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Comment by jonahx | Hacker News Reader

> No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money...

Naked apologism. So unthoughtful, and delivered with such a righteous tone.

If this was their intention, they could have implemented the feature honestly, informing users about what was happening, and offering a clear choice, such as an immediate popup, between "turn off for this location" and "turn off completely." That would have been fine.

But the existence of this "pro" to the deceptive and confusing behavior does not justify it.

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"offering the option to actually turn the services off."

I'm not getting into the rest of your discussion, but I think you completely missed that you can indeed actually turn them off via 3D touch. Even on non-3D touch devices like the iPad mini, you can get to the "actually off" toggles by long-pressing the icons. Sure, it's somewhat of an extra step, but it's misleading to claim that the option doesn't exist when it clearly does.

You can? On my phone, deep pressing on the 'block' in Control Center containing the Wi-Fi icon gets me to a submenu, which adds text labels to the existing toggles and adds two more toggles (AirDrop and Personal Hotspot). However, pressing the Wi-Fi button from that submenu seems to have the same effect as outside of it, and deep pressing it (as well as long pressing it) has no effect.

edit: but you can definitely turn them off through the Settings app.

I can't, it's complete bullshit as I don't even have any devices paired. The long press is useless, it does nothing.

As I said elsewhere, I repeated the GP's claim without testing it myself, assuming good faith on his part. After testing I found it wasn't true. Unfortunately I can't edit my original comment now, so I've been apologizing throughout the thread.

Apple changed the behaviour of something that people have been using since the first smartphone (before, even), without indicating that to the user. Saying that the option is there when it's poorly-discoverable doesn't really counter the GP's point.

I think there is a valid point that while this is changing what is happening under the hood, the behaviour is effectively identical for the vast majority of users, and arguably improved for most use cases (most non-technical users wouldn't understand that that switch would stop airdrop working, and even as an extremely technical user I have accidentally forgotten to switch my WiFi back on after needing to temporarily disconnect, and have ended up using a fair bit of 4G data. Luckily I have a lot of included data on my plan, but for some they might have to pay extra).

You can still switch off the radios if you want in settings.

Honestly I don't think it's effectively identical for the vast majority of users.

Every single time I've wanted to turn off Wifi and Bluetooth, it's because I know I'm going to struggle to get my battery to last till I can charge it again. I'm going to be out and on the move, so Wifi has no value to me except as a battery drain.

In fact, I struggle to think of any other ordinary use for disabling Wifi and Bluetooth. The real exceptions are like (I have this one now) I don't have ADSL at home but I haven't been bothered to turn off the modem or my mate who's paranoid of being stalked by companies. But those are exceptional. I wouldn't write a feature to deal with them. Except to keep the battery going, who turns wifi off?

It sounds like I've lost a real feature and I don't know how to get it back any more. If I want to be able to send and receive data but I want my phone to last all day[], what can I do?

[]: NB. The only reason I want my phone to last all day is because I want to use it. Consequently, saying "my phone lasts all day no problem" isn't an answer. You probably don't use your phone like I do.

> It sounds like I've lost a real feature and I don't know how to get it back

This. We can’t turn off BlueTooth/WiFi from the swipe-up screen anymore. Full stop.

I understood. What I meant by "option" in that context (and I updated the post to clarify this) is something like a popup when I turn off my WiFi in the control center that says: "Your wifi will automatically turn back on when you leave this location," followed by an "Ok" button and a "Do not turn it back on" button.

When the user is presented with the current control center button that turns the WiFi symbol from blue to gray, the user has a reasonable expectation (actually, I'd say more than that in this case) that it means "off." That's the point of the original article. As a completely general rule, if your UI is does something that may reasonably be misinterpreted, it is your responsibility to inform the user of that. You could take the principle almost as a definition of good usability.

3D touch and long-press are such awful places to bury any sort of functionality. There are no visual cues, no material cues, and the only way you'd know about those things are to watch Apple keynotes.

How hard would it have been to emulate what they did with f.lux, I mean Night Shift and say "Bluetooth, off until 5am (tap for more options)" or "Wi-Fi, off at this location (tap for more options)"

Not to mention that 3D Touch isn’t available on all currently sold models.

Which I’ve long held is a wedge they use to force the obsoletion of otherwise suitable devices.

There's nothing magical about 3D touch. Assuming you have iOS 10 or greater, you can achieve the same results on older devices with a long press on the screen. The only thing I've found 3D touch to handle differently between newer and older devices is moving icons on the springboard.

The obvious result is hidden under non-obvious action, and pointing that out isn't being misleading, quite the opposite. And you managed to equate the "offering a clear choice" present in the actual comment into "offering the option" as in not making it technically impossible. They're not equal.

> It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'

-- You Know Who

And that's not "offering" the plans, is it? When I ask you if you want a piece of chewing gum, I'm offering you a piece of chewing gum. If I have some chewing gum in my pocket and it's possible for someone -- not everybody, just someone -- to overpower me, that's not quite the same as offering. And yes, that's an extreme example, Apple isn't hiding the option on a planet full of killer robots in another galaxy. But it's also not quite "offering" it.

> I think you completely missed that you can indeed actually turn them off via 3D touch

My iPhone SE doesn't have 3D touch, or if it does, I have no idea what it is.

So as far as I know, no, I don't have that option.

As I said, long-press on non 3D touch devices opens the same box.

This is patently false (I have just done the very thing you said, then confirmed that the wifi was in fact still on).

I think this whole argument just lends more support to the idea that Apple is being deceptive with this UI.

It's not false that a long press on a non-3D touch device opens the same box as using 3D touch on a device that supports it.

