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I have been an android-windows user for the longest time, and using Apple devices is among the most difficult things I've had to do. I have used windows phone,
by screye 8y ago
I have been an android-windows user for the longest time, and using Apple devices is among the most difficult things I've had to do.
I have used windows phone, linux, chrome OS, Blackberry's palm-like UI over the years, but I have gotten the hang of each over a small period of time. Apple devices however, are simply counter intuitive for me.
Apple seems to design UI for 2 types of people.
1. Old Apple users
2. The person whose phone use is the same as it was 15 years years ago + an app launcher
Because of those, I have seen 2 negative trends in their UI/UX design :
1. Sticking to old but familiar (for Apple customers) ways, even if they are cumbersome. (itunes)
2. Front loading everything that is heavily used by a layman (their launcher and quick setting menu), and hiding everything else behind a bevy of menus in settings.
If you have not grown up thinking like an Apple user and want to do anything advanced (my demographic), then their interface is incredibly alienating. The only other time I have felt this way has been when using SnapChat. (although Snap's was a lot more egregious than Apple)
I used an iPad for 2 months this Summer, and swapped it out for a Fire HD 10. As much as the iPad was fast, I can't be happier to be back to familiar territory in Android (even if it is on 5.1 Lollipop)
Granted, that my demographic may be the minority, esp. in the US. But, I can't help but feel, that the incessant praise showered on Apple's devices is partly because of the greater familiarity people have with those devices. And, that Apple won't fare as well if they were to be evaluated by an audience unfamiliar with their brand and devices all together.
- JCSato 8y agoI'm the same way. I've gotten used to using a Mac for work; there are the few things I need to know how to run, and I've more or less figured those out. Even after that, though, I was utterly useless last week trying to send an email for my mom on her iPhone.
- fastball 8y ago1. Open Mail 2. Click compose button How could that possibly be difficult of all things?
- julianz 8y agoI've never been able to understand why mail apps insist on the word Compose. Is it an American thing? I've never wanted to compose a piece of text, and never heard the word used in that way.
- smogcutter 8y agoIt's the word gmail uses as well.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mixmastamyk 8y agoSounds a bit grandiose from here in California.
- saagarjha 8y agoWhat word would you use to describe the action of creating a new message?
- 8y ago
- codetrotter 8y agoWhen the Android phones came on the market, I was extatic. Linux, in my pocket! However, Android did not live up to my expectations at all. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but Android was not it. After a while I came to understand that for me personally Android was a bad fit, and everything I had envisioned about running Linux on my phone was ill-adviced. Linux and FreeBSD are my main two operating systems I run on my own computers and servers, and I would not trade them for anything in the world on my main laptop, main desktop and servers. But on phones neither have anything to offer that is of use to me actually. I don’t really understand what kind of “advanced” things you are referring to not being possible on iOS. Could you expand on that? I use my iPhone for web browsing, watching videos, making music, playing some games, taking photos, 2nd factor auth, sending and receiving money, SSH client in my pocket, GPS with updated maps, listening to music, writing down notes, setting alarms, keeping track of my schedule, keeping in touch with people, creating PDFs that are indistinguishable from the scan a full size flatbed scanner would give me. The list goes on. Everything I thought I wanted when I imagined having Linux in my pocket turned out to be a distraction. When I need Linux or FreeBSD, I have my laptop, desktop and servers for that. Anyway, the point is to say that I don’t identify with the two groups of people you said are their target audience, but I find myself a very happy iPhone user. But I am not married to Apple, and I am a loyal customer only because of 1. their stance on privacy and security and 2. their product fits me so well. If they mess up with my trust then they will lose me as a customer. If they make changes to iOS that make using it bothersome, they will lose me as a customer.
- jpindar 8y agoI have had the same experience with iPhones - being unable to figure out how to do things should have been easy. Ended up having to use my Android to look up how to do things. It's not that things aren't possible (sometimes), it's that they're not discoverable.
- dkonofalski 8y agoI've done extensive user testing with people on both Android and iOS devices (and, comparatively on Windows and MacOS devices) and the common thread that I see is that Android users coming to an iPhone try to use it exactly the same way that they use their Android device and then get frustrated that it doesn't work the same way. Windows users try to use a Mac exactly the same way they use Windows and get frustrated when it doesn't work that way. Inversely, the same is try for iPhone users trying to use Android and Mac users trying to use Windows. They ignore the intuitive features of both sides simply because they're used to working with one or the other. If you can't figure out how to do things on an iPhone and think it's difficult, I'd wager a argument that it's because you're not just looking at what's there, you're trying to project your existing experience onto a different device and expecting it to work the same way. In other words (and I don't really say this sarcastically), you're using it wrong. If they were meant to be used the same way, they'd be the same products and they're not.
