
Undiscoverable UI Madness - pcr910303
https://birchtree.me/blog/undiscoverable-ui-madness/
======
bangonkeyboard
This post requires that users ignore the most prominent and longstanding
discoverability feature of the Mac: the omnipresent top menubar.

1\. Scrollable windows flash their scrollbars when focused. This bit of bad UI
was imported from iOS. Unlike iOS, it can still be turned off: Click the Apple
menu -> System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars.

2\. File menu -> Quick Look.

3\. Every action in that context menu is available in the File menu.

3a. Holding the Option key works in the File menu as well, but this change can
also be made from File menu -> Get Info -> Open with.

4\. This actually bad UI was, again, taken from iOS.

5\. Go menu -> Enclosing Folder.

Nearly every example is solvable with single clicks in the always-visible,
literally spelled-out menubar, as they have been for 30+ years. They are
therefore eminently discoverable, contingent on a user giving a thought to
trying in the first place to discover them. The one or two examples where this
is not true are direct iOS tack-ons that do not respect the platform.

What this post is doing is mendaciously pretending that power-user shortcuts,
some more or less discoverable than others, are the only way to perform these
operations which can actually be accomplished by reading and clicking. The
attempt to equate the Mac's discoverability with iOS fails once that is
pointed out, since in the latter those mystery-meat gestures truly are the
only way to execute them.

~~~
staplers
Good ux designers don't inject their opinions. They observe the data and
adjust accordingly.

~~~
pembrook
Good UX designers would also never conduct a user study with a sample size of
3.

~~~
Vinnl
While 3 is a bit on the low end, user studies are not required to have large
sample sizes. You're not trying to estimate what percentage of users are
running into a particular issue, but only which issues many users run into.
Whether it affects 10% or 30% of users does not really influence whether it
should be fixed.

More on this: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-
test-w...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-
with-5-users/)

~~~
pembrook
And this is why the field of design gets shit on so much. Jakob Nielsen might
have a PhD, but he’s much better at PR than he is at conducting actual
research. It’s mind boggling to me that people will still quote his opinion
pieces 20 years later as if there was any actual science behind them.

There’s a few other fields that happen to conduct a lot of studies around
human behavior. It turns out, there’s actually an established process for
calculating the confidence level of your findings:

[https://www.calculator.net/sample-size-
calculator.html](https://www.calculator.net/sample-size-calculator.html)

Is 3 or 5 better than nothing? Sure! But don’t trick yourself into thinking
your findings actually mean anything because a Danish dude drew a graph 20
years ago.

~~~
Vinnl
So again, a large margin of error and a low confidence level are fine, because
it doesn't matter if in reality, 80% of your users run into something rather
than the 60% that came out of user testing. In fact, we don't care about the
specific numbers at all. All we want to know is what things are unclear to
many users. Often, you test a design on five users, and _all_ five of them
miss the same thing - that gives you plenty of confidence that you'll want to
try something else there.

User testing is not a statistical test, and it's not a way to learn about
human behaviour (so indeed, in that sense it doesn't "mean" anything); it's to
give insight into your designs. I'd highly recommend everyone to take part in
conducting user research sometime, as it will quickly become obvious just how
easy it is to miss "obvious" things in something you're closely involved with,
and how you need to have just few people interact with it to find out which.

------
robenkleene
The difference between macOS and iOS isn't about discoverability (although, in
one important area macOS far more discoverable that iOS: multi-tasking). The
problem with iPadOS is that since all the expert controls are hidden, and
there's no such thing as shortcuts or right-clicking on iPadOS, it means doing
anything useful with iPadOS requires using many slow gestures in succession.

macOS, with a combination of Bash, AppleScripts, and system-wide third-party
utilities like Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar, provides extraordinarily
efficient ways to do powerful things, whereas doing anything on iPadOS is like
being stuck in quicksand. Just the minutia of navigating the OS with only
Apple's provided gestures is so slow and clumsy that I wouldn't bother to do
anything complicated with it. It just takes so much _effort_ , it's
exhausting. So neither OS is great at discoverability, but only one OS can be
used efficiently by a proficient user.

I'll say it again and again: The measure of a platform is not how easy it is
to use for it's weakest users, it's what it's more proficient users are able
to accomplish with it. Until Apple takes proficient users seriously, iPadOS
will be nothing but a side dish, because no one will use it to make anything
that anyone else would ever want to emulate.

[0]:
[https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/](https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/)

[1]:
[https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html](https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html)

~~~
robenkleene
I'll add the best thing Apple could do to fix iPadOS is make the developers
working on it bootstrap[0] it. E.g., by running some version of Xcode on it
(or CLI tools until they have Xcode working). Those developer would then fix
it right up.

I contend that iPadOS is so sluggish to use because it's a compile target from
a real machine that developers respect and work on, not a machine that those
developers take seriously itself. That Apple is pushing a platform so hard
that their own developers would never use for their work is everything you
need to know about using an iPad for productivity. Sure, there are other tasks
you can use a computer for besides programming, but sorry, programming is
_the_ task for computers, everything else stems from it.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_\(compilers\))

~~~
zer00eyz
I think of the iPad like a car. It does a few things well... but I would never
use one car as the means to build another. My computer(s) function much better
in those roles.

