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You mean the process to get to the subscription management page isn't intuitive? I'd actually be shocked if more than 3 people out of the 1 billion that have bo

You mean the process to get to the subscription management page isn't intuitive? I'd actually be shocked if more than 3 people out of the 1 billion that have bought iOS devices have ever figured this out without Googling or being shown. "Tap View Apple ID", seriously? 1. On the Home screen, tap Settings. 2. Tap iTunes & App Store. 3. Tap your Apple ID at the top of the screen. 4. Tap View Apple ID. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202039 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202039

LoSboccacc 10y ago
depends on what will be on the person bank statement, if it's your company or apple. they will call you to cancel, not apple, if the statements say the charge is for your service apple isn't new to this kind of outsourcing
dandare 10y ago
I keep watching in disbelief (from distance) how Apple more and more sucks at user experience. The next thing I know Microsoft will be releasing software that just works, lol.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  They've been doing that for decades. As has Apple. Both have also been shipping crap software for decades. They're huge companies.
- pavlov 10y ago
  The other day I tried to figure out how to change the 2nd city shown on the Apple Watch's default watchface. (There's a "world clock" feature that displays the time in another city in the corner of the watch screen.) Turns out that the process to do this involves first configuring the city in an app within the iPhone, and then on the watch doing a series of UI actions: a force-touch, a swipe, a tap and turning the "digital crown" to find the right city within a UI element that is a list although it doesn't look like one. Several of these actions are entirely undiscoverable (the force-touch and digital crown in these contexts are just actions you have to stumble on by trying all the possible combinations, I guess). I don't think there would have been any way to figure this out without googling it. And this is a feature that's prominently displayed in the default view of the Apple Watch screen, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that users will want to change the city. It's hard to believe that this device was designed by the company famous for the one-button mouse. I do find the physical design attractive though.
  - dhimes 10y ago
    Actually, that's exactly the kind of shit you have to do when you only have one button. I was using my cousin's apple mouse one day and discovered context menus are found by touching or rubbing it on the front somehow (don't exactly remember a couple years later). Simple is great, but not when you try to make simple do complex.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      Apple has forgotten the "... but no simpler" part of Einstein's dictum.
  - JBiserkov 10y ago
    relevant Dilbert http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-12 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-12
    - Drdrdrq 10y ago
      Not sure why you are being downvoted, it's straight to the point. Not a fan of Dilbert myself, but still...
- aah3o45okf 10y ago
  Recent OS upgrade experiences show that this is happening. Windows 10: will upgrade your computer while you are sleeping without consent OSX El Capitan: free upgrade requires you to create an account and type in your credit card number
  - givinguflac 10y ago
    El Capitan definitely doesn't require you to create an account OR enter a credit card number, I've done it on plenty of machines. Obviously you have to create an account if you want to use iCloud, but you can simply choose not to.
    - aah3o45okf 10y ago
      I believe you, but the OS told me to upgrade to El Capitan using the App Store and the App Store told me I had to log in to iCloud and iCloud told me I had to give it a credit card. I believe you that there is a way around it, but there is also a way around getting upgraded to Windows 10. If the OS doesn't tell the average user about it, it's not part of the UX.
      - hyperknot 10y ago
        You can select "no credit card" or similar when creating an Apple account. It's hidden behind a button but definitely possible.
  - cgriswald 10y ago
    Windows 10 will upgrade your computer at any time of the day without your consent. A med school student friend of mine has to take tests on her computer. 15 minutes before the test, Windows 10 was updating and rebooting. Found out, unless you have the pro version, you can't even tell Windows not to do that. You can only set a period of time where Windows will do it (like 2 am) so it doesn't do it at more inconvenient times. OS X upgrades are worse, in my opinion. For any given version, Apple just nags me to install it. But if I go from major version to major version, suddenly selling my MBP gets complicated, because I can only install the version that it came with after I wipe it. It's up to the person who buys it from me to log in to Apple and update the OS to a more recent version. Then there's iOS which nags you constantly to install updates that have been known to brick some devices...
- nmalaguti 10y ago
