<story><title>Undiscoverable UI Madness</title><url>https://birchtree.me/blog/undiscoverable-ui-madness/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robenkleene</author><text>The difference between macOS and iOS isn&amp;#x27;t about discoverability (although, in one important area macOS far more discoverable that iOS: multi-tasking). The problem with iPadOS is that since all the expert controls are hidden, and there&amp;#x27;s no such thing as shortcuts or right-clicking on iPadOS, it means doing anything useful with iPadOS requires using many slow gestures in succession.&lt;p&gt;macOS, with a combination of Bash, AppleScripts, and system-wide third-party utilities like Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar, provides extraordinarily efficient ways to do powerful things, whereas doing anything on iPadOS is like being stuck in quicksand. Just the minutia of navigating the OS with only Apple&amp;#x27;s provided gestures is so slow and clumsy that I wouldn&amp;#x27;t bother to do anything complicated with it. It just takes so much &lt;i&gt;effort&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s exhausting. So neither OS is great at discoverability, but only one OS can be used efficiently by a proficient user.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll say it again and again: The measure of a platform is not how easy it is to use for it&amp;#x27;s weakest users, it&amp;#x27;s what it&amp;#x27;s more proficient users are able to accomplish with it. Until Apple takes proficient users seriously, iPadOS will be nothing but a side dish, because no one will use it to make anything that anyone else would ever want to emulate.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.keyboardmaestro.com&amp;#x2F;main&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.keyboardmaestro.com&amp;#x2F;main&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;obdev.at&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;launchbar&amp;#x2F;index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;obdev.at&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;launchbar&amp;#x2F;index.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>robenkleene</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll add the best thing Apple could do to fix iPadOS is make the developers working on it bootstrap[0] it. E.g., by running some version of Xcode on it (or CLI tools until they have Xcode working). Those developer would then fix it right up.&lt;p&gt;I contend that iPadOS is so sluggish to use because it&amp;#x27;s a compile target from a real machine that developers respect and work on, not a machine that those developers take seriously itself. That Apple is pushing a platform so hard that their own developers would never use for their work is everything you need to know about using an iPad for productivity. Sure, there are other tasks you can use a computer for besides programming, but sorry, programming is &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; task for computers, everything else stems from it.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bootstrapping_(compilers)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bootstrapping_(compilers)&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Undiscoverable UI Madness</title><url>https://birchtree.me/blog/undiscoverable-ui-madness/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>robenkleene</author><text>The difference between macOS and iOS isn&amp;#x27;t about discoverability (although, in one important area macOS far more discoverable that iOS: multi-tasking). The problem with iPadOS is that since all the expert controls are hidden, and there&amp;#x27;s no such thing as shortcuts or right-clicking on iPadOS, it means doing anything useful with iPadOS requires using many slow gestures in succession.&lt;p&gt;macOS, with a combination of Bash, AppleScripts, and system-wide third-party utilities like Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar, provides extraordinarily efficient ways to do powerful things, whereas doing anything on iPadOS is like being stuck in quicksand. Just the minutia of navigating the OS with only Apple&amp;#x27;s provided gestures is so slow and clumsy that I wouldn&amp;#x27;t bother to do anything complicated with it. It just takes so much &lt;i&gt;effort&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s exhausting. So neither OS is great at discoverability, but only one OS can be used efficiently by a proficient user.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll say it again and again: The measure of a platform is not how easy it is to use for it&amp;#x27;s weakest users, it&amp;#x27;s what it&amp;#x27;s more proficient users are able to accomplish with it. Until Apple takes proficient users seriously, iPadOS will be nothing but a side dish, because no one will use it to make anything that anyone else would ever want to emulate.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.keyboardmaestro.com&amp;#x2F;main&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.keyboardmaestro.com&amp;#x2F;main&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;obdev.at&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;launchbar&amp;#x2F;index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;obdev.at&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;launchbar&amp;#x2F;index.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deepspace</author><text>My iPad is probably my most-used device, but it is also the device that I most often feel like throwing at a wall.  Wading through quicksand is exactly how it feels like to do anything &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Not to mention the madness that is the Files interface.  Far too often I find myself selecting a file, wanting to do something simple with it (like move it to a a location managed by another app) and just being &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;stuck&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;.  Again, the quicksand feeling.  I just want to get to &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;that place right over there a few steps away&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;, but there is no obvious way of getting there.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x2F;rant</text></comment>