27 ms·

The iPhone - and macOS too - used to be a paragon of simplicity. Today the setup experience on a brand-new iPhone or Mac is abysmal. Entering the same username

by avalys 1y ago

The iPhone - and macOS too - used to be a paragon of simplicity. Today the setup experience on a brand-new iPhone or Mac is abysmal. Entering the same username and password multiple times - then sometimes a different username and password - competing notifications, irrelevant feature nags, a popup from some random product manager about their pet thingy. Permission questions from some meddlesome privacy team about the feature you just said you wanted to turn on. Uncertainty about whether you’ll break something irreparably by “skipping” the expected setup path. A choice of several inscrutable interface modes because no one has the balls to commit to a single solution. Just terrible. I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great.

k2enemy 1y ago
And after all of that there are still red bubbles nagging you to sign up for various services and to enable features you already said no to. I remember switching to Mac years ago to avoid this type of user-hostile crap in Windows.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  lol yes. I’ve had my iPhone for a few years now and there’s still a red bubble on settings because I never set up Face ID.
  - Barbing 1y ago
    Annoying - familiar with the workaround? (disabling the badge, or you need it in case a software update ships?)
  - zevon 1y ago
    I never tried it with FaceID specifically, but all the other red bubbles I've encountered behaved the same way: You say "not now" during the initial setup, then you get a nag/reminder in the settings app. If you tap on the reminder and say "not now" or "don't use feature XYZ" or whatever again, it goes away permanently.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      Huh -- you're right. I went in to FaceID setup, immediately canceled out of it, and the bubble is gone. We'll see for how long I guess.
      - zevon 1y ago
        In my experience, it lasts between indefinitely and until the next major system update. I think, that has been the default behavior for all of Apple’s „use our services“-reminders since they started showing those.
jonhohle 1y ago
I’ve been a Mac user for >20 years, Linux before that, and lots of FreeBSD on the side. The rewrite from System Preferences to System Settings was one of the worst changes I’ve seen. Preference panes used to be customized for each function to do what was necessary. Often there were hidden sheets with additional features for power users. Now everything is just lists. Lists of identical looking, but actually very different settings. List of permissions that drill down into more lists which may or may not be what you want. The lists are unsortable and the order seems arbitrary. I’m sure there was some push to SwiftUI preferences, but in my opinion, Scott Forstall’s Maps decision pales in comparison to the mess that Settings continues to be.
- bromuro 1y ago
  I actually love the new design of System Settings.
- Groxx 1y ago
  not being in osx development any more: is custom UI no longer possible at all, or is it just significantly easier to go with the flow? though I have seen settings sections that are simply a "launch the actual config" button. but Wacom was doing that back in System Preferences days, so I'm not sure what to think.
  - jonhohle 1y ago
    It’s possible, and some exist, it’s just less common now. Previously each preference category would take over the whole window. Now it gets a vertically oriented list. Previously all content fit within the window. Now all of the categories require vertical scrolling of some overly padded list control.
- cyberax 1y ago
  I would mind Settings much less if they at least fixed some bullshit. For example, there's no easy way to find the network in the Wifi network list. There's no search field for it, in 2025! And the whole window can not be resized horizontally. It's just jaw-droppingly bad.
- 1y ago
duttish 1y ago
I've been a software engineer for quite a number of years now. I bought a mac and iphone a few months back because I wanted to look into iphone development and there was a lot of cursing involved. First the forms were incredibly bad for a new Swedish user. Then there turned out to be some kind of sync issue between account creation and when it can be used, but the error message did not reflect that in any way whatsoever. The next day the same thing worked. On the one hand they have a support chat to contact and it's great, just being able to contact an actual person was a shock. On the other hand support couldn't help with my problem and I would not recommend the onboarding experience to anyone. I'm never buying a mac again if I can avoid it.
- inetknght 1y ago
  > I've been a software engineer for quite a number of years now. ... I bought a mac and iphone a few months back ... and there was a lot of cursing involved. I'm not sure what's worse: the inane keyboard compared to Linux or the ridiculously dumbed-down featureset that makes it effectively impossible for a power user to even try to transition into macOS.
  - flakeoil 1y ago
    The keyboard issue when switching from Windows/Linux to Mac is understated. It's a pain and I think it's worse for non-english keyboards/characters. You have to use plugins/3rd party software and relearn new keys.
  - fmbb 1y ago
    What powers are you missing? Zsh works the same. You of course have to learn a real (BSD) Unix userspace instead of some silly GNU amalgamation, but that is usually quick.
    - inetknght 1y ago
      > Zsh works the same. zsh is nice, but I don't like it. I use bash. As for what powers am I missing? Absolutely missing keys, and not every input field is tabbable. If it was just the key sequences that were different, I would cope with that.
Telaneo 1y ago
I've been really disappointed in iOS 26 for this reason. I thought it was going in the completely wrong direction, but maybe that was just me being grumpy. Then I noticed that the less computer savvy were having an absolutely abysmal time with it. We're back to computers being really hard for the normies, with apparently no mainstream option that's simple and easy for Grandma. Unless you want to ship her over to Linux Mint or something similarly not mainstream, but actually user friendly. I doubt Jobs would have let things get this bad. He would have been ruthless if he had noticed the setup and nagging being this bad.
- al_borland 1y ago
  Jobs seemed like he actually used everything himself, and he wanted a good experience as a customer. I don’t actually believe Tim Cook uses most of the stuff Apple makes, nothing beyond the basics, and he’s likely willing to compromise that experience to increase the stock price. I’m still of the opinion that iOS 6 was peak iPhone. Say what you will about skeuomorphism, it was easy to understand, apps were visually unique from one another, and the friendly UI was a nice juxtaposition to the clean minimalist hardware.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    I loved skeuomorphism. It seemed to add some human touch to apps.
    - ksec 1y ago
      +1, may be the style and graphics design needs some updating. But I love the idea.
    - worldsayshi 1y ago
      Yes flat/material design makes UIs so much harder to read.
  - miramba 1y ago
    iOS6 peak iPhone? Finally someone says it! Also buttons had titles like “Done“ instead of icons, touches wouldn‘t end in accidental swipes all the time and Safaris toolbar was fixed. All things I recently failed to explain to an elderly person.
jazzyjackson 1y ago
Took 3 tech savvy family members to figure out why mom couldn’t sign back into an app she was paying for: every time she “signed in with Apple” she also hit “hide my email” (first option) and so registered with a new random email address every time she signed in It was also illuminating how complex sharing app purchases can be. Some apps allow it, some apps it’s a different payment tier to enable it. It was unclear who had paid for what app and why they didn’t show up on some devices.
- ZPrimed 1y ago
  This is part of why I absolutely LOATHE the multiple "sign-in-with-Y" prompts on everything. Federation's not a terrible idea for people who don't "get it," but many places are then starting to _hide_ the standard email-based login form... it's bonkers. Google can go DIAF for their browser-based forced popover that so many sites have opted-in to (so they can sell more expensive ads, of course). [I use Vivaldi which is Chromium-based and AFAIK there's no way to shut off those prompts]
  - eep_social 1y ago
    Don’t bother switching to a better browser either, those prompts will be replaced with prompts to download chrome
- rendaw 1y ago
  Hide my email replaces your email with an apple controlled intermediate address, right? Is there any reason apple couldn't reuse the same intermediate address for you? I thought the main things were making it so they don't have your actual email to track/trace, that when you unsubscribed they couldn't continue to spam you, and maybe let apple track spammers, all of which would be fine with a persistent fake email... I mean, facilitating multiple accounts, while it could be nice, seems way beyond the UX apple provides and isn't a typical paradigm for most software... this seems like an apple issue.