  Apple historically got a lot of praise for having a great user experience that was intuitive. Apple also historically had a small fraction as many users as Microsoft and had Steve Jobs, who didn't seem to care if existing users were bothered and instead wanted the experience to always be perfect. Once you reach a certain number of users, any menu or UI change becomes increasingly painful for your current users, at the expense of new users and, sometimes, what feels like common sense.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    The key binding change for New Folder from Command-N to Command-Shift-N still gets me. I think it's been a decade since they did that.
    - azdavis 10y ago
      You can customize keyboard shortcuts with System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts. However, this may only serve to compound the problem.
      - tedmiston 10y ago
        Yeah, of course. But it's something like using a Dvorak keyboard layout -- every time you use another computer or help someone else you hit friction. Customizing system level key binding is something I've intentionally avoided.
  - xg15 10y ago
    There are "we can't please everyone" decisions, there are plain mistakes and there are UI decisions that benefit no one except possibly the company - i.e. dark patterns. I personally don't see what benefit putting the subscription management behind an unrelated UI widget that doesn't even appear to be clickable could possibly bring to an end-user. Or how such a design got through usability testing in the first place. Hence the likelihood for a dark pattern seems pretty high to me here.
- wineisfine 10y ago
  Yup, seems like they stopped caring under Cook. On iOS the shift button indication still sucks after all these years. Still, if Apple's barometer has become "just to be less sucky" then Google and MS, they're still doing awesome.
Osmium 10y ago
> "Tap View Apple ID", seriously? This has always seemed like a horrible user-hostile dark-pattern on Apple's part. When you subscribe, Apple says to go to Settings to unsubscribe or turn off auto-renew, but it's very opaque. It's also hidden behind a username/password prompt. It would be much better if there were a Subscriptions option directly under 'iTunes & App Store' – even if there were still a password prompt behind this, at least people would know how to find it. But Apple have long, long needed to modernise their entire iTunes Store experience, of which subscriptions are just one small problem. Does anyone know if it's still running on WebObjects? The whole experience has always felt slow and un-responsive, which felt normal when it first launched, but now feels very behind the times. It wouldn't surprise me if the subscriptions issue is a result of this too. Would be interested to hear if this is the case. It's always felt like poor discoverability and lag were big reasons behind their social efforts (Ping/Connect) failing too. Not every social network needs a web presence, but presumably it'd help to be able to access/link to this content on the web at large, rather than it being buried deep inside existing apps.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  It's hidden behind a u/p prompt for a very good reason: that section of the site contains your personal info, payment information, shipping address, and so forth. It is absolutely necessary to require reauthentication to access that data. Redacted example from my site: http://imgur.com/a/cL0t7 http://imgur.com/a/cL0t7
  - 0xCMP 10y ago
    That's a decision on their part which makes it a dark pattern. Subscriptions do not need to be in the same place. Although, I guess what you're subscribed to could be sensitive enough...
    - madeofpalk 10y ago
      I think, given how Apple treat subscriptions (they email you multiple times warning you when a subscription is about to expire, renewable subscriptions are only for certain types of content), I would rather chalk this up to incompetence rather than maliciousness.
stanleydrew 10y ago
Tap #2 is bad enough. I'm a relatively-infrequent Apple user who signed up for HBO Now when it first came out and you had to sign up exclusively via an iPhone App. As it turned out, you could use the credentials obtained from that signup to sign in with any web browser and stream content. You didn't need to use the app itself. Apple was literally just handling payments and subscriptions for HBO Now, exclusively, for 3 months. Imagine my frustration at trying to find out when my subscription was set to renew. Why am I supposed to know that iTunes and App Store settings is where I should look for anything to do with a subscription for something that isn't visibly tied to either iTunes or the App Store? Taps #3 and #4 are truly banana-pants insane though.
- fma 10y ago
  Ah that's what it was. My dad complained about signing up for some HBO think and didn't know how to cancel. It was like $10 a month. He ended up just cancelling the credit card.
tedmiston 10y ago
5. Enter password 6. Tap Subscriptions > Manage 7. Tap on a subscription That's a crazy convoluted flow. It's hard to believe it was made that way on accident. Hopefully this change in iOS 10.
ultramancool 10y ago
Let's compare with Google's: 1. Play Store 2. hamburger menu 3. Account 4. Subscriptions Not a lot better, but at least makes more sense than "View Apple ID" I think.
- marklubi 10y ago
  You can also cancel subscriptions for a specific app from the app page in the GP store

