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How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name

188 points by andyjohnson0 11y ago

andyjohnson0 11y ago
(Re-posted at the suggestion of dang.) As someone who develops on both iOS and Android, and uses an Android phone, there was a lot in this article that I agreed with. Particularly Apple's prioritisation of beauty over design. One weakness was the discussion of undo and Android's supposed strength due to its dedicated back button. This didn't convince me: the back button on Android sometimes undoes operations, but often it doesn't [1]. [1] http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2011/12/back-button-androids-achilles-heel.html http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2011/12/back-button-android...
- qyv 11y ago
  Speaking of Undo, one of google's common features across several of it's products is the use of undo instead of confirmation, I absolutely LOVE this. If I archive an email in gmail (app or browser) it doesnt't ask me if I am sure I want to do that, but it does give me the option to immediately undo that action. This little feature is so wonderful when you think about it. It allows you to complete an intended action in one step, but abort an unintended action in two steps. That is great functional design.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Apple does this too. Except they hide the undo command behind a completely insane "shake the device" gesture, and half the time it fails to retrieve the email.
    - DubiousPusher 11y ago
      And what's worse, it's easy to accidentally do and it pops up a modal dialog.
    - dpkonofa 11y ago
      This is the biggest failure of Apple's design on iOS and the article nails it perfectly. It's not just that you have to shake the device, it's that you have to shake it and answer a modal and that all apps don't treat it the same way. You could be sitting there shaking your phone for 5 minutes wondering if you're just shaking it wrong or if the app doesn't offer an undo feature and there's not really any way of knowing which is the right answer.
- ChrisClark 11y ago
  Yeah, the back button can definitely be inconsistent and has annoyed me countless times, but at least it's there. I recently got stuck in a Youtube video on an iPad because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the video list. Turns out I had to swipe down on the video page with 3 fingers or something to go back.
Sfi81 11y ago
Agree with much of the article. I personally find Apple iOS devices completely unusable because I have to constantly try to guess what kind of action or gesture will achieve what I want to do rather than being obvious. The same for several apps which appear to have become successful first on iOS before being ported to Android. I find remembering these gestures and actions an unnecessary cognitive load.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  "Completely unusable"? Don't you think that's a bit over the top? I don't know any advanced features but I can use all apps just fine. Pinch-to-zoom and a few swipe types are sufficient for most use cases. Edit: why the downvotes? I didn't say anything controversial. If you disagree, write a reply.
  - 91bananas 11y ago
    I'm right with you, the grandparent is insane. Flat out. I love reading quotes like that that are backed with, you guessed it, absolutely nothing. Pinch to zoom is a great example. It may not be your first guess but it's the type of thing that you do a couple times then look back thinking, Wow! that's a great way of representing zoom on a device capable of listening to multiple inputs at a time. And subsequently will never forget how to do it, and it becomes your first tool when you want to zoom.
  - gambiter 11y ago
    HN is so anti-Apple it's not funny. I've noticed if an argument makes Apple better, no matter how reasonable you are, you tend to get downvotes. Anyway, I agree with you. (There are two of us!) Apple's stuff is built to be easy enough for a know-nothing user to get the basics done, and depending on your skill, you gain access to more and more over time.
- jakejake 11y ago
  If you put an iPhone in any 5-year olds hand they seem to have no trouble figuring it out.
jlg23 11y ago
The article describes the issues I had with discoverability very well: As a European I always refused to pay the insane prices for apple products there. When I finally needed a mp3-player to survive daily commutes in public transport, I got an ipod touch. Without any printed documentation, I had to ask experienced apple users how to perform certain actions.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  This is why, for me, the iPod ('classic') remains one of the greatest products Apple created. They managed to get so much of it right, almost uniquely. Hardware and software working very well together. Of course, it had a very specific function, which makes the task much easier, but I just wish they could follow it up with something remotely approaching as nice an experience.
  - jcranmer 11y ago
    I've been wanting to replace my iPod Nanos for a few years now (they're 10 years old already, and the batteries are starting to go), but everything nowadays is touch-screen, and so completely unusable for me. Why? With that tactile single click-wheel, it was very easy for me to put the iPod in my pocket and not look at it for the entire flight, even when I wanted to skip the next song or replay or pause.
    - will_pseudonym 11y ago
      I know! Similarly, what I've been pining for are smart watches with several tactile buttons that can be used as input for apps. I've been waiting on programmable generic buttons for AGES. Having a display would be icing on the cake.
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      FYI there is a big market for non-touch music players if you know where to look. Over at HeadFi [1] you can find a large amount of reviews and discussion of players from iRiver, Sandisk, Sony, together with more niche brands like Fiio and HiFiMAN. [1] http://www.head-fi.org/products/category/digital-audio-flac-mp3-players http://www.head-fi.org/products/category/digital-audio-flac-...
braythwayt 11y ago
JM2C, “The plural of anecdote is not data," &c. Most of these things annoy me, but nevertheless iOS devices continue to be “good enough,” and with the exception of Surface, I have been given no incentive to go through the agony of switching. I would hazard that Apple is giving competition an opening, but it won’t be easy to overcome the kind of inertia they have. Most people fear switching costs. The easiest way to beat them is in an entirely new category, just like Surface vs. iPad Pro. Or wearables. I have the Apple Watch, and it’s a fine extension for my iPhone. And I don’t regret the purchase. But it fees like there is lots of uncertainty in how the wearables game will play out. When do I get a ring that starts my car, opens my front door, unlocks my laptop and phone, and pays for my coffee? For that matter, why the hell do I need to log into my MacBook when I’m wearing my unlocked watch?
- quadrangle 11y ago
