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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot to unpack here, and a lot to disagree with, as I believe there's plenty of evidence Apple cares a lot about accessibility.

Also harping on specific terminology like password vs passcode is not really productive in terms of improving the underlying UX, as the word gets translated into tons of languages which may or may not have the same level of nuance.

While I don't necessarily agree with the premise, especially when compared with the competition, I will say that iOS has not gotten easier to use over time. Features like 3D touch are implemented inconsistently both at the hardware level, and in the UX — Worst is how undiscoverable they are. Here's the crazy part: Apple is about to release the iPhone XR, their 1 and only phone without 3D touch!.

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It's gotten worse. Screens keep getting bigger, but more and more functionality keeps getting hidden behind undiscoverable swipes and taps. I've been an iPhone user since the 3G, I used to program computers for a living, and I don't have a reliable mental model of what the available gestures even are these days. I'm reduced to randomly tapping and pressing and swiping like some sort of idiot.

I feel the same. And when I learn how it works I get it but it doesn't rub right to me, I say to myself weird. I think it's apple without Steve Jobs super crazy attention to detail and the overall feel of it degraded over time.

> but more and more functionality keeps getting hidden behind undiscoverable swipes and taps

I think the issue is that Apple keeps adding functionality to iOS, but seldom removes functionality. So all these "non-essential" features end up relegated to harder to discover actions.

I don't think that's the biggest part of the issue, though. I think it's that whatever functionality is there has to work across a broad range of devices. Someone mentioned consistency and that's what's key here that I think most people are missing. Using an iPad is, generally, the same experience as using an iPhone even though an iPad has a completely different set of utility than an iPhone.

That means that the fact that phone screens have gotten larger is irrelevant because whatever complications or features are added have to work broadly and consistently amongst devices of varying screen sizes. Web developers actually have it down best when it comes to responsive design but even responsive design makes for a different experience on mobile vs. desktop and I think Apple is trying to avoid that. An iPhone might be "hard to use" for someone that's not tech savvy but, once they learn how to use it, they now have an easier time across Apple's entire product line, not just that one device.

I'm generally dismayed at the state of UX in general, and mobile UX in particular, these days.

It feels like we have regressed a lot from where we were in the "golden age of the desktop". I mean, we actually had standards for things - remember CUA? And UX was designed in a way that made it so that once you learn a few basic tricks (like double click and drag and drop), they would work everywhere, and they would do so consistently. Consistency, in general, was key to the UX of that era. Some things might not have been as easy to access as they are today, but all things could be found where you expected them. Even the menu hierarchy was largely standardized.

Now, even if you stick to one particular platform, it often changes the concepts radically within 4-5 years; and many of those aren't even consistently applied. Worse yet, instead of fixing the mess, the UX designers just keep piling more and more stuff, like Apple's "3D touch".

20 year UX veteran here. It's absolutely unheard of for UX to be the final arbiter on marketing &/or development driven features.

To take your 3D touch example. I'll bet it went a little something like this; development said 'we can now detect pressure', leads (inc UX) brainstormed on ways to utilise the functionality. Then it's soley on UX to make it usable.

I've never been involved in a situation where I get to demand capabilities that hitherto did not exist. Nor have I ever held the power to stop-ship. We have varying degrees of touch on functionality as it evolves for sure but not the power you assume we have.

We don't live in a reality where any company, Apple specifically, says 'hey customers, we realised we actually got things right on the last release, please give us more money 'cos shareholders'

Product design is inherently a push system. If it was needs-based pull, the world would be slightly different.

If everything was evaluated by cybersecurity and UX experts first, we wouldn’t have half the problems, but people aren’t interested in those sorts of issues, it is more of a matter of getting there “firstest with the mostest”.

> If everything was evaluated by cybersecurity and UX experts first, we wouldn’t have half the problems

That's an extremely brash assumption. The reason privacy and security haven't been built into the core of everything we do is because the ease of use within highly secure systems is inversely proportional to it's UX. The more secure you want something to be, the harder it is to learn and use.

3D Touch seems to be the Touch Bar of the mobile world.

Both are great ideas, but only sparsely exploited even by Apple, itself.

For what it’s worth, I use 3D Touch pretty much every day. The number one usage for me is moving the cursor around while editing text. I actually did it while writing this post; I decided I wanted to add a comma after “worth” at the beginning and did so easily with this feature.

Since iOS12 you can do this by holding the spacebar on devices without 3D touch

On devices with 3D Touch you can also press harder to activate text selection, which is something I use daily.

Long press does this.

But you are already long-pressing in order to use the cursor?

With the spacebar alternative method you can also activate text selection.

Tried it on my iPhone 8 (by disabling 3d touch). It seems to be a lot less precise for whatever reason. And one issue is also that the swipe always starts at the lowest end of the screen and it's not easily possible to scroll downwards with it, since one starts at the spacebar which is at the very bottom of the screen. With 3d touch one starts the gesture somewhere in the middle of the keyboard, which provides room in every direction.

