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Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

I recently had to get printing working for a family member on an Apple tablet. I'm not an Apple jockey so it took me a while to sort out and I've being using computers since 1980 and consulting since 1995.

You tap an icon that looks like the outline of a rectangle with an arrow pointing up. Then you tap the name of the printer. Then you tap another rectangle with an up arrow and then tap the word "Print".

I may have got the precise steps wrong but it really is that abstruse to print something on a tablet. Never mind that mDNS/Bonjour has done its thing - the steps to actually indicate that you want to print is frankly weird.

What on earth is that box with an up arrow actually supposed to mean? Why does the interface switch from icons to text?

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It's supposed to be the "Share" menu, but that stopped meaning anything very fast because they just crammed everything into it for lack of other UX for system services.

Macs have the problem multiple times over, because now they have the normal menu bar and toolbar, and a Share menu that just gets arbitrary stuff dumped into by App Store apps, and the Services menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and the Quick Actions menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and some services can just add things directly to right click menus.

Apple UI designers wanted to avoid the Android hamburger so much that they doubled-down on the share menu to duplicate hamburger menu functionality.

I guess printing it to paper is a form of sharing so they may have the last laugh.

Windows Explorer supports its own equivalent to the "Share" menu, dubbed "Send To". It was there already in the original Windows 9x. Printers are generally not listed though, there is a separate "Print" option instead.

There's a very reasonable argument behind that, though.

"Sending" a file to another disc or on the network is non-transformative. At the far end, it's still a file.

But "printing" is inherently transformative-- you're expecting to get something clearly not a file (print-to-file pseudo-printers excepted).

I can see the desire for minimalism-- having seperate rows for "share/send" and "print" is, well, two seperate rows. But if you offer adaptable and configurable interfaces, I could see suppressing one or both depending on context or user preferences. (You have no external drives or registered share-recipients? No "Send To/Share")

Obligatory:

https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-ne...

Maybe I've been in Linux land too long but sending a file to a printer seems pretty obvious to me. Yes it's transformative in a way, but you could equally argue that my word document with A4 layout is a digital version of a document, and the print out is equivalent.

To me there seems to be more difference between sending and share. One is pushing something somewhere, the other implies making it available for someone/thing to pull.

I'm not particularly saying you're wrong btw. We are talking metaphors, and there's no 'correct' way to do it.

Good point. Its a mess. Come on apple get someone to fix this

Android uses the 'share' icon to represent the same thing, which is maybe a little more legible, but still feels like shoving way too many actions under a confusing modal they shouldn't be in. Even worse when apps implement a custom share dialog.

I usually see the Android share icon with the word share. Apple doesn't often present words with icons, so if you don't already know what the icon means, it's difficult to find out.

Arguably, it's a bit off that you share a document with a printer in order to print it, but I feel like printing is no longer so common as to require a dedicated button everywhere; and printing from a phone still seems like a novelty to me (but I do use it; it feels odd, but useful and I know lots of people have no computer to print from)

It's called the Action icon, a generalisation of its original Share meaning. It's used throughout the Apple ecosystem so knowing that's where actions live is not a big expectation.

You've mangled the steps. You only press one Action icon in this sequence, then you select Print, then you need to select the printer and any other options, then you tap Print. Which of these steps do you think 'abstruse'?

Are you suggesting they should use a little icon of a printer, peripheral that takes many wildly different forms, instead of the word Print?

There's a printer icon in windows and *nix. Many icons represent things that have wildly different forms. People and cars look different, but road signs manage to portray these things.

We've had clear, legible printer icons for decades.

OK so Action.

I may have got the steps wrong but I do recall that the Action icon was again to the left of the Print text that performed the actual print.

Again, why does the UI switch from icons to text arbitrarily? If Action is Action then label it Action and not an icon of a broken rectangle with an up arrow. That means nothing and is abstruse.

I'm an IT consultant and my step mum is not. Neither of us had any idea what the Action icon means. I do now (it's now filed along with burger menu and other UI wankery).

An icon of a printer is at least relatable. That Action thingie isn't.

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