Steve Jobs Wanted the First iPhone To Have a Permanent Back Button Like Android (bgr.com) 208
anderzole shares a report from BGR: Brian Merchant's new book, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, provides a captivating and intriguing look at how the most revolutionary product of our time was designed and developed. Through a series of interviews with Apple engineers and designers who played an integral role in the iPhone's creation and development, Merchant maps out how the iPhone came to be after more than two years of non-stop work at breakneck speed. One of the more interesting revelations from the book is that the iPhone design Apple unveiled in January of 2007 might have looked vastly different if Steve Jobs had his way. According to Imran Chaudhri, a veteran Apple designer who spent 19 years working on Apple's elite Human Interface Team, Steve Jobs wanted the original iPhone to have a back button in addition to a home button. Believe it or not, the original iPhone could have very well looked like a modern-day Android device. "The touch-based phone, which was originally supposed to be nothing but screen, was going to need at least one button," Merchant writes. "We all know it well today -- the Home button. But Steve Jobs wanted it to have two; he felt they'd need a back button for navigation. Chaudhri argued that it was all about generating trust and predictability. One button that does the same thing every time you press it: it shows you your stuff. 'Again, that came down to a trust issue,' Chaudhri says, 'that people could trust the device to do what they wanted it to do. Part of the problem with other phones was the features were buried in menus, they were too complex.' A back button could complicate matters too, he told Jobs. 'I won that argument,' Chaudhri says."
Do one thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the Home button now does multiple things depending on if you long-press, double or even triple click it?
Re:Do one thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Call me an old fart, but I absolutely hate that about mobile interfaces.
How am I supposed to know that a menu needs to be swiped, then double pressed then held. At least with desktop UI's you can hover the mouse over a button and get a caption.
I had my Samsung S5 for over a year before I realized that the drop down top bar with the wifi/location/etc buttons can actually be HELD and it'll go into a sub-menu for configuration. Whereas just pushing the button turns them on/off.
And, furthermore, the second you utilize TIME in your clicks, you're now forcing time to be a component in their usage. I can press as many radio buttons on my car radio as I want... as fast as I want. I don't have to press one button, and then HOLD IT to have it move radio station. I don't have to watch for the "Context" to change.
If you ask me (and nobody is), user interfaces have gone ass-backwards and keep getting worse. When I had a flip phone, I could send text messages on the FULL KEYBOARD without even looking at the phone. I knew people who could hold conversations AND send text messages like some sort of dual-core human savant. Now, I have to freaking type texts with my fingers pressing ON THE SCREEN that I'm also supposed to be reading from. (Enjoy playing a game where 1/4th to 1/3rd the screen area is your fingers.) Moreover, there's no haptic feedback. So much so that "haptic feedback" is some new age buzzword research field for what we used to already have... a freaking audible/feelable CLICK when you depress a button, and ridges so you can place your fingers in the right place.
Stare at your keyboard right now. Notice the bumps on the F and J keys? They're notches so you can place your hands... the same place... every time. And they work so well you probably never even noticed them.
Meanwhile, how many times have you tried typing manual keys (or god forbid a PASSWORD with special characters) on your phone, and looked down and realized you slightly missed a key and hit a completely different letter as if you're hands are made of fat, unwieldy sausages.
Re:Do one thing? (Score:5, Funny)
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How am I supposed to know that a menu needs to be swiped, then double pressed then held.
What menu operates like that?
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What menu operates like that?
The exaggeration menu.
It's a language setting under the "trying to make a point" menu, next to YELLING and expletives.
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What menu operates like that?
well. a couple. take current s6 firmware for example. draw down from the top and you see quicklink options that you can long press or quick press. if you want to see more of them you can drag down on any of them and you'll see more icons. do a long press on the wifi icon and you're taken to wifi actions. inside which you can do long presses to get more.
in the notifications area under those before mentioned icons if you drag a notification left or right and you can set settings f
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I had my Samsung S5 for over a year before I realized that the drop down top bar with the wifi/location/etc buttons can actually be HELD and it'll go into a sub-menu for configuration.
In the stock Android version, you don't long-press. Instead, there's a bar and below that a section which is a separate "button" which you tap to get into the settings for that. There's a "pulldown" arrow in that section that clues you into the fact that you can tap there to get into other stuff.