  > The plural of anecdote https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata > When do I get a ring… https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit
pasta_2 11y ago
>One of us, Tognazzini, worked at Apple with Steve Jobs in the early days. Norman joined Apple shortly after Jobs departed and then left shortly after Jobs returned in 1996. We were not present during the shift from the days of easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products (where Apple could honestly brag that no manual was necessary), to today’s products where no manual is included, but is often necessary. We do know that before Jobs returned, Apple had a three-pronged approach to product design: user experience, engineering, and marketing, with all three taking part in the design cycle from day one to when the product shipped. >Today’s Apple has eliminated the emphasis on making products understandable and usable, and instead has imposed a Bauhaus minimalist design ethic on its products. I actually love this article because when people look back with rose tinted glasses about how things were great when Forstall was around, I can send them this article about how Apple's usability suffered when Jobs came back, an era where they claim that Apple's products was the best they ever were from a usability stand point.
molecule 11y ago
previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932
sorenjan 11y ago
I've long found it strange that the same company that didn't want a second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality in context menus now hide so much functionality behind gestures with a varying amount of fingers. This started while Jobs where still at Apple, so it can't be blamed entirely on his successors.
- mrks_ 11y ago
  This issue has been getting worse in OS X, too. I find myself continuously finding hidden functionality by holding in the option or command button while clicking or dragging. Frankly, and this may just be cynicism, I speculate that these hidden functions are a way for Apple to hold consumers hostage to their platform. If someone spends a few years learning all the idiosyncrasies of OS X and iOS, they may be too intimidated to switch to another platform, since they've invested so much time into learning Apple's OS.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Nah, the original Mac had all that too. You'd select multiple files by shift-clicking. Command-option-escape would force-quit an app. Numerous corruption & crashing issues would be fixed by holding down Command-option-P-R on startup. MacOS 8 gave us Ctrl-clicking to pop open popup menus. Option-click would often do a number of strange app-specific things. I suspect it's more that you're becoming a power user. Power users have always had a lot more functionality available at their fingertips, in exchange for investing time learning a platform really well. It's just market segmentation: you don't have room to put all the functionality that everyone might need on screen, so you put the stuff that most people need all the time on screen, get them hooked, and hide other stuff in an obscure reference manual so it can spread through tips & tricks blogs.
  - mistercow 11y ago
    I've been using Mac OS since it was System 6, and I feel like power user features have been commonly hidden behind things like "hold option" for about that long. The difference now seems to be that it's not always power user features. Example of a good feature to hide behind "hold option": removing the "..." from "Sleep...", "Shut Down...", etc. in the apple menu, meaning that selecting them won't prompt you before executing the command. Example of a bad feature to hide behind "hold option": clicking the green window button to maximize instead of going to full screen.
brandonmenc 11y ago
> Apple simultaneously made a radical move toward visual simplicity and elegance at the expense of learnability, usability, and productivity. Case in point: calendar. I simply cannot tell where one month ends and another begins in the flat UI. Sure, the skeuomorphic version looked corny, but it was a lot easier to use.
- err4nt 11y ago
  and iTunes went from a fully featured media library that focused on managing the media on your hard drive. iTunes STILL manages the media on your hard drive, but it's nearly impossible to manage the files through the stripped-down iTunes interface. iTunes used to be a power-app, now I can hardly use it.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > iTunes used to be a power-app, now I can hardly use it. This happens to a lot of software. There used to be lists of "last good version of ..." The Usenet group alt.comp.freeware sometimes used to recommend the last good version rather than the latest version. There's probably a Reddit subreddit for it. ACDSee and Nero burning rom are well known examples. I guess Imgur is at risk of this, but they seem to be keeping stuff in check.
  - atrilumen 11y ago
    Did they strip it down? I haven't opened it for the past several OS releases. It always annoyed me that they added so many conceptually different applications to an audio player.
ThomPete 11y ago
All interaction is learned nothing is purely intuitive and so their critique seems awfully nit-picky but ultimately trivial and based on an older paradigm than the one I think apple is trying to achieve. I am frankly surprised that people I normally admire would launch such a critique. The touch display did more good for usability than any interface design or metaphor did the previous 20 by simply removing the layer of abstraction between the object on the screen and the user wanting to manipulate it. No more mentally translating hand-mouse coordination with eye-screen coordination. I am not defending apple but I understand what they are trying to do which is to remove the need for metaphors by allowing you to manipulate the objects directly. I.e. the content is the metaphor for itself. Just like i don't need a metaphor for picking up a pencil i just do. Maybe they are not there yet but thats I price I think is worth paying. Apple have far bigger problems than their interaction design IMO.
- qyv 11y ago
  Gestures are the epitome of interface metaphors. Not only that, but their hidden nature can make them exceptionally difficult to learn or master.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Not sure what gestures and what metaphors you are talking about. Touch something on the screen is not a metaphor it's the closest to what you would do in real life. This is why kids and people less experienced with computers have such an easy time picking them up and start using them.
    - blub 11y ago
      Sure, touching is the easy part, but there are now quite a few gestures available: * Four finger swipes on the iPad to go to the task manager or switch between apps. * Swipe from the left to go back in a navigation controller. * Swipe from the top to activate the notification center. * Swipe from the bottom to activate the control center. * Swipe list elements right or left (but not from the edge) to delete or perform other actions. * Swipe notifications from the left to perform the default action for that notification. And then there's 3D touch.
