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I don't know man. It's easy to wax poetic about simplicity behind a keyboard, but again - they're maintaining an operating system that has to work for blind use

by gyomu 1y ago

I don't know man. It's easy to wax poetic about simplicity behind a keyboard, but again - they're maintaining an operating system that has to work for blind users, for people using their AirPods as hearing aids, for people who want to make the font XXXL, for people who read in (one of dozens of languages, all with their own quirks as to how they should be displayed), people who want to interact with their phone by talking to it, people who want to plug in their phone to their car, people who use their phone as a transit pass/credit card/digital ID in (one of the dozens of countries supported, each with its own regulatory quirks), people who mostly care about using their phone as a camera, people who are using their phone for work purposes with arcane legacy requirements... Etc etc etc. With all that in mind, a few dozen/hundred features a year (depending on what you count as a feature) sounds quite tame to me. If you look at each individual app, they honestly get way less churn and change for the sake of change than most products on the market do. For example my usage of Notes.app has remained more or less unchanged over the last 15 years, while in a fraction of that time apps like Notion will shift stuff around and force workflows on me a half dozen times. I don't even remember Apple killing a core app that people relied on? That can't be said for most any competitor. The hate towards the new design system that feels rushed and is riddled with inconsistencies and legibility problems is justified. Comparing macOS to Windows - an operating system that has been literally shoving ads in our faces, or saying "well they should just take inspiration from Linux and just not ship new features" feels... as weak of an argument as it gets.

Groxx 1y ago
I suspect you are signed into iCloud, and haven't seen the nonsense they throw at you to upsell it if you don't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45459074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45459074 but yes, Windows is worse here. that doesn't make current-Apple good at it though. they've just collaboratively lowered the hurdle quite a lot, and still trip on it frequently. and Linux ships tons of features, but they don't throw it in your face. it does that so quietly you apparently didn't even notice. (this is not in any way meant to claim Linux handles feature changes well, or helps you find stuff you might need, or much of anything, because it does not. just that it doesn't advertise to you, in the vast majority of distros)
int_19h 1y ago
The UI is supposed to be adaptive; that's why there's an "Accessibility" section in Settings. But out of the box it's pretty clear that iPhone is quite a mess compared to most modern Androids. All the swiping from various non-obvious directions is just crazily non-discoverable, and on top of that it's easy to accidentally do something you didn't want - like pulling down notifications when you wanted control panel, or vice versa. OTOH Android 2.x 4-button experience (back, home, context, search) was clean and very discoverable. Especially on devices where the buttons were separate hardware ones, like Nexus One - no swiping bullshit, you just press the button that you see, and that does the same thing every time.
- Groxx 1y ago
  I never had a device+apps that really made use of anything but "back" and "home" and... while I kinda like the idea, they're just not usable in most screens in most apps. The current three buttons (well. previous, given how hard they're pushing gesture nav and how often three-button is broken nowadays) are nearly all useful all the time, I think I prefer it this way. Even if it would be nice to kill the hamburger menu, or get nigh-universal support for "find text on screen/in list". But yes 100%, buttons are great. They respond much much faster too.

by gyomu 1y ago

Groxx 1y ago

I suspect you are signed into iCloud, and haven't seen the nonsense they throw at you to upsell it if you don't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45459074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45459074 but yes, Windows is worse here. that doesn't make current-Apple good at it though. they've just collaboratively lowered the hurdle quite a lot, and still trip on it frequently. and Linux ships tons of features, but they don't throw it in your face. it does that so quietly you apparently didn't even notice. (this is not in any way meant to claim Linux handles feature changes well, or helps you find stuff you might need, or much of anything, because it does not. just that it doesn't advertise to you, in the vast majority of distros)

int_19h 1y ago

The UI is supposed to be adaptive; that's why there's an "Accessibility" section in Settings. But out of the box it's pretty clear that iPhone is quite a mess compared to most modern Androids. All the swiping from various non-obvious directions is just crazily non-discoverable, and on top of that it's easy to accidentally do something you didn't want - like pulling down notifications when you wanted control panel, or vice versa. OTOH Android 2.x 4-button experience (back, home, context, search) was clean and very discoverable. Especially on devices where the buttons were separate hardware ones, like Nexus One - no swiping bullshit, you just press the button that you see, and that does the same thing every time.

Groxx 1y ago
I never had a device+apps that really made use of anything but "back" and "home" and... while I kinda like the idea, they're just not usable in most screens in most apps. The current three buttons (well. previous, given how hard they're pushing gesture nav and how often three-button is broken nowadays) are nearly all useful all the time, I think I prefer it this way. Even if it would be nice to kill the hamburger menu, or get nigh-universal support for "find text on screen/in list". But yes 100%, buttons are great. They respond much much faster too.