[matthewtse]

I got my 90 year old grandma to use an iPad. The other day I saw her switching languages via the keyboard to search for a video on YouTube using a combination of Chinese and English, and I was dumbfounded.

It's a true testament to the intuitiveness of Apple UX.

Switched parents over to Mac/iPhone years ago too. They still have issues, but it's usually something like "I maximized my window, how do I get out of that?". I wish Apple would release a "dumb mode", which removes 90% of the already limited UX features of macOS/iOS.

[CharlesW]

> I wish Apple would release a "dumb mode", which removes 90% of the already limited UX features of macOS/iOS.

Have you seen Assistive Access? https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welc...

"Assistive Access is a distinctive iOS experience, with more focused features and a simplified user interface, which allows people with cognitive disabilities to use iPhone with greater ease and independence."

[adamomada]

I don’t think many at all are aware at the lengths that Apple goes to wrt accessibility features. It is astonishing.

There are blind people who can type faster than I (sighted) can on an iPhone.

[MobileVet]

Thanks for the reminder on this… definitely need to give it a shot.

One big issue with older folks is change. While the Assistive Access might be awesome, making such a significant change will be tough.

[ghusto]

I wish Apple would be consistent with their reasoning abilities :/ Much of it is great, so it's that much more confusing for people when there are things that make no sense.

The gestures on iPhones come to mind. I'm used to them and find them indispensable now, but what? Swipe down on one side and it brings me some controls, swipe down on the other and I see my lock screen? Where am I? What's happening? No reason or logic.

[sotix]

I switched back to an iPhone SE, and it’s so much better at UX. There’s a single home button that removes you from any app. Swiping down from the top anywhere brings up your notifications. Swiping up from the bottom anywhere brings up controls. Double tapping the home button while locked brings up your credit cards, which are also authorized because the home button has a fingerprint reader. Holding down the power button brings you to the power off screen. This phone has functionally been an upgrade in usability across the board compared to my iPhone mini.

[everyone]

This an example of the worst possible UX imo. There is literally zero affordances or discoverability for those gestures.

Smartphones in general tend to completely ignore the fundaments of human interface design.

[latexr]

It used to be that swiping down would lock the screen and swiping up would show Control Center. But when iPhones lost the home button, swiping up took up its click behaviours. Swiping down from the left for locking the screen and swiping down from the right to show Control Center is indeed somewhat awkward, but it’s not immediatelly clear to me what alternative they could’ve gone with that would leave you with the same level of quick access as before.

[FrontierProject]

1. It's your notification tray, you know, the thing that's been default behavior of swiping down on smartphones since their inception. 2. It's not one side or the other either. It used to be that anywhere you swiped down opened the notification tray. Now only the right side has a different effect, opening control center. The notification tray still takes over two-thirds of the swipe-down space at the top.

[doctorpangloss]

> It's a true testament to the intuitiveness of Apple UX.

I think it's much simpler than that. For normal people, the aesthetics of an experience is the experience. There is no functionality, form is functionality.

Apple does this more than anyone else as a side effect of different design goals. An iPhone competes with the 1990s-era cable TV-equipped television, not an Android phone, especially for older adults. In that comparison, you can see how the iPhone "UX" could be "improved:" how could it achieve the same level of effortlessness as switching a channel, an idea of an aesthetic experience distilled to a brand name and a button press, and then having the aesthetic experiences you like transferred to you continuously, nonstop, throughout the day, affordably?

You are talking about watching YouTube specifically, and consider that if your grandma could "just" watch a channel with a mix of Chinese and English content she "likes," she would be even "happier." I am not trying to get into the normative argument over which aesthetic experiences are more meaningful or preferred or whatever. It's a way of looking at things differently, without the myopic point of view of frontend web development.

Once you deconstruct your lived experience of watching your grandma, "Apple UX" looks more like a marketing idea that is inferior to many alternatives.

[tim333]

That's a bit of an unusual way of looking at iPhones. They seem to do much the same as Android phones and very different from 90s TVs especially when if comes to taking photos, doing banking, making calls and the like.

