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Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)

• krackers 7y ago
  I feel that for OSX, everything past Mavericks has been a downgrade. What's the point in having a beautiful hiDPI display if you're going to flatten all UI elements into a solid color?
  • charlesism 7y ago
    Everything past Snow Leopard. Lion was a disaster, and there is literally no feature I use that I prefer in any Mac OS created since then. What's more, the OS has become uglier and buggier. Edit: actually, I like the addition of Finder > Cut, and Finder > Rename. So, hey, there is something!
    • Lammy 7y ago
      For me, Panther (10.3) was the last release where every new feature or addition was something I wanted. Spotlight and Dashboard in Tiger (10.4) were dog slow on my G3 back in the day and got disabled immediately.
      • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        But if you’d had a faster machine, would you still have disabled Spotlight? I’d say Spotlight was a pretty big deal on the whole.
    • kohtatsu 7y ago
      Just picked up a 2008 MacBook with Snow Leopard (10.6). I can confirm all (95%?) the features I've grown to love about macOS and regarded as innovative human design are still there. Edit: I do however think iOS has been steadily improving, with some mild-moderate missteps. iOS 8 on my first 5s is a far cry from iOS 13.3 on the 11P. For comparison Snow Leopard was 2009, iOS 8 was 2014.
    • MiddleEndian 7y ago
      I agree. 10.7 was when I left the Mac platform. Sometimes I miss os x 10.6 but I'm not a fan of anything past that.
    • sombremesa 7y ago
      I really love sidecar.
    • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      Snow Leopard (10.6) also lacks batch file rename, automatic file versioning, full screen app support, trackpad gestures, and autosave. IMO that last one is huge—I remember losing many hours of work in Snow Leopard as a high school student, because whenever I got into the "zone" of writing I'd stop remembering to hit ⌘S. Lion (10.7) has all of these features—Apple added a lot in that release. And while Lion itself was a buggy mess, Mountain Lion (10.8) and Mavericks (10.9) are basically just Lion with stability fixes. I do prefer Snow Leopard aesthetically for it's higher contrast UI, but 10.7–10.9 are still well ahead of modern macOS in that respect, and there are even some individual visual elements I prefer in those versions, such as the Dock. Mavericks is my favorite release overall. Launchpad is stupid, and probably the first place where Apple really began to break OS X's internal consistency, but it can be hidden away easily enough. Yosemite (10.10) is where things got really bad. (Just for fun: Mavericks > Snow Leopard > Mountain Lion > High Sierra > Sierra > El Capitan > Mojave > Lion > Yosemite > Catalina)
      • techslave 7y ago
        autosave is awful when mandatory, as it is in FCPX. when optional, like Office, it’s great.
    • arvinsim 7y ago
      Gave my sister a Macbook Air to replace her crappy laptop. First thing she couldn't figure out is where the "cut" functionality is.
  • kirstenbirgit 7y ago
    I think the UI looks great on Retina displays. The main point for me is the smoother fonts. It's extremely crisp. I also loved the Windows 2000-style UI which was almost pixel perfect. I guess that's why I love Apple's new design direction.
• chrisseaton 7y ago
  Is anyone trying to back this up with a proper scientific study of whether users find it easier or harder to use? Seems just like opinion and debates about aesthetics otherwise? If I wanted to claim that JavaScriptCore was getting slower and I didn't post any data to back that up people would laugh me out of the conversation.
  • mihaaly 7y ago
    As long as we miss SI unit for the "hard to use" attribute we will have to fall back to user opinions and debates - and potential randomly constructed half cooked polls. The opinions and debates are not looking well for Apple though.
    • pvorb 7y ago
      You still could set up a study where you have tasks that users must complete and you get countable results. But this would quickly get expensive, so you need a sponsor. This could either be Apple, Google, or some other company in the market interested in making their opponent look bad. And I wouldn't take such a study for granted.
      • mihaaly 7y ago
        Not only expensive but making a comprehensive one that people actually finish is practically impossible. And there are many many further aspects that make the measurement non-reproducible - and so unreliable - or biased.
        • pvorb 7y ago
          Right. Like I said, the only parties interested in taking all that effort and that have enough money are probably Apple, Google or maybe Samsung. Independent companies won't go down that hole.
    • chrisseaton 7y ago
      > we will have to fall back to user opinions and debates So what's the point? If it's all just random subjective opinion why are we indulging in it? If you can't even demonstrate any issue in the first place then why bring it up?
• bitwize 7y ago
  Apple has fallen into the same trap that Microsoft has -- changing their UI not to advance the state of the art, but just for the sake of changing it so they have something new to sell.
  • threeseed 7y ago
    This comment makes no sense. Apple hasn't fundamentally changed the UI on iOS or OSX since the initial releases apart from say the iOS look & feel refresh and gestures to support iPhone X. And in the last few releases there have been almost no UI changes. It's actually one of the disappointments of the Apple platforms.
    • josteink 7y ago
      > Apple hasn't fundamentally changed the UI on iOS or OSX since the initial releases apart from say the iOS look & feel refresh and gestures to support iPhone X. So for the iPhone alone Apple has changed the 1. look and feel to be more “modern” (which means showing less accordances), 2. fashionably removed the very affordable home-button for no functional reason and 3. replaced it with non-discoverable, complex gestures. Pardon my math but to me that sounds like ignoring 3 core design-principles just to appear trendy and have something new to sell.
      • t34543 7y ago
        I’m increasingly frustrated with iOS 13 text selection, copy, and paste semantics. I had the first iPhone and I remember it was really good at selecting text. A far cry from the painful experience today. Rearranging icons is also pretty awful, it takes me multiple tries to move something into a folder and then rearrange said folder.
        • breatheoften 7y ago
          I came here just to say the same thing — Apple really needs to track the statistics on success rate for text selection ... “User Selected the text they wanted first try” “User Selected the text they wanted within 30 seconds” “User Selected the text they wanted within 1 minute” “User Failed to select the text they wanted” I hit that last case probably more than 30% of the time nowadays — and very often it’s not because the text representation on screen makes it impossible — but because it’s just fucking horrifically bad ui and I can’t select the text I’m interested it despite trying for frustratingly long amount of time. I hit categories 2 and 3 frequently when I really need to get the data selected — and that makes me want to throw my Apple iPhone into the sun ...
• scarface74 7y ago
  This article is just a rant without many concrete examples, studies, or suggestions for improvements.
  • criddell 7y ago
    My suggestion would be to just stop adding new features to iOS, macOS, Windows, etc... They are done and only need updates to add support for new hardware, fix bugs, reduce resource consumption, and close security holes.
    • scarface74 7y ago
      At least the Mac needs a few things. - a low power mode - a restricted data mode - a modern scripting interface , basically port Workflows to the Mac
      • colejohnson66 7y ago
        > - a modern scripting interface , basically port Workflows to the Mac What’s wrong with AppleScript? Genuine question as I don’t use macOS.