  - wodenokoto 1y ago
    It’s because the Sign in with Apple dialogue failed to recognize that it already has an account with said service.
gyomu 1y ago
Is there an example of a platform that serves almost 2 billion users, across 40+ languages and many more geographic locales, countless possible hardware configurations etc., introducing dozens/hundreds of new features a year, without falling into all those traps? Of course I wholeheartedly agree with your critiques. But the original iPhone - or even macOS circa 2005 - were very different products, much more limited in scope and capability. It's already hard enough to make a product a paragon of simplicity when the number of things it needs to do are so limited (as evidenced by all the products out there that are even more confusing than Apple products, doing even less), but I'm not sure it's even possible to do it when you reach such planetary scale. Seems to me that the only way to have a product that's a paragon of simplicity is to have a product that does much, much less. But you don't become a trillion dollar company with 2 billion active users by doing less.
- Groxx 1y ago
  >Is there an example of a platform that [does this right] no, because >introducing dozens/hundreds of new features a year is antithetical to "doing it right". doing that is sufficient to prove you are not doing it right.
  - gyomu 1y ago
    Would love to read your manifesto of what "doing it right" entails.
    - pasc1878 1y ago
      It doesn't matter. If there is a definition of doing it right then it is a better experience in following that rather than adding new features that don't match the definition no matter what it is. And if the definition changes then you should be changing everything which takes resources away from new features. Unfortunately new features grab the attention of media an influencers and so that is what gets you the money.
    - Groxx 1y ago
      given this is in a thread about simplicity: I think "dozens/hundreds of new features a year" speaks for itself why it's a problem. but Apple (and Windows) nowadays reeks of promotion-driven development. ship a new feature and make sure people use it by making it as annoyingly in-your-face as possible, so you can show "impact". do that for just a few years and you're reliably left with a confusing, inconsistent, and extremely chaotic new user experience as each of those features jockeys for prime eyeball real estate. mobile games with tons of features to spend money on are often a prime example of this, where new users a year after it launched are stuck in hours of tutorials and broken UI due to dozens of notifications that barely fit on screen, and Windows is not far behind with some sellers' junkware. Apple hasn't reached that far yet (AFAICT), but it's clearly headed in the same direction. Linux has many, many flaws as a user-friendly desktop environment, but this is not one of them. take a clean install. boot up the first time. it's very likely you'll be greeted by a single "welcome" window (a normal one that you can just close) or nothing at all, just a working environment, regardless of the version you chose. that's unambiguously a more simple, less annoying, less spammy experience. Apple used to be almost this smooth.
daemonologist 1y ago
I have a couple of older relatives with Macs, and every time you fire them up for the first time in a while (these people might go several months without using their computer) the Apple ID sign-in nagging is insane. It'll pop up the same sign-in notification a dozen times and seems to lock up the settings app until you deal with it. I usually think of myself as quite patient but when I see that little window it inspires strong feelings.
- scrollaway 1y ago
  The Apple ID sign in is insane in the first place. Why does Apple want to feel so frickin special and require a working iPhone for 2FA and passkeys, instead of adopting standards? One day the eu will yell at them to do things normally and then Cook will go on stage to showcase what an awesome idea they had that nobody thought of before: “standards!”. Wait no, that’s usb c. Side-rant over.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever. I do have a Google ID and I can't wait for the day that I can finally retire it. All of these feel like the exact opposite of what the internet should have been, this centralization and abuse of critical mass is a serious problem.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever. I don't know whether I have a Microsoft account or not. I didn't want to have one, obviously. But at some point I wanted to use Visual Studio and setting that up required me to create a Microsoft account. I continued not to use that account as an account on my computer, because why on earth would I do that. So, other than using Visual Studio, that account never did anything at all, sort of like you'd expect from an account that you forced someone to create under duress. One day I opened Visual Studio and a popup message displayed, telling me that because of what appeared to be fraudulent behavior by my Microsoft account, it was being revoked or disabled or whatever. (But I was still free to continue using Visual Studio.) OK.
psadri 1y ago
We miss you Steve.
cyberax 1y ago
Last week I spent hours debugging our application. Something was broken in the remote request layer, and I spent quite a bit of time debugging it with curl. The culprit? Apple. I missed a notification hidden below all the windows that iTerm was requesting access to my local network. So curl installed via Homebrew and activated using direnv was not working because it was not getting the required entitlement. But curl in the `/usr/bin` directory was working just fine because it has the necessary entitlement from Apple. So "/usr/bin/curl http://192.168.20.1 http://192.168.20.1" was working just fine, while "/opt/homebrew/bin/curl http://192.168.20.1 http://192.168.20.1" was silently failing. Fun. Fun. Fun. Can you disable this bullshit? Nope. Permission grants need to be renewed every 30 days. And they pop up at the most inopportune moments.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  You’re making me twitchy. Desktop Docker (eww, yuck) and it’s permissions, path hell and general bs. Can <permissions dialogue> it <permissions dialogue> be <permissions dialogue> any <permissions dialogue> other <permissions dialogue> way? <permissions dialogue> I want a headless mac mini running docker. Why is it so hard?
  - skydhash 1y ago
    It’s better to take the hit on power and have a mini pc running linux. Macos is not great if you’re not using user facing apps.
    - thewebguyd 1y ago
      Yeah, you can get a little Beelink with AMD's new chips and a boatload of RAM for around the price of a mac mini (cheaper if you are trying to max out the mini). The Ryzen AI 9 can run at about 28W I believe, it's not too bad.
      - lostlogin 1y ago
        I’m running the mini on 7w (averaged over a month). It’s networked at 10gb, which is hard to do on mini pc/nuc without using a lot more power. My other Nucs use 70ish (nuc 9 extreme) or 35 (nuc 10 with thunderbolt dongle). The mini is also much more powerful. The is was a bit of a nightmare to tame but I’ve got it sorted now.
heavyset_go 1y ago
They turned macOS into an iCloud client and subscription sales funnel.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  This is everything outside of Linux now. Every freaking device or service is now just a sales funnel, and the whole industry has stopped making good products and are just rent seeking now. It's a damn shame the hardware is so good for laptops, and that Qualcomm is taking their sweet time getting device trees for the Snapdragon X elite stuff into Linux, so the one laptop that's even remotely comparable to my Macbook (my Surface laptop 7) can't run Linux either. No other OEM seems to give a crap about putting out a decent laptop without compromises.
- VectorLock 1y ago
  macOS with its popups that iCloud is full with no way to disable it.
snielson 1y ago
Assistive access mode for an iPhone is fantastic for the elderly. It's the only way my 85-year-old father can even use a phone. One of the best features is that it can be set to allow incoming calls only from people in his contacts. It's such a lifesaver.
- netsharc 1y ago
  What if it's police or the hospital trying to call? I suppose it'd be "simple" for the device to answer the call and then prompt for a password before ringing for the user, but then the random caller needs to know the password. But then again, it could be as simple as "This is Siri, please say the name of the person you're trying to reach.", and since spammers usually don't have a name associated with the number they just randomly dialled, they'll be stumped.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    I strongly suspect the people who throw all these roadblocks if an unknown number calls them don’t have kids, elderly relatives, various medical visits, etc. personally I’m not going to make myself hard to reach because of the cost of a spam call now and then. If it works for you fine. But understand that different people have different needs.
