The iPhone - and macOS too - used to be a paragon of simplicity.
Today the setup experience on a brand-new iPhone or Mac is abysmal. Entering the same username and password multiple times - then sometimes a different username and password - competing notifications, irrelevant feature nags, a popup from some random product manager about their pet thingy. Permission questions from some meddlesome privacy team about the feature you just said you wanted to turn on. Uncertainty about whether you’ll break something irreparably by “skipping” the expected setup path. A choice of several inscrutable interface modes because no one has the balls to commit to a single solution. Just terrible.
I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great.
I have a couple of older relatives with Macs, and every time you fire them up for the first time in a while (these people might go several months without using their computer) the Apple ID sign-in nagging is insane. It'll pop up the same sign-in notification a dozen times and seems to lock up the settings app until you deal with it. I usually think of myself as quite patient but when I see that little window it inspires strong feelings.
This might work for you, but doing this to an untrained, unexpecting, or visiting Apple user on your LAN will make their Apple device experience 1,000x worse.
I run several PiHoles — for guests, DHCP issues the IP of the least-restrictive blacklist (which does allow Apple; just seven rules to block largest always-advertisers).
But also, I don't care about anybody's user experience on my home network, but my own =D
Ug. Apple is bad (I don’t really want Apple Music thanks..). Being using Linux lately and it’s great.
I got a window machine and a month later “my computers config isn’t done” because I didn’t sign up for windows cloud and office 365 , oh do I want game pass?
I guess comercial OSs are just advertising platforms now which is kind of sad.
It really is sad. They are convinced that “growth” (insert worshipful gesture by executives) can only be most efficiently pursued via “services revenue” rather than quaint old ideas like convincing you to buy new OS versions on their merits, or to stay loyal to the platform because it was good. In 2000, this meant Microsoft set your homepage to MSN and dropped an MSN ISP icon on your desktop. Now every touchpoint in both Mac OS and Windows is an opportunity to advertise another Service.
My kid (10) got one of my old computers from work. I put linux on it. He doesn't use it a ton, but other than showing him that the windows key opens the menu to search for programs, I've never shown him a single thing.
I think kids aren't the best comparison with senior citizens when it comes to technology. I've got senior citizen parents and I've got nieces and nephews who are all under 10 years old. The kids are so much more adept at pretty much any technology they get their hands on when compared to my parents (iphones, nintendo switch, tv remotes, etc). They start off about as poorly as my parents do but quickly overcome them. My parents aren't tech illiterate, either -- my dad especially was quite a DOS power user back in the day, and to some degree has kept it up with his Windows usage too.
I think part of it might be due to the neural pathways still forming in the kids brains, but I also think a lot of it has to do with who they're around. The kids are around their parents who are using this tech all the time, while my parents don't have that benefit except for in comparatively small doses.
Unironically yes, the most intuitive designs you'll find are on linux.
Keyword: intuitive. This is the problem. People who have seen stuff before have way too much baggage and preconceived notions. People who have used MacOS before, and especially Windows, struggle on linux.
Because linux isn't that. And, heavy on the Windows here. Pretty much every way that Windows does stuff is stupid, unintuitive, and poorly thought out. It is truly the black sheep of Operating Systems. It does stuff different just cuz. Just to fuck with you.
Want to add a ? or a . in a file name? What about name it CON? No. Why not? Fuck you, that's why, this is Windows.
But it's not actually the black sheep, because it's the most popular desktop OS. So people move to Linux or MacOS and they're anticipating Windows weirdness.
Like, they'll open up a web browser and download a random EXE to install a program and then be mad it doesn't work. When the much more obvious thing, opening up a software center and searching for what you want, WOULD work.
Seriously, Windows and MacOS can learn a lot from KDE, Gnome, and their associated applications.
The Apple ID sign in is insane in the first place. Why does Apple want to feel so frickin special and require a working iPhone for 2FA and passkeys, instead of adopting standards?
One day the eu will yell at them to do things normally and then Cook will go on stage to showcase what an awesome idea they had that nobody thought of before: “standards!”. Wait no, that’s usb c.
My elderly parents have managed to destroy more than one iPhone / Mac (dropped a glass of wine on the keyboard on the last one). Using the "Restore from iCloud" is a god send to get all their messages and settings back. So I'm willing to go through some pain / privacy invasion for that.
Kind of off topic, but is "spilled liquid on keyboard" still this unfathomable engineering barrier that nobody can break to make a more robust laptop for one of the most common causes of damage?
What do you mean? "Old" (up to Sandy Bridge) Thinkpads had no issue with that, it just meant no keyboard backlighting (which is why the ThinkLight exists).
You can destroy the keyboard but they're replaceable and usually contained the spill to just the keyboard so it didn't damage any of the more expensive components like the main board. The goal wasn't an invulnerable keyboard but to limit the damage to a cheap replaceable subcomponent that kept the laptop alive.
It’s complicated, especially as laptops have gotten thinner and tolerances tighter. Dell and Lenovo/IBM used to have laptops with drains.
Lenovo definitely has splash resistant laptops, and most semi-rugged devices are spill-safe, but spilling coffee is still a service event as the cream ruins the keyboard.
Doesnt hardware getting smaller and with tighter tolerances mean they it's easier to waterproof something? Less surface area to protect and tighter joints means there's less gaps to fill.
Most electronics are just fine. A few capacitors, and LCD displays are not fine with water, and probably a few other things I'm not aware of. However most electronics parts are encased in plastic or ceramic and just fine. In general mineral build up from washing in tap water once or twice is not significant, though if you are talking about hundreds of washings it will become a problem (depending on the quality of your local tap water). Deionized water is best if you can get it, but even that will harm a few components.
In general if you can wash it once (meaning components that cannot handle water are not used in this), the screws rusting out will be the next thing that gets you from washing.
Yeah but there are solutions. After years of being vulnerable to water the iphones are now waterproof. Cars have had engine electronics in boxes with wax in for decades. The cheapest stuff you buy in supermarkets comes in waterproof packaging.
All the things you listed arent things you interact with by pressing on them thousands of times in a day. Its a hard problem to make a keyboard that feels nice, looks nice and is waterproof. Its even harder if you know that the payoff isnt that marketable, I dont think I have ever seen a mainstream laptop advertisment talking about that you can spill stuff on it. Phones barely have buttons or holes anymore and it took us quite a while for the flagship-phones to be water-resistant.
All the keys are wearing hats, so the switches should be fine. Probably needs a couple of drain holes and some acrylic spray over the circuitry. 2¢ per keyboard.
Problem is, then they sell 40% less keyboards.
If instead they thin down the metal in the switches ever so slightly, then they break 2 months after the warranty expires and they sell 40% more...
The old IBM model Ms were often washed in a dishwasher - don't use soap, but hot water cleaned them out. Most circuit boards are (or were - I haven't looked in 20 years) washed in hot water near the end of their assembly. Just air dry for a day before use. Ideally you should was in deionized water (or at least rinse with distilled), but if you don't do this often most regular tap water is good enough)
The old model M's also had easy to replace keycaps so you could take them off and wash as often as you want. Only downside is the need to put them back on in the right place each time, which is tedious.
