It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and 3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for many years because it hid functionality.
There's no core functionality hidden behind 3D touch on the iPad, not least because the iPad doesn't have any 3D touch capability.
And back in the pre OS X days, tons of functionality was "hidden" with the option key. Things like saving the printer profile default were done by holding down option when clicking on the OK button. Again, not "essential" functionality, but very useful and known by those who had been using the system for years.
I think this type of hidden, but not essential to use, functionality goes waaaaay back in the DNA of Mac.
I also tried to search for how much NextStep used right-click contextual menus, but that's also something that's pretty difficult to find.
Option-click the wifi icon: special diagnostics info
Option-click the bluetooth icon: diagnostics info
Shift-Option-click the bluetooth icon: debug menu
Hold option while resizing a window: resize from both sides at once (see gif: https://twitter.com/dceddia/status/859518600931143680)
Option-click the sidebar icon: turn notifications on and off.
- option + click on audio -> choose audio in + out
- option + drag on columns in finder -> resize all columns
The option-resize window trick is crucial when you come across a monitor/video card bug that doesn't let you touch the edge of the window that you need to drag in order to bring the window on-screen. Just option-drag the opposite edge as a workaround.
One I find useful is option-right-click dock icon that force reveals the force quit menu item.
iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the lock screens which are outright bizarre. They feel very much like they were built for designers, not for end users.
Come to think of it, a lot of what Apple does today feels like it was built for their own designers and not for users. Removing critical ports, 3D Touch, endless dongles, confusing UI and UX, the Touch Bar, awful low travel keyboards, etc etc
Apple used to pride itself in everything being obvious and everything just working as you would expect it to. Perhaps the biggest change in Apple post-Jobs is how that is missing.
People complain about iOS not being for 'power users', but when they add features in like a secondary click or more fine-grained control, people complain about it not being obvious. How obvious is right clicking on a computer to bring up special features?
Well considering that most mice have 2 or 3 obvious physical buttons I would say the right-click on a mouse is pretty obvious. It has also be deeply ingrained in every Windows user since Windows 3.11 (maybe earlier?)
Unfortunately, if you replace the keyboard on iOS you lose the quick dictation key because Apple doesn't let the third party keyboard initiate dictation.
Speaking of dictation, Windows is finally going to bring a dictation key to their virtual keyboard this fall so I'll probably switch from iPad to Windows for my tablet needs. I really hate all of the web browsers on iOS and Android.
Indeed Apple tying 3D touch to cursor control on the iPhones makes me resent it more because they then removed the feature from the iPhones without 3D Touch.
Or, more accurately, "that's orthogonal".
But the reason the iPads have it without 3D touch is because they have much larger screen estate (and also because they lack 3D touch).
If you want to see your notifications, just pick up the phone and swipe down from the top (since the screen will turn on automatically).
Sure, but have you used it on an older phone?
Just recently I was trying to explain how to unlock an iPhone 6 hand-me-down to a relative by pressing on the Home button now that slide to unlock is gone. They initiated Siri 90% of the time instead of unlocking the phone. Is that good UX?
The new lock screen/notification center combo is an abomination. I have an iPhone 6S Plus and am considering downgrading to iOS10 or jailbreaking solely because of the notification center fubar.
For the longest time, and made better in iOS10 - our primary mode of unfolding UI was directional. You swipe up and you get the control center. Swipe down to see your notifications.
Now we have this half brained implementation where direction is now secondary to virtual anchors. Swipe up to see your lock screen and last few notifications. Then swipe up to see older notifications. But don't swipe up from too far down or else you get your control center.
This is ironic given how terrible the iOS10 control center was with it's multi-direction paginating views. They appeared to learn their lesson and fixed the usability issue in their latest major revision. But here we are again, and it's terrible.
I think you may need to find yourself a new crowd to roll with. 3D Touch becomes pretty intuitive after just a few hours of playing with a 3D Touch enabled device. It especially shines on the Apple Watch but it's also fantastic on the iPhone. Sadly, it's missing from iPad.
I have better things to do than train myself to use a phone.
3D touch is totally different, and better than a long press. With a long press, you're stuck waiting on an animation to finish to continue with what you want to do. With 3D touch, you are able to instantly get to the menu you want.
I can admit that discover-ability is an issue, but this should be solvable by UX designers embracing the feature and highlighting when it would be useful to users.
Perhaps for me, who am not confused.
It used to be the case that Cmd-E ejected, but you rarely wanted just to eject (i.e. just remove the disk from the Mac), usually you wanted to Put Away, and that was Cmd-Y.
I miss System 7.
...I miss it, too.
I remember System 7.1 most for its purity of interface. Everything from 7.5 onwards seemed to be bolting on more bells and whistles in a faintly uncoordinated fashion, and OS X has continued that. 7.0/7.1 were simple, efficient and fast. Much of the featuritis in the last 25 years has been good, of course, but I would still kill to have the old Spatial Finder back.
If you turn on the Status Bar, when the toolbar is hidden, it hops up to the top of the window. Just like the old days. sniff
You didn't double click the app icon - you double clicked the container that contains the app you are about to open or move/install to your apps folder. I think the drag and drop approach to installing apps is as easy as it gets.
No because ZIP files serve a completely different purpose so require a different workflow.
> You didn't double click the app icon - you double clicked the container that contains the app you are about to open or move/install to your apps folder. I think the drag and drop approach to installing apps is as easy as it gets.
Having a dialog walk you through the install is clearly requires less steps and less prior knowledge than having to teach the user they just opened a container and not an app (how would they know this?) and that they have to drag and drop to install.
Have you tried installing an APK file on Android? You get asked if you want to install it and you're done.
Other apps come as a DMG which launches an installer; some are just DMGs with files to drag to Applications.
First, Apple shunned right click because it was difficult (in early computing era 80s and early 90s) for the common user to use -- in tests few used it, and even today, even in Windows land, most common folk can't master it.
Not because it "hid functionality". It was the inverse cause and effect actually: since Apple only had single-button mouse, they didn't want developers to make things only available in context menus, so they forced them to make them easily available for left button access. But the first consideration was how users interact with the mouse (and lack of right click skills in the average non computing savvy masses), not the hiding of functionality. They still offered control-click for right click and supported optional two button mice for advanced users since like forever.
Second, regarding hiding functionality Apple has since forever had all kinds of hidden options in menus, only available when you open the menu and press Option/Alt or click Option/Alt somewhere -- and other such cases of advanced (but hidden) features.
They never had an issue with having such hidden functionality, that you could use only once you knew it was there, meant for more advanced users.