
iPhones are hard to use - mrzool
https://blog.fawny.org/2018/10/22/hardtouse/
======
varenc
Most of this article just lists semi-advanced features that people don't know
about. I think that’s Apple’s intention...

Having every feature and option up in your face can reduce usability and make
simple tasks harder for the average user. Apple wants a product that's easy
for anyone to use and that often means keeping non-essential features out of
the way.

I’d be more interesting in seeing feedback for Apple on how to improve the
situation without compromising on ease of use.

(Regarding the WiFi thing...I agree this is a very annoying default setting,
but I think a worse outcome is when a user shows up in their friend’s house
and has no idea how to connect to the WiFi. Making the user go to Settings ->
WiFi to disable this prompt means they’ve demonstrated they’ll be able to go
back to that page to manually connect to a network in the future. If you turn
this setting off on a friend's phone, be sure they still know how to connect
manually.

(Though I do think iOS could be smarter and not prompt you to connect to
intermittent networks while you’re driving around a city...))

~~~
karmakaze
The problem lies in what's _semi-advanced_ to one is critical or basic to many
others. Apple has been known to hide (aka. make subtle) basic operations. How
often have you wanted to load a page in 'desktop mode' in mobile Safari? It's
there, just invisibly so. The UI does not teach in the name of clean/minimal
design which is Apple's way: form over function.

Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut keystrokes into
pull down menus.

~~~
rangibaby
Steve Jobs was heavily against hidden functionality (sorry there is a word for
it I can't remember off the top of my head). It's why Macs had one-button mice
for so long. It wasn't until the third major revision of the OS that iPhones
got copy+paste!

~~~
reitanqild
> Steve Jobs was heavily against hidden functionality (sorry there is a word
> for it I can't remember off the top of my head). It's why Macs had one-
> button mice for so long.

That doesn't make sense at all to me: The right click button on a mouse is
visible.

The Mac way of hiding it behind the ctrl key was non-discoverable and non-
obvious to me.

~~~
bb88
Or under pull down menus... or context menus... or...

Force touch just seems like a different form of right mouse clicking.

~~~
submeta
I know a few people who - even after trying - can't make "force touch" work
properly. I love it and try to show them. But they can't seem to make the
effort to learn it.

~~~
dublin
I know at quite a few people that have not upgraded their iPhone 6-vintage
phones simply because they found 3D/force Touch to be a really significantly
negative feature, and just flat don't want it.

------
monkeynotes
Most people know it's controversial to say "iPhones are hard to use" because
most people feel that the iPhone, perhaps more than any other technological
innovation in the past 20 years, made technology easy to access, use, and
integrate with their lives.

To say 'iPhones are hard to use' and then point out all the small edge cases
of use as significant flaws is hyperbole in bad faith. The author is caught up
in his own intellectual habit and not in touch with reality.

A better title for this article could be 'Simplifying complexity inevitably
sidelines some of some user's needs'.

~~~
MattSayar
But then nobody would read it

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Well sure, the profit-motive explains clickbait (or in this case, wanting
readership; I see no ads).

We should still keep it off HN. I expect the headlines to work for me, not for
the author.

------
ProfessorLayton
There's a lot to unpack here, and a lot to disagree with, as I believe there's
plenty of evidence Apple cares _a lot_ about accessibility.

Also harping on specific terminology like password vs passcode is not really
productive in terms of improving the underlying UX, as the word gets
translated into tons of languages which may or may not have the same level of
nuance.

While I don't necessarily agree with the premise, especially when compared
with the competition, I will say that _iOS has not gotten easier to use over
time_. Features like 3D touch are implemented inconsistently both at the
hardware level, and in the UX — Worst is how undiscoverable they are. Here's
the crazy part: Apple is about to release the iPhone XR, their _1 and only
phone without 3D touch!_.

~~~
rayiner
It's gotten worse. Screens keep getting bigger, but more and more
functionality keeps getting hidden behind undiscoverable swipes and taps. I've
been an iPhone user since the 3G, I used to program computers for a living,
and I don't have a reliable mental model of what the available gestures even
are these days. I'm reduced to randomly tapping and pressing and swiping like
some sort of idiot.

~~~
int_19h
I'm generally dismayed at the state of UX in general, and mobile UX in
particular, these days.

It feels like we have regressed a lot from where we were in the "golden age of
the desktop". I mean, we actually had standards for things - remember CUA? And
UX was designed in a way that made it so that once you learn a few basic
tricks (like double click and drag and drop), they would work everywhere, and
they would do so _consistently_. Consistency, in general, was key to the UX of
that era. Some things might not have been as easy to access as they are today,
but all things could be found where you expected them. Even the menu hierarchy
was largely standardized.

Now, even if you stick to one particular platform, it often changes the
concepts radically within 4-5 years; and many of those aren't even
consistently applied. Worse yet, instead of fixing the mess, the UX designers
just keep piling more and more stuff, like Apple's "3D touch".

~~~
radiorental
20 year UX veteran here. It's absolutely unheard of for UX to be the final
arbiter on marketing &/or development driven features.

To take your 3D touch example. I'll bet it went a little something like this;
development said 'we can now detect pressure', leads (inc UX) brainstormed on
ways to utilise the functionality. Then it's soley on UX to make it usable.

I've never been involved in a situation where I get to demand capabilities
that hitherto did not exist. Nor have I ever held the power to stop-ship. We
have varying degrees of touch on functionality as it evolves for sure but not
the power you assume we have.

We don't live in a reality where any company, Apple specifically, says 'hey
customers, we realised we actually got things right on the last release,
please give us more money 'cos shareholders'

~~~
ryacko
Product design is inherently a push system. If it was needs-based pull, the
world would be slightly different.

If everything was evaluated by cybersecurity and UX experts first, we wouldn’t
have half the problems, but people aren’t interested in those sorts of issues,
it is more of a matter of getting there “firstest with the mostest”.

~~~
haggy
> If everything was evaluated by cybersecurity and UX experts first, we
> wouldn’t have half the problems

That's an extremely brash assumption. The reason privacy and security haven't
been built into the core of everything we do is because the ease of use within
highly secure systems is inversely proportional to it's UX. The more secure
you want something to be, the harder it is to learn and use.

------
screye
I have been an android-windows user for the longest time, and using Apple
devices is among the most difficult things I've had to do.

I have used windows phone, linux, chrome OS, Blackberry's palm-like UI over
the years, but I have gotten the hang of each over a small period of time.
Apple devices however, are simply counter intuitive for me.

Apple seems to design UI for 2 types of people.

1\. Old Apple users 2\. The person whose phone use is the same as it was 15
years years ago + an app launcher

Because of those, I have seen 2 negative trends in their UI/UX design :

1\. Sticking to old but familiar (for Apple customers) ways, even if they are
cumbersome. (itunes) 2\. Front loading everything that is heavily used by a
layman (their launcher and quick setting menu), and hiding everything else
behind a bevy of menus in settings.

If you have not grown up thinking like an Apple user and want to do anything
advanced (my demographic), then their interface is incredibly alienating. The
only other time I have felt this way has been when using SnapChat. (although
Snap's was a lot more egregious than Apple)

I used an iPad for 2 months this Summer, and swapped it out for a Fire HD 10.
As much as the iPad was fast, I can't be happier to be back to familiar
territory in Android (even if it is on 5.1 Lollipop)

Granted, that my demographic may be the minority, esp. in the US. But, I can't
help but feel, that the incessant praise showered on Apple's devices is partly
because of the greater familiarity people have with those devices. And, that
Apple won't fare as well if they were to be evaluated by an audience
unfamiliar with their brand and devices all together.

~~~
codetrotter
When the Android phones came on the market, I was extatic. Linux, in my
pocket!

However, Android did not live up to my expectations at all. I don’t know what
I was hoping for, but Android was not it.

After a while I came to understand that for me personally Android was a bad
fit, and everything I had envisioned about running Linux on my phone was ill-
adviced. Linux and FreeBSD are my main two operating systems I run on my own
computers and servers, and I would not trade them for anything in the world on
my main laptop, main desktop and servers. But on phones neither have anything
to offer that is of use to me actually.

I don’t really understand what kind of “advanced” things you are referring to
not being possible on iOS. Could you expand on that?

I use my iPhone for web browsing, watching videos, making music, playing some
games, taking photos, 2nd factor auth, sending and receiving money, SSH client
in my pocket, GPS with updated maps, listening to music, writing down notes,
setting alarms, keeping track of my schedule, keeping in touch with people,
creating PDFs that are indistinguishable from the scan a full size flatbed
scanner would give me. The list goes on.

Everything I thought I wanted when I imagined having Linux in my pocket turned
out to be a distraction. When I need Linux or FreeBSD, I have my laptop,
desktop and servers for that.

Anyway, the point is to say that I don’t identify with the two groups of
people you said are their target audience, but I find myself a very happy
iPhone user.

But I am not married to Apple, and I am a loyal customer only because of 1.
their stance on privacy and security and 2. their product fits me so well.

If they mess up with my trust then they will lose me as a customer. If they
make changes to iOS that make using it bothersome, they will lose me as a
customer.

~~~
brianpgordon
> I don’t really understand what kind of “advanced” things you are referring
> to not being possible on iOS. Could you expand on that?

I could give you one. An actual user-accessible filesystem instead of having
only iCloud plus siloed app-specific storage. (No, Apple's eventual
capitulation to include a "Files" app which just aggregates files from
different apps doesn't count.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Seconded. Hiding the filesystem is both destroying productivity and fucking up
people's mental model of computing. I hate when people build abstractions that
_lie to you_ about the way things work - because lies are always inconsistent,
they'll eventually leak and confuse people.

