
Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015) - sogen
https://jnd.org/apples_products_are_getting_harder_to_use_because_they_ignore_principles_of_design/
======
Razengan
The iPad was my gateway into the Apple orchard. I had never purchased an Apple
product until about a decade ago, when I got the first Retina iPad as a gift
for someone who didn’t use computers. I was so impressed by how intuitive the
device and OS was for them, that I installed macOS in a VM on Windows to try
iOS development. I fell in love with macOS (back during Lion) shortly before
getting my first MacBook and leaving Windows forever behind, never to return.

Fast forward to a month ago. I purchased one of the newer low-end iPads as
another gift for someone else who didn’t use computers.

It was depressing.

The setup process was kinda annoying. No, we don’t want Apple Pay, thank you.
I had to enter the Apple/iCloud account credentials multiple times at
different points before it stopped asking me to sign in again.

There were a lot of bugs in the system UI and the preinstalled apps.

I had to disable the multitasking gestures because they would be confusing for
a new user.

They have removed labels for the Dock icons with no way to restore them, so I
had to keep apps with less obvious icons out of the Dock, so they could have
labels. Because a flower for photos is not a connection that many people can
intuitively make.

I had to explain that dragging down from the right corner of the top edge
brings up the brightness control.

Dragging down from anywhere else on the top edge brings up the notifications.

Dragging down on a blank part of the home screen’s background, away from
edges, brings up the search bar.

Fuck.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Oh, you want to updates your apps? That's easy. Open up the App Store and then
click on your profile picture.

Wait, what?

~~~
kccqzy
Hold the App Store icon until a menu appears. Choose "Updates" and done.

I'm not defending Apple here. I only accidentally discovered this shortcut. I
feel that designers these days expect users to explore a lot of things out of
blind faith in order to discover functionality.

~~~
rogy
only works if you know where your app store icon is. i dont use the icons from
the launcher screens anymore, everything goes in one folder bar the 'sticky
apps'

find it much faster to just pull down and search for apps

~~~
vladvasiliu
On the Iphone it works when long pressing in the search results too. (iOS
13.3)

------
hs86
I never owned an iOS device personally and when I offered my help to an older
relative who wanted to bookmark a page on their home screen, it took me like
10 minutes to find out that I have to scroll horizontally on that Safari share
menu. Due to the auto-hiding scrollbar and no cut off icons to the right, I
had no idea that scrolling horizontally was possible.

This gets worse whenever I see new Apple keynotes about their latest iPad
gestures for multitasking or text editing. On the computer I have visible
menus where I can peek the shortcut for each action but is there anything like
that on i(Pad)OS? Just adding more and more gestures without giving the user
some intuitive hints/signifiers seems like a degradation of usability. The
scrollbar tells me that there is more to show and auto-hiding it was a first
step into the wrong direction.

I am glad that Android got rid of the dedicated menu button which only worked
in very special places without showing any on-screen indication for its
availability and I feel like the Option key on Macs is still hiding important
things from their users.

The now deprecated(?) 3D Touch on iPhones also seems to suffer from this
issue. I was expecting some sort of visual clues to the user (like differently
colored buttons) that certain elements offered special actions with a harder
press but instead the 3D Touch-enabled elements continued to look the same and
mostly the tech-savvy users kept up with where this feature was enabled and
where not.

~~~
robomartin
A couple of decades ago I worked at a company that had about 200 Mac's and a
similar number of PC's. One of our favorite practical jokes was to disable the
mouse on Mac's. The victim quite literally could not do a thing with the
computer until the mouse was re-enabled. In sharp contrast to this most
Windows users could function reasonably well without the mouse.

This, of course, was a long time ago. My guess is that today this would be the
case for any computer user, Windows or MacOS. At the time this was simply
hilarious.

In terms of iOS, the overloading of buttons and gestures makes for a situation
where most users don't use any of that stuff. The simplest example I have of
this is using the volume switch to take a picture, nobody does not. I know
about it and never do it. In fact, when I do it is because I pressed it by
accident and end-up unintentionally taking a picture or more.

I have another example that is unrelated to computers. We have these dimming
light switches in several areas of our home. If you want to turn on the lights
to the pre-established dimming level you single-click the switch. If, on the
other hand, you want to go to full intensity, you double-click them. Despite
having explained this, everyone uses the little tiny dimming lever on the side
of the large push-button plate to go up to full intensity. And visitors, of
course, have no clue because the feature isn't discoverable except for a
fortuitous accident.

Progress isn't without side effects I guess.

~~~
DonHopkins
There's a much more evil prank than that:

A user was having a really bizarre problem: They could log in when they were
sitting down in a seat in front of the keyboard, but when they were standing
in front of the keyboard, their password didn't work! The problem happened
every time, so they called for support, who finally figured it out after
watching them demonstrate the problem many times:

It turned out that some joker had rearranged the numbers keys on the keyboard,
so they were ordered "0123456789" instead of "1234567890". And the user's
password had a digit in it. When the user was sitting down comfortably in
front of the keyboard, they looked at the screen while they touch-typed their
password, and were able to log in. But when they were standing in front of the
computer, they looked at the keyboard and pressed the numbers they saw, which
were wrong!

~~~
robomartin
That's hilarious!

What's sad in this little sub-thread is to watch people down-voting and taking
this too seriously. These are healthy jokes, just good fun. Nobody is saying
Macs are bad or inferior in any way. Heck, I own a bunch of them, PC's as
well. Lighten-up people!

...and then there was this time when I spent a full hour with an x-acto knife
above the dropped ceiling carefully, silently, carving a hole right behind one
of my co-workers to drop a firecracker right behind him. Yeah, that's how we
rolled.

I have a feeling that today's workplace has become far more rigid and
intolerant of, well, being human. People would get fired for probably every
single thing we did back then...like wiring-up a fire extinguisher to
discharge into someone's crotch (male coworker, 'cause someone is likely to
assume the worst) when they sat at their desk. Or how about jumping out of the
bushes with two water hoses to hose down someone when they got to work?
There's more...we had lots of fun and worked 14 to 16 hour days. That was
twenty years ago, we are still good friends.

Oh, I have to mention one more. I bought a new car and proudly showed it off
to everyone in the team at the time. One of the other engineers rented a
crashed version of exactly the same car from a junk yard. He had the tow truck
swap my car for the utterly destroyed car in the parking lot. He also swapped
the license plates. My car was towed and parked around the corner. Imagine my
reaction when I came out of the office to get lunch and my car looked like
Optimus Prime stomped on it! It was absolutely hilarious beyond description.

~~~
DonHopkins
The crashed car prank is epic! Sounds like something Bertram Gilfoyle would do
to Dinesh Chugtai's Tesla.

I wrote a "Flakey Keyboard Simulator" in 6502 assembly on the Apple ][ to
drive my brother crazy.

~~~
robomartin
All of this definitely required everyone to have a sense of humor. It
developed over years of working together. The participants could take it as
well as they dished it out. It sure makes for a lot of great stories to
remember.

Here's a quick one: One of my coworkers watched my frustration level rise
throughout the day as I was debugging one of my hardware designs. The thing
was failing intermittently and I just couldn't figure out what was going on.
Being a hardware + embedded software project made it that much more difficult.

At the end of the day he calls me over to his workbench. He doesn't say a
thing. He opens a drawer, grabs hold of a large knob on a variac, turns it
down and all the alarms on my workbench --at the other end of the room-- go
off. He turns it back up to 120 V, looks at me and smiles. The SOB got me
good. Brilliant!

