
iOS First Impressions (2018) - luu
https://basicbitch.software/posts/2018-11-20-iOS-First-Impressions.html
======
kccqzy
> Luckily, apps seem to have a really good memory of where you left off

This is something I have some gripes about. In the old days before
backgrounding, pressing the home button literally ends the process. So
implementing state preservation and restoration is a must for any non-toy
apps.

With backgrounding, apps can linger in the background for a while before being
killed. And now many iOS apps don't implement state restoration at all,
including built-in apps like Photos. Quick experiment to verify: I open a
particular photo, quit the app, reopen the app, and I don't see that photo any
more. Instead I see the general timeline view or album view.

I hate this and wish more iOS devs would implement these things correctly.
Docs here:
[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/view_control...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/view_controllers/preserving_your_app_s_ui_across_launches)

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
+1 particularly upsetting for apps like YouTube.

~~~
Lammy
It’s a paid feature for YouTube. They want you to pay up for background
playback, so they won’t risk the free version being too convenient.

~~~
leokennis
Ugh I hate the YouTube app so much.

Every 3rd open is a "want to try premium?" popover, like some beggar on the
street. Closing a video requires 2 precisely positioned and executed swipes.
Everything looks like an Android app, like all Googles apps for iOS.

Just terrible.

~~~
dan-robertson
Well I agree that there’s a lot to hate about the app but if it means YouTube
can move to a business model that doesn’t rely on surveillance and advertising
then I think I can’t really complain too much

------
harrisonjackson
The point that resonates most with me is the smoothness and how pervasive this
is in all the top ios apps.

As a developer, I know where this is built-in (many gestures and navigation
components) and where other developers have spent extra time and attention on
the details.

Jumping back and forth between xcode and android studio - it is SO SO SO much
more enjoyable to develop iOS apps than Android apps. I cannot stand the
emulators and the whole android development experience. If anyone out there
disagrees and can point to resources to improve Android studio and emulator
setup I would love a link.

~~~
habosa
I've been an Android user and developer for 10 years. THIS is the thing.
Smoothness. Android claims it's equal between an iPhone and a flagship Android
device but it's not even close.

It seems Android just is not willing/able to admit this is a huge gap and
address it.

~~~
skohan
I remember how bad this was in the early days. The first time I started
working on an Android app after a half a year of iOS development, it almost
seemed like a joke. If I'm not mistaken back then GC pauses were even a big
factor in UI performance, which led to unpredictable hitches in
responsiveness.

I agree it's something Android should prioritize, but it also shouldn't be
understated how big of a task this will be. Apple has invested a huge amount
in this specific competency since the advent of OSX (and just look at the
difference between mac os 10.0 and comparable versions of windows in terms of
UI smoothness).

Ask a game developer: making computer graphics workloads perform predictably
is a very difficult task which requires art as well as science. Building a UI
stack which enables that, as well as having a nice front-end to work with for
developers, and integrating well with arbitrary application logic is more than
just optimizing some systems here and there.

------
_bxg1
I switched a year ago and the only thing that is truly, fundamentally, worse
about the experience is notifications. Somehow iOS notifications (swiping
away, interacting, everything) are just incredibly clunky compared to Android.
Throw in the baffling decision to separate the state of the "Notification
Center" from what appears on the lock screen and it makes for a terrible
experience.

I don't regret the decision, it's just frustrating that this one thing is so
far behind everything else.

~~~
nottorp
However, on iOS you can turn off all notifications easily from the control
center. Or more exactly, each app has to ask for permission to send you
notifications on first start and you can just deny them there.

If you _don 't_ want notifications, iOS is much better.

~~~
_bxg1
You can do that on Android too. I believe you can also do things like "mute
subsequent notifications from a particular app if they come in at a certain
rate after the first one". So for a string of messages you'd only get buzzed
once.

To be fair, Android's do-not-disturb/prioritized messages system is _way_ too
complicated.

------
ProfessorLayton
Interesting comment about the blue iMessage bubbles. I've definitely heard of
it, and have seen the memes on the internet, but have never actually met
anyone that cared about the _color_.

In my experience people do, however, care about iMessage being green insofar
as the loss of functionality is concerned. Specifically with group messaging,
a mix of iOS + Android users will result in weird quirks that aren't
experienced "when everyone is blue". For example I've been in a mixed thread
where the android user would receive a reply individually by every
participant, while iOS users would not. Reactions, et al are unavailable in a
mixed environment etc.

I'm not convinced it's a superiority complex, but rather the loss of extras
that are lost when texting outside of Apple's ecosystem.

~~~
cglong
I'll never forget the day I saw someone write, "If they have green bubbles
they're not even worth talking to."

~~~
Twisell
Some teenagers are really mean and some people never grow up.

Also : Some boomers believe they know everything because of their experience
and some know better.

------
parski
A "hidden feature" I absolutely loathed not having when I was on Android for a
month is tap clock to scroll to top. Resorting to two-thumb screen jogging is
such a drag.

~~~
Darkstryder
That is a _really_ hidden feature indeed, as I've been using iOS daily for ten
years and was not aware of that. Thanks for the tip!

