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What an absurd and tiresome article. IOS is significantly easier and more intuitive than any PC ever was, including the Mac. Most gestures are so intuitive you
by Grustaf 8y ago
What an absurd and tiresome article. IOS is significantly easier and more intuitive than any PC ever was, including the Mac. Most gestures are so intuitive you don’t even realise they are gestures, 2-year olds scroll and zoom without being told how. The only people who could possibly find iOS unintuitive are those whose minds have hardened in a PC shaped mold.
- macawfish 8y agoYour bias is showing ;)
- buzzerbetrayed 8y agoWhat an absurd and tiresome comment (actually though). Just because he has a different opinion than you doesn’t mean that opinion is biased. Perhaps he likes apple because he finds their interfaces intuitive, as opposed to saying their intuitive only because he likes apple. IMO, comments like yours have no place on hacker news.
- FireBeyond 8y agoHis opinion denigrates others: > What an absurd and tiresome article. > IOS is significantly easier and more intuitive than any PC ever was, including the Mac. > The only people who could possibly find iOS unintuitive are those whose minds have hardened in a PC shaped mold. Sounds like he has no place for alternative opinions of any form.
- macawfish 8y agoThanks for sticking up for me there! I was on once a "Mac fanatic", so to speak... my perspective is not uninformed!
- jayd16 8y agoTwo year olds are certainly taught to scroll. Its not a natural human gesture. In fact, what they're actually taught is to just try scrolling everything to see what happens because there's no way to know. This is why you see kids trying to scroll on televisions now.
- Grustaf 7y agoI definitely didn’t teach my children to use iphones or ipads, I didn’t even allow them to use them. And I’m pretty sure nobody else taught them, but they are happily swiping and scrolling and zooming and rearranging icons. I mean come on, what could possibly be more intuitive than dragging a photo or screen to the right when you want it to move to the right? Barring mind-controlled computers, I think this is as intuitive as it could possibly get. Keep in mind also that mouse controlled computers introduce a whole level of indirection.
- vbezhenar 8y ago3D Touch is extremely non-intuitive.
- saagarjha 8y ago3D Touch is an optional feature. You can use an iOS device without 3D Touch (I do, for example, because I do not personally own a device with this feature).
- toasterlovin 8y agoHow is this any different from right clicking a mouse?
- mikestew 8y agoRight-click would be equivalent to long-press on iOS. But don’t long-press too hard or you’ll get 3D Touch. Or maybe you do want 3D Touch, so you press hard. Surprise! Your iPad doesn’t support 3D Touch; you were thinking of your phone. Does this particular app even support 3D Touch? Only one way to find out! Inconsistent and not discoverable, which isn’t anything like a right mouse button at all.
- ahakki 8y agoIt’s exactly like right clicking. Only one way to find out if it does anything, and if it does something, you will only find out what once you try it. You even had stuff like the puck mouse, which didn’t support the feature.
- csande17 8y ago3D Touch is like if pressing the right mouse button a little harder than usual opened a second, completely different context menu. But only sometimes; in some programs, it would just open the regular context menu, leaving you to wonder if you pressed hard enough.
- asark 8y ago
- la_barba 8y ago>IOS is significantly easier and more intuitive than any PC ever was, including the Mac. How so? One of the key points of the article is that the the perceived intuitiveness, especially among expert users, doesn't extend to people unfamiliar with the interface. I have seen my own folks struggle with iOS, especially recovering from accidental taps as the article mentions. My mom hits the home button on her iphone whenever she hits the wrong UI button. On her laptop, that happens much more rarely. I forgot who said this first, but I firmly believe that software developers should personally watch non-expert users interact with their UI before shipping. Your point about toddlers being able to scroll and zoom, applies to most things kids do. They can pickup a remote and turn the TV off, or unlock doors, play handheld video games, etc, etc.
- Grustaf 7y agoOne thing toddlers can’t do is use the start button in windows (if that still exists) or double click on icons to launch apps.
- la_barba 7y agoYeah.. hopefully Desktop UIs don't get dumbed down in the future. They hastily abandoned the metro UI which was a disaster for non-touch use cases.
- amelius 8y agoBy the way, just as an observation, an iPhone is more a "personal computer" than a PC ever was ...
- atoav 8y agoIt sure is personal. But is it a personal computer? I knew IOS was nothing for me when I couldn’t access a file system, there was no way to switch between open applications and the backups were not backups of my photos, but some special format only meant to be played back onto another iphone. Things might have changed since, but the iphone I had never felt as if it belonged to me, it felt as if I belonged to the phone.
- Grustaf 7y agoYes none of those are true now. The second one was never true as far as I know.
