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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)

#31

This article is just a rant without many concrete examples, studies, or suggestions for improvements.

My suggestion would be to just stop adding new features to iOS, macOS, Windows, etc... They are done and only need updates to add support for new hardware, fix bugs, reduce resource consumption, and close security holes.

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

#32
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m increasingly frustrated with iOS 13 text selection, copy, and paste semantics. I had the first iPhone and I remember it was really good at selecting text. A far cry from the painful experience today. Rearranging icons is also pretty awful, it takes me multiple tries to move something into a folder and then rearrange said folder.

I came here just to say the same thing — Apple really needs to track the statistics on success rate for text selection ... “User Selected the text they wanted first try” “User Selected the text they wanted within 30 seconds” “User Selected the text they wanted within 1 minute” “User Failed to select the text they wanted” I hit that last case probably more than 30% of the time nowadays — and very often it’s not becaus…

Maybe it’s because idiots don’t know/care about selecting text to begin with and their products are more and more targeted to them, as opposed to people why (try to) do real work on their devices as opposed to scrolling social media?

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

#33
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…

I agree, they went off the rails with iOS 7, both with regards to UX and graphic design. They have never recovered.

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

#34

I remember as a child showing my mother how to do stuff on our family Mac with OS 7.5 and being baffled that she didn't 'get' the UI. A decade ago I wrote some Cocoa stuff and read the HIG religiously. Now I'm in my 30s. I can't work out how to do stuff on my iPhone (Android makes perfect sense). mac OS, of which I have used every major version of since 6, is starting to break with the mental model I understand and i…

I don't know if android is immune anymore. The latest update to my tablet dispensed with the labels on the desktop icons and I didn't figure out how to get them back. It's a sad state of affairs across the board.

> The latest update to my tablet dispensed with the labels on the desktop icons

Try using a third party launcher, maybe? Nova is a great alternative.

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

#35
post #25

I 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.

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

#36
As an iOS user since late 2008 I recently tried to use GarageBand on my iPhone 8+ - it was such a non-intuitive nightmare.

(Actually, I just wanted to create a custom ringtone out of an song fragment. It was the most epic fail I've ever had on a macOS and an iOS device).

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

#37

I remember as a child showing my mother how to do stuff on our family Mac with OS 7.5 and being baffled that she didn't 'get' the UI. A decade ago I wrote some Cocoa stuff and read the HIG religiously. Now I'm in my 30s. I can't work out how to do stuff on my iPhone (Android makes perfect sense). mac OS, of which I have used every major version of since 6, is starting to break with the mental model I understand and i…

I don't know if android is immune anymore. The latest update to my tablet dispensed with the labels on the desktop icons and I didn't figure out how to get them back. It's a sad state of affairs across the board.

If you're still wondering how to get the icon labels back on your tablet, one way is to install a third-party home screen app. (Unlike on iOS, on Android the "desktop" is just another app. If you don't like the one your device comes with, you can download a replacement on the Google Play Store.)

Apps like this are usually called "launchers". Personally, I've used and liked Nova Launcher, an app that tries to be like the default Android launcher but with more settings to customize everything: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teslacoils...

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

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The over-reliance on gestures and other hidden things like 3D Touch is the exact problem. It's a complete about-face from their classic 90s design policies, which were about ensuring applications were fully discoverable and did not hide any state from the user.

> hidden things like 3D Touch is the exact problem I’ve had an iPhone for around 5 years now and I still have no idea what 3D Touch is. I hear it’s not supported on all models, so my phone may be lacking it, but if it does, I wouldn’t even be able to tell.

Pressing hard on a UI element, like an app icon[0], tweet, etc will show certain actions. On the newer models without a pressure-sensing screen, you can hold the UI icon for about a second to perform the same thing.

0: https://imgur.com/a/wOTDT3s

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

#39
post #25

I 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.

Now due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut-off list items to the bottom, people have no idea that scrolling vertically is possible

https://tyler.io/perfectly-cropped/

But at least we've rotated the problem by 90 degrees :P

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

#40
post #7

I feel that for OSX, everything past Mavericks has been a downgrade. What's the point in having a beautiful hiDPI display if you're going to flatten all UI elements into a solid color?

Everything past Snow Leopard . Lion was a disaster, and there is literally no feature I use that I prefer in any Mac OS created since then. What's more, the OS has become uglier and buggier. Edit: actually, I like the addition of Finder > Cut, and Finder > Rename. So, hey, there is something!

I agree. 10.7 was when I left the Mac platform. Sometimes I miss os x 10.6 but I'm not a fan of anything past that.
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