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I am beginning to dread every new iOS version as they seem to just make it worse and worse as times goes on. Examples: 1. Copy and Paste. When first introduced
by jmyeet 3y ago
I am beginning to dread every new iOS version as they seem to just make it worse and worse as times goes on. Examples:
1. Copy and Paste. When first introduced, it was great. You got a magnifying glass to be precise. It basically just worked. Yet somehow they kept changing it and every change makes it less usable. Currently, you can't really place the cursor at the end of a line (seriously, go into iMessage and try it). It's trying way too hard to snap to where it thinks you want the cursor. The only way to get this is to put it at the beginning of the next line and delete back. Pressing on a word brings up the "select" menu instead of just placing the cursor half the time.
2. Safari tab groups. I liked the old version where you toggled between tabs and private. But now you have to go through an extra step: selecting a tab group. Some people may want this. I'm not one of them. There is absolutely no way to opt out of this.
3. On an iPad hitting the top center of Safari brings up some split screen functionality that I have never used, don't care about and don't want. It's a natural place to press to go to the top of the page so this happens all the time.
Please just stop with this, Apple.
- andelink 3y agoI don't have the same problems in #1 that you do (copy/paste + selection). Only mentioning this because you say to go try it, and I did just these things prior to reading your comment. Also, if you aren't aware of long pressing / holding the space bar to navigate, it's very useful.
- ant6n 3y agoI cant figure out how to paste something in many contexts without a long press, which will select text - so the paste will replace that text. So if i want to insert something, I will write a couple of chars of garbage, long-press-select, then paste-replace. iOS strangely is full of these little hickups, it sometimes feels like back in Windows. (Also the auto correct is so annoyingly dumb and broken)
- andelink 3y agoI do a light tap to bring up the copy/paste options. Long-press activates the navigation mode to drag the cursor.
- jmyeet 3y agoYou reminded me of another iOS UI/UX fail: the long press (and Force Touch). Apple famously for many years avoided adding a second mouse button. Steve Jobs was against it. Why? Because it lacked discoverability and consistency. He ultimately lost this because the context menu on Windows became pretty consistent and universal. But his ultimatel point applies to long presses (and similar): where is the discoverability? Most people don't realize this can do something different. If they do, there's no consistency to it. Even in your example, why would I expect to move the cursor around by long pressing the space bar? They added a non-intuitive gesture to make up for the failure they created by messing with the original copy and paste that worked just fine. Both apple and Google created a similar problem with the address bar on browsers. Notice how hard it is to delect part of a URL? Why would you want to do this? Example: removing the stupid text fragment on Google search results so you can copy and paste the URL. Click (or press) once and you select the whole URL. Click (or press) again and it brings up a menu with options like cut, copy and translate. To get rid of the selection you have to click outside the selection area. Now you can click the text like the search term but it snaps to word endings. What if I want to just correct spelling without re-typing the whole word? All I want is to finely select in the URL and they've added so many extra steps and barriers to make this as difficult as possible in the name of "usability".
- andelink 3y agoI'm a fan of the space bar navigation. It's not a replacement, it's an additional way to move the cursor. Feel free to tap to the position you'd like, or long-press-and-drag the cursor directly.
- aceazzameen 3y agoNot just iOS. That's all mobile OS's, as they all keep trying to re-invent the wheel each year so they can have something big to unveil to shareholders and customers.
- akira2501 3y agoCynically.. "That's why this year, we're again focusing on the core features. Phone, messages, voicemail. We literally have no ideas beyond what was already here when we arrived."
- sentientslug 3y agoFor point number one, you just tap in the empty space at the end of a line, so I'm not really sure what you mean. You can also hold your finger down and get the "magnifying glass" experience with the cursor just like you've always been able to.
- jmyeet 3y agoIf the URL (or search term) exceeds the address bar box size, this is either impossible or very difficult. You'll hit the clear button instead and delete the URL. But even if this works (which it doesn't consistently), how is that intuitive?