I wonder how much undiscoverable features like this one I'm still missing.

~~~
kiliankoe
I tried collecting a few unknown tidbits here, feel free to open a PR if you
know of more.

[https://github.com/kiliankoe/iOS-tidbits](https://github.com/kiliankoe/iOS-
tidbits)

------
wklauss
> Project Fi isn't supposed to work with Apple phones. Turns out that it does
> work, somewhat. I hear there's limitations (it only uses the T-Mobile
> network, none of the international data works)

I have been using Google Fi on iPhone since they allowed it. Supposedly still
in beta but works great. It's true that it's limited to T-Mobile (sadly) but
it does include international data, same as in Android. Still one of the main
reasons to stick with Fi, honestly.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
I recently switched to iPhone + Fi. Was able to get data in London

------
Nextgrid
It's a shame they discovered iOS's UX when it's in my opinion at an all times
low. I wonder how their experience would've been with the UX of iOS 6 or 7,
before it all went downhill.

~~~
dmlittle
Some things are arguably better[1]. If you have an iPhone without a home
button you can swipe left on the bottom of the screen to switch between your
apps (or back right if you passed it) without having to open the app deck (not
sure what the name is, previously you would double tap the home button).

[1] Yes, this is my opinion and not everyone might agree with me.

~~~
lorenzhs
On the phones that have a home button and 3d touch, you can switch to the
previous app or bring up the app switcher with a force touch swipe from the
left edge, fyi.

~~~
dmlittle
I had forgotten about that! While this is true, I find it a lot more difficult
than the new mechanic since it's a lot slower.

------
gorpomon
What a fun surprise to find that this website is Lisa's writings. I was lucky
enough to attend Recurse Center while they were a facilitator there. Working
with Lisa was a real joy and I learned a ton from her and James (the other
facilitator). I can't recommend Recurse Center enough, if you're looking for a
unique way to grow as a developer, hacker, computer scientist, or whatever
label you prefer, it's an environment that really can't be beat.

------
Poiesis
> anything that lets you into my phone when I'm dead or otherwise
> incapacitated is generally off limits.

I don't know if the gaze detection can be fooled by a corpse with its eyes
open, but supposedly Face ID checks for body temperature as well.

~~~
Tomte
Apple says that FaceID checks for saccades.

~~~
bobbylarrybobby
Do you have a source for that?

------
ryukafalz
>That color discrimination runs deeper than you think, man. The last company I
worked at the full time employees had blue badges. The contractors's badges?
Green.

Hah, the badges had this color scheme in a job I interned at years ago. Never
thought to make that connection. :)

------
Snetry
> Discovering Which of Your Friends Are Discriminating Assholes

It's sad how something as simple as a different color can get the worst out of
people

~~~
mellavora
fortunately they only apply it to text bubbles, not skin color.

------
mikelpr
I've only heard about message bubble color discrimination from the US and I
think it's some real bullshit.

~~~
pwinnski
The color itself isn't the thing really. It's what the color represents: all
of the features that iMessage provides don't work with SMS. Instead of little
icon reactions, there are long messages ("pwinnski liked 'Okay, see you
there'"), location-sharing is ugly, URL-previews are wonky, etc, etc.

It's a diminished experience because SMS is a terrible protocol, the color
just lets us know what to expect.

~~~
mikelpr
definitely. it's just that WhatsApp took over the rest of the world but the US
still uses SMS

------
gok
It's too bad how many people are running into the usability catastrophe that
is Signal.

------
kick
_Or maybe Apple just patented all of it. Assholes._

Extremely succinct. Apple's the only company possible that could get a patent
for _turning a page in a book._

[https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/apple-now-owns-
the...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/apple-now-owns-the-page-
turn/)

~~~
dylan604
This isn't just an Apple thing as this isn't the most ridiculous sounding
patent (it is ridiculous) that has been posted here. There are so many patents
that take an existing concept but add the phrase "on a computer" or
"digitally" or some such. Is it an example of one company being an asshole or
yet another example of how the patent system is patently broken?

~~~
threeseed
> There are so many patents that take an existing concept but add the phrase
> "on a computer" or "digitally" or some such

Please show us just one example of this.

Because it's a myth that gets perpetuated that this is how patents work. You
patent a specific implementation of a concept not the concept itself. If you
implement a concept in a different way it won't infringe the patent.

~~~
comex
> Please show us just one example of this.

How about the patents at issue in _Alice v. CLS Bank_? Or any of the
“hundreds” of patents, according to Wikipedia, that have been found invalid by
lower courts in decisions citing _Alice_.

------
notlukesky
I like the way he puts it on the baffling share icon: “ I'm still pretty
confused with what that arrow out of a box even means.”

To me that sums up the era when Jony Ive and the anti-skeuomorphic crowd took
over the asylum. There are so many UX flaws since iOS 6. Luckily for Apple,
Google and the Android crowd came out with Material Design that is a bad
imitation of what went wrong with Apple instead of copying what went right
during Steve Jobs era.

Skeuomorphic design is a great enabler for Human Computer Interaction and
allows the layman to quickly grasp things.

