The iPod’s Dark UI Pattern
blog.sefsar.com
blog.sefsar.com
This is a UI concept that has had a lot of usability testing on the Desktop. Personally, I feel tapping through hierarchical menus on a mobile device is just the wrong way to go about organizing/using the system.
I totally agree. I love the edge swiping introduced in iOS 7.
The core issue is it breaks a core UI convention, clicking back and stopping at the beginning, just to push a few more people into a shopping portal. Coming from UX, that's probably the most brazen abuse of Apple's previous good name in design and user experience.
I have personally hit that button accidentally many times while trying to get back to the albums view and waiting for the animations to finish in exactly the way this article describes. I did not want to go to the iTunes store! I just wanted to pick another album on my phone and now I have to double tap the button and navigate back to the music app.
Not only is Apple's pie chart used for telling lies here, I would argue that all pie charts are used for telling lies.
The only thing a pie chart gives you is it tells you that everything in a category adds up to 100%. It doesn't tell you what 100% is, or why 100% is good, or bad, or let you compare across charts, or set goals.
You can accomplish this same thing with a bullet graph, developed by Stephen Few. You make a bar chart, then put a line through it to represent your goal (or 100%). Then, it's simple to compare multiple categories and model very complex information in a simple to understand way.
So remember this: The next time you see a pie chart, know that someone is lying or trying to appear more impressive than they actually are.
The worst part about this particular way of graphing information is that it's so ingrained in our culture (it's taught in Kindergarden), that people don't even understand that they're lying, even when they are.
However I fail to see how they are lying because they used a pie chart... back in 2008 they are saying that Apple had roughly 20% of the market share of smart phones.
They are vague in explaining whether they are measuring - devices sold, devices in use, devices pre-ordered... however that would be the case whether they used a bar graph, line graph, or just gave the raw numbers.
Now, get a set of bar charts and do the same thing.
In both experiments time the participants. You'll need two groups, a group that knows they're being timed and one that doesn't know.
What group was more accurate? What group was able to complete the exercise faster?
Here's a side by side of the same information in these two different forms: http://speakingppt.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/stephen-fe...
The reason that using pie charts is, in and of itself, a dark pattern is because the results of this experiment support bar charts as a more concise, more easily understood way of communicating information. In other words, the only real reason you'd use a pie chart is to obfuscate information. Or, well... to lie. If you're just using it because you don't know better, then you're negligent and misleading people without even knowing it.
Is that their fault? I don't entirely think so. You might be able to claim they should have done the research before choosing that type of graph but the majority of people are not even going to give pie charts a second thought.
If there was an active campaign against pie charts and more discussion I might find fault in that persons ignorance to the matter.
The misuse of language is another way to mislead and confuse people -- intential or not.
We should strive for accuracy in words and charts!
Although I agree they are generally bad
"I have a feeling, this is just the tip of the ice-berg." A little over-dramatic at the end there.
Where they talk about how hard it is to disable iOS ad tracking.
As mentioned in another comment, the setting was buried in IOS 6, in iOS 7 it is in the Privacy section, has a link to a page that explains what the setting can and can't do (you still get ads but they won't be as targeted) and also let's you manually reset the advertising identifier at any time.
I'm not aware of anything similar or better on any platform.