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This is a pretty ironic statement, given their entire product design is built to serve apple, and the users are often secondary to that or ignored entirely; suc
by meesterdude 9y ago
This is a pretty ironic statement, given their entire product design is built to serve apple, and the users are often secondary to that or ignored entirely; such as making UI more difficult on purpose so you're more inclined to use siri, or buying music instead of bringing your own.
I dont see AI at apple being any different. Its for them FIRST, us second, if at all. "humanity" may as well mean corporations since they are comprised of humans, but the general public will bare the costs in the end.
- plokiju 9y agoDo you have any examples of them making bad UI to get people to use siri?
- chollida1 9y agoThat's easy. The most common thing to do with my iPHone is hit the button. They overloaded the button to load Siri if its held for even a fraction of a second too long. 99 times out of 100 I don't want to use siri but she continually pops up. Trying to click to get back to the home screen.... here's Siri. Trying to double click the button, to kill an app..... here comes Siri So to answer the question.... 1) They made Siri enabled by default, something that I can't see myself ever wanting. 2) They made Siri come up using the button, again something that almost always means when siri comes up its by accident and not indented. Apple isn't immune from "dark patterns" in their UI. The Siri example above being the most egregious example I can think of.
- blipmusic 9y agoTurn it off then? It's in the settings. Can't say I particularly like Siri either but not using it works so far. So what's a real example of Apple making the UI worse to further their agenda (i.e. selling more stuff)?
- ChrisLTD 9y agoI'm sure being able to access Siri from a prominent button was boon to users that have little or no eye sight. Also, recall this was added to iPhones before any other major phone had similar built-in functionality.
- soperj 9y agoI have the google assistant on my galaxy s3, stock.
- k-mcgrady 9y agoI've been using iPhone's with Siri since it debuted and this has never once happened to me. Is this really something you experience regularly?
- Retric 9y agoUhh, I have never enabled Siri on my iPhone 7 and everything just works. It's easy to install, but asking a question does not make it the default.
- tvcgrid 9y agoWhen I setup my iPhone, it asked me if I wanted Siri up front, instead of sneaking the functionality in. Later, I was able to go to Settings and switch it on or off. I don't see how your above example is at all egregious -- people retain full control. Compare this to Windows 10 (at launch) turning on a whole host of privacy-compromising features and not giving clear control to the user (but I was glad to see at a more recent setup I did that I now can toggle it off even at first install, and that I can look it up later) To steelman your argument, I would propose instead talking about lack of browser rendering engine control or lack of ability to install arbitrary executables. That's actually something people have no/little control over. But even then, there is a reasonable debate to be had.
- wstrange 9y agoAllowing the user to choose their default assistant (Google, Cortana, Siri, ) would be a good start. EDIT: I didn't read the question carefully enough. I don't believe Apple has dumbed down the UI to push people to Siri. That being said, giving users a choice over the assistant, browser, etc. would be a good thing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jlaskdf768 9y agoThis smells more like you're frustrated with "business as usual" these days and less Apple specifically. Every org I have been with has had to maintain a level of "can't resolve 100% of the numerous customer complaints, because gotta ship." Can't Tim be pointing to a path forward? Why so negative. If they can't fix it all today, they're not good at their work, and completely incompetent?
- _red 9y agoI'm sympathetic to that idea and feel like it could potentially hold a lot of weight, yet Tim did turn the tech juggernaut he was bequeathed into a watch band and sticker company.
- askafriend 9y ago> yet Tim did turn the tech juggernaut he was bequeathed into a watch band and sticker company. That's such an incredibly simplistic view of Apple's strategy. I expected more out of the HN crowd. I honestly think the moderation team should crack down more on these types of casual and innocuous statements that provide no value that they might as well be memes. It's so incredibly easy to trivialize anything, especially when you don't understand it - and you see this happening more as a forum or subreddit grows bigger and the audience gets broader and less informed. It's frustrating to say the least because instead of an actually interesting conversation, we're left with this drivel which isn't even fun to respond to or even entertain as a thought.
- ErikBjare 9y ago> I expected more out of the HN crowd. Don't underestimate the variance in small samples (especially when the sample size is 1). The best thing you can do it is to not respond, or create a well argued thread about it, at least then it's on neutral ground.
- culturalzero 9y agoIt's ironic, and hilarious frankly, that your reply about vapidity was much more vapid than what you were complaining about. Why don't you offer something of substance rather than complaining about substance.You are part of the 'HN crowd' you speak of and what you contribute literally forms part of this living, breathing community.
