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Perfectly Cropped

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Re: Perfectly Cropped

#491

Post by scarface74 »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #335
_bxg1 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, iOS these days is wildly unintuitive, and I'm not yet thirty. It's positively littered with hidden gestures and features that you'd never discover during normal usage. Many of them are really slick once you learn about them! But discoverability is worse not only compared to previous Apple software, but even to other systems like Android. And from what I've read, iPadOS is even worse.

I switched from iOS to Android in the iPhone 4 days, and switched back last month. The new iOS UI/UX is horrible and it's extremely difficult to understand how the hell to navigate anything. Part of this is the obsession over gestures in place of buttons, the size of the screens and distance of the swipes also makes it difficult to use with one hand (I can't use my thumb to unlock the device), apps are completely uni…

The podcast app has always been bad - since iOS 4/5. Just use Overcast.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#493

Post by scarface74 »

reaperducer wrote: post #281
dpcan wrote: post #156

"But I see them impact my aging parents all the time." I've realized lately that I'm actually entering this zone. For the last 20 years I've been talking about how stuff like this is a nightmare for the "aging" community. 20 years is a long time, and now I'm falling into it. The big one for me in this new version of iOS was that: 1) I couldn't figure out how to move my cursor around. It used to be perfect. I held my…

It feels like change for the sake of change when it worked perfectly before. I fired up my old launch day iPhone a few weeks ago. The phone works great, though some of the apps no longer have services to connect to (Weather, for example). What struck me is how intuitive iOS 3 was to use. Everything seemed more (to use the parlance of our times) "discoverable." Maybe part of it was just remembering how things work, bu…

Skeuomorphism and pixel perfect design where the interface was tightly tied to the screen resolution doesn’t work when you have multiple screen sizes. Back then developers only had to worry about the 320x480 iPhone screen and the 1024x768 iPad resolution.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#494

Post by jijji »

andyburke wrote: post #428
andrewla wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To summarize this thread (HN is still the best place to get IOS tips and tricks): Three ways to move the cursor, from most reliable to least: 1. Hold down space bar and you'll enter a mode where moving your finger moves the cursor. 2. Drag it from its current location to a new location. This gets finicky, especially if you move your finger out of the text area; the cursor will move to the end of the text, but the hig…

As an android user who left iOS some years ago, this sounds absolutely awful.

Same here. I thought IOS was cool in 2007 when most people first got it, but then the constant forced-upgrades and forced-updates of the phone where it would randomly reboot the phone while sitting idle on your desk and where you would randomly lose functionality -- this was happening in 2007 -- made me really want to switch to something different. I always felt like Steve Jobs was in my pocket and I couldnt control the phone, it was controlling me.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#495

Post by partdavid »

dmix wrote: post #441
Aperocky wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot for the love of my life understand why apple put a touchbar there. If someone regularly uses them, please share your experience. My next personal laptop will definitely not be a MacBook at this rate.

I'm curious if Apple has some data that people secretly like the touchbar (I've never come across someone who uses it for anything). Beyond just being fancy-looking when you're in the Apple store comparing laptops... which I think is the whole point and makes you question the priorities of Apple's recent leader. I wouldn't even care about the Touchbar if they left the rest of the keyboard alone, but apparently the es…

I like the touchbar. I don't love it, but I like it and use it. For a Mac at least, if I were choosing between two otherwise-identical laptops, and one had the touchbar, and one didn't: I would choose the touchbar version.

I'm a longtime user of vi keys. I use them in Emacs Viper, vim in a pinch, and everything I can that uses readline. As such, I use the ESC constantly and I truly don't understand why people find it such a problem for ESC to be on the touchbar. It's just a slightly different feel but since it's a reach anyway, having a low-effort key there works for me. I don't know if I'd call it better but it's definitely fine. I've been using a touchbar Mac for all work for at least two years (I'm on my third--I don't remember when I got my first but it was around then) and it just isn't an issue for me.

On the other hand, since I use an alternate keyboard layout (Dvorak), it's quite nice to be able to put an input method switcher on the upper right of the touchbar that displays the current layout and allows me to toggle it. It was critical for years to be able to do this just to be able to practically use Yubikey hardware tokens, for example.

I also like having a screenshot button with an actual icon where I want it and to discard some of the control locations of the hardware function keys. Similarly having a lock screen button next to the fingerprint sensor is useful.

This makes the touchbar a bit better than function key buttons for me. Of course I could remap or reassign function key buttons; but for me function keys are infrequently used, so the icons and being able to create my familiar and preferred layout is a help. I use a different platform with function key buttons for a personal laptop, and while I have a button for ESC the rest of the function keys are comparatively less useful to me.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#496

Post by hnick »

I had a similar issue in SQL Server Management studio when importing a database from a backup file. The window was unnecessarily large and spacious and couldn't be properly resized, and the 'OK' button was perfectly situated just off my corporate laptop's piddling small screen.

For quite a while I had no idea what was happening, there was a verify/test type option which was passing and I thought would prompt me to continue but I didn't. Only after looking for tutorials online did I realise my buttons were missing.