~~~
hhas01
+1 Good product design is as much about what a product _doesn’t_ do as what it
does. Jobs was very good at that. The current design committee… not.

------
newscracker
If there’s one area where macOS has lagged behind Windows for decades, it’s in
making all menu items accessible using the keyboard by default (not forcing
the user to go to Settings and setup a shortcut, which is very nice). In
Windows, pressing Alt and then the underlined character in a menu name and
then a submenu name would be the easiest way to get to things without even
knowing any other shortcuts. On the Mac, many menu items don’t have shortcuts
attached to them. To get to the menu bar using the keyboard, you have to hit
Cmd+F2 and then use arrow keys to navigate — it’s useful when you can’t use
the mouse or trackpad, but it’s highly inefficient.

I’ll list just one example of not having default keys for menu options. In
Preview, you can adjust the size of an image from a menu option. But that
specific menu option, among others, does not have any shortcut. If you need to
access it via the keyboard, your choices are to use Cmd+F2 and then crawl
around or go to Settings and setup a shortcut for it (playing around to avoid
conflicts with any system wide shortcuts).

~~~
wingerlang
Are you aware that you can search the menu from the help area? Or just cmd-
shift-?

~~~
newscracker
Late reply, but that's still very slow and cumbersome compared to hitting Alt
and then a couple of keys on Windows.

I can give more examples. The default on Mac, for a very long time, has been
to not allow tab to navigate all controls in windows and dialogs (the default
is only text boxes and lists). This has to be changed by the user in System
Preferences.

Another point on keyboard support is how it's missing on macOS in certain
places. An example: Download a DMG file of an app that's already installed
(say you're doing a manual upgrade), open it using Cmd+Down Arrow, and then
copy the app into /Applications (let's assume the keyboard is used for this
entire flow). If your user account is not an administrator, you'd get a dialog
to authenticate first, and then another dialog in response to the fact that an
app with the same name is already there in /Applications, with options to Keep
both versions, Stop the operation or Delete the older version. On macOS
Mojave, I find that this dialog cannot be navigated using the keyboard at all
(hitting tab or space or Enter does nothing)! The trackpad is the only way to
respond to it. I have never seen this kind of behavior on Windows dialogs,
whether they're from an application or from the OS (for UAC or other
permissions).

~~~
wingerlang
If I go by my family, I don't think using purely keyboard is something normal
users would be doing anyway. So it is possible that they simply have not found
it necessary to add as default (I say this as someone who uses a lot of
keyboard, and custom shortcuts).

------
cyberferret
Decades long user of Apple devices, and a long time developer, and I learned a
few things from that article. Have designers lost sight of the fact that 99%
of people use their eyes when working with an interface? You cannot simply
hide the simplest visual cues and expect people to find out about them
accidentally, or via a video or article like this.

My biggest gripe at the moment is the photo sharing option in the latest iOS.
The 'Copy' or 'Send To' options used to be immediately in front of you as
buttons. Now, they are hidden below a 'swipe up' menu that resides off screen.
There is not even the simplest hint that you can swipe up, and it took me
literally weeks of using the new iOS update to discover that purely by
accident.

Why not have the visual clue by having the top bit of the first menu option
just showing at the bottom of the screen? That at least gives me as the user
looking at the screen the idea that "Hey, there's something that goes off
screen here - maybe I can swipe up a little to see it better...Ooooh - there
is a whole menu hidden down there!".

UI/UX Designers - STOP designing screens that look cool on your Dribbble,
UpLabs and Behance portfolios and start designing screens that give people
hints as to how the interface is to be used. Please.

~~~
bobbylarrybobby
In addition to having buttons halfway off the screen, the share sheet could at
least have a scroll bar like every other scrolling view.

------
transreal
Good post - these features are quite undiscoverable, and I only figured them
out because I did them accidentally one day or someone showed me.

Someone at Apple made the determination that "looking simpler" was more
important that UX discoverability, and so hid some features under Ctrl/Command
clicks.

A worse offender is "Command+Shift+." for showing hidden files - they don't
even have a menu item anywhere for it, it's either you know that hidden files
is a thing or you don't, and there's no way to discover it by clicking around
and paying attention.

While I still prefer macOS to Windows, I agree that Apple could do a bit more
to make these hidden features more exposable. E.g. why not let a click on the
folder name show you the folder path, why require a "Command"?

~~~
Ididntdothis
That's one thing that baffles me about MacOS. There is a lot of powerful stuff
hidden behind keyboard shortcuts but there is almost no way to find them. It
seems a colossal waste of energy to first implement them but then making it
very hard to find them.

On iPadOS it's very similar. Sometimes I get two apps on the screen by
accident but I have no idea how I did it and there is no way to find out how
to do it if you don't do an online search. Good old drop down menus were
actually good for something.

~~~
madeofpalk
Is that a macOS thing, or just a conceptual problem with keyboard shortcuts?

IMHO macOS does a pretty decent job of discoverability for shortcuts as
they’ll be listed there in the menu.

 _edit:_ originally I doubted whether Windows does this or not. It does!
Somehow I missed this despite using Windows every day...

~~~
noisem4ker
Windows programs absolutely do show shortcut keys in their menus.

[http://homepage.eircom.net/~pcengineers/kbguide.html](http://homepage.eircom.net/~pcengineers/kbguide.html)

This is in addition to access keys (also explained in the document above),
underlined letters you can type to instantly navigate the menus and select
even the items for which no shortcut is defined.