Proficient users aren't born, they're made. Or, increasingly, _not made_ ,
thanks to contemporary UX trends.

~~~
codetrotter
I am not sure that the way files are usually presented is actually that much
better.

You and I know that a file is data and a file format is defined by the
structure of the data.

Most regular users I have talked to don’t know this. If you ask them what a
file format is they will say that the file format is determined by the
extension of the file.

Even with a file system presented to the user you still end up with most
people not having a real understanding of what files actually _are_.

Likewise, a lot of users will insist that certain file formats “belong” to
some particular program, just because the extension associated with the format
is handled by that program on their computer.

Furthermore, most users have no idea what really happens when you open a file
in a program.

In fact I would bet that at least some are completely unable to distinguish
the data of the file from the interface that they are using to edit the file.

A file system is a powerful abstraction, but I don’t think it teaches the
“truth” on its own.

Neither do I think knowing about files is the most important for someone
wishing to understand computation.

The most important to understand is what a data format is, and knowing that
knowing the details of the byte-level structure of the data is what allows
software to be implemented to interact with and optionally transform that
data.

Furthermore, I wish more people knew some fundamental things about data like

\- the difference between text and an image of text

\- the difference between bitmap and vector graphics

\- the difference between lossy and lossless compression, and how these work

\- why some formats are hard to work with, for example extracting data from
PDF files

Etc.

Understanding these things does not require a user visible fs, nor will a user
visible fs help most people understand these things for reasons I stated
earlier in this comment.

------
new_here
This is another case of Apple being held to a higher standard than competitors
in the market.

Apple literally revolutionised the smartphone market with the simple usability
of the iPhone. Of course, there are things that can be improved (with many
decent suggestions from the author that most power users would agree with) but
based on the author’s mild annoyances and casual observations that elderly,
visibly challenged or foreign language people do not always know about
features that can help them, iPhones are now “hard to use”. That’s quite an
unfair title. There’s zero consideration by the author of how many hundreds of
millions of people perform so many of the same tasks (email, messaging and
navigation) almost seamlessly everyday using an iPhone. Our human nature is to
only notice things that ‘dont’t work’ though. It would be interesting to see
how the same people mentioned in the article fare on an Android device.

This article reminds me of the time when the iOS alarm clock app had a bug
that caused the alarm to go off one hour later on some random Sunday and it
made headlines in all the tech press. Compared to the accepted norm that
malware apps are almost routinely found in the public Google Play store.

~~~
lern_too_spel
> Compared to the accepted norm that malware apps are almost routinely found
> in the public Google Play store.

To add to the author's list of things that iPhone users don't know that Apple
keeps hidden, several orders of magnitude more iPhone users have been infected
with malware than Google Play Store users despite the Play Store having
several orders of magnitude more users.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/20/xcodeghost-chinese-
malw...](https://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/20/xcodeghost-chinese-malware-faq/)

~~~
simonbarker87
Given that it is reported on a very well known Apple blog and Apple released a
statement on the issue I don’t think you can say they are hiding it.

So a quick google for xcodegohst brings up a Wikipedia page and widespread
main steam news coverage (including BBC), with quotes from Apple - literally
not hidden at all.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Apple underreported the number of affected apps by two orders of magnitude,
reported that only on its Chinese website (even though millions of users
outside of China were affected), took down even that report shortly after (it
now loads a marketing page), and left the apps on users' phones.
[https://www.fireeye.com/blog/executive-
perspective/2015/09/p...](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/executive-
perspective/2015/09/protecting_our_custo.html)

I consider anything that Apple says to be an ephemeral marketing gimmick.

------
pcmoney
Ok, I need to say it. This article just has iPhone in the title to get more
views. This is a problem with not just all smartphones but all rapidly
evolving technology products. Do you think you could hand an android phone to
one of those example cases and have them do any better with it?

Also half of the time I am in an apple store I am helped by someone who needs
to use the accessibility features to check me out/in. I think it is awesome
that Apple dog foods their products that way.

~~~
bobthepanda
Just because all companies handle the problem space really badly, doesn't mean
we should excuse it.

Apple products, as far as I can remember, do not come with any sort of manual
describing the nifty little shortcuts that they have. Even as someone who did
IT support and handled a lot of iPhone troubleshooting constantly, I got
blindsided by lots of small things, like when they switched the force reboot
from power+home to power+volume down, or whatever it is now.

If you have a feature but nobody knows how to use it, is it really helpful?

~~~
nrb
The “Tips” feature (Swipe left from home) points you right to the User Guide
downloadable from the Books app for the device. It also prompts you with this
info shortly after you finish setting up the device. It’s a 600+ page manual
that describes every single button, gesture, function, menu, for every
preinstalled app on the phone.

There’s a section that describes most everything that has changed in the
newest iOS release.

~~~
CamperBob2
_The “Tips” feature (Swipe left from home)_

I think this is sort of his point. How in the world am I supposed to know to
do that?

~~~
nrb
Well there are many ways to get there, tap the Tips app that is preinstalled
on the home screen on a newly setup iOS device. As I said, it also sends a
notification shortly after device setup directing you there.

~~~
bobthepanda
I've literally never seen the Tips app. Granted, I haven't had a new device in
a while; but I don't recall this being present when I bought my iPhone 7, and
it certainly didn't show up when I upgraded to iOS 12 over the weekend. And as
someone who has had iOS devices for a while, I'm not sure that I would ever
get it, since my first thing is usually to just transfer a backup to my new
phone.

The point is, devices used to come with a manual that had at least some
guidance on how to use a device. It may not have exposed everything, but it
told you the basics. Apple, anecdotally, has outsourced this to Google and the
kindness of strangers like yourself, to tell me how my device works. And
that's the biggest CX failure for me.

I've honestly considered switching to Android many times because the iOS
premium no longer seems justified in terms of hardware or UX, and at this
point the only thing stopping me is my suspicion of Google.

~~~
nrb
Yeah, the Tips app is new in iOS 11. It might have been relegated to some
"Preinstalled" app group somewhere or pushed to one of the last pages. It's
definitely front and center on new phones now.

~~~
artimaeis
The Tips app was new as of iOS 9:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20151204044205/http://www.apple....](https://web.archive.org/web/20151204044205/http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/)

------
philliphaydon
My mum is 68 now. I first got her a windows phone. I taught her how to make
calls. That was it. Then a month later I got a string of text message.

Hello

Son

Is

This

Working

?

She worked out how to send texts.

I upgraded her to an old iphone. I sent it to her in the mail. She worked out
everything including how to take photos. I told her about LINE and she found
the App Store and downloaded it.

Her phone died so I bought her an android cos I couldn’t afford the iphone.

She can’t figure it out at all. She had to go to the store to ask how to
connect to wifi. How to use the play store, etc.

I thought cos she went iphone > android she would be able to pick it up. That
isn’t the case.

iPhones may have hidden features. But they are a lot easier to pick up than an
android phone by a Long shot as far as I’m concerned.

~~~
aetherson
Once you get used to one O/S, the other becomes harder, because instead of
just not knowing any of the conventions, you've actively trained the wrong
ones.

~~~
philliphaydon
My mum went from Windows Phone to iPhone without issue. I didn't have to teach
her anything about the iPhone. To me that suggests either Windows Phone / iOS
are similar (they aren't) or intuitive.

~~~
aetherson
I mainly use Android, have an iPhone, and the differences are constantly
tripping me up. To the point where the claim that iPhones are user-friendly
feels intuitively completely wrong to me. I always want to point to the wifi
thing, or the lack of periods and commas on the keyboard, or the terrible
home-screen arrangement/customization stuff as ironclad proof that the iPhone
is less user-friendly.

But that's not actually it. People who go from iPhone to Android find Android
difficult to use. People who go from Android to iPhone find iOS difficult to
use.

~~~
wvenable
I went from iPhone to Android and struggled but now I have serious trouble
using iOS devices.

I'm now convinced the greatest UI innovation this century is the Back button.
If IBM PC keyboards had a big dedicated "back" key the world would have a been
a much better place.

~~~
lukeschlather
I very rarely use iPhones but when I do I have no idea how anything is
supposed to work without a back button.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I guess they end up being soft buttons on the screen.

~~~
CarVac
In inconsistent places. In many UIs they're on the top left. In the browser
it's on the bottom left?

So weird.

~~~
benzoate
You can however consistently swipe from the left side of the screen to go
back. There are a couple of apps which I suspect were not written by iOS users
where this functionality is broken (such as Valve’s Steam iOS app), but those
are far in the minority.

~~~
CarVac
It isn't necessarily consistent.

I used my coworker's iPhone yesterday, opening a link from a text message, and
couldn't figure out how to go back to the message. Swiping in from the left
side went back... within the browser, which had no back history. I had to go
to the home screen and open text messages again.

On Android, you just hit the back button and it goes back to the previous app
in the stack if you launched one app from another.

~~~
benzoate
It’s consistently going back in the context of the app you’re in.

If you want to go back to the previous app you can swipe from the left on the
home indicator, or on older iPhones swipe from the left with force.

------
devinus
I recently switched to iOS from Android after years on Android. I'm coming
from being a daily macOS user for almost a decade. I would argue that iOS
should no longer be considered the more "user friendly" of the two. That might
have been the case years ago, but iOS seems to expect prior experience with
what I can only guess are iOS paradigms specifically.

Almost every important action I need to take in an iOS app is hidden behind a
gesture. In Android apps, gestures are value adds. They make on-screen actions
or actions accessable through contextual menus quicker to accomplish for the
experienced user. In iOS they're essential to accomplish some tasks.

~~~
sutterbomb
Can you give some specific examples? I’m so thoroughly baked into iOS that I
don’t notice these potential issues.

~~~
lozenge
Opening the app switcher is essentially a gesture. As is opening quick
settings. Opening notifications makes a little more sense as notifications
appear at the top of the screen. Rearranging the home screen is also a
gesture.

~~~
sutterbomb
Thanks, fair examples. How is home screen arrangement handled in android?

~~~
lozenge
A long press on the icon you want to move and you've picked it up (it comes
"closer" to you and moves to be exactly under your finger). Drag it around and
other icons will move around to preview/indicate where it'd be. Let go and it
drops into place. There is no jiggling. You can also drag to Remove or
Uninstall (Remove leaves it in the alphabetical app drawer).

Creating folders is the same as iPhone.

There is a caveat that if the icon was held very still then you'll open a menu
similar to 3D touch menu. I never use this because it isn't that discoverable.

~~~
sutterbomb
Other than the jiggling that’s the exact same method as iOS, unless I’m
missing something.

------
jplayer01
All tech is hard to use. All our interfaces expect a certain amount of
familiarity with abstract concepts that have little to no relation to the real
world. Most people get by because they memorize the most obvious processes
(how to save a file) and build their own largely incorrect mental models that
happen to give the correct results most of the time (assuming a consistent
environment). As soon as something minor breaks or changes, these models
become completely useless.

I've had somebody come to a PC repair shop for columns being the wrong size in
Thunderbird. She wasn't a dumb person, but it's clearly a deeply flawed and
incomplete understanding of the interface and computers in general that led to
her inability to cope with the entirely new state of her desktop (yes, I'm
still talking about the columns).

