A few things which hugely annoy me;
- Saving a photo from iMessage.... the option has disappeared. I get a popup to airdrop the file, interact with some apps and a huge copy button. In fact, I can scroll down in this menu but there is not a single visual indicator that I can scroll. No scroll bar, no icon... nothing. I've had to read somewhere online that I could scroll there, and I work in IT. How is this usable for people who don't work in IT.
- After updates I'm frequently asked to provide my Apple ID password, and yet iOS doesn't allow me to interact with Password Managers at this moment. I've got a 36 random character password, and it is a pain in the ass to enter this.
- 3D touch has been removed in newer iPhones. Fine, but why cripple older phones which still have the hardware to use 3D touch... Now it takes me an extra action to re-arrange my icons.
At least that's how it works on my iPad Air 2, which is a bit outdated, but has the latest iOS.
I'm the opposite, I didn't even try to click on the image and save from the screen that appears.
I feel like I see the root of this problem everywhere in "card"-based UIs. The share button opens a "card" on top and you can move the card up in the view. There should definitely be some consideration for how to represent that there's more "card" outside of your screen.
The new share sheet in iOS/iPadOS 13 is not great -- the two rows of horizontal scrolls (one for contacts, the other for apps) was much more discoverable.
'Repeat' and 'next up' are below the play/pause button. But the spacing makes it look like there's no possibility to scroll!
One caveat is that you have to drag away from the context menu.
Edit: nvm I think this is an issue on ios13. Definitely weird design choice, wonder what is the story behind this decision.
First screenshot: "Wait, why is 'copy' the only option?"
Second screenshot: What shows if you scroll past "copy", for which there's no visual indication showing that's even possible.
There's no rational reason for "copy" and all the other options to be visually separated, either. They could've been obviously part of one continuous set of options and it'd be a lot clearer to people.
I hate that apple doesn't let you export your iMessage history.
It's self serving on many levels.
Wait, what?
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.
find it much faster to just pull down and search for apps
Getting at least one user's opinion about a redesign might have nipped some of this in the bud
It doesn't feel like they have anyone who uses their own products anymore (dogfooding.)
The one thing about Steve Jobs was that he was a user like us, sharing most of the same annoyances and frustrations and in a position to make the engineers do something about them.
Just all of us who don't live at apple 24/7.
Something must be going wrong here. It doesn’t appear the ‘automatic’ part of that is working :P
Along with the email inbox bug they claim to have fixed but is still very much live and well on my iPhone 7 Plus.
e.g. This was definitely a change for the better. They're pushing something that shouldn't be first class into the background, in the same way that you don't manage memory or decide which apps in the background to close.
[1] - I remember when Google first added enabled automatic app updates and one of the most common retorts, including on here, was "can you say bricked" and similar nonsense.
More stuff should allow for the latter option.
Want to switch which user account you're using? No problem, simply find the picture of the current user account that you definitely don't want to use, and click on it.
Also, it's really a stretch to say that an action related to account x is "switch to account y."
I also know the long press shortcut to get to updates, but often forget that. As well as the copy/paste swipe gestures.
I know when people say "it's like they don't even use their products" it is usually hyperbolic, but I don't know how they can explain the seemingly random continual prompting of Apple/iCloud login on OS X I see a few times a year.
[1]https://eclecticlight.co/2019/03/03/last-week-on-my-mac-keyb...
You can also drag an icon out of the search UI when you're in another app, but only if you have a keyboard attached, because other than Cmd+Space there's no longer a way to access Spotlight without going back to the home screen.
Absolutely bonkers.
• Be intuitive for new users
• Have features for power users
• Sane number of customization options
Like the dock labels issue. I personally don't need or want labels in the Dock. But there should be an option to enable dock labels for people who are not familiar with all the icons.
In fact I would like to hide the labels for ALL icons on the Home Screen, with a tap-and-hold to show them temporarily, like the mouse hover on the Mac Dock.
Now you need 2 more options to satisfy everyone.
And then you need to keep the Settings app from becoming too cluttered or intimidating.
So I believe the cornerstone of all good design is a good settings/preferences system, that is easy to navigate, discover, search and filter. And to selectively restore defaults when you fuck shit up.
1. You can largely escape the trifecta by hiding advanced customization options inside of the Terminal, where they're 100% invisible to anyone who isn't explicitly searching for them.
2. For a long time, Apple's way around the problem was to have different platforms for different markets. The iPad was a simple computing platform for very casual users, and the Mac was the more capable option for more advanced users. For some reason, Apple has now decided that their simple platform needs to be as capable as the more advanced platform.
Which of course makes them completely undiscoverable, too.
How would I see all the options available for an app? We're back to googling and peer support.