~~~
madeofpalk
My bad.

------
Wowfunhappy
A good UI can only ever have a limited number of discoverable actions. You can
try to make a button for everything, but no one is going to try all the
buttons, much less remember what they mean.

So you have to pick which actions are most important, and make _those_ easy to
discover. QuickLook is a wholly essential feature. So is navigating up a
level—it's very useful in some instances, but the back button does the same
thing 90% of the time.

For the rest, what matters most is that the actions are never activated
accidentally†. This last point is, IMO, where iPadOS fails the most.

*

However: it is worth noting how far the Mac has fallen in the past decade.
Snow Leopard had persistent scrollbars, that were big and blue so you couldn't
miss them. Finder's toolbar had a button for activating QuickLook. And of
course, the notification center didn't exist yet.

There's a pattern behind all these changes. Scrollbars were modified to match
iOS. The QuickLook icon was removed to make room for a share button that
mimics iOS. The design of notification center was basically ripped from iOS
wholesale.

So yes, I agree that _iOS_ has UI problems.

——————————

† Unless the user can instantly parse _how_ they accidentally triggered the
action. If you can turn the accident into a learning experience, that's
fantastic.

‡ It's still there, but disabled by default. So in terms of discoverability,
it might as well not exist.

~~~
samatman
Practically speaking, Notification Center already existed, it was just called
Growl. Everyone I knew with a Mac had it loaded, and Apple adopted the API
whole-cloth for Notification Center, for compatibility reasons.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Yes, but Growl had a _very_ different UI from notification center.

~~~
samatman
By now, yes, this is true. When it was first released it was just Apple-
flavored Growl.

I don't find myself using most of what's been added. I routinely forget that
there's a drop-down with all the stale Notifications in it, and other than the
evening Do Not Disturb which turns on automatically, I forget (sometimes to my
detriment) that I can activate it manually.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Other than the addition of Today widgets (aka Dashboard except worse),
Notifications Center really hasn't changed much since it was released.

Here's what it looked like in Mountain Lion, where it was first introduced:
[https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-
library/os-x-...](https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-
library/os-x-10-8-mountain-lion/#jp-carousel-16160)

And here's Growl:
[http://growl.info/images/screenshots_images/RollupWhileAway....](http://growl.info/images/screenshots_images/RollupWhileAway.png)

~~~
samatman
I stand corrected!

I just remember switching over at some point and not really noticing. Messages
still made a small noise and slid in from the top right; some would disappear,
some wanted me to click on them.

Like I said, I barely use the panel, and thought (thank you for the
correction) that it was a later addition.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Ah, you may be thinking of Lion, which had _notifications_ but not
_Notification Center_. Notification Center is the name of the panel
specifically, and that came one version later in Mountain Lion.

------
wyqydsyq
> None of this is meant to say macOS is garbage or anything like that.

I think an OS as prolific as macOS having such shit UX kind of implies it is
garbage though.

The year is 2020 and macOS still doesn't have a location/address bar in
Finder.

Basic native UI interfaces still completely lack keyboard controls.

Window snapping is still non-existent.

I understand Apple strive to be different, but lacking these basic features
(among many others) makes macOS have an arguably inferior workflow to Windows
or Linux/BSD DEs.

Excluding these things are not unique and quirky subjective design choices
Apple can continue get away with. They are baseline expectations for a
workstation computing environment to meet, which macOS does not. The way I see
it, macOS is increasingly falling behind in UX. Not only have Apple failed to
make their own improvements and innovations; they've failed to keep pace with
Microsoft and the Open Source community.

Posted from my 2019 MacBook Pro

~~~
saagarjha
> The year is 2020 and macOS still doesn't have a location/address bar in
> Finder.

⌥⌘P

> The year is 2020 and macOS still doesn't have a location/address bar in
> Finder.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Use keyboard navigation to move
between controls

> Window snapping is still non-existent.

Not completely: you can do two windows side-by-side, and resizing windows now
makes them snap to each other and edges.

~~~
wyqydsyq
> ⌥⌘P

Those are breadcrumbs, not an address bar. Note the fact you cannot type or
paste a path into it, as is a core feature in practically every file manager
in every other OS. There is no apparent difference to breaking this
convention, beyond impairing users' workflows. Finder also has the "Go to"
dialogue, but again, it is a functionally inferior solution.

There is absolutely no good reason for these design choices other than to "be
different for the sake of it" at the expense of good UX

~~~
saagarjha
How is "Go to Folder" worse? Finder just splits the two actions up…

~~~
wyqydsyq
Unlike address bars in other OS file managers: \- Finder Go To does not
provide suggestions/completions (unless there is only one single match in the
current folder, it'll complete the name of that) \- Finder Go To does not
respect the current directory (it always uses `~/Library`) making relative
navigation tedious \- It's an entirely separate action and UX flow for
absolutely no good reason

In any other OS one can open the file manager, press Ctrl+L and start typing a
path, pressing tab at any point to get contextual completion suggestions.

~~~
saagarjha
I'm not sure what you're using (⇧⌘G, right?) but mine does all of those
things. It gives me multiple suggestions if there is more than one match, and
it lets you enter a directory in your current path if you just type that
folder's name.