IMNSHO, most of what Samsung does to the Android UI damages it, rather than improving it. The stock UI also has its share of non-obvious controls, but I don't think there are nearly as many. An example from Nougat
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And, furthermore, the second you utilize TIME in your clicks, you're now forcing time to be a component in their usage. I can press as many radio buttons on my car radio as I want... as fast as I want. I don't have to press one button, and then HOLD IT to have it move radio station. I don't have to watch for the "Context" to change.
That's kind of a horrible example, because on old car stereos you would pull the button to set a preset, and on most car stereos of today you hold the button to set a preset, while you simply touch it to select one. If you hold the button down too long, you'll reset your preset.
Oh, now I understand (Score:2)
I was boggling at some inexplicable moderation... but someone with modpoints has apparently become quite offended by me personally. Must still be on Slashdot. People get grumpy when you point out facts here.
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"And, furthermore, the second you utilize TIME in your clicks, you're now forcing time to be a component in their usage. I can press as many radio buttons on my car radio as I want... as fast as I want. I don't have to press one button, and then HOLD IT to have it move radio station. I don't have to watch for the "Context" to change."
Mmm, I've had quite a few car radio's (when they still had physical buttons), where pushing the button changed the channel, while press+hold stored the current channel under th
Car radio as an example? (Score:2)
Have you tried long pressing a car radio button? I mean time has been a component of car radio interfaces since at least the 90s for storing channels. For me every button on the radio does something different related to time. Stand by be power down, mute Vs menu, station select Vs station search, store Vs retrieve. Call Vs enable voice activation.
Sure it hasn't always been that advance but the last car radio I used which didn't have time as a component relied on those mechanical levers to move the tuning me
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The swipes, short swipes, swipes from the top, left, right, side, corner, taps, gestures, long-presses, double-taps, tap presses, or whatever secret knocking code needed to activate a feature with no menu or visual indication of the capability is horrible.
Throw on the visual restrictions of the narrow phone displays preventing well-organized data, and the clunky size of everything so that it can be touched...
The awfulness has been translated badly into other user interfaces and now I'd kill for a keyboa
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I forgot the obvious rotate, shake, flip over, force-click, force-click-hold, pinch, drag, press and drag... any others?
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# Oooooh hokey cokey cokey ...
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Intuitive really doesn't exist in the computing world. It's all about familiarity.
How are you meant to know that moving the plastic thing with a wheel corresponds to moving pixels on a screen? Or caressing the touchpad on your laptop. You only know about the F/J keys because you were told (in some way).
The Mac and PC HIDs are sufficiently different enough that PC people really struggle with Mac keyboard/Mouse shortcuts and use (and vice-versa).
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Intuitive really doesn't exist in the computing world. It's all about familiarity.
How are you meant to know that moving the plastic thing with a wheel corresponds to moving pixels on a screen? Or caressing the touchpad on your laptop. You only know about the F/J keys because you were told (in some way).
The Mac and PC HIDs are sufficiently different enough that PC people really struggle with Mac keyboard/Mouse shortcuts and use (and vice-versa).
Actually, the hardest thing to get used to going back and forth between Windows and macOS is to remember CONTROL-C/X/V/Z vs. COMMAND-C/X/V/Z, depending on which system you are using at any one time.
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I can press as many radio buttons on my car radio as I want... as fast as I want. I don't have to press one button, and then HOLD IT to have it move radio station.
Chris,
You better sit down because I am about to blow your mind.
Your car radio works like that too for resetting a station to the current one. "Not mine! My car is 30 years old, I still have the original radio. It has mechanical buttons" you say. Well, if that's the case, that's a hard press, not a long press.
And that little black triangle next to your fuel gauge icon, it's an arrow to remind you which side of the car is your gas door. And that fuel cap, there is actually fuel cap holder built into the gas d
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The auto complete thing depends on keyboard. Its a common way of doing it, but there's 0 enforcement. Keyboards on Android don't even share dictionaries, so there's no way they could enforce it.
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I was talking about the new standard Android keyboard.
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And that fuel cap, there is actually fuel cap holder built into the gas door flap
Holy crap! I had no idea.
Thanks.
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my Samsung S5 for over a year before I realized that the drop down top bar with the wifi/location/etc buttons can actually be HELD and it'll go into a sub-menu for configuration. Whereas just pushing the button turns them on/off.
Wow, thanks for the tip! Wish I'd have known that a couple years ago.
I appreciate how many phone features are simple, but can't stand how the features are so non-obvious or otherwise poorly communicated to phone users.