Not all electronic components are water safe, but most are. I have no idea how you figure out if your device is or not without taking it apart. If you do this "often" expect that screws will rust, or minerals will build up - each causing problems. However if you just wash once a year you can get a lot of junk out.
I dishwash my keyboards (Kinesis contoured) every year or so. Just rinse thoroughly, don't use high-temperature drying, and wait for it dry completely before powering on.
I have put multiple cheaper keyboards through the dishwasher over the years. No heat, no soap, and I make sure to thoroughly dry it of course. I wouldn't do it with a mechanical keyboard for obvious reasons, but I have done it many times with membrane keyboards.
I suspect the Model M was dishwasher safe (if you popped off the keycaps so they don't get lost - put them in a separate dishwasher bag). ... and there's a fair bit of material out there of people trying some variation of it.
There is nothing preventing storing standard 2FA secrets on iCloud. You shouldn’t blindly accept substandard behaviour because of imagined technical requirements.
I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever. I do have a Google ID and I can't wait for the day that I can finally retire it. All of these feel like the exact opposite of what the internet should have been, this centralization and abuse of critical mass is a serious problem.
> I don't have an Apple ID and I don't have a Microsoft ID. I won't have either, ever.
I don't know whether I have a Microsoft account or not.
I didn't want to have one, obviously. But at some point I wanted to use Visual Studio and setting that up required me to create a Microsoft account. I continued not to use that account as an account on my computer, because why on earth would I do that.
So, other than using Visual Studio, that account never did anything at all, sort of like you'd expect from an account that you forced someone to create under duress.
One day I opened Visual Studio and a popup message displayed, telling me that because of what appeared to be fraudulent behavior by my Microsoft account, it was being revoked or disabled or whatever. (But I was still free to continue using Visual Studio.)
They just can't help themselves. It's as if someone's career depends on the number of users in the system, no matter whether or not they actually provide value to the users by having them in the system. Everybody and their dog wants you to be part of their eco-system. The best way to get me to not use a service is to have an account requirement that does not provide any functionality that I could have had without that account. It is also why pianojacq.com does not have any accounts, there simply isn't anything that you could do with an account that you can not do without.
> Everybody and their dog wants you to be part of their eco-system.
And that's the core problem. We stopped making tech and started making walled-garden "ecosystems." Apple is the most egregious, but everyone else is doing it too.
What ever happened to open standards, cross-platform, interoperability?
I never wanted a world where I have to choose all Apple tech, or all Google tech, or All Microsoft, or whatever just to get devices and software that integrate and play nicely together. When I was younger I remember being relatively platform agnostic. I had windows and Linux PCs, they dual booted without Windows killing grub every update, I didn't need to have my kernel signed with Microsoft's key. I had a macbook, an Android phone, wired headphones. My music was local on a network share and I used it with local music players across all my computers.
None of those ever pestered me for an account, or tried to push me to buy more of their "ecosystem," or sell me a subscription to use basic features.
Now everything is a sales funnel. Every app or service wants your email, every device wants an account, everybody is always trying to upsell you on something. We stopped making great tech products a long time ago and are now just extracting rent.
I used to be optimistic about tech. I dreamed of a world of openness and interoperability, not lock-in and ecosystems.
The only problem here is apple. Just don't buy apple products and you're fine. You can have. A windows or Linux pc and use Google sheets or whatever. I don't know whether the office suite is available on Linux but you have options for creating files that are office compatible.
The only problem here is apple, I don't think it seems fair to include MS and Google, they're much less walled than apple is. Maybe they could do better too, but apple is much worse.
Fair enough, Windows still plenty open (outside of the MS account requirement for home edition), but I think we can safely include Google now with the sideloading changes on Android, they clearly have seen Apple's rent revenue and want a slice of the pie.
I refuse to update to windows 11 because it requires setting up a Microsoft account. So all new computers (and some of the old ones) in our family have had their disks wiped and Ubuntu installed instead. We started doing this even before the Cortana/AI bs.
There's usually a way to convince windows to let you use a local account. Less so for the Home versions, Pro lets you do it pretty easily though. But good on you for switching... windows seems hellbent on sliding into oblivion.
Google a/c was the easiest to retire for me. Stopped using Android [0], Gmail - done!
Apple ID, on the other hand - if you use an Apple device then a whole lot of (safety) features are literally tied to an Apple a/c and don't even exist without it. I can't remember I ever had a MSFT ID.
I dream of a day when device makers are forced to expose APIs where one can add a device account provider a/c or device id provider a/c which offers various features like theft protection, remote lock et cetera or a self hosted solution. Yeah, that's just a dream.
[0] I do use one for work/testing and there's a throwaway Google a/c added on that created using a disposable email from SimpleLogin.
And Apple being Apple, they designed their own solution. I actually like having a Secure Enclave on my device with easy biometric authentication across all of my devices
Calling for standards is a great thing usually but to be perfectly honest, the current ecosystem of FIDO, webauthn, TOTP, etc is a nightmare. I have three yubikeys and three or four protocols to manage on them.
People won’t adopt that, but they will adopt Apple’s.
Really? I've never really had a problem adding TOTP codes to the password manager of my choice on the device of my choice. Apple's 2fa where they assume I have an iPhone just because I own a Mac or just because I want to log in to some Apple service has definitely given me trouble though. It often feels like an iPhone is an assumed accessory with Mac OS sometimes.
> Why does Apple want to feel so frickin special and require a working iPhone for 2FA and passkeys, instead of adopting standards?
Ever since the Great iCloud Hack of 2014, Apple dialed up their end user auth to the max. [1]
It was after that hack when bad actors from around the world realized getting into someone's Apple account could be as lucrative (or more) than their bank or email, and so here we are today.
I'm not sure what else Apple can do here. People have made it a habit to store their most sensitive and private secrets in iCloud, stuff which can't be refunded or bought back. I think having such an annoying, stringent, and walled-in auth system is probably the only way Apple PMs are able to move past the disaster of 2014.
>People have made it a habit to store their most sensitive and private secrets in iCloud
Totally absurd to blame anyone but apple for that. Apple pushes features, like iCloud, so they can do show and tell every year and make their stock go up. More a stock go up business than anything else. Features, like iCloud, are the problem. People who like that stuff are also the loudest fanboys and often the least technologically literate too.
> Why does Apple want to feel so frickin special and require a working iPhone for 2FA and passkeys, instead of adopting standards?
Mind elaborating on this? I used a Mac without an iPhone for years when the M1 came out. SMS 2FA, and then later enrolling two Yubikeys, worked just fine for 2FA, as did using the Mac itself as a passkey.
Glad to know I was correct. They didn’t claim it was new or “never thought of before” at all—they even specifically pointed out how they already did it on their other products.
I’m pretty sure they almost spent more time talking about the colours of the phone.
I’ve been a Mac user for >20 years, Linux before that, and lots of FreeBSD on the side. The rewrite from System Preferences to System Settings was one of the worst changes I’ve seen.