------
erling
IMO Apple has really lost its way in terms of genuinely good UX. The UI might
be “pretty” but in terms of actual usability it’s gotten just frustrating at
this point. The amount of complexity they require from their users now,
memorizing swipe gestures, complex keyboard shortcuts, and strange
incarnations is just sad. Good design is simple!

~~~
Tehdasi
These things have been in Apple ever since the original Macintosh. In that
case it was 'one mouse button, so simple'. Except to make the system usable as
other systems with multiple button mice, they added a whole load of keyboard
shortcuts mimiced how the multibutton mice worked, which ended up being far
more complicated than just adding another button to the mouse.

~~~
hhas01
Citation for that?

I’m fairly sure they got rid of all those other buttons because for the
majority of customers they created more confusion than power back then.

Also, speaking as a power user who’s also a southpaw, I’ve got more than a few
choice words for many of the multibutton mice I’ve had to use over the years.
Apple’s late ADB mice were lovely in the hand and completely unprejudiced.

------
addicted44
The author is conflating discoverability of features, with discoverability of
different ways to activate certain features.

So, for example, everyone knew how to view a PDF. It's just that the author
disallowed the most discoverable method.

They all knew how to right click, in the most discoverable way (trackpad),
it's just that the author insisted they use the magic mouse instead, or know
about ctrl+click which no one ever uses. That the magic mouse is a usability
disaster is a whole other issue, but that's unrelated to OS X.

I havent used OSX in a bit, but the default app thing should be something that
you can do through settings (at least Windows 10 makes it very easily
discoverable that way). Apple, however, has always done a terrible job with
default apps (for example, requiring users to change their default Browser,
Mail app, etc through Safari, Mail.app and so on).

The Do Not disturb thing is ironically an iOS UI pattern that Apple has
completely unnecessarily brought to the mac.

So are the invisible scroll bars. Mac OS X's scroll bars used to be easily
visible (and more functional, because it immediately gave you an idea of the
size of the view as well as allowed you to click anywhere on the bar and jump
there directly).

Fundamentally, OS X has well described, discoverable and recommended UI
patterns that cover all these cases. iOS and iPad OS don't. It's unfortunate
that Apple has decided the HIG isn't needed anymore, but that's more of an
Apple thing, than an OS X capability thing.

~~~
Geee
You can right click on the Magic Mouse perfectly fine (just click on the right
side), I don't get it why they couldn't do it?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
This is disabled by default, you need to go into System Preferences to enable
it.

I work in an office where everyone has an iMac and a Magic Mouse, and this is
a common annoyance when coworkers ask me to come over and help them with
something. I'm so used to being able to right click, and I can't on (many of)
their machines.

~~~
Geee
Why don't they enable it?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
So, one coworker in particular tried enabling right click after watching me
always attempt to use it on her machine. She turned it off a few weeks later.

She couldn't get the hang of right click on the magic mouse. She would right
click when she meant to left click, and be unable to right click when she did
want to. Despite watching her, I wasn't able to figure out what she was doing
wrong. The gesture works perfectly for me.

Of course, Apple could resolve all of this by putting two buttons on their
mice...

~~~
christoph
I personally find the magic mouse to be the most frustratingly annoying Apple
device ever made. I want to love it. Functionality wise, I think it's
fantastic. I even agree with the charging port on the bottom in the latest
iterations.

I just find the shape and form of it to be so horrible to use for any period
time, that no matter how much I try to love it and use it, it just ends up
giving me physical pain in my hand and I revert back to my 10 year old
Microsoft mouse. I don't understand how anyone can use it for any reasonable
length of time.

~~~
dividedbyzero
For me it's just the opposite – it's the one mouse that seems to fit my hand
and my anatomy just right. Feels as natural to me as using a mouse can
possibly be. Other mice force my hand into this typical holding-a-mouse
gesture that gets crampy and exhausting pretty quickly. I don't really know
what exactly makes the difference for me, but my hand posture looks completely
different when using a Magic Mouse, in a way that (most?) other mice would be
to irregularly shaped, thick, large for. No definite idea, but it's a great
reminder of how much such things can vary between individuals.

------
pedrokost
I have been observing something similar recently, but related to other
technologies. People claiming they are good at Excel, but can't do a vlookup
or a pivot table. People using 5% of the power of an IDE. People not realizing
that if they are able to use a web-based tool at work, they could (probably)
also access it remotely.

And these are just the things I have noticed in the past week.

We utilize just a tiny percentage of options that are available to us, barely
enough to get the basics of out tasks done. But we are completely oblivious
that there are probably better/hidden/power tools available in the software we
are already using that could help us achieve our tasks much more efficiently.

Interestingly, most people probably don't care about it, or are so oblivious
of their lack of knowledge that they don't even search for better ways to do
things.