        • scarface74 7y ago
          AppleScript is like the uncanny valley of programming languages. It tries to be English like but it ends up being more verbose and trying to figure out the right syntax is obtuse. It’s also been around since the early 90s and was the spiritual successor to HyperTalk - which was much better because it had a smaller domain. Apple dismantled the original automation team (https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1359425 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1359425) years ago. Workflow is much more modern and is already partially ported to the Mac.
      • criddell 7y ago
        A low power mode feels like resource consumption improvements and a restricted data mode feels like a security improvement. Workflows doesn't need OS support beyond the current regular API, does it? On iOS at least, it was entirely a userspace program.
• meerita 7y ago
  Apple made a huge mistake when it launched iOS 7: it failed to improve its UI. I don't know if it was a matter of the best and most capable designers leaving the company or bad decisions by the managers, but the truth is that iOS 7 was never a good UI for iPhones, especially the biggest ones. There are many things that are missing that are obvious, such as being able to organize the icons on your Home screen as you wish like you can do in Android, and I suspect that many of the things that are excellently solved in Android's Material Design, at Apple can't because of patents. I think it all boils down to patents because I don't believe that a company like Apple has such a poorly designed operating system.
  • threeseed 7y ago
    Not sure why you are talking about iOS7 since it was released 7 years. But anyway the reason Apple doesn't allow for customisation of the home screen is because it adds complexity. And given they are trying to sell to people who are computer and technology illiterate you don't want complexity.
    • pcurve 7y ago
      I feel ios7 had lasting negative impact not just on ios, but also general usability on the web. Even Apple back peddled on some of its design decision in subsequent updates. iOS has gotten already too complex that I don't think avoiding complexity is a strong enough reason for not offering home screen customization.
    • meerita 7y ago
      Many of the problems started there: the departure of Forstall, Steve Jobs getting so sick and dying, departure of many important roles at Apple and moving Ive to the head of design in the digital part, in my opinion brang the company to a disadvantadged position. In opposite, Google moved quickly and cleanest with Material Design taking Android phones to a new level Apple couldn't reach. Nowadays iPhones are the minority in every market.
    • miffy900 7y ago
      Compare iOS 7 to iOS 13 and despite the time that separates them, are still very similar, but compare iOS 13 to iOS 6 and the difference is night and day. iOS 7 is still pertinent to bring up when talking about iOS software usability because they changed so much in one version; much of the changes in iOS 7 set the direction for future iOS versions, and for better or worse, those iOS versions have inherited iOS 7's design language. I always wonder what iOS 13 would look like if they didn't dump iOS 6's design so thoroughly.
• spectramax 7y ago
  One of the biggest gripes I have with modern UI (both Apple and Android) is animation times. Try exporting an image from Dropbox app to Photos app on the iPhone. There are so many animations that take up precious time. Do it 10 times and you're tired. I feel like designers today want "sleekness" more because it sells when people look at it. Ohh...look at that shiny animation, so impressive. I want instant actions at the expense of not knowing where something poped-up from. This is usually the case made by designers that animations help you understand the "Context" of where something came from. I feel like this needs to be toned down a bit. UI would feel 1000% faster.
  • tinus_hn 7y ago
    Oh I’m so tired! Too tired to find the switch that turns off the animations if they bother you so much.
  • tqkxzugoaupvwqr 7y ago
    An easy solution for developers would be to decrease the animation duration the more often a feature is used. But I have yet to see this approach in the wild.
• afandian 7y ago
  I remember as a child showing my mother how to do stuff on our family Mac with OS 7.5 and being baffled that she didn't 'get' the UI. A decade ago I wrote some Cocoa stuff and read the HIG religiously. Now I'm in my 30s. I can't work out how to do stuff on my iPhone (Android makes perfect sense). mac OS, of which I have used every major version of since 6, is starting to break with the mental model I understand and is becoming slowly less usable to me. Suddenly I feel old.
  • redleggedfrog 7y ago
    I don't know if android is immune anymore. The latest update to my tablet dispensed with the labels on the desktop icons and I didn't figure out how to get them back. It's a sad state of affairs across the board.
    • krtkush 7y ago
      > The latest update to my tablet dispensed with the labels on the desktop icons Try using a third party launcher, maybe? Nova is a great alternative.
      • jrobn 7y ago
        LOL, this is exactly the problem. You shouldn’t have to download a third party launcher, desktop, app screen to use the device efficiently. I think iOS and Android are both shit shows. I pick up an android device and it’s a pain in the ass to figure out. That’s terrible design. iOS seems to break their own rules and hide more and more in the name of minimalism. It’s asinine. 3D Touch was moronic. More than three gestures is moronic. Context sensitive swipes off the screen are moronic. All of this became abundantly clear seeing my 77 year old grandma, who used a old android phone for years, have so many WTF moments on iOS 13. It’s not clear what is a button. She accidentally gestures and thinks her phone is busted.
        • InvaderFizz 7y ago
          My father literally can not send an iMessage without triggering "gentle effect." It has been highly annoying getting that every time he sends a message for the past three years with no way of disabling it.
• rahuldottech 7y ago
  Previous threads from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10559387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10559387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932
• hs86 7y ago
  I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like 10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about their latest iPad gestures for multitasking or text editing. On the computer I have visible menus where I can peek the shortcut for each action but is there anything like that on i(Pad)OS? Just adding more and more gestures without giving the user some intuitive hints/signifiers seems like a degradation of usability. The scrollbar tells me that there is more to show and auto-hiding it was a first step into the wrong direction. I am glad that Android got rid of the dedicated menu button which only worked in very special places without showing any on-screen indication for its availability and I feel like the Option key on Macs is still hiding important things from their users. The now deprecated(?) 3D Touch on iPhones also seems to suffer from this issue. I was expecting some sort of visual clues to the user (like differently colored buttons) that certain elements offered special actions with a harder press but instead the 3D Touch-enabled elements continued to look the same and mostly the tech-savvy users kept up with where this feature was enabled and where not.
  • Hackbraten 7y ago
    > Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible. This appears to be fixed on iOS 13. Actions are now arranged vertically. The app bar above the actions still scrolls horizontally but it now hints at that by cutting off icons.
    • wlesieutre 7y ago
      Now due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut-off list items to the bottom, people have no idea that scrolling vertically is possible https://tyler.io/perfectly-cropped/ https://tyler.io/perfectly-cropped/ But at least we've rotated the problem by 90 degrees :P
      • 7y ago
• rmoriz 7y ago
  As an iOS user since late 2008 I recently tried to use GarageBand on my iPhone 8+ - it was such a non-intuitive nightmare. (Actually, I just wanted to create a custom ringtone out of an song fragment. It was the most epic fail I've ever had on a macOS and an iOS device).