------
FpUser
I have a desktop Windows only product that I sell (10s of thousands of
clients). It does not have the most eye pleasing UI design but it is very
functional and ergonomic. All possible actions are clearly visible and / or
discoverable. And every action can be accessed in less clicks then in any of
competitor's products. I actually get some praises for it.

Still every once in a while I get support email telling me that the product
sucks "cause it is ugly". Most of those complaining were Apple users who
installed a product using Parallels. One of the emails actually was written by
pro UX designer (at least this is who the author claimed to be). This got me
curios to find out what is really wrong in my GUI that irritates some users so
I asked for short interview on Skype/Phone. We had a discussion. Among the
things he showed me the example of light gray text on white background and
told me that is very eye pleasing an mine are too contrast. For fuck sake I
could not read the example he showed to me without glasses and when I
complained he said that the beauty trumps usability/ergonomics. I just bailed
out. Maybe he is right but I'll stick to what I believe works.

~~~
slimsag
I have had conversations with several "designers", some from FAANG, and all
have held the general belief that having strong authority over how the UI
looks and getting eye-candy at the cost of usability and ergonomics was
'without doubt the right choice'.

In my frank opinion, many designers hold a position of subjective judgement
and thrive on the power that comes with that. This is like a developer making
arbitrary decisions about a product because they like the technical
implementation better.

Data, and actual user preference, should always be the key decider. Not some
arbitrary rule-decider.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Who could be right, the multiple designers who do this every day, or my
opinion about data (which I don't see backed up by any data)? If Steve Jobs
had followed user preference he'd have made a faster flip phone.

On another topic, putting someone's job into quotes just isn't a good look for
any argument. If you have to straw man to get your point across, it might not
be that great.

~~~
FpUser
"Who could be right, the multiple designers who do this every day..."

Those designer might actually be very good one's but they might have different
goals. Their design might be all about eye pleasing hoping that mos potential
customers will glance at it, like it and buy it. Ergonomics might not be their
concern at all.

There are other UX designers though, making GUI for pilots, nuclear station
operators etc. etc. They have somewhat different goals. I feel that my brain
digests what they do way better then the stuff coming from a first group

I come from a different background where I learned to value reaching the goal
in most clear and shortest way

~~~
shinkarom
If you read The Design of Everyday Things, you'd gladly remember that to each
user-unfriendly design, the author sarcastically added "but it won a lot of
design awards". Which implied that the givers of those awards had one-track
mind. And since the book's author co-wrote the article that we discuss,
aesthetics at the cost of usability is a major sin for him.

On the other hand, since (insert obligatory joke about $1000 monitor stands),
losing customers is no longer their worry.

------
heavenlyblue
You know what I hate? I hate the fact that every time I open an app (most of
which I use relatively rarely), I get a bunch of popups trying to introduce me
to a variety of features I never needed in the first place. That goes beyond
iOS, but also websites including Slack.

E.g. Why does iOS, instead of silently allowing me to use it's new version,
feeds me this gamified introduction to "what's new in 13.x.y.z?".

What I want is a piece of software that doesn't change. Or when it changes, it
doesn't notify me of it - it just keeps working until I find enough time to
actually go on my own journey of discovery.

I am not-so-subtly exhausted by every single half-capable developer spoon-
feeding me their "new features". I've downloaded your app because of the
features it _had_ - I mostly don't care about what you add later on.

~~~
lostmsu
A contrary indie developer perspective: some features are just really hard to
discover even when you know what are you looking for. I don't have time for
making those introductions, and end up getting feedback requests for some
features my app already has.

~~~
CamperBob2
_A contrary indie developer perspective: some features are just really hard to
discover_

Maybe tackle _this_ problem first, then fall back to exposition.

One suggestion might be to start by removing hieroglyphic icons, or at least
augmenting them with text labels.

~~~
lostmsu
> Maybe tackle this problem first, then fall back to exposition.

You assume it can be tackled. Here's a concrete example:

The tool automatically snaps new windows to where user wants them to be.
Rarely the user wants to undo that. The core functionality (autosnap) does not
require any visible interface whatsoever. If I want user to see the undo
button, I have to place it somewhere over his app's window, which bloats the
interface (the undo is uncommon), or outright impossible, since some windows
have custom titlebars.

So there's a hotkey, configurable in settings. How can you make it more
discoverable?

~~~
dmitriid
Popup at the bottom of the screen "Autolayout applied. <Undo button (shortcut
in parenthesis)> [don't show again checkbox]"

~~~
lostmsu
What if it happens to many windows at once? What if they end up covering each
other? Are you sure user wants to see that popup he'd hardly ever use every
time he starts an app?

~~~
uryga
not gp, but wouldn't that "don't show again" checkbox they mentioned fix this
problem?

------
afandian
I remember as a child showing my mother how to do stuff on our family Mac with
OS 7.5 and being baffled that she didn't 'get' the UI.

A decade ago I wrote some Cocoa stuff and read the HIG religiously.

Now I'm in my 30s. I can't work out how to do stuff on my iPhone (Android
makes perfect sense). mac OS, of which I have used every major version of
since 6, is starting to break with the mental model I understand and is
becoming slowly less usable to me.

Suddenly I feel old.

~~~
redleggedfrog
I don't know if android is immune anymore. The latest update to my tablet
dispensed with the labels on the desktop icons and I didn't figure out how to
get them back.

It's a sad state of affairs across the board.

~~~
krtkush
> The latest update to my tablet dispensed with the labels on the desktop
> icons

Try using a third party launcher, maybe? Nova is a great alternative.

~~~
jrobn
LOL, this is exactly the problem. You shouldn’t have to download a third party
launcher, desktop, app screen to use the device efficiently.

I think iOS and Android are both shit shows. I pick up an android device and
it’s a pain in the ass to figure out. That’s terrible design.

iOS seems to break their own rules and hide more and more in the name of
minimalism. It’s asinine. 3D Touch was moronic. More than three gestures is
moronic. Context sensitive swipes off the screen are moronic.

All of this became abundantly clear seeing my 77 year old grandma, who used a
old android phone for years, have so many WTF moments on iOS 13. It’s not
clear what is a button. She accidentally gestures and thinks her phone is
busted.

~~~
InvaderFizz
My father literally can not send an iMessage without triggering "gentle
effect." It has been highly annoying getting that every time he sends a
message for the past three years with no way of disabling it.

------
matthew-wegner
New gestures introduced in iOS 13:

    
    
      Copy: three-finger pinch
      Cut: three-finger double pinch
      Paste: three-finger pinch out (expand)
      Undo: three-finger swipe left (or three-finger double tap)
      Redo: three-finger swipe right
      Shortcut menu: three-finger single tap

~~~
blackhaz
This is fucking horrible. Worth an episode in Silicon Valley horrible. What I
hate most about the new Apple devices is that I always do something that
produces a gesture or a hidden function. Grab iPhone quickly by the sides -
get a screenshot. Swipe with four fingers looking North shaking - get
something else. Who the hell needs all this crap?

~~~
saagarjha
> Grab iPhone quickly by the sides - get a screenshot.

That’s not a gesture, that’s you pressing the side buttons.

------
chrisseaton
Is anyone trying to back this up with a proper scientific study of whether
users find it easier or harder to use? Seems just like opinion and debates
about aesthetics otherwise?

If I wanted to claim that JavaScriptCore was getting slower and I didn't post
any data to back that up people would laugh me out of the conversation.