- ksk 9y agoThe context of the statement was technology causing humans to become less relevant via automation. Hes not talking about users of Apple products. To your statement though, Apple wants to make things less configurable with a large enough sandbox where the users don't complain about their restricted freedoms (applies more to their devices line). The earlier Apple wanted to give the best tools to their users, and let them use them as they saw fit. I equate this with the shift in games, where earlier games simply gave you a good control system and let you figure things out, where as now, its more about ensuring that the player has a good experience by gently nudging them towards a goal.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago> I equate this with the shift in games, where earlier games simply gave you a good control system and let you figure things out, where as now, its more about ensuring that the player has a good experience by gently nudging them towards a goal. A bit off topic, but I always see this mentioned when it comes to modern gaming, but fail to see the evidence. Older games came with instruction manuals (Nintendo had the most exquisite ones and they always came in color). When I was a kid, I would voraciously read it on the way home, heightening my anticipation for the ride home. Although I do wish more opening tutorials were optional and not tied into a game's story Modern games are more mechanically complex, period. Compare the control system in Nier: Automata to any pre 3D Legend of Zelda game (or any other game really). Letting you figure things out would is an exercise in frustration. One example of this is the Dark Souls series which is more hands off. Every new game in the series, I have to go online to look up the controls, power attacks, etc. for every new game in the series and spend 4439 deaths getting the parry timing down. It's frustrating and breaks immersion. Having a npc sparring partner to hone your parrying instead of the enemy who kills you with two hits would have me from breaking a couple of controllers in frustration.Also, often times you can turn off the hand-holding by turning off UI/HUD elements in the options (this is the way to play Assassin's creed) What I think has happened is that yersteryear's easy difficulty is the default normal, normal the default hard, etc. I feel that a lot of reviewers don't do games justice when they base it on easy or normal mode. In good games, the higher difficulties often require a higher level of tactics and more diverse gameplay. If you haven't played Halo on Legendary mode, you haven't really played Halo because you miss out on the brilliance of the set pieces and the increased tactical complexity required to survive. If you play the Last of Us on normal, the preponderance of ammo breaks the immersion and mood of the game. Same goes for Horizon: Zero Dawn...if you're not playing on the hardest level, you don't ever need to employ advanced tactics to take down/hunt the machines...no need to lay traps, plan out your attacks, etc. It especially becomes a very different game. The Uncharted series, the Last of Us, the Bayonetta series, Horizon: Zero Dawn, etc. all have controls that, IMO, are superior to (or at least equal) older games
- eridius 9y ago> given their entire product design is built to serve apple, and the users are often secondary to that or ignored entirely; such as making UI more difficult on purpose so you're more inclined to use siri, or buying music instead of bringing your own. That's simply not true, and it's a really offensive statement for pretty much anybody working at Apple. There's no company I can think of that cares more about the user experience than Apple, and here you are claiming that they're doing the exact opposite.
- AckSyn 9y agoThis is my first thought as well. Apple has done wonderful things as far as accessibility for the handicapped, and usability in general. I can't think of a more incorrect statement than the one claiming otherwise.
- soperj 9y agoApple is extremely user-hostile, they make it hard to do anything they don't want you to do with YOUR device. It's simple things like using uncommon screws internally, or soldering in the ram, or requiring a certain set of bits at the front of your hard drive, or making it so the batteries cannot be removed.
- gnaritas 9y agoThat's not user hostile, that's user friendly, those things enable them to delivery a standard experience (something you cannot get on a droid) on their appliance to users who by the way love the shit out of them for how well their phones work. You might not like Apple, but their users do precisely because of those things. Apple sees their phones as appliances, not as personal computers to be customized; that approach has earned them die hard loyal fans who love those appliances as is. We don't all want to hack our phones, I'll take an iPhone over a droid any day, it's a much better experience.
- soperj 9y agoBullshit. No one loves apple because of using torx screws and requiring certain bits at the front of their hard drives or soldering the empty ram slots shut so that you can't upgrade it later. It doesn't provide a "standard experience", or make their "phones" work any better.
- swift 9y agoI find myself pretty skeptical of the claim that Apple is "making the UI more difficult on purpose so you're more inclined to use siri". I can't speak to Apple's internal motives, since I haven't worked there, but I've worked at another major tech company that has received similar accusations in another context, and I can tell you that in that case it was definitely not true. In reality the designers did their best to create a UI that worked for as many people as possible in the time they had available, and they performed extensive user studies to determine which problems needed to be fixed and to validate their solutions. Sometimes they didn't get it right the first time around, and sometimes for one reason or another there were technical issues that required some compromises until they could get sorted out, but there were absolutely no "dark patterns" involved in the process. Designing a good UI is hard. I don't think we need to assume bad faith or malice when people get it wrong.