
Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (2015) - bookofjoe
https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name
======
crazygringo
> _It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always
> possible to discover what actions are possible..._

People harp on this, but what changed is that phone screens are tiny. It's
just not possible to show all commands and still show content. Also, people
forget that "gestures" like the double-click were not intuitive _at all_ and
that Macs came with _manuals_ which had to _teach_ the basic concepts of
computing (double-clicking, folders, windows, etc.). While young children seem
to use iPads rather intuitively (and they don't come with manuals).

> _clearly see how to select that action..._

Tapping is just as intuitive as clicking... and select-tap for a context menu
is no worse than click-and-hold for a drop-down menu, or right-click for a
context menu.

> _receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action..._

I see no evidence this is any worse on phones. To the contrary, iOS brought a
whole new world of animated feedback that makes feedback even clearer
spatially (e.g. an app or folder expanding).

> _and have the power to reverse that action–to undo it–if the result is not
> what was intended._

In the most advanced applications, yes. But "undo" was never a universal
concept on the desktop -- it was mostly limited to text editing and actions in
Office-type applications. E.g. in System 7 you couldn't undo creating a folder
or moving a file or an operation in the calculator, you've never been able to
undo setting a preference or resizing a window, and you certainly couldn't
undo overwriting a file until Time Machine and file versions came along more
recently. (And on iOS, things like drawing and text editing apps usually _do_
have undo, same as on desktop.)

I would argue things haven't gotten any worse, because they were never that
idyllic to begin with, and that most of what does _seem_ worse is forced by
smaller screens, not by suddenly ignoring principles.

(edit: changed "tap-and-hold" above to "select-tap" which I meant to write,
e.g. when bringing up the copy/paste menu for text)

~~~
flowerlad
> _what changed is that phone screens are tiny_

iOS7 and up degraded usability relative to iOS6. See:
[https://uxcritique.tumblr.com/](https://uxcritique.tumblr.com/) for
comparisons of iOS and MacOS old vs new designs.

With the passing of Steve Jobs Apple has lost its design mojo.

~~~
mch82
I suspect it was related to the loss of Scott Forestall. It’s notable that
“metaphor” dropped from the top iOS design principle to near the bottom. And
the backlash against “skeuomorphic design” was a popular narrative in the tech
press around the time of these changes.

~~~
skavi
I'd argue that the gesture interface used in newer iOS devices is proof that
modern Apple is fully capable of employing metaphors to make interfaces more
intuitive.

------
gandalfian
My father used to hold the home button to start siri. Siri then says "hello"
so my father politely says hello back. On hearing this siri turns itself off
so it never hears his question and he stands there wondering why it works for
other people but never him.

~~~
mhh__
That's a UX oversight that I can so so so imagine myself doing if given the
chance.

Excellent reason to test interfaces with people who've never used it before

~~~
atoav
I think for most people this kind of empathy is a skill that can be learned
and improved. It is very easy to forget the assumptions you make everyday.
Very carefully studying how e.g. your parents use things or remembering how
foreign certain parts of a computer felt to you the first times you used them
are valuable excercises.

This is a bit like writing novels with main figures that are very much unlike
yourself: if you want to paint a convincing picture, you will have to research
and figure out how people do things. And if you go deeper you need to
understand where their ideas come from.

It is quite sad, that many people in the tech world have a very one-
dimensional collection of possible user characters. In the worst case they
divide the world into people that are like them and idiots who have no idea.

The only thing worse than this is not thinking about design at all.

~~~
ALittleLight
Especially for a company like Apple, I think it should be less about having
empathy and more about having the resources to gather bug reports and track
them down.

Large beta pools and other feedback mechanisms could credibly get reports like
"Siri doesn't work for me" to come in. Then you have to have people to trace
those down. Really? It works for me? What are the recent queries on this
account? Ohhh, he's just saying hello back, then the exchange ends and Siri
misses his question. How many other people have this pattern? Can we get a fix
so, if the user replies with a greeting the conversation stays open?

Having people getting and tracking down reports from customers will cause your
organization to develop something that's a lot like empathy. You'll learn what
customers have problems with and fix them.

~~~
atoav
Ofc this depends on the size of the project. But you have testers who will
need to figure things out. It is not very creative to say “Hallo” to a thing
that says “Hallo” to you, people do it every day. This is something that
should work from day 1 and could have been avoided by one person testing it
with their un-techy dad in mind.

And this as you said depends on the organization, but if your product speaks
to people and it doesn’t know that greeting back isn’t necesarilly the end of
the conversation, you skipped conversation 101

------
jedberg
This[0] is one of my favorite websites ever. It’s by Apple’s first HCI
engineer (long before such a title existed). He has some great articles on HCI
as well as a bunch of critiques of Apple’s missteps after he left.

I find I agree with pretty much everything he says.

[0] [https://www.asktog.com/](https://www.asktog.com/)

~~~
whitepoplar
Honest question: why do so many design/HCI/typography experts have
unreadable/unusable websites of their own? I don't doubt what you're saying,
but damn.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Honest question: why do so many design/HCI/typography experts have
> unreadable/unusable websites of their own?