Preference panes used to be customized for each function to do what was necessary. Often there were hidden sheets with additional features for power users.
Now everything is just lists. Lists of identical looking, but actually very different settings. List of permissions that drill down into more lists which may or may not be what you want. The lists are unsortable and the order seems arbitrary.
I’m sure there was some push to SwiftUI preferences, but in my opinion, Scott Forstall’s Maps decision pales in comparison to the mess that Settings continues to be.
I was told that I was stupid and simply "didn't get it" when I complained about System Settings. It sucks on the iPhone, it sucks on macOS. You can't find anything, and certainly not the settings you do want to change.
I use it like twice a year and can't say I ever had a thought about the new design vs the old one. When I want to do something I just crack it open and use the search bar. The amount people freak out about stuff like this online is completely unwarranted.
In fact it's one step faster because cmd + space > "settings" actually finds it whereas in the past I would do that, get no results, and then remember the correct name.
The problem is that their implementation of search can be very difficult to navigate, when it just happens to find some completely unrelated checkbox with similar name on a bunch if pages - it can be hard to figure out which is which.
I would mind Settings much less if they at least fixed some bullshit. For example, there's no easy way to find the network in the Wifi network list. There's no search field for it, in 2025!
And the whole window can not be resized horizontally. It's just jaw-droppingly bad.
Basic windowing barely works on it. On macOS is can click anywhere on a window to bring it into focus and make it active.
System Settings is 50/50 if it works. I might still be able to interact with a control as it’ll click through, but the top bar is still lightly greyed out indicating it is still not in focus.
It was the first big sign that trouble was brewing. macOS is being destroyed from within.
I'm glad it's not just me! The System Preferences is terrible, the search doesn't work well, and it's really hard to find what you need without having to go into another subwindow.
not being in osx development any more: is custom UI no longer possible at all, or is it just significantly easier to go with the flow?
though I have seen settings sections that are simply a "launch the actual config" button. but Wacom was doing that back in System Preferences days, so I'm not sure what to think.
It’s possible, and some exist, it’s just less common now. Previously each preference category would take over the whole window. Now it gets a vertically oriented list. Previously all content fit within the window. Now all of the categories require vertical scrolling of some overly padded list control.
Not to defend the new System Settings, but the old Preferences app was some 1999 iMac CRT stuff. Everything crammed into different tabs and sub-dialogs, (and secret tabs and sub-dialogs), just to "keep it small". Some of the panes had 'character', but it really was not a good UI on modern systems.
Calling it some 1999 iMac stuff is fair, but in that case it was replaced with some 2007 iPhone stuff. I’m not so sure that’s a step forward for a desktop OS.
That weird grid of icons (I could never find anything in) with the goofy search that put spotlights on the icons, then the separate full-window ‘panels’ of inconsistent controls would (also?..) be laughed at if it was a new design.
I've been a software engineer for quite a number of years now. I bought a mac and iphone a few months back because I wanted to look into iphone development and there was a lot of cursing involved.
First the forms were incredibly bad for a new Swedish user. Then there turned out to be some kind of sync issue between account creation and when it can be used, but the error message did not reflect that in any way whatsoever. The next day the same thing worked.
On the one hand they have a support chat to contact and it's great, just being able to contact an actual person was a shock. On the other hand support couldn't help with my problem and I would not recommend the onboarding experience to anyone.
Yeah, as somebody who switched from Linux to Mac recently, I feel that MacOS is a nuisance. Yet it's a nuisance I can tolerate with some tweaking, when in return I get much better battery life, screen and keyboard compared to any other options provided by my company.
I know I’m pretty much repeating what the GP said, but it’s crazy how far they have strayed.
Around 20 years ago (which, on reflection, is quite a long time) I, as a developer, moved to mac, as the way it all just worked without having to wade through the weeds was unbelievably refreshing. Couldn’t be more different to the experience you describe.
I bought my last Mac over a decade ago now - I’m now back on windows, as if I’m going to be nagged in an adware UI, I may as well use the one that gets in my way less.
> I've been a software engineer for quite a number of years now. ... I bought a mac and iphone a few months back ... and there was a lot of cursing involved.
I'm not sure what's worse: the inane keyboard compared to Linux or the ridiculously dumbed-down featureset that makes it effectively impossible for a power user to even try to transition into macOS.
When I see someone calling the keyboard things like 'inane' I read 'not what I'm used to'.
Personally I found the keyboard a breath of fresh air when I switched from Windows/Linux. The whole text editing experience is gloriously consistent and logical, though marred by a growing number of cross-platform apps that don't behave correctly.
What I think of as inane is Linux's having a slightly different key combo for copy depending on what context you're in. Or all the mad extended keyboard keys I used to use that were in a different place on every laptop.
[the keyboard experience is much less well thought out on non-English keyboards though, as another comment points out, come on Apple sort it out]
That's a fair argument to be made. But in my case, I grew up on Mac OS 9 which had mostly the same key sequences. I transitioned to Windows, and that was definitely "not what I'm used to". But then moving into Linux, almost everything can be configured and the user experience across apps is consistent. Except for the terminal that needs control-shift-c instead of control-c, but that's because terminals inherit control-c for tty control.
On macOS/X? Nope, I've made up my mind: macOS has inane keyboard layouts, reduced key availability, and many things can't be reached at all by just by tabbing around a few times.
I wish it was slightly easier to type a #. But OTOH it's /way/ easier to type accented characters (in either the fast way for regular use or the slow way that's much more discoverable) or different types of punctuation. Without memorising numerical codes, which is what I remember from Windows.
I certainly don't miss all the extra navigation keys, when I have the meta-keys and cursors right under my fingers, exactly the same on any Mac I use.
I'm struggling to remember more than minor differences from a PC keyboard. N.B. I'm in the UK so that might make a difference.
> No keypad, no pageup/pagedown/home/end/delete (I use all of them very frequently), arrow keys are misplaced and tiny (also use them a lot), no F1-F12 keys, no screenshot button, funky command key instead of using control key like any sane OS, and the command key is where the option key belongs, blah blah.
I had all of those keys when I was using Mac OS 9, 25 years ago.
Well, I won't cover all the same things the replies do there!
I can empathise, as I always used a full size keyboard on Windows/Linux, and I chose Thinkpads and decent Dells where the extended key layout wasn't completely bastardised.
I insisted on a full size Mac keyboard for nearly a decade afterwards. Then I realised that, barring the niceness of full height cursor keys, it was a useless appendix that meant I had to move my hand ~8 inches more every single time I needed the mouse/trackpad.
And they have F1-12, though you need Fn to use them unless you invert their function in settings. And they have a numerical keypad, as well as pageup/pagedown/home/end/delete - on a full size keyboard. And you can type all those things easily using the meta keys and cursors on the bottom row anyway. And why would screenshot need its own meta key in 2025, with so many ways to screenshot or record. But I digress.
What drive me crazy when using Windows for work is the abysmal copy/paste support.
Just 2 minutes ago I started an email, was composing a numbered list of steps, saw that a co-worker sent another email to the same thread, so I copied the text I was working on and replied to the latest mail.
