The other day I tried to figure out how to change the 2nd city shown on the Apple Watch's default watchface. (There's a "world clock" feature that displays the time in another city in the corner of the watch screen.)

Turns out that the process to do this involves first configuring the city in an app within the iPhone, and then on the watch doing a series of UI actions: a force-touch, a swipe, a tap and turning the "digital crown" to find the right city within a UI element that is a list although it doesn't look like one. Several of these actions are entirely undiscoverable (the force-touch and digital crown in these contexts are just actions you have to stumble on by trying all the possible combinations, I guess).

I don't think there would have been any way to figure this out without googling it. And this is a feature that's prominently displayed in the default view of the Apple Watch screen, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect that users will want to change the city.

It's hard to believe that this device was designed by the company famous for the one-button mouse. I do find the physical design attractive though.

Actually, that's exactly the kind of shit you have to do when you only have one button. I was using my cousin's apple mouse one day and discovered context menus are found by touching or rubbing it on the front somehow (don't exactly remember a couple years later).

Simple is great, but not when you try to make simple do complex.

Apple has forgotten the "... but no simpler" part of Einstein's dictum.

relevant Dilbert http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-12

Not sure why you are being downvoted, it's straight to the point. Not a fan of Dilbert myself, but still...

Yup, seems like they stopped caring under Cook. On iOS the shift button indication still sucks after all these years.

Still, if Apple's barometer has become "just to be less sucky" then Google and MS, they're still doing awesome.

They've been doing that for decades. As has Apple. Both have also been shipping crap software for decades.

They're huge companies.

Apple historically got a lot of praise for having a great user experience that was intuitive.

Apple also historically had a small fraction as many users as Microsoft and had Steve Jobs, who didn't seem to care if existing users were bothered and instead wanted the experience to always be perfect.

Once you reach a certain number of users, any menu or UI change becomes increasingly painful for your current users, at the expense of new users and, sometimes, what feels like common sense.

There are "we can't please everyone" decisions, there are plain mistakes and there are UI decisions that benefit no one except possibly the company - i.e. dark patterns.

I personally don't see what benefit putting the subscription management behind an unrelated UI widget that doesn't even appear to be clickable could possibly bring to an end-user. Or how such a design got through usability testing in the first place. Hence the likelihood for a dark pattern seems pretty high to me here.

The key binding change for New Folder from Command-N to Command-Shift-N still gets me. I think it's been a decade since they did that.

You can customize keyboard shortcuts with System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts.

However, this may only serve to compound the problem.

Yeah, of course. But it's something like using a Dvorak keyboard layout -- every time you use another computer or help someone else you hit friction. Customizing system level key binding is something I've intentionally avoided.

Recent OS upgrade experiences show that this is happening.

Windows 10: will upgrade your computer while you are sleeping without consent

OSX El Capitan: free upgrade requires you to create an account and type in your credit card number

Windows 10 will upgrade your computer at any time of the day without your consent. A med school student friend of mine has to take tests on her computer. 15 minutes before the test, Windows 10 was updating and rebooting.

Found out, unless you have the pro version, you can't even tell Windows not to do that. You can only set a period of time where Windows will do it (like 2 am) so it doesn't do it at more inconvenient times.

OS X upgrades are worse, in my opinion. For any given version, Apple just nags me to install it. But if I go from major version to major version, suddenly selling my MBP gets complicated, because I can only install the version that it came with after I wipe it. It's up to the person who buys it from me to log in to Apple and update the OS to a more recent version.

Then there's iOS which nags you constantly to install updates that have been known to brick some devices...

I have home edition, it is set to reboot in the middle of the night. The laptop goes to sleep or hibernates when I go to bed, one or the other, the update is still pending when I start the laptop in the morning. Updates can be put off indefinitely, if this is the normal pattern.

>But if I go from major version to major version, suddenly selling my MBP gets complicated, because I can only install the version that it came with after I wipe it.

That isn't true. You can install a fresh copy of the most recent OS.

You can, but that requires you to log in with your Apple ID and password. Or to download (with your Apple ID and password) a copy and create an installation thumb drive.

El Capitan definitely doesn't require you to create an account OR enter a credit card number, I've done it on plenty of machines. Obviously you have to create an account if you want to use iCloud, but you can simply choose not to.

I believe you, but the OS told me to upgrade to El Capitan using the App Store and the App Store told me I had to log in to iCloud and iCloud told me I had to give it a credit card. I believe you that there is a way around it, but there is also a way around getting upgraded to Windows 10. If the OS doesn't tell the average user about it, it's not part of the UX.

You can select "no credit card" or similar when creating an Apple account. It's hidden behind a button but definitely possible.