~~~
mihaaly
As long as we miss SI unit for the "hard to use" attribute we will have to
fall back to user opinions and debates - and potential randomly constructed
half cooked polls.

The opinions and debates are not looking well for Apple though.

~~~
manicdee
We already have usability testing, but there are more dimensions to usability
than can be encapsulated by one SI unit. As an example one measure might be
the number of seconds required to perform a set sequence of actions such as
copying text from a web page to a Notes entry. That's a completely different
task to copying a pre-written comment from Notes into a web page, even though
they both involve the same apps and are measured in seconds.

~~~
mihaaly
Nice isolated example that tells nothing about the "hard to use" factor. We
can repeat such for days without yielding reliable empirical results. The
issue is too compound.

Opinion of the users, especially repeated ones ought to be enough to justify a
concern. There are too many to doubt its validity even without exact but half
cooked partial numbers.

------
bitwize
Apple has fallen into the same trap that Microsoft has -- changing their UI
not to advance the state of the art, but just for the sake of changing it so
they have something new to sell.

~~~
threeseed
This comment makes no sense.

Apple hasn't fundamentally changed the UI on iOS or OSX since the initial
releases apart from say the iOS look & feel refresh and gestures to support
iPhone X. And in the last few releases there have been almost no UI changes.

It's actually one of the disappointments of the Apple platforms.

~~~
josteink
> Apple hasn't fundamentally changed the UI on iOS or OSX since the initial
> releases apart from say the iOS look & feel refresh and gestures to support
> iPhone X.

So for the iPhone alone Apple has changed the 1. look and feel to be more
“modern” (which means showing less accordances), 2. fashionably removed the
very affordable home-button for no functional reason and 3. replaced it with
non-discoverable, complex gestures.

Pardon my math but to me that sounds like ignoring 3 core design-principles
just to appear trendy and have something new to sell.

~~~
t34543
I’m increasingly frustrated with iOS 13 text selection, copy, and paste
semantics.

I had the first iPhone and I remember it was really good at selecting text. A
far cry from the painful experience today.

Rearranging icons is also pretty awful, it takes me multiple tries to move
something into a folder and then rearrange said folder.

~~~
Nextgrid
I was gonna post about this as well.

How do they expect me to be able to position the cursor precisely when my
finger is right over it and they removed the “magnifying glass” that used to
appear above it?

The keyboard “hold & swipe the space bar” trick doesn’t really work. It’s
really hard to go down vertically (since the space bar is all the way at the
bottom), it’s slow especially if you need multiple attempt as each attempt has
a delay before the feature activates (3D Touch solves this on my iPhone 8 but
they removed it from the new models).

Finally, what the fuck is that idea of moving the cursor by grabbing it
directly? It makes no sense, has no “prior art” so nobody is used to it (and
why would there be prior art for the dumbest UX ever) and it _always_ gets in
the way when trying to scroll (in fact I tried the space bar trick first to
avoid this but couldn’t move down with it so had to scroll the text box
directly and ended up moving the cursor instead). If I recall correctly even
_themselves_ had an embarrassing moment trying to demo it at the Keynote.

~~~
FabHK
> Finally, what the fuck is that idea of moving the cursor by grabbing it
> directly?

I didn’t know you could do that. Thanks. It’s definitely not great, but better
than tap-and-hold where you want the cursor to go, and then giving up in
frustration because the whole word gets selected.

~~~
Nextgrid
Tap and hold _between_ words used to bring up a cursor and a magnifying glass
above your finger so you could move it and know where you were. Plus moving it
away from the currently visible line would start scrolling infinitely allowing
you to navigate beyond what you see on the screen.

Both of those behaviours are now gone. Moving the cursor with the finger now
scrolls both the text field _and_ the outer page, at a speed high enough to
make it unusable.

The “space bar trick” on the other hand doesn’t scroll the text beyond a
couple of characters, making it impossible to get to the end of a long URL in
the address bar for example.

------
rogual
The silver lining is, now that we've all lived through Apple's Jobs years, we
at least know that that kind of quality, consistency, attention to detail,
etc. is possible.

Sooner or later somebody will take all the good ideas from Apple's heyday and
make another good OS. Maybe, if we're lucky, it'll even be open-source.

It's the kind of thing I dream of doing myself one day. But if someone beats
me to it, that's fine too :)

~~~
lioeters
I share your optimism, that people who remember what good Apple design felt
like, will carry on the torch.

The generational knowledge transfer seems to have broke down somewhere within
Apple, that only the superficial aesthetic is being carried on, while the
fundamentals - user-friendly design, repairability, extensibility - are
getting left behind.

> ..take all the good ideas from Apple's heyday and make another good OS.
> Maybe, if we're lucky, it'll even be open-source.

There are a number of open-source community projects that impressed me as
having such a vision, going back to the roots, keeping the dream alive and
designing the way forward.

------
spectramax
One of the biggest gripes I have with modern UI (both Apple and Android) is
animation times. Try exporting an image from Dropbox app to Photos app on the
iPhone. There are so many animations that take up precious time. Do it 10
times and you're _tired_.

I feel like designers today want "sleekness" more because it sells when people
look at it. Ohh...look at that shiny animation, so impressive.

I want instant actions at the expense of not knowing where something poped-up
from. This is usually the case made by designers that animations help you
understand the "Context" of where something came from. I feel like this needs
to be toned down a bit. UI would feel 1000% faster.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
An easy solution for developers would be to decrease the animation duration
the more often a feature is used. But I have yet to see this approach in the
wild.

------
at_a_remove
Fearing (correctly) that the laptop I had refurbished for my mother was soon
to die, I bought her an iPad. She is not in any way computer literate and
dislikes change. Surely, I thought, they would have some "cheat sheets"
available to boil down the basics. I bought a few on Amazon and found them to
be either insufficient or crowded with esoterica.

So I set about making a set of laminated cheat sheets of my own, with a
consistent design, using screenshots of all of the applications I had
installed, and so on. One points out all of the buttons on the iPad, another
one shows the different screens, and a third was a diagram of common gestures.

Finding the gesture list itself was ... well, quite a bit harder than I
thought it ought to be. Everything seems opaque. I am reminded of one of those
escape room puzzles where one must painstakingly iterate through an array of
taps, drags, swipes against each and every corner, edge and pixel. It seems
that one must flail about against all of the idols, oh, I'm sorry, _icons_ ,
hoping that one of the motions I have just performed will propitiate the gods.
Watch for signs.

It seems, from my vantage, that learning the Apple Way was done with the very
first Apple products and that now there is an expectation that everyone has
been following along all this time. Certainly, that was my experience with my
first smartphone, the iPhone SE. I was constantly having to look up how to do
the smallest things and hoping that the information I found was not outdated.
I also had to pester other Apple users for tips. My high school computer
science teacher would be appalled at the lack of forthrightness.

While I think I did an alright job with the cheat sheets, she never _did_ use
that iPad much.

~~~
pcurve
The sad part is, it doesn't have to be that way.

The problem is, the gesture metaphor is deeply rooted in manipulation of
window pane of desktop based OS, which normally has menu bar and controls.

What does iOS lack? Both. Most gesture-based controls are torturous workaround
the absence.

I have new ipad and it pains me to look at this cheat sheet.