The numbered list of steps was no longer a numbered list that I could continue auto-incrementing, but just plain text.
And that's just from one Microsoft program to itself. Copying text between two different Microsoft apps rarely preserves the formatting I want. Copying text between Microsoft and a 3rd party application is guaranteed to be an exercise in frustration.
On the other hand I cannot stand it when copy/paste preserves formatting. The last thing I want when I paste some text somewhere else is fonts, colors, hyperlinks, and numbered lists coming along with it. 90% (or more) of the time I just want the plain text.
Same. But there are a few rare instances I do want formatting preserved.
I've resorted to using PowerToys on Windows for this, it has a little utility called Advanced Paste. Win+Shift+V brings up a little modal and you can choose to paste as plain text, markdown, json, and a bunch of other functions, or you can give it your OpenAI API key and have ChatGPT format clipboard contents for you.
The keyboard issue when switching from Windows/Linux to Mac is understated. It's a pain and I think it's worse for non-english keyboards/characters. You have to use plugins/3rd party software and relearn new keys.
No keypad, no pageup/pagedown/home/end/delete (I use all of them very frequently), arrow keys are misplaced and tiny (also use them a lot), no F1-F12 keys, no screenshot button, funky command key instead of using control key like any sane OS, and the command key is where the option key belongs, blah blah.
>funky command key instead of using control key like any sane OS
That "funky" command key makes it so you can copy paste into/out of a terminal with the same keyboard combo you use everywhere else. Ctrl being used to send signals to the terminal and also all over the place for different thingsin the GUI stinks.
Home and End are mapped to C-a and C-e literally everywhere in Cocoa. Same as in the terminal.
Methinks you're just annoyed because it's different than what you're used to. There's nothing wrong with that, but arguing about subjective preferences as if they are objective facts is silly. There's nothing wrong with the Mac's keyboard shortcuts out of the box, and they can all be customized with a NeXTSTEP style plist placed at ~/Library/Keybindings/DefaultKeybindings.dict (There's a default set inside of the AppKit framework bundle's Resources folder, or grab a commented copy here https://github.com/ttscoff/KeyBindings/blob/master/DefaultKe...).
Like, I'm annoyed X and thus all of desktop Linux just copied Windows' dumb keyboard combos that put everything on Ctrl, but that's hardly a reason for me to slag off the entire platform, because its minor, and I can just change them if I really wanted to.
> Home and End are mapped to C-a and C-e literally everywhere in Cocoa.
Even in iOS, if you have a hardware keyboard attached! But Ctrl-a/e have come in with BSD, the more common Mac shortcuts are Cmd-left/right, which go to the beginning/end of the current line, whereas Ctrl-a/e follow wrapped text.
The OS supports all of those keys still. Yeah you don't get them on a laptop keyboard but I rarely use the laptop keyboard as is, it's docked 80+% of the time for me at my desk so I have a nice full size keyboard I use.
Never missed a dedicated screenshot button though, I always just Cmd+Shift+4
Control key is easy to reach for me when it's placed in the bottom left corner instead of where it doesn't belong, beside a worse-then-useless Fn key, which is in the control key's place in the bottom left corner, which decides to make random (undocumented, even) functions of so many of the normal keys, and those normal keys don't even have labels for what the Fn key does in that combination like other keys with eg sound, brightness, etc controls.
Fn + A, for example. What the hell is that doing? It opens a fucking emoji window. Do you know how many times I've accidentally control-A to select all and then... oops no more keyboard input unless I press escape, and by the time I realize the mistake, I've already typed a bunch of other things and even more unwanted things happen.
And the control key is where the power key belongs, the command key is where the alt key belongs.
On linux I can type 120+ words/actions per minute on a bad day, around 160 on a good day. On a macbook air? I'm lucky to do an even dozen per minute because I have to slow the fuck down and soooooo many features are missing that I have to actually move a hand to the mouse to figure out a workaround.
Oh speaking of mouse, I literally detest touchpads. Apple's touchpad is not really much better despite the hype. Nothing like trying to position your cursor somewhere then try to click on something but moved the cursor off of it instead. Rinse and repeat until you finally press the touchpad in just the way it likes to activate a button click without also moving the cursor off of the object I wanted to press.
I'm only just now using a Mac again after not using them since elementary school. Tucking my thumbs under the rest of my hand to press the command key is a motion I'm really not used to, while as before I was really used to using my pinky to press/hold the control key often.
I do have to say though, its nice not having to worry about situations where I need to remember some odd shortcut for something that actually supports control characters like text consoles. I never need to worry about "does ctrl+c actually copy here, or does it kill things?" They're just different button presses. I get the logic these days of having those things be different keypresses than control key logic.
A lot of keyboard shortcuts I use daily now feel quite alien because of tucking my thumb under to reach the command key. And boy is it sometimes annoying having so many shortcuts using number keys in them. And the common jump between words or jump to the end or start of a line seem to be backwards in my mind (command+arrow versus option+arrow), I tend to get mixed up on those a bit right now.
The weird thing about "tucking your thumbs" is that you get used to that after a while if you mostly use Apple keyboards, and then you end up trying to do Cmd+C in Windows or Linux.
This is one case where I feel that Apple's take is genuinely more useful for largely historical reasons related to terminals, but at the same time Windows also can't change for legacy reasons of its own, and Apple ends up being this special flower that doesn't work "like most everything else" (i.e. most desktops around - which aren't majority macOS even in countries where it has strong penetration). Basically as soon as you introduce it into the equation, constantly switching back and forth becomes painful.
Its definitely already happening. I almost have to think about hitting Ctrl+C these days when I'm wanting to send a sigint as I'm hitting Ctrl much less than before.
> I never need to worry about "does ctrl+c actually copy here, or does it kill things?"
I've never had that trouble. Terminals are the only place where it's something different, for historical reasons. Copying/pasting in well-designed terminals is shift-control-click, which is easily pressed when the control key is where it belongs. Pinky on control, ring finger on shift, index finger on C.
Terminals are the most common place, I agree. I spend a lot of time in terminals, definitely more than an average user.
> Copying/pasting in well-designed terminals
This implies there are less well designed terminals.that do it otherwise, which is kind of my point. I don't think I've ever done the shortcut you mentioned. Some would copy on select, some on a click on the marked area, some other ways as well. Pasting has been a click, or shift+insert, or Ctrl+shift+v, or a few others.
On a Mac, it's command+c/command+v, everywhere. It's a shortcut that doesn't change.
I'm far from a Mac fanboy but that's a nice little thing.
So the biggest thing is the laptop keyboard layout isn't great, and not every input field is tabbable? And that prevents powers users from even trying to migrate?
> that prevents powers users from even trying to migrate?
Prevents? No. Hinders? Absolutely.
I only have a mac because it was issued by work as a loaner while they set up my new Linux laptop. I wouldn't want to use it as a daily driver at all because I still exclusively use Linux at home, and likely would never get over the keyboard differences.
Don't forget how some of the default shortcuts can't be typed on a keyboard layout that uses alt-gr to type things like @.
