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'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.