[https://www.cnet.com/how-to/16-gestures-that-will-make-
you-l...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/16-gestures-that-will-make-you-love-
using-your-ipad/)

------
bbarn
There's one key difference in modern, big company software, vs. the software
of yesteryear, in my opinion - 20 years ago, most software was written by
people who would use the software. Today, software is written and designed by
people completely disconnected from the user, or, in the case of things like
apple, people whose status as a designer matters more (legitimately) than what
they design.

~~~
nineparts
This is the case with most of open source software. Three notable cases:

1\. GIMP, which is unusable to such a degree that somebody actually decided to
make a version with a decent interface, called GIMPshop... what happened to
GIMPshop you can only guess [1].

2\. LibreOffice which is much much worse interface-wise than Apache
OpenOffice, although hyper-aggressively promoted. That being said, neither of
them are even remotely capable of licking the knee of Microsoft Office.

3\. systemd, which "suddenly" found its way in all distributions, even though
it goes against everything that GNU/Linux or Unix-like philosophy represents.

All this makes me think that unusable interfaces are an intentional "feature"
of "some" software.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190608205114/https://en.wikipe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190608205114/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop)

~~~
cycloptic
I actually think the real problem with those is the exact opposite. Those
projects were initially hacked together for their own specific workflow, and
are now going through the "growing pains" of becoming popular and somewhat
ubiquitous.

On GIMP: There have been various forks throughout the years led by various
groups of artists, but they have typically been very hacky. Currently the
Glimpse fork is planning to do a redesign of the UI.

On Libreoffice: This is the result of the split from Oracle -- the project is
now driven by consultants and ISVs. It works if you're willing to pay one of
those or become one yourself. If you pay $0 and expect to get a perfect clone
of MS Office then you will be disappointed.

On systemd: The design seems to be heavily inspired by the "giant ball of C"
design that is already used by the Linux kernel. I would argue that GNU/Linux
in general is too decentralized to have an overarching philosophy.

From my perspective as someone who does UI on open source projects, ultimately
a lot of the high-level problems come down to lack of resources. It's hard to
find good designers who are willing to contribute to open source, and it's
expensive to put together a focus group to gather feedback. The typical
corporate methods of gathering telemetry and doing A/B testing are not really
useful to any of those projects you mentioned.

~~~
nineparts
First of all, they won't get more popular than they are now. Second, I doubt
any person who uses said software for professional or amateur reasons has the
skills or time to cobble it together. Because they either do one thing or the
other.

GIMP: "Groups of artists." See, there's your problem. As much as I despise
Steve Jobs, I finally came to understand why he was so appreciated.

Libreoffice: What you said doesn't explain why Apache OpenOffice is still
better. I do not expect an MS Office clone (although an MS Word clone would be
welcome) but I do expect those writing the software to check out MS Word and
point out why it is better... and then slowly but surely move in that
direction, not away from it.

systemd: You can't compare an init system, which has the role of starting
daemons and whatnot, to a kernel which is basically hardware drivers.

As for your perspective... if you are working for 0$ do not complain about
lack of resources. You said it yourself, didn't you?

------
meerita
Apple made a huge mistake when it launched iOS 7: it failed to improve its UI.
I don't know if it was a matter of the best and most capable designers leaving
the company or bad decisions by the managers, but the truth is that iOS 7 was
never a good UI for iPhones, especially the biggest ones. There are many
things that are missing that are obvious, such as being able to organize the
icons on your Home screen as you wish like you can do in Android, and I
suspect that many of the things that are excellently solved in Android's
Material Design, at Apple can't because of patents. I think it all boils down
to patents because I don't believe that a company like Apple has such a poorly
designed operating system.

~~~
threeseed
Not sure why you are talking about iOS7 since it was released 7 years.

But anyway the reason Apple doesn't allow for customisation of the home screen
is because it adds complexity. And given they are trying to sell to people who
are computer and technology illiterate you don't want complexity.

~~~
pcurve
I feel ios7 had lasting negative impact not just on ios, but also general
usability on the web. Even Apple back peddled on some of its design decision
in subsequent updates.

iOS has gotten already too complex that I don't think avoiding complexity is a
strong enough reason for not offering home screen customization.

------
masswerk
One of my "favorite" paradigmatic UI changes (Mac): the Finder and Open/Save
dialog sidebar. Up to and including Snow Leopard, these would include custom
icons, once the flagship feature of user customization and personalization.
However, this also served productivity, just assign a simple colored bubble
icon to any of your current project folders and a few decent, but recognizable
ones to the major entry points into your file structure, and these were easily
recognized and located in any file list at a glance, without even reading a
single character.

Then, Apple decided that this may endanger their precious industrial design.
Finder icons, especially those for folders, are to be clean and uniform – and
to be exclusively chosen and delivered by Apple. (Also, color must not serve a
purpose and isn't allowed to transport any information.) Icons are not for
everyone, quot licet Iovi non licet bovi. Now, it's all about reading, or, if
you maintain a really clean and short sidebar, about position. Still, every
time a Finder window or file dialog is accessed, some precious seconds and
some maybe even more precious focus is lost. However, these are apparently not
that precious as Apple's pristine looks. – OK, Apple, now I know, where I rank
in your esteem. Thanks for letting me know.

------
krackers
I feel that for OSX, everything past Mavericks has been a downgrade. What's
the point in having a beautiful hiDPI display if you're going to flatten all
UI elements into a solid color?

~~~
charlesism
Everything past _Snow Leopard_. Lion was a disaster, and there is literally no
feature I use that I prefer in any Mac OS created since then. What's more, the
OS has become uglier and buggier.

Edit: actually, I like the addition of Finder > Cut, and Finder > Rename. So,
hey, there _is_ something!

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Snow Leopard (10.6) also lacks batch file rename, automatic file versioning,
full screen app support, trackpad gestures, and autosave. IMO that last one is
huge—I remember losing many hours of work in Snow Leopard as a high school
student, because whenever I got into the "zone" of writing I'd stop
remembering to hit ⌘S.

Lion (10.7) has all of these features—Apple added a lot in that release. And
while Lion itself was a buggy mess, Mountain Lion (10.8) and Mavericks (10.9)
are basically just Lion with stability fixes.

I do prefer Snow Leopard aesthetically for it's higher contrast UI, but
10.7–10.9 are still well ahead of modern macOS in that respect, and there are
even some individual visual elements I prefer in those versions, such as the
Dock.

Mavericks is my favorite release overall. Launchpad is stupid, and probably
the first place where Apple really began to break OS X's internal consistency,
but it can be hidden away easily enough. Yosemite (10.10) is where things got
really bad.

(Just for fun: Mavericks > Snow Leopard > Mountain Lion > High Sierra > Sierra
> El Capitan > Mojave > Lion > Yosemite > Catalina)

~~~
techslave
autosave is awful when mandatory, as it is in FCPX. when optional, like
Office, it’s great.

------
atraktor
They made lot "invisible" improvements in 10.15 (apfs is finished, kern
speedup, metal, ml, fonts on 4k etc..) but not sure about this iOS look on my
MacBookPro, Now my os look like web page from '98\. Way too flat. Icons are
broken on toolbar, hated how it looks.

Suggestion:

1\. One Pro OSX version for Pro users (cut all services that eat ram and can
be security hole) and add more options for advanced users.

2\. Cut price around $800 or if you can cut more without damage in "real"
performance and quality. Because not all apps use all power anyway.

3\. And most important, fix broken flat UI, find balance. We have lot talented
designers without job.

4\. Don't break old apps with new update, find way for LTS.

MacOS is still my favourite BSD distro and mac from 2013/15 is perfect HW. So,
if you do not know how to improve it, then keep what works and what users like
or ask.

------
stretchwithme
One of the biggest time wasting annoyances Apple has created is the touch bar
virtual escape key. I'm triggering it constantly. How did they not know this
was a problem before they brought it to market?

Thankfully, they're going back to a real escape key in the latest MacBook Pro.

And what happened to the backlit Apple on the lid? Another sacrifice to the
god of thinness?

Like getting rid of the Kensington security slot. My first MacBook had that
and I used it with a cable lock in coffee shops. Also sacrificed to eliminate
size and weight, I suppose.

