News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015). Parent comment

Re:Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore princi... by Wowfunhappy on Monday December 23, 2019 @09:33AM (#21863781)
Two separate points:

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore princi... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Monday December 23, 2019 @11:01AM (#21864482)
> 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.

Which of course makes them completely undiscoverable, too.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore princi... by Razengan on Monday December 23, 2019 @11:18AM (#21864626)
The Terminal/NSUserDefaults system is useless for navigation and discoverability of optional settings.

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore princi... by ncallaway on Monday December 23, 2019 @12:05PM (#21865034)
> We're back to googling and peer support.

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore princi... by Wowfunhappy on Monday December 23, 2019 @12:30PM (#21865242)
Yes, exactly.

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]