------
TheKnack
> If Apple actually cared about accessibility (it does not), on the setup
> screen for every iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch would be a step you could not
> skip wherein you have to choose your preferred text size.

iPhones literally do have an unskippable screen during setup that prompts you
to choose a text size

[https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/xlarge/pu...](https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/xlarge/public/field/image/2015/09/06-set-
up-iphone.jpg?itok=oLTHj3Gb)

~~~
lightyrs
Display Zoom is a different setting than Text Size.

~~~
twodayslate
And also not an option on all devices.

~~~
eugeniub
To be fair, it's an option for all currently sold iPhones.

~~~
twodayslate
I don't think this is true.

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8586721](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8586721)

------
aerovistae
In the modern day I would really avoid using "autism" as a negative descriptor
or analogy in published works like this, as much as I may say it in private
contexts to friends.

~~~
MJR
100% agree. I stopped reading when I saw that. What exactly is "Windows
autism" exactly? My autistic son would like to know... And I would encourage
you not to say it in private contexts with friends either.

~~~
jplayer01
> And I would encourage you not to say it in private contexts with friends
> either.

Not sure it's any of your business what he says to his friends in private,
even if you have an autistic son.

~~~
eugeniub
Encouraging people not to be offensive in private? The nerve!

~~~
jplayer01
Offensive to whom exactly? Are you literally insane?

------
ynniv
Last night, while putting my children to sleep, I tried to change the volume
on my wireless headphones and instead called 911. It also woke up the children
because it makes a loud noise like a car alarm. After I cancelled the
impending call to 911 (I hope), it switched to trying to call my wife instead.

I can see a case where this would be valuable, but I'm not an old man and not
likely to be in an accident where the only thing I can do is press the not-
the-volume side of my phone a few times. On top of that, it was only a year
ago that this was an inconspicuous shortcut for disabling your Touch ID from
an attacker or the police. Now it makes an alarming in what might already be a
tense situation. If you have an iPhone, you probably want to review your
"Emergency SOS" settings to better understand what the few remaining buttons
on your phone do.

------
rkho
A number of years ago, I was employed by an Apple Retail store. I don't know
how it is now but when I started (in 2010), they would hold employee-led
workshops on the basics of iOS devices and how to customize them.

By the time I left, they had completely revamped those workshops to be mere
Q&A sessions. My biggest gripe about these Q&A style workshops is that most of
the people attending weren't aware of _what questions to ask_.

~~~
threeseed
> weren't aware of what questions to ask.

This seems completely fine to me.

The idea is to help people solve their problems. Not give them solutions for
problems that never had in the first place.

~~~
Thriptic
Most people don't even know that they have a problem because they are unaware
of what they should be able to do. They think that any preventable annoying
behavior is the natural state of the machine. I was spending time with my
parents awhile back and happened to look over to watch my mom try to
communicate some content from a website she was looking at to a friend. She
would go back and forth from the browser, to the message, to the browser, to
the message, reading and typing. I asked her "Does that site block copy paste?
Why aren't you copy pasting?" She gave me a blank look. I showed her that copy
paste was a feature and it blew her mind.

She didn't think that she had a problem because she didn't expect copy paste
to even be a function on a phone (as she is not a confident computer user
either).

~~~
CamperBob2
Easy to complain about copy/paste functionality, but how else would you
implement it?

I agree with most of the criticisms in the article, but copy/paste is just one
of those things that is never going to be 100% reflexive or intuitive on a
touchscreen.

~~~
matt_j
I know how to copy/paste on an iPhone and it's still an insufferable
operation. I don't know if my fingers are fatter than the average but I find
it next to impossible to select anything, or even place the cursor at the end
of a word instead of selecting an entire word for that matter.

~~~
function_seven
Same here. I just learned yesterday that iOS 12 allows you to rest your finger
on the space bar to begin moving the cursor like you would a mouse. Use
another finger to tap the keyboard (anywhere) to start and end selection mode.

It's a lot easier than trying to precisely aim your fat meat fingers on the
itty bitty text!

------
aaaaaaaaaab
>What can press-and-hold do that people don’t know about? >Directly move a
scrollbar. (Fails most of the time due to tiny narrow hotspots you’re expected
to hit on the first go.)

I couldn’t get this to work.

>Show a magnified absolute-centred duplicate of nearly anything onscreen you
cannot actually manipulate, like whatever is in the title bar. (Try pressing
and holding on the battery icon.)

Neither this one.

Do I need some obscure accessibility setting for these?

~~~
jpeg_hero
I couldn’t get either to work too. Maybe they took them out in iOS 12? I have
scrollbarred before on prior Ios releases

~~~
wingerlang
I'm on 11.2.1 and I can't get it to work.

------
polalavik
And now dumber than ever. At least on my iPhone 6s with the latest update. Now
you have to go through 2 screens to send a photo to someone in imessage,
whereas before the most recent photos were easily accessible. And on facetime
you have to pull up a menu [that covers the entire screen] to flip the camera
around, and if you accidentally hit it a couple times theres no way to know
which way your camera is facing without closing the menu.

~~~
gricardo99
I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was feeling old when I became confused by the
facetime pull up menu and accidentally disconnected the call, unable to figure
out if the camera was flipped, and how to get back to the call.

~~~
bitrrrate
Agreed on this one. Does FaceTime really have that many controls that they
need a separate menu rather than just lining the ever larger device screens
with them?

------
NoPicklez
As someone who worked heavily in sales in the telecommunications industry, and
having spoken to many customers of all ages. This article is not constructive
at all, it's terribly fraught with emotion. The intrusive reminders of WiFi
networks? Really, that required an entire paragraph? I can't remember the last
time I was interrupted by it, probably because I switched it off on the
welcome screen when setting up my device?

Nobody knows that they can swipe up or down on the screen? Tell me where
Android shows you this during setup and tell that it's not the same with most
devices.

This article should just be "Smartphones are hard to use".

Heck, there are features mentioned in the article that I don't frequently use,
that doesn't mean I should nor that Apple has done a bad job at showing me.

~~~
yborg
Apple (used to) market the ease of use of the features of iOS very heavily.
iPhones don't get a pass because Android phones are complicated as well since
Apple (used to) stress that they were so much better than the competition.

Nowadays I notice Apple mostly just markets the new shiny. The XS commercial
is a masterpiece of vapidity, they don't even pretend it's anything but brand.

------
brokenmachine
It's not surprising at all to me that people who don't take the time to learn
how to use the supercomputers in our pockets are unable to use them.

It's like typing. Learning to touchtype was one of the best things I've ever
done on a return for investment basis. All I did was stick a little printout
of the keyboard layout under the monitor, and committed to not look at the
physical keyboard ever again. It was slow for a couple of weeks, but from then
on I could touchtype. It was not such a massive burden. But most people I see
are still painfully hunting and pecking, even people who use a computer all
day long in a professional capacity!

I know there is much more that Apple and other manufacturers could do to make
things better, and definitely they should be doing those things, but the main
problem IMO is that people are just lazy. They want their phone to do
complicated things, but they don't want to spend the time to learn how to do
those things.

It would be good if there was easy training for these things though, maybe
some kind of beginner courses? I know some community centres/libraries have
courses for beginners and older people... But most people just expect to
automatically be able to use a smartphone with no training, knowledge or
effort.

~~~
onemoresoop
I am older, ~40, and my relationship with technology changed over time. I'm no
longer eager to learn a new interface as I was when I was younger. When I was
younger a shiny thing would make me excited, take my eye and sort of fool me
that this new thing is cool. I'd be excited to learn what the new thing was
all about. I'd spend a few hours and figure it out. Back then apple was
winning big with consistent and intuitive interfaces, operations. As I got
older i started to prioritize what I want to learn in a different way. Now all
I want from the phone is to be a tool, not the other way around. A good tool
but not something I have to learn over and over. And especially when I know
these changes were made for.. the sake of change, to sort of give the
impression of innovation I'm even less incentivized to take a course to teach
me how to use a phone. And most of the time these changes make my life
harder... e.g. remove the tactile button trend. I'm willing to bet that the 1
button will return at some point as an "innovation". Someone here mentioned
the mental maps that people build when learning a system. If you mess with
that mental map for a few generations you end up with frustrated users. We
know what game these companies are playing: force people to upgrade through
planned obsolesce. If it's real upgrades such as better performing cameras,
faster ram, etc, I will eventually upgrade. But if they're forcing these
changes through updates that we cannot turn off, we have a problem.

~~~
CamperBob2
_I am older, ~40, and my relationship with technology changed over time. I 'm
no longer eager to learn a new interface as I was when I was younger._

I don't mind learning a new interface or even coming up to speed with an
entirely new UI paradigm, if there's something in it for me. But my objection
is that as soon as I learn it, someone who is paid to look busy will change it
for no reason other than to justify their role in the company hierarchy.

Obvious examples include almost anything from Microsoft
("Metro^H^H^H^H^HWindows 10 is awesome! You just don't like change!") or
Google ("We have altered GMail. Pray all you want, we're going to alter it
further"), but Apple is far from guiltless.

When that happens, it's hard to escape the feeling that your time is being
wasted... and as you suggest, the older you get the bigger a deal that is.

~~~
headsoup
Actually the MS 'Metro' design used in the ZuneHD and Windows Phone UI (best
Home screen design by far) were both more logical and discoverable than the
iOS UI (well until they released the Win Phone 10 UI with the hamburger
menus...), but everyone just learned how to navigate iOS because 'everyone's
doing it.'

I still believe the iOS UI is terrible. Navigation is all over the place, the
wall of icons gives no preference to priority (other than creating folders),
the icons and colours change (as mentioned in the article) and interaction is
inconsistent (press/long-press).

But everyone learnt the interface so now it's 'good.'

------
texan
"Seriously advanced security features like two-factor authentication (which
kind? Apple offers two) are exactly the sort of thing only experts who don’t
need them will ever set up."

Hmm. This is a reflection of the author's bias towards not having the features
he likes on the Iphone be more in your face, and the features he finds
annoying are labelled as useless.

The two factor ID, is there as a CYA for Apple, so they won't have to deal
with the fallout of their users' accounts being compromised. Those are the
types of features prioritized and forced. The same goes for touch ID, in
addition to it making new purchases a seamless and more effortless process, it
also helps deal with chargebacks and the like. When I use touch ID to call a
Lyft, I have esseentially 'signed' the CC receipt of that transaction.

The other features he finds annoying, may be annoying to many people, but
those are key features that most people would otherwise not turn on, and as a
result have a poor experience with wifi. the list goes on.

~~~
jakobegger
Two Factor Auth is not a CYA.

It effectively prevents phishing attacks and helps mitigate weak/reused
passwords.

Everyone should have it turned on. If you don't have 2FA turned on, it's just
a question of time until someone downloads all your nudie pictures.

