On: Apple's Products Are Getting Harder to Use

[musesum]

The Apple Watch has been getting a bad rap for complexity, even though it is simpler than the iPhone.

What are the main gestures, today, for the iPhone? Home-button-press(once twice long-siri thrice), home-button-double-tap, home-screen-swipe(left right middle-down mid), bottom-up, top-down (Today Notifications), three-finger-swipe, pinch, shake. What did I miss?

Compare that with the original iPhone. We started simple, and then year-by-year, a new gesture is added, which seems natural because it's only a small change from what was done before. The UX has been boiling the frog.

So, then the Apple Watch comes along. It is less complex than the iPhone 6, but more complex than the original iPhone. Because it is starting from scratch. It highlights how complex iOS has become.

Would love to see a UX reboot. But, who at Apple has power to do so? Would it turn out like Window's tiles?

[dingaling → musesum]

I had a colleague recently who handed me his iPhone ( a 5, I think. Tall and skinny. ) and asked me to look-up some astronomical data while he was busy.

Not having used one before, I can say the the interface is far from intuitive. I couldn't find the way to switch between running apps, I kept having to go back to the home screen and hit the app's icon.

I've just searched now out of interest and apparently I should have swiped four-fingers to the left. How is that in any way discoverable? Or even easy to do when walking.

[scott_karana → dingaling]

FYI, double-tapping the Home button shows you a list of recent applications.

That would be the most commonly used way of switching apps, and it's one of the first tips that is shown to a user on a "new" phone by the OS.

Four finger swiping is an optional feature that power users can turn on.

Discoverability is still a valid issue, of course.

[snowwrestler → dingaling]

> I couldn't find the way to switch between running apps, I kept having to go back to the home screen and hit the app's icon.

That is the way to switch between running apps. There are slightly faster ways to do it, but they do exactly the same thing, functionally.

This is why people say that the Apple interface is intuitive: you actually were able to accomplish your goal first try with no instruction.

[secstate → musesum]

The boiling frog is a great analogy for what's become of Apple's UI and UX