The problem lies in what's semi-advanced to one is critical or basic to many others. Apple has been known to hide (aka. make subtle) basic operations. How often have you wanted to load a page in 'desktop mode' in mobile Safari? It's there, just invisibly so. The UI does not teach in the name of clean/minimal design which is Apple's way: form over function.
Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut keystrokes into pull down menus.
Theres a lot of armchair design going on here. Obviously there is some sort of balance between showing the user too many options or not enough and making the important stuff obvious without cluttering the UI. I imagine if Apple had gone too far in the other direction (which they would never do IMO) that people would complain there are too many options.
There is definitely room for improvement though. There are some regressions that are too obvious. The recent regression that comes to mind is forcing the end user to go through extra taps to switch the camera between front and back during a FaceTime call when previously it was a one-button click
That change is infuriating. Showing something/someone else on a FT call may be a minority pastime, but it's not exactly a super-obscure use-case.
I seriously doubt there was a groundswell of users complaining they could swap cameras with a single tap.
The other annoying change was putting the End Call button in a panel the bottom right. Regular users have muscle memory, and suddenly they have to relearn one of the main features.
Changes like these are superficial tinkering and make work for the sake of appearances rather than considered, focused development.
Personally, I use the "Request Desktop Mode" features lots! I also moved it so it's the very first option listed for quick access. But I wouldn't do that on my grandma's phone...
While 'desktop mode' is super useful the HN crowd, I don't think most users would benefit from it.
A non-technical user is probably only minimally aware that mobile and desktop sites might have different features at all. And even when you do use it, it might not have the desired affect. I might have been browsing around on "mobile.site.com" for a while and repeating my request with a desktop User-Agent is still going to get me the mobile version. (this happens to me on m.facebook.com) To fix this I have to know how to modify the URL to point to the non-mobile-only version...easy for this crowd, but not for the average user.
Certain CSS @media queries also don't seem to be affected by "Desktop Mode". (It only changes the User-Agent I believe?) So in other situations, it won't work no matter what and that's pretty frustrating/confusing/inconsistent if you don't know the details.
Even if I do succeed, a desktop webpage on mobile can be a pain with all the zooming and zooming out needed. Sometimes desktop sites don't even work properly on mobile browsers! Now...we understand the constraints, but all these details come together to make it a pretty confusing feature for the average user.
I think most users wouldn't get value from this so it's obscure by default...but for the technical types that love this, it's not too hard to figure out how to move this feature to a place where it's convenient to access.
Overall I think the current design is a pretty good balance all things considered.
(though I do wish the ability to move the desktop mode button to the 1st slot was more obvious. Definitely took me a while to figure this out)
hah I only discovered that long-press option just a couple months ago!
Long pressing there also gives me a "request without ad blockers" button which I've found super useful as well. A bit weird this option isn't in the Share Sheet like desktop mode is...
also isn't it weird that this is called the "Share Sheet" but has lots of buttons for non-sharing related things?
Yeah, "request without ad blockers" is great. Very inconsistent that it isn't available in the Share Sheet.
The whole "Share Sheet" is rather confusing. It has three categories of actions in one screen. Potentially useful options are hidden wayyy down the list (like this Request Desktop Option). Even more options are hidden inside "More" menu all the way at the end. Which is also where the re-ordering controls are – although I just realized the icons can be reordered with drag-and-drop.
All in all, not very discoverable for a feature with such high utility.
Steve Jobs was heavily against hidden functionality (sorry there is a word for it I can't remember off the top of my head). It's why Macs had one-button mice for so long. It wasn't until the third major revision of the OS that iPhones got copy+paste!
I think the word you're looking for is discoverability (or perhaps visibility).
The problem with Solaris, Windows, and other desktop workstations at the time was that the second (and even third) mouse buttons were required for many workflows, especially in applications---i.e. a lot of functionality was only available from the right-click menu or via the middle mouse button. This introduced a lot of unnecessary complexity to computer use, especially for new users, because of low visibility and discoverability.
Even today, Mac hardware never has a visible 2nd mouse/trackpad button. Sure, you can click a trackpad with 2 fingers or tap on the right side of a mouse to get a context menu, but keeping the buttons invisible forced these shortcuts to remain just that, and not an essential requirement to get the job done. Windows apps today follow this rule as well -- never make right-clicking the only way to execute a particular function.
This, unfortunately, is slowly going away. The Home app in the new macOS, which has been ported over from iOS, is unusable if you don’t know how to two-finger-tap.
Discoverability is a very hard problem on the small screen. I’m amazed at how often I actually know a function exists, and I try every conceivable type of interaction I can think of to no success. Then I google it.
Damn the little tip about tapping the clock to jump is so handy, I have actually searched for how to do this and never came across a description of this feature.
> Steve Jobs was heavily against hidden functionality (sorry there is a word for it I can't remember off the top of my head). It's why Macs had one-button mice for so long.
That doesn't make sense at all to me: The right click button on a mouse is visible.
The Mac way of hiding it behind the ctrl key was non-discoverable and non-obvious to me.
Every single action that was available in the contextual menu (hidden "behind the ctrl key") was supposed to be available elsewhere as well, typically as an actual app menu item.
I know a few people who - even after trying - can't make "force touch" work properly. I love it and try to show them. But they can't seem to make the effort to learn it.
I know at quite a few people that have not upgraded their iPhone 6-vintage phones simply because they found 3D/force Touch to be a really significantly negative feature, and just flat don't want it.
Apple hides tons of stuff - often so well that they go missing for years. I hate to admit this (I'm an 8-time tech CTO), but I thought that Apple had made the bonehead decision to completely remove the iOS search feature after swiping to the left from the home screen stopped working (iOS 6?). It was literally years (at least iOS 10!) before I accidentally invoked the absolutely opaque "swipe down from the middle of a home screen" gesture to discover search was still possible.
