Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

Sure. iPhones and the Apple desktop OS. In both of them, I am lost as to how to accomplish anything but the most common stuff. The design of the OSes is such that it's not obvious how to do anything, and they provide very little guidance. You have to already know how to do what it is you're trying to do.

This is even worse on Apple smartphones, because a lot of stuff is done using mystery gestures that you have to already have memorized.

Skeuomorphism used to provide a small amount of relief, but since that's gone out of fashion, it eliminated even those clues.

In short, I find Apple's user interfaces to be very opaque. In fairness to Apple, this is also true of Android, Windows, and Gnome. But in the case of Android, it feels intuitive to me simply because I've internalized how to do the stuff that it gives no hint as to how to do.

View on HN

I’m actually curious about specifics here for macOS aside from things like hidden scroll bars. Mainly because I find it to be one of the most discoverable. If you go into the ‘help’ menu in any application, you get a search box that searches all the menus of the application, if a shortcut exists for the action it’s listed alongside it. Admittedly Qt and KDE can do this too, but only for QT apps, while on macOS it’s every app that actually provides menus. Nearly every application handles files and actions the same way, and take the same common shortcuts for things like preferences. If I want to see shortcuts for system actions, they’re all listed in the keyboard control panel, and arbitrary shortcuts for arbitrary applications can be added there. I can’t name another system that feels as integrated and discoverable in that sense, except possibly KDE or gnome running ONLY apps developed specifically for that toolkit.

What system(s) do you find more discoverable, and how? I’m honestly curious because I love checking our new systems or window managers and it’s bugged me not to have some of this elsewhere for a while.

How do you show hidden folders in Finder? You literally have to memorize a keyboard shortcut. How do you switch apps in full screen mode, you need to know trackpad gestures or keyboard shortcuts. Every post like 2004 addition to MacOS seems to be reliant on trackpad gestures to the point using the operating system with a mouse is a negative.

The search bar in the menu is fine if there is a menu to search. IIRC or at least last time I used it the screenshot tool had no menus and was extremely unclear as to how to save a screenshot as a file in the location you actually want.

The screenshot tool is pretty tightly coupled to shortcuts that’s certainly true. I actually didn’t know there was a keyboard shortcut for hidden files and folders, it can be toggled through the preference menu for finder, but again yeah that’s not as discoverable as it should be. Switching apps in full screen mode would be using the dock. I never do, but it works just fine and it’s the way you switch apps with a mouse, also using cams+tab works with the system set to follow space of selected application which is set by default.

To your point about trackpads though, I agree. I can’t stand a mouse on macOS, it loses too much convenience, especially with BTT available.

That said, is there any system today that you find more discoverable? I mean serenityOS actually fits that bill, and classics like older macOS or windows 98, but anything modern?

> How do you switch apps in full screen mode, you need to know trackpad gestures or keyboard shortcuts.

The Dock also works, although you have to move the pointer downwars to show it. In a lot of ways Clicking on Icons is MacOS foundation mode and everything else is superfluous. I, as a Poweruser, forget that sometimes.

> IIRC or at least last time I used it the screenshot tool had no menus and was extremely unclear as to how to save a screenshot as a file in the location you actually want.

The Screenshot tool btw. is also an App under Applications → Utilities. If you use that, you’ll get a floating palette with different options including for different locations. Those options then get also used by the Poweruser ⇧⌘n shortcuts.

(I don’t necessary disagree with you, there is too much invisible navigation.)

And that screenshot tool does not have anything in the global menu. That was my point.

That screenshot utility is also accessible with ⇧⌘5, which might be invisible, but just letting you know.

As for where to save that screenshot, that is available in the Options section of the floating menu.

> How do you show hidden folders in Finder?

You don't. They are hidden. If you are supposed to see them they shouldn't be hidden.

I understand that other operating systems make a different choice about this, but that doesn't make their choice is the correct one.

⇧⌘.

Or hold down the option key while right clicking things or in certain dialog boxes. I guess that's not horrible if you internalize that fact but it's not discoverable.

I’ll give you a very specific example. When turning on the flashlight, I have to hold the flashlight icon for a specific period of time. If I hold too long, I get the dimmer option. If I don’t hold long enough, it doesn’t turn on. The iphone expects what feels to me like a zen-like stoner’s calm press of the button. This is absolutely infuriating to me. Every time. Just turn the damn light on when I press the button.

Did you know that you can hold the spacebar to move your cursor around on iOS? Without my friend telling me about that feature, I also found text selection in iOS to be deeply frustrating as compared to Android

My Dad is going through ALS and keeps accidentally turning on his flashlight. And is then unable to turn it off. So many UI choices in iOS just seem poorly thought out.

> I’ll give you a very specific example. When turning on the flashlight, I have to hold the flashlight icon for a specific period of time. If I hold too long, I get the dimmer option. If I don’t hold long enough, it doesn’t turn on. The iphone expects what feels to me like a zen-like stoner’s calm press of the button. This is absolutely infuriating to me. Every time. Just turn the damn light on when I press the button.

I just tested this on my phone (albeit it is an iPhone 8, so a bit older model perhaps without as many features). A short tap is sufficient to turn it on and off. A longer tap brings up the intensity slider. I was unable to tap the icon quickly enough so as not to register the tap and toggle the flashlight.

Upon retesting a couple times, I did notice that on the first tap the icon is illuminated but it did take a split second more for the actual flashlight to turn on. But waiting the split second was sufficient instead of further tapping.

I’m using the menu that is pulled up while the phone is unlocked (by dragging from the bottom of the screen, on my model), for reference.

The iOS UI has to determine intent from touch input, so as more gesture-based controls have been added, the OS needs to figure out what you're trying to do. Tap. Tap and drag. Scroll. Slide. Whatever. If your intent is one action, but your inputs don't match the actual requirement for what you want to do, you get bizarre behavior.

For the flashlight in particular, the button inside the control center can do a few different things—including closing the control center entirely—if you fumble the tap even slightly with an upward push of the thumb. With the Lock Screen, a sliding motion of any kind will just not turn the light on if your slide doesn't begin and end inside of the UI element that you're entirely obscuring the view of with your enormous fingers. You can accidentally open the Lock Screen customizer. It's even possible to get haptic feedback from the lockscreen flashlight button without actually turning it on.

While I don't have any of these problems, I am familiar with them and have observed others struggle. There are accessibility settings that are designed to help (repeated input filters and such) but they all slow the UI down and somehow make it more confusing because the phone is just more likely to do nothing rather than the wrong thing.

How do you Airplay something on Macos Monterrey?

On a multi monitor setup, why is it impossible to drag a window over to a monitor where another window is fullscreened?

How do you select a specific resolution or refresh rate when you're plugged into an older meeting room projector?

You're looking for specifics from people that don't necessarily have them. Not because their reasoning isn't valid, but a lot of us don't use the ecosystem frequently enough for them to be in the foreground of our minds.

I had to use an iPhone for a few weeks when mine broke. That was enough to convince me to never touch any of their products again. I'd love to tell you more about it but it's been 4 years and I just don't remember all of of details. The main thing I remember is that it was anything but intuitive to use and it was an entirely frustrating experience. Easily the worst phone experience I've ever had

This makes sense. The few times I’ve tried to help someone with Android, I had to go very slowly through every single step. The two look pretty similar from afar but are quite different. I can still make my way around Windows because I’ve used it before.

My 70-80+ year old parents can use iOS abd ipados mostly fine but get lots of things wrong on their Mac, so it seems to be a net improvement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com