- atoav 7y agoYes, this was a few years ago, but at that point I had android phones that could do that, so it felt like a step back. And it might be the case that app switching was possible (I cant really remember) but either it didn’t convince me or I didn’t find out how it worked.
- NikkiA 7y ago> The second one was never true as far as I know. I think it was true in the very, very early days of the iPhone, where the only way to switch apps was to go home then tap on the app you wanted, internally it was switching between suspended apps, but to the user it felt like you were closing and opening a new app each time.
- baldfat 8y agoTell that to people who have to use a iPad for doing office work. I just switched jobs on April 1 and I want to throw this hunk of hot garbage away. Mouse and Keyboard are so much better for doing most things. iOS will be much friendlier to mouse and keyboard as more people are given iPads.
- mch82 8y agoGo get yourself an iMac Bluetooth keyboard. It’ll be full sized & work great with iOS.
- slewis 8y agoThis is your company’s fault, they chose the wrong tool for the job.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThey chose a "computer" just like the ad told them. It all reminds me of the ST:TNG episode where a space faring alien doesn't know how his technology works.
- Grustaf 7y agoI use my ipad for all work in my startup that does not require xcode, i much prefer it. The only thing except programming that I feel is worse on the ipad is Keynote, but I am not sure it has to be, it should be possible to make it as nice as the mac version.
- mensetmanusman 7y agoGet jump desktop, a Bluetooth mouse, and a pc to remote into :) that's what I do!
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoI agree. I think there are plenty of valid things to critique Apple for with regards to design (e.g. their odd fetish for thinness at all costs: battery life, a functional keyboard, and resistance to bending be damned), but picking on iOS usability vs. a PC is a bizarre choice.
- atoav 8y agoUsabilty depends on the problem you are trying to solve. If you wanna browse websites and do basic things IOS is easy. If you wanna backup your photos to a windows machine, things start to get hairy. If you want to do anything professional it takes a special kind of dedication to stay with IOS.
- Grustaf 7y agoYou need to look at iOS as a full solution. Of course it is not good at backing up to windows because there’s no need for that, all your photos are backed up to iCloud.
- atoav 7y agoSure, but then your mother comes with this picture print software she has on your computer and asks you to transfer the pics from her phone. Stuff like this should be simple. On android it is connecting the cable and copying the pics. The only reason you are not able to do this is, that Apple values lock-in over good design. And I do not trust a company with these values to store my pictures indefinitly, sorry.
- hpen 8y agoHave people learned nothing from the ape using instagram video? Someone should do a test on apes to compare ease of use between iOS and PC/macOS
- paulryanrogers 8y agoWould it be a fair comparison? What can be done _pratically_ with Instagram mobile, or any mobile platform, and a PC are different.
- hpen 8y agoSure, but there’s plenty of a areas of overlap. For example you could compare using a web app like Instagram on both devices
- Veen 8y agoI’ve heard user experience designers pushing for UI so simple that the least experienced human can use it, but making ape-friendliness the standard seems to be taking intuitive design a step too far.
- atoav 8y agoMy father changed to android after using ios for 6 generations of iphones. He is very bad with computers. After a week he told me: “Why didn’t you tell me I should use Android? This is so much better, it allows me to do the things I want!” Design is always about solving problems. Toddlers wiping screens is the equivalent of toddlers smearing paint. They explore, they don’t solve problems. IOS might be the better thing for a certain class of problems, but for other classes of problems it can become a burden very quickly, even to undemanding people like my father. Truly good design would grow with the user and give each person the level of control they need. OSX works much better in these regards IMO.
- Grustaf 7y agoI have never used Android, but could you tell me how it is more intuitive, or what it is that he wanted to do that he couldn’t on ios?
- atoav 7y agoThis was two years ago, so I cant recall precisely, but I remember he liked the contacts app more on android and he liked how switching running apps worked.
- kalleboo 8y agoiOS is far easier to use up until a certain point, at which the UI model breaks down when you can't fit more features into the UI. The best example of this is Undo. Shake to undo is the dumbest thing ever (well, dumbest aside from Google's "shake to leave feedback")
- zmb_ 8y agoLet me give you an example of where I think iOS is significantly worse than even the earliest graphical operating systems from Apple: Multitasking. The number one way I would want to use my iPad daily is to have it in portrait mode with a book or video on the top half and my note book on the bottom. This cannot be done. The only way to split the screen is side by side (which I have never found useful for anything), and only for a couple of predefined widths. Further, I had to go online to find out how any of that worked since it was completely undiscoverable for me. Even further, when switching between apps, they regularly lose state (e.g., Apple's Notes jumps to the top of the document so I have to scroll all the way down to continue). These issues make multitasking on iPad a completely frustrating experience for me. While all of these things were worked out in the very first multitasking graphical user interfaces, where multiple windows would just open and I could move and resize them at will.