<story><title>Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (2015)</title><url>https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;People harp on this, but what changed is that phone screens are tiny. It&amp;#x27;s just not possible to show all commands and still show content. Also, people forget that &amp;quot;gestures&amp;quot; like the double-click were not intuitive &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; and that Macs came with &lt;i&gt;manuals&lt;/i&gt; which had to &lt;i&gt;teach&lt;/i&gt; the basic concepts of computing (double-clicking, folders, windows, etc.). While young children seem to use iPads rather intuitively (and they don&amp;#x27;t come with manuals).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;clearly see how to select that action...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tapping is just as intuitive as clicking... and select-tap for a context menu is no worse than click-and-hold for a drop-down menu, or right-click for a context menu.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I see no evidence this is any worse on phones. To the contrary, iOS brought a whole new world of animated feedback that makes feedback even clearer spatially (e.g. an app or folder expanding).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;and have the power to reverse that action–to undo it–if the result is not what was intended.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the most advanced applications, yes. But &amp;quot;undo&amp;quot; was never a universal concept on the desktop -- it was mostly limited to text editing and actions in Office-type applications. E.g. in System 7 you couldn&amp;#x27;t undo creating a folder or moving a file or an operation in the calculator, you&amp;#x27;ve never been able to undo setting a preference or resizing a window, and you certainly couldn&amp;#x27;t undo overwriting a file until Time Machine and file versions came along more recently. (And on iOS, things like drawing and text editing apps usually &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have undo, same as on desktop.)&lt;p&gt;I would argue things haven&amp;#x27;t gotten any worse, because they were never that idyllic to begin with, and that most of what does &lt;i&gt;seem&lt;/i&gt; worse is forced by smaller screens, not by suddenly ignoring principles.&lt;p&gt;(edit: changed &amp;quot;tap-and-hold&amp;quot; above to &amp;quot;select-tap&amp;quot; which I meant to write, e.g. when bringing up the copy&amp;#x2F;paste menu for text)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flowerlad</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;what changed is that phone screens are tiny&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;iOS7 and up degraded usability relative to iOS6. See: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uxcritique.tumblr.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uxcritique.tumblr.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; for comparisons of iOS and MacOS old vs new designs.&lt;p&gt;With the passing of Steve Jobs Apple has lost its design mojo.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (2015)</title><url>https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;People harp on this, but what changed is that phone screens are tiny. It&amp;#x27;s just not possible to show all commands and still show content. Also, people forget that &amp;quot;gestures&amp;quot; like the double-click were not intuitive &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; and that Macs came with &lt;i&gt;manuals&lt;/i&gt; which had to &lt;i&gt;teach&lt;/i&gt; the basic concepts of computing (double-clicking, folders, windows, etc.). While young children seem to use iPads rather intuitively (and they don&amp;#x27;t come with manuals).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;clearly see how to select that action...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tapping is just as intuitive as clicking... and select-tap for a context menu is no worse than click-and-hold for a drop-down menu, or right-click for a context menu.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I see no evidence this is any worse on phones. To the contrary, iOS brought a whole new world of animated feedback that makes feedback even clearer spatially (e.g. an app or folder expanding).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;and have the power to reverse that action–to undo it–if the result is not what was intended.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the most advanced applications, yes. But &amp;quot;undo&amp;quot; was never a universal concept on the desktop -- it was mostly limited to text editing and actions in Office-type applications. E.g. in System 7 you couldn&amp;#x27;t undo creating a folder or moving a file or an operation in the calculator, you&amp;#x27;ve never been able to undo setting a preference or resizing a window, and you certainly couldn&amp;#x27;t undo overwriting a file until Time Machine and file versions came along more recently. (And on iOS, things like drawing and text editing apps usually &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have undo, same as on desktop.)&lt;p&gt;I would argue things haven&amp;#x27;t gotten any worse, because they were never that idyllic to begin with, and that most of what does &lt;i&gt;seem&lt;/i&gt; worse is forced by smaller screens, not by suddenly ignoring principles.&lt;p&gt;(edit: changed &amp;quot;tap-and-hold&amp;quot; above to &amp;quot;select-tap&amp;quot; which I meant to write, e.g. when bringing up the copy&amp;#x2F;paste menu for text)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jamesrcole</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;and that most of what does seem worse is forced by smaller screens&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;and us being so familiar with the desktop that we can no longer see  what is unintuitive about it for newcomers</text></comment>