pinaceae 11y ago
the great thing is that reality, and that is millions and millions of new users that never used a "proper" computer before and now have no problem using these new supercomputers that fit into a pocket, is proving this whole diatribe wrong. same is true for Android and iOS, the differences are minimal by now. little kids can pick up modern multi-touch devices and work and play with them at ease. that is design. not the lofty bullshit claimed in that article. but yeah, it strokes the egos of so many butthurt alphanerds, who just can't comprehend how their elite hobby is being overtaken by normal people. on iOS, and less so Android, but still, there are NO POWER USERS. everyone gets the same treatment. you can shove your l33t bash or WSH/regedit skills right where they came from.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  > on iOS, and less so Android, but still, there are NO POWER USERS. everyone gets the same treatment. This is not true. Those of us that can write programs are power users in that we can write programs using our general purpose computers that run on our devices.
revelation 11y ago
I'm guessing design is now random pictures with splashes of color added on top? Is this aiding the article, because right now it's "giving design a bad name". Some GIFs would be much more convincing.
nostrademons 11y ago
Much of this may be a reaction to the technology market maturing, with many more people being intimately familiar with how to use technology and new features spreading faster by word of mouth. When the Mac came out, you had to teach people how to use a computer through the interface. Few people had prior experience with them, and it was unlikely that they'd be able to sit down with you and explain it. Now, it is a fairly good bet that somebody you know has the product you're about to buy, and will happily tell you what you can do with it. Apple has sold more Apple Watches in the past 6 months than they did Apple IIs in its entire production run from 1977-1993. If you don't have a friend who will show off the latest features, you can easily Google for them, or read about them on any one of a number of online blogs dedicated to surfacing cool features. It's a different social environment, not just a different technical one. Design is as much about understanding the environment you operate in than it is about the product itself, and the principles change as the environment does.
- puranjay 11y ago
  I've been helping my 64 year old mom use her smartphone. She has never used any computing device before and it's eye opening watching her work. Things we take for granted are a confusing mess for her. And the author is absolutely spot on: thin fonts and low contrast are a terrible choice as far as user experience goes. My mom can't read her screen without her glasses and holding her phone close.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    In accessibility, you can set the size of the font thruout the entire OS. On iOS that is. But then, if your mom was using iOS I don't thin you would have a problem with contrast (I can't think of a single situation Apple's presented me with that was low contrast in the past 20 years.)
    - microcolonel 11y ago
      Good old red text on aero glass, the pinnacle of legibility.
    - 11y ago
abecedarius 11y ago
So, on discoverability in gestural interfaces: what are some good sources? I'm working on a touch interface right now and I'd love to learn how to make it better.
peter303 11y ago
An ironic piece where I had to wade through a preview ad and three poorly placed overlay ads to even this article.
mikepalmer 11y ago
"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist." OMG have you guys tried to navigate the Apple Music iOS app?? You wouldn't think they could make it harder to use than iTunes... but they did! Almost impossible to find features, and when you finally do figure something out, it's hard to remember by the next time you run the app. The bloated number of swipe gestures on iOS is ridiculous too... I am always cursing after swiping in some direction by mistake. (I am generally a big apple fan...)
- robbyking 11y ago
  > I am always cursing after swiping in some direction by mistake. Spotify is the same way. If you swipe the wrong way when trying to queue a song it removes the song from your library without the (shake) option to undo. It's infuriating.
  - hussong 11y ago
    Also, the app gets slower and slower with every update, having become mostly useless on older hardware, to the point where it reminds me of my grandma's radio, where you had to warm up the tubes for a minute before you could listen to music...
- deleted 11y ago
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- gnicholas 11y ago
  I agree that Apple's fonts are too thin and low-contrast, but it's pretty ironic for this to be called out by a publication whose standards are no better (and probably a tad worse). Talk about the pot calling the kettle gray!
  - 11y ago
binaryapparatus 11y ago
As a side effect, result from all the tiny 'improvements' since Snow Leopard, I have moved everything from stock apps and services. Ecosystem is simply not something I would rely on. Mutt/offlineimap for mail. Baïkal (on my own server) for contacts and calendar. My photos are outside of Photos. My music is outside of iTunes. As a final result of the process, my iCloud account has all the checkboxes unchecked. I would not strive to be OS agnostic if Apple didn't bend over backwards to tie me in into their services. So yeah I agree with other comments, half of the hidden gestures are there to tie us in. Bad move.
- jp_storvick 11y ago
  Why do think anyone gives a shit what programs you use? > As a final result of the process, my iCloud account has all the checkboxes unchecked. Flippin' fascinating. Why are you telling anyone this?
makecheck 11y ago
Positioning of buttons on iOS is a big problem. For instance, when on a phone call and you show the numeric keypad, there is no sane reason to make the "Hide" function a microscopic text label that is a finger-width away from the HANG-UP action. Functionally, these actions should be on opposite sides of the display from each other. I don't even think they placed it there for aesthetic reasons, since the Hide "button" just looks like an ugly hack. Then there's positioning of keyboard keys. If I had a nickel for every time I deleted a character while trying to finish a word with "m", or every time I accidentally committed an action with incomplete text because of that stupid blue key! Instead of moving dangerous actions to the opposite end of the screen where they belong, too much effort was spent trying to emulate the precise layout of a real keyboard. I don't think users would complain at all if the "action" key was instead in the top-right corner, and if "backspace" was in the top-left corner. The scrolling calendar widget is also a nasty example of poor positioning. Long after it was "improved" in iOS 7, I still can't create a single calendar event without doing the accidental-screw-up-date-instead-of-scroll action, usually with "helpful" automatic "corrections" for my change such as synchronizing the From and To times to both reflect my accidental date-change. Or if I'm really lucky, I don't even notice that I changed the time. They need to step back and realize that design is how it works. Their interfaces are incredibly error-prone right now.