~~~
matthuggins
As a developer, the Touch Bar as a whole is trash. I want to type without
looking at the keyboard, and now I suddenly always have to look at the
keyboard.

Accidentally pressing the escape key is just one of many issues I have with
that "feature".

~~~
stretchwithme
I really doubt Steve Jobs would have given the touch bar a green light.

------
mellowdream
I've wanted to like Apple's way of doing things for years - Unix-like and
support for MS Office, "ecosystem" integration - but every time I've used
their products I've returned them or passed them off to my family members
hoping they'd get more use out of them.

Nowadays, I get more questions than ever asking for help on how to do X Y or Z
thing that seems really trivial on Android/Linux/Windows systems (like copying
files without iTunes/iCloud, a frustration I remember dealing with even almost
10 years ago). It's now to the point where I just recommend 3rd party apps and
alternatives for basic utilities for Apple's macOS and iOS to my family.

~~~
wayneftw
I never got how people could even get past Mac window management or rather
lack of window management. They've never had a Maximize function and they
always pushed that stupid Zoom functionality instead, which every window
implements differently. Then they moved onto making Full Screen the default
which I find utterly frustrating as I wait for some junior programmer, who
chose a Macbook, swiping furiously to find that lost window. Many other times,
they'll put the pointer too close to the top of a full screen window and
window chrome will expand downwards to get in their way.

And that's just one tiny facet of a single set of features that they got
terribly wrong. There's so many other things wrong with Macs, macOS, iPhones
and iOS... I could go on for hours and hours detailing these things.

Despite all of that, like you, I will happily recommend a Mac to beginners
because they do have system stability down to a science. I also use an iPhone
and I recommend them to everyone since they're just safer and more secure than
Android as far as I have seen. I'm hoping one day I can stop giving Apple
money though because I don't want to support their shit attitude towards power
users. I used to only buy used iPhones, but now I stay about 2 or 3 models
behind their current offering (and I buy them at a deep discount - my new
iPhone 8 was only $350 with no contract from Boost Mobile which works just
great for my needs).

I'm really hoping my iPhone 8 will be my last iPhone because the task
switching shortcut for the newer home button-less iPhones is very finicky from
what I can tell experimenting in stores. Maybe they'll bring the home button
back one day or I'll finally switch back to some other mobile OS.

~~~
arvinsim
BetterTouchTools for window management and Alfred for feature discovery is
indispensable to my MacOS use. I couldn't imagine using MacOS without them.

------
DonHopkins
The original Mac would pop up a dialog with a threatening icon of a bomb with
a lit fuse, whenever it crashed!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_(icon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_\(icon\))

>The Bomb icon is a symbol designed by Susan Kare that was displayed inside
the System Error alert box when the "classic" Macintosh operating system (pre-
Mac OS X) had a crash which the system decided was unrecoverable. It was
similar to a dialog box in Windows 9x that said "This program has performed an
illegal operation and will be shut down." Since the classic Mac OS offered
little memory protection, an application crash would often take down the
entire system.

Unfortunately, the Mac's error dialog could cause naive users to jump up out
of their seat and run away from the computer in terror, because they though it
was going to explode!

And Window's error message was just as bad: it could cause naive users to fear
they might get arrested for accidentally doing something illegal!

~~~
Dylan16807
> Unfortunately, the Mac's error dialog could cause naive users to jump up out
> of their seat and run away from the computer in terror, because they though
> it was going to explode!

'''could'''?

------
dangus
There's a point where a device's insane amount of computational capability has
to be balanced with usability given its available inputs.

I definitely agree with the general idea of the article, but, on the other
hand, a typical non-technical user doesn't have to know every little nuance of
the system to use it effectively.

The original iPhone didn't do 10% of what smartphones are capable of now. It
couldn't install apps. It couldn't copy and paste. A massive amount of
functionality has been added since 2007.

In the end we are limited to a small screen that can fit in our pockets.
Adding buttons to the phone really isn't an option. Adding a plethora of menus
and buttons to the screen UI to make everything infinitely discoverable isn't
really an option, either: again, you're working with a relatively small screen
here.

Since the article was written some improvements have been made. I find that
the new pop-up long-press menus you can find around iOS 13, like on the home
screen icons, are an improvement. Removing 3D Touch is an improvement.

Things like the three-finger copy, cut, and paste gestures sound completely
ridiculous, but they aren't for non-technical users. They are for power users
who will absolutely remember those gestures. macOS is praised for its
extremely smooth, useful trackpad gestures but it isn't like my parents are
using _any_ of them.

I see a lot of comments complaining about things like the multitasking
gestures in iPadOS, the app switching gestures on iPhone X and above, or those
aforementioned undo/copy/cut/paste gestures, but on a smartphone or tablet,
very few people actually end up needing them. Remember, there are still
copy/cut/paste context menus when you select text.

Not only that, when you look at the competition, I don't think Android has a
standardized Undo function at all? I could be wrong about that. If you Google
that sort of thing you are met with a good amount of confusion, or suggestions
to install add-on apps.

Is Alt-Tab (Command-Tab) discoverable? How about Command-`? Or any keyboard
shortcuts that power users insist on during their daily lives? No, they're not
discoverable outside of a manual or keyboard shortcut screen. But we wouldn't
live without them. And the fact that non-technical users may never learn those
shortcuts doesn't make the rest of the system unusable or unintuitive.

~~~
blauditore
>There's a point where a device's insane amount of computational capability
has to be balanced with usability given its available inputs.

Exactly the same could have been said 40 years ago. Computers have (almost)
always been outperforming humans and certain tasks, even if just calculus. The
increase in capabilities due to more computation power has been happening
constantly for several decades. It lead to some revolutions in terms of human-
computer interaction, like the switch from text-based UIs to graphical ones.

The challenge of spreading between simplicity, discoverability, and
capabilities has always been around, just the topics are shifting over the
years. The reason for the decline in user-friendliness as in the article lies
in the motivation of companies building software: They expect higher returns
by oversimplifying things (as plain-looking sells easier), or nagging users
about registration (as they can send promotional content later), even though
they're perfectly aware about the usability trade-off.

------
cmrdporcupine
When Jobs came back to Apple, and continuing after his passing, there seems to
have been a conscious decision away from "the computer for the rest of us"
(aka 'entry level' 'easy' computer, and thus hard to sell to the aspirational)
branding to various forms of luxury branding. The point of the UI in the iOS
and OS X era is not so much to be easy to use, but to provide a consistent
luxurious experience. A kind of marketing sheen -- like the styling of the
interior of a BMW or Mercedes -- more than a UX approach.