However, after all the feedback here I did some testing and it appears the GP was wrong: The submenu obtained by 3D touch/long-press doesn't actually turn WiFi off. My apologies for repeating his claim without backing it up.

no you can't - or please step-by-step explain how you achieve this

After all the feedback here I did some testing and it appears the GP was wrong: The submenu obtained by 3D touch/long-press doesn't actually turn WiFi off. My apologies for repeating his claim without backing it up.

They did inform users.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086

I fail to see how dumping documentation for a cryptic feature at such an unfriendly URL counts as "informing".

The UI informs the user directly that they're disconnecting from a network. This support document explains the change and how it all works in-depth for anyone who will actually care to know (everyone who reads HN or tech blogs and pretty much no one else).

> The UI informs the user directly that they're disconnecting from a network.

The UI (mis)informs the user that wifi has been turned off by greying it out, at the very least it's inconsistent with other toggle buttons. Or are there other things apple decides that you don't really want turned off?

Can you describe a reasonable scenario where a layperson would see the support document prior to encountering some sort of frustration with the feature in question?

> The UI informs the user directly that they're disconnecting from a network.

I'm honestly confused... Do you really believe that most users have distinct concepts in their mental model for "wifi off" and "disconnected from a network"? They look at the button, it's not blue anymore, it's off. Then later they think... "Wait how did this randomly turn on again?" I believe this will be the experience even of the majority of tech savvy users, let alone typical ones.

Most users when turning "off" Wi-Fi, particularly from the control center, are doing so to get them off whatever network they're on. What their mental model is for what "Wi-Fi off" is doesn't matter because the user shouldn't be responsible for managing the radios in their phone. And any of them that do try to are probably under the impression that it saves them battery life, when it actually doesn't (unless connected and transmitting).

The new control center behaves in the way that most people actually use the buttons. More importantly it solves a major problem in that it no longer requires the user to know what radios need to be on for various features they use to work. Apple probably has all the support call stats they need to decide this was a better behavior.

> What their mental model is for what "Wi-Fi off" is doesn't matter

It always matters if you're trying to minimize user frustration and confusion. The mental model determines what the user expects their actions to do.

> because the user shouldn't be responsible for managing the radios in their phone. > The new control center behaves in the way that most people actually use the buttons. More importantly it solves a major problem in that it no longer requires the user to know what radios need to be on for various features they use to work.

I don't think anyone (certainly not me) is arguing that this isn't a useful feature for the phone to have and is what many people want, at least some of the time. The argument is that the feature's behavior should be clear rather than misleading.

> Apple probably has all the support call stats they need to decide this was a better behavior.

Again, fine, but don't suggest one thing and silently do the "better" thing. Either allow the user to confirm the behavior, or create a UI that clarifies the behavior so people aren't misled into believing that "off until 5am" or "off until you move" means "off."

I will concede that I almost always used the "bluetooth off" button in order to disconnect my current bluetooth device. I did this because it was faster and more convenient than going into the Settings menu and disconnecting that device specifically. It's fewer clicks this way.

So if most iPhone users are using these buttons to disconnect from their current network, or to disconnect the current bluetooth device, then I understand why they'd change them to have that meaning.

Disconnecting from the current wifi network or disconnecting the current bluetooth device probably comes up somewhat frequently as a task the user wants to accomplish, whereas actually disabling the radios likely does not come up much at all outside of airplane mode. So I get what Apple is doing. I wonder why they chose to maintain the button UI though. Perhaps it's because people are expecting it, and are used to it?

When I manually disconnect from a network or a bluetooth device, I want it to stay off until I specifically ask it to reconnect.

Nonsense. Literally every single smartphone before iOS 11 had a simple toggle switch for wifi on/off. This is now the expected behavior, this is what people expect to happen. They are conditioned by now, to switch off wifi by pressing the wifi button, and to have to turn it back on manually.

If Apple wants to change this paradigm, they have to be very very careful about it. And they obviously haven't been.

Apple removed the Home button after 10 years in the iPhone X and replaced it with a little bar drawn in software at the bottom of the phone. Just like users will learn new behaviors to exit apps, they will learn that the control center behaves in a new way.

Nobody cares about this other than technical people, who really only care because they perceive it to be Apple Arrogance. Nearly 40% of the installed base is on iOS 11, if there were complaints about this we'd have heard about it by now (just like we hear about everything else).

Tech blogs and the EFF might write about it, but aside from the HN threads about it, no one in the real world will ever care because the change is an improvement over what it used to do.

Virtual home buttons have been a thing on phones long before the iPhone X.

Deliberately changing how a well known function works is stupid, especially the part about it not being immediately obvious that it now works differently from literally every other phone out there.

> The new control center behaves in the way that most people actually use the buttons.

This is a statement that must have links confirming that most people actually do use it that way.

Meanwhile the new shitty toggle leads to my phone randomly dropping perfectly stable 4G connection in an attempt to connect to random Wi-Fi hotspots on the train

Prompting the user every time for a nuance they likely don't understand instead of just doing the thing they want 99% of the time is bad UX.

> Naked apologism. So unthoughtful, and delivered with such a righteous tone.

And, of course, voted up to the very top of the comments section here, as usual. The Apple apologists here are a bit of a plague.

I thought Apple fanboism was a dying breed around here. I guess I was wrong.

More clarification, it's a plague of fanbois bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood. Engage in reasoned debate? Agree to disagree? Wonder if there's a point to their opinion at all? Nope, maybe we should drive them out of the neighbourhood into a ghetto somewhere else so Hackernews can be nice and pure instead.

Disagreeing with you makes someone part of a plague. Got it. Reasoned argument failed to convince everyone everywhere, so now let's impugn their humanity. I'm sure that will work!

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