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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

The iPhone ran tons of ads showing people how to navigate and use swipes and pinch-to-zoom before the product was released. That's really not an obvious thing to do with a phone, if you've never seen it before.

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Yes. There's also the Apple Stores where you can play with them, so it was already clear in the mind of early adopters how to use it.

Cleverly subtle.

It seems that 2 year old babies that have never seen the ads knew how to do these things just fine. Heck, there are even videos of cats playing with an iPad and getting it to scroll and such.

Swipe with finger to scroll, tap to press, and even pinch-to-zoom are as basic interaction as interaction goes. You only need a second to get them if shown, and most people can even discover them instantly without being shown.

It still takes a 2 year old time to learn, same for a cat. They don't instantly get it.

Scrolling isn't bad, but getting to different pages on the homescreen isn't obvious for example. And pre-iPhone, most people had no experience with multitouch. Mouse trackpads would just get confused if you used two fingers! So pinch-to-zoom may be a basic interaction, but people still had to be (re)trained to use it.

The Windows "tutorial" item in question is a shortcut for switching to recent applications. The equivalent action on iOS is either a four-finger swipe to the right, or else double-tapping the home button, then tapping on an app. These are obvious to 2 year old babies and cats?

No, but "switch to recent applications" is not a basic action.

It's actually an action you might not even use at all -- since you can do it in another way (home and click the app you want to open next).

It's not a common action since using apps is mostly a seggregated affair. Now you use this, after some time you go and use that. You don't usually flip from one to the next all the time.

Sure, and that's the case on Windows too. You can launch and switch exclusively through the start screen and never use the recent-apps swipe. It's just included in the tutorial popups for whatever reason (maybe because Windows users are expected to be more keen on multitasking, given its desktop heritage and since that's a point of differentiation for Windows vs. the iPad).

My young daughters (5 and 7) have figured out the Windows 8 swipe commands by themselves, without the tutorial. They're surprisingly fast and adept at it. Even tiling the windows (to share files, or to run Skype on one side and desktop Chrome on the other) apparently comes "naturally" to them.

But that is because 2 year old babies see their parents doing those gestures on that shiny black square and try to imitate them. I have a dumb phone with actual keyboard. My kid grew up watching me use it and understands the concept of keys and doesn't touch the screen. I was with a friend's kid (about same age) and his whole family has iPhones and the kid just kept touching my phones monitor ignoring the keys completely.

Can't speak for cats as I don't have one.

The main complain is not the "education" thing. It is the compulsory nature of it and the fact that Windows even mis-detected a digital pen as a touch interface that makes it totally useless and rather annoying.

compulsory

I keep seeing this idea around Win 8 discussions. You aren't compelled to buy it.

So a company no longer offers a product you like, that doesn't mean you have to buy something you don't like from them.

Even if you do have to buy, you make the choice - Win 8 and trade offs or Mac or Linux or Chromebook or second hand Win 7. It's not compulsory that you have Win 8.

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