I’m not sure what you mean by the flashlight not being actionable. Notification shade/Lock Screen buttons are long press actions to prevent accidental activation.
On iOS 16 there’s now a button on the launcher to invoke search in case people want to avoid swiping
You say they design their products to be used by tech savvy people but gestural design is designed to become intuitive after the first tutorial. Indeed the only people I know who struggle with it are tech savvy people who skip the on-boarding. In much the same way that people who think they’re handy disregard ikea instructions etc
Here’s a talk on the thought process behind a lot of their “fluid” design https://developer.apple.com/wwdc18/803
Many very usable actions are left to intuition and discovered as such or by on-boarding.
Pinch to zoom is a classic example.
The swipe to dismiss gesture is very usable once it’s discovered. iOS does a very good job at training people that actions from the edge of their device do things. It’s fundamental to the design of the OS and has been so since day one.
I also feel like comparing navigating an app with its own unique idiosyncrasies that you do so sporadically to navigating an OS daily are very different orders of magnitude on developing muscle memory.
Anyway I think you’re arguing very different aspect of UX design
And herein lies the problem, and it’s not exclusive to iOS. No matter how much hand holding there is, if the user doesn’t engage, then it’s a lost cause. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Discoverability is as much about trying something that you know works elsewhere as it is showing direct affordances.
Swipes, and especially swipes from behind the edge were definitely not "fundamental" in the first version of iOS. I don't even recall them being fundamental in the first iPad.
It is consistent.
It’ll probably change in a few years again. Except it won’t for some devices.
Some are saying they see a pattern of “if it has a home button you swipe up, otherwise down” but both of these iThings have a home button.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but here in Japan, when you buy a phone in a mobile carrier shop, they set it up for you, which means any on-boarding that exists on the phone OS is skipped entirely.
If they’re skipping that for users then they’re breaking the entire flow for transferring data , setting up payment and authentication etc…
The button is actionable, it just takes a long press to avoid accidental activation.
The search discoverability nfw2 brings up is fair but has been entirely fixed in iOS 16- a prominent search button was added to the Home Screen (thankfully can be disabled if you prefer the old way)
...like no other button ever does.
This only makes it worse.
Something like a progress bar going around the button in a circle, I could give them a pass for - at least you get the indication of beginning and end, and a suggestion that letting it fill would make something happen.
But growing a button?
Amazing.
I've seen this sort of long-press safety feature a couple of times, and elsewhere it's been accompanied by a helpful message which appears if I try to short-press the button.
Why does the flashlight button need the safety feature anyway? It's not a self-destruct button, if I turn it on I can turn it off again with no ill effects. That was a rhetorical question, nobody knows why.
Apple's design approach has been totally _un_intuitive to me for at least 20 years, and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI.
You’d be surprised.
> and we're here talking about it because one HN (thus probably somewhat technical) user and iDevice owner did not know how it works.
The information is out there. When you first run, when you upgrade, there are numerous prompts to show you “what’s new”. Many ‘power users’ (I really dislike that name) arrogantly dismiss these. Then there are the online guides, the offline guides (book in the books app, Tips app). If the user pays attention, there are affordances everywhere — the safari tabs example in the article being a perfect example.
> and roughly everybody I know with an iPhone uses a mix of luck and barely explainable superstitious rituals to get where they're going in the UI.
This is testament to the point I’m making. Sure some of it isn’t completely obvious, but this ain't one of them, and discoverability isn’t about obviousness. If that were the case, we’d still be hunter-gatherers.
1. unlocking my phone
2. swiping down from the top
3. clicking on a small button in the bottom corner
not so much
But, personally, I’d rather a UI that’s convenient to use rather than discoverable. Discovering a feature happens once, using happens forever.
I kinda secretly judge UX people that enjoy iOS. And somehow almost all of them are Mac/iPhone users. I think that is a bit responsible for the uptick in form over function lately.
Not really, swiping from anywhere on the top (except top-right) works. This is consistent with the other gestures: swipe up from the lock screen to unlock it (just like you would open a roller shutter); swipe down to lock it again -- and see the notifications. You can also simply hit the side button.
> - turning on the flashlight requires swiping down specifically from the top right
You can turn it on from the lock screen, as others have pointed out.
> - turning the phone off requires holding two unrelated buttons
Yes, so that you don’t turn it off by mistake. Smartphones are not devices you turn on and off; outside of OS updates they stay on forever.
> It makes me wonder if they intentionally design their products to be exclusively usable by tech-savvy people.
I would say the opposite. When I think of tech-savy people, I think about mouse and keyboard; when I think of non-tech-savy ones, I think about tactile displays and gestures (and voice).
My 92-yo grandfather barely knows how to make his printer work but has no trouble remembering the most common swipe gestures: it’s hard to forget about pinch to zoom or swipe down to 'close' the phone and swipe up to 'open' it again.
I don't endorse it however. I think pop-up menus (even the much maligned hamburger) are at least a way to make many more features discoverable. I dislike "gestures".
Was it really more discoverable to have the icon always on screen but embedded among so many other useless icons?
Some of the other stuff you mentioned is discoverable in my opinion. Swiping down from home gives you a search bar. Notifications being accessible by swiping down from the left is admittedly not as good as swiping down from the top bar in the older iPhones, but I think still more discoverable than the Windows notification system that requires you to click a button.
When I go through open apps, it is usually to get back to something I was doing, rather than to clear it. Finding what you were just looking at 2 seconds ago shouldn't be considered a power user feature.
- seeing notifications requires swiping down specifically from the top left
- turning on the flashlight requires swiping down specifically from the top right. Swiping down from top left also gets you a flashlight button, but it is not actionable. The flashlight button on the home screen is also not actionable.
- universal search requires swiping to the left of the app pages. Swiping past the right end of the app pages also gets you a search bar, but it will only show you apps
- Seeing your open apps requires swiping up slowly from the bottom of the page.
- turning the phone off requires holding two unrelated buttons
Mobile UX generally is heavily-dependent on gestures, which inherently creates discoverability challenges, but it seems like Apple goes out of its way to hide every basic function behind a very specific swipe. It makes me wonder if they intentionally design their products to be exclusively usable by tech-savvy people.
Another possible explanation is that design requires users to develop muscle memory over time that will improve experience in the long run and makes competitors feel unnatural.