• heavenlyblue 7y ago
  You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond iOS, but also websites including Slack. E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version, feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?". What I want is a piece of software that doesn't change. Or when it changes, it doesn't notify me of it - it just keeps working until I find enough time to actually go on my own journey of discovery. I am not-so-subtly exhausted by every single half-capable developer spoon-feeding me their "new features". I've downloaded your app because of the features it _had_ - I mostly don't care about what you add later on.
  • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    I could not agree more. This is also what really bothers me about Windows 10. Notably in that case, Microsoft makes an enterprise version of Windows 10 called LTSC/LTSB, where you get security updates but never feature updates. Unless you're a huge enterprise, they'll refuse to sell to you.
    • fortran77 7y ago
      1. You can buy LTSC with as few as 5 licenses. And they don't all have to be for Windows. If you need 5 MS licenses of anything you can get it. Don't spread misinformation https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/bbof9s/windows_10_enterprise_ltsc_what_are_the_purchase/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/bbof9s/windows_10... 2. You really don't want LTSC on your desktop.
      • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        The link you gave makes it sound like it's a huge hassle to get LTSC as an individual, which is what I'd read in the past. You need to go through a reseller and provide details about your business. > You really don't want LTSC on your desktop. Because why? I have used LTSC, and it is in fact exactly what I want on all my Windows computers. It's just normal Windows 10 except without the Windows Store†, and with a Debian-esque update model. † And there are ways to add the Windows Store back in, if you really want it.
• Havoc 7y ago
  Yeah.still haven't figured out the odd diagonal new ios13 swipes. Esp since second phone is still on ios12.
• stretchwithme 7y ago
  One of the biggest time wasting annoyances Apple has created is the touch bar virtual escape key. I'm triggering it constantly. How did they not know this was a problem before they brought it to market? Thankfully, they're going back to a real escape key in the latest MacBook Pro. And what happened to the backlit Apple on the lid? Another sacrifice to the god of thinness? Like getting rid of the Kensington security slot. My first MacBook had that and I used it with a cable lock in coffee shops. Also sacrificed to eliminate size and weight, I suppose.
  • lostgame 7y ago
    The lack of haptic feedback is the most confusing. And that it’s not a Retina display while the screen is, that’s baffling.
  • matthuggins 7y ago
    As a developer, the Touch Bar as a whole is trash. I want to type without looking at the keyboard, and now I suddenly always have to look at the keyboard. Accidentally pressing the escape key is just one of many issues I have with that "feature".
    • stretchwithme 7y ago
      I really doubt Steve Jobs would have given the touch bar a green light.
• matthew-wegner 7y ago
  New gestures introduced in iOS 13: Copy: three-finger pinch Cut: three-finger double pinch Paste: three-finger pinch out (expand) Undo: three-finger swipe left (or three-finger double tap) Redo: three-finger swipe right Shortcut menu: three-finger single tap
  • dmitriid 7y ago
    While doing all that they broke "slide finger across screen to move cursor easily"
    • manicdee 7y ago
      Now that's press and hold on the keyboard to move the cursor without your finger being in the way so you can never figure out where the cursor is going to land in "teh".
      • dmitriid 7y ago
        You could always figure that out thanks to the maginfication you had. The took that away
        • manicdee 7y ago
          For me the magnifier didn’t help since the cursor would always move as I lifted my finger.
  • zik 7y ago
    I would never guess any of those gestures. It's very much the opposite of intuitive.
  • veddox 7y ago
    I was really excited to see multitasking coming with iPadOS 13. Unfortunately, it turns out to be absolutely horrible to use and insists on turning itself on with annoying regularity...
  • 7y ago
• mellowdream 7y ago
  I've wanted to like Apple's way of doing things for years - Unix-like and support for MS Office, "ecosystem" integration - but every time I've used their products I've returned them or passed them off to my family members hoping they'd get more use out of them. Nowadays, I get more questions than ever asking for help on how to do X Y or Z thing that seems really trivial on Android/Linux/Windows systems (like copying files without iTunes/iCloud, a frustration I remember dealing with even almost 10 years ago). It's now to the point where I just recommend 3rd party apps and alternatives for basic utilities for Apple's macOS and iOS to my family.
  • paulie_a 7y ago
    I've passed off excessive tech support calls for a few people by suggesting they get a Mac. Not because it's easier to use, I really doubt that is true anyways. But for the simple reason I don't know how to use them being an Android, Linux and Windows guy. The calls went away fast. I first started doing that when the bosses wife called me at 12:30 at night and had the audacity to expect me to do a home visit to help her.
  • wayneftw 7y ago
    I never got how people could even get past Mac window management or rather lack of window management. They've never had a Maximize function and they always pushed that stupid Zoom functionality instead, which every window implements differently. Then they moved onto making Full Screen the default which I find utterly frustrating as I wait for some junior programmer, who chose a Macbook, swiping furiously to find that lost window. Many other times, they'll put the pointer too close to the top of a full screen window and window chrome will expand downwards to get in their way. And that's just one tiny facet of a single set of features that they got terribly wrong. There's so many other things wrong with Macs, macOS, iPhones and iOS... I could go on for hours and hours detailing these things. Despite all of that, like you, I will happily recommend a Mac to beginners because they do have system stability down to a science. I also use an iPhone and I recommend them to everyone since they're just safer and more secure than Android as far as I have seen. I'm hoping one day I can stop giving Apple money though because I don't want to support their shit attitude towards power users. I used to only buy used iPhones, but now I stay about 2 or 3 models behind their current offering (and I buy them at a deep discount - my new iPhone 8 was only $350 with no contract from Boost Mobile which works just great for my needs). I'm really hoping my iPhone 8 will be my last iPhone because the task switching shortcut for the newer home button-less iPhones is very finicky from what I can tell experimenting in stores. Maybe they'll bring the home button back one day or I'll finally switch back to some other mobile OS.
• atraktor 7y ago
  They made lot "invisible" improvements in 10.15 (apfs is finished, kern speedup, metal, ml, fonts on 4k etc..) but not sure about this iOS look on my MacBookPro, Now my os look like web page from '98. Way too flat. Icons are broken on toolbar, hated how it looks. Suggestion: 1. One Pro OSX version for Pro users (cut all services that eat ram and can be security hole) and add more options for advanced users. 2. Cut price around $800 or if you can cut more without damage in "real" performance and quality. Because not all apps use all power anyway. 3. And most important, fix broken flat UI, find balance. We have lot talented designers without job. 4. Don't break old apps with new update, find way for LTS. MacOS is still my favourite BSD distro and mac from 2013/15 is perfect HW. So, if you do not know how to improve it, then keep what works and what users like or ask.
