab, etc.) either. It's not like the buttons have icons or anything on-screen to emphasize the key combo can be used to multitask. Not trying to defend Apple, but really just that interfaces in general haven't always been perfect and still have issues, not just one (mobile) platform.
Perhaps so, but Apple _is_ the one consistently touting their design, UI, UX strengths. “It just works”, “we made it better”, etc.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android is even worse in this regard. There really is no way to undo changes in text fields! I'm generally a happy android user, but I find it absolutely infuriating that this hasn't been implemented. Text editing on phones is fiddly, and I've lost quite a few comments/messages due to this issue.
I have one of the few Android phones with a physical keyboard and I have the dollar sign key mapped to ctrl. I was pleased to discover ctrl-z works the way it should. This doesn't help the vast majority of users, I know, but it's one more thing I love about having a physical keyboard on my phone.
> I have one of the few Android phones with a physical keyboard
What phone? Do you recommend it?
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many things that are missing that are obvious, such as being able to organize the icons on your Home screen as you wish like you can do in Android, This is bad on a mobile operating system. I had the displeasure of trying a device running Android's default UIs a few weeks ago: it felt like a Fisher-Price toy. Apple's model of organization is better in every way.
You could just organize things Apple's way if you wanted to though. Sometimes it seems like Apple's lack of choice is the primary reason people prefer Apple.
Constraints make things easier sometimes, and it isn't a bad thing.
A lot of times, it's easier to write something like a narrative when you're working within certain rules. Or to design a powerpoint when you're given a corporate style guide.
Starting from scratch is difficult because it doesn't give any ideas to bounce off of. And with something like a smartphone - which users need constantly, but never seem to have the time to configure - any half-hearted configuration by the average user is going to benefit dramatically by having basic rules in place.
For power users - like all of us on Hacker News - sometimes the blank-slate approach is preferable, but there's nothing wrong for liking Apple because of the lack of choice.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#237On MacOs, the behavior of Home/End/PageUp/PageDown (or Cmd/Fn + Left/Right/Up/Down), and further on, combined with Ctrl/Shift, varies dramatically across different apps. I can never predict what will happen when I press these keys on the first acquaintance of any random app. It's never been a problem on Windows.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#238Earlier 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…
> 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. This doesn’t sound right. I once installed a corrupted version of OS 10 Jaguar on my laptop that resulted in a non-functioning mouse and touchpad. I m…
"Couple of decades ago" could mean Classic MacOS, which is indeed mostly unusable without a mouse
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#239I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about…
> Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This appears to be fixed on iOS 13. Actions are now arranged vertically. The app bar above the actions still scrolls horizontally but it now hints at that by cutting off icons.
Yes, and since there are so few varieties of screen size, having it cut off perfectly with no ugly hints (scrollbar, cut-off icon, or even off-centered item) is no accident and shows much higher they prioritize better-looking over more-useful.
When I got my first iPhone, my first touch screen device, I noticed their beautiful little slider switches for all the settings. They didn't work very reliably, though. I would use the touch interface to drag the slider, and it sometimes worked but often failed. Well, touch screens aren't perfect, right?
Until someone eventually saw me doing it and said, "You can't drag it, you have to just tap it." It turns out to be just a checkbox. A real slider switch has to be dragged and won't work if tapped, and an on-screen checkbox is the reverse, and they decided to use an image of the former as their standard implementation of the latter on a touch screen. Someone at the very top very deliberately decided that was what they wanted most.
Re: Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. This doesn’t sound right. I once installed a corrupted version of OS 10 Jaguar on my laptop that resulted in a non-functioning mouse and touchpad. I m…
"Couple of decades ago" could mean Classic MacOS, which is indeed mostly unusable without a mouse
I don't remember the OS version at the time. I do remember it was the PowerPC era.