    - District5524 1y ago
      I used to feel the same, but nowadays, I have very few normal calls, mostly from close relatives only, but a dozen of spam calls a week. And that used not to be the case before 2024. I know robocalls are/were a terrible affliction in the US for like the last 10 years, but they were very few of these in Hungary. I wish I'd know what caused this change..
      - ghaff 1y ago
        It's hard to say why people's experiences differ so much in the US I get maybe 3 a week or so. I would probably be more aggressive about adding businesses and people to my contact list if I were more aggressive about blocking possible SPAM. For me, the SPAM is one of life's lesser annoyances but I should probably check out some of the prevent features Apple has built into iOS.
busymom0 1y ago
Changing wallpapers alone on iPhones is super complex nowadays. Still have no idea why I can't just set a photo as the wallpaper only while not removing the existing widgets already set.
- poolnoodle 1y ago
  This is insane to me. How could they make the simplest thing so complicated?
  - BrtByte 1y ago
    It's the perfect example of Apple overengineering something
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  The new wallpaper/lockscreen customization is so insane to me. You can't select any of Apple's built-in wallpapers without creating a new lock screen first (which requires re setting up all your widgets). Whose idea was that? Trying to set a photo from photos as your wallpaper also creates a new lockscreen. the only way to modify an existing, already set up lock screen is to long press, tap customize, and then tap the little photo square. Did a UX designer even look at this? Because it sure doesn't seem like it.
  - busymom0 1y ago
    Yep. And despite many people sending that feedback over the last 2 iOS versions, they haven't fixed the UX. It's absurd.
    - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
      You know, you guys might just be getting old. Maybe ask a kid to help? Back when we were kids we probably all had adults asking us how to do tech stuff all the time, because we had the time and curiosity to explore and learn it. My son is 4 and has autism and he knows how to change his wallpaper and likes to switch between the different home screens he's made when he gets some iPad time. Now I can do it too because I've watched him do it lol. But I've got a job, groceries to buy, cooking and cleaning to do, yard work, etc. I don't have the time or energy to devote to making 7 different home screens to match all my outfits or whatever people are doing with it.
userbinator 1y ago
I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great. Instead, the whole company has become a dictator of its "users".
aantix 1y ago
A couple of times I’ve been offered a backend contract position for Apple at $110/hr. They couldn’t go any higher. lol. No thanks. Billions in the bank and they’re cheaping out on talent. El cheapos.
- defraudbah 1y ago
  los cheapos, my gringo amigo
  - kaeruct 1y ago
    Los codos, mi amigo gringo
- yard2010 1y ago
  Las cheapas
Simulacra 1y ago
There was a joy of tech comic a long time ago, in which Johnny Ives was discussing with Steve Jobs all the complexity of a smartphone, so many apps, so many buttons, that he had made a brand new phone: No apps, mo screen, it just makes calls!
- ghaff 1y ago
  A few years ago at least a feature phone probably was the right answer for many people. But smartphones are so normalized that they’re increasingly essentially a requirement for a lot of services.
unlikelytomato 1y ago
I got stuck in a fullscreen YouTube video the first time I tried an iPhone. Simplicity is relative. For years, the lack of a back button resulted in this weird behavior of having to learn how each app wants you to navigate it. Even now that everyone has settled into the same list of 5ish methodologies, it can be cumbersome to figure out.
brap 1y ago
I recently tried helping out my parents setup the latest Windows. I don’t wish that on my worst enemies. What a pile of garbage that OS has become. Xbox? Copilot? OneDrive? Why am I seeing ads? Bro leave me the fuck alone I just want a browser. It’s so bad that at one point I considered having them try another OS, even though all they know is Windows. Unfortunately everything is crap now. Chrome OS would have been a great option because they only need a browser, but just navigating the site is a mess. What the fuck Google, why do you always have to work against your potential customers. And don’t get me started on Linux distros, I don’t see my parents fixing the inevitable issues in the terminal. Can we just go back to Windows 98 or something?
- netsharc 1y ago
  Why not Linux with SSH open, ready for you to login in case some troubleshooting is needed? OK, I have SSH open on a non-standard port on my homemade NAS, and I notice the many many visitors from all over the world trying to bust through my SSH door... (I've implemented a web page to open the port when I enter a password there)
  - subscribed 1y ago
    I set up tailscale for my older family members. I can always login and fix stuff. In a pinch - AnyDesk.
- baconbrand 1y ago
  I set my mom up with Linux Mint a little over a decade ago, she used it without issue for a few years before changing computers. I don’t think that distro is a thing anymore, but it was Ubuntu based. You might be surprised, there is lots of very user friendly Linux out there.
  - shawn_w 1y ago
    Mint is still very much around.
    - 1y ago
dustingetz 1y ago
this is the actual driver for AI
teekert 1y ago
I switched to iOS about 4 years ago (want small phone, so iPhone 12 mini), from a OnePlus3 with Lineage. I thought indeed that it was all going to be much better, simpler, more elegant (phone was 2x the price so), but I ran into a lot of issues that I wrote down at the time (some things have been fixed by now): * Tried installing Signal 4 times, it failed on the apple account generation and no further clues that it didn't or did install Signal (it didn't) * Can't put icons on the bottom of screen, where your thumb is... need to fill other icons to get important stuff on the bottom. (Fixed!) * App store does not start with search... So one feels a bit lost, where are the apps? (Fixed! Now a beautiful bubble at the bottom, does require good eye-sight to notice). Still think app store is not really about apps? IDK, it's screaming, there are anime cat girls everywhere; feels cheap. * Absolutely maddening that it keeps correcting my .nl email adres to .nul (android leaves non txt field alone as far as I'm aware) * No intro at all into UI (although nowadays I see some hints in "sets") * Top suggestion in app store is never what you are looking for. Pretty strange. Can we change that? -> Later found out the top suggestion with dark blue around it is always sponsored... And since has NEVER been what I was looking for, never, I instinctively ignore it now like a vibrating "100.000th visitor" badge on a 90s webpage. * Spouse got stuck searching for app in the Apple store instead of the App store.. * Many controls are at the top (this was pre-swipe, man am I happy with swipe gestures, really fixed iOS for me). Although again: How do you find out? * My wife, after 3 years still can't remember how to close badly behaving apps to restart them. * (Old remark) Video pauzes when taking a quick look at notification tray -> In the new bubbly iOS this is much worse even, I often quickly pulled down the notification tray for quick peaks, then let go. But in bubbly iOS there is 0 contrast until you let your finger go, and then the screen will sleep soon. * You can't dismiss all notifications, since iOS 16 or so there is a dismiss button but it is still, to this day, unclear to me what subset of notifications it allows me to dismiss. * Screen often goes to sleep as I'm curating notifications. * Can't drag to folder onder lower bar/icon area (Fixed!) * Pull down in center of screen gives Siri/search, not notifications, I'd swap that, now notifications requires hand stretching even on iPhone mini. * I set Firefox as the standard browser yet both telegram and Signal (so far) always open Safari (Fixed I think) * No notification grouping. (Fixed, but still not as nice as Android, where I spent quite some time in the notification center triaging) * auto correct does not un-correct on backspace, autocorrect corrects the last word AFTER hitting send (still drives me mad, I just end every message with a space now to avoid looking dumb). Language switching does seem to go very well. * To close a picture, swipe down, that really took a while. Although not all apps implement it. * Red dots are not synced with open notifications, when I dismiss a notification I want the red dot gone. * Hotspot keeps shutting down (it just remains on on Android, usually that is what you want) * A couple of days in I had 652 mb of data on iCloud, no idea what it