------
thanatos_dem
How many hours does the author think it should take to set up an iPhone? If
they want every toggle and every accessibility option presented at device
setup, with enough explanation of what each one does and how to use it, it’ll
take at least 2, probably more since the elderly tend to use technology
slower.

You know what the author didn’t mention? That with any Apple device you can go
in for a 1:1 session or a class on usage, and the people running them will
walk you through everything. They’re also good at identifying people
struggling to use the device in various ways and know about all the
accessibility options, which in general are more plentiful and _much_ better
supported in iOS than Android.

My mother got an iPad after years of owning only android devices, went in, and
not only did they walk her through it, but they let her know that a new iOS
release would be coming out soon which would change a few things, and invited
her back to a second session after that change if she was at all confused.

------
fudged71
Phones are computers now. We can't expect everyone to know AND USE all of the
features. Many of the features are obscured on purpose.

~~~
bootlooped
I thought that when I read, "He (a senior citizen) also thought he had to use
the Gmail app to read his Gmail"

Like what do you want, an unskippable popup about the difference between email
providers and email clients, and instructions on configuring IMAP and SMTP on
a 3rd email app? That would only lead to more fear and confusion. The Gmail
app is fine.

~~~
saagarjha
I believe what the article wants to say is that the built-in Mail app allows
setting this up easily, so people should use that.

------
freetime2
> The gold standard here is Undo. You have to shake your iPhone (or giant iPad
> Pro) to undo an action. You discover this by accident as you get up from a
> restaurant table with your phone in your hand, only to be greeted with an
> Undo Typing dialogue box. Unless you are an expert, you have no idea what
> just happened.

Wow I have been an iPhone user for many years now, spend several hours a day
using my phone (according to their new screen time metrics), and I did not
know this!

------
Rjevski
I agree with this post, but outside of a few specific things I don't think the
issue is with Apple (or Android, or whatever).

The issue is people; most non-tech people either don't care about learning how
to _properly_ use a tool they'd be using for the rest of their life, or are
scared to for whatever reason.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Dumbing down the UI for the lowest common
denominator doesn't seem viable - it would completely kill any productivity
(try to do your job with the children's toy equivalent of your usual tools),
and I'm not even sure it would solve this - the "target market" of such change
would most likely also get annoyed by it (I noticed that the people we're
talking about are outright not interested in spending _any_ time setting up
their device, so a 50-step setup screen is unlikely to sort out the issue).

Maybe the solution is to let "natural selection" take its course; eventually
you'll be expected to know how to operate these devices if you want to
function in society. And honestly that's fine by me. There are already tons of
things you are expected to know if you want to operate in today's society
(social skills, managing your finances & administrative tasks, etc) and
everyone seems to be doing fine with that.

~~~
spikej
On the other hand, there's Huawei that went with Advanced and Simple mode:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcalxGyLE1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcalxGyLE1w)

And for aging parents, the simple mode works fantastically!

~~~
Rjevski
The downside of a simple mode is that it locks the user in and prevents them
from discovering what "advanced" stuff their device can do; so essentially
they're wasting money by having a 1k$ supercomputer in the pocket and
intentionally it dumbing down to Nokia 3310 levels.

------
threeseed
Who is this guy and why he is so oblivious to his own bias ?

He says that few people understand AirDrop, Apple Pay, iMessages Apps. Even
though we have numbers on Apple Pay adoption (people do understand it) and we
know how much Apple invested on Animoji (many younger people love apps).

Also does he know Apple has anonymous telemetry ? They don't guess what is
popular or not. They know.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Joe Clark has been writing about web accessibility for nearly twenty years. If
he’s not the world’s leading authority on digital accessibility, then he’s at
least one of the most influential writers on the topic.

------
brandon272
One thing I have come across in trying to explain phones to older people is
that they have difficulty grasping the difference of cellular vs. WiFi and
where they can and can't use data.

I have a parent who is terrified to use the internet _while on WiFi_ because
they don't want to get a huge bill at the end of the month. I have done some
explaining to reduce that anxiety and I'd like to tell them not to worry about
it, but frankly, iOS doesn't help at all, both in terms of managing data,
communicating how much LTE data you are using, etc.

I know others who spend hundreds of dollars extra per year on "unlimited" data
plans even though they have no need for it. But it's easier than trying to
manage their data. Imagine how many people who don't understand data usage are
spending hundreds of dollars annually on data plans they don't use "just to be
safe" because the phone company might send them a $5K bill if they
accidentally misconfigure their phone to allow Netflix access to cellular.

If iOS wants to be layman-friendly, there has to be a better way of handling
data and communicating to a user what the status of their data usage is. This
is just one example.

~~~
toast0
Get people onto unlimited data plans with a limited amount of fast data. Most
(all?) US carriers have a plan like that, although I don't know how common
they are overseas. You can usually pick how much fast data you want, and if
you go over, it's not the end of the world. Sometimes I've had phones that
didn't have matching lte bands, so the 'slow' data rate was faster than what I
could manage anyway.

~~~
brandon272
We do have that, but it’s the most expensive “unlimited” plan that does that.
By “unlimited” they mean 10gb and then slow speeds! :)

------
akuji1993
I'm okay with Claudia being banned from the page. I still would like to not
get reminded every time I set down my mouse on your site...

~~~
bspammer
Not sure what you're talking about, I don't see any mention of a Claudia on
the page.

~~~
duckerude
It's a title attribute on the body element. It can show up as a tooltip when
you rest your cursor on the page.

    
    
      <body id="APOSTOPHES-body-id" title="Claudia, you are banned from here">

~~~
bspammer
Ah that explains it, I was viewing on mobile.

------
rrauenza
My biggest difficulty is moving the edit cursor when trying to edit text. It
takes too many tries to get it exactly where I want. I wish they'd add cursor
keys...

~~~
lightyrs
Another hidden UX: you can long press the keyboard and it'll turn into a
touchpad that you can use to move the cursor (still not as easy as cursor keys
but much better than the long press and drag method).

~~~
lemoncucumber
I use this all the time because it's convenient, but there have always been
two things that frustrate me about it:

1) There's no way to scroll the text while moving the cursor by moving it to
the end of the last visible line, the way there is with the cursor interface
you get by directly touching and holding the text.

2) Sometimes when I'm doing this it will randomly select the word my cursor is
over, and I've never figured out exactly what triggers this.

~~~
saagarjha
> There's no way to scroll the text while moving the cursor by moving it to
> the end of the last visible line, the way there is with the cursor interface
> you get by directly touching and holding the text.

This should work–at least, it does for me.

> Sometimes when I'm doing this it will randomly select the word my cursor is
> over, and I've never figured out exactly what triggers this.

On 3D Touch devices, pressing harder does this.

~~~
lemoncucumber
> This should work–at least, it does for me.

I should have been more specific: this works for me up to a point, but there’s
no way to keep scrolling. To see what I mean, try to use that method to delete
the last character of a long URL in the address bar of safari — you can’t
scroll all the way over to it.

> On 3D Touch devices, pressing harder does this.

I had suspected that might be the case, and I’m able to reproduce it now. Not
having any haptic feedback on the second, harder 3D Touch feels inconsistent
though.

------
mszczepanczyk
A couple of things I absolutely hate about Apple's products:

1\. Whenever switching an app in iOS and going back to the same app I don't
know if I'll find it in the same state as before, even after only few seconds.
It's unbelievably annoying to read an article opened in embedded browser in
Facebook app, check something quickly in Chrome and be forced to look for the
same article again.

2\. Some apps don't allow me to open a url in Chrome, for some reason I have
to do it in Safari. And why can't I delete Safari altogether? How's it's
different from Microsoft and IE in the 90s?

3\. There's no easy, automated way to disable background running, bandwidth
consuming apps while connected to hotspot in macOS. This should be obvious I
don't want to backup 30GB of data to Backblaze while on my data plan.

~~~
saagarjha
> Whenever switching an app in iOS and going back to the same app I don't know
> if I'll find it in the same state as before, even after only few seconds.
> It's unbelievably annoying to read an article opened in embedded browser in
> Facebook app, check something quickly in Chrome and be forced to look for
> the same article again.

Apple would very much like you to have the experience that apps do not change
when you leave them. There are a couple ways that apps break this model,
though: if they use a lot of memory, iOS will kill them in the background. In
any case, apps are supposed to have state restoration to get back to where
they were when you last left it, but few apps implement this correctly.

> Some apps don't allow me to open a url in Chrome, for some reason I have to
> do it in Safari. And why can't I delete Safari altogether? How's it's
> different from Microsoft and IE in the 90s?

Safari is the system browser. I believe the difference from Microsoft is that
iOS is not a monopoly?

~~~
mszczepanczyk
> Apple would very much like you to have the experience that apps do not
> change when you leave them. There are a couple ways that apps break this
> model, though: if they use a lot of memory, iOS will kill them in the
> background. In any case, apps are supposed to have state restoration to get
> back to where they were when you last left it, but few apps implement this
> correctly.

You're probably right. But Facebook isn't just some random app - it's used by
around half of all iPhone users, and Apple is known for lengthy acceptance
process in their app store. They should be able to detect such cases. And if
Facebook doesn't implement the model correctly who will. Also, switching apps
is such a common pattern it shouldn't be garbage collected that fast in the
first place.

~~~
badwolf
To be fair... Facebook often refreshes in the web while you're reading a post,
only to find it disappeared from your timeline, only to be found again a year
later when someone comments on it and Facebook remembers you want to see it
again...

(sorry for the semi-off-topic rant)

------
nabla9
The problem is the "perpetual novice" sentiment.

Smartphones are sold with the underlying assumption that 'user friendly'
equates to zero training or learning. The idea is that UI is so intuitive that
you can simply pick the phone up and use it.

It's clear that this novice strategy has upper limit respect to the number of
features.