It's hard to blame thought. Improving this state requires a mentality of
continuous active learning, where you don't just wait for someone to show you
how to do your task better, but to constantly expand your knowledge into areas
you don't even think you need to improve. However, most of us usually have
"better things to do" than reading software manuals.

~~~
Smoosh
I think part of this was that in the past, computers and software were new and
novel. People had no comparative experience, so training had to be provided to
fully explain what you could do & how you could do it.

Compare to today where most people "learn" by immersion - you have to use
Google Docs or Excel for your school work, so you adsorb just enough to get
your work done without really understanding the fundamentals or the more
complex or non-obvious features, since you weren't taught systematically or
comprehensively.

Then you "know" Excel, or Word well enough to get by - but don't know that you
are barely scratching the surface of it's capabilities, or don't realize that
being more competent with the tool will make you more capable and productive.
And thus the motivation/opportunity isn't there to invest that time and
effort.

------
jml7c5
It's a shame there's no standard contextual key one can hold that overlays all
the keyboard shortcuts, swipes, clicks, scrolls, etc that are available in the
currently displayed UI. Ideally, every window that has hidden UI stuff would
have a little indicator in the corner that means "hey, there's something weird
you can do here, hold down the 'explain-o-tron 3000 key' to get a hint".

While one can argue that UIs should be immediately understandable, it doesn't
seem possible to pull off such a feat in many cases. Keyboard shortcuts are
particularly problematic, as an always-visible list would take up too much
space in most cases.

~~~
pjc50
Windows used to be very systematic about putting an underscore on letters that
could be used with alt accelerator key; but this seems to have been phased
out.

I think the only thing I've seen with a "hold key for instructions on
everything" was strategy game Rise of Nations.

~~~
noisem4ker
Underlined letters for access keys are not shown by default anymore, but they
can be brought back:

[https://winaero.com/blog/underline-access-keys-menus-
windows...](https://winaero.com/blog/underline-access-keys-menus-windows-10/)

~~~
int_19h
They are still shown as soon as you press Alt. Which makes sense, since if you
don't know about that, you can't use the underlined letters anyway.

------
LeanderK
I don't get why there's not continuous validation from apple for UX. Can't
they just pay random users to do some tasks and continuously monitor whether
they are able to do it?

Something like: how satisfied are you with x,y,z and then let them try to do
task 1, task 2, task 3.

Just track these metrics and try to improve the UI according to this. It seems
like the designers just live in a bubble without feedback from the users, this
seems especially crucial during and after a redesign.

Maybe a small popup in apples own apps, like music. Something like: Want to
use apple music for free for one month? Just answer these short questions and
complete a few tasks! These things don't need to take longer than 10 minutes.

Even a small sample size could provide meaningful and statistically
significant results.

------
StavrosK
The hidden scrollbar trend is maddening to me, why hide such an important
element? I just tried one of the latest Ubuntu Unity/Gnome/whatever it is
versions (I normally use XUbuntu) and saw that the scrollbars are hidden there
too, which is crazy. How is the user supposed to know whether they can scroll?

~~~
thewebcount
For what it's worth you can turn them on permanently in the System Prefs under
"General" > "Show Scroll Bars".

~~~
StavrosK
That's very useful, thanks!

------
gburdell3
I love using MacOS now that I'm used to it, but it really is a disaster from a
basic UX point of view. Even just installing applications on MacOS is wacky,
and it makes me wonder how Macs got their reputation of being easier to use
than Windows computers.

~~~
timw4mail
Surely using the app store, or dragging an app to the applications folder is
more sane than every program needing a installer program to put all the files
in the right places?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Surely [...] dragging an app to the applications folder is more sane than
> every program needing a installer program to put all the files in the right
> places?

Yes. It was more sane, when:

1\. The Applications folder lived on the Dock, so users actually knew it was
there.

2\. Many applications (much more than today) were distributed via DMG's with
instructions that an app should be dragged to the Applications folder.

Without either of these things, a lot of users end up just running an
application from their Downloads folder.

Worse, doing it the _right_ way involves on a non-trivial number of steps. You
have to (1) open the Finder, (2) navigate to the Applications folder, and (3)
then drag the app from Downloads into Applications.

~~~
samatman
Of all the numerous and growing usability problems with macOS, this isn't one
that's ever occurred to me.

Applications is, by default, in the Favorites bar of Finder. Which is where a
user would find the Download folder, granted that Applications is lower in the
list, but...

Second, a significant number of programs are installed from the App Store now.
Of those that aren't, it's still quite normal to open up a DMG and have two
icons: the application, and a link to the Applications folder. Often with a
bit of icon magic so the application points at the folder.

Some applications still use an installer, in which case the app lands in the
Applications folder, again.

Is this really a problem? I've been using OSX for far too long to be in a
position to tell...

------
preferenca
The party line at Apple is that right click (and everything in there) is for
power users only, and that you should be able to do everything a user
reasonably needs with only one button. I think this is a reasonable approach,
but it seems that it's breaking peoples' ability to transition from user to
power user.

The other Finder issues, however... well, it's become clear that Finder has
become simpler and simpler in an attempt to make the computers more
accessible.