was. Then at some limit it starts to nag and it is not obvious how to make it stop nagging. I don't even want anything on iCloud, nobody asked me if I did. * Alarms are very confusing. Your morning alarm clock is set in the health section (and under alarm) and is linked to your sleep schedule... OK, this changed many times a week, and irregularly... Spouse still has way too loud alarm sometimes because she refuses the "Health based morning alarm", yeah I know how that sounds to a non iOS user. Please also offer a decoupled version of the morning alarm. It's different from messaging alarms. * Switching "Focus" by holding the lock screen is just very annoying. First you have to swipe down your notifications, then you have to hold the screen. But just long enough until you feel that it didn't work and start to squeeze more. My father asked me some weeks back: "What is this, why does this happen?? That thing you just did!!" And I explained him I was "switching focusses". He does not understand, he does not want it. He turns his phone off if he does not want to be disturbed (yeah and complains when we send messages in the night, because the night is for sleeping and thus only for emergencies... life was simpler back in the days). * It took me more than a year to find out why my notes app keeps saying: "Restore writing" when walking through the DIY store with the notes app open. Drove me mad! Turns out, shaking is a trigger for un-doing things.. Or something... :s * Replying to an email and adding a couple of consecutive pictures is a nightmare -> Switched to much better Proton mail now. Apple mail, idk, it works until it doesn't. * One gets a "Screen use" report every week, when you tap it, it takes you to the current week, where you havent used you phone yet :s. Still don't understand how to see previous weeks. There were also a lot of nice things though, ie widgets are much better, feel more connected. Swiping feels much more integrated and still works when apps crash etc. Overal I got used to things pretty quickly, but many, many things are very much not obvious (anymore) indeed. Yeah it's a lot, I once thought about making a blog post about the switch but never did, just kept the notes and adding to it as I pulled my hair out over my iPhone.
amelius 1y ago
> used to be a paragon of simplicity. Yes, this is because in the beginning, like all systems, there was not much functionality. The first iPhone lacked important functions. But of course, this being Apple, users translate "this device is simple" into "this device is simple to use".
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  Feature-packed software can be simple though if it's well-designed (in terms of UX, not necessarily aesthetics). It just seems that Apple actually isn't all that good at it, despite that being their brand selling point. Once they started adding in more and more features due to pressure from Android, they lost the plot and ended up more complicated and disjointed. The cracks in Apple's ability to make software are showing.
loloquwowndueo 1y ago
Dunno man, I have used Android phones and they are way worse than my iPhone in my opinion - I assume you have an Android phone, so it’s fun we both consider the other ecosystem more aggressively demanding of attention and naggy. Ultimately I think they both suck and we’ve all gotten used to the one evil we’ve chosen.
- hocuspocus 1y ago
  The number of authentication and permission prompts is noticeably higher with macOS and iOS, there's really no comparison.
  - LPisGood 1y ago
    Which is objectively a good thing, right?
    - avalys 1y ago
      No, not objectively good at all. If you're a neurotic obsessive who wants to pretend that all kinds of dastardly forces are trying to spy on you and your data, then yes, you want more security checks and more permission prompts. For literally everyone else - these are only obstacles to their intended use of the device, and every one of them is objectively worse! Safari prompts me _every single time I use Google_ about whether I want to share my location. I literally couldn't care less whether Google knows this, and I click yes every time, but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, DOES NOT GIVE ME THE OPTION to say "Always Allow". Thanks to some overbearing, self-important privacy dweeb, no doubt, and no leadership at Apple confident enough to override them.
      - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
        that's crazy, I always deny because I'm already on the damn search results at that point and don't want to repeat the search for little to no benefit.
      - LPisGood 1y ago
basisword 1y ago
I had to setup one from scratch recently for the first time in years. The experience was terrible. However, I can see why it might not be a concern for device manufacturers. We’ve had the iPhone for almost 20 years. The number of people setting up a phone from scratch who have never used a smartphone before must be minuscule at this point and will continue to dwindle. 80 year olds were still working when the iPhone was released. They will have experience using computers at the very least and more than likely have used smartphones for a long time.
- eCa 1y ago
  Plenty of new people are created every year, many of whom eventually gets their first ever phone.
  - basisword 1y ago
    Yes but I assume (perhaps incorrectly) they will be technically literate enough to not have any issues. The process is a bit of a pain but it's not exactly difficult for someone that's used any modern technology before.
everdrive 1y ago
I'd also like to add the impossibility of knowing what all the gesture controls are. Currently they seem to assume that you have been using an iPhone for years and pay close attention to every product launch. In other words, they assume that you learned them as they evolved. If you didn't, there's not a very good way to uncover them or customize them. Individual apps behave differently as well, and it's pretty vague regarding how you do different things.
- lazystar 1y ago
  the situation is ripe for a new gesture protocol of some kind :pray:
- jpalawaga 1y ago
  Even if you haven't. My partner is an iphone loyalist for years and was very disappointed that they removed the "open tabs" button out of safari. I (new to iPhone) had to show them the pinch-out gesture to show your tabs. It's beyond unintuitive. At least in the latest OS release, they've stopped hiding the searchbar in the ridiculous 'scroll past the top of the list' idiom. The verge also has this wonderful paywall which completely breaks safari scroll such that you can't show the toolbar. The only way to 'go back' once you're hit with the paywall is to know about the hidden 'swipe from the far side' gesture in safari (cumbersome given the size of phones). I sometimes wonder if people actually use the devices they make.
- Xss3 1y ago
  This is what fucked me off about apple and their fandom from the get go. They called this gesture bs 'intuitive'. It isnt. Randomly swiping around the screen until something happens is not intuitive UX design. My mum used her iphone for 4 years before she learned how to multitask with it, under my tuition, and she still struggles. She is good with computers.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    iPhones with a physical button are great for this because all you really need in iOS is to get back to the home screen - switching apps that way isn't ideal but it works. Or you can just double-click the button, which is still easier than writing bee dances with your fingers. My 85-year-old grandmother can handle that. But a modern all-swipe iPhone? No way.
Razengan 1y ago
Well, when iOS was simple, people here moaned that it was too simple, a toy, and how so advanced glorious Android was and sacrificed their firstborns to Google and now where are we
boringg 1y ago
Couldn't agree more that they completely butchered the ease of use for anyone who isn't technical.
cmiles74 1y ago
Younger people struggle with this, too. I was getting my teeth cleaned this morning and the hygienist had a lengthy story about transferring data to a new iPhone (her prior phone was 2.5 years old). It's anecdata but the experience is challenging, especially for something people have to do and do rarely.
BrtByte 1y ago
The magic is gone when just getting to the home screen feels like an obstacle course
dlopno 1y ago
[dead]
Morizero 1y ago
> without a dictator I don't know what kind of pro-authoritarian sane-washing statement you're trying to make with this line. Jobs himself would tell you that it's a consequence of letting a salesperson run the company rather than a product person. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA
- appreciatorBus 1y ago
  > pro-authoritarian sane-washing The general use of the word dictator for someone in role like Jobs had or with his temperment has been around almost as long as the word dictator. A cursory Google search for "steve jobs dictator" reveals references going back to 2007 at least. Several references even refer to him as Hitler. Many people who worked with Steve, both those who liked him and those who hated him, described him as a dictator.