If you spend $500 on a device that you use more than your car or computer,
maybe you should spend 6-12 hours to learn it. People take courses in
woodworking, knitting, why not smartphones.

~~~
chrishannah
> If you spend $500 on a device that you use more than your car or computer,
> maybe you should spend 6-12 hours to learn it. People take courses in
> woodworking, knitting, why not in smartphones.

I completely agree with this. And if you're not willing to learn how to use a
device, why would you buy one anyway?

------
plandis
First couple of paragraphs were appeal to authority, followed by anecdotes
about what makes an iPhone hard for old people after which I stopped reading.

The title of this article is click-baity. "I think iPhones are hard to use if
you're old or disabled" would have been better but that doesn't drive
readership, I guess.

------
bubblethink
>There are people who know what address bars are but not search bars, so they
go to google.com

I've been forced to do this recently on android. In chromium, the default
search engine has location permissions by default. No way to disable this
without patching and recompiling chromium. So if you leave google as your
default search engine, which is what it ships with, google (i.e.,
*.google.com) gets location permission. So my workaround has been to set AOL
as the default search engine. When I really want to google something, I have
to go to google.com.

------
dustinmoris
Not sure I agree with the majority that's been said there and I say that
despite replying from a Pixel now. I think most critique there had little to
do with Apple and isba general tech-has-advanced-so-far problem that some
demographics might struggle to stay on top of everything new. The same things
apply to my Pixel phone. Currently my biggest annoyance is that in the latest
update they changed the WiFi button in the top menu to turn on/off WiFi
instead of opening the list of available networks. Now I need to long press it
to open up the menu and I see that my wife struggles to do that now. Some
things will always be difficult for people. My grandma also struggles with a
contact less payment card and personally I don't see how chip and pin is
easier than a quick tap with the card but she swears it's easier to her, so
what can I do!?

------
freetime2
On the one hand, I agree with the author. A lot of iPhone features have
serious discoverability issues, and I am constantly googling how to do certain
things on my iPhone. After probably thousands of hours spent using an iPhone,
I just learned today (from this article) that you can shake to undo.

On the other hand, my mother who in her 70s recently got an iPad and an iPhone
and is able to engage more confidently with those two devices than any PC or
laptop she owned in the 30 years prior. And my son who is 4 years old is able
to move around between and within apps fairly effortlessly - without even
knowing how to read.

So while there are definitely some things that could be improved in iOS, I
think it's also important to recognize that the iPhone has ushered in an era
of unprecedented usability for the general public.

------
wheelie_boy
Apparently Claudia is banned from there.

~~~
camtarn
It's a weird blog. As well as the Claudia tooltip and throwing around 'autist'
as an insult, the title bar at the top also has the 'title' attribute set to
"Analogous to allowing transgenders to rewrite gay history. (Ask a Millennial
who started Stonewall)", and it looks like there are a bunch of links/rants
about "trannies" in the archives. Not that that should necessarily detract
from what seems like a pretty reasonable article about usability, but it
doesn't give me a good feeling.

~~~
joe5150
Interesting. [https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/straight-talk-from-a-
ga...](https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/straight-talk-from-a-gay-guy-
bill-28-is-nonsense)

~~~
fwip
Even gay people can be transphobes, sadly.

------
sizzle
I truly believe the iPhone has the most usable mobile platform simply for all
their granular accessibility controls.

The author touches upon a topic that I also have seen and experienced
countless of times in my life, which is the need for a better first-run
accessibility settings onboarding experience for users that would benefit most
(e.g. senior citizens), that also can be trivially skipped by more tech savvy
users.

This new onboarding flow can be triggered by apple determining a person's
first time ever signing into that model iPhone, under the assumption that most
new users to the platform would benefit the most from becoming familiar with
these accessibility features and where they live in the settings from the get
go.

I know many senior citizens (including my parents) who would have greatly
benefited from a heavy accessibility settings onboarding experience, due to
many of the issues the author mentioned regarding eye sight and vision related
age decline.

It's a shame that a company like apple, one that pioneered usability and human
factors in designing products for people since their very beginning (see Human
Interface Guidelines [1]), buries these crucial accessibility settings and
makes them so difficult to reach for the people that need them the most.

I hope someone from apple is reading this and can champion this topic
internally to improve the lives of senior citizens, cause we'll all be old
some day scratching our head trying to use the latest and greatest iDevice...

[1]
[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=573097](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=573097)

------
auiya
The author is right, but for the wrong reasons. Conventional app design on
mobile devices (not just iPhone, Android is particularly bad about this) puts
all the interactive UI elements in difficult to reach corners of the
phone/tablet. It's especially apparent when trying to use a device one-handed,
which admittedly is becoming more difficult as OEMs engage in a pissing match
of who can build the biggest phone[1]. I get the need for keeping content
centered and scattering UI elements around the four corners, but could they
perhaps focus on a single corner so you're not constantly fumbling around with
the hardware in your hand(s) to reach the various areas you interact with
most? Ergonomic best practices are wholly ignored in every device I've ever
used.

[1] [https://kneeland.me/2011/10/07/2010s-smartphone-screens-
are-...](https://kneeland.me/2011/10/07/2010s-smartphone-screens-are-the-
new-1950s-tail-fins/)

------
wycy
With the new FaceID features, I could see it being a nice touch if iOS were to
ask users if they want to increase text size if it senses the user always
holds the phone ridiculously close to their face and/or constantly squints.

Beyond that, I don't know how much of a responsibility it is for the phone to
push its accessibility options on everyone after initial setup.

------
edanm
I think this article doesn't grapple with just how _hard_ it is to solve any
of the problems it brings up. _Of course_ if you're sitting next to someone,
observing them doing something wrong, and telling them exactly how to solve
it, then you can improve their process. You can say the same thing about how
most people use computers - it's even a meme that techie folks have a hard
time watching non-techies use computers because they never use shortcuts etc.

The problem that _Apple_ has to deal with is how to teach people _without_
having 1-on-1 time with every single user to watch what they're doing, and
this article offers _no_ solutions for almost anything. (Except for asking for
a few things to be part of the on-boarding process, which semi-solves some
issues - text size _is_ now part of the on-boarding process, but often, the
person using the phone is not the same as the person setting up the phone,
especially with older users I imagine).

------
euske
It would be fascinating to see this from the Apple designer's point of view.
I'm certain that this is a political problem inside Apple: how much priority
each feature/module gets, how many pixels they can have, and how much exposure
they get at the website, etc. iPhone (or any product really) is the product of
politics as well as its technology.

------
wgx
Good UI/UX designers (like Apple have) will classify interactions into:
Obvious, Easy, Possible.

Take the iPhone camera;

Obvious: taking a picture with the shutter button

Easy: switching between front and back cameras is easy to discover

Possible: switching between HD and 4K (in the settings menu - possible to
discover.

Unless your product is as simple as an office stapler, some parts of it will
be non-obvious, that's fine.

------
zone411
There are persistent bugs in common functions also. E.g. in messages attach a
photo, press the left arrow and then come back to the conversation. The photo
will be messed up (XS with the latest update).

------
fipple
The concealment of features is why my severely disabled mother was able to use
an iPad in the last years of her life to watch TV shows, send emails, and
FaceTime with her family.

------
parinvachhani
It's sad to see that many people here in the discussion are not trying to
critically assess the subject matter in proper context and rather targeting
the article author about his bias or why he dedicated a whole paragraph to a
certain issue. Seriously? We can all do much better than this.

~~~
xg15
What is the proper context?

------
dschuetz
There are at least two kinds of ways different people use their devices:
people who actively discover everything their device is capable of, and people
who don't do that, because they are afraid to break things. My parents, for
instance, are the latter ones. I am the curious "electronic computer stuff"
guy, just because I explore my possession to the fullest.

However, Apple makes it as easy as any Android vendor to explore their
devices, except that on any Apple iOS device it is _the same_ system, and
almost the same _tricks_. Not so on myriads of Android devices.

I must admit the bit that some features are indeed hidden, so that I cannot
find them _exploring_. Sometimes I read an article about iOS devices and
discover functions I didn't know my iPhone could do.

------
csours
> "Scroll to the top by tapping the clock. (Who would possibly discover that
> by accident? Somebody had to tell me about it.)"

Dang, this finally explains a "bug" in one of our apps. (We primarily do web
apps, so we don't have in-depth knowledge of platforms)

------
starpilot
Are any of these issues handled better on Android phones?

~~~
donatj
I currently own both Android and iOS devices, and have used both for years.

I think the single "Omni-Pull Down" from the top works way cleaner than the
now 3 seperate pull from side of screen actions. I actually find pulling up
from the bottom difficult and frustrating.

Swipe to dismiss, tap to open makes so much more intuitive sense than swipe to
open.

Text editing / selection does what I expect way more often.

Android doesn't bug you about Wifi access points by default.

This one is controversial, but I think a visible always available back button
is a huge accessibility win even if it's sometimes inconsistant in behaviour.

Also, the Google Assistant at this point is probably 10 times more accurate
and understanding than Siri. I have a pretty standard midwestern accent and
Siri understands almost nothing I say to a pathetic degree. I use Google
Assistant to do probably about half of the quick things I want to do on my
phone like set alarms and such. I don't trust Siri to do anything.

A lot of things of course are worse just because they vary between
manufacturers and even individual phones.

The fact that many OS components are replaceable is a double edge sword. My
dad for instance somehow installed a dialer that made him dismiss an
advertisement before he could answer his phone. He had no idea how to get rid
of it and assumed he had broke his phone.

~~~
sf_rob
>This one is controversial, but I think a visible always available back button
is a huge accessibility win even if it's sometimes inconsistant in behaviour.

As a recent iPhone switcher I can't stand the "back" behavior. I was so happy
to discover the swipe right to go back feature until I realized that it didn't
apply to images and other full screen elements (where there's an "x" instead
of "<back" in the top left corner). For those you swipe up to dismiss. So now
I have to keep mental state for what type of content is currently displayed to
know how to get back to where I was. This is more annoying than Android's
inconsistent back button experience IMO.

------
theandrewbailey
Does anyone else notice the title attribute/tooltip on the <body>? Am I the
only one wondering who Claudia is or why she was banned?

~~~
radoslawc
Also title: <body id="APOSTOPHES-body-id" title="Claudia, you are banned from
here">

Claudia had to do something awful.

------
Charlie_26
"the Apple “ecosystem” reeks of the kind of Windows autism that repels
Macintosh supremacists". Damn. What did Apple users or autism ever do to you?

------
xg15
> _You really need to tell the phone, and /or Siri, who you are and who your
> family members are. This involves creating a contact card (what’s that?) for
> yourself and linking to it. Then all your family members need their own
> cards, and you have to laboriously specify their relationships to you.

I insist this is not an optional or nice-to-have feature._

For a usability expert, I'm surprised he cares so little about the actual
intentions of people to use the phone. I can imagine a lot of non-technical
users who would get pretty mad if their new phone blocked them from proceeding
until they've personally asked aunt Betty to fill in her personal data.

~~~
MatekCopatek
I think he means the user should create/amend contact details for their family
members.

~~~
xg15
That makes sense. But then how would this be possible to do as a "non-
optional" feature?

------
Naushad
Completely agree with the objective usability points mentioned in this.