~~~
perl4ever
I think that an opaque interface actually helps sell a luxury product and
making it more difficult is intentional and strategic up to a point. A lot of
features on, say, a BMW don't actually improve the experience, like say soft-
closing doors or automatic wipers. But what they do is they constantly remind
you that you have a luxury product while you are getting used to it, and after
you have gotten used to it, you are constantly reminded if you drive anything
else, because your reflexes and expectations are tuned for the "special" way
of doing things.

It's a way to inhibit people from switching to a competitor, but of course
it's possible to go too far. People joke about BMW drivers not using their
turn signals, and as it happens, the traditional turn signals on their car
work quite differently than on other cars, so quite likely many drivers simply
never figured them out. Recently they have changed them to work the same way
as on Japanese cars.

"Good" design is insufficient for aspirational/luxury products in general,
because you can get it on mid-range products and incrementally higher pricing
can't pay for substantially better design. So anything for the high end has to
be ostentatiously or subtly _different_.

------
scarface74
This article is just a rant without many concrete examples, studies, or
suggestions for improvements.

~~~
criddell
My suggestion would be to just stop adding new features to iOS, macOS,
Windows, etc... They are done and only need updates to add support for new
hardware, fix bugs, reduce resource consumption, and close security holes.

~~~
scarface74
At least the Mac needs a few things.

\- a low power mode

\- a restricted data mode

\- a modern scripting interface , basically port Workflows to the Mac

~~~
colejohnson66
> \- a modern scripting interface , basically port Workflows to the Mac

What’s wrong with AppleScript? Genuine question as I don’t use macOS.

~~~
scarface74
AppleScript is like the uncanny valley of programming languages. It tries to
be English like but it ends up being more verbose and trying to figure out the
right syntax is obtuse.

It’s also been around since the early 90s and was the spiritual successor to
HyperTalk - which was much better because it had a smaller domain.

Apple dismantled the original automation team
([https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1359425](https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1359425))
years ago.

Workflow is much more modern and is already partially ported to the Mac.

------
rmoriz
As an iOS user since late 2008 I recently tried to use GarageBand on my iPhone
8+ - it was such a non-intuitive nightmare.

(Actually, I just wanted to create a custom ringtone out of an song fragment.
It was the most epic fail I've ever had on a macOS and an iOS device).

------
nkkollaw
So true.

I used to be an iPhone user for many years until iPhone 5. My Android phone
broke and even though I also own an iPhone 6 for testing, it was so
frustrating to use that I'm using my Android tablet as a phone until I fix my
actual phone.

iOS is just stupid. You have to memorize all these gestures for no reason. No
discoverability, I bet most people don't know about 80% of all available
gestures. To go back to the previous screen I have to press firmly, then
swipe—but all the way to the right, or if I stop I trigger overview mode or
whatever is called.

macOS suffers the same problem, but to a lesser extend.

Unfortunately, Johnny Hive has completely lost it. He's been obsessed with out
things _look_ instead of how people are going to use them—and that's why
people keep hitting his glass walls at Apple's HQ. Steve Jobs kept design at
bay and insured a mix of beauty and usability. Now that he's gone you can tell
that products got worse and worse in terms of usability (but 1.2 millimiters
thinner, and so beautiful).

Maybe with Hives gone things will improve. The MacBook Pro 16 is a step
forward (besides ports).

~~~
theandrewbailey
Ive, not Hive.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive)

~~~
nkkollaw
Ha! You're right. Thanks.

------
xnhbx
On MacOs, the behavior of Home/End/PageUp/PageDown (or Cmd/Fn +
Left/Right/Up/Down), and further on, combined with Ctrl/Shift, varies
dramatically across different apps. I can never predict what will happen when
I press these keys on the first acquaintance of any random app. It's never
been a problem on Windows.

------
rahuldottech
Previous threads from 2015:

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

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

------
tjr225
I just inherited a 2009 MacBook 13" Pro from a family member. It has 2 gb of
ram and a hard drive, which I plan to upgrade for about 50$. Note that it is
trivial to upgrade these things. Even without these upgrades it works fine.

I have a 2013 MacBook Pro that I bought refurbished during undergrad that has
been the best computer that I've ever had.

I prefer both to my work computer, a Touch Bar 13" MacBook Pro. In fact I
suspect the 2009 will become my daily driver soon. Making a solid computer
that lasts over a decade doesn't erode Apples profits- in fact I suspect this
opposite is true. It is the same reason Toyota is the biggest auto mfg there
is.

Imagine if the newest Camry was unreliable or something.

------
iamleppert
iOS was never designed to be a general computing platform. It was designed to
be minimalist mobile consumption only and light interaction.

You can tell this in the original iOS which lacked multi-tasking completely.
Only later was it shoe-horned in (along with undo, copy/paste, the concept of
a cursor, etc)

The result of what we have now has been an iterative journey, the product of a
bunch of user requests who insist on trying to create the same experience on a
mobile phone with limited and far different interaction modalities.

At a certain point, you need to know when to stop and just open up your laptop
rather than cursing something that was never originally designed for the task
you’re trying to accomplish.

Right tool for the right job!

~~~
Yabood
Or perhaps Apple wanted to get the iPhone out to the market quickly, so they
kept multitasking, copy/paste, and other features for later iterations.

------
aledthemathguy
"The fonts are pleasant to the eye, but difficult to read". Felt joy seeing
someone who actually worked for Apple says this.

------
rickyc091
I recently went to the Genius Bar to get a replacement Airpod since the left
ear stopped pairing. They told me to go home, charge the device for 10 minutes
and it should "just work."

Guess what, it didn't. I was following the instructions online for more than
an hour. I was about to schedule another Genuis bar appointment when I decided
to try a factory reset. Sure enough, that worked! I wish they just put that in
the instructions as something else to try. A quick Google search revealed that
I was not the only one confused as to how to re-pair replacement parts.

------
hetspookjee
After a lifetime use of Android and Windows I switched a month ago to Catalina
MacOS, as my very first mac experience. The experience has been amazing so
far, at the moment of unlocking I instantly fell in love with the instantness
of the logging in. On windows this will, always, take atleast 1 second of
black screen.

While I am relatively up to speed with most basic things of this OS, I must
admit that I severely underestimated the scope of change. All the tiny things,
like copy pasting a snipping tool screenshot into a chat, or just saving a
file to a certain location, need another approach. I enormously miss the
omnipowerful CTRL x/c/v combination windows had, and I still have a hard time
teaching my motorics to differ between the CTRL and CMD and OPTION when
manipulating the cursor. Also the WINDOWS LOGO BUTTON + arrow keys, to move
screens around the display is missing and I need to buy an App for that. The
price seemed to be around 8eu for a 2 year license but I'd wager that'd be
pretty default behavior for an OS - even Ubuntu has it. Though it's somewhat
refreshing to buy an app and knowing you're not still the product, but I
expected to be their either way.

Overall I really do love the experience on Mac and I think that in a year's
time I am above and beyond my productivity on Windows. Also one thing I'd like
to commend Apple for is the readability of their privacy policy regarding
their use of data for advertising.

~~~
nagVenkat
Look at spectacle for snapping windows to left half right half etc.

------
talkingtab
Some where, some place in the past, I read that Ford had made a very
successful car, maybe the Sable, but was unable to figure out why or how it
happened. Apple made things of beauty - but it seems now that they do not
understand why or how they did that. If it wasn't so sad it would be funny.