by avalys 1y ago

k2enemy 1y ago

And after all of that there are still red bubbles nagging you to sign up for various services and to enable features you already said no to. I remember switching to Mac years ago to avoid this type of user-hostile crap in Windows.

SoftTalker 1y ago
lol yes. I’ve had my iPhone for a few years now and there’s still a red bubble on settings because I never set up Face ID.
- Barbing 1y ago
  Annoying - familiar with the workaround? (disabling the badge, or you need it in case a software update ships?)
- zevon 1y ago
  I never tried it with FaceID specifically, but all the other red bubbles I've encountered behaved the same way: You say "not now" during the initial setup, then you get a nag/reminder in the settings app. If you tap on the reminder and say "not now" or "don't use feature XYZ" or whatever again, it goes away permanently.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Huh -- you're right. I went in to FaceID setup, immediately canceled out of it, and the bubble is gone. We'll see for how long I guess.
    - zevon 1y ago
      In my experience, it lasts between indefinitely and until the next major system update. I think, that has been the default behavior for all of Apple’s „use our services“-reminders since they started showing those.

jonhohle 1y ago

I’ve been a Mac user for >20 years, Linux before that, and lots of FreeBSD on the side. The rewrite from System Preferences to System Settings was one of the worst changes I’ve seen. Preference panes used to be customized for each function to do what was necessary. Often there were hidden sheets with additional features for power users. Now everything is just lists. Lists of identical looking, but actually very different settings. List of permissions that drill down into more lists which may or may not be what you want. The lists are unsortable and the order seems arbitrary. I’m sure there was some push to SwiftUI preferences, but in my opinion, Scott Forstall’s Maps decision pales in comparison to the mess that Settings continues to be.

bromuro 1y ago
I actually love the new design of System Settings.
Groxx 1y ago
not being in osx development any more: is custom UI no longer possible at all, or is it just significantly easier to go with the flow? though I have seen settings sections that are simply a "launch the actual config" button. but Wacom was doing that back in System Preferences days, so I'm not sure what to think.
- jonhohle 1y ago
  It’s possible, and some exist, it’s just less common now. Previously each preference category would take over the whole window. Now it gets a vertically oriented list. Previously all content fit within the window. Now all of the categories require vertical scrolling of some overly padded list control.
cyberax 1y ago
I would mind Settings much less if they at least fixed some bullshit. For example, there's no easy way to find the network in the Wifi network list. There's no search field for it, in 2025! And the whole window can not be resized horizontally. It's just jaw-droppingly bad.
1y ago

duttish 1y ago

I've been a software engineer for quite a number of years now. I bought a mac and iphone a few months back because I wanted to look into iphone development and there was a lot of cursing involved. First the forms were incredibly bad for a new Swedish user. Then there turned out to be some kind of sync issue between account creation and when it can be used, but the error message did not reflect that in any way whatsoever. The next day the same thing worked. On the one hand they have a support chat to contact and it's great, just being able to contact an actual person was a shock. On the other hand support couldn't help with my problem and I would not recommend the onboarding experience to anyone. I'm never buying a mac again if I can avoid it.

inetknght 1y ago
> I've been a software engineer for quite a number of years now. ... I bought a mac and iphone a few months back ... and there was a lot of cursing involved. I'm not sure what's worse: the inane keyboard compared to Linux or the ridiculously dumbed-down featureset that makes it effectively impossible for a power user to even try to transition into macOS.
- flakeoil 1y ago
  The keyboard issue when switching from Windows/Linux to Mac is understated. It's a pain and I think it's worse for non-english keyboards/characters. You have to use plugins/3rd party software and relearn new keys.
- fmbb 1y ago
  What powers are you missing? Zsh works the same. You of course have to learn a real (BSD) Unix userspace instead of some silly GNU amalgamation, but that is usually quick.
  - inetknght 1y ago
    > Zsh works the same. zsh is nice, but I don't like it. I use bash. As for what powers am I missing? Absolutely missing keys, and not every input field is tabbable. If it was just the key sequences that were different, I would cope with that.

Telaneo 1y ago

I've been really disappointed in iOS 26 for this reason. I thought it was going in the completely wrong direction, but maybe that was just me being grumpy. Then I noticed that the less computer savvy were having an absolutely abysmal time with it. We're back to computers being really hard for the normies, with apparently no mainstream option that's simple and easy for Grandma. Unless you want to ship her over to Linux Mint or something similarly not mainstream, but actually user friendly. I doubt Jobs would have let things get this bad. He would have been ruthless if he had noticed the setup and nagging being this bad.

al_borland 1y ago
Jobs seemed like he actually used everything himself, and he wanted a good experience as a customer. I don’t actually believe Tim Cook uses most of the stuff Apple makes, nothing beyond the basics, and he’s likely willing to compromise that experience to increase the stock price. I’m still of the opinion that iOS 6 was peak iPhone. Say what you will about skeuomorphism, it was easy to understand, apps were visually unique from one another, and the friendly UI was a nice juxtaposition to the clean minimalist hardware.
- cyberax 1y ago
  I loved skeuomorphism. It seemed to add some human touch to apps.
  - ksec 1y ago
    +1, may be the style and graphics design needs some updating. But I love the idea.
  - worldsayshi 1y ago
    Yes flat/material design makes UIs so much harder to read.
- miramba 1y ago
  iOS6 peak iPhone? Finally someone says it! Also buttons had titles like “Done“ instead of icons, touches wouldn‘t end in accidental swipes all the time and Safaris toolbar was fixed. All things I recently failed to explain to an elderly person.

jazzyjackson 1y ago

Took 3 tech savvy family members to figure out why mom couldn’t sign back into an app she was paying for: every time she “signed in with Apple” she also hit “hide my email” (first option) and so registered with a new random email address every time she signed in It was also illuminating how complex sharing app purchases can be. Some apps allow it, some apps it’s a different payment tier to enable it. It was unclear who had paid for what app and why they didn’t show up on some devices.

ZPrimed 1y ago
This is part of why I absolutely LOATHE the multiple "sign-in-with-Y" prompts on everything. Federation's not a terrible idea for people who don't "get it," but many places are then starting to _hide_ the standard email-based login form... it's bonkers. Google can go DIAF for their browser-based forced popover that so many sites have opted-in to (so they can sell more expensive ads, of course). [I use Vivaldi which is Chromium-based and AFAIK there's no way to shut off those prompts]
- eep_social 1y ago
  Don’t bother switching to a better browser either, those prompts will be replaced with prompts to download chrome
rendaw 1y ago
Hide my email replaces your email with an apple controlled intermediate address, right? Is there any reason apple couldn't reuse the same intermediate address for you? I thought the main things were making it so they don't have your actual email to track/trace, that when you unsubscribed they couldn't continue to spam you, and maybe let apple track spammers, all of which would be fine with a persistent fake email... I mean, facilitating multiple accounts, while it could be nice, seems way beyond the UX apple provides and isn't a typical paradigm for most software... this seems like an apple issue.
- wodenokoto 1y ago
  It’s because the Sign in with Apple dialogue failed to recognize that it already has an account with said service.

gyomu 1y ago

Is there an example of a platform that serves almost 2 billion users, across 40+ languages and many more geographic locales, countless possible hardware configurations etc., introducing dozens/hundreds of new features a year, without falling into all those traps? Of course I wholeheartedly agree with your critiques. But the original iPhone - or even macOS circa 2005 - were very different products, much more limited in scope and capability. It's already hard enough to make a product a paragon of simplicity when the number of things it needs to do are so limited (as evidenced by all the products out there that are even more confusing than Apple products, doing even less), but I'm not sure it's even possible to do it when you reach such planetary scale. Seems to me that the only way to have a product that's a paragon of simplicity is to have a product that does much, much less. But you don't become a trillion dollar company with 2 billion active users by doing less.