This is what Bruce Tognazzini and Don Norman both of whom were first few
interface designers are Apple, also wrote the Human Interface Guidelines.
[https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9743996/apple-
designer-i...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9743996/apple-designer-
interview-bruce-tog-tognazzini-don-norman)

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-
desi...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-
name)

and also later Don Norman independently

------
anad7
Title should have been "iPhones are hard to use - For old people", it's bad
for them, but it's not the fault of the iPhone itself, I bet if you give them
any other piece of technology it will be equally hard for them.

You are right in pointing out that it could be better, I think that the "Tips"
app can have a dedicated section for accessibility features and video
tutorials on how to use certain features of inbuilt apps.

They could also have an app dedicated to Accessibility features, pull out the
existing accessibility settings from Settings app and show them one at a time
in a UIPageViewController inside that app.

------
gmjoe
This is just silly. News flash: software UX isn't perfect, and it never will
be.

When you have a phone that can do 10,000 different things limited to a screen
a few inches wide, of course it's going to be harder to do some things than
others. And there will be some inconsistencies and some annoyances.

It's not like any other phone is obviously way better. Yes there are plenty of
UX things that could be improved... but "iPhones are hard to use" is a
clickbait title, and the content is just a totally random laundry list of one
person's annoyances. Doesn't really seem like HN material.

~~~
badwolf
This article and most of the comments just scream "I don't like new/different
things!" or "I don't know how to do x therefore it's a terrible
implementation"

------
paddy_m
Here is a recent annoyance. I use bluetooth headphones and a bluetooth
speaker. I want my bluetooth headphones to never be louder than $x, I want my
speaker to have the full volume range. There is only one volume control (under
Settings > Music > Max Volume) for the whole phone, and that doesn't seem to
control max volume for notifications/other apps. This frequently leads to me
leaving the max volume on high, then shocking my ears with a super loud noise.
I should be able to control max volume per device. I use Sony MDR-XB950B1
headphones btw.

~~~
Terretta
Mine remembers volume per device when I switch between them.

Whatever level I left a speaker or headphones, that's where it starts next
time I connect, completely separate from whatever I have the built-in speaker
set to.

Mine doesn't have a cap per device, but I'd have to manually click up on that
device to get louder than I left it.

First time I realized it was remembering all these different listening
volumes, I was pretty amazed.

------
dguo
I've been thinking about the more general problem of feature/solution
discoverability lately.

Sometimes people will stumble onto solutions, or someone they know will
mention them, or they will actually be bothered enough to search for a
solution. But it pains me to think of all the instances of problems that could
be avoided if we could do a better job of bridging the knowledge gap.

That applies to me too when I discover something and wish I had known about it
far earlier. I try to actively search for solutions, but sometimes you aren't
even aware that something is a problem.

------
ppetty
I think Apple could do a better job onboarding people to iPhones. For example
they could check to see if you’re interested certain aspects and queue up
tutorials that drive extracting settings that would help; but at the end of
the day the iPhone does so much more than it did in 2007 & the 2007 version
was so much more capable than all preceding phones. The biggest challenge
Apple faces is figuring out how to explain thousands of features … and that’s
before you install any 3rd party apps.

Steve Jobs called it “an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator” … that
was hard to swallow (or learn), but today that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If you’re fortunate enough to understand the majority of the features you
shouldn’t be embarrassed by the ability to help someone figure out the myriad
features and details …

Are iPhones hard to use: absolutely not … unless your expectations are off the
charts and you think a device that complex should require no effort.

That said, it would be funny if Apple eventually launches a device called
iPhone that only makes phone calls.

------
fma
Ask any owner of an iPhone X how to turn off their phone...bet most won't know
how.

~~~
saagarjha
How often do most users have to turn off their phone?

~~~
fma
There was one time my wife's iPhone would not turn off the light. It kept
shining even if you turn on and off the flashlight feature. Told her to turn
it off and on again.. She couldn't. I had to watch a YouTube video and do it
for her.

I mentioned this to a colleague and he too had to turn it off one day but
didn't know how.

The steps aren't intuitive and if you ask me again to do it, I would need to
Google it again

Really it's not how often you need to do it, but the fact the most basic and
fundamental step of turning off a device can't be accomplished with searching
online.

------
siruncledrew
Apple could probably do a better job with some of their design decisions, but
that's the nature of iteration and making decisions. Nothing is so absolutely
perfect it literally fulfills a person's every wish and dream. Of course
there's opportunity for improvement - that's why there's been 12 versions of
iOS and things still change.

People are different. That's part of designing for an audience - software
design needs to balance micro and macro level affordances. Extremely
customizable isn't always extremely pleasing. 'You can please some people most
of the time, but you can't please everyone all the time' (or something like
that).

This is a case where someone isn't pleased. Some claims are true, while others
are hot air. Based on the author's blog, they enjoy being a self-righteous
asshat on the internet. If the author strives to bring points to light in an
abrasive and inflammatory manner, rather than a sensible and constructive
dialogue, then at least he has that working out well.

------
matty_makes
Smart phones are hard to use, not just iPhones. They are as bloated with
features as an enterprise software that offers licenses by the seat.

------
mixmastamyk
My top 5 annoyances:

\- Too many features I'll never use, that mostly can't be removed. Less is
more.

i.e. I'll never use Siri or facial recognition. Never owned a bluetooth
device. "Screen Mirroring" What? in the Control Center. Yet those and more
always in the way, sometimes draining battery.

\- When radios are off to save energy, constantly nags about connection with
modal dialogs that prevent use of the home button.

\- Can't use it as a flash drive (w/o grudging workarounds)

\- Insists on using white backgrounds at night. Night mode saved my life but
would prefer a dark theme at night. Clock is the opposite, hard to read in the
day time. All hardcoded.

\- Can't disable the always accidental swipe from top stuff I'm never
interested in.

Btw, thanks to the author for linking to how to disable apps in iMessage, just
more clutter I didn't want. Totally unintuitve, BTW.

Bonus: There's App and Microphone icons in the iMessages entry field that take
up 1/3 of the space. Don't use Apps there and might use the microphone button
once a year. Hit it mistakenly often.

~~~
jodrellblank
Can you even turn facial recognition off?

Open the Photos app, search for "people", and it will pull up photos of
people's faces. Tap on one to make a full screen picture, and swipe it up , it
will show "Related" people and pictures. You can tap on someone to find more
photos of them.

Even if you never tagged them with names.

(You can also search Photos for general terms, like "flower" or "snow" or
"food", it's doing image recognition on all pictures somewhere). iOS 11, 12 at
least.

~~~
saagarjha
Just curious, why would you want to turn facial recognition off?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Or rather, why would one want devices recognizing and creating permanent
records? Police can unlock by pointing it to your face. Apple may have a
better track record than most, why I own an iphone, but unlocking a device was
never a burden to me. It's a button press if you've done it recently.

------
Skunkleton
People have the same sorts of problems with most non-trivial devices. In the
extreme cases mentioned in the article the solution is the same that the
author discovered: some who knows, teaches someone who can benefit. There
isn't an obvious solution to this problem in general that wont make the system
harder to use for intermediate/expert users.

------
torgian
Bah. Dumb article. All phones are hard to use. Nothing is really mechanically
intuitive anymore, except for some well-designed mechanical things.

Phones can only go so far to give use good, mechanical intuitiveness. Press a
button, see what it does. Now make an object to 500 different things and
obviously only the most important things for the majority of the population
will be easy to access, even if it’s not intuitive, because of icons.

Basically this forced us to move from mechanical thinking to something less
concrete (digital, non-analog) which is something many older people and those
with disabilities may have a harder time adapting to.

Android, iPhones, “smart” TVs, they are all confusing to some extent.

The problem isn’t iphones or androids, the problem is how we design things.
The digital world is still very bad at doing things intuitively for a brain
that starts life in a very physical, mechanical world.

------
chrissam
A lot of this seems valid. At the same time, I think massive customer
misuse/misunderstanding is the reality for almost all widely used software.

Maybe I'm projecting, but the "solutions people" at the company where I work
have endless horror stories of how "people actually use our software".

------
teekert
Ok, so we put the change font button always in sight? What else are we going
to put in the UI?

I also thought I needed the Gmail app? didn't Google stop with any open
protocols? (xmpp, imap, carddav?)

An iTouch? Please... And should Apple change their core UI for everyone
because some people are almost blind? Sure they can be accommodating, perhaps
a button can be placed somewhere, or better a Siri instruction for people with
poor sight to activated a more clear UI. But don't change the UI for everyone
because of this.

Would Siri understand a mispronounced street name? Who asks their phone for
directions anyway? And why does she need help when the street is already on
her screen? What at that point would help her? Seems like the iPhone was
pretty helpful.

Ok, I'm starting feel sorry I even gave this any attention so I'm going to
stop.

------
fnky
This article just outlines power-user features that most people don't know
anyway. They aren't really important. Even then, most of the arguments that he
makes are very anecdotal.

Take for example a senior using an iPhone:

My grandmother, 77 years old, has had her iPhone for 2 years. Prior to that,
she had no mobile at all and has not used a ton of technology through her
life.

She learned to use her crucial apps: Mail, Safari, Notes, Calendar and
Contacts by herself.

She will only ask if there are different ways of doing things if she can't
figure it out by herself—which is very rare.

I agree that Settings can be cluttered to navigate, but it's also assumed that
it's not an app that people use every day. Taking that into account, the
General tab is usually where you find what you need when it comes to changing
most settings anyway.

------
adeptus
Apple clearly needs to hire this guy. The only thing I disagree with is
forcing people to learn many features during the setup process when you get
your new phone. Pretty much nobody I know likes to sit there and read user
manuals or be forced to watch videos or however that'd be represented.

~~~
LeoPanthera
I don't think Apple need to hire someone so publicly transphobic.
[https://blog.fawny.org/category/tranny/](https://blog.fawny.org/category/tranny/)

~~~
egypturnash
Holy crap I was not expecting to ever have to figure out a term for "like a
TERF, except a man". I wonder if he is one of those straight-laced gay dudes
who whines about how all the people out there being flamboyant for Pride
celebrations give a bad name to all the gays.

"Trans-Exclusive Radical Faggot" springs to mind as a quick male alternate to
"Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminist" but it does have the slight problem of
containing a word that a lot of people currently put in the "slur" category.

~~~
LeoPanthera
TERF can still apply. Men can be feminist. (Feminism calls for equal rights,
so men _should_ be feminist.)

------
megablast
I think Apple intention was for people to grow with iOS. iOS has added more
and more features, but if you started with an earlier version, and kept
updating there are only minor changed to learn each time. Jumping into an
iphone these days would be hard for someone coming from no smartphone.

