Hidden interface controls that affect usability

My gosh I was unaware there were so many old men shaking their fists at clouds here. The level of nitpicking here is ridiculous, none of this is hard, no one else seems to have any issues with most of this stuff, it seems to me like people are bored and want to be angry at something.

Touch grass people.

Guessing you’re not often called to explain e.g. iOS control center to a boomer?

If you have older loved ones, understanding their reality might go a ways towards growing empathy!

This is the mistake allowing this phenomenon to continue. It is not a "Boomer" or old-person thing. It is a thing for people who enjoy other things in life than electronics. We've already wasted years of our lives learning how to use a bunch of weak features and apps that weren't worth the time. Now those are all gone and we have to learn more? Forget it. Your app is not worth it.

> no one else seems to have any issues with most of this stuff

In my experience, 9 times out of 10 what this actually means is that they just don't know it's an issue! The type of person who would be confused by, say, the iOS control center, is not necessarily the type of person who would easily identify and raise the issue of it being difficult to do something on their device. They would just be mildly annoyed that they can't figure it out, or that the device "can't do it", and move on to find some other way. You may not realize it if you don't interact with those types of people but they fundamentally do not think like you or I do and what may be an obvious problem-solving process to you (e.g. identify a problem, figure out what tools are at your disposal and whether each could be helpful, check for functionality that could do what you are wanting, ask for help from others if you can't figure it out on your own, etc.) may actually not always be so obvious.

That's why the main way I find out people don't know how to do something is from them seeing me do it with my device and going "what!! I didn't know it could do that!!"

My experience with the people you describe is that no amount of changing the user interface would help them do anything as they only rote learn things regardless, because you cannot manufacture interest in the disinterested.

To the contrary, I’ve successfully done so many times. It’s fine.

I’m not sure you’re making sense. 99% of people enjoy other things in their life other than electronics, and successfully use an iphone without any issues.

That's why I don't pretend that there's a way for an interface to fix this problem, nor that it's entirely an interface's fault that this happens. But there's certainly at least a little wiggle room where you can happen to be slightly more useful for these types of people even if by and large they're not entirely helpable.

I have a feeling businesses like apple have design tested their interfaces on older people more than just about anyone else, it’s safe to assume they weighed up the pros and cons well in that regard though

This is why Assistive Access exists, yes :)

Other than that, Apple tends to lean a little elitist in certain areas, when they actually slightly over-estimate the competence of the average user. A lot of their thinking makes perfect sense to me now, but I am not an average user by any means, and even me in a wrong mindset could not make sense of it in the past.

This happens a lot on the Mac, where a lot of, say keyboard shortcuts, are just kinda there and no guide walks you through them, and no help page or documentation entry mentions them - you are just expected to learn and grow how you make use of them over time, from menu bar entries, the internet, or other operators directly.

It doesn't fit everyone, but Apple is one of the world's only havens for a very particular type of crazy, and that is exactly what Steve Jobs was all about.