Groxx 1y ago
>Is there an example of a platform that [does this right] no, because >introducing dozens/hundreds of new features a year is antithetical to "doing it right". doing that is sufficient to prove you are not doing it right.
- gyomu 1y ago
  Would love to read your manifesto of what "doing it right" entails.
  - pasc1878 1y ago
    It doesn't matter. If there is a definition of doing it right then it is a better experience in following that rather than adding new features that don't match the definition no matter what it is. And if the definition changes then you should be changing everything which takes resources away from new features. Unfortunately new features grab the attention of media an influencers and so that is what gets you the money.
  - Groxx 1y ago
    given this is in a thread about simplicity: I think "dozens/hundreds of new features a year" speaks for itself why it's a problem. but Apple (and Windows) nowadays reeks of promotion-driven development. ship a new feature and make sure people use it by making it as annoyingly in-your-face as possible, so you can show "impact". do that for just a few years and you're reliably left with a confusing, inconsistent, and extremely chaotic new user experience as each of those features jockeys for prime eyeball real estate. mobile games with tons of features to spend money on are often a prime example of this, where new users a year after it launched are stuck in hours of tutorials and broken UI due to dozens of notifications that barely fit on screen, and Windows is not far behind with some sellers' junkware. Apple hasn't reached that far yet (AFAICT), but it's clearly headed in the same direction. Linux has many, many flaws as a user-friendly desktop environment, but this is not one of them. take a clean install. boot up the first time. it's very likely you'll be greeted by a single "welcome" window (a normal one that you can just close) or nothing at all, just a working environment, regardless of the version you chose. that's unambiguously a more simple, less annoying, less spammy experience. Apple used to be almost this smooth.

daemonologist 1y ago

I have a couple of older relatives with Macs, and every time you fire them up for the first time in a while (these people might go several months without using their computer) the Apple ID sign-in nagging is insane. It'll pop up the same sign-in notification a dozen times and seems to lock up the settings app until you deal with it. I usually think of myself as quite patient but when I see that little window it inspires strong feelings.

scrollaway 1y ago
The Apple ID sign in is insane in the first place. Why does Apple want to feel so frickin special and require a working iPhone for 2FA and passkeys, instead of adopting standards? One day the eu will yell at them to do things normally and then Cook will go on stage to showcase what an awesome idea they had that nobody thought of before: “standards!”. Wait no, that’s usb c. Side-rant over.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever. I do have a Google ID and I can't wait for the day that I can finally retire it. All of these feel like the exact opposite of what the internet should have been, this centralization and abuse of critical mass is a serious problem.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever. I don't know whether I have a Microsoft account or not. I didn't want to have one, obviously. But at some point I wanted to use Visual Studio and setting that up required me to create a Microsoft account. I continued not to use that account as an account on my computer, because why on earth would I do that. So, other than using Visual Studio, that account never did anything at all, sort of like you'd expect from an account that you forced someone to create under duress. One day I opened Visual Studio and a popup message displayed, telling me that because of what appeared to be fraudulent behavior by my Microsoft account, it was being revoked or disabled or whatever. (But I was still free to continue using Visual Studio.) OK.

psadri 1y ago

We miss you Steve.

cyberax 1y ago

Last week I spent hours debugging our application. Something was broken in the remote request layer, and I spent quite a bit of time debugging it with curl. The culprit? Apple. I missed a notification hidden below all the windows that iTerm was requesting access to my local network. So curl installed via Homebrew and activated using direnv was not working because it was not getting the required entitlement. But curl in the `/usr/bin` directory was working just fine because it has the necessary entitlement from Apple. So "/usr/bin/curl http://192.168.20.1 http://192.168.20.1" was working just fine, while "/opt/homebrew/bin/curl http://192.168.20.1 http://192.168.20.1" was silently failing. Fun. Fun. Fun. Can you disable this bullshit? Nope. Permission grants need to be renewed every 30 days. And they pop up at the most inopportune moments.

lostlogin 1y ago
You’re making me twitchy. Desktop Docker (eww, yuck) and it’s permissions, path hell and general bs. Can <permissions dialogue> it <permissions dialogue> be <permissions dialogue> any <permissions dialogue> other <permissions dialogue> way? <permissions dialogue> I want a headless mac mini running docker. Why is it so hard?
- skydhash 1y ago
  It’s better to take the hit on power and have a mini pc running linux. Macos is not great if you’re not using user facing apps.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago
    Yeah, you can get a little Beelink with AMD's new chips and a boatload of RAM for around the price of a mac mini (cheaper if you are trying to max out the mini). The Ryzen AI 9 can run at about 28W I believe, it's not too bad.
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      I’m running the mini on 7w (averaged over a month). It’s networked at 10gb, which is hard to do on mini pc/nuc without using a lot more power. My other Nucs use 70ish (nuc 9 extreme) or 35 (nuc 10 with thunderbolt dongle). The mini is also much more powerful. The is was a bit of a nightmare to tame but I’ve got it sorted now.

heavyset_go 1y ago

They turned macOS into an iCloud client and subscription sales funnel.

thewebguyd 1y ago
This is everything outside of Linux now. Every freaking device or service is now just a sales funnel, and the whole industry has stopped making good products and are just rent seeking now. It's a damn shame the hardware is so good for laptops, and that Qualcomm is taking their sweet time getting device trees for the Snapdragon X elite stuff into Linux, so the one laptop that's even remotely comparable to my Macbook (my Surface laptop 7) can't run Linux either. No other OEM seems to give a crap about putting out a decent laptop without compromises.
VectorLock 1y ago
macOS with its popups that iCloud is full with no way to disable it.

snielson 1y ago

Assistive access mode for an iPhone is fantastic for the elderly. It's the only way my 85-year-old father can even use a phone. One of the best features is that it can be set to allow incoming calls only from people in his contacts. It's such a lifesaver.

netsharc 1y ago
What if it's police or the hospital trying to call? I suppose it'd be "simple" for the device to answer the call and then prompt for a password before ringing for the user, but then the random caller needs to know the password. But then again, it could be as simple as "This is Siri, please say the name of the person you're trying to reach.", and since spammers usually don't have a name associated with the number they just randomly dialled, they'll be stumped.
- ghaff 1y ago
  I strongly suspect the people who throw all these roadblocks if an unknown number calls them don’t have kids, elderly relatives, various medical visits, etc. personally I’m not going to make myself hard to reach because of the cost of a spam call now and then. If it works for you fine. But understand that different people have different needs.
  - District5524 1y ago
    I used to feel the same, but nowadays, I have very few normal calls, mostly from close relatives only, but a dozen of spam calls a week. And that used not to be the case before 2024. I know robocalls are/were a terrible affliction in the US for like the last 10 years, but they were very few of these in Hungary. I wish I'd know what caused this change..
    - ghaff 1y ago
      It's hard to say why people's experiences differ so much in the US I get maybe 3 a week or so. I would probably be more aggressive about adding businesses and people to my contact list if I were more aggressive about blocking possible SPAM. For me, the SPAM is one of life's lesser annoyances but I should probably check out some of the prevent features Apple has built into iOS.