• at_a_remove 7y ago
  Fearing (correctly) that the laptop I had refurbished for my mother was soon to die, I bought her an iPad. She is not in any way computer literate and dislikes change. Surely, I thought, they would have some "cheat sheets" available to boil down the basics. I bought a few on Amazon and found them to be either insufficient or crowded with esoterica. So I set about making a set of laminated cheat sheets of my own, with a consistent design, using screenshots of all of the applications I had installed, and so on. One points out all of the buttons on the iPad, another one shows the different screens, and a third was a diagram of common gestures. Finding the gesture list itself was ... well, quite a bit harder than I thought it ought to be. Everything seems opaque. I am reminded of one of those escape room puzzles where one must painstakingly iterate through an array of taps, drags, swipes against each and every corner, edge and pixel. It seems that one must flail about against all of the idols, oh, I'm sorry, icons, hoping that one of the motions I have just performed will propitiate the gods. Watch for signs. It seems, from my vantage, that learning the Apple Way was done with the very first Apple products and that now there is an expectation that everyone has been following along all this time. Certainly, that was my experience with my first smartphone, the iPhone SE. I was constantly having to look up how to do the smallest things and hoping that the information I found was not outdated. I also had to pester other Apple users for tips. My high school computer science teacher would be appalled at the lack of forthrightness. While I think I did an alright job with the cheat sheets, she never did use that iPad much.
  • pcurve 7y ago
    The sad part is, it doesn't have to be that way. The problem is, the gesture metaphor is deeply rooted in manipulation of window pane of desktop based OS, which normally has menu bar and controls. What does iOS lack? Both. Most gesture-based controls are torturous workaround the absence. I have new ipad and it pains me to look at this cheat sheet. https://www.cnet.com/how-to/16-gestures-that-will-make-you-love-using-your-ipad/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/16-gestures-that-will-make-you-l...
  • Tempest1981 7y ago
    Would you mind sharing your cheat sheets? I know others who might benefit.
• nif2ee 7y ago
  Apple is just a cult. if Steve Jobs was great at anything, he knew how to create a cult and then the money will follow. It's not about engineering, design, users or any bullshit you see in the ads, press, your annoying friends shilling, etc.. . It's pointless to argue with cult believers. Cults are only removed with new cults.
• aledthemathguy 7y ago
  "The fonts are pleasant to the eye, but difficult to read". Felt joy seeing someone who actually worked for Apple says this.
• Tempest1981 7y ago
  Has anyone tried the free "Getting Started" sessions that Apple offers, when you buy a device? (Edit: I think they're online. In-store would be easier to learn the UI.) Although you probably need an annual refresher. Edit2: https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/06/apple-offers-30-minute-online-training-sessions-to-iphone-x-purchasers https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/06/apple-offers-30-m...
  • Someone 7y ago
    I think you mean the user guides. - https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados - https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios
• cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  When Jobs came back to Apple, and continuing after his passing, there seems to have been a conscious decision away from "the computer for the rest of us" (aka 'entry level' 'easy' computer, and thus hard to sell to the aspirational) branding to various forms of luxury branding. The point of the UI in the iOS and OS X era is not so much to be easy to use, but to provide a consistent luxurious experience. A kind of marketing sheen -- like the styling of the interior of a BMW or Mercedes -- more than a UX approach.
  • perl4ever 7y ago
    I think that an opaque interface actually helps sell a luxury product and making it more difficult is intentional and strategic up to a point. A lot of features on, say, a BMW don't actually improve the experience, like say soft-closing doors or automatic wipers. But what they do is they constantly remind you that you have a luxury product while you are getting used to it, and after you have gotten used to it, you are constantly reminded if you drive anything else, because your reflexes and expectations are tuned for the "special" way of doing things. It's a way to inhibit people from switching to a competitor, but of course it's possible to go too far. People joke about BMW drivers not using their turn signals, and as it happens, the traditional turn signals on their car work quite differently than on other cars, so quite likely many drivers simply never figured them out. Recently they have changed them to work the same way as on Japanese cars. "Good" design is insufficient for aspirational/luxury products in general, because you can get it on mid-range products and incrementally higher pricing can't pay for substantially better design. So anything for the high end has to be ostentatiously or subtly different.
• microtheo 7y ago
  I just made the move from Android 10 to iOS 13. I was shocked how complicated the process was. Not saying that one is more intuitive than the other. But man... No back button. The password manager didn’t integrate well. The keyboard didn’t adapt to the language I was typing in. Parameters were hidden in the settings app but sometimes also in the app itself. Force touch is impossible to predict without trying it (actionable notifications). The cloud is incompatible (I lost my WhatsApp history). The lock screen and the notification panel look the same but don’t show the same information (some notifications only show up in the nOtification panel). What the hell... the notification panel looks like the lock screen... Some control are stuck on an inaccessible and not obvious corner (abort the reorganization mode of main app starting panel). I felt a bit stupid and understood the frustration of my 70 year old mother trying to learn how to use an iPhone. How am I supposed to explain it to her if it doesn’t make sense to me? Nothing in the tech is really intuitive unless you truly know the product. I felt hopeless and a bit depressed for y couple of days. Thank god the hardware is gorgeous and the product feels great! :)
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    > No back button. Swipe from the left edge of the screen, or tap the chevron in the top left. > The lock screen and the notification panel look the same but don’t show the same information (some notifications only show up in the nOtification panel). The lock screen hides historical notifications. You can scroll down to see them.
    • microtheo 7y ago
      I’m sure I’ll get used to it, those were first impressions. Controls aren’t as visible as they used to be. Thanks for the tip with the lock screen!
• iamleppert 7y ago
  iOS was never designed to be a general computing platform. It was designed to be minimalist mobile consumption only and light interaction. You can tell this in the original iOS which lacked multi-tasking completely. Only later was it shoe-horned in (along with undo, copy/paste, the concept of a cursor, etc) The result of what we have now has been an iterative journey, the product of a bunch of user requests who insist on trying to create the same experience on a mobile phone with limited and far different interaction modalities. At a certain point, you need to know when to stop and just open up your laptop rather than cursing something that was never originally designed for the task you’re trying to accomplish. Right tool for the right job!
  • Yabood 7y ago
    Or perhaps Apple wanted to get the iPhone out to the market quickly, so they kept multitasking, copy/paste, and other features for later iterations.
  • arvinsim 7y ago
    Kinda like HTML. Original purpose was just to show documents. Now we have to shoehorn Javascript and CSS so that we can make apps to it.
• draklor40 7y ago
  Went to jnd.org on my 14" thinkpad. Thin, small grey fonts on white background, makes me want to tear out my own eyeballs. Eat your dogfood, perhaps ?
  • jeen02 7y ago
    > 14" thinkpad That would make me cry too.
    • draklor40 7y ago
      the thinkpad?
• boiler_up800 7y ago
  Disagree with this wholeheartedly. iOS is the only platform I used which seems to make regular usability upgrades. Not new features but actual workflow improvements. I used iOS to get 70% of my work done and it all works together very nicely. You might call me a technical user though. I watch all the keynotes and learn to use the new/different features.