And why is Airdrop and the toggle for the Hotspot hidden in the control center
of the lock screen when you can fit umpteen icons onto the real estate? I have
had to show that feature to multiple friends who have always been iOS users.
Function has to come before “prettiness.”

And the notch is not pretty by any measure. I prefer fingerprint on the screen
or behind the phone like Google did with the Nexuses.

~~~
leokennis
The pre-iOS7 share button looked very similar:

[https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/p...](https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/pull-to-refresh-safari-iOS-6.jpg)

Also I do not understand the criticism. The box represents your phone; the
arrow pointing outside represents sharing/sending something from your phone to
outside it (to Twitter, to another person etc.)

The only valid criticism IMHO is that the share button is often used to do
stuff that isn't sharing.

~~~
ascagnel_
> The box represents your phone; the arrow pointing outside represents
> sharing/sending something from your phone to outside it (to Twitter, to
> another person etc.)

More specifically, the box represents the app running on the phone, and it
shares content outside of the app. For example, you can "share" a picture from
Safari into the Photos or Files apps to save it for later.

It's a very, very leaky and ill-defined abstraction.

------
klik99
Regarding the smoothness, some of that is animation, but a lot is just in the
accuracy/feel/refresh rate/special sauce of the touchscreen and multi-touch.

~~~
ajconway
In my opinion iOS nowadays has a lot more lags than Android (even in the
native apps), but Apple keeps beating everyone else in terms of input latency.

~~~
klik99
This is my experience too, esp if you aren't on the latest hardware, but are
on the latest os If I wasn't a developer, I would never upgrade the os and
just keep using an older phone

------
vnpc1
iOS has been such a better experience than any version of Android that I've
tried but I'm really not a fan of the newer iPhone models. Hopefully by the
time my SE dies there will another iPhone which has 1) a small body; 2) touch
id instead of face id; 3) a headphone jack.

~~~
nizmow
Rumour is that's coming in March, but it's likely to be iPhone 6 sized rather
than iPhone 5 sized, which is a pity.

------
anotheryou
What's going on with the file system though? If you work like to work with
files (opposed to having everything isolated in apps expect for the share
functionality) you'll be lost. It's as if most apps are sandboxed in to their
own folder or something.

~~~
fctorial
> It's as if most apps are sandboxed in to their own folder or something

Isn't that a good thing?

~~~
Macha
I dislike the way it discourages data portability.

e.g.

* I want to be able to have syncthing pull down my keepass database and have keepass2android open the current version in launch without having to navigate a file picker every time.

* I want to use my browser to download rpg rulebooks from drivethrurpg then open them in my PDF viewer without either of those two having to specifically integrate with each other. It would then be nice if that pdf reader could display a list of recent files on launch rather than reopen a picker.

They're mostly my gripes with Android 10's lockdown but iOS doesn't even want
the filesystem exposed. I won't deny there's security advantages to this
model, but it should have an out as it just encourages your app to own your
data and only use it in ways they foresaw rather than giving control to users.

~~~
blitmap
I like that each app has its own filesystem, but i do wish i could 'get at'
anything from the Files app. I want to plug in my iPhone and see the
filesystem for the Files app. I want to be able to "share" any file from any
app into Files. This would either be "Save to Files" or simply exposing it to
files.

I wish Apple made this easy, and just stopped doing whatever they're doing
with iTunes. I hate needing it to upload photos.

~~~
ascagnel_
> I like that each app has its own filesystem, but i do wish i could 'get at'
> anything from the Files app.

If the developer takes the time to set it up, this is exactly how the Files
app works -- each app will appear either as a folder or as a provider.

> I want to plug in my iPhone and see the filesystem for the Files app.

This is how it works currently on macOS; word is that this will be coming to
Windows once they finish splitting up that version of iTunes.

> I want to be able to "share" any file from any app into Files. This would
> either be "Save to Files" or simply exposing it to files.

Again, this is up to the app developer to implement. On apps that support it,
there's literally a "Save to Files" option on the share sheet.

~~~
Macha
The thing is that the developer has the choice to implement it or not.

On the other hand, Microsoft didn't get a say about LibreOffice being able to
read it's files.

------
ccheney
That damned notch is why I still have an iPhone 8 in clutch

~~~
olivil
Considering I was in the same position and recently switched to an 11 Pro, I
now find the extra screen real estate to be nicer than the negatives of the
notch. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the notch is a nice solution, but as
it is either 1. part of the menu bar or 2. hidden in the black bars when
watching 16:9 videos, it's not so bad.

------
0ld
Unfortunately Apple "OSes" are ridden with small-ish but nasty bugs and
inconveniences which affect only an "insignificant" part of their customers,
and in the Apple garden world it means they are never ever going to be fixed.

And not only that, new bugs are getting introduced and the old features
removed with every OS release forcing me to look for workarounds, mostly to
find out there are none, and eventually the only option is to get used to live
with that

I've been using Apple products for 5 years now, but by now I've really grown
tired of being forced to "think different" every now and then, and I believe
the Apple products I currently own (this includes MBPs, iPhones and ATV) are
the last I ever buy