That's amazing, thank you. I had no idea this was possible on my iPhone SE. I'm assuming that there is a lot of other things that my phone can do that I am completely ignorant of.

iPhone X with 3D Touch enables: the space bar longpress worked for me. This is actually more convenient as the 3D Touch hurts my finger and sometimes activates the alternate letter options.

That’s odd. On my iPhone, moving the cursor is activated with long touch, and 3D Touch does nothing...and yet I do have 3D Touch

You need to do 3D touch on the keyboard itself.

I had no idea that existed and it is a game-changer. Thank you!

Ditto. I complain a lot about Apple software lately, but have to admit I'm turning on 3D touch for this.

This is one of the best things I've learned this month! Thank you

This is really great, thank you. I wish Apple’s weird “intuitive” gestures were more discoverable, on both macOS and iOS. They are often good, but they lack the visual hinting that you get from keyboard shortcuts.

The long touch cursor movement is different than the 3d touch cursor movement.

With a long touch, it brings up a loupe that magnifies the text. With 3d touch it lets you use the keyboard almost as a trackpad to move the cursor around.

That's not the full story. From iOS 12 you can do the long touch on the spacebar and get the same functionality as the 3d touch on the rest of the keyboard.

Great for me as 3d touch is so flaky on my iPhone since I got the screen replaced.

I also use 3D touch many times every day. Mainly for mobile payments, example: 1. Pay for bus fare: unlock->find app->3d touch->select "show payment barcode" 2. Instant payment in restaurant: unlock->find app(e.g. wechat)->3d touch->"show payment barcode"/OR "scan barcode" to scan restaurant's bar code for payment

Without 3d touch you need one more step to open the app, and maybe more steps to find menu for payments(depends on apps you use)

edit: just found some apps(not all) provide widget to access features like payment...

Whoa. I just thought to check my train ticket app for 3d touch options and sure enough, I can launch straight to my ticket!

Most (all?) 3D Touch actions can be handled by a long-press these days.

This exact function is duplicated by long pressing on the space bar. This has been there since iOS 11, I believe.

So you don't actually need 3D Touch to have the benefit of the awesome cursor UX.

Drag space bar is new in 12, but two finger drag on iPad has been around a bit longer.

It’s a bonus for SE users without force touch. Seems obvious to include this, but I assume the reason they went back and bothered with it is the new XR taking force touch back out.

> but two finger drag on iPad has been around a bit longer

Since iOS 9. Early in the betas this feature existed for non-3D Touch iPhones as well, but then it was removed and restricted to models with 3D Touch.

Whaaaat? I'm on my 3rd iPhone and I never found this, I just assumed that Apple was punishing people who wouldn't upgrade to 6s by denying them this feature.

Fun fact, before Apple so graciously incorporated this feature into their software, it was a tweak you could install after jailbreaking the previous versions of iOS. Same with the "quick reply" from notifications and a dozen other actually useful features. This behavior from Apple reinforced my belief that all they do is absorb other's innovations, make them shiny, and then sell at a ridiculous markup.

I agree with the author that the iPhone is hard to use

To use more charitable marketing speak Apple definitely strongly uses a second mover advantage, maybe with some secret sauce thrown in.

The ideal scenario imho would be for every interaction to require pressure.

That's a great idea! With a configurable amount of pressure and haptic feedback, preferably.

3D Touch is great when it works. But sometimes it just doesn't. I know on my 6S, there are times where 3D Touch stops working until I restart my iPhone. It is so frustrating that it sometimes works/sometimes doesn't and if you push to hard it's another gesture altogether.

Did you get your screen replaced by a third-party? My friend has this same issue and the only thing we can think of is that it's his mall kiosk screen replacement.

No. It happens on two iPhones I have, one has the original screen and the other has had the screen replaced by Apple twice.

I also use it every day, but for apps. Many of the apps I have on my home screen, have "shortcuts", not in the new siri way, but in the "do something/go somewhere quickly in the app" way. I used it to call a person, I use it to open a new tab on Firefox, I use it to add a new todo item, I use it to go to a specific tab on an app. I would be very sad if it goes away at some point..

Samsung manages to include the "shortcut" functionality you mention AND the ability to reorganize apps through a simple long press. Like a commenter above already mentioned, 3D touch was most likely a solution looking for a problem.

Same here. I was really surprised to find that most people don't use/know about/want it.

"3D Touch seems to be the Touch Bar of the mobile world."

No, it is the right-mouse click of touch interfaces.

I've read on a lot of sites that 3D touch is going away with the next flagship.

This is highly likely, since most people (off this site) don't seem to use it and one of the newest phones omits it.

I sure hope not. If I were buying a new phone this year, that single feature would get me to pay the extra $250 or whatever to get an XS instead of an XR.

No it won't. Pressure sensitivity is built into the hardware. 3D Touch is just a feature of that hardware functionality. Unless they get rid of the hardware, which doesn't seem likely since it's used for other things, 3D touch is probably here to stay.

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