• FpUser 7y ago
  I have a desktop Windows only product that I sell (10s of thousands of clients). It does not have the most eye pleasing UI design but it is very functional and ergonomic. All possible actions are clearly visible and / or discoverable. And every action can be accessed in less clicks then in any of competitor's products. I actually get some praises for it. Still every once in a while I get support email telling me that the product sucks "cause it is ugly". Most of those complaining were Apple users who installed a product using Parallels. One of the emails actually was written by pro UX designer (at least this is who the author claimed to be). This got me curios to find out what is really wrong in my GUI that irritates some users so I asked for short interview on Skype/Phone. We had a discussion. Among the things he showed me the example of light gray text on white background and told me that is very eye pleasing an mine are too contrast. For fuck sake I could not read the example he showed to me without glasses and when I complained he said that the beauty trumps usability/ergonomics. I just bailed out. Maybe he is right but I'll stick to what I believe works.
  • jiofih 7y ago
    > beauty trumps usability/ergonomics. That can not possibly come from a UI designer. Usability is always first, and it’s possible to make it look good while maintaining a11y/usability properties.
    • Stratoscope 7y ago
      Oh, it could easily come from some of the UI designers I've worked with in the past who followed modern design fads, especially regarding text: • Contrast is bad and hard on the eyes. The less contrast the better. • Decorative fonts with font-weight: 300 are better than ordinary normal weight fonts designed for readability. • It's better to have a small font with a lot of extra line-height instead of just making the font bigger.
    • pathseeker 7y ago
      >Usability is always first There are a lot of UI designers that missed that memo.
  • 7y ago
• amelius 7y ago
  I remember having to install standard system software updates through iTunes. In windows you have to press the "start" button to shutdown the machine, but in iOS you have to open a music player to upgrade your OS (or at least, it used to be the case). Which is worse?
• bondolo 7y ago
  The Apple Mail client in iOS 13 has terrible half-thought out UX. Open a message you get a bar on the bottom with a trash icon and a reply icon. It is laid out for right handed users only with both icons on the right side. The icons are adjacent and the delete operation requires no confirmation. The reply action is actually the menu for all of the mail actions. Why it is reply icon rather than the more common "…" ellipses icon when it does not actually reply? Besides being extremely buggy, the UI for the new Reminders app is even worse. I can't imagine the iOS 13 UI would do well in user testing at all. I can only assume they didn't do user testing.
• alien_ 7y ago
  I don't have much to complain about the usability of the software, but they are making hardware that should not be made. I'm the unfortunate user of a MacBook Pro company laptop with 8GB RAM and just two USB-C ports. This sort of hardware should not be made anymore. The memory is insufficient (my laptop is always paging) and the USB-C is forcing me to always carry a dongle, not to mention that just two is not enough considering that one of them is used for the power cable. It really feels like the people who designed this laptop never actually had to use it. I wish they would be forced to use it for a while to get a feeling of how crappy it is, so they stop making such terrible hardware anymore.
  • techslave 7y ago
    nobody that knows better is buying this spec hardware. it is made to satisfy purchasing departments. i’m sure it’s fine for word or google docs users that want to feel like they have an elite (“pro”) laptop so it also ticks that box. rather than be upset that it is made, be upset that you had this spec hardware forced on you by your company policy.
    • arvinsim 7y ago
      > nobody that knows better is buying this spec hardware. He literally showed you that some companies do buy that spec.
• TYPE_FASTER 7y ago
  Just like the original Mac OS became complex as the hardware and software added features, smartphones now are feature-rich computers. Part of me misses the early gen iPhones because of the simplicity. I’m not really sure what the solution is, aside from swiping left and searching. Or Alfred on Mac OS, or the search bar in Win 10.
• amiga_500 7y ago
  I just do not understand apple. I have an iphone through work. I have no choice. In a text box if I misspell a word, such as impaitant, I cannot go to the middle of that word and delete 'ti' and replace with 'it'. On their file browser if the file name is long the middle is truncated with '...' and if i hold down my finger on the file to see 'info', that too has the truncated name, despite it being the only file name on the screen. There are many other frustrations. It's inferior to Android. Yes the privacy thing is better, but most aren't buying for that. Itunes was horrible also. Apple make terrible software. I am frequently annoyed by their un-intuitive interface. Seems to me apple are really good at advertising and people cannot think.
  • siquick 7y ago
    >> In a text box if I misspell a word, such as impaitant, I cannot go to the middle of that word and delete 'ti' and replace with 'it'. If you hold your finger on the textbox it should turn into a cursor which you can drag to the required position to make the edits.
    • amiga_500 7y ago
      This is not intuitive. Why can't I just press on the middle of the word?!
    • Zarath 7y ago
      Or just highlight the word and a spelling correction will be suggested, or just use the backspace when you make the mistake instead of continuing to type.
      • amiga_500 7y ago
        Thought of another one in the same spirit: never mistype a word. And never use a word that is not in the dictionary!
    • amiga_500 7y ago
      I tried this. It's dreadful.
• dkarl 7y ago
  Undo on iOS manages to be ineffective and embarrassing at the same time. I give the phone one good shake, feeling like I'm playing D&D, rolling for a saving throw or whatever. Maybe you roll a good number, maybe you don't. It's embarrassing to pay so much money and still feel like you're begging and the technology is deciding whether to work for you or not. I know from spending enough time around people using iPhones in public that the vast majority of the population has decided it's too awkward and attention-getting to be worth trying at all. Being old, married, and less susceptible to embarrassment, I do give it that one shake, and sometimes it works.