LoSboccacc 10y ago

depends on what will be on the person bank statement, if it's your company or apple. they will call you to cancel, not apple, if the statements say the charge is for your service apple isn't new to this kind of outsourcing

dandare 10y ago

I keep watching in disbelief (from distance) how Apple more and more sucks at user experience. The next thing I know Microsoft will be releasing software that just works, lol.

skrebbel 10y ago
They've been doing that for decades. As has Apple. Both have also been shipping crap software for decades. They're huge companies.
pavlov 10y ago
The other day I tried to figure out how to change the 2nd city shown on the Apple Watch's default watchface. (There's a "world clock" feature that displays the time in another city in the corner of the watch screen.) Turns out that the process to do this involves first configuring the city in an app within the iPhone, and then on the watch doing a series of UI actions: a force-touch, a swipe, a tap and turning the "digital crown" to find the right city within a UI element that is a list although it doesn't look like one. Several of these actions are entirely undiscoverable (the force-touch and digital crown in these contexts are just actions you have to stumble on by trying all the possible combinations, I guess). I don't think there would have been any way to figure this out without googling it. And this is a feature that's prominently displayed in the default view of the Apple Watch screen, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that users will want to change the city. It's hard to believe that this device was designed by the company famous for the one-button mouse. I do find the physical design attractive though.
- dhimes 10y ago
  Actually, that's exactly the kind of shit you have to do when you only have one button. I was using my cousin's apple mouse one day and discovered context menus are found by touching or rubbing it on the front somehow (don't exactly remember a couple years later). Simple is great, but not when you try to make simple do complex.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Apple has forgotten the "... but no simpler" part of Einstein's dictum.
- JBiserkov 10y ago
  relevant Dilbert http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-12 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-12
  - Drdrdrq 10y ago
    Not sure why you are being downvoted, it's straight to the point. Not a fan of Dilbert myself, but still...
aah3o45okf 10y ago
Recent OS upgrade experiences show that this is happening. Windows 10: will upgrade your computer while you are sleeping without consent OSX El Capitan: free upgrade requires you to create an account and type in your credit card number
- givinguflac 10y ago
  El Capitan definitely doesn't require you to create an account OR enter a credit card number, I've done it on plenty of machines. Obviously you have to create an account if you want to use iCloud, but you can simply choose not to.
  - aah3o45okf 10y ago
    I believe you, but the OS told me to upgrade to El Capitan using the App Store and the App Store told me I had to log in to iCloud and iCloud told me I had to give it a credit card. I believe you that there is a way around it, but there is also a way around getting upgraded to Windows 10. If the OS doesn't tell the average user about it, it's not part of the UX.
    - hyperknot 10y ago
      You can select "no credit card" or similar when creating an Apple account. It's hidden behind a button but definitely possible.
- cgriswald 10y ago
  Windows 10 will upgrade your computer at any time of the day without your consent. A med school student friend of mine has to take tests on her computer. 15 minutes before the test, Windows 10 was updating and rebooting. Found out, unless you have the pro version, you can't even tell Windows not to do that. You can only set a period of time where Windows will do it (like 2 am) so it doesn't do it at more inconvenient times. OS X upgrades are worse, in my opinion. For any given version, Apple just nags me to install it. But if I go from major version to major version, suddenly selling my MBP gets complicated, because I can only install the version that it came with after I wipe it. It's up to the person who buys it from me to log in to Apple and update the OS to a more recent version. Then there's iOS which nags you constantly to install updates that have been known to brick some devices...
nmalaguti 10y ago
Apple historically got a lot of praise for having a great user experience that was intuitive. Apple also historically had a small fraction as many users as Microsoft and had Steve Jobs, who didn't seem to care if existing users were bothered and instead wanted the experience to always be perfect. Once you reach a certain number of users, any menu or UI change becomes increasingly painful for your current users, at the expense of new users and, sometimes, what feels like common sense.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  The key binding change for New Folder from Command-N to Command-Shift-N still gets me. I think it's been a decade since they did that.
  - azdavis 10y ago
    You can customize keyboard shortcuts with System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts. However, this may only serve to compound the problem.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      Yeah, of course. But it's something like using a Dvorak keyboard layout -- every time you use another computer or help someone else you hit friction. Customizing system level key binding is something I've intentionally avoided.
- xg15 10y ago
  There are "we can't please everyone" decisions, there are plain mistakes and there are UI decisions that benefit no one except possibly the company - i.e. dark patterns. I personally don't see what benefit putting the subscription management behind an unrelated UI widget that doesn't even appear to be clickable could possibly bring to an end-user. Or how such a design got through usability testing in the first place. Hence the likelihood for a dark pattern seems pretty high to me here.
wineisfine 10y ago
Yup, seems like they stopped caring under Cook. On iOS the shift button indication still sucks after all these years. Still, if Apple's barometer has become "just to be less sucky" then Google and MS, they're still doing awesome.

