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I absolutely abhor the new Calculator app on the iOS 11. The old interface was way more elegant, the buttons were squares (and had a larger touch area), and it

I absolutely abhor the new Calculator app on the iOS 11. The old interface was way more elegant, the buttons were squares (and had a larger touch area), and it worked even when you typed fast. Sometimes I wonder why individuals working for these multibillion dollar companies, who affect the lives of millions of people, decide to change things for the worse. Imagine having spent all those hours overhauling the calculator app, on I don't know, fixing things that actually are broken.

microcolonel 9y ago
I'm perpetually surprised that any competent software developer would go to work for a company that swears them to secrecy about almost everything they do. I can count how many developers employed at Apple I've had any contact with or seen a talk from on one hand. I'm thinking maybe that has something to do with why their system software is riddled with shallow bugs that would be (should have been?) detected by casual at-the-desk testing.
grzm 9y ago
I agree that the described bug is a very frustrating bug. As for old squares vs the new circles, that's an aesthetic choice I'm sure some will like and some won't. My impression is that the old UI is more in keeping with the HP calculator it emulated. Personally it's not something I'm overly concerned about but I can understand how some may be. (Don't get me started on the Contacts icon which I can never seem to be able to find.) > "and had a larger touch area" Your comment regarding touch area made me curious. While the button image area is smaller, in my very simple and admittedly limited tests I seem to be able to activate the button with touching the button only tangentially. Even with my pinky I can't not activate a button when attempting to avoid them by pressing in the space between them. This leads me to believe either the active area extends beyond the button image area, or, more pragmatically, fingers are large enough that they're going to end up activating the buttons regardless. Would you mind going into more detail in how you determined that the touch area is reduced in the iOS 11 calculator?
- plainOldText 9y ago
  Here's how I see it: I look at a button as defined by its shape as "perceived touchable area". A circle enclosed in a square has a smaller area than the square enclosing the circle. You're seeing the new buttons as circles (thus smaller area), even though behind the scenes (as your little experiment has demonstrated) the buttons are still squares (real touchable area) on a grid. I would also argue the eyes have a harder time parsing the layout, as the visual boundaries between the circular buttons have more complex shapes than the old UI, where the boundaries were very thin lines. If you want to run another "experiment" – albeit theoretical – imagine we shrink the "perceived touchable area" of each button even further, say we get rid of the circular background and keep solely the digit displayed on the button. Your eyes will now perceive the visual representation of the button, as only the digit, and I would say our initial impulse is to touch what we see and not some imaginary boundary we know exists.
  - grzm 9y ago
    I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think at the end of the day this ends up mattering much, if at all. For example, when trying to press the buttons quickly to reproduce the bug, I didn’t feel the slightest need to be precise. Similarly, if the buttons were physical, I believe they’re large enough that people wouldn’t feel much (if any) need to be more precise due to the inherent “slop” buttons have. Though, if you have reference to UX tests that show otherwise, I’d be interested in reading it.
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microcolonel 9y ago

I'm perpetually surprised that any competent software developer would go to work for a company that swears them to secrecy about almost everything they do. I can count how many developers employed at Apple I've had any contact with or seen a talk from on one hand. I'm thinking maybe that has something to do with why their system software is riddled with shallow bugs that would be (should have been?) detected by casual at-the-desk testing.

grzm 9y ago

I agree that the described bug is a very frustrating bug. As for old squares vs the new circles, that's an aesthetic choice I'm sure some will like and some won't. My impression is that the old UI is more in keeping with the HP calculator it emulated. Personally it's not something I'm overly concerned about but I can understand how some may be. (Don't get me started on the Contacts icon which I can never seem to be able to find.) > "and had a larger touch area" Your comment regarding touch area made me curious. While the button image area is smaller, in my very simple and admittedly limited tests I seem to be able to activate the button with touching the button only tangentially. Even with my pinky I can't not activate a button when attempting to avoid them by pressing in the space between them. This leads me to believe either the active area extends beyond the button image area, or, more pragmatically, fingers are large enough that they're going to end up activating the buttons regardless. Would you mind going into more detail in how you determined that the touch area is reduced in the iOS 11 calculator?

plainOldText 9y ago
Here's how I see it: I look at a button as defined by its shape as "perceived touchable area". A circle enclosed in a square has a smaller area than the square enclosing the circle. You're seeing the new buttons as circles (thus smaller area), even though behind the scenes (as your little experiment has demonstrated) the buttons are still squares (real touchable area) on a grid. I would also argue the eyes have a harder time parsing the layout, as the visual boundaries between the circular buttons have more complex shapes than the old UI, where the boundaries were very thin lines. If you want to run another "experiment" – albeit theoretical – imagine we shrink the "perceived touchable area" of each button even further, say we get rid of the circular background and keep solely the digit displayed on the button. Your eyes will now perceive the visual representation of the button, as only the digit, and I would say our initial impulse is to touch what we see and not some imaginary boundary we know exists.
- grzm 9y ago
  I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think at the end of the day this ends up mattering much, if at all. For example, when trying to press the buttons quickly to reproduce the bug, I didn’t feel the slightest need to be precise. Similarly, if the buttons were physical, I believe they’re large enough that people wouldn’t feel much (if any) need to be more precise due to the inherent “slop” buttons have. Though, if you have reference to UX tests that show otherwise, I’d be interested in reading it.

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