[itsoktocry]

In Android, there's a keyboard icon on the interface, you click it and choose your keyboard language. It's two clicks. Is the Apple one more intuitive?

[asoneth]

On my Pixel phone keyboard I have two ways to switch language: Holding the spacebar gives me a list labeled "Change keyboard" with six options whereas clicking the keyboard icon in the lower-right corner gives me a similar list except the title is "Choose input method", the options are in a completely different order, the options have slightly different names ("English (US) QWERTY" vs "English (US) (QWERTY) Gboard"), the list uses radio buttons instead of a checkmark, and includes an option for "Google Voice Typing".

These might seem like minor issues to us, but they can derail non-technical users who may be confused why the list looks different from the last time they switched languages. And this lack of coordination between elements is par for the course for Google design. Not saying there aren't examples of bad design from Apple, but most of their products seem to have someone in a position of authority who pays attention to detail and their issues seem less like oversights than bad decisions.

[sotix]

It’s identical.

[bamboozled]

Well the difference with the iPhone is the actual phone works for people of all abilities so the keyboard is actually accessible.

All my elderly family running Android have been pwned in some way or another.

[SoftTalker]

Or, a lot of old people are still pretty capable. My aunt is 90 and she manages her laptop and phone just fine.

I am not impressed at all by Apple's UX. Inconsistencies abound, and there are lots of hidden gestures and actions that you have no clue about unless you stumble upon them or someone shows you. It might be better than Android, but that's a low bar.

[TylerE]

Changing Green circle from "maximuze" to "full screen" with no way to revert it - yes, I'm sure there's some sketchy kmod or whatever - is one of the most baffling decisions Apple has made.

[latexr]

I’m not defending the choice, but there are some alternatives:

* Press ⌥ while hovering over the green circle. The icon changes to a + sign and clicking it uses the maximise behaviour.

* Double-clicking the title bar.

* From the menubar: Window > Zoom.

[bitwize]

Apple needs to bring back At Ease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

The intuitiveness of the Apple UI is not a given. A friend of mine was one of the first Mac developers, and an Apple man since then. He's old now, and both he and his wife grouse about the iOS UI and how unintuitive and difficult it is. Even my wife, also a lifelong Apple fan, finds herself frustrated when attempting to do tasks with her iPhone much more obscure than "launch app". Like the iPhone has a built-in Apple TV remote, but to use it you have to swipe down from the upper right where the clock is, then press the button that looks like an Apple TV remote (assuming you know what one looks like). Not something you can easily discover or figure out on your own. I can't even keep straight where to swipe from.

I think some time after Jony Ive took over Apple's design department, design wankery supplanted human factors. The original Mac UI was made functional and easy to discover, and then made pretty. Modern iOS is made pretty and clever with things like "pinch to zoom", but the emphasis is not on making things easy to discover or making it clear what you can do (but the "launch app" case is pretty well solved for).

[AJ007]

The Apple hardware also does nothing to protect against tech support scams.

One of the most important, and basic, things to do is make sure ad blockers are installed on devices and/or on a firewall. This matters before a broader decline in cognitive functionality too.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a blanket ban against all digital advertising for certain age groups in the EU within the next 10 years.

[neal_jones]

I found that iPhone and iPad work great, but my parent also wanted a computer and I went with it. 95% of my support calls are regarding something with the computer.

The iMac really is just subtracting value from their life. The phone and tablet are fantastic, but I want to hire someone to break into the home and steal that computer.

[antipaul]

Regarding exiting from fullscreen, you can suggest to them to "hover" over the traffic lights, for some extra tips

[fragmede]

If you're looking for a limited mode, why'd you get them a macOS computer instead of an iPad with a keyboard?

[matthewtse]

For my dad, he occasionally composes Word documents and uses other MacOS software for his business, so finding analogous iPad software and teaching him how to use that wouldn't be worth the effort.

iPad could probably work for my mom, but she just uses hand-me-down macs from my dad or me/my siblings.