How the fuck did that get past QC? KDE on Linux has a reputation of being janky, but I have never had to put up with things being actually unusable by design.
I'd also like to add the impossibility of knowing what all the gesture controls are. Currently they seem to assume that you have been using an iPhone for years and pay close attention to every product launch. In other words, they assume that you learned them as they evolved. If you didn't, there's not a very good way to uncover them or customize them. Individual apps behave differently as well, and it's pretty vague regarding how you do different things.
This is what fucked me off about apple and their fandom from the get go. They called this gesture bs 'intuitive'. It isnt. Randomly swiping around the screen until something happens is not intuitive UX design.
My mum used her iphone for 4 years before she learned how to multitask with it, under my tuition, and she still struggles. She is good with computers.
iPhones with a physical button are great for this because all you really need in iOS is to get back to the home screen - switching apps that way isn't ideal but it works. Or you can just double-click the button, which is still easier than writing bee dances with your fingers. My 85-year-old grandmother can handle that.
Even if you haven't. My partner is an iphone loyalist for years and was very disappointed that they removed the "open tabs" button out of safari. I (new to iPhone) had to show them the pinch-out gesture to show your tabs.
It's beyond unintuitive. At least in the latest OS release, they've stopped hiding the searchbar in the ridiculous 'scroll past the top of the list' idiom.
The verge also has this wonderful paywall which completely breaks safari scroll such that you can't show the toolbar. The only way to 'go back' once you're hit with the paywall is to know about the hidden 'swipe from the far side' gesture in safari (cumbersome given the size of phones).
I sometimes wonder if people actually use the devices they make.
Took 3 tech savvy family members to figure out why mom couldn’t sign back into an app she was paying for: every time she “signed in with Apple” she also hit “hide my email” (first option) and so registered with a new random email address every time she signed in
It was also illuminating how complex sharing app purchases can be. Some apps allow it, some apps it’s a different payment tier to enable it. It was unclear who had paid for what app and why they didn’t show up on some devices.
This is part of why I absolutely LOATHE the multiple "sign-in-with-Y" prompts on everything.
Federation's not a terrible idea for people who don't "get it," but many places are then starting to _hide_ the standard email-based login form... it's bonkers.
Google can go DIAF for their browser-based forced popover that so many sites have opted-in to (so they can sell more expensive ads, of course). [I use Vivaldi which is Chromium-based and AFAIK there's no way to shut off those prompts]
That sounds like an issue with the app rather than the sign-in with Apple feature. I use it with hide my email for everything that offers it, and it always remembers that I previously created an account with an alias if I ever have to sign-in again.
Hide my email replaces your email with an apple controlled intermediate address, right? Is there any reason apple couldn't reuse the same intermediate address for you?
I thought the main things were making it so they don't have your actual email to track/trace, that when you unsubscribed they couldn't continue to spam you, and maybe let apple track spammers, all of which would be fine with a persistent fake email...
I mean, facilitating multiple accounts, while it could be nice, seems way beyond the UX apple provides and isn't a typical paradigm for most software... this seems like an apple issue.
>making it so they don't have your actual email to track/trace
Indeed solved with persistent email (also solved by creating random new Gmail one time without paying for iCloud+)
>when you unsubscribed they couldn't continue to spam you
Once pwned (or in case of dishonest company selling data or changing outbound sending domains), it’d be one email to get spammed from all over the place
>maybe let apple track spammers
Suppose they could do this if folks used a single regular @iCloud email too, but it’s very important it’s a new email every time to prevent spam as mentioned before.
Big big point: we don’t want to be tracked by data brokers buying data then correlating emails across services. (Sorry for ineloquent reply, someone can do better but I’m pretty sure I’m barking up the right tree)
> >making it so they don't have your actual email to track/trace
> Indeed solved with persistent email (also solved by creating random new Gmail one time without paying for iCloud+)
If you make a “random new Gmail one time” and use that everywhere, that email address, for the purpose of tracking, is your actual email. People correlating your data across sites will not be able to infer your name from your email address, but that’s it.
Assistive access mode for an iPhone is fantastic for the elderly. It's the only way my 85-year-old father can even use a phone. One of the best features is that it can be set to allow incoming calls only from people in his contacts. It's such a lifesaver.
What if it's police or the hospital trying to call?
I suppose it'd be "simple" for the device to answer the call and then prompt for a password before ringing for the user, but then the random caller needs to know the password. But then again, it could be as simple as "This is Siri, please say the name of the person you're trying to reach.", and since spammers usually don't have a name associated with the number they just randomly dialled, they'll be stumped.
I strongly suspect the people who throw all these roadblocks if an unknown number calls them don’t have kids, elderly relatives, various medical visits, etc. personally I’m not going to make myself hard to reach because of the cost of a spam call now and then.
If it works for you fine. But understand that different people have different needs.
I used to feel the same, but nowadays, I have very few normal calls, mostly from close relatives only, but a dozen of spam calls a week. And that used not to be the case before 2024. I know robocalls are/were a terrible affliction in the US for like the last 10 years, but they were very few of these in Hungary.
I wish I'd know what caused this change..
It's hard to say why people's experiences differ so much in the US I get maybe 3 a week or so. I would probably be more aggressive about adding businesses and people to my contact list if I were more aggressive about blocking possible SPAM. For me, the SPAM is one of life's lesser annoyances but I should probably check out some of the prevent features Apple has built into iOS.
iOS 26 can sort-of do what you suggest in your second paragraph. The device answers the call, asks who is calling and the purpose of the call, then (if the caller doesn’t hang up) presents the answers textually in the call-answering UI to allow you to decide whether to answer or not.
At the moment, most spam callers just hang up so I never even get to the choice to answer, although I do wonder if that’ll change if the feature gets popular.
I got stuck in a fullscreen YouTube video the first time I tried an iPhone. Simplicity is relative. For years, the lack of a back button resulted in this weird behavior of having to learn how each app wants you to navigate it. Even now that everyone has settled into the same list of 5ish methodologies, it can be cumbersome to figure out.
Changing wallpapers alone on iPhones is super complex nowadays. Still have no idea why I can't just set a photo as the wallpaper only while not removing the existing widgets already set.
The new wallpaper/lockscreen customization is so insane to me. You can't select any of Apple's built-in wallpapers without creating a new lock screen first (which requires re setting up all your widgets). Whose idea was that?
Trying to set a photo from photos as your wallpaper also creates a new lockscreen.
the only way to modify an existing, already set up lock screen is to long press, tap customize, and then tap the little photo square.
Did a UX designer even look at this? Because it sure doesn't seem like it.
You know, you guys might just be getting old. Maybe ask a kid to help? Back when we were kids we probably all had adults asking us how to do tech stuff all the time, because we had the time and curiosity to explore and learn it.
My son is 4 and has autism and he knows how to change his wallpaper and likes to switch between the different home screens he's made when he gets some iPad time. Now I can do it too because I've watched him do it lol.
But I've got a job, groceries to buy, cooking and cleaning to do, yard work, etc. I don't have the time or energy to devote to making 7 different home screens to match all my outfits or whatever people are doing with it.