Did you know: you can turn scrolbars on by default? A lot of common
macos/finder complaints can be addressed by toggling settings, but it'd be
nice if there was a single "pro mode" button, or something.

~~~
robertoandred
Pretty presumptive to assume all "pros" would want scrollbars turned on and
all non-"props" would want them turned off.

UIs are complex and can't serve the needs of every kind of user by default.
That's why there are options.

------
anonsivalley652
I've been using macOS for about 10 years after 20 on the nameless platform.

1\. Get KeyCue or something like it that tells you (almost) every keyboard
shortcut within any application by using the accessibility API.

2\. Turn on that accessibility mode option where it makes it possible to
cursor through multiple-choice modal dialogs.

3\. What I find maddening is AppleScript. It's incredibly powerful except for
three deficiencies a) an inability to introspect applications to find their
nouns and verbs b) the lack of complete AppleScript documentation c) they
fired the AppleScript guy. You could do a lot in it if you only knew the
syntax and how to call things. AppleScript needs a minor UI overall to show
what possible keywords, operators, nouns or verbs could be used during
contextual code-completion.

4\. macOS (and iOS/iPadOS) support most *NIX Ctrl- shortcuts within text
fields. Ctrl-k to kill to EOL, Ctrl-a go to beginning, Ctrl-e go to EOL, etc.

5\. Assign keyboard shortcuts to speed-up common actions (both system-wide and
within particular apps) that don't have hotkeys by default, like Command-
Shift-, to open Settings.

6\. Get BlueToggle & AirToggle to bounce BT and WiFi.

Bonus for iPad/iOS: use the triple-click accessibility feature set to only the
Magnifier (with no zooming) with the darkening filter to get a darker display
at night.

~~~
saagarjha
> an inability to introspect applications to find their nouns and verbs

Script Editor, press ⇧⌘O, then click on the app you care about.

~~~
hhas01
That’s static documentation, aka “AppleScript dictionaries”, which isn’t
_quite_ the same thing as true introspection. In combination with Script
Debugger’s live object model browser it’s pretty powerful, but also all the
more frustrating as you run into common limitations: missing or incompete
details, ambiguous definitions, incorrect information, and so on.

Unfortunately the original designers left Apple before the whole system was
adequately specced and documented or thoroughly field-trialed, leaving both
app developers and users to make blind guesses as to how things should work,
and duct-tape over the shortcomings as best they can.

------
thdrdt
I've been using Mac OS, Windows and Linux (multiple distros) for over 20
years.

To me Mac OS always had the worst UI experience. I can understand why people
like it: it is clean and looks good. But clean and good looks doesn't make it
good.

Windows has been good on average.

On Linux it depends on the distro and the version of the distro a lot.

Overall I think Ubuntu has the best UI experience at the moment.

------
mehrdadn
A few days ago I discovered I could rotate PDF pages in Chrome's PDF viewer
with Ctrl+[]... by pressing it by accident.

How the heck anyone was supposed to know that, I have no clue.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I once rotated the screen on my Dell laptop by accident and couldn't figured
out how to get it back to normal. Took almost a day.

------
mmis1000
As a user mostly use windows. I always find the ui discoverable of mac
problematic. I really have no idea why do they like to hide most used things
like move file, show hidden under keyboard shortcuts and don't have a option
to force them permanently show up. As in windows, they are either already show
up or exist in some obvious item like `setting` and you can toggle things
here. You rarely need google to find out what's going on. But has in mac you
need to press random keys here and there is no obvious visual indications that
you can do so. I really curious about how mac user before google exists find
them out. Or they simply not?

~~~
kccqzy
> I really curious about how mac user before google exists find them out.

Before Google existed, software came with manuals. You buy software in a fancy
box, but within the box there's not just a CD/floppy disks, there's also a
large tome of written material teaching you how to use it. You would sit down,
read through it, and learn to use the software.

It is more of a testament to humanity's decreasing attention span that users
now demand UIs to be discoverable without reading anything.

Take a look at someone's discovery of the original Macintosh user manual:
[http://www.peterme.com/2007/08/27/thoughts-on-and-pics-of-
th...](http://www.peterme.com/2007/08/27/thoughts-on-and-pics-of-the-original-
macintosh-user-manual/)

------
why-oh-why
Here's the thing: you can't have 1000 "discoverable" actions, there's no place
for it.

Correction: you do have 1000 discoverable actions, but you discover them in
the menu bar.

What you found out with this article is that users are bad at knowing things,
because there are too many things to know. I know all of those actions and
their keyboard shortcuts, but I still have to occasionally "google it."

Either you have iOS 1.0 where everything is clear and easy to do — because
there's very little to do — or macOS, where each app has dozens of features
but can only surface some of them.

This is non-news.

------
tobr
As I’m not much of an iPad user, I’m not sure how well I’ve understood the
recent onslaught of criticism it has seen, but I thought it was more about
gestures that are hard to execute even if you know them, and UI modes that you
accidentally can get yourself into with no clear way to exit?

Most of these examples seem like things that are nice to be able to do if you
know about them, easy to execute, but not much of a problem if you are
oblivious to them?

------
cryo
Good test and I think the results would also apply for most people dealing
with Finder. I'd like to add that the right click context menu on any file or
folder is huge, I can't imagine that from the 20 entries (on my machine) more
than 4 are used by 95% of all users.

So here is a poll: What are the entries you use commonly from the context menu
and more interesting which of them haven't you used once?

~~~
armagon
I frequently use a couple of services on the menu to diff two files (but most
people don't have the diffing tool installed).

"Open", "Open With", I use frequently. "Compress", "Rename" and "Get Info"
come in handy now and then.

I've never used (before now, to see what it did) "Make Alias", "Share", or
"Use Groups". Not sure I've ever used "Duplicate".

------
timw4mail
It is interesting how newer interfaces tend to be seen as worse. (Windows
9x/XP vs Windows 8/8.1/10 or Mac OS current version vs previous version)

On the other hand, there is no reason that desktop websites should have
navigation hidden under a menu.

Now let me waste 10 minutes trying to find out how to show "My Computer" on
the Desktop in Windows 10...

------
proc0
The single click mouse is the dumbest peripheral to have ever been invented,
and I'm literally using right now (at work). They say less is more but this
unnecessarily forces you to use a keyboard, and at times I've had to unplug
the keyboard just to find myself in bad situation needing to right click.