MCRed 11y ago
It's sad to see Norman and Tognazinni-- men whose books I've read-- giving themselves a bad name. The bashing Apple bandwagon has been going on for 35 years now, and while being able to put up a headline like that guarantees publication, the quality of the articles below them has not improved. Clearly this is an article written by guys who have not been regularly using other products to see the competition- the lack of design principles in a windows or linux gui, the frustration that is android (and alas, Windows Phone). Ironically, when they get to specifics they refer in vague terms to things like "discoverability", but don't actually get to specifics about how apple products are not discoverable. I recently bought an Apple watch. I have not read one thing about how to use it, not online or in the manual. I just put it on and I'm discovering things. There is some challenge because this limited form factor means there are only a few ui points and two buttons... but I'm discovering. I didn't even watch the videos helpfully included in the Apple Watch App on my phone (Which were suggested to me when I setup the watch, which also I did without having to do any research.) > "Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read" This is straight up BS. And a low blow. An embarrassing blow for them to make. I have lower than normal vision. I have trouble seeing. I have no trouble reading my watch- which has probably the smallest text I experience (I have text size set larger on my phone and on my computer.) Further, they made a new font that is readable at all sizes AND an OS that lets you dynamically change the size of the fonts in your settings and have it work across applications. Nobody else can do that, let alone has done it. (And no, android does not do this. What you're thinking of is something else.) Basically, the only thing I can get out of this article is insecurity by norman and tognazzini... maybe the neilson norman group isn't doing so well. But they might as well be telling kids to get off their lawn. I expect this from people without credibility, like that douche from Novell who became Googles' CEO. Not from you guys.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  Maybe it's just that I never got on the iphone bandwagon, but I've never found anything about the Android UI confusing or frustrating, other than the inherent frustration that comes with the limitations of a tiny touchscreen-based interface. What exactly do you have in mind?
pvg 11y ago
It's odd that these titans of design gloss over one UI tenet - direct manipulation. This seems to somehow make up for a great deal inconsistency and violations of the design principles they pioneered. Nobody said 'my four year old and/or my mother-in-law just took to the Mac' as often as they say it about an iPad.
stretchwithme 11y ago
Are features less discoverable? Or has how you discover features changed from discovering through menus to discovering through swiping and tapping? I'm going to be using a feature in much the same way I discover it. Menus are harder to read and use on a small device. This is not a desktop.
bhanu423 11y ago
I have tried to use a Mac on several occasions but I see so much to adapt to. The apps still crash, some applications still feel slow, gestures/click pattern using 1-2-3-4 fingers, window system is not really obvious. It can obviously be learned but I find linux to be more much obvious and user friendly than Mac specially GNOME which is my current favorite. In any case windows has come a long way from windows xp to windows 10 to complicate things and hide features in crappy manner and still busy fixing things that are not broken.
- unfamiliar 11y ago
  I can't speak for Windows, but Linux is miles behind OS X in terms of usability in my opinion. The trackpad gestures are fantastic and very intuitive for me to the point where I hate using a crippled trackpad on linux. I can see the appeal of Gnome, which is very simple and intuitive to use. But modern gnome is adopting more and more features of the OS X window management system, like ctrl-tab switching applications rather than windows, the addition of indicator applets, the windows-and-dock overview screen (whatever they call it). From all the complaints I hear I don't think there's anything particularly difficult about OS X file management and window management other than "its different from what I'm used to."
  - bhanu423 11y ago
    Hmm I guess you are right on when you say "its different from what I'm used to" . Also I am more of a keyboard guy so I have limited trackpad usage, keeping it limited to just scroll and click works for me. Anyways the default way to switch applications is Super + Tab, in mac super key is command key whereas in windows laptops its the windows key.
yuhong 11y ago
I thought Firefox was facing a similar problem for a while now, with the merging of the back and forward buttons for example. I wonder who is responsible.
eprom 11y ago
"Unfortunately, visually simple appearance does not result in ease of use, as the vast literature in academic journals on human-computer interaction and human factors demonstrates." This lines up with my own anecdotal experience, but isn't something I've read about. Can anyone suggest further reading on this research?
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended. I think this is the best summation I've seen of the value of a well-designed GUI interface as opposed to the most common implementations of the command line. Obviously not everything can be plausibly translated to CLI, but I wish there was more effort to combine the power of CLIs with, especially, the discoverability and feedback of GUIs.
deleted 11y ago
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userbinator 11y ago
This reminds me of the article about Apple's internal iPhone UI, and how I thought it actually looked better than the release version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414149 A heavy, very readable font, along with buttons that actually look like buttons.
oldboyFX 11y ago
Good. I always felt weird for not knowing any of the advanced gestures. I also didn't know that shaking == undo. I've been using iPhones since 2009.
bsg75 11y ago
What Apple has been focusing on in later releases is not design, but fashion - form without function.
chrisra 11y ago
I'm surprised at how many people are agreeing with this article. I need a new phone soon, and all of my family members have iPhones, which is nice for group chat (maybe photo sharing too). I worry about getting an iPhone because I feel like Apple is going nowhere these days. If your biggest innovation is "make it bigger", "make it smaller" (macbook air, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch), we've got some things to work on. I felt like everyone struggled with Yosemite, too.