Actually, I wish any modern smartphone OS had half the thought put into it that Palm had 20 years ago. After all this time, nothing even comes close for contact and calendar management, as well as actual phone use!
I had a Palm Pilot, Palm III and Treo, followed by BlackBerry. It wasn’t THAT great, poor graphics, slowness and weird quirks (also graffiti) but I agree it was visionary compared to everything else in the 90s. the blackberry was pretty amazing in 2000 and as a phone was a step up circa 2005. Though the Palm Pre had some great ideas we Are seeing now in iOS and Android. iOS became really good at calendar and contacts by around 2010 if I recall but I lived with it from 2007 onwards.
Whenever a key feature in iOS seems missing I just google for where it went. iOS search is so essential that I couldn’t see it ever removed...
Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut keystrokes into pull down menus
This reminds me that several versions ago, Windows stopped underlining the shortcut keys to the menu items by default --- taking away the only affordance to discovering that the keyboard can be used to more quickly activate the menus. I learned by accident long ago ("what's the Alt key for?"), and have used it since. In contrast, I remember trying to operate a Mac the same way but gave up experimenting with the Alt key and such to try to get the menus to show (I know about the shortcuts, but they are not easily discoverable/explorable in the same way that menus are) --- and only later found out that trying to operate the menus on a Mac from the keyboard is... not very intuitive and disabled by default (why!?!?):
(I'm not sure if the above even apply to pre-OS X --- when I discovered the function of Alt and the underlined keys in Windows, it was the Windows 3.1 era.)
>The problem lies in what's semi-advanced to one is critical or basic to many others.
Well, that's not a dictum to design UIs by. This way everything becomes "critical".
At some point you just use statistics, and if something is critical to fewer people, you can give it lower priority anyway than what most want to use everyday.
Press the share button at the bottom (or next to the address bar in landscape/iPad), then scroll along the list of options at the bottom and you'll see "Request Desktop Site."
I think the trick they are referring to is to go to the site then hold the refresh icon and a menu saying "Request Desktop Site" pops up.
I thought cool, I'll try it with the nyt - It'll be like the original iPhone demo again but no - it goes to a pay screen. Mercury Browser kind of worked though which is an app that "can spoof the UserAgent string to trick websites into thinking the browser is a desktop browser."
"Form over function" is not "Apple's way". Apple's way is function, period, paragraph. And often, what "function" means is, don't bury the user under 200 options they will never use. Make choices. Be willing to say "no" to having every single option front and center.
Added to this is the obvious point that with a touch interface on a small screen, you cannot make everything obvious. It's impossible.
> "Form over function" is not "Apple's way". Apple's way is function, period, paragraph.
I like Apple's design, but that's...definitely not true. You could charitably say that Apple's goal is a seamless marriage of form and function, and they do that better than most. But they have always cared more about aesthetics than any other important developer, of hardware or software.
Exquisitely thin keyboards that don't work reliably, missing ports that need dongles, a touchbar that doesn't really add much and sometimes gets in the way, super-thinness at the expense of extended battery life, and a missing headphone jack are all examples of form over function.
Meanwhile a function-motivated Finder in MacOS would not look anything like the clunky dinosaur we seem to be stuck with.
well, for the imac, the thickness is more than thick enough to handle usb ports, they just taper it off at the edge so certain three quarters shots make it look thinner than it is. there's also a bezel on the front that could be accommodating. i think the bottom of the screen is an obvious choice, or even integrated into the stand. I understand why they don't do any of these things, and I wouldn't put usb ports in the front of an imac either (its very pretty and sleek). but, a theoretical function first machine would certainly have usb ports right in the front. my monitor has usb hub functionality, but they're all in the back, or behind a plastic shroud on the bottom. I don't get it- its an ugly dell monitor anyways, that i bought for the resolution, why not make it uglier and more useful? so yes, its not just apple, and at least they don't seem to have those useless plastic shrouds over cables. but the imac is not a function first machine, not from a cooling perspective, and certainly not from an I/O perspective.
well, older laptops had top mounted hinges that allowed for a lot of I/O real estate on the back. that allowed them to work well on a tight desk, with power, usb hub, whatever coming out the back. for a portable machine, i think most accessible things should be on the sides, and the newer hinges on most laptops that are mounted to the back of the chassis mean that back mounted ports aren't an option. the obvious function first choice is side mounted ports, with a bottom dock with power redundancy and everything else. best of both worlds. i don't know if older laptops are the relevant comparison point to a new imac all in one desktop though. I understand why they are on the back, but its clearly not a function first decision (putting them on the front would be way more functional.
And that's fine, you have other options available to you. Apple's target demographic prefers simplicity first, convenience second, with niche features way down the line... and Apple delivers.
Personally, I prefer the Android ecosystem, and honestly I'd very much prefer even more control than that. In fact, I'm really excited about the Librem 5 project, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Apple. However, many of my friends prefer the Apple experience.
A product doesn't have to cater to everyone. If it tries to, it ends up alienating everyone.
I always thought Apple sold lifestyle/fashion primarily; their target demographic are those that buy in to fashion readily. They're highly concerned with looks and want to pay more to flaunt their wealth.
I've always found the Apple-way, wrt UI, to be different; more confusing for me because I'm used to a different paradigm. But, there's some lock-in effect there, if you start with Apple, you become accustomed to their way and then other "ways" seem more complicated. In practice it seems largely to be just familiarity.
Edit: it's the equivalent to not putting keyboard shortcut keystrokes into pull down menus.