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> having heard how easy Apple device are to supposed to be to use That was a rule for very good reason, and it will take some time to erode, but it’s definitel

> having heard how easy Apple device are to supposed to be to use That was a rule for very good reason, and it will take some time to erode, but it’s definitely not as true today as it once was. It’s no consolation, but the first iPad - from the era of usable Apple design - was much better. Not in terms of power or weight, of course, but the OS didn’t have all these weird mystery-meat controls, gestures, broken multi-windowing etc.

irrational 7y ago
Is multi-windowing really broken? I've found it incredibly useful for taking notes in the right window while the book/article I am reading in in the left window. It seems to just work for me.
- oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
  I think it's 'broken' for anyone who doesn’t use it regularly. It’s too undiscoverable, and too easy to invoke accidentally, for the rest of us.
- falcolas 7y ago
  It’s changed. With the last iOS update, the gestures changed slightly - they used to start with a slide over that could be docked, and moved to a split and/or dock based on the position on the screen. Individual app’s capabilities also vary based on whether they are windowed or not. For example, you can’t airplay out of YouTube unless the app is full screen (even though once you’ve moved it to your Apple TV, you can switch away freely). Discoverability is also crap. You have to dig into the manual (which you have to “buy” for free) to get the full details of the feature.
sp332 7y ago
Swiping is not discoverable, but no one noticed at first because the iPhone TV ad campaigns all showed how to use it. So most people who got an iPhone already had that bit of knowledge in their brains and thought it was intuitive.
- oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
  Touch interfaces have an inherent disadvantage here — there's no equivalent of 'hovering' a 'cursor' over something to see if it changes visually, triggers a tooltip, etc. Their interfaces actually need more help to be discoverable, not less. Swiping isn't even a great gesture for most uses. Earlier today, I had to delete maybe 50-100 downloaded podcasts from the Podcasts app (there is seemingly no way to do this en masse). The quickest way to do so is with repeated swipes, but it's almost impossible to be consistent with your swipes over 50-100 items: sometimes the swipes 'stop short', sometimes they just fail for no obvious reason. A swipe is also a LOT more physical effort than a tap — if I could have just pressed a "DELETE" button 50 times, it would have been a lot more palatable (still short of a proper multi-delete, of course).
  - scalio 7y ago
    It drives me up the walls when some kind of list or collection touch UI doesn't offer any kind of batching, and most don't. Some kind of data-selection mode where I can drag across all the elements I want to select would be awesome.

irrational 7y ago

Is multi-windowing really broken? I've found it incredibly useful for taking notes in the right window while the book/article I am reading in in the left window. It seems to just work for me.

oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
I think it's 'broken' for anyone who doesn’t use it regularly. It’s too undiscoverable, and too easy to invoke accidentally, for the rest of us.
falcolas 7y ago
It’s changed. With the last iOS update, the gestures changed slightly - they used to start with a slide over that could be docked, and moved to a split and/or dock based on the position on the screen. Individual app’s capabilities also vary based on whether they are windowed or not. For example, you can’t airplay out of YouTube unless the app is full screen (even though once you’ve moved it to your Apple TV, you can switch away freely). Discoverability is also crap. You have to dig into the manual (which you have to “buy” for free) to get the full details of the feature.

sp332 7y ago

Swiping is not discoverable, but no one noticed at first because the iPhone TV ad campaigns all showed how to use it. So most people who got an iPhone already had that bit of knowledge in their brains and thought it was intuitive.

oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
Touch interfaces have an inherent disadvantage here — there's no equivalent of 'hovering' a 'cursor' over something to see if it changes visually, triggers a tooltip, etc. Their interfaces actually need more help to be discoverable, not less. Swiping isn't even a great gesture for most uses. Earlier today, I had to delete maybe 50-100 downloaded podcasts from the Podcasts app (there is seemingly no way to do this en masse). The quickest way to do so is with repeated swipes, but it's almost impossible to be consistent with your swipes over 50-100 items: sometimes the swipes 'stop short', sometimes they just fail for no obvious reason. A swipe is also a LOT more physical effort than a tap — if I could have just pressed a "DELETE" button 50 times, it would have been a lot more palatable (still short of a proper multi-delete, of course).
- scalio 7y ago
  It drives me up the walls when some kind of list or collection touch UI doesn't offer any kind of batching, and most don't. Some kind of data-selection mode where I can drag across all the elements I want to select would be awesome.