It's not a matter of not knowing how to do it, that part is easy.
It's the lack of options or a clean way to replace an existing wallpaper without adding a new lock screen and re-customizing. E.g., clicking the share sheet from photos and choosing "Set as wallpaper" creates a brand new lock screen instead of just replacing your existing wallpaper.
At the very least, it should ask which option you want to do.
Good UX is not about whether or not something is possible to do. It's about how easy and obvious it is to do.
Also someone being able to switch between different home screens is not what I am complaining about. I am talking about inability to easily apply the current photo in Photos app as wallpaper without losing all the already setup widgets.
So you know how to do it. You had no trouble figuring it out. It just doesn't work exactly how you want it to.
> I'm upset that I have to change my existing wallpaper from the existing wallpaper rather than from the Photos app
This would have been much more accurate than trying to portray it as complex and broken. Bad UX isn't when something doesn't work exactly the way you personally think it should. Overall, it's fine. People just fucking love to complain.
This is everything outside of Linux now. Every freaking device or service is now just a sales funnel, and the whole industry has stopped making good products and are just rent seeking now.
It's a damn shame the hardware is so good for laptops, and that Qualcomm is taking their sweet time getting device trees for the Snapdragon X elite stuff into Linux, so the one laptop that's even remotely comparable to my Macbook (my Surface laptop 7) can't run Linux either. No other OEM seems to give a crap about putting out a decent laptop without compromises.
I've been really disappointed in iOS 26 for this reason. I thought it was going in the completely wrong direction, but maybe that was just me being grumpy. Then I noticed that the less computer savvy were having an absolutely abysmal time with it. We're back to computers being really hard for the normies, with apparently no mainstream option that's simple and easy for Grandma.
Unless you want to ship her over to Linux Mint or something similarly not mainstream, but actually user friendly.
I doubt Jobs would have let things get this bad. He would have been ruthless if he had noticed the setup and nagging being this bad.
Jobs seemed like he actually used everything himself, and he wanted a good experience as a customer. I don’t actually believe Tim Cook uses most of the stuff Apple makes, nothing beyond the basics, and he’s likely willing to compromise that experience to increase the stock price.
I’m still of the opinion that iOS 6 was peak iPhone. Say what you will about skeuomorphism, it was easy to understand, apps were visually unique from one another, and the friendly UI was a nice juxtaposition to the clean minimalist hardware.
iOS6 peak iPhone? Finally someone says it!
Also buttons had titles like “Done“ instead of icons, touches wouldn‘t end in accidental swipes all the time and Safaris toolbar was fixed.
All things I recently failed to explain to an elderly person.
> I’m still of the opinion that iOS 6 was peak iPhone.
You’re not alone. The release of iOS7 basically took us from having one OS that didn’t constantly confuse the non-tech-savvy, back to having zero of those. And it’s gotten a little better in a couple releases, but overall the trend is that it’s moving even farther from that over time.
>> We're back to computers being really hard for the normies
I'm not sure that smartphones qualify as computers anymore, they feel more like pop-up picture books that only work when you now how to finesse them. And unfortunately that UX has been bleeding into computer OSes for a while now, most notably with the decimation of scrollbars.
Younger people struggle with this, too. I was getting my teeth cleaned this morning and the hygienist had a lengthy story about transferring data to a new iPhone (her prior phone was 2.5 years old). It's anecdata but the experience is challenging, especially for something people have to do and do rarely.
Last week I spent hours debugging our application. Something was broken in the remote request layer, and I spent quite a bit of time debugging it with curl.
The culprit? Apple. I missed a notification hidden below all the windows that iTerm was requesting access to my local network. So curl installed via Homebrew and activated using direnv was not working because it was not getting the required entitlement.
But curl in the `/usr/bin` directory was working just fine because it has the necessary entitlement from Apple. So "/usr/bin/curl http://192.168.20.1" was working just fine, while "/opt/homebrew/bin/curl http://192.168.20.1" was silently failing.
Fun. Fun. Fun.
Can you disable this bullshit? Nope. Permission grants need to be renewed every 30 days. And they pop up at the most inopportune moments.
Desktop Docker (eww, yuck) and it’s permissions, path hell and general bs.
Can <permissions dialogue> it <permissions dialogue> be <permissions dialogue> any <permissions dialogue> other <permissions dialogue> way? <permissions dialogue>
I want a headless mac mini running docker. Why is it so hard?
Yeah, you can get a little Beelink with AMD's new chips and a boatload of RAM for around the price of a mac mini (cheaper if you are trying to max out the mini). The Ryzen AI 9 can run at about 28W I believe, it's not too bad.
I’m running the mini on 7w (averaged over a month).
It’s networked at 10gb, which is hard to do on mini pc/nuc without using a lot more power. My other Nucs use 70ish (nuc 9 extreme) or 35 (nuc 10 with thunderbolt dongle).
The mini is also much more powerful.
The is was a bit of a nightmare to tame but I’ve got it sorted now.
I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great.
Instead, the whole company has become a dictator of its "users".
I recently tried helping out my parents setup the latest Windows. I don’t wish that on my worst enemies. What a pile of garbage that OS has become. Xbox? Copilot? OneDrive? Why am I seeing ads? Bro leave me the fuck alone I just want a browser.
It’s so bad that at one point I considered having them try another OS, even though all they know is Windows.
Unfortunately everything is crap now. Chrome OS would have been a great option because they only need a browser, but just navigating the site is a mess. What the fuck Google, why do you always have to work against your potential customers.
And don’t get me started on Linux distros, I don’t see my parents fixing the inevitable issues in the terminal.
> I don’t see my parents fixing the inevitable issues in the terminal.
Really good chance now a days that they won't ever run into issues, as long as the hardware is well supported. Slap something like Mint or Debian on there with XFCE and it'll happily run forever.
I set my mom up with Linux Mint a little over a decade ago, she used it without issue for a few years before changing computers. I don’t think that distro is a thing anymore, but it was Ubuntu based. You might be surprised, there is lots of very user friendly Linux out there.
Why not Linux with SSH open, ready for you to login in case some troubleshooting is needed?
OK, I have SSH open on a non-standard port on my homemade NAS, and I notice the many many visitors from all over the world trying to bust through my SSH door... (I've implemented a web page to open the port when I enter a password there)
> Chrome OS would have been a great option because they only need a browser, but just navigating the site is a mess. What the fuck Google, why do you always have to work against your potential customers.
Navigating the google sales site? You don't need to do that, just go to a computer store and pick out a chromebook from there. Try to get one with a nice processor (ryzen or intel core), and a good amount of ram, and check the expiration date. Most major computer makers have some chromebooks, so you can stick with a brand you like.
Of course, Google is cancelling Chrome OS, so it might not be worth training your parents on it, because you'll need to do something else next time.
There was a joy of tech comic a long time ago, in which Johnny Ives was discussing with Steve Jobs all the complexity of a smartphone, so many apps, so many buttons, that he had made a brand new phone: No apps, mo screen, it just makes calls!
A few years ago at least a feature phone probably was the right answer for many people. But smartphones are so normalized that they’re increasingly essentially a requirement for a lot of services.
