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iPhones are hard to use

blog.fawny.org

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Re: iPhones are hard to use

#491

Post by CarVac »

benzoate wrote: post #441
CarVac wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In inconsistent places. In many UIs they're on the top left. In the browser it's on the bottom left? So weird.

You can however consistently swipe from the left side of the screen to go back. There are a couple of apps which I suspect were not written by iOS users where this functionality is broken (such as Valve’s Steam iOS app), but those are far in the minority.

It isn't necessarily consistent.

I used my coworker's iPhone yesterday, opening a link from a text message, and couldn't figure out how to go back to the message. Swiping in from the left side went back... within the browser, which had no back history. I had to go to the home screen and open text messages again.

On Android, you just hit the back button and it goes back to the previous app in the stack if you launched one app from another.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#492

Post by WillPostForFood »

danaris wrote: post #481
daxelrod wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this from Control Center. 3D-Touch the widget group with airplane mode and the antenna toggles in it, and it will expand to include a Personal Hotspot control. Of course, this is completely undiscoverable...

Personal Hotspot is not the same thing as mobile data...I suppose it's possible it's what the parent meant, but unless you meant to say that there was a switch to turn cellular data access for the phone itself on and off there, I don't think that's going to solve the stated problem.

There is an immediately visible cellular data switch (right next to airplane mode) in the control center, as well as a hotspot switch which is hidden behind the 3D Touch.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#494

Post by etatoby »

ngcazz wrote: post #423
nilkn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, I use 3D Touch pretty much every day. The number one usage for me is moving the cursor around while editing text. I actually did it while writing this post; I decided I wanted to add a comma after “worth” at the beginning and did so easily with this feature.

The ideal scenario imho would be for every interaction to require pressure.

That's a great idea! With a configurable amount of pressure and haptic feedback, preferably.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#495

Post by wool_gather »

rtpg wrote: post #245
varenc wrote: post #110

Most of this article just lists semi-advanced features that people don't know about. I think that’s Apple’s intention... Having every feature and option up in your face can reduce usability and make simple tasks harder for the average user. Apple wants a product that's easy for anyone to use and that often means keeping non-essential features out of the way. I’d be more interesting in seeing feedback for Apple on how…

I get that, but I do think that saying that text size is an advanced feature is just not true. Loads and loads of people are older than 40. Loads of people just have weaker eyesight. Apple has really good accessibility tools, and it would make a _lot_ of sense for there to be a dedicated part of the onboarding for accessibility.

Text sizing is addable to the control center, as are other accessibility shortcuts. That's about as fast access as I think it's possible to get.

Worth noting that there's a fair number of apps historically that don't really support text sizing. Until iOS 11, if you were using a non-system font, you had to do the resizing manually. They made it much, much easier to buy in to Dynamic Type in iOS 11, so hopefully this will get better over the next year or two.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#496

Post by pbhjpbhj »

beatgammit wrote: post #195
inetknght wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 options one person will never use is 190 options that other people won't use. And they're not mutually exclusive. I'd rather present all of the options and let the user learn what options are there even if they never use them.

And that's fine, you have other options available to you. Apple's target demographic prefers simplicity first, convenience second, with niche features way down the line... and Apple delivers. Personally, I prefer the Android ecosystem, and honestly I'd very much prefer even more control than that. In fact, I'm really excited about the Librem 5 project, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Apple. However, many o…

I always thought Apple sold lifestyle/fashion primarily; their target demographic are those that buy in to fashion readily. They're highly concerned with looks and want to pay more to flaunt their wealth.

I've always found the Apple-way, wrt UI, to be different; more confusing for me because I'm used to a different paradigm. But, there's some lock-in effect there, if you start with Apple, you become accustomed to their way and then other "ways" seem more complicated. In practice it seems largely to be just familiarity.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#497

Post by pbhjpbhj »

simion314 wrote: post #477
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Settings having a search facility is helpful. Something like `apropos` that searches all installed apps and suggests matches seems like it would already be in the latest gen phones?

You still need to know that something exists and how it was named to be able to search for that setting.

You need to have an idea it exists, but with well designed search/indexing you shouldn't need to know the name of it. E.g. "duplicate screen" "copy what's on my display" "mirror to another device", etc., should all show "MirrorShare" (and possible other options) on Android.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#499

Post by monkeynotes »

Most people know it's controversial to say "iPhones are hard to use" because most people feel that the iPhone, perhaps more than any other technological innovation in the past 20 years, made technology easy to access, use, and integrate with their lives.

To say 'iPhones are hard to use' and then point out all the small edge cases of use as significant flaws is hyperbole in bad faith. The author is caught up in his own intellectual habit and not in touch with reality.

A better title for this article could be 'Simplifying complexity inevitably sidelines some of some user's needs'.

Re: iPhones are hard to use

#500

Post by ryacko »

radiorental wrote: post #483
int_19h wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally dismayed at the state of UX in general, and mobile UX in particular, these days. It feels like we have regressed a lot from where we were in the "golden age of the desktop". I mean, we actually had standards for things - remember CUA? And UX was designed in a way that made it so that once you learn a few basic tricks (like double click and drag and drop), they would work everywhere, and they would do so…

20 year UX veteran here. It's absolutely unheard of for UX to be the final arbiter on marketing &/or development driven features. To take your 3D touch example. I'll bet it went a little something like this; development said 'we can now detect pressure', leads (inc UX) brainstormed on ways to utilise the functionality. Then it's soley on UX to make it usable. I've never been involved in a situation where I get to dem…

Product design is inherently a push system. If it was needs-based pull, the world would be slightly different.

If everything was evaluated by cybersecurity and UX experts first, we wouldn’t have half the problems, but people aren’t interested in those sorts of issues, it is more of a matter of getting there “firstest with the mostest”.

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