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Call me wierd. Been called worse. I like discovering a new function after having a phone for awhile... an easter egg hunt for the big kids.
Re:Do one thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
These problems exist on MacOS too. I was recently handed a MacBook for compatibility testing of a web site with Safari. Only problem? How the FUCK do I launch Safari? It wasnt in the launch bar at the bottom. Literally had to go to another machine just to Google how to do it, because there is apparently no way to just have a simply listing of all available installed applications to launch from the main OS UI. It is inside of Finder apparently, under some Applications menu inside of there. This honestly reminded me of all the bullshit in Windows 3.1 that was needed to get simple things done.
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How the FUCK do I launch Safari?
Option 1: Go to the Finder, hit the 'Applications' icon in the side bar, double-click on Safari (this is how you've launched applications on every Mac since 1984 - how many other operating systems can say that for any GUI?).
Option 2: Use spotlight by either hitting the shortcut keys (command-space) or by clicking on the search icon at the top right of the screen. Type 'Safari' (it will probably autocomplete after 'Sa'). Hit enter. This mechanism is relatively new and has only been the same for about 10
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Option 4) Use any of the above options to open a terminal, run your *nix search command of choice, find where Safari lives, and launch it from the command line.
I was recently handed a MacBook for compatibility testing of a web site with Safari. Only problem? How the FUCK do I launch Safari?
At least the GP seems qualified to do compatibility testing.....
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This is actually the best point, if you shorten it. In Windows, there is a very obvious "START" button (now just an orb though), and without knowing it being called "Internet Explorer", you can literally just type in "internet" in the search box, the box that is literally the closest item to said orb button itself when clicked. With absolutely zero instruction but a little tech savvyness, this would be something someone could figure out on their own.
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These problems exist on MacOS too. I was recently handed a MacBook for compatibility testing of a web site with Safari. Only problem? How the FUCK do I launch Safari? It wasnt in the launch bar at the bottom. Literally had to go to another machine just to Google how to do it, because there is apparently no way to just have a simply listing of all available installed applications to launch from the main OS UI. It is inside of Finder apparently, under some Applications menu inside of there. This honestly reminded me of all the bullshit in Windows 3.1 that was needed to get simple things done.
It is the same with everything on macOS, nothing just works, everything has some complicate arcane enchantment you have to utter to get it to do anything at all. And still they market it as simple to use, so people think THEY are the stupid ones. Notice how over 50% of the howto computer books in bookstores are on how to use Apple product, despite being less than 5% of the market?
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MacOS seems like it's designed for people that want to be taught how to use their computers. Stuff is easy enough to do once you've been shown how. But a lot is not easily discoverable by simply poking around. It's like they assume their users are computer phobic.
Android seems to be taking its lead from Apple in that respect. Interestingly, earlier versions of Android made much more use on long-pressing as a kind of 'right-click' to find out what options are available. I hate that they've moved away fr
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I didn't say that there weren't some technological advantages to the Mac. Their app packaging is one of them - I've used 'wine skins' to generate a single .zip file that contains an entire runnable version of my WIN32 app and all the WINE stuff it takes to run it on a Mac - very nice.
But I find the Mac UI a struggle. Some of it is the 'dumbing down' of the UI. Some of it is stuff they came up with in 1983 and think it's just great as it is (the one-button mouse - the baffling 'switch between 2 window siz
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On OSX there are actually several launchers, panes, feeds, spaces, etc that will list shit.
By "several" I mean "lol did you have separate teams that just didn't communicate their overlap? or have you been needlessly reinventing your GUI (who doesn't, right?) while redundantly keeping the old one?"
And I have deliberately omitted the word "intuitive" from my first sentence. Your only provision is the dock. If you're lucky, your build shows currently-accessible file partitions on the desktop, which leads to ba
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It used to be. But recent versions of OSX have gotten pretty bad. I think 10.5 was when most of that happened.
Apple changed when Steve got cancer and started worrying about his legacy. Up until recent times the Mac UI was usually better.
Well except for those stupid one button mouses.
The "stupid" one-button mice went away long before OS X. So, time to put that meme to rest, shall we?
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Whatever happened to user customization?
For instance, there may be whole sets of options you don't really care about and likely never will...
Slashdot, ladies and gentlemen. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Re:Do one thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, it's way more than that.
It now does different things depending on state (whether the phone is locked or not), where you are in the phone, which model of phone it is, and of course how many times you click it. And I think the button on the iPhone 7 is even pressure sensitive, so that's something to look forward to as well.
