Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jnd.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 509 posts

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

#341

Post by Dylan16807 »

cletus wrote: post #207

First I'll say that accumulated knowledge counts for a lot here. There's a vast difference between someone starting to use these devices now and someone who started 10 years ago who slowly adds to their repertoire of knowledge. This, I think, is why I personally find Android devices so incredibly hard to use. I don't have 5-10 years of built up knowledge on how to use them and they seem utterly unintuitive to me. I a…

USB-C cables desperately need better labeling but it's not as bad as that. They all carry 60 watts, and they all support USB 2.0 to give you >300Mbps.

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

#342

Post by j7ake »

The thing that annoys me is that devices like iPad and iPhone have so much trouble doing simple things such as uploading a set of PDFs so you can read the PDFs offline.

Maybe I am just dumb who can't get it working, but it involved some sort of syncing with a computer with iTunes and an iBook app.

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

#343

Post by bouke »

ajmurmann wrote: post #88
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…

I once shook my phone because I was annoyed by autocorrect repeatedly messing up. The shaking undid more than half the text I had written. I couldn't find a way to redo.

Shake once more, it'll offer to redo.

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

#344

Post by draklor40 »

jeen02 wrote: post #128
draklor40 wrote: post #125

Went to jnd.org on my 14" thinkpad. Thin, small grey fonts on white background, makes me want to tear out my own eyeballs. Eat your dogfood, perhaps ?

> 14" thinkpad That would make me cry too.

the thinkpad?

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

#345

Post by bouke »

umbos wrote: post #175
chrbarrol wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first Apple product was a iPad Pro I got last year. I consider myself quite tech savvy, but the gestures was a huge pain-point when learning the device, to the point that it soured the whole experience for me: When trying to find the WiFi toggle button (which is accomplished by "pinching" the screen) I basically just tried every possible gesture until I found the right one (I know that some gesture opened it from…

Why wouldn't you just Google it? It would have taken you two seconds and then you'd have known all about control centre and how to access it. Besides, none of those gestures are actually necessary; you could have gone settings app > Wifi > turn wifi on/off.

I think that after disabling WiFi, there's no Googling possible.

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

#346

Post by xg15 »

andreitp1 wrote: post #337
overgard wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger with data is it can keep you trapped in a local maxima. Also there's the whole thing with a lot of users seeming to be more and more annoyed with telemetry.

THIS. So many people don't realize that true innovation cannot come from existing data.

Maybe, instead of either just declaring what is the "right" way or observing users like some kind of behavioural scientist, we could just go back to, I don't know, asking them.

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

#347

Post by nkkollaw »

So true.

I used to be an iPhone user for many years until iPhone 5. My Android phone broke and even though I also own an iPhone 6 for testing, it was so frustrating to use that I'm using my Android tablet as a phone until I fix my actual phone.

iOS is just stupid. You have to memorize all these gestures for no reason. No discoverability, I bet most people don't know about 80% of all available gestures. To go back to the previous screen I have to press firmly, then swipe—but all the way to the right, or if I stop I trigger overview mode or whatever is called.

macOS suffers the same problem, but to a lesser extend.

Unfortunately, Johnny Hive has completely lost it. He's been obsessed with out things _look_ instead of how people are going to use them—and that's why people keep hitting his glass walls at Apple's HQ. Steve Jobs kept design at bay and insured a mix of beauty and usability. Now that he's gone you can tell that products got worse and worse in terms of usability (but 1.2 millimiters thinner, and so beautiful).

Maybe with Hives gone things will improve. The MacBook Pro 16 is a step forward (besides ports).

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

#348

Post by xg15 »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #223
emidoots wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had conversations with several "designers", some from FAANG, and all have held the general belief that having strong authority over how the UI looks and getting eye-candy at the cost of usability and ergonomics was 'without doubt the right choice'. In my frank opinion, many designers hold a position of subjective judgement and thrive on the power that comes with that. This is like a developer making arbitrary…

Who could be right, the multiple designers who do this every day, or my opinion about data (which I don't see backed up by any data)? If Steve Jobs had followed user preference he'd have made a faster flip phone. On another topic, putting someone's job into quotes just isn't a good look for any argument. If you have to straw man to get your point across, it might not be that great.

> If Steve Jobs had followed user preference he'd have made a faster flip phone.

Actually, would this be so bad?

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

#349

Post by xg15 »

FpUser wrote: post #248
frank2 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you consider giving the the user some way to configure the text color?

I only make configurable things that MUST be configured. I've long learned that my audience when it comes to handling software for better or worse has the average intelligence approaching that of my cat. Not trying to insult here. Just general observation

> Not trying to insult here. Just general observation

Sorry, still an insult.

But ok. So your users have the intelligence of a cat and are generally really helpless with your software. Then the obvious way forward is to include non-discoverable features, hard-to-read text and extra-confusing mouse gestures...?

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

#350

Post by eloisant »

m11a wrote: post #59
heavenlyblue wrote: post #42

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What…

It wouldn't bother me if it was one or two apps that I use frequently. It does bother me when it's every single one, and as you say, most of which are used rarely. Then it gets annoying on all of them. It's less annoying with Apple since they only update apps/OS once a year. But it seems like every software jumps onto the bandwagon and now you see a changelog opening up an app every other day.

That's the thing, each developer thinks their app is the most important one on your device.
Post reply on HN