188 points by andyjohnson0 11y ago

(Re-posted at the suggestion of dang.) As someone who develops on both iOS and Android, and uses an Android phone, there was a lot in this article that I agreed with. Particularly Apple's prioritisation of beauty over design. One weakness was the discussion of undo and Android's supposed strength due to its dedicated back button. This didn't convince me: the back button on Android sometimes undoes operations, but often it doesn't [1]. [1] http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2011/12/back-button-androids-achilles-heel.html http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2011/12/back-button-android...

qyv 11y ago
Speaking of Undo, one of google's common features across several of it's products is the use of undo instead of confirmation, I absolutely LOVE this. If I archive an email in gmail (app or browser) it doesnt't ask me if I am sure I want to do that, but it does give me the option to immediately undo that action. This little feature is so wonderful when you think about it. It allows you to complete an intended action in one step, but abort an unintended action in two steps. That is great functional design.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Apple does this too. Except they hide the undo command behind a completely insane "shake the device" gesture, and half the time it fails to retrieve the email.
  - DubiousPusher 11y ago
    And what's worse, it's easy to accidentally do and it pops up a modal dialog.
  - dpkonofa 11y ago
    This is the biggest failure of Apple's design on iOS and the article nails it perfectly. It's not just that you have to shake the device, it's that you have to shake it and answer a modal and that all apps don't treat it the same way. You could be sitting there shaking your phone for 5 minutes wondering if you're just shaking it wrong or if the app doesn't offer an undo feature and there's not really any way of knowing which is the right answer.
ChrisClark 11y ago
Yeah, the back button can definitely be inconsistent and has annoyed me countless times, but at least it's there. I recently got stuck in a Youtube video on an iPad because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the video list. Turns out I had to swipe down on the video page with 3 fingers or something to go back.

Sfi81 11y ago

Agree with much of the article. I personally find Apple iOS devices completely unusable because I have to constantly try to guess what kind of action or gesture will achieve what I want to do rather than being obvious. The same for several apps which appear to have become successful first on iOS before being ported to Android. I find remembering these gestures and actions an unnecessary cognitive load.

enraged_camel 11y ago
"Completely unusable"? Don't you think that's a bit over the top? I don't know any advanced features but I can use all apps just fine. Pinch-to-zoom and a few swipe types are sufficient for most use cases. Edit: why the downvotes? I didn't say anything controversial. If you disagree, write a reply.
- 91bananas 11y ago
  I'm right with you, the grandparent is insane. Flat out. I love reading quotes like that that are backed with, you guessed it, absolutely nothing. Pinch to zoom is a great example. It may not be your first guess but it's the type of thing that you do a couple times then look back thinking, Wow! that's a great way of representing zoom on a device capable of listening to multiple inputs at a time. And subsequently will never forget how to do it, and it becomes your first tool when you want to zoom.
- gambiter 11y ago
  HN is so anti-Apple it's not funny. I've noticed if an argument makes Apple better, no matter how reasonable you are, you tend to get downvotes. Anyway, I agree with you. (There are two of us!) Apple's stuff is built to be easy enough for a know-nothing user to get the basics done, and depending on your skill, you gain access to more and more over time.
jakejake 11y ago
If you put an iPhone in any 5-year olds hand they seem to have no trouble figuring it out.

jlg23 11y ago

The article describes the issues I had with discoverability very well: As a European I always refused to pay the insane prices for apple products there. When I finally needed a mp3-player to survive daily commutes in public transport, I got an ipod touch. Without any printed documentation, I had to ask experienced apple users how to perform certain actions.

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
This is why, for me, the iPod ('classic') remains one of the greatest products Apple created. They managed to get so much of it right, almost uniquely. Hardware and software working very well together. Of course, it had a very specific function, which makes the task much easier, but I just wish they could follow it up with something remotely approaching as nice an experience.
- jcranmer 11y ago
  I've been wanting to replace my iPod Nanos for a few years now (they're 10 years old already, and the batteries are starting to go), but everything nowadays is touch-screen, and so completely unusable for me. Why? With that tactile single click-wheel, it was very easy for me to put the iPod in my pocket and not look at it for the entire flight, even when I wanted to skip the next song or replay or pause.
  - will_pseudonym 11y ago
    I know! Similarly, what I've been pining for are smart watches with several tactile buttons that can be used as input for apps. I've been waiting on programmable generic buttons for AGES. Having a display would be icing on the cake.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    FYI there is a big market for non-touch music players if you know where to look. Over at HeadFi [1] you can find a large amount of reviews and discussion of players from iRiver, Sandisk, Sony, together with more niche brands like Fiio and HiFiMAN. [1] http://www.head-fi.org/products/category/digital-audio-flac-mp3-players http://www.head-fi.org/products/category/digital-audio-flac-...

braythwayt 11y ago

JM2C, “The plural of anecdote is not data," &c. Most of these things annoy me, but nevertheless iOS devices continue to be “good enough,” and with the exception of Surface, I have been given no incentive to go through the agony of switching. I would hazard that Apple is giving competition an opening, but it won’t be easy to overcome the kind of inertia they have. Most people fear switching costs. The easiest way to beat them is in an entirely new category, just like Surface vs. iPad Pro. Or wearables. I have the Apple Watch, and it’s a fine extension for my iPhone. And I don’t regret the purchase. But it fees like there is lots of uncertainty in how the wearables game will play out. When do I get a ring that starts my car, opens my front door, unlocks my laptop and phone, and pays for my coffee? For that matter, why the hell do I need to log into my MacBook when I’m wearing my unlocked watch?