Personally, I believe that Apple products used to be works of art that were
the result of a combination of talents and skills orchestrated by a master
artist. Now they are just products.

------
mkchoi212
I agree with most of the stuff the author is mentioning. But i think most of
his points only apply to large devices (iPads, and Macs). Small devices such
as iPhones and Apple Watches are so limited in their screen real-estate that
helpful UI decisions - e.g. putting labels next to cryptic icons - will only
clutter up the UI, making the user even more distracted.

------
domador
I'm not an Apple enthusiast and the main reason is their products'
underpowered, oversimplified user interfaces, from the standpoint of a power
user like me. One manifestation of this is a chronic lack of buttons on their
hardware. I've long preferred the extra functionality afforded by a right-
click button on mice and a middle button or scroll wheel. I've preferred the
extra buttons on Android phones over iPhones. Not a lot of buttons, mind you,
but enough to perform certain common tasks through tactile memory, without
having to look at the screen. My latest gripe is with the Apple TV remote. (My
family was recently lent an older Apple TV model.) This remote could
definitely use a home button, since as it stands, I frequently need to press
the Menu button around 5 to 8 times to get back to the main screen (to get
from watching a Netflix video to watching a YouTube video.)

------
draklor40
Went to jnd.org on my 14" thinkpad.

Thin, small grey fonts on white background, makes me want to tear out my own
eyeballs.

Eat your dogfood, perhaps ?

~~~
jeen02
> 14" thinkpad

That would make me cry too.

~~~
draklor40
the thinkpad?

------
quantgenius
I bought my first Macbook Pro when OSX was first released, having previously
been a fan of NextStep. Was a loyal Apple user until earlier this year. Bought
a ThinkPad P1 Extreme. Running Windows 10 Pro with WSL for unixy stuff. Could
not be happier. The only thing I miss from my 2015 vintage Macbook Pro is the
gesture to click and drag with 3 fingers. I have to tap and drag with one
finger.

I bought an iPad for my mom this year. I likely won't buy another one, period.
Not sure there is a good enough alternative to my iPhone for when I need to
upgrade next but I'll be looking.

AAPL needs to stop making jewelry and start making proper computing machines
again.

------
dkarl
Undo on iOS manages to be ineffective and embarrassing at the same time. I
give the phone one good shake, feeling like I'm playing D&D, rolling for a
saving throw or whatever. Maybe you roll a good number, maybe you don't. It's
embarrassing to pay so much money and still feel like you're begging and the
technology is deciding whether to work for you or not. I know from spending
enough time around people using iPhones in public that the vast majority of
the population has decided it's too awkward and attention-getting to be worth
trying at all. Being old, married, and less susceptible to embarrassment, I do
give it that one shake, and sometimes it works.

------
bondolo
The Apple Mail client in iOS 13 has terrible half-thought out UX. Open a
message you get a bar on the bottom with a trash icon and a reply icon. It is
laid out for right handed users only with both icons on the right side. The
icons are adjacent and the delete operation requires no confirmation. The
reply action is actually the menu for all of the mail actions. Why it is reply
icon rather than the more common "…" ellipses icon when it does not actually
reply?

Besides being extremely buggy, the UI for the new Reminders app is even worse.
I can't imagine the iOS 13 UI would do well in user testing at all. I can only
assume they didn't do user testing.

------
alien_
I don't have much to complain about the usability of the software, but they
are making hardware that should not be made.

I'm the unfortunate user of a MacBook Pro company laptop with 8GB RAM and just
two USB-C ports.

This sort of hardware should not be made anymore. The memory is insufficient
(my laptop is always paging) and the USB-C is forcing me to always carry a
dongle, not to mention that just two is not enough considering that one of
them is used for the power cable.

It really feels like the people who designed this laptop never actually had to
use it.

I wish they would be forced to use it for a while to get a feeling of how
crappy it is, so they stop making such terrible hardware anymore.

~~~
techslave
nobody that knows better is buying this spec hardware. it is made to satisfy
purchasing departments. i’m sure it’s fine for word or google docs users that
want to feel like they have an elite (“pro”) laptop so it also ticks that box.

rather than be upset that it is made, be upset that you had this spec hardware
forced on you by your company policy.

~~~
arvinsim
> nobody that knows better is buying this spec hardware.

He literally showed you that some companies do buy that spec.

------
guuguuguu
I switched to Android after 5 years of iOS. Here are the reasons: 1\. The
price, no explanation needed. 2\. Short of functionalities, such as split
screen and Miracast. 3\. Browser, android Firefox can install adblocker.

------
Tempest1981
Has anyone tried the free "Getting Started" sessions that Apple offers, when
you buy a device? (Edit: I think they're online. In-store would be easier to
learn the UI.)

Although you probably need an annual refresher.

Edit2: [https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/06/apple-
offers-30-m...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/06/apple-
offers-30-minute-online-training-sessions-to-iphone-x-purchasers)

~~~
Someone
I think you mean the user guides.

\-
[https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados](https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados)

\-
[https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios](https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios)

------
smartbit
There was a good reason for Apple to fire John Ive

    
    
      * butterfly-switch keyboards are uncomfortable for many and unreliable
      * touch-bar was missing esc-key driving many pros away form Macbooks
      * Apple TV remote is beautiful, but entirely impractical
      * MacBook Pro 2018 and Mac Pro 2013 had cpu overheating issues
      * until releases 2019, iPhone and MacBook Pro had less that day battery life for many users

------
nojvek
Agreed. As Apple’s made more money, they have this pressure of growing at any
cost. Some of the recent decisions of pop ups in your face and a whole of
magic hidden gestures really make it seem they aren’t doing their due
diligence like they used to.

I have as much respect for iOS/OSX as I did for pre-we-track-everything-
Windows. It’s just clunky and shit gets complicated and slower on every
version

------
microtheo
I just made the move from Android 10 to iOS 13. I was shocked how complicated
the process was. Not saying that one is more intuitive than the other.

But man...

No back button. The password manager didn’t integrate well. The keyboard
didn’t adapt to the language I was typing in. Parameters were hidden in the
settings app but sometimes also in the app itself. Force touch is impossible
to predict without trying it (actionable notifications). The cloud is
incompatible (I lost my WhatsApp history). The lock screen and the
notification panel look the same but don’t show the same information (some
notifications only show up in the nOtification panel). What the hell... the
notification panel looks like the lock screen... Some control are stuck on an
inaccessible and not obvious corner (abort the reorganization mode of main app
starting panel).

I felt a bit stupid and understood the frustration of my 70 year old mother
trying to learn how to use an iPhone. How am I supposed to explain it to her
if it doesn’t make sense to me?

Nothing in the tech is really intuitive unless you truly know the product.

I felt hopeless and a bit depressed for y couple of days.

Thank god the hardware is gorgeous and the product feels great! :)

~~~
saagarjha
> No back button.

Swipe from the left edge of the screen, or tap the chevron in the top left.

> The lock screen and the notification panel look the same but don’t show the
> same information (some notifications only show up in the nOtification
> panel).