Because they are not only aware of what is ideal, they are aware of the
effort-payoff balance involved in doing it right.

The ones that have a secure brand and are sharing knowledge for free (as
opposed to the ones using their website to build/establish a personal brand)
don't have a lot of incentive to invest heavily.

~~~
LaGrange
...except it actually took effort to make it that bad. Plain HTML without any
styling whatsoever would be more readable. Someone _thought this was an
improvement_.

~~~
dragonwriter
> ...except it actually took effort to make it that bad. Plain HTML without
> any styling whatsoever would be more readable

Handcoding HTML is a lot more effort than picking up one of the many canned
tools that you configure some settings and throw text at and it produces a
blog.

------
Grustaf
What an absurd and tiresome article. IOS is significantly easier and more
intuitive than any PC ever was, including the Mac. Most gestures are so
intuitive you don’t even realise they are gestures, 2-year olds scroll and
zoom without being told how. The only people who could possibly find iOS
unintuitive are those whose minds have hardened in a PC shaped mold.

~~~
baldfat
Tell that to people who have to use a iPad for doing office work. I just
switched jobs on April 1 and I want to throw this hunk of hot garbage away.
Mouse and Keyboard are so much better for doing most things. iOS will be much
friendlier to mouse and keyboard as more people are given iPads.

~~~
slewis
This is your company’s fault, they chose the wrong tool for the job.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
They chose a "computer" just like the ad told them. It all reminds me of the
ST:TNG episode where a space faring alien doesn't know how his technology
works.

------
saagarjha
This article is correct, but this the points it brings up about
discoverability are somewhat misrepresented. iPhones usually make it easy to
do simple things and hard to complicated ones. That’s why you can see tech
illiterate people being able to use iPhone so well: they just tap on things
and scroll, and it usually works. But these people have no need or can get by
without accelerators or advanced features, so iOS chooses to hide them. I’m
not sure if this is the ideal design, but it does allow for visually pretty
products that work a lot of the time. Note that Apple has recently started
moving away from the iOS 7 design of “minimalism is the best”, so some of the
things mentioned in the article are not relevant anymore or significantly less
of an issue.

Also,

> The Magic Mouse works differently than the track pad, which is different
> than gestures on the iPhone or tablet. Why?

I have never seen this be an issue? On macOS, you scroll with two fingers
because you have a cursor, and on iOS you use one. Since Magic Mouse has an
alternate way of moving the cursor, you can actually use both methods.

~~~
BurningFrog
“Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.”

― Alan Kay

Apple used to live by that quote, but maybe they ignore the latter part now.

~~~
saagarjha
I literally said exactly this: iOS makes simple things easy and difficult
things hard-to-find.

~~~
callalex
The person replying to you agrees and was just adding an interesting and
relevant quote to the discussion. Not every post on the internet is an
argument.

------
Despegar
Counterpoint:
[https://twitter.com/jiveDurkey/status/1121186334243213314](https://twitter.com/jiveDurkey/status/1121186334243213314)

~~~
graeme
That's instagram. It isn't made by apple, and works the same on any phone.

~~~
Despegar
It's Instagram but it's Apple's user interaction design [1].

>and works the same on any phone.

Well yes, that's what Jobs' "thermonuclear war" was about. In fact Google is
still at it with Android Q. They've given up and just aped the iPhone X
gestures [2]. Apple might be mad about it but they shouldn't be because it
just makes switching from Android to iOS easier.

[1]
[http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/09/ios-7-gestures.html](http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/09/ios-7-gestures.html)

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18530599/google-
android-q-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18530599/google-android-q-
features-hands-on-dark-mode-gestures-accessibility-io-2019)

~~~
jordansmithnz
To be a little pedantic - it’s not quite the same as Apple’s user interaction
design... notice how the ape performs swipes to navigate back?

Apple’s gesture for this requires starting at the edge of the screen, but
Instagram allows you to start swiping anywhere.

I’d hesitate a guess that without this difference, the ape wouldn’t have been
able to browse Instagram nearly as easily.

~~~
graeme
Yes, instagram’s swipe back is much better than apple’s.

Though in fairness, I do think the iphone is pretty intuitive. My parents
picked it up quite well (mac too).

However, there are a variety of mid-tier functions that are not very
discoverable. Not pro features, even simple stuff like screenshots and certain
sharing options.

~~~
genghizkhan
To be fair, screenshots aren’t intuitive on any OS.

------
mch82
> “Indeed, in Apple’s latest release of its mobile Operating System, iOS 9, a
> number of the issues we have discussed have been addressed.”

This is a strange line to find 90% into the article. It seems like a lead in
rather than a late acknowledgement. iOS struggled to find its way back to
usability after rejecting “skeuomorphic design” in favor of flat design (see
the drop in emphasis on metaphors), but it’s doing better now.

> Discoverability

This does continue to be an issue. However, the subtle bars that indicate the
availability of the swipe up from the bottom and swipe down from the top right
are helping.

