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Comment by itsoktocry | Hacker News Reader

>Believe it or not, they mostly figured it all out pretty easily. They still get confused and scared by FB video calls coming in, but otherwise are able to talk, text, use social media, etc. So much so they even bought an iPad.

For the 99% of use cases elderly people have with a phone, what exactly is it you imagine that Apple is doing better than Android? You click an icon to text, phone or browse the web. The experience is nearly identical.

The idea that Android has lots of customization, but Apple doesn't, is a myth; even Apple has far more options to tweak than the average use is ever going to have to get into.

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We had that same experience. My wife’s grandmother was 90-something when I got her an Android tablet thinking it would be easy to set up. She kept doing stuff that broke the experience for her. It would go home when she was trying to do something else, and wouldn’t go home when she wanted to. I can’t remember everything but it was enough to really frustrate her. After a while switched to an iPad and 90% of the issues went away. Only one that didn’t was taking a pic with a camera. There was something we couldn’t sort: (IIRC, it’s been a while) moving the red button to the left instead of right side so her good hand could click it easily. And she sometimes still turns wifi off. But that’s it, and she’s now 103. Maybe they’re better now. Not going to test that!

The problem I guess I was referring to was options between mfgs. Pixel's Android isn't Samsung's Android, which isn't Oneplus's Android, and so on. Not just different looks and layouts, all different default apps, settings menus, features, and so on. Heck my wife even gets frustrated between Samsung updates, as they often change something she can't figure out how to get back.

Generally if you ask any IPhone user how to do X, or even Google it, the results should work exactly the same on your phone. This is definitely -not- the case for Android.

Consistency throughout the user experience and, most importantly, consistency through time.

Macos ui is largely frozen in 2002ish

IOS is frozen in 2008ish

This is why blind people only ever use iOS.

(Linux user myself)

Apple moved off skeuomorphism in 2013. I agree there haven’t been big changes since then except maybe the deep press.

Someone who uses the word "skeuomorphism" is probably a domain expert and notices every little change.

Most people you talk to dont notice any change until they pick up a device not updated for the better part of a decade

I cannot align the 3 apps the person uses on the thumb side of the home screen and have the rest unused. I have no dedicated back button THIS IS THE WORST for a 98 year old with very shaky hands.

Consistency? Everything is all over the place for different apps.

The back button is probably the biggest thing keeping me from an android. Every time I’m handed an android to look at something that stupid button gets triggered.

that is a thing you can disable for a long time

Sounds like (assistive access)[https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welc...] is what you want as it solves both of these. It gives full app placement control to you and an always on screen back button.

> This is why blind people only ever use iOS.

That's not why. It's because iOS has great features for the blind, and iOS developers care about accessibility and making good apps.

Also.

But if you're blind, I bet youd hate the UI you cant see and you've memorized changing under you.

That's the same for blind as seeing...

> Consistency throughout the user experience and, most importantly, consistency through time.

> Macos ui is largely frozen in 2002ish

> IOS is frozen in 2008ish

This is verifiably extremely incorrect? Lots of things about the core UX of both platforms have changed since then. Heck, even turning an iPhone off isn't as simple as "press and hold the power button" anymore.

Now do Windows. Circa 2002, so you're baseline is XP. Go through those UI changes and the change backs.

Don't forget the detours! At one point (purportedly) MS had a phone and they made their desktop look like a phone UI.

Heck, Ill double down.

Go back to the late 80s and compare Mac GUI to window's. There are still important themes in the Mac UI that remain, specifically the menu bar at the top. I could get around System 1.0 even though Ive never touched a classic OS mac.

Win 2.0? I grew up with pre-95 windows and Id be completely lost.

Id go further back, but then Id be comparing a GUI to a TUI. (Which to be fair are superior to GUIs)

Android phone will randomly stop working for some reason nobody's ever heard of and possibly with specifics tied to whatever particular phone you got, that's what Apple does better. That and not getting viruses.

Funny, for me its opposite. And I never saw a virus on Android in the last 10 years.

If you know how to use a phone, you won't get any viruses. My friend's elderly mother on the other hand...

Simple example: Android has a airplane mode toggle in the notification tray, iPhone does not. No surprise that once I put my elderly family on iPhones all problems of accidently enabling airplane mode magically went away.

Nearly everything UX related is better in iOS.

Default logo sizes are larger, settings menus are basically the same no matter the device, software and hardware are coupled and designed by the same company making everything snappier. The subtle.design difference also come into play.

I use Android myself, but it is a fact that Apple is superior in UX, which is unsurprising given that they are obsessed with UX as a company in general and the whole ecosystem is designed by themselves alone, while Android is designed and developed by many players. Even a 2 year old can use iPhones and iPads.

> Nearly everything UX related is better in iOS

That's funny because I heard my friend say this at work yesterday when I suggested that he should gift his mother an iPhone:

"Oh my mother would have too much difficulty switching from Android to iOS. I know because I use iPhone and things that have dedicated buttons in some Android phones are gestures in iOS. Like the back button for example."

I must live in a parallel world because to me Apple is the king of hidden shortcuts which are hard to discover for beginners.

Multiple fingers gestures doing different things, hidden swipe menus and features depending on the offset of where you swiped, that's all very hard for non experienced users.

Not that Android is perfect, I'd say it's still not great either in that regard but the UI is more discoverable for sure for beginners.

I really miss the win2k era in terms of user research and UX, sure it didn't look the best on screenshots but it was made to be as discoverable as possible.

> Multiple fingers gestures doing different things, hidden swipe menus and features depending on the offset of where you swiped, that's all very hard for non experienced users.

I can't think of any of those which are _required_, though. They are shortcuts, sure, but do not need to be known to use the device.

I completely agree. Hell I do mobile development and still play “find the magical long press/swipe/spot to manage an item on this ui”

It has zero ability to be discovered.

Its not good but so many people are decades entrenched they do not think about how annoying it is

The best example I had of the same (started with Amstrad CPC, then Amiga, PC ... software engineer for almost two decades).

I couldn't find "Find on page" on iOS/Safari, so I did a Google search on how to so it - result snippet on Google was cut and actual results page was full page of forum replies, and I was having trouble finding it by just scrolling.

Now years later (and only Android) I forgot, it was something rather non intuitive where they've hidden that option.

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