I think I fixed it by trying to resize the window. It didn't actually resize, but did jumble around the UI elements just enough to get 2 pixels of the top of the button to click on.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#497

Post by mattnewton »

romwell wrote: post #483
mattnewton wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tips app is one attempt at feature discovery like this. The problem is that modern UI's can do so much that some has to be hidden so the common use cases can be easier, but users never go into the tips app or online help books to find out what was hidden. Pushing notifications spams users who don't want to look there, so we instead have our current situation /shrug ️ Source: used to work on the iOS tips app and h…

>The problem is that modern UI's can do so much that some has to be hidden so the common use cases can be easier Bollocks. The "modern UI" can't do anything that much more that Windows 95 wasn't doing already. Too bad the touchscreen became standard long after anyone cared about good UX, and so the UI paradigms are still struggling with this new kind of hardware. There is no reason ever to hide the scrollbar, which i…

I mean, I'm personally strongly against showing scrollbars almost everywhere on mobile because any kind of visual noise makes the UI harder for me to parse, the scroll position is not relevant to me usually, and there is not enough screen real estate to make it an actual usable control. I understand this is a personal preference, but I assure you I am not alone and these ideas _were_ tested and debated because there aren't obvious solutions here. You have a much much bigger pointer closer to your face than on Windows 95 (which I remember as a usability nightmare personally to me as a child, I don't know if people have rose colored glasses or it is a generational thing). On desktop I don't have any good arguments, but at least it is an option to re-enable there.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#498

Post by muddi900 »

wool_gather wrote: post #219
achow wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our designers seem more interested in coolness than usability. I think a lot of designers are big on artistry but low on understanding how to help people actually use things. This stereotyping of a profession is becoming a cliché and is being rude towards a profession who has contributed so much to make technology accessible. The example in the blog would not have been intention of the design spec, it looks like mo…

> The example in the blog would not have been intention of the design spec, it looks like more of a failure of test pass when a new device (with different form factor) got slapped with bits designed and tested for another one. Strong disagree with this point. The device from the example is an older one (iPhone 8), and this is a brand-new OS. This was not existing software that's being applied to a new screen size --…

iPhone 8's were one of the highest selling devices the year they came out, outselling the X some quarters.

There are millions of iPhone 8 and 7 devices actively being used.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#499

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

andrewla wrote: post #273
dpcan wrote: post #156

"But I see them impact my aging parents all the time." I've realized lately that I'm actually entering this zone. For the last 20 years I've been talking about how stuff like this is a nightmare for the "aging" community. 20 years is a long time, and now I'm falling into it. The big one for me in this new version of iOS was that: 1) I couldn't figure out how to move my cursor around. It used to be perfect. I held my…

To summarize this thread (HN is still the best place to get IOS tips and tricks): Three ways to move the cursor, from most reliable to least: 1. Hold down space bar and you'll enter a mode where moving your finger moves the cursor. 2. Drag it from its current location to a new location. This gets finicky, especially if you move your finger out of the text area; the cursor will move to the end of the text, but the hig…

> Double tap selects a word, and triple tap selects a paragraph.

FYI: Triple-tap is for sentences. Quadruple-tap is for paragraphs.

Text selection is the one area that the lack of 3D Touch affects me the most, and I am truly upset about it.

With last year's phone/iOS, you could 3D Touch anywhere on the keyboard and enter a cursor-move mode. This was replaced with the spacebar thing, which is fine.

But then while moving your cursor around in the old version, you could 3D Touch again to select a word, again for a sentence, and again for the paragraph. I could select text so easily! This made deleting sections or copy/pasting bits of edited text sooooo much easier.

Now it's significantly worse. I can move the cursor fine, but then to select text I have to use my fingers to tap on the text directly and it's much more difficult to be precise. (Why? Because I can't see through my fingers, surprisingly. You can see through a cursor just fine.)

Sigh. I'm really disappointed in this change specifically.

Re: Perfectly Cropped

#500

Post by sundvor »

_bxg1 wrote: post #323
dpcan wrote: post #156

"But I see them impact my aging parents all the time." I've realized lately that I'm actually entering this zone. For the last 20 years I've been talking about how stuff like this is a nightmare for the "aging" community. 20 years is a long time, and now I'm falling into it. The big one for me in this new version of iOS was that: 1) I couldn't figure out how to move my cursor around. It used to be perfect. I held my…

In fairness, iOS these days is wildly unintuitive, and I'm not yet thirty. It's positively littered with hidden gestures and features that you'd never discover during normal usage. Many of them are really slick once you learn about them! But discoverability is worse not only compared to previous Apple software, but even to other systems like Android. And from what I've read, iPadOS is even worse.

I've been using computers religiously since I got my Vic20 at 9 or 10, after working for it for a year.

Almost every time I need to change something on son's aging iPad (2012 issue, updated to latest iOS but is before cut off point for iPad OS) it seriously risks defenestration.

Parental setup including App store restrictions is the absolute worst, followed closely by the scattered application settings.

If only there was an Android tablet that was as well physical engineered. Unfortunately they don't really come close.

So his iPad is for educational apps only, and I got him the newly issued Switch for gaming. The quality of the A grade titles is astounding, well worth paying; none of the ad ridden crap that's par of the course on the iPad. And even though I'm missing some granularity, their parental controls are a textbook case of fantastic UX work by comparison.

The companion Android app lets me easily define and monitor daily limits; it just works.

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