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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

by 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.
- scintill76 11y ago
  This is a common refrain, but is it possible that adults have learned valid paradigms that make using the iPhone as it is today, more difficult? If you want to design for 5-year-olds and have them retain that forever, I guess it can work, but maybe it's a design failure if the people who actually buy your product have a harder time using it. To use another analogy, it's somewhat like saying "Well, people literate in a left-to-right language have no problem using it." Great, but presumably Apple was aiming for a global audience, so pointing out success stories in some subsections of that audience does not mean they succeeded overall.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    I've certainly noticed that my decades of touch-typing experience make it much more difficult for me to enter text on a buttonless touch keyboard. I'm constantly growling and swearing at the machine and deleting words and typing them over, because I can't shake the habit of watching the text as I type instead of the buttons I'm trying to push. Someone who had never learned to type properly would be unlikely to have this problem.
    - iSnow 11y ago
      Maybe embracing the system and its physical constraints instead of fighting it would help, in that case using something like swype that is both fast and completely different from typing (makes it easier to transition). At least that worked for me and I am typing without looking at the keys too.
  - jakejake 11y ago
    I think a 5 year old with no preconceived notions of a user interface is probably the best validation of whether a device is "usable." Also my 93 year old grandmother took to her iPhone almost instantaneously. As did my technically challenged parents, all of their friends and pretty much any of the hundreds of people who I have ever seen pick up an iPhone. I have actually never even heard of a single person picking up and iPhone and saying "I can't figure this out - it's unusable!" until your post. And on a tech forum no less - what are you even doing here? Perhaps you feel Apple should have designed a beautiful rotary phone?
deleted 11y ago
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by Sfi81 11y ago

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.

scintill76 11y ago
This is a common refrain, but is it possible that adults have learned valid paradigms that make using the iPhone as it is today, more difficult? If you want to design for 5-year-olds and have them retain that forever, I guess it can work, but maybe it's a design failure if the people who actually buy your product have a harder time using it. To use another analogy, it's somewhat like saying "Well, people literate in a left-to-right language have no problem using it." Great, but presumably Apple was aiming for a global audience, so pointing out success stories in some subsections of that audience does not mean they succeeded overall.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  I've certainly noticed that my decades of touch-typing experience make it much more difficult for me to enter text on a buttonless touch keyboard. I'm constantly growling and swearing at the machine and deleting words and typing them over, because I can't shake the habit of watching the text as I type instead of the buttons I'm trying to push. Someone who had never learned to type properly would be unlikely to have this problem.
  - iSnow 11y ago
    Maybe embracing the system and its physical constraints instead of fighting it would help, in that case using something like swype that is both fast and completely different from typing (makes it easier to transition). At least that worked for me and I am typing without looking at the keys too.
- jakejake 11y ago
  I think a 5 year old with no preconceived notions of a user interface is probably the best validation of whether a device is "usable." Also my 93 year old grandmother took to her iPhone almost instantaneously. As did my technically challenged parents, all of their friends and pretty much any of the hundreds of people who I have ever seen pick up an iPhone. I have actually never even heard of a single person picking up and iPhone and saying "I can't figure this out - it's unusable!" until your post. And on a tech forum no less - what are you even doing here? Perhaps you feel Apple should have designed a beautiful rotary phone?

deleted 11y ago

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