- Steko 8y ago> Apple won't fare as well if they were to be evaluated by an audience unfamiliar with their brand and devices all together. Haven't they spent the last decade expanding into new markets successfully though? And from what I gather their new customer retention and satisfaction is among the best in the industry. People like to explain away Apple's success as merely the product of "fanboys" they've had for decades, as though the same 10 million guys who bought the first iphone are somehow responsible for the 50+ million phones apple sells each quarter. The truth is simpler: (1) yes they do have many loyal customers and (2) those customers keep buying Apple products because they have good experiences with them. It's also true that their design priorities are not universal and some are especially ornery for power users. But the idea that their UI design is inherently bad seems off and the fact that people keep copying them [1] seems like the best evidence. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17988564/chinese-phone-software-android-iphone-copy-ui https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17988564/chinese-phone-s... , money quote: "judging by the accuracy and specificity of the rip-offs, the camera app from iOS 7 has a serious claim to being one of the most influential software designs of the past decade."
- kbenson 8y ago> People like to explain away Apple's success as merely the product of "fanboys" they've had for decades, as though the same 10 million guys who bought the first iphone are somehow responsible for the 50+ million phones apple sells each quarter. Given the world's fashion industry is worth trillions, it will take a more persuasive argument than that to convince me it's not heavily influenced by people's perception of it as a status symbol. > those customers keep buying Apple products because they have good experiences with them. Or they've bought into the hype and that's all they experience on a regular basis anymore. My mom has driven a Mercedes for decades. My sister drove a cheaper one as her first car, and recently bought a much nicer one. Even if I wanted to spend that much money on a car, I don't like them, and have always had bad experiences with them. My mom's car was a lemon, in and out of the shop multiple times every year for the first 15 years, until it's been too unreliable to drive on a regular basis the last 5 years. She's in a market for a new car, and both she and my sister are excited to get her a Mercedes. Their experiences should have driven then away from the brand years ago, but they haven't. Why do you suppose that is? I have my own theories.
- stevehawk 8y agoI had nearly every iPhone until the LG G5 came out and I switched to Android. Whenever I use my wife's phone I honestly feel like an idiot because I can't figure out 3d touch and a bunch of the other features since I missed their 'introduction' of sorts and don't know that they exist or how they are supposed to be used.
- graeme 8y agoYou shouldn't be downvoted for this. I was missing new apple features for years, until I started browsing the apple subreddit. There are a lot of hidden features. Seems there is a good manual online, but it's poorly advertised. The new features are often mainly announced once when you first open a system app after an ios update. I've seem my parents repeatedly close them in a rush to get to the app. There's no "show me these tips later" option either, so they never learn the new features. There are many advantages to the simplicity, but it's not wrong to say that new stuff is poorly discoverable. For pros and casual users alike. That said, basic useability is great. Both of my parents figured out how to use iphones for their day to day with basically no tech support requests. Same with a mac. I was impressed, they always asked for help on Windows.
- fnky 8y ago> There's no "show me these tips later" option either, so they never learn the new features. There is a Tips app which is visible on the Home Screen that contains general information such as "Welcome to iPhone" and "What's New" that contains tips on how to use the new features. The app sometimes even nags you with "Tip of the Day" notifications.
- graeme 8y agoTips is nice, but it only has a fraction of the info that is displayed on those splash screens. That info is displayed exactly once. It's a mystery to me why they don't have a list of tips for each stock app in the tips app.
- batiudrami 8y agoWhen iPhones first came out they were a dream to use - but I think that was largely because they didn't do very much. Picking up an iPhone 3GS (the first one I saw in real life) the interface was fast, intuitive and accessible. However, as more features were added, Apple's desire to keep things appearing to be simple and clean, and their refusal to increase screen size, meant features get hidden away, behind swipes, long presses and double presses from different parts of the screen. I find iPhones really hard to use nowadays - even though they now have a lot of features which stopped me from buying them initially.
- ttty 8y agoAre you joking? On the iPhone 3 I couldn't even copy paste....
- batiudrami 8y ago>because they didn't do very much They also didn't send MMS. No Flash, at a time when the web was highly reliant on it. No front facing camera. No practical way to share files. But the interface was definitely simple and easy to understand.
- megaremote 8y agoWhat a ridiculous response. Man used to using Android find iOS frustrating, predicts doom for Apple.
- rimliu 8y agoVery strange experience. As far as sharing anecdotes go I have witnessed two people coming to Apple without previous experience and having zero problems. You yourself state how happy you were to go back to familiar land of Android. So it may be, that Apple is not an issue here.
- emdowling 8y agoI feel the same way, but in reverse. I've been using iOS since the iPhone 3G and have built apps for it. I know iOS inside out. I recently started a new job where the vast majority of our customers use Android. I therefore chose my work phone to be Android, so I could use the same platform that our customers use. Wow - is it confusing! Nothing is intuitive, and I genuinely find it very hard to use and get into a rhythm with. It's a Galaxy S9, so hardly a "bad" Android phone. My takeaway is that so much of the way we use our devices, especially our phones, becomes muscle memory. Android is not badly designed, neither is iOS, it's just that I've built up a decade's worth of muscle memory, coming from hundreds of interactions a day with the device, that switching to a different paradigm is going to feel jarring.
- dkonofalski 8y agoMost people use different devices in the same way they use their preferred devices and get frustrated when they don't produce the exact same results.
- kerbalspacepro 8y agoYou realize 15 years ago was 2003.