It's part of the way Apple's lost its way since Jobs died. The iPhone that Steve Jobs made had a Home button that did one thing and only one thing. Here's a small list of things the Home button does today:
1. Single click when unlocked: Bring you to the Home screen
2. Single click when locked: Bring you to the PIN screen
3. Hold but don't click while locked: Unlock but remain on the lock screen. (As I recall this is only really useful if you have notifications set to only display when unlocked and don't want to dismiss them.)
4. Double-click when locked: Brings up Apple Pay.
5. Double-click when unlocked: Brings up the task switcher.
6. Double-tap (that is, do not click the button, just rest your finger on it twice) while unlocked: pushes the screen down to make reaching the top easier (only on 6/7 models). While locked this does nothing.
7. Press and hold: Activate Siri (whether locked or unlocked, certain Siri functions only work if the phone is unlocked)
8. Hold without clicking while an app requests TouchID authentication: authenticate with TouchID
9. Triple-click: activate an accessibility feature, assuming you have it enabled
And those are the ones I'm personally aware of. I can't wait to discover ones I don't know about because I'm pretty sure there are other weird combos of pressing versus touching with clicks and holding variation to activate various features.
Post-Jobs iOS is an amazing mess of features that are impossible to discover on your own. It's a great example of how one of the things Jobs was good at was saying "no" to ensure that the user experience remained as easy as possible.
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Here [lifewire.com] is a few more things about iPhone home button...
Re:Do one thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
This, from the company that brought you the one button mouse, that you can click three ways.
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However most Computer users and especially for Mac users with the traditional 1 button mouse, the clicking of the home button is rather intuitive.
Single click. Has the core action. Double click has the extended action. The hold click gives you a bunch of options.
So with a standard windows interface a single click on a file will select it.
A double Click on the file will open it.
A right click (or a left click hold On a mac) will open the additional options for the file.
Yes, and then they improved (Score:2, Interesting)
The iPhobd at first was going to have a keyboard also, and probably lots of other useless crap.
But as the article states, they realized it added too much complexity - which I find is true even today when I use an Android device. It seems like back rarely does what you expect.
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It seems like back rarely does what you expect.
Yeah, because clever script kiddies keep breaking it (like on just about every Javascript-heavy web page). It's not the button itself that's the problem.
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The back button on Android is one of the greatest UI innovations this century, because it does exactly what you would expect: it goes back to the previous screen. Doesn't matter if that screen was another app, it goes back to it. And it forces app developers to design with the ability to go back always available, meaning you can easily back out of anything with one tap.
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The iPhobd at first was going to have a keyboard also, and probably lots of other useless crap.
Yeah, I can't see one reason why you'd want a physical keyboard!
Stagnation of the iPhone pushed me to Android (Score:2)
and he's 100% correct. That back button is nice.
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What does 'sexy phone' even mean? Are you implying that anybody else should only handle your phone with rubber gloves on?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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FYI, the reason Apple stuck with a one-button mouse is to discourage relying on context menus. Reportedly, Jobs hated context menus because they hid functionality in unpredictable ways, i.e. it's often hard to know exactly what will be in a context menu when you right-click on a particular object, until you right-click and see what pops up.
Also, they kind of gave up on that a while ago. Apple mice have had a virtual second button for years.
Sorry, I know you're just making a joke, but I just thought I'd
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Jobs hated context menus because they hid functionality in unpredictable ways
Yeah, like Ctrl-Click...
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Yeah, like Ctrl-Click...
Early Mac keyboards didn't even have a control button on them.
Picture of Mac Plus Keyboard [grinnell.edu]
I remember what a weird arcane experience it was the first time I used a Mac.
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They still don't (or do, depending on your perspective) - the command ("Splat") key (also seen on the Mac Plus keyboard) is the equivalent of Ctrl for Macs. And is the same key if you're using a USB or Bluetooth keyboard, just with the label changed.
Wrong.
Although several Command-Key Keyboard Shortcuts got translated to Control-Key Keyboard Shortcuts when Microsoft stole them from macOS, the Mac has always recognized the Command and Control Keys separately.
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> Also, they kind of gave up on that a while ago. Apple mice have had a virtual second button for years.
No, not really. It's much like the single user zero security underpinnings of Microsoft. They tried to move on by they remain mired in their own past and can't really get away from it. People are too used to doing things the old way.