~~~
tartoran
I grew with IOS, loved 6 through 9, even 10 but with exceptions. I highly
dislike the current version though

------
larrik
> If somebody told you your Home button was going to wear out, hence you
> turned on AssistiveTouch, you were lied to.

Actually, this happened on my wife's iPhone 5. Granted, they don't actually
exist anymore (or at least aren't buttons), but it very much did happen.

------
exabrial
Such a great point about diversity: they're not. Apple products allow you to
live the life a 24 year old silicon valley hipster. Granted Apple is making a
_ton_ of money off this target audience however, so it's hard to criticize
their approach

------
kylnew
Both my parents and my grandmother use iPhones now and I do notice the limited
functionality they are comfortable with but I believe the problem goes beyond
the iPhone and into general tech literacy. I taught my dad to use 1Password
then noticed he never uses the biometrics to log in, then reveals the password
and memorizes it instead of copy pasting. He definitely set up touchID and has
interacted with text before yet in this context forgot they both exist. I
wonder if some of these examples like the map direction example are about the
same. People who know better just forgetting parts of functionality depending
on the context of the problem.

------
carlospwk
These aren’t necessarily only iPhone “issues”, they apply to other mobile
devices as well. Balancing which settings are visible and which aren’t is
tricky. But one thing I’m upset with and that’s the death of the manual. I
shouldn’t have to rely on 3rd party life hack style videos and articles to
figure out useful features. I’m not expecting (or wishing) to see 100+ page
paper manuals to make a comeback, but I’m also not happy with flimsy, pretty
support pages which only scratch the surface. I want to see detailed and well
designed documentation with useful illustrations on how to do things.

------
_emacsomancer_
What I find hardest about iPhones are the intentionally hidden/obscured
things. If I want to access a file, or copy an arbitrary file to the iPhone,
its response is "What are these 'files' you speak of?"

------
mrhappyunhappy
Reader mode for all sites is amazing - I never knew I could do this. My
default behavior for anynweb article has been to hit the reader view icon in
safari every single time.

My biggest gripe about iOS is how terrible autocorrect is. Even as I type
this, iOS is aweful at predicting what I'm entering when I miss the letters.
When I had an Android phone I was always delighted that big G was so good at
getting my words right and at predicting what I would type next so I could
speed up my input just by selecting the right words at the top of the
keyboard. Impossible to do with iOS.

------
brownbat
> seniors... chest pain...

Quick, if you could change one UX that would maximize the numbers of lives
saved, what would it be?

(For the purposes of this thought experiment you get to force all users to
watch a 30 second educational video one time.)

~~~
jodrellblank
_Quick, if you could change one UX that would maximize the numbers of lives
saved, what would it be?_

Change the human brain response to eating vegetables and exercise so they felt
good, while any other "food" and lazing around was unbearable?

------
subroutine
Reading one of the referenced articles by Don Norman [1], I find this
statement immediately true...

> "What kind of design philosophy requires millions of its users to have to
> pretend they are disabled in order to be able to use the product? Apple
> could have designed its phone so that the majority of people could read and
> use the phone without having to label themselves as needy, disabled, and
> requiring assistance."

...as just a few days ago I reluctantly traded in my iPhone 6 for the iPhone
XS. So far, I cannot get over not having a home button. (since it was
mentioned below, I just want to point out that my gripe isn't about not
wanting to adapt to a new interface; it's about what Don brought up). After
exploring the OS menus for a while I found that, I could add a button to the
screen that mimics to a small degre, much of the functionality of the home
button Apple previously entrained me on. Of course this option is tucked under
the ___accessibility_ __preferences. In fact, I found a half-dozen 'features'
under accessibility that I decided to turn on.

Pic:
[http://bit.ly/iPhoneXS_accessibility](http://bit.ly/iPhoneXS_accessibility)

Note that the floating home button is labeled ___AssistiveTouch_ __. Here is a
really short video I just made attempting to use this slippery-ass button...

[http://bit.ly/iPhoneXSdemo](http://bit.ly/iPhoneXSdemo)

Hopefully I can adapt to the default XS patterns soon, so I can turn off some
of some of these ___accessible_ __features, apparently intended for the
iPhoneXS-disabled. I 'm just wondering why these things, which to me just seem
like user ___preferences_ __or __ _options_ __are nested under the __
_accessibility_ __tab. Then again, maybe Apple is trying to tell this 6th-year
phd student that I 'm no spring chicken, so hurry up and graduate already.

[1] Don Norman article: [https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-
giving-desi...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-
design-a-bad-name)

~~~
soared
Are you complaining that after getting a new device, it’s taking you a while
to get used to it?

~~~
subroutine
No, I'm complaining that things which seem like 'features' are nested under
'accessibility'. But maybe I'm reading too much into it.

edit: Anyway that was Don's main point.

edit2: oh I also found this kinda funny, as another example: Note I've turned
on ' _reachability_ ' in the ' _accessibility_ ' tab. This accessibility
option allows people using their phone with one hand to swipe down at the
bottom of the screen to shift icons from the top-half to the bottom-half, so
if you're an 'inaccessible' like me who doesn't have thumbs that reach the top
corners of the screen, you can still use those apps.

------
jl6
My iPhone usability peeve is the lack of an authoritative, comprehensive
reference manual. I know lots of intelligent people who lack “technical
affinity” but are nevertheless perfectly capable of reading.

The iPhone gets a lot right in terms of discoverability and usability of 90%
of its functionality, but that last 10% is frustratingly hard to find
definitive answers for.

There’s also a further 10%: The functionality you think the iPhone might or
should have, but doesn’t. Good luck getting any official source to confirm
though. You are left to trawl helpless forums.

------
vezycash
"Apple never admits it makes mistakes." Best sentence on the page.

~~~
eppsilon
Hardly news. Most companies don't.

------
chrishannah
I can see a few good points being made here. But I don't think if someone
can't use a device properly, that it's the manufacturers fault for making it
hard to use.

Also, I think there are many points being made that are either down to people
being told incorrect information, or them just being plain wrong.

Regarding using Spotlight to search for apps/files: "Find a spot in
Springboard (what’s that?) with no apps or folders." This is wrong, you can
swipe down even over apps or folders.

"The simplest task that is functionally impossible to do (also on Macintosh):
Play exactly one song." Wrong

"Apple Pay. Inscrutable and scary even in countries that have had chip cards
forever, like Canada." This is not Apple's fault. Here in the UK, we've had a
very good chip&pin system, which was updated to wireless readers a few years
ago. And Apple Pay just works with them automatically. You'll find it hard to
find a place that doesn't support it. I've heard that it's completely the
opposite in the US, but does that mean the iPhone is hard to use? Also, it
prompts you to set this up when you first use the phone.

"Because Apple calls its passwords passcodes, nobody has any clue at all that
you can use an alphanumeric password instead of a string of six digits." Oh
really.

I could include many other quotes here, but it's getting boring. But there is
one point that is just absolutely fundamentally stupid - "If Apple actually
cared about accessibility (it does not)". There is no way you can say Apple
doesn't care about accessibility.

Another point I'd like to make - Even if there's an "advanced" feature like
AirDrop, using Siri to schedule a meeting, or using an Apple Watch to receive
directions, on your phone, it doesn't mean you will know how to use it
immediately. And that is not by default a bad thing. But anyway, I think a lot
of these features are easy to use. For example, when using the share sheet,
AirDrop automatically appears at the top of the view. With names and images of
nearby devices/contacts. Surely it couldn't be more intuitive?

Maybe when people spend large amounts of money on something, they should put
more effort into learning how to use it? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> I don't think if someone can't use a device properly, that it's the
> manufacturers fault for making it hard to use.

It absolutely, completely is. What pointers to the hidden features, or more
information, are built into the very trivial onboarding phones provide? What
quick reference leaflets are in the box? What brightly printed card with a QR
code to the downloadable beginners guide, or full manual is there? What
getting started app or link is there on the home screen?

None at all.

My microwave, stereo, car, kettle and lawnmower all included more get you
going guides, links, sometimes PDFs, sometimes proper paper guides. For
trivial often single purpose items.

Search for a user guide for a phone, or Android/iOS and you'll get shitty
third party sites and/or programming guides for developing apps. Apple happen
to have a really comprehensive one, that's not exactly mentioned anywhere,
that you can download into books. They could include it on all phones for zero
effort and loss of a tiny amount of storage.

Tech manufacturers should be deeply embarrassed.

No need to include a 3 volume printed manual set, just a card or two
signposting current, relevant resources. A simple app on the home screen would
suffice too.

> Maybe when people spend large amounts of money on something, they should put
> more effort into learning how to use it?

Maybe the resources could be subtly telegraphed to the people when they spend
large amounts of money on something. Like just about every other category of
product in existence manages to a far fuller degree.

~~~
chrishannah
> None at all.

There's a mini user guide in every iPhone box.

Also, Apple includes the Tips app by default on iPhones, that continuously
prompts about features, and guides on how to use them.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
There's a card with the buttons named, and a few lines of small print on the
back in silver grey print on grey, that is so short of contrast it's almost
impossible to read in perfect light. 50% of the space is unused so a much
larger font was possible. Hardly a mini user guide though - a card with one
image and 3 or 4 sentences on the back.

Only other things in the box were a sticker or two, and a single sheet of
absurdly microscopic print with warranty and regulatory info etc.

My recollection, which may be faulty as it's been a while, of the tips app is
it included mostly bits of trivia but nothing particularly useful or
substantive. Basically just tips - not especially surprising.

------
MerlinDE
Most of the points in this article are just wrong (e.g. font size asked for
and configured during initial setup; WiFi alerts are not enabled by default).

Apart from that, I agree that iOS has too many hidden features and — first and
foremost — too many interactions that you must know exist and you can’t find
by just glancing at the screen (which is defined as mandatory in Apple‘s User
Interface Guidelines).

So, yes, their products get worse. But, no, not like described in this
article.

------
Lio
When I think about iPhone useability issues I'm always reminded that it still
doesn't have an easy way to undo autocorrect mistakes.

The best you can do is shake the phone and if you don't drop it it might undo
for you ...or it might just redo the bogus autocorrect when you retype the
word.

Whole websites are devoted to ridiculing people for sending text messages with
"hilarious" autocorrect errors in. Still Apple can't or won't improve it.

------
zoggenhoff
IPad Air 9.7". Notification centre on lock screen used to have two columns. I
used to fill the screen with widgets and have it as a dashboard. Now due to
various updates I'm stuck with one column and half the screen wasted. It's
even worse on iPad Pro 12.9".

There's no apparent way to fix this bad UI design.

So now I have a raspberry pi do the same task with no issues. Bonus feature is
that no update can remove this functionality again.

------
ianferrel
"Apple could make their phones easier to by forcing you to go through a
mandatory seven-hundred step process before you could start using one"

------
teetermld
'Claudia, you are banned from here.'

Jesus christ talk about intrusive annoyances akin to dissociative anesthesia.
Stop trying to be quirky and random.

------
msla
"Claudia, you are banned from here."?

Why is that popping up?

