14 ms·

i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible. the main problem: zero discoverablity - i need to google how to d

• askafriend 10y ago
  To be fair, even Google has terrible UI/UX these days. Just look at Google Maps or Gmail. Material design isn't that great for discoverability either.
  • flukus 10y ago
    They took away the zoom in/out floating buttons on the android maps app, managing to destroy discoverability and single handed operation.
    • striking 10y ago
      At least on my OnePlus phone, you can double-tap the screen and drag up or down to zoom in or out, like a scroll wheel. It's better than buttons, in my humble opinion.
      • ViViDboarder 10y ago
        But not discoverable. There is no visual indicator telling you about the feature. Only trial and error.
        • madeofpalk 10y ago
          Not every feature needs to be immediately discoverable. The default and 'main' way of zooming is the (un)pinch gesture. Take keyboard shortcuts - they're EXTREMELY undiscoverable, but they're not required for most operations, it's more of a power-user feature.
          • flukus 10y ago
            Most programs will list the keyboard shortcut against the menu item for the same feature, that makes them discoverable.
            • Natanael_L 10y ago
              Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V works in Android too, among many other classical shortcuts. Try it with a Bluetooth keyboard or over USB-OTG. How about that for undiscoverable in a mobile OS? :)
          • eyelidlessness 10y ago
            > Not every feature needs to be immediately discoverable. Not every feature does. But every function does. If there is no visual indication of how to zoom at all, there are users who will never even discover that they can zoom.
      • coldpie 10y ago
        Off topic, I know, but which OnePlus do you have? Do you like it? I'm considering the OnePlus 3 to replace my 2013 Moto X.
        • striking 10y ago
          I have the OnePlus One still, actually. It's been in water and dropped on the ground, and somehow is still going strong. For $300, this is the best phone I have ever had, even ignoring the 64GB storage and out of the box rootability. I've looked at the OnePlus 3, and it seems like a worthy successor. LinusTechTips on YouTube did a review on it. I'd recommend checking it out.
    • agentdrtran 10y ago
      But pinch to zoom is used for everything.
      • flukus 10y ago
        Maps and the occasional website (the browser used to have zoom options too) with crappy css are the only times I really need pinch zoom. It's annoying as hell when you're holding a coffee and want to zoom.
        • Dain42 10y ago
          You're probably outside the 95th percentile on that one, though, and good design targets the rest of the user base. I think most people probably just got annoyed by accidentally hitting those, or by them taking up real-estate or cluttering the view.
          • flukus 10y ago
            > You're probably outside the 95th percentile on that one In what way? If you mean one handed usage, it's pretty common here when people are standing on public transport, you need to hold on with one hand. If you mean the infrequency I need it, take a look through you're list of installed apps and tell me how many require zooming? Almost all are designed specifically to avoid it.
            • lake99 10y ago
              I agree with all you have written, but there is a way to zoom in or out without using your other hand: use your lips. "Muaa" zooms out, and "auum" zooms in. This will make public transport journeys more interesting (for the others).
              • Natanael_L 10y ago
                I'm not that close with my phone, though.
    • bestnameever 10y ago
      double tap and drag. http://www.carlsednaoui.com/post/46803524724/google-maps-one-hand-zoom-on-iphone http://www.carlsednaoui.com/post/46803524724/google-maps-one...
  • icebraining 10y ago
    What's wrong with Google Maps? I've just been watching a non-technical friend use it and the only thing that wasn't intuitive was adding an extra stop to her trip (and even then, she discovered it without needing to search for help).
    • reitanqild 10y ago
      So tell me how am I supposed to find a route between x and y from my phone without being on x or y first? It is doable, but how is it supposed to be done? (For context: IIRC there used to be a shortcut to navigation for that feature. And yes I think ux designers mindlessly copying each others or Apple are at least partially to blame.(
      • fpgeek 10y ago
        1. Search for x (or y). 2. Ask for directions 3. Replace your location with y (or x). 4. Reverse start and end if necessary. Personally I think is flow is better than directly entering start and end for two reasons: - The common case (go from where I am to somewhere else) is faster. - I don't have to think about how to enter "my location", which isn't obvious (over the years I've seen - typing "my location", searching with the start box empty, pressing a special button for the purpose, and others).
        • reitanqild 10y ago
          > - The common case (go from where I am to somewhere else) is faster. > - I don't have to think about how to enter "my location" IIRC at some point this where solved rather nicely by offering you start location pre-filled with your current address.