The lock screen hides historical notifications. You can scroll down to see
them.

~~~
microtheo
I’m sure I’ll get used to it, those were first impressions. Controls aren’t as
visible as they used to be.

Thanks for the tip with the lock screen!

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eloop
I think this trend is seen in many areas, e.g. architecture and landscape
design that looks and sounds great in a magazine but is actively hostile to
humans. Products vying for the attention of a society obsessed with the latest
shiny thing. Is Apple catering for the market, or creating the market?

------
j7ake
The thing that annoys me is that devices like iPad and iPhone have so much
trouble doing simple things such as uploading a set of PDFs so you can read
the PDFs offline.

Maybe I am just dumb who can't get it working, but it involved some sort of
syncing with a computer with iTunes and an iBook app.

------
TYPE_FASTER
Just like the original Mac OS became complex as the hardware and software
added features, smartphones now are feature-rich computers.

Part of me misses the early gen iPhones because of the simplicity.

I’m not really sure what the solution is, aside from swiping left and
searching. Or Alfred on Mac OS, or the search bar in Win 10.

------
lostgame
The massive amounts of white empty space in iOS 7+ makes me long for the
skeuomorphic days.

The dark theme helped, but should have been an option since day one. Pre iOS
13, the sheer amounts of white space drove me nuts.

And why did they remove visible UIButtons? I miss the real days of iOS.

~~~
dep_b
> And why did they remove visible UIButtons? I miss the real days of iOS.

As a developer that meant a ton of work to fix the UI of my existing apps.
Just a floating blue word instead of a real button. You used to just drag a
UIButton into Interface Builder and call it a day, the current default is
super confusing.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Glad to see Don Norman getting some attention. I’ve always liked him. _The
Design of Everyday Things_ should, IMO, be required reading for anyone that
designs anything.

I think that Tog feels similarly. When OSX came out, he wrote a polemic,
slamming the Dock.

------
reedx8
My biggest gripe is how ridiculous bluetooth connection is on iPhones. Apple
for some dumb reason decided to remove headphone jack before making Bluetooth
connections easy and convenient. How does this make any sense? It still is bad
- long pressing bluetooth button still takes multiple steps and is buggy
(doesn't register, or long pressing leads to mistakenly pressing on the
following pop up screen listing the available connections).

There should've been software/interface changes before ever even thinking to
make hardware changes (removing headphone jack).

------
kirstenbirgit
Interestingly, they criticise Apple's choice of OS font, but he's using the
default system font on his blog.

------
Havoc
Yeah.still haven't figured out the odd diagonal new ios13 swipes. Esp since
second phone is still on ios12.

------
boiler_up800
Disagree with this wholeheartedly. iOS is the only platform I used which seems
to make regular usability upgrades. Not new features but actual workflow
improvements. I used iOS to get 70% of my work done and it all works together
very nicely. You might call me a technical user though. I watch all the
keynotes and learn to use the new/different features.

------
amelius
I remember having to install standard system software updates through iTunes.
In windows you have to press the "start" button to shutdown the machine, but
in iOS you have to open a music player to upgrade your OS (or at least, it
used to be the case). Which is worse?

------
cletus
First I'll say that accumulated knowledge counts for a lot here. There's a
vast difference between someone starting to use these devices now and someone
who started 10 years ago who slowly adds to their repertoire of knowledge.

This, I think, is why I personally find Android devices so incredibly hard to
use. I don't have 5-10 years of built up knowledge on how to use them and they
seem utterly unintuitive to me. I also think the multiple hardware buttons
were a huge mistake.

I really do think though that Apple has really suffered without having Steve
Jobs to say "no" to Johnny Ive as a lot of the bad ideas of the last 5-8 years
I don't think ever would've gotten passed Steve Jobs and seem to have the user
less in mind and seem solely aimed at increasing ASP (average selling price)
of various product lines. Examples:

\- Force Touch. This added weight and cost to devices for a feature that had
no discoverability and was used inconsistently by developers. This from a
company that for decades eschewed a second mouse button for lack of
discoverability. I honestly think this never would've gotten passed Steve.

\- The 12" Macbook with _one_ port. So began the dongle blues. This was a
terrible design that was an ode to thinness that had Johnny Ive's fingerprints
all over it. Compare it to the 2011-2015 era Macbook Air, which was a
fantastic device and a nice compromise between price, weight and power. The
12" Macbook shows what happens when you solely optimize for one metric:
thinness. And it wasn't good.

\- The 2015+ butterly keyboard. Absolutely terrible. A rare reversal by Apple
to ditch it in the 16" MBP.

\- The Touch Bar. A great example of a solution looking for a problem. Again,
the motivation seemed to be to drive up MBP ASPs.

\- Face ID. This one actually works OKish on a phone but is awful on an iPad.
It's also an accessibility nightmare as anyone who is visually impaired has to
move the phone further away to get the right field of view for Face ID to
work. What I'd give for Touch ID back. Also the false negative rate on Face ID
is really high.

This one is motivated by making the full front face of the phone a screen by
getting rid of the home button. I'd really like a fingerprint sensor on the
back (like a Galaxy S9 I tried to use for 5 months had). Apple claims the
false positive rate was too high,. I call bollocks on that. And that should be
my choice.

But getting rid of the (great) home button now creates a UX problem. How do
you get to the home screen? Well, you swipe up of course. But wait, which
direction you swipe from depends on the orientation of the app you're using,
which isn't always clear. Some apps auto-rotate orientation and some don't.
You know what always worked? Pressing Home.

\- USB-C. Not only was this a loss of MagSafe (/cry) but we moved from a world
of where if the plug fits, it works to a world where every plug fits and
nothing works because it's now based on what the cable is designed to do and
there's no visibility to that. Some carry power, some don't. Some carry data,
some don't. The amount of power or data they can carry can vary. Do they carry
a video signal? Maybe. No cable can do everything.

\- I think the current version of copy/paste on iOS is decidedly worse than
the original version, probably because the unintended gestures that now exist.

\- The other day I couldn't move a tab on Safari on an iPad without iOS
thinking I wanted to split screen. I still don't understand split screen
gestures and the fact that I get this as unintended behaviour is an indictment
of the implementation.

~~~
Dylan16807
USB-C cables desperately need better labeling but it's not as bad as that.
They all carry 60 watts, and they all support USB 2.0 to give you >300Mbps.

------
LemonAndroid
What about their password reset?

Does it take several weeks? For every user?

------
amiga_500
I just do not understand apple.

I have an iphone through work. I have no choice.

In a text box if I misspell a word, such as impaitant, I cannot go to the
middle of that word and delete 'ti' and replace with 'it'.

On their file browser if the file name is long the middle is truncated with
'...' and if i hold down my finger on the file to see 'info', that too has the
truncated name, despite it being the only file name on the screen.

There are many other frustrations. It's inferior to Android. Yes the privacy
thing is better, but most aren't buying for that.

Itunes was horrible also. Apple make terrible software. I am frequently
annoyed by their un-intuitive interface.

Seems to me apple are really good at advertising and people cannot think.

~~~
siquick
>> In a text box if I misspell a word, such as impaitant, I cannot go to the
middle of that word and delete 'ti' and replace with 'it'.

If you hold your finger on the textbox it should turn into a cursor which you
can drag to the required position to make the edits.

~~~
Zarath
Or just highlight the word and a spelling correction will be suggested, or
just use the backspace when you make the mistake instead of continuing to
type.

~~~
amiga_500
Thought of another one in the same spirit: never mistype a word. And never use
a word that is not in the dictionary!

------
nif2ee
Apple is just a cult. if Steve Jobs was great at anything, he knew how to
create a cult and then the money will follow. It's not about engineering,
design, users or any bullshit you see in the ads, press, your annoying friends
shilling, etc.. . It's pointless to argue with cult believers. Cults are only
removed with new cults.