~~~
joe5150
because it's in the title attribute for the page's body element. unless you
mean "why would somebody do that to their website," which I don't have an
answer for.

------
airnomad
I think the big part of the problem is that people don't know what their
device or software can do and what is possible to do with it.

Once you show people how to use a certain feature they get on quite easily.

Insane amount of productivity is lost because a lot of people don't feel
comfortable with their digital tools and think they have to live with whatever
default settings are.

------
SubiculumCode
" Very advanced, very tuned-in people learn about, and learn how to use, new
Apple features by watching them being demonstrated onstage during Apple
keynote events.

Then there’s everybody else. "

I've never cared to watch a keynote, but I am a fairly advanced user. Makes me
feel like the author lives in a bubble...not that his many points aren't well
taken aor wel stated.

------
_pmf_
> They picked the bigger fonts they’d needed all along. They were so grateful
> it was embarrassing.

They probably changed it back once he was gone.

------
packetized
The term “Windows autism” is pretty repugnant.

------
hkai
Is that true that mostly Chinese people use Assistive Touch? I've seen them
doing it and I couldn't figure out why.

~~~
sho
It's certainly not only Chinese, although perhaps the author lumps all asians
into that category. It's certainly very common in China and South East Asia.

I actually find it quite interesting. At some point, it's true, the home
button was a common point of failure on iphones - and a kind of memetic "folk
wisdom" idea was born that everyone should use the assistive touch button
instead. This idea, which "everyone knows", persisted (and persists) long
after the actual issue had been fixed. I am still seeing it today with iPhone
8 users! Hopefully the advent of FaceID finally puts it to bed.

Another good example of the genre is the "common knowledge" that you let your
phone/laptop battery run down before recharging, and don't keep it constantly
plugged in. Might have had some validity back in the days of NiCad - actively
wrong advice in the age of LiOn. But the meme persists...

------
j45
Smartphones have a new batch of kindergartners joining technology each year.
There's also another group of beginners a little further down the river that
never really received the best onboarding experiences that are available
today.

Many of the items outlined in this article could be included in the phone
setup wizard like other settings.

------
edwinyzh
I think the UX of the iPhone's text message app can be improved, in that after
I come back from a conversation to the list, it has no visual clue for me to
identify which was 'currently selected'. sometimes the text messages are
similar and hard to distinguish them from each other in the list view.

------
gtvwill
I have an iPhone 7s for work and a Xiaomi A2 for personal.

Not going to lie but the iPhone hands down is a pain in the ass. Battery life
is shite compared to the China phone, the thing constantly goes to emergency
menus in my pocket or tries to tap pay for shit.

Reception on it is AVG at best (both phones on same network) and it's general
usability sucks. Like can't even just plug it in to transfer files, the
fingerprint sensor has about 1/3rd the hit rate of my China phone, the thing
can't shoot video while in a phone call, hell I can't use my earbuds for
hands-free while it's on the charge because it has no headphone jack (oh and
the stock headphones are about the tinniest worse quality sound I've had in
half a decade). Christ I could rant for dayz but you get the point the list
goes on.

Tbh all these things suprise me, I've avoided iPhones like the plague for
moral reasons but I figured/assumed the phones would have decent usability.
Apparently I was wrong as I have been forced to discover thanks to work.

I would have to agree with the article, shit that is simple and fairly easy to
do elsewhere becomes a tedious task W/ iPhones.

------
laythea
I don't mind if this gets shot down, but I completely agree with the article.

The level of complexity is far too much for me. What Apple seems to think are
obvious things (Eg UI interaction elements) are not obvious to me.

A thoroughly frustrating experience.

------
geophile
iPhones (and all smartphones and tablets) are magic wands. You have to know
the spells.

Any of the hundreds of capabilities that are made easy and obvious, cause
other capabilities to become more obscure and harder to enable and even know
about.

------
Myrmornis
There are so many different ways to control silence/non-silence/vibrate, I
have to admit I don't get it at all:

\- Main volume control

\- Ringers and alerts volume control

\- switch on side of phone

\- Do Not Disturb mode

\- Sounds => Vibrate on Ring

\- Sounds => Vibrate on Silent

------
pankajdoharey
Meh, the article seems like a clickbait joke article, the advanced features in
iphone are kept that way, that is how Mac has always been. Easy for most and
special features tucked in plain sight.

------
dmtroyer
An article full of on the subway anecdotes rings pretty hollow to me.

------
usaphp
> The gold standard here is Undo. You have to shake your iPhone (or giant iPad
> Pro) to undo an action.

The most useless of the bunch, maybe that's why nobody even bother to mention
it?

------
billfruit
Does iphone/ios have a notification history, where one can see past
notifications and revive any notifications that had been dismissed by mistake?

------
buboard
They failed to mention the flattening of the UI and the textualization of
everything, which served nothing other than make things harder to find.

------
knowingpark
ios phones, android phones, windows phones, mobile phones are ageist. No ifs
or buts. I was happy to read this, it needs more attention. mobile phones have
forgotten that they are phones. I find that 'contacts' apps, which you'd think
would be the heart of the whole thing, quite unintuitive. User interfaces in
general have a long way to go, imho!

------
chemmail
Sounds like these people need Windows Mobile™ phones.

------
jason46
My biggest gripe, how about a standardized back button, that is always in the
same place and works the same in all places.

------
torstenvl
LOL

Anyone who wants to add more steps you cannot skip during setup is completely
lacking in credibility when it comes to user interface. QED.

------
georgelyon
I wonder if the FaceID technology can eventually detect squinting and suggest
a font size increase?

------
peterwwillis
iPhones don't come with comprehensive instruction manuals, do they? (I know my
Android didn't)

------
julienfr112
Couldn't Apple A/B test a feature in a client subset before releasing it
wildly ?

------
brandontreb
That title font is hard to read.

------
thedaemon
In summary, people do not RTFM. If people RTFM, the phone would be easy to
them.

------
newshorts
Substitute the word “Samsung” in place of Apple and you get the same article.

------
pesmhey
No, they are not. By design.

------
agentdrtran
> Windows autism

yikes

------
tat_xcitd_dev
I’m not sure about that! But I’m pretty sure it’s hard to buy :D :D

------
neuralRiot
After 10 years of using iphones android is hard to use for me.

------
otabdeveloper1
No shit, Sherlock. Welcome to the 21st century.

------
Elzair
There is some horrible ableism in that post.

------
awkward
iPhones have hit the point that their main target audience is people who have
4+ years of experience using iPhones.

------
vezycash
>it stands to reason that passwords don’t have to use the characters on an
American computer keyboard. Even Apple did not know that for a time.

Is this true?

------
exabrial
It's 2018 and iPhones can't send a high res message to the vast majority of
smart phone users. It's a joke perform.

------
JiNCMG
Click Bait Article.

------
fergie
Is this satire?

------
__m
Why don’t experts need two factor authentication?

------
wtmt
As others have said, whatever the author has written could apply to any
smartphone from any vendor and any OS. And there's a whole lot of room for
improvement in iOS (only Apple has to decide that these are priorities). The
small screens and touch interface pose many limitations on how to convey
things to users and enhance discoverability. I doubt if anyone wants a phone
that bothers them for an entire hour teaching them how to do certain things.
It's already quite painful setting up a new iOS device and having to re-
download all apps on a slow connection (with the removal of app transfer from
device to iTunes about two years ago).

Some more observations:

1\. The author mentions the manual on the Apple Books Store but doesn't even
mention the Tips app that's been around a few years and shows some neat tips
to discover _some_ (not all) features. Apple ought to expand on this one more.

2\. Some of the issues that the author lists are not easy to solve without
having a long, tedious and difficult to use onboarding process when the device
is first powered on. It also sounds like some of the examples he quotes are
about people where someone else did the onboarding and forgot to setup certain
things correctly when handing the device over to someone else. How can iOS or
any OS solve these issues? The onboarding process, by some measures, is
already long and incomprehensible by many lay people. For example, what
exactly is "Location services" or "Notifications"? Taken to an extreme, some
concepts (not these) are almost impossible for a device to explain to people.
They're _only a little bit more easier_ for people to explain to people.
Computers are difficult for most people. Not everyone needs to know everything
or every feature. _But people learn over time because there are others who
teach them things._

3\. Also, telling people that they can ask the iPhone for directions and that
Apple should make sure people know about it is a catch 22. In India, Apple
Maps cannot even find well known locations in major cities or provide
directions to many places. Siri doesn't understand the Indian English accents
(yeah, there are different accents depending on where the user is from within
the country) well. Apple would have to know how good some of its services are
and decide to tell people or not tell people or completely disable them in
certain places. In this example, should Apple not tell users in India about
Apple Maps or about Siri? Should it wait until another major release when
these services are better? What defines "good enough" or "better"? Maps is
almost useless in India, but Siri is not completely useless. It has some
utility.

4\. While writing a rant is easy, I wish the author had also spent some time
on providing some suggestions or solutions for at least some, if not all, of
the issues.

5\. Email this to people at senior executives at Apple. That's something the
author could've done after writing this post.

------
picduniya
You can put it in control center and have it be about as easily adjustable as
brightness. It‘s not there by default and hard to discover, but adjusting your
text size all the time really is a bit of a niche feature. I‘m really not sure
what else Apple could do other than:

\- Asking during onboarding

~~~
raverbashing
I assume if I want to see if it's possible to change the font size I'd go to
the Settings and look there.

Not sure how much hidden there it is. It could be more obvious, but I'm not
sure how.

BTW pushing every setting in your face is also a design anti-pattern, so the
complaint has to be taken lightly. (Also the "Apple doesn't care about
usability" is just cheap words)

------
cocoonkid
I use Android for everything mobile. (nix based). MacOS for everything
else.(nix based) Whatever is nix based works ;) Questions?

~~~
eugeniub
iOS is just as nix based as macOS.

