News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on iPhones are hard to use. Parent comment

Re:iPhones are hard to use by toast0 on Monday October 22, 2018 @09:18PM (#18280047)
It's not like typing at all. Typing is fairly obvious: hit the button with the letter you want, and it will always be in the same place, so maybe you don't have to look too often; anyway lots of people will teach you to type. Cute cats (paws), Mario, Mavis Beacon.

How can you learn to press and hold , or press harder, or shake the phone, or whatever else when there's no manual, you don't even know there's some other way of interacting, there's no getting started video, etc. I firmly believe that if companies actually wrote a manual for their software, they would ocassionaly make things more obvious, so it would be easier to write the manual.

Yes, a lot of people wouldn't read the manual, or wouldn't understand it, but not providing a manual means those few that would read it can't.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhones are hard to use by brokenmachine on Monday October 22, 2018 @10:22PM (#18280286)
It's the same in that it is a set of skills that you need to spend time to learn. That's the point I was trying to make. I learned touchtyping in a couple of weeks. I guarantee someone with motivation could learn the basics of a smartphone in that time.

I agree there should be a manual. My phone (Samsung) has an almost useless pdf manual available.

But I also think that most people do not spend anywhere near the time necessary to learn how their phone works or how to use it. They wouldn't read the manual even if it was available. They don't watch the intro videos that play when you first start your phone out of the box. They expect to just get it out of the box and it to magically be completely usable for them.

There's lots of ways they could learn those things you mentioned. Libraries and community centres often have courses for beginners. There's youtube videos. There's books. There's endless websites. Nothing makes most techies special except the motivation to google the things they don't know. Most people don't even try, and just muddle along with what little they already (don't) know.

[ Parent | on HN ]