• cletus 7y ago
  First I'll say that accumulated knowledge counts for a lot here. There's a vast difference between someone starting to use these devices now and someone who started 10 years ago who slowly adds to their repertoire of knowledge. This, I think, is why I personally find Android devices so incredibly hard to use. I don't have 5-10 years of built up knowledge on how to use them and they seem utterly unintuitive to me. I also think the multiple hardware buttons were a huge mistake. I really do think though that Apple has really suffered without having Steve Jobs to say "no" to Johnny Ive as a lot of the bad ideas of the last 5-8 years I don't think ever would've gotten passed Steve Jobs and seem to have the user less in mind and seem solely aimed at increasing ASP (average selling price) of various product lines. Examples: - Force Touch. This added weight and cost to devices for a feature that had no discoverability and was used inconsistently by developers. This from a company that for decades eschewed a second mouse button for lack of discoverability. I honestly think this never would've gotten passed Steve. - The 12" Macbook with _one_ port. So began the dongle blues. This was a terrible design that was an ode to thinness that had Johnny Ive's fingerprints all over it. Compare it to the 2011-2015 era Macbook Air, which was a fantastic device and a nice compromise between price, weight and power. The 12" Macbook shows what happens when you solely optimize for one metric: thinness. And it wasn't good. - The 2015+ butterly keyboard. Absolutely terrible. A rare reversal by Apple to ditch it in the 16" MBP. - The Touch Bar. A great example of a solution looking for a problem. Again, the motivation seemed to be to drive up MBP ASPs. - Face ID. This one actually works OKish on a phone but is awful on an iPad. It's also an accessibility nightmare as anyone who is visually impaired has to move the phone further away to get the right field of view for Face ID to work. What I'd give for Touch ID back. Also the false negative rate on Face ID is really high. This one is motivated by making the full front face of the phone a screen by getting rid of the home button. I'd really like a fingerprint sensor on the back (like a Galaxy S9 I tried to use for 5 months had). Apple claims the false positive rate was too high,. I call bollocks on that. And that should be my choice. But getting rid of the (great) home button now creates a UX problem. How do you get to the home screen? Well, you swipe up of course. But wait, which direction you swipe from depends on the orientation of the app you're using, which isn't always clear. Some apps auto-rotate orientation and some don't. You know what always worked? Pressing Home. - USB-C. Not only was this a loss of MagSafe (/cry) but we moved from a world of where if the plug fits, it works to a world where every plug fits and nothing works because it's now based on what the cable is designed to do and there's no visibility to that. Some carry power, some don't. Some carry data, some don't. The amount of power or data they can carry can vary. Do they carry a video signal? Maybe. No cable can do everything. - I think the current version of copy/paste on iOS is decidedly worse than the original version, probably because the unintended gestures that now exist. - The other day I couldn't move a tab on Safari on an iPad without iOS thinking I wanted to split screen. I still don't understand split screen gestures and the fact that I get this as unintended behaviour is an indictment of the implementation.
• talkingtab 7y ago
  Some where, some place in the past, I read that Ford had made a very successful car, maybe the Sable, but was unable to figure out why or how it happened. Apple made things of beauty - but it seems now that they do not understand why or how they did that. If it wasn't so sad it would be funny. Personally, I believe that Apple products used to be works of art that were the result of a combination of talents and skills orchestrated by a master artist. Now they are just products.
• reedx8 7y ago
  My biggest gripe is how ridiculous bluetooth connection is on iPhones. Apple for some dumb reason decided to remove headphone jack before making Bluetooth connections easy and convenient. How does this make any sense? It still is bad - long pressing bluetooth button still takes multiple steps and is buggy (doesn't register, or long pressing leads to mistakenly pressing on the following pop up screen listing the available connections). There should've been software/interface changes before ever even thinking to make hardware changes (removing headphone jack).
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
  Glad to see Don Norman getting some attention. I’ve always liked him. The Design of Everyday Things should, IMO, be required reading for anyone that designs anything. I think that Tog feels similarly. When OSX came out, he wrote a polemic, slamming the Dock.
• eloop 7y ago
  I think this trend is seen in many areas, e.g. architecture and landscape design that looks and sounds great in a magazine but is actively hostile to humans. Products vying for the attention of a society obsessed with the latest shiny thing. Is Apple catering for the market, or creating the market?
• mkchoi212 7y ago
  I agree with most of the stuff the author is mentioning. But i think most of his points only apply to large devices (iPads, and Macs). Small devices such as iPhones and Apple Watches are so limited in their screen real-estate that helpful UI decisions - e.g. putting labels next to cryptic icons - will only clutter up the UI, making the user even more distracted.
• xnhbx 7y ago
  On MacOs, the behavior of Home/End/PageUp/PageDown (or Cmd/Fn + Left/Right/Up/Down), and further on, combined with Ctrl/Shift, varies dramatically across different apps. I can never predict what will happen when I press these keys on the first acquaintance of any random app. It's never been a problem on Windows.
• tjr225 7y ago
  I just inherited a 2009 MacBook 13" Pro from a family member. It has 2 gb of ram and a hard drive, which I plan to upgrade for about 50$. Note that it is trivial to upgrade these things. Even without these upgrades it works fine. I have a 2013 MacBook Pro that I bought refurbished during undergrad that has been the best computer that I've ever had. I prefer both to my work computer, a Touch Bar 13" MacBook Pro. In fact I suspect the 2009 will become my daily driver soon. Making a solid computer that lasts over a decade doesn't erode Apples profits- in fact I suspect this opposite is true. It is the same reason Toyota is the biggest auto mfg there is. Imagine if the newest Camry was unreliable or something.
• LemonAndroid 7y ago
  What about their password reset? Does it take several weeks? For every user?
• lostgame 7y ago
  The massive amounts of white empty space in iOS 7+ makes me long for the skeuomorphic days. The dark theme helped, but should have been an option since day one. Pre iOS 13, the sheer amounts of white space drove me nuts. And why did they remove visible UIButtons? I miss the real days of iOS.
  • hamhand 7y ago
    Windows 10 too, it tries too hard to look chic. I've tried many it many times but I always return to 7. And the font is just always blurry, I guess you either use 4K display or don't use 10.
  • bluegreyred 7y ago
    Apple's hardware recently improved by reverting some changes done over the last few years. Many attribute this to the departure of a certain designer that was also in charge of iOS 7, so I feel like there’s hope.
  • dep_b 7y ago
    > And why did they remove visible UIButtons? I miss the real days of iOS. As a developer that meant a ton of work to fix the UI of my existing apps. Just a floating blue word instead of a real button. You used to just drag a UIButton into Interface Builder and call it a day, the current default is super confusing.
• bbarn 7y ago
  There's one key difference in modern, big company software, vs. the software of yesteryear, in my opinion - 20 years ago, most software was written by people who would use the software. Today, software is written and designed by people completely disconnected from the user, or, in the case of things like apple, people whose status as a designer matters more (legitimately) than what they design.
  • nineparts 7y ago
    This is the case with most of open source software. Three notable cases: 1. GIMP, which is unusable to such a degree that somebody actually decided to make a version with a decent interface, called GIMPshop... what happened to GIMPshop you can only guess [1]. 2. LibreOffice which is much much worse interface-wise than Apache OpenOffice, although hyper-aggressively promoted. That being said, neither of them are even remotely capable of licking the knee of Microsoft Office. 3. systemd, which "suddenly" found its way in all distributions, even though it goes against everything that GNU/Linux or Unix-like philosophy represents. All this makes me think that unusable interfaces are an intentional "feature" of "some" software. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190608205114/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop https://web.archive.org/web/20190608205114/https://en.wikipe...