          • reitanqild 10y ago
            Update: As lake99 and hawski pointed out it still is there. Just use the blue-sign-with-white-arrow-up-and-to-the-right (directions) and there the nice one is.
      • deleted 10y ago
• deleted 10y ago
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• striking 10y ago
  Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touchpad. If the piece of text hasn't been there since OS X first came out, is it clickable or not? Because I damn well can't tell, nothing new looks like a button anymore. I could also talk about how the gaussian blur effect is just about the most wasteful effect you can apply to anything, and is a far cry from pioneering the first fast rounded rectangle drawing algorithm, or anything in that vein, but I don't need to. Because Apple's UI is just no longer good. I'd rather every button look like a shimmering stupid bubble than an unusable postmodern art piece. Sent from my MacBook Pro
  • threeseed 10y ago
    a) If you want to see notifications click the button in the top, right corner where it's always been. b) Apple has not changed the behaviour of buttons on OSX. They still look like they always have. c) Computing resources are not finite like oil. It's there to be used. d) Which gestures are available has always been in the Trackpad system preference which has videos to show you how to use them.
    • wruza 10y ago
      On c): recharge cycles are limited, as are Amper-hours. Idk though how much it takes, I just don't like blurs, it is like you're semi-blind or your screen is damaged, sort of. But flat interface would be too ugly without all that color blots. It is like a makeup to actually bad ui. Shame on Apple they lost it at iOS 7.
    • Bartweiss 10y ago
      I'm not sure I accept D) as a full defense of a confusing system. I get that some things can't be made intuitive, and have to be learned. But "there's a video somewhere if you know to look" is a crappy justification for the current setup. As is, non-regional gestures compete with regional versions of the same motion and the enabled-by-default gestures aren't terribly well chosen. I've watched a lot of non-power-users work their touchpad, accidentally fire off either the wrong gesture or an unintended gesture, and then sort of click aimlessly until they get back to something recognizable. That's a sign that OS X is failing users, no matter how elegant things look to Apple.
• kovrik 10y ago
  Agree. I really love Apple, but I always find myself Googling for "Can I do that in iTunes?" (the answer is usually No) or "How to do this?". And I can't say that I want something weird. Some workflows look so simple and obvious to me (and I think most people have the same workflows), but they are literally impossible with iTunes and other Apple stuff. For example, I have a 2TB AirPort Time Capsule, but it looks impossible to backup my iPod or MacBook directly to it (which is nonsense, why do I need 2TB then?). So I have to create backups with iTunes, then go to `~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/` and copy everything manually to the capsule. Searching for a song in iTunes is always confusing. Why don't they have global search field that searches in both Library and connected device? Photos app is another nightmare (and photos management overall)! Again, I just want to connect my iPhone or my camera and transfer photos to AirPort Time Capsule. Impossible. Or in macOS, you can't just make some apps fullscreen: they always have that 5px gap between app window and dock bar (http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/141800/gap-at-the-bottom-of-maximized-windows http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/141800/gap-at-the-b...). Or the fact they don't have proper window management and themes. One have to use third-party apps full of hacks to have, say, dark window theme or some parody of tiling WM.
  • astrange 10y ago
    Have you found Time Machine?
    • kovrik 10y ago
      How does it help? Can I use Time Machine to backup my iPod to AirPort Time Capsule?
      • dmart 10y ago
        You can use Time Machine to automatically back up your MacBook to the Time Capsule, and as .../MobileSync/Backup/ will obviously be a part of that backup, your iPod backups will come along for the ride as well.
        • 10y ago
• Razengan 10y ago
  > all of their stuff is terrible. As a PC-only user since the days of DOS up till Windows 8, and having used Windows 10 after jumping ship to Macs a few hours ago, macOS has demonstrably more discoverability than Windows. One example: Just click on the Help menu, in any app, and type something like "show" or "find" or any other operation, and it will show you all the menu items which have that word in their name. That feature is a part of the Cocoa subsystem and comes for free with every app, and very handy when you know an app has a certain feature but you're not sure which menu it's buried in (like standard operations and filters in different image editing apps.) Also, all the shortcuts and standard menus are the same in every macOS app, and can be discovered/modified from System Preferences -> Keyboard, again for any app. Take "Preferences", which in Windows is sometimes under Edit, Tools, or the app name menu (which imitates macOS.) I could go on and on, but "zero discoverability" is an undeserved hyperbole.
