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Comment by Telaneo | Hacker News Reader

I've been really disappointed in iOS 26 for this reason. I thought it was going in the completely wrong direction, but maybe that was just me being grumpy. Then I noticed that the less computer savvy were having an absolutely abysmal time with it. We're back to computers being really hard for the normies, with apparently no mainstream option that's simple and easy for Grandma.

Unless you want to ship her over to Linux Mint or something similarly not mainstream, but actually user friendly.

I doubt Jobs would have let things get this bad. He would have been ruthless if he had noticed the setup and nagging being this bad.

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Jobs seemed like he actually used everything himself, and he wanted a good experience as a customer. I don’t actually believe Tim Cook uses most of the stuff Apple makes, nothing beyond the basics, and he’s likely willing to compromise that experience to increase the stock price.

I’m still of the opinion that iOS 6 was peak iPhone. Say what you will about skeuomorphism, it was easy to understand, apps were visually unique from one another, and the friendly UI was a nice juxtaposition to the clean minimalist hardware.

I loved skeuomorphism. It seemed to add some human touch to apps.

+1, may be the style and graphics design needs some updating. But I love the idea.

Yes flat/material design makes UIs so much harder to read.

iOS6 peak iPhone? Finally someone says it! Also buttons had titles like “Done“ instead of icons, touches wouldn‘t end in accidental swipes all the time and Safaris toolbar was fixed.

All things I recently failed to explain to an elderly person.

> I’m still of the opinion that iOS 6 was peak iPhone.

You’re not alone. The release of iOS7 basically took us from having one OS that didn’t constantly confuse the non-tech-savvy, back to having zero of those. And it’s gotten a little better in a couple releases, but overall the trend is that it’s moving even farther from that over time.

iOS 6 really was the sweet spot. It had personality, clarity, and just enough visual cues to guide users without being overwhelming

The question is then, what are these people using instead?

The problem with design is the incentive to rehaul everything for gain.

Even if we arrive at a design that's already optimal for user's, economic forces will always force it to change.

>> We're back to computers being really hard for the normies

I'm not sure that smartphones qualify as computers anymore, they feel more like pop-up picture books that only work when you now how to finesse them. And unfortunately that UX has been bleeding into computer OSes for a while now, most notably with the decimation of scrollbars.

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