Which led to people like me making a fool out of themselves. Always been using Android, and listened to iPhone users singing the praise of the amazing UI and UX of iOS. Well, eventually iPhone 12 Mini released so I figured, "why not give it a try, can't be worse than my current Motorola Moto G gen4 right?"
Well, it is worse. I still have the phone because it still works, but that was my first and last iPhone. Everything is dog slow, not because poor performance but because of slow animations. Same on Android by default, but at least I can speed it up. And the UX makes you jump through hoops, things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube, and the amount of UI bugs seems sky-high for something that sells itself as "Premium".
And then CarPlay is just an abomination! Even the most basic things like "I'd like to answer a call while still being able to see the map I use for navigation" seems to be completely ignored and it honestly doesn't make any sense at all.
Ugh, I almost look forward to accidentally dropping the phone so I can go back to having a non-distracting experience in the car again.
Edit: I just remembered the most egregious issue: How can I see the current year without having to open up a separate calendar application/put a huge widget on my home screen?
Did you try Accessibility > Motion > Off?
>Things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube
There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?
There is no "Motion > Off" but there is a "Reduce Motion" toggle. Seems to be turning things that were slowly animated into even slower fade, like when you switch applications. Doesn't seem to actually affect much, animations inside for example Apple applications is still there, no matter if that toggle is on or off.
> There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?
I've browsed through it, but I don't think it's in no way extensive? I tried to find anything documenting the "Hold on spacebar and drag to move text cursor" in the Tips application (that I'm guessing you're referring to?) and found nothing, which is one of the features I "discovered" purely by accident.
> There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?
I posit that if one needs to load up the Tips app to figure out how to perform desired functions, that's a problem with the UX and not the human trying to use the device/app.
The ideas espoused in The Design of Everyday Things[0] pops into mind right now.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...
Expand the Table of Contents + at the top to see all the sections.
(Like others, not defending the state of things, just trying to help.)
0: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...
edit: if you want it in an offline format, you can find it in the Apple Books app by searching iPhone User Guide.
Great that it is mentioned somewhere, in some manner, I guess.
the unfortunate reality of touch screens is that there are no affordances for things that can't be seen. design of everyday things goes over stuff like never put a pull handle on a push door kinda things. i think having to go to an app for some things is somewhat reasonable given the ui size constraints and only having so much touchable area... most of the functionality is there and self evident without an app.