  • EdHominem 10y ago
    > "zero discoverability" is an undeserved hyperbole. Actually, it's a deserved hyperbole. It's not like Apple haven't realized their mistakes... They wrote a book in the late 80s about UI and it's still one of the best works. But they've abandoned many of their most-important guidelines, and almost always for the worse. They threw out the discoverability baby with the skeuomorphic bathwater.
    • jnpatel 10y ago
      Which book are you referring to?
      • majewsky 10y ago
        See [1] in a comment somewhere else in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12529428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12529428
  • Razengan 10y ago
    Oops, years, not hours. I should proofread.
• Alex3917 10y ago
  I'm surprised they haven't been hit with a class action lawsuit for the iTunes UX yet, since it seems designed to needlessly fill up space on your computer / phone in order to get you to upgrade to larger models. E.g. with the podcasts sync feature, you can only decide how many episodes you want stored for every podcast at a global level, not per podcast. So e.g. you can either store the most recent ten episodes of each podcast, or every episode of each podcast. So even though for most podcasts ten is probably enough, you end up needing to store every episode of every podcast on your phone even if there is only one podcast where you want every episode. Similarly, once you purchase an app the only option is to download all the new updates, even if you don't use the app anymore. There is no option to archive the app, so it's either let iTunes keep installing the updates each week or else delete it the app you paid for from your computer. Again, this just needlessly churns through backup disks so that Apple can sell people more external hard drives. These are just a couple examples, but it seems like pretty much every features of iTunes is designed to force you to buy more stuff from Apple that you don't actually need.
  • madeofpalk 10y ago
    > it seems like pretty much every features of iTunes is designed to force you to buy more stuff from Apple that you don't actually need. I actually highly doubt this. Apple has done a lot of work (starting in iOS 4 IIRC) to actually remove the need for iTunes. From my personal experience, and that of working at the Genius Bar, most people don't use iTunes at all. With regular backups and sync happening over iCloud, with Apple Music/iTunes-over-the-cloud/Spotify, the use case for iTunes - ESPECIALLY for managing an iOS device - is incredibly small. In fact, more and more iTunes features are added to lessen the space it takes up - the default behaviour of iTunes (as a music listening app) is for it to stream songs and download as much as possible on-demand. My 45GB iTunes library only takes up 15GB on my Mac. I say this as someone who uses iTunes daily to listen to music, but never actually touches iOS devices through it.
    • sverige 10y ago
      Then why have it at all? The point is that if it's there taking up space, it should work well. It doesn't. Fix it or kill it.
• flukus 10y ago
  I've been wondering lately if it stems from the purchasing experience. I'm looking at getting a new PC lately and there are just so many options from supplier to hardware details. How many cores do I want? Which processor architecture? What nanometer size? How much RAM? How big a hard disk? What graphics card (a dozen questions on it's own)? Even if you restrict yourself to one supplier, they have dozens of variants and arcane naming schemes that makes working out what's current something that takes hours of research. Compare this to apple which only has a couple of SKU's at a time in each category and it makes purchasing a lot simpler. My thinking is that apple == easy is something that just sticks in your mind from the outset.
  • spronkey 10y ago
    Heh, Apple don't really make it easy anymore either. You have to choose upfront how much RAM and HDD you need, because unlike on almost every other decent manufacturer's higher end machines, you can't change them later. But I agree. It's even worse with phones - have you seen the number of phones Samsung have? I have a nack for remembering model numbers and specs and even I find it absurdly difficult.
• twhb 10y ago
  Speaking of, Apple is to blame for the absolute worst case of discoverability I've ever encountered: getting the iOS App Store app to list all apps labeled "Essentials". Dug around, couldn't find it. Googled it, found a few forum threads where everybody concluded it couldn't be done. Went into an Apple store, gave an employee a few minutes to figure it out, and he gave up. And yet, it's possible. Rather than just tell you, I'm going to leave this as a challenge. See how long it takes you to figure this out.
  • the_other 10y ago
    Why on this blue-green earth would you want to ask a vendor for what they consider "essential". How is this useful to you? Why would you expect the vendor to provide this for you (except to further their own sales agenda)? This is a straw man that I implore you to burn.
    • supercoder 10y ago
      Apple do a lot of editorial on the App Store.
  • usmannk 10y ago
    Searching for "essentials" seems to do the trick.
    • scottmf 10y ago
      Same here. What am I missing?
