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One of my biggest problems is the all-too-pervasive attitude that #2 means that users shouldn't be able to control things that "do the right thing", rather than
by x1798DE 12y ago
One of my biggest problems is the all-too-pervasive attitude that #2 means that users shouldn't be able to control things that "do the right thing", rather than that the device defaults to doing the right thing. I find myself all too often in "edge case" situations that would be very easy to fix manually if I could dig around in some settings panel, but modern design philosophy seems to consider including a setting like that to be a design failure in some way.
One example is a lack of any kind of manual focus on any phone cameras. If I'm taking a picture of a person or a cat or something the autofocus does the job right almost every time, but try taking a picture of a small shiny button or something - it's a nightmare. If I could press up-down-up-down-A-B-A-B-start-select and get a manual focus slider, I'd be happy all the time, but instead my few salient memories of fighting with the autofocus have soured me on the whole experience.
- gsteinb88 12y agoFYI, if you have an iPhone there's now a couple manual focus camera apps. Free: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/manually-manual-focus-camera/id923233292?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/manually-manual-focus-camera... and $2, but I've been happy with it: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/manual-custom-exposure-camera/id917146276?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/manual-custom-exposure-camer...
- morley 12y agoAs far as I know, if you're in the stock camera app, you can tap a portion of the screen for the camera to focus on that area. My girlfriend has an Android phone and can do the same.
- bryanbuckley 12y agotap is to autofocus. So if the autofocus is wrong, enjoy your frustration, miss your picture, or enjoy your blurry picture.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y agoTap and hold in iPhone camera app locks the focus, you can then move the phone to manually focus.
- x1798DE 12y agoI don't, but good on Apple for exposing that functionality. My understanding last time I looked was that in Android it's not even exposed to developers (though I didn't look too deeply into it - there may just be no native API functions for manual focus).
- Joeri 12y agoLumia phones have manual focus buit into the standard camera app.