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Hidden interface controls that affect usability

(interactions.acm.org)
559 points cxr | 3 comments | 05 Jul 25 23:10 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nsriv ◴[06 Jul 25 00:13 UTC] No.44476613[source]▶
Very slightly unrelated, but this trend is one of the reasons I went Android after the iPhone removed the home button. I think it became meaningfully harder to explain interactions to older users in my family and just when they got the hang of "force touch" it also went away.

First thing I do on new Pixel phones is enable 3 button navigation, but lately that's also falling out of favor in UI terms, with apps assuming bottom navigation bar and not accounting for the larger spacing of 3 button nav and putting content or text behind it.

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zhivota ◴[06 Jul 25 01:37 UTC] No.44477055[source]▶
I am the same, long time Android user and when I borrow my wife's iPhone it is an exercise in frustration. Interactions are hidden, not intuitive, or just plain missing.

Now that Pixel cameras outclass iPhone cameras, and even Samsung is on par, there is really no reason to ever switch to the Apple ecosystem anymore IMO.

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SoftTalker ◴[06 Jul 25 01:50 UTC] No.44477124[source]▶
> [iPhone] Interactions are hidden, not intuitive, or just plain missing.

And they aren't even consistent from app to app. That's perhaps the most frustrating thing.

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1. cosmic_cheese ◴[06 Jul 25 03:58 UTC] No.44477707[source]▶
That’s thanks to third party devs, not Apple. If you look primarily at proper native UIKit/SwiftUI apps, there’s a lot more consistency, but there’s a lot of cross platform lowest common denominator garbage out there that pays zero mind to platform conventions.

You see this under macOS, too. A lot of Electron apps for instance replace the window manager’s standard titlebar with some custom thing that doesn’t implement chunks of the standard titlebar’s functionality. It’s frustrating.

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2. SoftTalker ◴[06 Jul 25 18:19 UTC] No.44482872[source]▶
In Messages, to create a new message tap the pencil-in-a-square icon in the upper right corner.

In Notes, to create a new Note, tap the pencil-in-a-square icon in the lower right corner.

In Calendar, to create a new appointment, tap the + icon in the upper right corner.

In Reminders, to create a new reminder, tap the + in a blue circle in the lower left corner. At least it offers a text label "New Reminder"

These are all Apple apps and they all do it differently. And that's not even getting into gestures and other actions that you just have to stumble upon to even know they exist.

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3. cosmic_cheese ◴[06 Jul 25 19:57 UTC] No.44483548[source]▶
Consistency has been on the decline within Apple apps for sure, but it gets much worse after introducing cross platform apps into the mix.

The main one I end up missing most is the swipe to go back gesture within apps. It comes for “free” when using UIKit and SwiftUI navigation primitives (UINavigationController, UISplitViewController, and their SwiftUI counterparts) but it’s almost always missing from apps built with React Native and such.