4 ms·

> The flashlight button on the home screen is also not actionable. The button is actionable, it just takes a long press to avoid accidental activation.

romwell 4y ago
Great, add that to the list of undiscoverable and incoherent design choices in the OP's comment.
- mobiledev2014 4y ago
  As you hold your finger down the button grows. The designers considered that to be an affordance, whether successful or not (the swiping between tabs mentioned in the OP also has a fairly obvious affordance IMO) The search discoverability nfw2 brings up is fair but has been entirely fixed in iOS 16- a prominent search button was added to the Home Screen (thankfully can be disabled if you prefer the old way)
  - romwell 4y ago
    >As you hold your finger down the button grows. ...like no other button ever does. This only makes it worse. Something like a progress bar going around the button in a circle, I could give them a pass for - at least you get the indication of beginning and end, and a suggestion that letting it fill would make something happen. But growing a button? Amazing.
    - sanitycheck 4y ago
      Truly brilliant. On a touch UI, the visual feedback is on the thing your finger is currently obscuring! I've seen this sort of long-press safety feature a couple of times, and elsewhere it's been accompanied by a helpful message which appears if I try to short-press the button. Why does the flashlight button need the safety feature anyway? It's not a self-destruct button, if I turn it on I can turn it off again with no ill effects. That was a rhetorical question, nobody knows why.
      - sbuk 4y ago
        So you don't turn it on accidently and burn out the lamp/burn through the battery. It's really not that hard or obscure. Tap and hold has been a 'thing' for a long time. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Literally everyone I know personally groks this particular feature. It's not nearly as unintuative as you attempt to make out.
        sanitycheck 4y ago
        I'm not making a mountain out of anything, I'm drive-by commenting on a particularly amusing Apple UI feature I wasn't previously aware of. Of all the things one might accidentally turn on or off I think the flashlight is one of the most easy to subsequently detect, and we're here talking about it because one HN (thus probably somewhat technical) user and iDevice owner did not know how it works. Apple's design approach has been totally _un_intuitive to me for at least 20 years, and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI.
        sbuk 4y ago
        > Of all the things one might accidentally turn on or off I think the flashlight is one of the most easy to subsequently detect You’d be surprised. > and we're here talking about it because one HN (thus probably somewhat technical) user and iDevice owner did not know how it works. The information is out there. When you first run, when you upgrade, there are numerous prompts to show you “what’s new”. Many ‘power users’ (I really dislike that name) arrogantly dismiss these. Then there are the online guides, the offline guides (book in the books app, Tips app). If the user pays attention, there are affordances everywhere — the safari tabs example in the article being a perfect example. > and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI. This is testament to the point I’m making. Sure some of it isn’t completely obvious, but this ain't one of them, and discoverability isn’t about obviousness. If that were the case, we’d still be hunter-gatherers.
        4y ago
  - sbuk 4y ago
    There is, and has always been, haptic feedback too.
    - nfw2 4y ago
      There is only haptic feedback if you hold it, not if you tap it.

romwell 4y ago

Great, add that to the list of undiscoverable and incoherent design choices in the OP's comment.

mobiledev2014 4y ago
As you hold your finger down the button grows. The designers considered that to be an affordance, whether successful or not (the swiping between tabs mentioned in the OP also has a fairly obvious affordance IMO) The search discoverability nfw2 brings up is fair but has been entirely fixed in iOS 16- a prominent search button was added to the Home Screen (thankfully can be disabled if you prefer the old way)
- romwell 4y ago
  >As you hold your finger down the button grows. ...like no other button ever does. This only makes it worse. Something like a progress bar going around the button in a circle, I could give them a pass for - at least you get the indication of beginning and end, and a suggestion that letting it fill would make something happen. But growing a button? Amazing.
  - sanitycheck 4y ago
    Truly brilliant. On a touch UI, the visual feedback is on the thing your finger is currently obscuring! I've seen this sort of long-press safety feature a couple of times, and elsewhere it's been accompanied by a helpful message which appears if I try to short-press the button. Why does the flashlight button need the safety feature anyway? It's not a self-destruct button, if I turn it on I can turn it off again with no ill effects. That was a rhetorical question, nobody knows why.
    - sbuk 4y ago
      So you don't turn it on accidently and burn out the lamp/burn through the battery. It's really not that hard or obscure. Tap and hold has been a 'thing' for a long time. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Literally everyone I know personally groks this particular feature. It's not nearly as unintuative as you attempt to make out.
      - sanitycheck 4y ago
        I'm not making a mountain out of anything, I'm drive-by commenting on a particularly amusing Apple UI feature I wasn't previously aware of. Of all the things one might accidentally turn on or off I think the flashlight is one of the most easy to subsequently detect, and we're here talking about it because one HN (thus probably somewhat technical) user and iDevice owner did not know how it works. Apple's design approach has been totally _un_intuitive to me for at least 20 years, and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI.
        sbuk 4y ago
        > Of all the things one might accidentally turn on or off I think the flashlight is one of the most easy to subsequently detect You’d be surprised. > and we're here talking about it because one HN (thus probably somewhat technical) user and iDevice owner did not know how it works. The information is out there. When you first run, when you upgrade, there are numerous prompts to show you “what’s new”. Many ‘power users’ (I really dislike that name) arrogantly dismiss these. Then there are the online guides, the offline guides (book in the books app, Tips app). If the user pays attention, there are affordances everywhere — the safari tabs example in the article being a perfect example. > and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI. This is testament to the point I’m making. Sure some of it isn’t completely obvious, but this ain't one of them, and discoverability isn’t about obviousness. If that were the case, we’d still be hunter-gatherers.
        4y ago
- sbuk 4y ago
  There is, and has always been, haptic feedback too.
  - nfw2 4y ago
    There is only haptic feedback if you hold it, not if you tap it.