busymom0 1y ago

Changing wallpapers alone on iPhones is super complex nowadays. Still have no idea why I can't just set a photo as the wallpaper only while not removing the existing widgets already set.

poolnoodle 1y ago
This is insane to me. How could they make the simplest thing so complicated?
- BrtByte 1y ago
  It's the perfect example of Apple overengineering something
thewebguyd 1y ago
The new wallpaper/lockscreen customization is so insane to me. You can't select any of Apple's built-in wallpapers without creating a new lock screen first (which requires re setting up all your widgets). Whose idea was that? Trying to set a photo from photos as your wallpaper also creates a new lockscreen. the only way to modify an existing, already set up lock screen is to long press, tap customize, and then tap the little photo square. Did a UX designer even look at this? Because it sure doesn't seem like it.
- busymom0 1y ago
  Yep. And despite many people sending that feedback over the last 2 iOS versions, they haven't fixed the UX. It's absurd.
  - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
    You know, you guys might just be getting old. Maybe ask a kid to help? Back when we were kids we probably all had adults asking us how to do tech stuff all the time, because we had the time and curiosity to explore and learn it. My son is 4 and has autism and he knows how to change his wallpaper and likes to switch between the different home screens he's made when he gets some iPad time. Now I can do it too because I've watched him do it lol. But I've got a job, groceries to buy, cooking and cleaning to do, yard work, etc. I don't have the time or energy to devote to making 7 different home screens to match all my outfits or whatever people are doing with it.

userbinator 1y ago

I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great. Instead, the whole company has become a dictator of its "users".

aantix 1y ago

A couple of times I’ve been offered a backend contract position for Apple at $110/hr. They couldn’t go any higher. lol. No thanks. Billions in the bank and they’re cheaping out on talent. El cheapos.

defraudbah 1y ago
los cheapos, my gringo amigo
- kaeruct 1y ago
  Los codos, mi amigo gringo
yard2010 1y ago
Las cheapas

Simulacra 1y ago

There was a joy of tech comic a long time ago, in which Johnny Ives was discussing with Steve Jobs all the complexity of a smartphone, so many apps, so many buttons, that he had made a brand new phone: No apps, mo screen, it just makes calls!

ghaff 1y ago
A few years ago at least a feature phone probably was the right answer for many people. But smartphones are so normalized that they’re increasingly essentially a requirement for a lot of services.

unlikelytomato 1y ago

I got stuck in a fullscreen YouTube video the first time I tried an iPhone. Simplicity is relative. For years, the lack of a back button resulted in this weird behavior of having to learn how each app wants you to navigate it. Even now that everyone has settled into the same list of 5ish methodologies, it can be cumbersome to figure out.

brap 1y ago

I recently tried helping out my parents setup the latest Windows. I don’t wish that on my worst enemies. What a pile of garbage that OS has become. Xbox? Copilot? OneDrive? Why am I seeing ads? Bro leave me the fuck alone I just want a browser. It’s so bad that at one point I considered having them try another OS, even though all they know is Windows. Unfortunately everything is crap now. Chrome OS would have been a great option because they only need a browser, but just navigating the site is a mess. What the fuck Google, why do you always have to work against your potential customers. And don’t get me started on Linux distros, I don’t see my parents fixing the inevitable issues in the terminal. Can we just go back to Windows 98 or something?

netsharc 1y ago
Why not Linux with SSH open, ready for you to login in case some troubleshooting is needed? OK, I have SSH open on a non-standard port on my homemade NAS, and I notice the many many visitors from all over the world trying to bust through my SSH door... (I've implemented a web page to open the port when I enter a password there)
- subscribed 1y ago
  I set up tailscale for my older family members. I can always login and fix stuff. In a pinch - AnyDesk.
baconbrand 1y ago
I set my mom up with Linux Mint a little over a decade ago, she used it without issue for a few years before changing computers. I don’t think that distro is a thing anymore, but it was Ubuntu based. You might be surprised, there is lots of very user friendly Linux out there.
- shawn_w 1y ago
  Mint is still very much around.
  - 1y ago

dustingetz 1y ago

this is the actual driver for AI

teekert 1y ago

I switched to iOS about 4 years ago (want small phone, so iPhone 12 mini), from a OnePlus3 with Lineage. I thought indeed that it was all going to be much better, simpler, more elegant (phone was 2x the price so), but I ran into a lot of issues that I wrote down at the time (some things have been fixed by now): * Tried installing Signal 4 times, it failed on the apple account generation and no further clues that it didn't or did install Signal (it didn't) * Can't put icons on the bottom of screen, where your thumb is... need to fill other icons to get important stuff on the bottom. (Fixed!) * App store does not start with search... So one feels a bit lost, where are the apps? (Fixed! Now a beautiful bubble at the bottom, does require good eye-sight to notice). Still think app store is not really about apps? IDK, it's screaming, there are anime cat girls everywhere; feels cheap. * Absolutely maddening that it keeps correcting my .nl email adres to .nul (android leaves non txt field alone as far as I'm aware) * No intro at all into UI (although nowadays I see some hints in "sets") * Top suggestion in app store is never what you are looking for. Pretty strange. Can we change that? -> Later found out the top suggestion with dark blue around it is always sponsored... And since has NEVER been what I was looking for, never, I instinctively ignore it now like a vibrating "100.000th visitor" badge on a 90s webpage. * Spouse got stuck searching for app in the Apple store instead of the App store.. * Many controls are at the top (this was pre-swipe, man am I happy with swipe gestures, really fixed iOS for me). Although again: How do you find out? * My wife, after 3 years still can't remember how to close badly behaving apps to restart them. * (Old remark) Video pauzes when taking a quick look at notification tray -> In the new bubbly iOS this is much worse even, I often quickly pulled down the notification tray for quick peaks, then let go. But in bubbly iOS there is 0 contrast until you let your finger go, and then the screen will sleep soon. * You can't dismiss all notifications, since iOS 16 or so there is a dismiss button but it is still, to this day, unclear to me what subset of notifications it allows me to dismiss. * Screen often goes to sleep as I'm curating notifications. * Can't drag to folder onder lower bar/icon area (Fixed!) * Pull down in center of screen gives Siri/search, not notifications, I'd swap that, now notifications requires hand stretching even on iPhone mini. * I set Firefox as the standard browser yet both telegram and Signal (so far) always open Safari (Fixed I think) * No notification grouping. (Fixed, but still not as nice as Android, where I spent quite some time in the notification center triaging) * auto correct does not un-correct on backspace, autocorrect corrects the last word AFTER hitting send (still drives me mad, I just end every message with a space now to avoid looking dumb). Language switching does seem to go very well. * To close a picture, swipe down, that really took a while. Although not all apps implement it. * Red dots are not synced with open notifications, when I dismiss a notification I want the red dot gone. * Hotspot keeps shutting down (it just remains on on Android, usually that is what you want) * A couple of days in I had 652 mb of data on iCloud, no idea what it was. Then at some limit it starts to nag and it is not obvious how to make it stop nagging. I don't even want anything on iCloud, nobody asked me if I did. * Alarms are very confusing. Your morning alarm clock is set in the health section (and under alarm) and is linked to your sleep schedule... OK, this changed many times a week, and irregularly... Spouse still has way too loud alarm sometimes because she refuses the "Health based morning alarm", yeah I know how that sounds to a non iOS user. Please also offer a decoupled version of the morning alarm. It's different from messaging alarms. * Switching "Focus" by holding the lock screen is just very annoying. First you have to swipe down your notifications, then you have to hold the screen. But just long enough until you feel that it didn't work and start to squeeze more. My father asked me some weeks back: "What is this, why does this happen?? That thing you just did!!" And I explained him I was "switching focusses". He does not understand, he does not want it. He turns his phone off if he does not want to be disturbed (yeah and complains when we send messages in the night, because the night is for sleeping and thus only for emergencies... life was simpler back in the days). * It took me more than a year to find out why my notes app keeps saying: "Restore writing" when walking through the DIY store with the notes app open. Drove me mad! Turns out, shaking is a trigger for un-doing things.. Or something... :s * Replying to an email and adding a couple of consecutive pictures is a nightmare -> Switched to much better Proton mail now. Apple mail, idk, it works until it doesn't. * One gets a "Screen use" report every week, when you tap it, it takes you to the current week, where you havent used you phone yet :s. Still don't understand how to see previous weeks. There were also a lot of nice things though, ie widgets are much better, feel more connected. Swiping feels much more integrated and still works when apps crash etc. Overal I got used to things pretty quickly, but many, many things are very much not obvious (anymore) indeed. Yeah it's a lot, I once thought about making a blog post about the switch but never did, just kept the notes and adding to it as I pulled my hair out over my iPhone.

