iOS is worse than Android | Hacker News Reader

iOS is worse than Android

porchlab.com

21 pointswallflow3r28 comments

"On Android, if you check your email, or similarly handle a notification for another application on a different device the notification disappears on your phone. Not so on iOS. You are going to see that notification on every iOS device you have and have to clear it on every one, or just ignore the notification center entirely"

This. It drives me up the wall. My ipad is forever cluttered with notifications for stuff that I have already seen and checked, because somehow iOS is incapable of clearing these notifications, god knows why. If I have a new discord notification on my android phone, and then open discord on my pc, that notification disappears. Why can't it work on iOS too???

It can, but right now it's up to developers to implement it and they just don't bother.

It does, but the application has to support it. All of the apps I use sync their notification state, but unless you have iCloud disabled it sounds like the Discord developers specifically may not.

Not sure anything productive will come out of a sweeping title which turns out to his subjective opinion about a few UI features being different than what he’s used to, especially for relatively niche operations. It’s unclear what makes him fiddle with Bluetooth or WiFi so much more than average – joining lots of private WiFi networks? – but it seems like this is Apple optimizing the mainstream use-case, which isn’t exactly unexpected.

Notifications are an interesting case because his logical model doesn’t match the system’s (badges numbers are not just a notification counter - for example, my newsreader & podcast app badge unread items), or which apps he’s using which don’t sync notification state across devices as all of the Apple apps and most mainstream ones do, but also what I think of as a war of attrition trying to have the UI cope with abusive app developers. The App Store ToS disallows marketing spam but if the app is pushing that line, you really should disable notifications or, better, delete it and leave a negative review — trying to filter spam is a losing game when you’re doing it part-time and the developers has a team trying to exploit your attention.

My biggest peeve is that the Bluetooth toggle doesn’t ape you to turn Bluetooth off completely. It only puts it in some low power idle mode or something.

The decision was made for apple watch and airpods to keep the connection I think.

To turn Bluetooth really off, one has to go to settings > Bluetooth, then toggle.

Why would you ever want to turn bluetooth off?

1) that's completely irrelevant, if there is a toggle switch for bluetooth, then changing it to off should switch bluetooth....off. I hate Apple constantly pretending they know better what I want to do with my device than I do. If there is a use case here(keeping BLE working for watches and trackers...then make this option explicit in settings)

2) Since I imagine you'd like an example anyway - because I want to prevent my device from automatically connecting to headphones/speakers/cars that it has been paired to in the past.

I got your back: Shortcuts. Shortcuts on iOS lets you create (even location based automated!) actions. Also a single button on your home screen to disable your BT and / or WiFi.

BTW the Bluetooth button USED to turn BT off (same for WiFi) but it was changed to "do not connect to all visible BT devices for one hour" since so many people forgot to re enable their BT / WiFi and complained. So for you and me it is unwanted behaviour, for plenty of others it is now more what they expect.

Thank you for this. I had heard of the shortcuts allowing you to achieve this but never got around to it.

Took me all of 10 seconds to set it up, thank you.

I agree with point 1.

My phone never connects to pre-paired devices when in low-power mode (Apple-off) though.

In fact, I use it to force it to disconnect from devices - sometimes I do that to disconnect the phone from the headphones so I can connect them to another device without powering them off.

BLE is mostly for beacons, to find and suggest hotspots, airdrop, etc.

bluetooth beacon tracking in retail settings

Avoiding undesired connections to Bluetooth headphones and battery consumption.

The easy toggle prevents Bluetooth headphone/speaker connections without breaking everything else which uses Bluetooth.

Power consumption is extremely low – rather than trying to micromanage that, you’ll see far more savings from using low-power mode earlier or uninstall the top consuming apps.

That's... exactly what the toggle does, though? It remains barely active for things like AirDrop, but toggling it "off" turns it off in any way the average person would expect, and it definitely doesn't try to establish new connections, or even maintain existing connections, when turned "off."

On the subject of notifications, clearing notifications on other devices does clear the notification on iOS too, assuming the developer of that app implemented and designed for that behavior.

