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Comment by felipemesquita | Hacker News Reader

The main issue I see older people have with iPhones is unrelated to ui complexity. iOS’ worst parts are services/updates where the user is frequently asked for Apple ID passwords and shown confusing ads for Apple services like iCloud Photo Library that end up making photos more complicated to use as some pictures are now unavailable without internet. More parts of the iOS experience are getting unnecessarily tangled with server side services that require unpredictable prompts to get acceptance to terms and conditions, logins, and traps that make you set up two factor auth or buy an unnecessary subscription.

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These things are the bane of my existence with my Mom's iphone. She is blind but is not able to use all the swiping/tapping features of Voiceover due to a tremor. She mostly uses the phone with Siri only and that works well enough until a popup decides to appear.

I agree that apple prompts for iCloud passwords way too frequently and doesn’t have the ability to authorize with another device (despite the fact that you could reset your password from another device).

“Type your password to buy this item on the App Store”. Why?

> “Type your password to buy this item on the App Store”. Why?

Because store items can be quite expensive (particularly the microtransactions), and it's using a stored credit card. I too get bugged by the plethora of prompts, but this is a good example of when to use one. Plus, after doing it once you can tie it back to Face ID or Touch ID and not have to enter it again for quite some time.

Store items have much, much less value than your personal data on the device and that can be accessed just with your passcode.

Financial transactions are held to a higher standard (i.e. there's a bunch of laws around them) than device access. That said, you can make your device passcode as complex as your Apple ID password if it's a tradeoff you're willing to make.

Device asks me to type my kid’s password in. Kid is in my family group. After authorizing my kid, I have to still approve on my device. If I forget kid’s password, I can reset on my device.

Zero extra security forcing me to type in his iCloud password on his device, especially given I have typed it in the passed.

It’s not financial requirements but instead layziness.

It's nevertheless that the password vs biometric challenge seems to be more-or-less at random.

My theory is there is a server glitch that causes it to default to type password in.

E.g. if the token can’t be refreshed.

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