amelius 1y ago

> used to be a paragon of simplicity. Yes, this is because in the beginning, like all systems, there was not much functionality. The first iPhone lacked important functions. But of course, this being Apple, users translate "this device is simple" into "this device is simple to use".

thewebguyd 1y ago
Feature-packed software can be simple though if it's well-designed (in terms of UX, not necessarily aesthetics). It just seems that Apple actually isn't all that good at it, despite that being their brand selling point. Once they started adding in more and more features due to pressure from Android, they lost the plot and ended up more complicated and disjointed. The cracks in Apple's ability to make software are showing.

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

Dunno man, I have used Android phones and they are way worse than my iPhone in my opinion - I assume you have an Android phone, so it’s fun we both consider the other ecosystem more aggressively demanding of attention and naggy. Ultimately I think they both suck and we’ve all gotten used to the one evil we’ve chosen.

hocuspocus 1y ago
The number of authentication and permission prompts is noticeably higher with macOS and iOS, there's really no comparison.
- LPisGood 1y ago
  Which is objectively a good thing, right?
  - avalys 1y ago
    No, not objectively good at all. If you're a neurotic obsessive who wants to pretend that all kinds of dastardly forces are trying to spy on you and your data, then yes, you want more security checks and more permission prompts. For literally everyone else - these are only obstacles to their intended use of the device, and every one of them is objectively worse! Safari prompts me _every single time I use Google_ about whether I want to share my location. I literally couldn't care less whether Google knows this, and I click yes every time, but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, DOES NOT GIVE ME THE OPTION to say "Always Allow". Thanks to some overbearing, self-important privacy dweeb, no doubt, and no leadership at Apple confident enough to override them.
    - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
      that's crazy, I always deny because I'm already on the damn search results at that point and don't want to repeat the search for little to no benefit.
    - LPisGood 1y ago

basisword 1y ago

I had to setup one from scratch recently for the first time in years. The experience was terrible. However, I can see why it might not be a concern for device manufacturers. We’ve had the iPhone for almost 20 years. The number of people setting up a phone from scratch who have never used a smartphone before must be minuscule at this point and will continue to dwindle. 80 year olds were still working when the iPhone was released. They will have experience using computers at the very least and more than likely have used smartphones for a long time.

eCa 1y ago
Plenty of new people are created every year, many of whom eventually gets their first ever phone.
- basisword 1y ago
  Yes but I assume (perhaps incorrectly) they will be technically literate enough to not have any issues. The process is a bit of a pain but it's not exactly difficult for someone that's used any modern technology before.

everdrive 1y ago

I'd also like to add the impossibility of knowing what all the gesture controls are. Currently they seem to assume that you have been using an iPhone for years and pay close attention to every product launch. In other words, they assume that you learned them as they evolved. If you didn't, there's not a very good way to uncover them or customize them. Individual apps behave differently as well, and it's pretty vague regarding how you do different things.

lazystar 1y ago
the situation is ripe for a new gesture protocol of some kind :pray:
jpalawaga 1y ago
Even if you haven't. My partner is an iphone loyalist for years and was very disappointed that they removed the "open tabs" button out of safari. I (new to iPhone) had to show them the pinch-out gesture to show your tabs. It's beyond unintuitive. At least in the latest OS release, they've stopped hiding the searchbar in the ridiculous 'scroll past the top of the list' idiom. The verge also has this wonderful paywall which completely breaks safari scroll such that you can't show the toolbar. The only way to 'go back' once you're hit with the paywall is to know about the hidden 'swipe from the far side' gesture in safari (cumbersome given the size of phones). I sometimes wonder if people actually use the devices they make.
Xss3 1y ago
This is what fucked me off about apple and their fandom from the get go. They called this gesture bs 'intuitive'. It isnt. Randomly swiping around the screen until something happens is not intuitive UX design. My mum used her iphone for 4 years before she learned how to multitask with it, under my tuition, and she still struggles. She is good with computers.
- int_19h 1y ago
  iPhones with a physical button are great for this because all you really need in iOS is to get back to the home screen - switching apps that way isn't ideal but it works. Or you can just double-click the button, which is still easier than writing bee dances with your fingers. My 85-year-old grandmother can handle that. But a modern all-swipe iPhone? No way.

Razengan 1y ago

Well, when iOS was simple, people here moaned that it was too simple, a toy, and how so advanced glorious Android was and sacrificed their firstborns to Google and now where are we

boringg 1y ago

Couldn't agree more that they completely butchered the ease of use for anyone who isn't technical.

cmiles74 1y ago

Younger people struggle with this, too. I was getting my teeth cleaned this morning and the hygienist had a lengthy story about transferring data to a new iPhone (her prior phone was 2.5 years old). It's anecdata but the experience is challenging, especially for something people have to do and do rarely.

BrtByte 1y ago

The magic is gone when just getting to the home screen feels like an obstacle course

dlopno 1y ago

[dead]

Morizero 1y ago

> without a dictator I don't know what kind of pro-authoritarian sane-washing statement you're trying to make with this line. Jobs himself would tell you that it's a consequence of letting a salesperson run the company rather than a product person. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA

appreciatorBus 1y ago
> pro-authoritarian sane-washing The general use of the word dictator for someone in role like Jobs had or with his temperment has been around almost as long as the word dictator. A cursory Google search for "steve jobs dictator" reveals references going back to 2007 at least. Several references even refer to him as Hitler. Many people who worked with Steve, both those who liked him and those who hated him, described him as a dictator.