It is true that clearing a notification may not clear the app badge, but that's because there's a distinction between clearing and dismissing notifications. To dismiss a notification, you have to view it, either by pulling down the notification banner as it comes in, or long pressing; that peeks at the notification, and if you pull down on it again, it's dismissed. Otherwise, if you clear the notification, it's assumed that you have not viewed it (since you can bulk clear and not have to interact with every notification individually). This may not be straightforward at first, but at least I prefer that it fails safe for the user, and they don't miss a notification they accidentally swiped away. I hear notifications on iOS 15 are coming closer to the Android experience, if that helps.

On the subject of getting to the settings quicker, at least on iOS 15 you can get to Spotlight search faster.

Regarding auto-correct, it's the first thing I turn off and only keep predictive text, but at least when you do have it on, you get a visual cue that the word has been changed with the word flashing. It would be better if it underlined the word like it does for when it's not sure whether it chose the correct word during dictation.

I would've expected something more systemically wrong (of which I'm sure there are at least a few) referred to in the article than just a few UI/UX quirks.

Apple's notification management has to be the worst I've ever seen. For a company that has made some serious advances in UI/UX and is single-handedly responsible for Android not being a Blackberry clone, their notifications are absolutely atrocious.

iOS 15 is introducing some welcome changes that I wouldn't mind Android copying in the future, such as notification summaries, but that does little to fix the core issues of iOS notification management.

For me, that was the one gripe that I didnt agree with in the article.

I pretty aggressively manage notifications on my phone. And will selectively disable either the entire thing or the little red bubble depending on their use case.

Also you can clear individual notifications by selecting them or swiping them off. Or you can en-mass delete them, theres an X at the top right of the main banner

For example:

By default most are off. I really dont need notifications from say...Pandora or Zoom or Youtube.

For things that i check, work email, phone calls, texts or chat apps or even TOTP/push like DUO I allow the banners and badges but generally disable sounds.

My kids daycare app that is largely required for basic communication, absolutely abuses the communication feature. Every time a picture is posted you get one, and if they post say...10 you get 10. They ONLY get the bubble, so i know theres something i should check.

This makes it look like theres more work than I put into as well. In general i deny notifications. For those that I want it I allow them and if they abuse it, i simply trim down what is bothering it. Its actually a pretty solid system imho.

This is just a list of some annoyances with iOS. You could make an equally long list about Android.

No, I couldn't.

Top tip for cursor navigation on iOS: long press on the space bar turns the keyboard into a trackpad so you can scoot the cursor around; touch briefly with a second finger to select text.

>I am not sure why android manufacturers struggle so much with the physical aesthetics of their phones, but, to me, iPhones are just prettier.

Maybe something to do with the Rounded Rectangle patent?

iOS also isn't as good at home screen layout; moving an icon causes others to jump around. Despite visually being a grid, the icons are internally modeled as single line that wraps like text. If you add or remove an icon from a higher row, every icon below it moves, including jumping between rows. I can understand how this mistake was made before the app store, but it's bizarre that it hasn't been corrected.

Was expecting some angle on privacy/security here given recent buzz. Disappointed to find that this was some complaints about UI with a strong 'stop liking things that I don't like' vibe.

All of the author's complaints are also... incredibly minor. I understand small UI quirks can make a big impact but this is stuff any OS can fix (or make worse) in a single update.

How did this make it to the front page with the very real concerns going on? Its about extremely minor UX issues that while annoying aren't exactly equivalent to the privacy issues right now iOS users are dealing with.

The author clearly used the fact most people never click on a link to read it to their advantage to get an incredibly meh blog post to the front.

Both the UX and the privacy issues on iOS are symptoms of the user having absolutely no control (zero) of the system software.

If we are going to discuss or compare privacy with iOS and Android we should look at the privacy issues of Android.

While I am bothered by the latest privacy issues with iOS, I also realize that Android is terrible at privacy. Right now there is no mainstream option with good privacy.

Actually I'm glad this is getting some attention. Apple's notification center, especially across devices, is a mess - or to be charitable, there's lots of room for improvement! Though it may seem these are extremely minor UX issues, they're actually rather major: they prevent the notification center from being actually usable.

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