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I never understood his thinking. I don't find context menu's counter-intuitive at all, in fact just the opposite --well, at least, on Windows. Since the main menu bar on a Mac (old Macs anyway) is application/context sensitive and changes depending on which app is open/ has focus, I guess in a way it fulfilled the function of a context menu. Still, a one button mouse feels completely alien to me.
I've used a personal iPhone for the past several years, it would be nice sometimes to have a back button, it
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I don't find context menu's counter-intuitive at all, in fact just the opposite --well, at least, on Windows.
When you've been doing something a particular way for a long enough time, it'll end up feeling intuitive, almost no matter what. But anyway, the objection wasn't exactly "It's not intuitive", but rather "it makes functionality hidden and unpredictable". It's less of a problem when there are a set of conventions around what's in context menus, and you know the conventions, and developers follow those conventions, which is the case often enough these days.
I think it might help to go into a fairly concrete e
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I just look at it as a "most commonly used" quick list of menu items. If what you want isn't there, then sure, you have to go to the full menu and dig, but more often than not, what you're looking to do will be there.
There are far worse inconsistencies... the current split between Control Panel and Settings in Win10 for example, that seems evident of really poor GUI project management.
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I just look at it as a "most commonly used" quick list of menu items. If what you want isn't there, then sure, you have to go to the full menu and dig, but more often than not, what you're looking to do will be there.
Yes, I think that's the intention. I think it really helps to think about the issue in terms of how all this was developing in the 80s and 90s. Early on in personal computing, a lot of people had trouble understanding even things that you might find brain-dead simple. It took people a little while to understand the mouse, and it wasn't uncommon to run into computer novices who had a hard time keeping track of the difference between left-click and right-click. GUIs were often far less refined, and much m
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PERFECT example!
And I believe the Apple Human Interface Guidelines state that Contextual Menus (which have existed in MacOS since System 8.1, IIRC) should contain ONLY Items that are accessible in other places. However, (or course) Apple themselves breaks that "rule" whenever it is convenient, like in the Finder, where Right-Clicking on a Document Icon will give you a Contextual Menu that includes "Open WIth...". I haven't scoured the Finder's Menu Bar; but I'm pretty sure that command doesn't exist up ther
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"Open With" does appear under "File" in the menu at the top of the screen, when Finder is active. There may be some other example of Apple breaking their own rules, though.
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"Open With" does appear under "File" in the menu at the top of the screen, when Finder is active. There may be some other example of Apple breaking their own rules, though.
Sorry. I was at work, away from my Mac.
Thanks for the correction.
And yes, there are other examples; but I've already embarrassed myself once today, thank you!
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This has also been true for Microsoft's Windows interface standards for I-don't-know-how-long. More specifically, anything that you can do with a mouse has to be doable from the keyboard. The right click context menus are generally items pulled from the app's main menu system, accessible via the "Alt-" key combinations.
And yes, I've seen my share of mouse-centric apps - especially in Excel - which violate those standards. But that is a fault in the apps, not the OS.
I agree about the "App vs. OS" violation-thing.
Not to turn this into an OS-War (at all!); but I always liked the fact that OS X/macOS even has a "Keyboard Shortcut EDITOR", where you can define and bind keystrokes either App or System-Wide, to Menu Commands. I'm surprised that Windows has never really copied that Mac feature. Just like I've always been surprised that Apple has never copied the Windows Audio "Mixer". That's really quite nice to have once in awhile.
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Windows Phone (Score:2)
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The iPhone does miss such a button (Score:2)
Having used both Android and iPhone OS I can say that the user experience with Android is superior with regards to navigation. The home button on iOS has far too many functions right now - one click for home, double click for multitask switching, three times for something else, hold for Siri, etc. It tries to be too much at once, which totally complicates things (the irony!)
I fully expected in a future release there will be a dedicated back button and maybe more, similar to Android - Apple's current imple
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I haven't used an Android as a daily-driver in years, but I never liked the physical back button (I agree the IOS solution is a kludge). Reasons being is that "back" navigated both in the app and between apps and
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Holy crap I'm an idiot. I've had an iPhone since 2013 and I never knew that. *smacks head*. Seems intuitive enough, I can't believe I never tried it.
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Doesn't work very well, especially when you have a case on (which you MUST, if you want the darn expensive thing to retain any resell value). Either it does it half-way and snaps back, or doesn't register the wipe correctly at all (and depending on the actual UI displayed, might do something destructive).
