I... but... how in the world is anyone ever supposed to know that exists???

I want to search to see if an app is installed. I expect an Overview screen that's easily accessible for this like Android, Gnome or Chrome OS, but on iOS I have to swipe left a few times? Weird.

I want to switch wireless network I'm connected to. I correctly guess that I can swipe down to make a wireless icon appear. I expect that from the icon I can get into the settings, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It only seems to toggle the wireless networking on or off.

Sometimes I have good luck telling Siri what to do, but other times the comprehension of what I'm asking falls flat compared to Google's AI.

You can now also long press the wifi icon (twice) from the control centre in iOS 13 to quickly switch wifi networks without going into the settings app, you can also do the same with the bluetooth icon.

A lot of this stuff is really hard to just discover though if you're not already aware it exists to begin with.

Apple products have been like this for ages. I.e., they present a "simple" interface for the "typical" user, and then they provide "advanced" features for the "power user" that are only accessible via keyboard shortcuts, or what have you. (E.g., doing a screenshot on MacOS is via Command-$.)

Their success in achieving the right balance, however, has been quite mixed IMHO.

How do you find out about the "advanced" features? Via Google or Stack Exchange or reading a book or guide, I suppose.

I remember when google maps changed from having a from location box and a to location box to just letting you type "from address A to address B", which is pretty nifty. However this was never actually documented so I spent months pressing randomly to get the old UI up (it still seemed to exist, but only in some states of the application) before I finally realized that was the new way.

In iBooks you can download all the user guides for all devides

I don't know if there is or isn't official documentation everything you might typically want to know for Apple products. Clearly, they don't document the answer to every question that anyone might ever ask, but they do document many things that you might not think they do.

I know this because often when I Google for how to do something on a Mac, I often end up on some Apple page that tells me how to accomplish what I want. E.g., a page that documents a bunch of MacOS keyboard shortcuts, or what have you.

Of course, one problem is churn. I.e., the features in the software are changing frequently, and consequently, documentation can get quickly out of date. Also, Apple is likely to be cooperating with book authors. There is the "Missing Manual" series, which often seems to contain a lot of useful information (though, as I mentioned sometimes out-of-date), and I'm sure that David Pogue and friends don't figure all of this out via just trial and error. It seems like they must get some sort of assistance from Apple in the form of release notes or rough documentation, or something.

It reminds me of all the old Windows users accidentally dragging their start-bar and covering the whole screen.

I really REALLY wish buttons would come back in style.

Can you imagine if there was a persistent button at the top of your screen that said “Open Notifications?”

Does anyone happen to know of any other applications that use this kind of UI, or even better, a windows utility that adds this kind of functionality across the OS, building custom context-menus for each application?

You can discover some functionality you're looking for by searching for it and activating it from the palette for the first few times, and if you find the functionality useful enough you can spend a few brain cycles learning/configuring the shortcut to accelerate it.

I think a similar paradigm can work for gestures on mobile as well. Some master gesture to open up a searchable list of context sensitive commands, and some mechanism to map new gestures to frequently used commands.

YES PLEASE! I've had enough of modern design. Text, links, and buttons all look the same. Sub-panels are hidden behind random things in random places and behind random swipes.

We're ready for a renaissance of discoverability in UI.

I remember spending a good 10 minutes trying to work out how to eject a CD from a Macbook/iMac until someone explained to me that you simply drag the CD icon from the desktop to the trash can...

I’m not sure about intuitive vs unintuitive, but as a desktop windows & Linux server user, the Mac was very unfamiliar to me and took a long time to learn its quirks.

It’s just that "drag to the trashcan" gimmick was present since first Macintosh introduction keynote in 1984 and is still usable as of today so no surprise it’s the first answer on every Q/A.

I can’t yet skim through the footage but it might even appear in the 1984 LIVE DEMO (more emphasis needed) of the first Macintosh : https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA

Ref: Intuitive = Familiar ... By Jeff Raskin

Advertising teaches a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Glc2mHLPRM

Since the WWDC, Apple has promoted that feature wildly. There are many other features people will miss, but not that one.

Joking aside, the iPad clearly has too many features for they all to be immediately discoverable. The solution to this is for the community to share knowledge, through articles like this and through word of mouth.

I hate undiscoverable UIs, but at least in this case the documentation is right on the device.

What is the solution? Make people sit through a 2 hour video? Or not include functions that are hard to find?