> For some reason, Apple has now decided that their simple platform needs to be as capable as the more advanced platform.
Because they were getting crap for it.
Googling and peer support is much more acceptable for advanced actions than simple actions.
If I need to Google how to disable labels in the dock, that's probably ok. If I need to Google how to turn down the brightness of the iPad...that's not great.
An interface can only ever have a finite number of discoverable actions. So choose what actions are core functionality, and make those discoverable. Hide what's left.
Nova Launcher is an example of a pretty good piece of software that fulfills all 3 requirements in my mind (it's a 3rd party launcher, or desktop, for Android). It's what I use personally so it fits my power user and ricing needs, but it's also what I set up for less computer literate relatives.
It has every option one could want, but they are organised sanely and are kept separate from the basic interface. I don't see why this is difficult.
As a power user you could easily set up your click and hold labels with KWGT or KLWP. Having this option available doesn't make the phone worse to use for normal users. All hail the android ecosystem!
It's like being dropped into a dungeon where helpless people are endlessly flailing about trying find an answer so they can escape and instead being told useless, out-of-date, or crazy information by other clueless users.
Yes! What on earth is this for? My girlfriend picked up an iPhone after a series of awful Android phones and it's still sitting on her desk in a half-setup state a few days later because she got frustrated inputting her iCloud credentials constantly for god-knows-what and dismissing unhelpful help messages. Next she's gonna ask me how to migrate her pictures to the new phone and I've no idea what to tell her ...
I would presume that it's an overreaction to cover their asses if users get "hacked", and also a more aggressive DRM authentication to keep making sure you paid for all those apps/books/songs/shows.
It is super annoying.
This icon only makes sense if you used earlier versions of iOS where the icon was an actual photo of a flower. Objectively bad design.
The Photos app icon is a blurred version of the Slack app icon. Ugh.
Edit: put them next to each other and took a screenshot to underline my post above: https://imgur.com/jPFJMx4
dear god yes. I stopped using my ipad because of this, and I would never purchase another one.
Apple Integration is still top notch, but I agree 100% about their UI. I don't run mac, but I've been an ipad/iphone user for many years and it's definitely gone downhill. I disabled automatic updates and live in fear every time there's a new major version.
The other replies frustrate me as much as Apple’s design direction, in that they “get it” even less than Apple.
Bad design is not that I can’t figure out how to copy an image from mail. That’s annoying, that could be better, but you’re not even seeing the wood for the trees at that point - it’s the fundamental concepts of design that escape most people.
Like, what do these rows of icons even mean? What do they do? Why is it that tapping on them opens a window with their name in? Is that the right design? What does your user actually want to do, how are you guiding them?
There’s this conceptual clarity to design, and when you see it you shout “yes!” And when it’s absent you mumble a lot, and most nerds cannot even recognise those two modes, let alone approach devising the concepts that underly the clarity. The dead giveaways are the minor pedantic points vs how the entire paradigm is designed.
Android, for example, has this home screen versus the app grid, and it’s not clear why that exists. It seems like a hangover from desktops - here’s my “desktop display” and here’s my “app bank” and no designer would ever think of inventing that paradigm if they were truly reimagining how a omnitool should work. A mobile device isn’t “computing in your pocket”, it’s “a tool that allows you to do things that can change its face and use a network” and you go from there.
This is what Apple get and others don’t, but that should really be past tense as Apple have completely forgotten the thoughtful and deliberate design they’ve always made. Hold and press an icon and you can “share app”, you waaat, like how is that even a feature. Imagine you’re using a penknife and you can “share blade” or you can “share this channel” on a TV. You just totally don’t get it at that point, you’re not designing for the user at that point (cue comments of “yes, I love sharing apps that way” from the 0.0001%).
Despite their nosedive, Apple devices are still the best, and it just feels like we’re waiting for them to get so bad that Android is a cheaper version of awful, and no other company is coming to save us. Someone, for the love of god, start an electronics company that is dominated by a small team of great designers.
They really need an option to tell it "Yes, I have an Apple/iCloud ID that I want to use with this device, and I can even tell you that ID now, but my password is a strong password in my password manager and I really do not want to try to type it right now...so how about we just finish setting things up without it, and then as soon as I get my password manager installed I can get that password for you?"
It should then finish setup without further Apple/iCloud ID prompts, deferring setting up things that need it.
Furthermore, it should but on icon on the front page named "Finish Setup" or something like that which kicks off finishing setup of everything that needs your Apple/iCloud password.
They do have that, but it may ask you to sign-in again when you download apps, books, music etc. or sometimes seemingly at random.
Like the whole need for installers/uninstallers, worrying about drivers, separate menu bars for each window, and so on.
Some of those things will never change as long as Windows remains Windows.
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.