quadrangle 11y ago
> The plural of anecdote https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata > When do I get a ring… https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit

pasta_2 11y ago

>One of us, Tognazzini, worked at Apple with Steve Jobs in the early days. Norman joined Apple shortly after Jobs departed and then left shortly after Jobs returned in 1996. We were not present during the shift from the days of easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products (where Apple could honestly brag that no manual was necessary), to today’s products where no manual is included, but is often necessary. We do know that before Jobs returned, Apple had a three-pronged approach to product design: user experience, engineering, and marketing, with all three taking part in the design cycle from day one to when the product shipped. >Today’s Apple has eliminated the emphasis on making products understandable and usable, and instead has imposed a Bauhaus minimalist design ethic on its products. I actually love this article because when people look back with rose tinted glasses about how things were great when Forstall was around, I can send them this article about how Apple's usability suffered when Jobs came back, an era where they claim that Apple's products was the best they ever were from a usability stand point.

molecule 11y ago

previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932

sorenjan 11y ago

I've long found it strange that the same company that didn't want a second mouse button because they didn't want to hide functionality in context menus now hide so much functionality behind gestures with a varying amount of fingers. This started while Jobs where still at Apple, so it can't be blamed entirely on his successors.

mrks_ 11y ago
This issue has been getting worse in OS X, too. I find myself continuously finding hidden functionality by holding in the option or command button while clicking or dragging. Frankly, and this may just be cynicism, I speculate that these hidden functions are a way for Apple to hold consumers hostage to their platform. If someone spends a few years learning all the idiosyncrasies of OS X and iOS, they may be too intimidated to switch to another platform, since they've invested so much time into learning Apple's OS.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Nah, the original Mac had all that too. You'd select multiple files by shift-clicking. Command-option-escape would force-quit an app. Numerous corruption & crashing issues would be fixed by holding down Command-option-P-R on startup. MacOS 8 gave us Ctrl-clicking to pop open popup menus. Option-click would often do a number of strange app-specific things. I suspect it's more that you're becoming a power user. Power users have always had a lot more functionality available at their fingertips, in exchange for investing time learning a platform really well. It's just market segmentation: you don't have room to put all the functionality that everyone might need on screen, so you put the stuff that most people need all the time on screen, get them hooked, and hide other stuff in an obscure reference manual so it can spread through tips & tricks blogs.
- mistercow 11y ago
  I've been using Mac OS since it was System 6, and I feel like power user features have been commonly hidden behind things like "hold option" for about that long. The difference now seems to be that it's not always power user features. Example of a good feature to hide behind "hold option": removing the "..." from "Sleep...", "Shut Down...", etc. in the apple menu, meaning that selecting them won't prompt you before executing the command. Example of a bad feature to hide behind "hold option": clicking the green window button to maximize instead of going to full screen.

brandonmenc 11y ago

> Apple simultaneously made a radical move toward visual simplicity and elegance at the expense of learnability, usability, and productivity. Case in point: calendar. I simply cannot tell where one month ends and another begins in the flat UI. Sure, the skeuomorphic version looked corny, but it was a lot easier to use.

err4nt 11y ago
and iTunes went from a fully featured media library that focused on managing the media on your hard drive. iTunes STILL manages the media on your hard drive, but it's nearly impossible to manage the files through the stripped-down iTunes interface. iTunes used to be a power-app, now I can hardly use it.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > iTunes used to be a power-app, now I can hardly use it. This happens to a lot of software. There used to be lists of "last good version of ..." The Usenet group alt.comp.freeware sometimes used to recommend the last good version rather than the latest version. There's probably a Reddit subreddit for it. ACDSee and Nero burning rom are well known examples. I guess Imgur is at risk of this, but they seem to be keeping stuff in check.
- atrilumen 11y ago
  Did they strip it down? I haven't opened it for the past several OS releases. It always annoyed me that they added so many conceptually different applications to an audio player.

ThomPete 11y ago

All interaction is learned nothing is purely intuitive and so their critique seems awfully nit-picky but ultimately trivial and based on an older paradigm than the one I think apple is trying to achieve. I am frankly surprised that people I normally admire would launch such a critique. The touch display did more good for usability than any interface design or metaphor did the previous 20 by simply removing the layer of abstraction between the object on the screen and the user wanting to manipulate it. No more mentally translating hand-mouse coordination with eye-screen coordination. I am not defending apple but I understand what they are trying to do which is to remove the need for metaphors by allowing you to manipulate the objects directly. I.e. the content is the metaphor for itself. Just like i don't need a metaphor for picking up a pencil i just do. Maybe they are not there yet but thats I price I think is worth paying. Apple have far bigger problems than their interaction design IMO.

qyv 11y ago
Gestures are the epitome of interface metaphors. Not only that, but their hidden nature can make them exceptionally difficult to learn or master.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Not sure what gestures and what metaphors you are talking about. Touch something on the screen is not a metaphor it's the closest to what you would do in real life. This is why kids and people less experienced with computers have such an easy time picking them up and start using them.
  - blub 11y ago
    Sure, touching is the easy part, but there are now quite a few gestures available: * Four finger swipes on the iPad to go to the task manager or switch between apps. * Swipe from the left to go back in a navigation controller. * Swipe from the top to activate the notification center. * Swipe from the bottom to activate the control center. * Swipe list elements right or left (but not from the edge) to delete or perform other actions. * Swipe notifications from the left to perform the default action for that notification. And then there's 3D touch.