    • cycloptic 7y ago
      I actually think the real problem with those is the exact opposite. Those projects were initially hacked together for their own specific workflow, and are now going through the "growing pains" of becoming popular and somewhat ubiquitous. On GIMP: There have been various forks throughout the years led by various groups of artists, but they have typically been very hacky. Currently the Glimpse fork is planning to do a redesign of the UI. On Libreoffice: This is the result of the split from Oracle -- the project is now driven by consultants and ISVs. It works if you're willing to pay one of those or become one yourself. If you pay $0 and expect to get a perfect clone of MS Office then you will be disappointed. On systemd: The design seems to be heavily inspired by the "giant ball of C" design that is already used by the Linux kernel. I would argue that GNU/Linux in general is too decentralized to have an overarching philosophy. From my perspective as someone who does UI on open source projects, ultimately a lot of the high-level problems come down to lack of resources. It's hard to find good designers who are willing to contribute to open source, and it's expensive to put together a focus group to gather feedback. The typical corporate methods of gathering telemetry and doing A/B testing are not really useful to any of those projects you mentioned.
• guuguuguu 7y ago
  I switched to Android after 5 years of iOS. Here are the reasons: 1. The price, no explanation needed. 2. Short of functionalities, such as split screen and Miracast. 3. Browser, android Firefox can install adblocker.
• Razengan 7y ago
  The iPad was my gateway into the Apple orchard. I had never purchased an Apple product until about a decade ago, when I got the first Retina iPad as a gift for someone who didn’t use computers. I was so impressed by how intuitive the device and OS was for them, that I installed macOS in a VM on Windows to try iOS development. I fell in love with macOS (back during Lion) shortly before getting my first MacBook and leaving Windows forever behind, never to return. Fast forward to a month ago. I purchased one of the newer low-end iPads as another gift for someone else who didn’t use computers. It was depressing. The setup process was kinda annoying. No, we don’t want Apple Pay, thank you. I had to enter the Apple/iCloud account credentials multiple times at different points before it stopped asking me to sign in again. There were a lot of bugs in the system UI and the preinstalled apps. I had to disable the multitasking gestures because they would be confusing for a new user. They have removed labels for the Dock icons with no way to restore them, so I had to keep apps with less obvious icons out of the Dock, so they could have labels. Because a flower for photos is not a connection that many people can intuitively make. I had to explain that dragging down from the right corner of the top edge brings up the brightness control. Dragging down from anywhere else on the top edge brings up the notifications. Dragging down on a blank part of the home screen’s background, away from edges, brings up the search bar. Fuck.
  • JohnTHaller 7y ago
    Oh, you want to updates your apps? That's easy. Open up the App Store and then click on your profile picture. Wait, what?
    • kccqzy 7y ago
      Hold the App Store icon until a menu appears. Choose "Updates" and done. I'm not defending Apple here. I only accidentally discovered this shortcut. I feel that designers these days expect users to explore a lot of things out of blind faith in order to discover functionality.
      • rogy 7y ago
        only works if you know where your app store icon is. i dont use the icons from the launcher screens anymore, everything goes in one folder bar the 'sticky apps' find it much faster to just pull down and search for apps
• DonHopkins 7y ago
  The original Mac would pop up a dialog with a threatening icon of a bomb with a lit fuse, whenever it crashed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_(icon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_(icon) >The Bomb icon is a symbol designed by Susan Kare that was displayed inside the System Error alert box when the "classic" Macintosh operating system (pre-Mac OS X) had a crash which the system decided was unrecoverable. It was similar to a dialog box in Windows 9x that said "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." Since the classic Mac OS offered little memory protection, an application crash would often take down the entire system. Unfortunately, the Mac's error dialog could cause naive users to jump up out of their seat and run away from the computer in terror, because they though it was going to explode! And Window's error message was just as bad: it could cause naive users to fear they might get arrested for accidentally doing something illegal!
  • Dylan16807 7y ago
    > Unfortunately, the Mac's error dialog could cause naive users to jump up out of their seat and run away from the computer in terror, because they though it was going to explode! '''could'''?
• kirstenbirgit 7y ago
  Interestingly, they criticise Apple's choice of OS font, but he's using the default system font on his blog.
• hetspookjee 7y ago
  After a lifetime use of Android and Windows I switched a month ago to Catalina MacOS, as my very first mac experience. The experience has been amazing so far, at the moment of unlocking I instantly fell in love with the instantness of the logging in. On windows this will, always, take atleast 1 second of black screen. While I am relatively up to speed with most basic things of this OS, I must admit that I severely underestimated the scope of change. All the tiny things, like copy pasting a snipping tool screenshot into a chat, or just saving a file to a certain location, need another approach. I enormously miss the omnipowerful CTRL x/c/v combination windows had, and I still have a hard time teaching my motorics to differ between the CTRL and CMD and OPTION when manipulating the cursor. Also the WINDOWS LOGO BUTTON + arrow keys, to move screens around the display is missing and I need to buy an App for that. The price seemed to be around 8eu for a 2 year license but I'd wager that'd be pretty default behavior for an OS - even Ubuntu has it. Though it's somewhat refreshing to buy an app and knowing you're not still the product, but I expected to be their either way. Overall I really do love the experience on Mac and I think that in a year's time I am above and beyond my productivity on Windows. Also one thing I'd like to commend Apple for is the readability of their privacy policy regarding their use of data for advertising.
  • nagVenkat 7y ago
    Look at spectacle for snapping windows to left half right half etc.
• rogual 7y ago
  The silver lining is, now that we've all lived through Apple's Jobs years, we at least know that that kind of quality, consistency, attention to detail, etc. is possible. Sooner or later somebody will take all the good ideas from Apple's heyday and make another good OS. Maybe, if we're lucky, it'll even be open-source. It's the kind of thing I dream of doing myself one day. But if someone beats me to it, that's fine too :)
  • lioeters 7y ago
    I share your optimism, that people who remember what good Apple design felt like, will carry on the torch. The generational knowledge transfer seems to have broke down somewhere within Apple, that only the superficial aesthetic is being carried on, while the fundamentals - user-friendly design, repairability, extensibility - are getting left behind. > ..take all the good ideas from Apple's heyday and make another good OS. Maybe, if we're lucky, it'll even be open-source. There are a number of open-source community projects that impressed me as having such a vision, going back to the roots, keeping the dream alive and designing the way forward.
• j7ake 7y ago
  The thing that annoys me is that devices like iPad and iPhone have so much trouble doing simple things such as uploading a set of PDFs so you can read the PDFs offline. Maybe I am just dumb who can't get it working, but it involved some sort of syncing with a computer with iTunes and an iBook app.
• nkkollaw 7y ago
  So true. I used to be an iPhone user for many years until iPhone 5. My Android phone broke and even though I also own an iPhone 6 for testing, it was so frustrating to use that I'm using my Android tablet as a phone until I fix my actual phone. iOS is just stupid. You have to memorize all these gestures for no reason. No discoverability, I bet most people don't know about 80% of all available gestures. To go back to the previous screen I have to press firmly, then swipe—but all the way to the right, or if I stop I trigger overview mode or whatever is called. macOS suffers the same problem, but to a lesser extend. Unfortunately, Johnny Hive has completely lost it. He's been obsessed with out things _look_ instead of how people are going to use them—and that's why people keep hitting his glass walls at Apple's HQ. Steve Jobs kept design at bay and insured a mix of beauty and usability. Now that he's gone you can tell that products got worse and worse in terms of usability (but 1.2 millimiters thinner, and so beautiful). Maybe with Hives gone things will improve. The MacBook Pro 16 is a step forward (besides ports).