> Undo

This is a huge design flaw. I finally enabled shake-to-undo because I’ve
started doing more work on iOS and needed undo, but I feel foolish shaking my
phone. Photoshop introduced the history palette years ago and that’s a
fantastic approach to undo/redo. Now the feature is common on desktop apps.
iOS badly needs a “time machine” control as a universal access to undo/redo.
The rewind/fast forward 2-finger gesture introduced in the Paper by 53 was a
nice solution, but not widely implemented. An icon would be better.

> Feedback

The most satisfying feedback on iOS is the click vibration when the flashlight
or camera app snap open after a long press on the lock screen.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
On iPad, the keyboard has a Undo/Redo buttons. Given the increased screen
space reserved for the keyboard on the iPhone X/XS/XR I’m surprised Apple uses
it for an emoji shortcut key and dictation button (and a lot of empty space)
instead of Undo/Redo.

~~~
mch82
I do notice that on iPad, though it seems inconsistent & I’d forgotten about
it.

I also wish the X line of phones had the two-finger touch keyboard cursor
control... It seems like iPad is innovating (maybe because the potential
universe of pissed off users is less) & hopefully we’ll see some of those
updates on iPhone in the future.

~~~
eclipxe
They have 3D Touch for keyboard cursor control. At least the X/XS

------
bookofjoe
No doubt this has appeared on HN in the past but now is the first time I've
seen it and I suspect there are others like me.

~~~
wilkystyle
Agreed and upvoted. It's been long enough since the previous discussions, and
articles like this have repost value in my eyes, since they can generate a
good discussion of the content in light of the current state of things.

------
dang
2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13849402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13849402)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10559387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10559387)

The day before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10552932)

------
sytelus
Article argues that Apple UX no longer have affordances and discoverability as
it used. I am not sure if I completely agree with this. Even kindergartners
very quickly learn and use iOS and for most part Apple's UX primitives are
well thought out. I'm more concerned about bad or no design decisions that are
accumulating over time such as,

* Power and volume buttons on exactly opposite side means you often press one when you meant another when held in one hand.

* Extremely slippery surfaces means the devices slips away and fall down all the time.

* No easy way to organize app icons. Over time you accumulate 100s of apps and its lot of pain to organize and discover apps.

* Cannot disable click sound when taking photos easily.

* Cannot search and organize photos easily.

* Anything related to iCloud is either mess or dysfunctional.

... and so on.

------
fmajid
It's simple. Steve Jobs died, and Jony Ive was now free to engage in his self-
indulgent narcissistic hack work. It took an extra 4 years for the pipeline of
Steve's influence to run dry.

They fired Scott Forstall for not assuming the failure of Maps V1. What do you
think the likelihood is that Jony Ive will be fired for the butterfly keyboard
fiasco, notched iPhone and other design catastrophes?

------
jasonhansel
What I really dislike is designs that sacrifice information density for
beauty. I want my apps for the content, not for the whitespace.

------
rienbdj
Apple made the fonts thicker in recent iOS releases.

I don’t understand the other complaints. Anecdotally, users are more
proficient with iOS than Windows or macOS, for similar usage times.

~~~
mattkevan
San Francisco is a much better UI font than Helvetica

~~~
Wowfunhappy
It is, but Lucida Grande was significantly better than both.

~~~
zapzupnz
Lucida Grande looked great on displays for which it was designed (non-Retina)
but looked a bit naff and oddly-proportioned on Retina displays. Not
unreadable by any means, but the features baked into the font to aid
readability on non-Retina displays simply no longer applied once the majority
of Apple's products had moved to Retina displays.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I agree that San Francisco looks more visually pleasing on Retina displays,
but I still find Lucida Grande easier to read. Particularly via peripheral
vision, which matters in a UI.

------
samirsd
fast company's website is giving design a bad name

------
chenster
So is Google Material Design is a much sexier alternative? No, thanks. LAMOH.

------
hellllllllooo
Tried to use Apple's email client on a friend's phone to send and email to
myself and 1 other person. I entered both emails with a space between them and
it didn't handle it considering it a single email address. Tried to go back to
add a comma between them and I could no longer select the space. Finially
added a comma and the client didn't recognize it as a delimiter. In the end I
deleted the addresses and started again finially figuring out what it wanted.
Generally I'm confused by Apple's great reputation for design.

The back button being furthest place away from the thumb on the iPhone was
another thing that never made sense. I think ppl just get used to it but a lot
of the good design is really good marketing.

~~~
zapzupnz
The back button being placed at the top is because it's the clearest place to
put an indication of a hierarchy. Remember, iOS has always made it explicit
where a back action will take you — the arrow button isn't just an arrow, it
also contains text that tells you where it's going.

It makes perfect sense to put such a control at the top of the screen next to
the title. The interface is clear: you are here, you can go back where you
came from — and these two things are grouped together.

Android has now adopted this which is great, because it's still a crapshoot
where the hardware back button will take you on an Android phone — back in the
navigation hierarchy? Out of the app entirely and into a different one? Will
it just dismiss a popover? In the past moreso than now, the button's behaviour
could almost have been described as entirely arbitrary.