Osmium 10y ago

> "Tap View Apple ID", seriously? This has always seemed like a horrible user-hostile dark-pattern on Apple's part. When you subscribe, Apple says to go to Settings to unsubscribe or turn off auto-renew, but it's very opaque. It's also hidden behind a username/password prompt. It would be much better if there were a Subscriptions option directly under 'iTunes & App Store' – even if there were still a password prompt behind this, at least people would know how to find it. But Apple have long, long needed to modernise their entire iTunes Store experience, of which subscriptions are just one small problem. Does anyone know if it's still running on WebObjects? The whole experience has always felt slow and un-responsive, which felt normal when it first launched, but now feels very behind the times. It wouldn't surprise me if the subscriptions issue is a result of this too. Would be interested to hear if this is the case. It's always felt like poor discoverability and lag were big reasons behind their social efforts (Ping/Connect) failing too. Not every social network needs a web presence, but presumably it'd help to be able to access/link to this content on the web at large, rather than it being buried deep inside existing apps.

Karunamon 10y ago
It's hidden behind a u/p prompt for a very good reason: that section of the site contains your personal info, payment information, shipping address, and so forth. It is absolutely necessary to require reauthentication to access that data. Redacted example from my site: http://imgur.com/a/cL0t7 http://imgur.com/a/cL0t7
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  That's a decision on their part which makes it a dark pattern. Subscriptions do not need to be in the same place. Although, I guess what you're subscribed to could be sensitive enough...
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    I think, given how Apple treat subscriptions (they email you multiple times warning you when a subscription is about to expire, renewable subscriptions are only for certain types of content), I would rather chalk this up to incompetence rather than maliciousness.

stanleydrew 10y ago

Tap #2 is bad enough. I'm a relatively-infrequent Apple user who signed up for HBO Now when it first came out and you had to sign up exclusively via an iPhone App. As it turned out, you could use the credentials obtained from that signup to sign in with any web browser and stream content. You didn't need to use the app itself. Apple was literally just handling payments and subscriptions for HBO Now, exclusively, for 3 months. Imagine my frustration at trying to find out when my subscription was set to renew. Why am I supposed to know that iTunes and App Store settings is where I should look for anything to do with a subscription for something that isn't visibly tied to either iTunes or the App Store? Taps #3 and #4 are truly banana-pants insane though.

fma 10y ago
Ah that's what it was. My dad complained about signing up for some HBO think and didn't know how to cancel. It was like $10 a month. He ended up just cancelling the credit card.

tedmiston 10y ago

5. Enter password 6. Tap Subscriptions > Manage 7. Tap on a subscription That's a crazy convoluted flow. It's hard to believe it was made that way on accident. Hopefully this change in iOS 10.

ultramancool 10y ago

Let's compare with Google's: 1. Play Store 2. hamburger menu 3. Account 4. Subscriptions Not a lot better, but at least makes more sense than "View Apple ID" I think.

marklubi 10y ago
You can also cancel subscriptions for a specific app from the app page in the GP store