  • theandrewbailey 7y ago
    Ive, not Hive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive
    • nkkollaw 7y ago
      Ha! You're right. Thanks.
• masswerk 7y ago
  One of my "favorite" paradigmatic UI changes (Mac): the Finder and Open/Save dialog sidebar. Up to and including Snow Leopard, these would include custom icons, once the flagship feature of user customization and personalization. However, this also served productivity, just assign a simple colored bubble icon to any of your current project folders and a few decent, but recognizable ones to the major entry points into your file structure, and these were easily recognized and located in any file list at a glance, without even reading a single character. Then, Apple decided that this may endanger their precious industrial design. Finder icons, especially those for folders, are to be clean and uniform – and to be exclusively chosen and delivered by Apple. (Also, color must not serve a purpose and isn't allowed to transport any information.) Icons are not for everyone, quot licet Iovi non licet bovi. Now, it's all about reading, or, if you maintain a really clean and short sidebar, about position. Still, every time a Finder window or file dialog is accessed, some precious seconds and some maybe even more precious focus is lost. However, these are apparently not that precious as Apple's pristine looks. – OK, Apple, now I know, where I rank in your esteem. Thanks for letting me know.
• rickyc091 7y ago
  I recently went to the Genius Bar to get a replacement Airpod since the left ear stopped pairing. They told me to go home, charge the device for 10 minutes and it should "just work." Guess what, it didn't. I was following the instructions online for more than an hour. I was about to schedule another Genuis bar appointment when I decided to try a factory reset. Sure enough, that worked! I wish they just put that in the instructions as something else to try. A quick Google search revealed that I was not the only one confused as to how to re-pair replacement parts.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• smartbit 7y ago
  There was a good reason for Apple to fire John Ive * butterfly-switch keyboards are uncomfortable for many and unreliable * touch-bar was missing esc-key driving many pros away form Macbooks * Apple TV remote is beautiful, but entirely impractical * MacBook Pro 2018 and Mac Pro 2013 had cpu overheating issues * until releases 2019, iPhone and MacBook Pro had less that day battery life for many users
• domador 7y ago
  I'm not an Apple enthusiast and the main reason is their products' underpowered, oversimplified user interfaces, from the standpoint of a power user like me. One manifestation of this is a chronic lack of buttons on their hardware. I've long preferred the extra functionality afforded by a right-click button on mice and a middle button or scroll wheel. I've preferred the extra buttons on Android phones over iPhones. Not a lot of buttons, mind you, but enough to perform certain common tasks through tactile memory, without having to look at the screen. My latest gripe is with the Apple TV remote. (My family was recently lent an older Apple TV model.) This remote could definitely use a home button, since as it stands, I frequently need to press the Menu button around 5 to 8 times to get back to the main screen (to get from watching a Netflix video to watching a YouTube video.)
• nojvek 7y ago
  Agreed. As Apple’s made more money, they have this pressure of growing at any cost. Some of the recent decisions of pop ups in your face and a whole of magic hidden gestures really make it seem they aren’t doing their due diligence like they used to. I have as much respect for iOS/OSX as I did for pre-we-track-everything-Windows. It’s just clunky and shit gets complicated and slower on every version
• dangus 7y ago
  There's a point where a device's insane amount of computational capability has to be balanced with usability given its available inputs. I definitely agree with the general idea of the article, but, on the other hand, a typical non-technical user doesn't have to know every little nuance of the system to use it effectively. The original iPhone didn't do 10% of what smartphones are capable of now. It couldn't install apps. It couldn't copy and paste. A massive amount of functionality has been added since 2007. In the end we are limited to a small screen that can fit in our pockets. Adding buttons to the phone really isn't an option. Adding a plethora of menus and buttons to the screen UI to make everything infinitely discoverable isn't really an option, either: again, you're working with a relatively small screen here. Since the article was written some improvements have been made. I find that the new pop-up long-press menus you can find around iOS 13, like on the home screen icons, are an improvement. Removing 3D Touch is an improvement. Things like the three-finger copy, cut, and paste gestures sound completely ridiculous, but they aren't for non-technical users. They are for power users who will absolutely remember those gestures. macOS is praised for its extremely smooth, useful trackpad gestures but it isn't like my parents are using any of them. I see a lot of comments complaining about things like the multitasking gestures in iPadOS, the app switching gestures on iPhone X and above, or those aforementioned undo/copy/cut/paste gestures, but on a smartphone or tablet, very few people actually end up needing them. Remember, there are still copy/cut/paste context menus when you select text. Not only that, when you look at the competition, I don't think Android has a standardized Undo function at all? I could be wrong about that. If you Google that sort of thing you are met with a good amount of confusion, or suggestions to install add-on apps. Is Alt-Tab (Command-Tab) discoverable? How about Command-`? Or any keyboard shortcuts that power users insist on during their daily lives? No, they're not discoverable outside of a manual or keyboard shortcut screen. But we wouldn't live without them. And the fact that non-technical users may never learn those shortcuts doesn't make the rest of the system unusable or unintuitive.
  • blauditore 7y ago
    >There's a point where a device's insane amount of computational capability has to be balanced with usability given its available inputs. Exactly the same could have been said 40 years ago. Computers have (almost) always been outperforming humans and certain tasks, even if just calculus. The increase in capabilities due to more computation power has been happening constantly for several decades. It lead to some revolutions in terms of human-computer interaction, like the switch from text-based UIs to graphical ones. The challenge of spreading between simplicity, discoverability, and capabilities has always been around, just the topics are shifting over the years. The reason for the decline in user-friendliness as in the article lies in the motivation of companies building software: They expect higher returns by oversimplifying things (as plain-looking sells easier), or nagging users about registration (as they can send promotional content later), even though they're perfectly aware about the usability trade-off.
• quantgenius 7y ago
  I bought my first Macbook Pro when OSX was first released, having previously been a fan of NextStep. Was a loyal Apple user until earlier this year. Bought a ThinkPad P1 Extreme. Running Windows 10 Pro with WSL for unixy stuff. Could not be happier. The only thing I miss from my 2015 vintage Macbook Pro is the gesture to click and drag with 3 fingers. I have to tap and drag with one finger. I bought an iPad for my mom this year. I likely won't buy another one, period. Not sure there is a good enough alternative to my iPhone for when I need to upgrade next but I'll be looking. AAPL needs to stop making jewelry and start making proper computing machines again.