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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

(Re-posted at the suggestion of dang.)

As someone who develops on both iOS and Android, and uses an Android phone, there was a lot in this article that I agreed with. Particularly Apple's prioritisation of beauty over design.

One weakness was the discussion of undo and Android's supposed strength due to its dedicated back button. This didn't convince me: the back button on Android sometimes undoes operations, but often it doesn't [1].

[1] http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2011/12/back-button-android...

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Speaking of Undo, one of google's common features across several of it's products is the use of undo instead of confirmation, I absolutely LOVE this. If I archive an email in gmail (app or browser) it doesnt't ask me if I am sure I want to do that, but it does give me the option to immediately undo that action. This little feature is so wonderful when you think about it. It allows you to complete an intended action in one step, but abort an unintended action in two steps. That is great functional design.

Apple does this too. Except they hide the undo command behind a completely insane "shake the device" gesture, and half the time it fails to retrieve the email.

And what's worse, it's easy to accidentally do and it pops up a modal dialog.

This is the biggest failure of Apple's design on iOS and the article nails it perfectly. It's not just that you have to shake the device, it's that you have to shake it and answer a modal and that all apps don't treat it the same way. You could be sitting there shaking your phone for 5 minutes wondering if you're just shaking it wrong or if the app doesn't offer an undo feature and there's not really any way of knowing which is the right answer.

Yeah, the back button can definitely be inconsistent and has annoyed me countless times, but at least it's there.

I recently got stuck in a Youtube video on an iPad because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the video list. Turns out I had to swipe down on the video page with 3 fingers or something to go back.

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