~~~
dmart
Pretty sure clicking on the right-side of the mouse has activated secondary
click by default all the way back to the Mighty Mouse (2005), no? Even if not,
it's one checkbox to enable it. You don't need a keyboard to right-click,
that's absurd.

~~~
proc0
Not this one. It does have a pseudo touchpad on top to use certain gesture
commands but sacrifices the second click. Maybe the decision was to prioritize
the touchpad on top, but alas bad decision although not unusable.

~~~
snowwrestler
Every Apple mouse sold for at least the last 5 years can do a right click. You
may have to configure it.

~~~
proc0
I found, it was a configuration and it was turned off. _shrugs_

~~~
hhas01
Considering the nature of this forum and its inhabitants, in combination with
the topic at hand, there is very rich irony in this.

Nevertheless, it does _prove_ the point: whether power user or punter, Poor
Discovery Bad.

------
brianpgordon
A couple more really odious offenders in MacOS-

1\. Needing to hold the option key when right-clicking in order to even see an
option for moving a copied item. I don't mind the use of copy->move instead of
Windows's cut->paste but why does it have to be hidden? This is surely one of
the _basic_ operations you want to perform in a file manager!

2\. Needing to right click and select "open" in order to run an unsigned app
for the first time. This is a counter-intuitive and pointless ritual - there
should be no difference between double-clicking and selecting "open" from the
context menu. If Apple wants to ban unsigned apps they should just do it,
instead of hiding a workaround behind a trivial trick that the unsophisticated
users Apple is ostensibly trying to protect can easily discover by accident.

~~~
zapzupnz
As for 1, I imagine it's because Apple doesn't want the destructive actions
front-and-centre. Not only that, but macOS has always encouraged/preferred the
drag-and-drop pattern for file management — it might be something with which
you or others agree but that's the paradigm they're backing, for better or
worse.

Copying-and-moving might be a basic operation if it's something to which
you're accustomed, but it's such second nature for me, and I'm sure others, to
just open a new Finder window or drag to a Stack.

I agree with 2. The way they do it now is far too heavy handed; give us a
prompt to choose to run the app for the first time, possibly with an
administrator password prompt. I haven't _really_ had a problem with Apple
introducing restrictions with Gatekeeper but that one is simply _annoying_.

------
gumby
I've been a (generally) happy Mac user for more than 25 years, but I am still
of the opinion that the command line is more discoverable. At least man -k
will surface all sorts of commands whose own man pages may suggest other
search keys. The mac's "Help" menu bar item is much less useful in this regard
(of course it will surface menu commands and highlight them when you mouse
over the response). And even then it is mostly only an interface to the menu
bar options themselves -- vague questions like "how do I X", much less "click
on a pixel in you image to Y" are pretty much unanswerable through this
interface.

And despite what I said about man -k, let's not get into the parlous state of
Apple's man files.

------
derefr
> and telling them that they could by hitting Cmd+up arrow ... was deemed the
> most hidden thing thus far.

That's one of the oldest and most uniform/predictable ones, though—Cmd+up
means "navigate out"; Cmd+down means "navigate in" (which translates to "open"
for documents and "launch" for apps.) It perfectly lines up with movement
within the (implicit) tree that backs the spatial-navigation metaphor.

When Safari was introduced, we also gained Cmd+[ to universally mean "navigate
Back" and Cmd+] to mean "navigate Forward." These tend to be recapitulated
lately by left/right swipe gestures, but not all the time. You can't swipe in
Preferences.app, but you _can_ Cmd+[. (And you can Cmd+up, too!)

------
ctruelson
I created this to help discover shortcuts:
[https://twitter.com/randomshortcuts](https://twitter.com/randomshortcuts)

And [https://www.randomshortcuts.com](https://www.randomshortcuts.com)

------
jvagner
_That 's_ how you turn on DND...

Frustratingly, if you "x" all the notifications, there's still no hint that
you can scroll to see night shift & DND toggles.

I still have to think really hard every time I want to move my cursor to the
beginning or end of an edit line on OS X.

~~~
tobr
You can also option+click the notification center icon in the menu bar.

~~~
avip
That's it. I give up programming and going back to Barista.

------
chaoticmass
I have been saying for years (since OS 9) that Apple UIs are nowhere near as
intuitive as their reputation would have you believe. The worst part is,
because Apple does this bad stuff, everyone else thinks it must be a good idea
and copies it.

------
_bxg1
Some of these are esoteric keyboard shortcuts for things that are possible to
do in a less-undiscoverable way. Others, like right-clicking on the trackpad
and scrolling without a visible scroll bar very quickly become second-nature
when you start using a Mac, because it's impossible to navigate otherwise.
Only the "Open With" case is really valid, because even the non-keyboard way
of doing it (again, not mentioned in the article) is really fairly esoteric:
[right-click] > "Get Info" > [select application for this file] > "Change
All..." to apply to all files with this extension.

------
ebg13
Years ago Macs used to all come with a cheatsheet of keyboard shortcuts and
other hints. Before that there was a guide program with every Mac showing how
to interact with the OS. Now you get nothing, nada, bubkes.