I never tried it with FaceID specifically, but all the other red bubbles I've encountered behaved the same way: You say "not now" during the initial setup, then you get a nag/reminder in the settings app. If you tap on the reminder and say "not now" or "don't use feature XYZ" or whatever again, it goes away permanently.
In my experience, it lasts between indefinitely and until the next major system update. I think, that has been the default behavior for all of Apple’s „use our services“-reminders since they started showing those.
Feature-packed software can be simple though if it's well-designed (in terms of UX, not necessarily aesthetics).
It just seems that Apple actually isn't all that good at it, despite that being their brand selling point. Once they started adding in more and more features due to pressure from Android, they lost the plot and ended up more complicated and disjointed. The cracks in Apple's ability to make software are showing.
Well, when iOS was simple, people here moaned that it was too simple, a toy, and how so advanced glorious Android was and sacrificed their firstborns to Google and now where are we
I switched to iOS about 4 years ago (want small phone, so iPhone 12 mini), from a OnePlus3 with Lineage.
I thought indeed that it was all going to be much better, simpler, more elegant (phone was 2x the price so), but I ran into a lot of issues that I wrote down at the time (some things have been fixed by now):
* Tried installing Signal 4 times, it failed on the apple account generation and no further clues that it didn't or did install Signal (it didn't)
* Can't put icons on the bottom of screen, where your thumb is... need to fill other icons to get important stuff on the bottom. (Fixed!)
* App store does not start with search... So one feels a bit lost, where are the apps? (Fixed! Now a beautiful bubble at the bottom, does require good eye-sight to notice). Still think app store is not really about apps? IDK, it's screaming, there are anime cat girls everywhere; feels cheap.
* Absolutely maddening that it keeps correcting my .nl email adres to .nul (android leaves non txt field alone as far as I'm aware)
* No intro at all into UI (although nowadays I see some hints in "sets")
* Top suggestion in app store is never what you are looking for. Pretty strange. Can we change that? -> Later found out the top suggestion with dark blue around it is always sponsored... And since has NEVER been what I was looking for, never, I instinctively ignore it now like a vibrating "100.000th visitor" badge on a 90s webpage.
* Spouse got stuck searching for app in the Apple store instead of the App store..
* Many controls are at the top (this was pre-swipe, man am I happy with swipe gestures, really fixed iOS for me). Although again: How do you find out?
* My wife, after 3 years still can't remember how to close badly behaving apps to restart them.
* (Old remark) Video pauzes when taking a quick look at notification tray -> In the new bubbly iOS this is much worse even, I often quickly pulled down the notification tray for quick peaks, then let go. But in bubbly iOS there is 0 contrast until you let your finger go, and then the screen will sleep soon.
* You can't dismiss all notifications, since iOS 16 or so there is a dismiss button but it is still, to this day, unclear to me what subset of notifications it allows me to dismiss.
* Screen often goes to sleep as I'm curating notifications.
* Can't drag to folder onder lower bar/icon area (Fixed!)
* Pull down in center of screen gives Siri/search, not notifications, I'd swap that, now notifications requires hand stretching even on iPhone mini.
* I set Firefox as the standard browser yet both telegram and Signal (so far) always open Safari (Fixed I think)
* No notification grouping. (Fixed, but still not as nice as Android, where I spent quite some time in the notification center triaging)
* auto correct does not un-correct on backspace, autocorrect corrects the last word AFTER hitting send (still drives me mad, I just end every message with a space now to avoid looking dumb). Language switching does seem to go very well.
* To close a picture, swipe down, that really took a while. Although not all apps implement it.
* Red dots are not synced with open notifications, when I dismiss a notification I want the red dot gone.
* Hotspot keeps shutting down (it just remains on on Android, usually that is what you want)
* A couple of days in I had 652 mb of data on iCloud, no idea what it was. Then at some limit it starts to nag and it is not obvious how to make it stop nagging. I don't even want anything on iCloud, nobody asked me if I did.
* Alarms are very confusing. Your morning alarm clock is set in the health section (and under alarm) and is linked to your sleep schedule... OK, this changed many times a week, and irregularly... Spouse still has way too loud alarm sometimes because she refuses the "Health based morning alarm", yeah I know how that sounds to a non iOS user. Please also offer a decoupled version of the morning alarm. It's different from messaging alarms.
* Switching "Focus" by holding the lock screen is just very annoying. First you have to swipe down your notifications, then you have to hold the screen. But just long enough until you feel that it didn't work and start to squeeze more. My father asked me some weeks back: "What is this, why does this happen?? That thing you just did!!" And I explained him I was "switching focusses". He does not understand, he does not want it. He turns his phone off if he does not want to be disturbed (yeah and complains when we send messages in the night, because the night is for sleeping and thus only for emergencies... life was simpler back in the days).
* It took me more than a year to find out why my notes app keeps saying: "Restore writing" when walking through the DIY store with the notes app open. Drove me mad! Turns out, shaking is a trigger for un-doing things.. Or something... :s
* Replying to an email and adding a couple of consecutive pictures is a nightmare -> Switched to much better Proton mail now. Apple mail, idk, it works until it doesn't.
* One gets a "Screen use" report every week, when you tap it, it takes you to the current week, where you havent used you phone yet :s. Still don't understand how to see previous weeks.
There were also a lot of nice things though, ie widgets are much better, feel more connected. Swiping feels much more integrated and still works when apps crash etc. Overal I got used to things pretty quickly, but many, many things are very much not obvious (anymore) indeed.
Yeah it's a lot, I once thought about making a blog post about the switch but never did, just kept the notes and adding to it as I pulled my hair out over my iPhone.
I’ve experienced most of your annoyances but maybe I can help with a few of them!
> .nl to .nul
If you undo the correction on the prompt that comes up in the correction instead of fixing it with backspace or whatever it will stop doing that autocorrect
> No intro at all into UI
There is a very long series of tutorials for using the interface on first phone setup and then for each major update
> Video pauses while when looking at notifications
This depends on the behavior defined by the app. It did not happen when I just checked with YouTube (premium)
> pulldown on center is Siri
It has always been and still is notifications for me, maybe a setting?
> Safari instead of default browser
App defined. Some apps open a safari browser and some open my defined browser (Orion)
> Swipe up to close a picture
And some apps are double tap or even swipe up! What the heck?
> Alarms confusing
You can still set your daily/weekly/whatever alarms in the alarm section of the clock app. I believe this is the main way people set their alarms.
> switching focus by “holding”
Not sure what process you’re talking about but the control tray (swipe down from right side of screen) has a simple focus mode switcher with no acrobatics needed
Dunno man, I have used Android phones and they are way worse than my iPhone in my opinion - I assume you have an Android phone, so it’s fun we both consider the other ecosystem more aggressively demanding of attention and naggy.
Ultimately I think they both suck and we’ve all gotten used to the one evil we’ve chosen.
If you're a neurotic obsessive who wants to pretend that all kinds of dastardly forces are trying to spy on you and your data, then yes, you want more security checks and more permission prompts.