pinaceae 11y ago

the great thing is that reality, and that is millions and millions of new users that never used a "proper" computer before and now have no problem using these new supercomputers that fit into a pocket, is proving this whole diatribe wrong. same is true for Android and iOS, the differences are minimal by now. little kids can pick up modern multi-touch devices and work and play with them at ease. that is design. not the lofty bullshit claimed in that article. but yeah, it strokes the egos of so many butthurt alphanerds, who just can't comprehend how their elite hobby is being overtaken by normal people. on iOS, and less so Android, but still, there are NO POWER USERS. everyone gets the same treatment. you can shove your l33t bash or WSH/regedit skills right where they came from.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
> on iOS, and less so Android, but still, there are NO POWER USERS. everyone gets the same treatment. This is not true. Those of us that can write programs are power users in that we can write programs using our general purpose computers that run on our devices.

revelation 11y ago

I'm guessing design is now random pictures with splashes of color added on top? Is this aiding the article, because right now it's "giving design a bad name". Some GIFs would be much more convincing.

nostrademons 11y ago

Much of this may be a reaction to the technology market maturing, with many more people being intimately familiar with how to use technology and new features spreading faster by word of mouth. When the Mac came out, you had to teach people how to use a computer through the interface. Few people had prior experience with them, and it was unlikely that they'd be able to sit down with you and explain it. Now, it is a fairly good bet that somebody you know has the product you're about to buy, and will happily tell you what you can do with it. Apple has sold more Apple Watches in the past 6 months than they did Apple IIs in its entire production run from 1977-1993. If you don't have a friend who will show off the latest features, you can easily Google for them, or read about them on any one of a number of online blogs dedicated to surfacing cool features. It's a different social environment, not just a different technical one. Design is as much about understanding the environment you operate in than it is about the product itself, and the principles change as the environment does.

puranjay 11y ago
I've been helping my 64 year old mom use her smartphone. She has never used any computing device before and it's eye opening watching her work. Things we take for granted are a confusing mess for her. And the author is absolutely spot on: thin fonts and low contrast are a terrible choice as far as user experience goes. My mom can't read her screen without her glasses and holding her phone close.
- MCRed 11y ago
  In accessibility, you can set the size of the font thruout the entire OS. On iOS that is. But then, if your mom was using iOS I don't thin you would have a problem with contrast (I can't think of a single situation Apple's presented me with that was low contrast in the past 20 years.)
  - microcolonel 11y ago
    Good old red text on aero glass, the pinnacle of legibility.
  - 11y ago

abecedarius 11y ago

So, on discoverability in gestural interfaces: what are some good sources? I'm working on a touch interface right now and I'd love to learn how to make it better.

peter303 11y ago

An ironic piece where I had to wade through a preview ad and three poorly placed overlay ads to even this article.

mikepalmer 11y ago

"Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist." OMG have you guys tried to navigate the Apple Music iOS app?? You wouldn't think they could make it harder to use than iTunes... but they did! Almost impossible to find features, and when you finally do figure something out, it's hard to remember by the next time you run the app. The bloated number of swipe gestures on iOS is ridiculous too... I am always cursing after swiping in some direction by mistake. (I am generally a big apple fan...)

robbyking 11y ago
> I am always cursing after swiping in some direction by mistake. Spotify is the same way. If you swipe the wrong way when trying to queue a song it removes the song from your library without the (shake) option to undo. It's infuriating.
- hussong 11y ago
  Also, the app gets slower and slower with every update, having become mostly useless on older hardware, to the point where it reminds me of my grandma's radio, where you had to warm up the tubes for a minute before you could listen to music...
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gnicholas 11y ago
I agree that Apple's fonts are too thin and low-contrast, but it's pretty ironic for this to be called out by a publication whose standards are no better (and probably a tad worse). Talk about the pot calling the kettle gray!
- 11y ago

binaryapparatus 11y ago

As a side effect, result from all the tiny 'improvements' since Snow Leopard, I have moved everything from stock apps and services. Ecosystem is simply not something I would rely on. Mutt/offlineimap for mail. Baïkal (on my own server) for contacts and calendar. My photos are outside of Photos. My music is outside of iTunes. As a final result of the process, my iCloud account has all the checkboxes unchecked. I would not strive to be OS agnostic if Apple didn't bend over backwards to tie me in into their services. So yeah I agree with other comments, half of the hidden gestures are there to tie us in. Bad move.

jp_storvick 11y ago
Why do think anyone gives a shit what programs you use? > As a final result of the process, my iCloud account has all the checkboxes unchecked. Flippin' fascinating. Why are you telling anyone this?

makecheck 11y ago

Positioning of buttons on iOS is a big problem. For instance, when on a phone call and you show the numeric keypad, there is no sane reason to make the "Hide" function a microscopic text label that is a finger-width away from the HANG-UP action. Functionally, these actions should be on opposite sides of the display from each other. I don't even think they placed it there for aesthetic reasons, since the Hide "button" just looks like an ugly hack. Then there's positioning of keyboard keys. If I had a nickel for every time I deleted a character while trying to finish a word with "m", or every time I accidentally committed an action with incomplete text because of that stupid blue key! Instead of moving dangerous actions to the opposite end of the screen where they belong, too much effort was spent trying to emulate the precise layout of a real keyboard. I don't think users would complain at all if the "action" key was instead in the top-right corner, and if "backspace" was in the top-left corner. The scrolling calendar widget is also a nasty example of poor positioning. Long after it was "improved" in iOS 7, I still can't create a single calendar event without doing the accidental-screw-up-date-instead-of-scroll action, usually with "helpful" automatic "corrections" for my change such as synchronizing the From and To times to both reflect my accidental date-change. Or if I'm really lucky, I don't even notice that I changed the time. They need to step back and realize that design is how it works. Their interfaces are incredibly error-prone right now.