~~~
applecrazy
[https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-
help/welcome/mac](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/welcome/mac)

Something similar to this actually loads up in Safari when you log into your
Mac for the first time.

------
bobblywobbles
This is the reason why I prefer Windows, but of course I grew up in Windows
and use it daily.

It doesn't help all the icons for command, option and ctrl are all these
hyroglyphs.

------
nihonde
The Finder in particular has been neglected for so long. Many of these
“features” are artifacts that are indicative of a long-standing need to
rethink the Mac OS user’s relationship to the file system. The problem is that
Apple’s instinct is to eliminate complexity, which is why iOS lacked any file
system in user space until the Files app was added as a kind of begrudging
concession.

------
avip
He didn't make it to the final question: _how_ would you re-find an open
window of some app and bring it to front as active window?

~~~
Smoosh
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204100](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204100)

------
icehawk
_While here, I right clicked on a PNG file and asked how to make that file
type always open on Photoshop instead of Preview. None knew you had to hold
Option while using the “open in” option._

Probably because there's a selection drop down and a big button in the Get
Info window with a label that tells you it does this exact thing

------
ericlewis
I did not know holding option in a right click menu had so many useful
features!

Also, on command clicking the title bar to go a folder above: my memory is
probably failing me but I seem to recall when this was announced there was an
arrow or some such, or highlighting.

~~~
rubyn00bie
It works on almost any menu; not just right click context menu. XCode for
example, is much more useful when you realize you learn that half of the menu
options you really want are hidden by holding down the option key.

The WiFi icon has an insane amount of information if you option click it for
example... (most of the system ones do)

Holding option in menus, settings, or while clicking the status bar is easily
the most underused and under-documented feature of MacOS... (maybe after
removing annoying shit with launchctrl).

Edit: totally didn't see the two other posts with exactly the same tip, ha.
Maybe not so underused -_-;

~~~
ericlewis
I have seen it on the system bar, very useful there.

------
beders
Speaking of undiscoverable:

"Tap all the things, slide all the things' is now the de-facto modus operandi
for figuring out how to use mobile apps.

It feels like we made a huge step backwards in UX and are leaving behind
generations of users.

------
rileytg
> Apple’s mouse only has a single click.

it has way more than just single click...

------
Shank
The common element in design trends is to minimize analogies that were
previously made really obvious because users already know them by now. This
has resulted in a constant iterative design that's led to the flattening and
hiding of every major UI element. It's not because of malice or anything, it's
just that for designers who already know and are familiar with the system,
it's redundant to keep displaying things users already know.

In general, it's fine for users that are already familiar with the system. If
you've been using macOS since it was Mac OS X (or even earlier), and you used
every version from then to now, then the system is probably totally obvious.
The catch is that we stopped "teaching" users things from scratch. So there's
a ton of users who feel like the current user interfaces are totally obvious,
while users who are just now entering an ecosystem find themselves completely
lost.

I've advocated for this a lot privately, but I think it needs to be said more
prominently: interfaces need to grow with the users on an individual level.
Maybe you want to reach some kind of eden where no control is highlighted and
the entire interface is flat -- so be it. Just make sure that you start users
off with a very 3D interface with obvious affordances before you start
changing things up. Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but it's basically the only
way to teach a brand new user how to use a computer system from scratch.

I help my mom and grandparents out all the time when it comes to technology.
They aren't dumb. They just don't follow every design change, take every OS
update, or buy new devices every year. They know how to close windows, resize
windows, and deal with windows. But when the iPad ships things like three and
four finger gesture systems that have no obvious way to discover them, of
course they look clueless. Similarly, when a button doesn't look like a button
(but it did in three design languages ago and has just slowly removed all of
the button-like features), they don't know that it's a button. Again, it's not
their fault: they just haven't followed every iteration of the design language
to know why or how things have changed.

The key UI element that Superhuman gets right that everyone talks about is its
ridiculous obsession with teaching keyboard shortcuts. Every time you click a
button instead of using a shortcut, the confirmation tells you "yes, that
worked, but also here's the keyboard shortcut to do it faster next time."
Maybe something like this would help?

Whatever the case may be, users who don't know things make the industry look
inscrutable and unfriendly. Heck, it makes people leave platforms because they
think they're unfriendly, when they've actually just been optimizing away all
of the affordances.

------
mirap
A "research" with only 3 users? Meh.

------
city41
It wasn't always like this. MacOS about circa system 7 through 9 were
excellent UX-wise. OSX has been a slow, gradual degradation of UX over the
past decade or so.

------
Exuma
I knew all these _pats self on back_

------
nkkollaw
macOS is bad in terms of discoverability, but iOS or whatever they call it
nowadays is ridiculous.

I have a brand-new iPhone I bought for testing websites, and I use a beat-up
Motorola just because iOS is so frustrating to use.

Apple needs some design lessons, Microsoft has been doing such a great job
with Surface devices that if they could make Windows just a tiny bit better
people I bet a huge percentage will switch.