For literally everyone else - these are only obstacles to their intended use of the device, and every one of them is objectively worse!
Safari prompts me _every single time I use Google_ about whether I want to share my location. I literally couldn't care less whether Google knows this, and I click yes every time, but Apple, in their infinite wisdom, DOES NOT GIVE ME THE OPTION to say "Always Allow". Thanks to some overbearing, self-important privacy dweeb, no doubt, and no leadership at Apple confident enough to override them.
It can be argued as good the first time. I now have multiple apps that I would like to use on my Mac that I can't rely on because my computer just decides that since they aren't verified developers that it is ok to turn off random permissions to the file system no matter how many times I approve.
I don't know what kind of pro-authoritarian sane-washing statement you're trying to make with this line. Jobs himself would tell you that it's a consequence of letting a salesperson run the company rather than a product person.
I had to setup one from scratch recently for the first time in years. The experience was terrible.
However, I can see why it might not be a concern for device manufacturers. We’ve had the iPhone for almost 20 years. The number of people setting up a phone from scratch who have never used a smartphone before must be minuscule at this point and will continue to dwindle. 80 year olds were still working when the iPhone was released. They will have experience using computers at the very least and more than likely have used smartphones for a long time.
Yes but I assume (perhaps incorrectly) they will be technically literate enough to not have any issues. The process is a bit of a pain but it's not exactly difficult for someone that's used any modern technology before.
Is there an example of a platform that serves almost 2 billion users, across 40+ languages and many more geographic locales, countless possible hardware configurations etc., introducing dozens/hundreds of new features a year, without falling into all those traps?
Of course I wholeheartedly agree with your critiques. But the original iPhone - or even macOS circa 2005 - were very different products, much more limited in scope and capability.
It's already hard enough to make a product a paragon of simplicity when the number of things it needs to do are so limited (as evidenced by all the products out there that are even more confusing than Apple products, doing even less), but I'm not sure it's even possible to do it when you reach such planetary scale.
Seems to me that the only way to have a product that's a paragon of simplicity is to have a product that does much, much less. But you don't become a trillion dollar company with 2 billion active users by doing less.
given this is in a thread about simplicity: I think "dozens/hundreds of new features a year" speaks for itself why it's a problem.
but Apple (and Windows) nowadays reeks of promotion-driven development. ship a new feature and make sure people use it by making it as annoyingly in-your-face as possible, so you can show "impact". do that for just a few years and you're reliably left with a confusing, inconsistent, and extremely chaotic new user experience as each of those features jockeys for prime eyeball real estate.
mobile games with tons of features to spend money on are often a prime example of this, where new users a year after it launched are stuck in hours of tutorials and broken UI due to dozens of notifications that barely fit on screen, and Windows is not far behind with some sellers' junkware. Apple hasn't reached that far yet (AFAICT), but it's clearly headed in the same direction.
Linux has many, many flaws as a user-friendly desktop environment, but this is not one of them. take a clean install. boot up the first time. it's very likely you'll be greeted by a single "welcome" window (a normal one that you can just close) or nothing at all, just a working environment, regardless of the version you chose. that's unambiguously a more simple, less annoying, less spammy experience. Apple used to be almost this smooth.
I don't know man. It's easy to wax poetic about simplicity behind a keyboard, but again - they're maintaining an operating system that has to work for blind users, for people using their AirPods as hearing aids, for people who want to make the font XXXL, for people who read in (one of dozens of languages, all with their own quirks as to how they should be displayed), people who want to interact with their phone by talking to it, people who want to plug in their phone to their car, people who use their phone as a transit pass/credit card/digital ID in (one of the dozens of countries supported, each with its own regulatory quirks), people who mostly care about using their phone as a camera, people who are using their phone for work purposes with arcane legacy requirements...
Etc etc etc. With all that in mind, a few dozen/hundred features a year (depending on what you count as a feature) sounds quite tame to me. If you look at each individual app, they honestly get way less churn and change for the sake of change than most products on the market do. For example my usage of Notes.app has remained more or less unchanged over the last 15 years, while in a fraction of that time apps like Notion will shift stuff around and force workflows on me a half dozen times. I don't even remember Apple killing a core app that people relied on? That can't be said for most any competitor.
The hate towards the new design system that feels rushed and is riddled with inconsistencies and legibility problems is justified. Comparing macOS to Windows - an operating system that has been literally shoving ads in our faces, or saying "well they should just take inspiration from Linux and just not ship new features" feels... as weak of an argument as it gets.
The UI is supposed to be adaptive; that's why there's an "Accessibility" section in Settings.
But out of the box it's pretty clear that iPhone is quite a mess compared to most modern Androids. All the swiping from various non-obvious directions is just crazily non-discoverable, and on top of that it's easy to accidentally do something you didn't want - like pulling down notifications when you wanted control panel, or vice versa.
OTOH Android 2.x 4-button experience (back, home, context, search) was clean and very discoverable. Especially on devices where the buttons were separate hardware ones, like Nexus One - no swiping bullshit, you just press the button that you see, and that does the same thing every time.
I never had a device+apps that really made use of anything but "back" and "home" and... while I kinda like the idea, they're just not usable in most screens in most apps. The current three buttons (well. previous, given how hard they're pushing gesture nav and how often three-button is broken nowadays) are nearly all useful all the time, I think I prefer it this way. Even if it would be nice to kill the hamburger menu, or get nigh-universal support for "find text on screen/in list".
But yes 100%, buttons are great. They respond much much faster too.
but yes, Windows is worse here. that doesn't make current-Apple good at it though. they've just collaboratively lowered the hurdle quite a lot, and still trip on it frequently.
and Linux ships tons of features, but they don't throw it in your face. it does that so quietly you apparently didn't even notice. (this is not in any way meant to claim Linux handles feature changes well, or helps you find stuff you might need, or much of anything, because it does not. just that it doesn't advertise to you, in the vast majority of distros)
>ship a new feature and make sure people use it by making it as annoyingly in-your-face as possible, so you can show "impact".
Modern consumer tech in a nutshell. It's less about serving the paying end-user and more about self promotion. There's so much neediness and entitlement in the design.
You're quite right about the relative calm in Linux. It knows it's an operating system, and an OS is supposed to stay out of the way and simply support the user's needs, not be a billboard for junk.
If there is a definition of doing it right then it is a better experience in following that rather than adding new features that don't match the definition no matter what it is.
And if the definition changes then you should be changing everything which takes resources away from new features. Unfortunately new features grab the attention of media an influencers and so that is what gets you the money.
Today the setup experience on a brand-new iPhone or Mac is abysmal. Entering the same username and password multiple times - then sometimes a different username and password - competing notifications, irrelevant feature nags, a popup from some random product manager about their pet thingy. Permission questions from some meddlesome privacy team about the feature you just said you wanted to turn on. Uncertainty about whether you’ll break something irreparably by “skipping” the expected setup path. A choice of several inscrutable interface modes because no one has the balls to commit to a single solution. Just terrible.
I guess this is what happens without a dictator to tell people they’re fired for shipping garbage, and when a company worries about meeting quarterly KPIs rather than doing something great.