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Comment by empyrrhicist | Hacker News Reader

As if they put any effort whatsoever into teaching or UI discoverability these days. If there was a tutorial app I would have used it, but I have repeatedly had to use Google to find unrelated blog sites describing how to accomplish things in the iOS interface.

Cynically, it feels like they think everyone should already "just know" how the various gestures work, which is obnoxious and user hostile.

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As someone who only occasionally has to use macOS and iOS for work. The gestures and key combos required to do even the most basic things are insane.. and there is (almost) zero discoverability or affordances for them. On iOS gestures with multiple fingers, on macOS keyboard shortcuts with 3 or 4 keys.

I also dont often use Linux, but I could try some new distro with a completely different windows manager I have never seen before and I can figure it out and be happily computing in no time.

apple stuff always requiring searching on the internet to find out how how to do even most basic functions.

Also, not relevant, but I gotta mention as it grinds my gears so bad.. The only reason I have to use macOS is that it's required to build to iOS, which is just uniquely egregious. That sort of business should actually be illegal. Hopefully it will be in EU soon.

> there is zero discoverability

The shortcuts associated with menu items are shown in the menu item. I realize that there other discovery problems with keyboard shortcuts (on all platforms) but there is non-zero discoverability for "the most basic things" on Mac OS.

Gesture discoverability is much closer to zero, IMHO.

Yeah fair enough, I was being hyperbolic, edited my comment to be more accurate.

what you mean most people don't go explore every single page of the System Preferences when they get a new computer and look at all the helpful animations in the Gestures pane, I'm shocked

(yeah this is the computing equivalent of a locked file cabinet in a disused toilet stall in a dark basement with a sign on the door that says "Beware The Leopard")

> yeah this is the computing equivalent of a locked file cabinet in a disused toilet stall in a dark basement with a sign on the door that says "Beware The Leopard"

OTOH it makes complete sense to have a look at the Trackpad pane to see how it works. It’s not like it’s hidden behind a defaults command line, and it even has movies. It’s much worse on phones.

macOS help menus are incredibly useful, system preferences is helpful, and support.apple.com actually has some useful guides. Apple also provides free training sessions at Apple Stores, and free remote support 24/7 AFAIK through AppleCare.

What do you expect? Unskippable videos when you first set up a mac followed by a mandatory test that you have to pass before you can use the computer?

Mac OS Help menu search is spectacular for discoverability. Start typing what you want and it pops up the menu with an arrow and it shows you the shortcut.

Everyone else does it worse, except maybe the VSCode command palette.

This is the only thing I miss about macos. Last Mac used was snow leopard and I _still_ sometimes find myself wishing for menu search on Linux

How do you discover key combos in Linux?

You read the man page/documentation for the software you installed that they're for, or else you defined them yourself and don't need to discover them.

Apple also provides ample documentation

Sure, but the complaint was discoverability, my point is that on Linux you start with something you don't need to discover: you either defined the shortcut yourself, or you installed something that defines it by default. There are no 'system shortcuts'.

Generally speaking, you dont actually need them in Linux, you can do everything with mouse.. however you can't actually use macOS without them.

>if there was a tutorial app I would have used it..

Isn't that the Tips App? I'm pretty sure it gets recommended every time you set up a new phone. Mine has a tip on using Haptic Touch with the keyboard to move the insertion point.

I just looked at that for the first time, there's some neat stuff. Didn't know you can define actions for tapping on the back of the phone, even works with my case.

Not only is there a tutorial app ("Tips") but you receive a notification pointing you towards it shortly after setting up a new iOS device. Also after major iOS updates. So... Yeah I suppose you're making their point for them, to an extent.

Does this apply to iPads? I had mine set up by my employer and don't think I've seen a prompt. I also don't recall seeing this on an iPhone SE I had, so maybe discover ability would be better than popups for a tips app.

As I understand it 3D touch's functionality per app depended on the app author, so the discoverability problem is not that simple.

One way to do discoverability here is to make a suggestion if you notice the user hoping around between texts during typing.

Absolutely not. Machines and software that interrupt users are Kafkaesque torture devices. Hell is full of Clippies and microwaves that repeatedly beep for eternity.

There's got to be a tactful way to do this without interrupting users. If anyone's got some good examples I'd like to take a look.

The thing some email clients do where they say “did you mean to attach something” is the one I love.

I’d like a Mark II version which also says “there is no such thing as Sunday 8th of August this year” so that I can fix my errors before they cause problems.

It's just fundamentally a bad idea. Software should never, ever bother the user during use about how it's being used. That's what tutorials and documentation are for.

No matter how clever and subtle you think you're being, you're still just redirecting the user's attention from the task at hand toward the UI itself. No matter how ignorable, dismissable, or optional it is, it's an abysmal UI failure and it shouldn't even happen once. Make the feature right in the first place and you won't have to resort to nagging.

I wouldn't mind having a shortcut or "I'm stuck" button that would try to figure out what my issue was based on my last 5 minutes of activity.

> If there was a tutorial app I would have used it

There is/was - it's called Tips, and most people ignore or uninstall it.

Its an interesting refutation and confirmation of my point.

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