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Comment by emadabdulrahim | Hacker News Reader

The cursor on iPadOS is a game-changer and arguably one of the very few noteworthy UI/UX innovations of the last few years.

IMO it is incredibly well implemented and thought through. And it works amazingly well and serves a clear purpose for the medium which is iPadOS with all of its design details.

In the user interface/interaction world, I'd go as far as calling it genius.

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Can you explain why? I mentioned some of my actual issues with it in my critique, which were neither addressed nor even explained away as an acceptable sacrifice in exchange for the many real benefits it provides. I’m legitimately curious what actual big problems you believe it uniquely and amazingly solves. For the record, I think it’s great to simply be delighted by the feature — but if I understand correctly, you think it goes above and beyond that into real “for the history books” usability. That’s why I find it a bit strange that you spent 3 paragraphs saying it’s genius, but didn’t mention one actual problem it solves or capability it enables, let alone what makes it one of the few noteworthy innovations in all of UI and UX in the last few years (which is really saying something considering it has competition like “Scan Text” in photos which is really Sci-Fi incredible stuff that still makes me think “what did I do before this?”).

Adaptive precision to match the OS and the different tasks the OS accomplishes.

This video explains in more details the thought process behind the design decisions. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640/

How is it special?

Explains the design process and the why: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640/

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