  • thenewwazoo 10y ago
    Wow. That was about five minutes of hunting, and I actually seriously considered the possibility that your comment was a troll. That was impressively unexpected.
    • aparadja 10y ago
      Could you share the solution? I couldn't figure it out. Searching for "essentials" was the closest I got.
• clw8 10y ago
  Good to know I'm not the only one who can't figure out UIs these days. Mobile apps have all these icons that give me absolutely no idea what action will be performed. I miss the days of being able to hover and get an English description. (I guess this is where I say "get offa my lawn!")
  • majewsky 10y ago
    On many Android apps, you can tap-and-hold the menu buttons and a popup will describe the action, like a tooltip on WIMP UIs.
• jimjimjim 10y ago
  apples UI reputation is from the mac days when it's major selling point over windows boxes was that the UI was nicer, shinier and easier. the ipods looked nice, and the iphones looked nice. but the UX for some apple things is trash. I've had years of IT working with crap interfaces and itunes is still one of the most confusing and willfully annoying programs i've used.
• rsync 10y ago
  "i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible." All you need to know about Apple UI is this: Sometimes you click the green (maximize) button and the window gets smaller.
  • jakobegger 10y ago
    Yeah, that's because it's not a maximise button. It's the button that adjusts the window size to the content size. At least, that's what it used to be. They changed the default behavior to 'fullscreen' because all the people coming from Windows thought that's what the button should do...
    • rsync 10y ago
      "It's the button that adjusts the window size to the content size." Which is just so, so wrong. Imagine how much mouse-mouse-mousing around (and time wasted) that kind of organization produces. Things I wish Steve Jobs had said: "If you're using the mouse, you're doing it wrong"
      • mcintyre1994 10y ago
        Does OSX even have keyboard controls for window management, like win+arrows? I think I have a 3rd party thing doing that, which seems like it shouldn't be necessary.
        • coldpie 10y ago
          OSX users can't even handle having buttons on their mice. Imagine the confusion if they had a whole keyboard! (I have to use a Mac for work. I'd kill for a touch pad with physical buttons, or even better, the Lenovo clitmouse.)
        • initram 10y ago
          Yes, it does. Pretty much the entire OS can be controlled by keyboard. You may have to turn on Assistive Services to make it work in all contexts, but it's definitely there.
• otabdeveloper1 10y ago
  > i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... They don't. Apple is the only tech company that markets their products like fashion accessories. That's not a bad thing: in 2016 we're living squarely in the age of 'wearable computers'. The "good UI" stuff is just rationalization, however.
• matt4077 10y ago
  Until a few years ago, the difference to windows was like night & day. Whenever I had to use a Windows PC during the Windows XP - Windows 7 days, I'd wonder how Windows users ever got anything done. Windows would almost constantly interrupt any sort of flow with notifications about updated virus definitions, really really urgent updates that need a reboot right now, the highly relevant information that I got a new DHCP IP etc. etc. It's gotten better now I believe, and OS X usability has indeed suffered a bit while expanding in features.
  • Grishnakh 10y ago
    No, it's gotten much worse with Windows 10: now it'll force you to spend 45 minutes downloading and installing updates (while you can't do anything else) and then rebooting, at whatever time it feels like it, even if you're right in the middle of a critically important meeting. I don't remember XP-7 doing stuff like that.
• dTal 10y ago
  I had an SSH password once with a # character in it. I tried to log in from a friend's Macbook and was forced to ask him how to type this. Apparently it was Option-3. Completely unmarked. Astonishing. But hey, at least you can type §.
  • cmiller1 10y ago
    Huh? I have a Macbook Pro and a Microsoft keyboard on an old Win XP box right next to each other right now and they both, clearly labeled, have # above the "3" for shift-3
    • dTal 10y ago
      I believe this is because I live in the UK. Apple seems to have invented some kind of bizarre hybrid layout between the UK and US ones. Shift-3 is the £ symbol here.
    • ChoGGi 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards#Apple_Macintosh_keyboards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards... "The # symbol is replaced by the £ symbol (as on PC keyboards); the # is available by pressing ⌥ Option+3 More recent Apple British keyboards move the backquote/~ key to the left of the Z key and replace it with a section sign (§) and a plus-minus sign (±) respectively. The Enter key spans two rows and is shaped similarly to the Enter key of many ISO PC keyboards."
• golemotron 10y ago
  Steve Jobs balanced aesthetics and usability. Jony Ive is 100% aesthetics. That's the trap they are in now.