MCRed 11y ago

It's sad to see Norman and Tognazinni-- men whose books I've read-- giving themselves a bad name. The bashing Apple bandwagon has been going on for 35 years now, and while being able to put up a headline like that guarantees publication, the quality of the articles below them has not improved. Clearly this is an article written by guys who have not been regularly using other products to see the competition- the lack of design principles in a windows or linux gui, the frustration that is android (and alas, Windows Phone). Ironically, when they get to specifics they refer in vague terms to things like "discoverability", but don't actually get to specifics about how apple products are not discoverable. I recently bought an Apple watch. I have not read one thing about how to use it, not online or in the manual. I just put it on and I'm discovering things. There is some challenge because this limited form factor means there are only a few ui points and two buttons... but I'm discovering. I didn't even watch the videos helpfully included in the Apple Watch App on my phone (Which were suggested to me when I setup the watch, which also I did without having to do any research.) > "Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read" This is straight up BS. And a low blow. An embarrassing blow for them to make. I have lower than normal vision. I have trouble seeing. I have no trouble reading my watch- which has probably the smallest text I experience (I have text size set larger on my phone and on my computer.) Further, they made a new font that is readable at all sizes AND an OS that lets you dynamically change the size of the fonts in your settings and have it work across applications. Nobody else can do that, let alone has done it. (And no, android does not do this. What you're thinking of is something else.) Basically, the only thing I can get out of this article is insecurity by norman and tognazzini... maybe the neilson norman group isn't doing so well. But they might as well be telling kids to get off their lawn. I expect this from people without credibility, like that douche from Novell who became Googles' CEO. Not from you guys.

marssaxman 11y ago
Maybe it's just that I never got on the iphone bandwagon, but I've never found anything about the Android UI confusing or frustrating, other than the inherent frustration that comes with the limitations of a tiny touchscreen-based interface. What exactly do you have in mind?

pvg 11y ago

It's odd that these titans of design gloss over one UI tenet - direct manipulation. This seems to somehow make up for a great deal inconsistency and violations of the design principles they pioneered. Nobody said 'my four year old and/or my mother-in-law just took to the Mac' as often as they say it about an iPad.

stretchwithme 11y ago

Are features less discoverable? Or has how you discover features changed from discovering through menus to discovering through swiping and tapping? I'm going to be using a feature in much the same way I discover it. Menus are harder to read and use on a small device. This is not a desktop.

bhanu423 11y ago

I have tried to use a Mac on several occasions but I see so much to adapt to. The apps still crash, some applications still feel slow, gestures/click pattern using 1-2-3-4 fingers, window system is not really obvious. It can obviously be learned but I find linux to be more much obvious and user friendly than Mac specially GNOME which is my current favorite. In any case windows has come a long way from windows xp to windows 10 to complicate things and hide features in crappy manner and still busy fixing things that are not broken.

unfamiliar 11y ago
I can't speak for Windows, but Linux is miles behind OS X in terms of usability in my opinion. The trackpad gestures are fantastic and very intuitive for me to the point where I hate using a crippled trackpad on linux. I can see the appeal of Gnome, which is very simple and intuitive to use. But modern gnome is adopting more and more features of the OS X window management system, like ctrl-tab switching applications rather than windows, the addition of indicator applets, the windows-and-dock overview screen (whatever they call it). From all the complaints I hear I don't think there's anything particularly difficult about OS X file management and window management other than "its different from what I'm used to."
- bhanu423 11y ago
  Hmm I guess you are right on when you say "its different from what I'm used to" . Also I am more of a keyboard guy so I have limited trackpad usage, keeping it limited to just scroll and click works for me. Anyways the default way to switch applications is Super + Tab, in mac super key is command key whereas in windows laptops its the windows key.

yuhong 11y ago

I thought Firefox was facing a similar problem for a while now, with the merging of the back and forward buttons for example. I wonder who is responsible.

eprom 11y ago

"Unfortunately, visually simple appearance does not result in ease of use, as the vast literature in academic journals on human-computer interaction and human factors demonstrates." This lines up with my own anecdotal experience, but isn't something I've read about. Can anyone suggest further reading on this research?

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended. I think this is the best summation I've seen of the value of a well-designed GUI interface as opposed to the most common implementations of the command line. Obviously not everything can be plausibly translated to CLI, but I wish there was more effort to combine the power of CLIs with, especially, the discoverability and feedback of GUIs.

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userbinator 11y ago

This reminds me of the article about Apple's internal iPhone UI, and how I thought it actually looked better than the release version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414149 A heavy, very readable font, along with buttons that actually look like buttons.

oldboyFX 11y ago

Good. I always felt weird for not knowing any of the advanced gestures. I also didn't know that shaking == undo. I've been using iPhones since 2009.

bsg75 11y ago

What Apple has been focusing on in later releases is not design, but fashion - form without function.

chrisra 11y ago

I'm surprised at how many people are agreeing with this article. I need a new phone soon, and all of my family members have iPhones, which is nice for group chat (maybe photo sharing too). I worry about getting an iPhone because I feel like Apple is going nowhere these days. If your biggest innovation is "make it bigger", "make it smaller" (macbook air, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch), we've got some things to work on. I felt like everyone struggled with Yosemite, too.