Having a separate and easily accessible 'back' soft button at the bottom (like most Android devices have) is both simpler to activate, and more logical and obvious to use (doesn't require any 'discovery' at
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Doesn't work very well, especially when you have a case on (which you MUST, if you want the darn expensive thing to retain any resell value). Either it does it half-way and snaps back, or doesn't register the wipe correctly at all (and depending on the actual UI displayed, might do something destructive).
Having a separate and easily accessible 'back' soft button at the bottom (like most Android devices have) is both simpler to activate, and more logical and obvious to use (doesn't require any 'discovery' at all, and no 'reaching' to the opposite of the screen to activate it).
Except for that whole teaching about "There's no way to really know what that button will do at any one time" thing...
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I think the Android UI are collectively terrible. Something as simple as finding the apps can take multiple taps.
Android: press the "application drawer" icon. It's all there, sorted alphabetically.
iOS: no need for that silly drawer complicating things, all applications are already on the main screen. I mean, somewhere in one of multiple screens. Without any sort of automatic organization. Possibly tucked away inside a folder.
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The icons in the 'application drawer' on Android are only in alphabetical order if you deliberately tell it to sort them. I like them unsorted, actually, because that means they are sorted by 'install order' instead.
You need to deliberately tell it to sort the icons in the 'application drawer' from time to time, because it's not a directive to 'sort the icons from this point on', it's a one-time operation. After sorting them, the new icons again pile in at the end of the order.
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The app drawer in Android is part of the launcher, which can be replaced by the user. Different launchers have different behavior, including how they decide to sort apps in the app drawer.
The Google Now Launcher [google.com] is the default on stock Android devices, with the Pixel Launcher [google.com] being installed by default on the Pixel line of phones. Plenty of non-Google alternative launchers exist, including Nova Launcher [google.com], ZenUI Launcher [google.com] (by ASUS), and even Arrow Launcher [google.com], made by Microsoft.
No WONDER no one knows how to navigate in Android! It's nothing more than an inconsistent clusterfuck!
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I completely disagree. I've been impressed with some of the Samsung and Motorola phones hardware. But every time I try to use one, I have no idea where most of the features and functions are. I think the Android UI are collectively terrible. Something as simple as finding the apps can take multiple taps. Keep in mind, I'm extremely technology literate by any objective measure. I've designed and implemented user interfaces for a variety of control systems. I've trained end-users in how to use technically advanced systems. If it's hard for me to 'find stuff', then it's surely difficult for a large portion of the potential user base. Contrast that with iOS. My 90+ grandmother struggled to do anything with PC/laptops that she was shown repeatedly how to operate. We got her an iPad, and she used it almost everyday for hours with relatively few questions. I've had an iPhone since gen. 1 and the simplicity of the iOS UI has been consistent enough for my kids to have grown up using it from age 2. Again, contrast that with Android devices we've had access to, and all off us struggle to find basic functions. The Android back button is a perfect example. It's context-sensitive, but without any visual clue as to what the context is. Sometimes it's back in an app, sometimes it's back to a different app, sometimes it's back to the previous screen, sometimes it's back to the app selection screen, and occasionally it's even back to the home screen. All without any indication about which one is going to happen when you push the button. Maybe if I used it everyday for a few weeks, I'd get used to where everything is, but there is no such learning curve with iPhone/iOS.
That's why iOS' "kludgy" Back Button at the top left is apparently far superior to what Android does. In iOS the "button" says "Back to Safari", "Back to Mail", etc., so there is ZERO ambiguity as to what will happen when tapping it.
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That's why iOS' "kludgy" Back Button at the top left is apparently far superior to what Android does. In iOS the "button" says "Back to Safari", "Back to Mail", etc., so there is ZERO ambiguity as to what will happen when tapping it.
... and totally unreachable using your thumb without stretching it... or using two hands (unless you want to risk dropping your slippery expensive iDevice). Yeah, FAR superior....
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The double-click on the single IOS button and the swipe to close a running app are NOT obvious. I had several iPhone users complain about how slow and sluggish their iPhone would run because they had no idea that they had tons of running programs open and if they did how they could close them.
If I understand correctly, "Suspended" Apps in iOS aren't REALLY running. They are "in stasis", with a "Poster Screen" the only thing actually consuming resources.
Jobs wrong? (Score:2)
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Our time? (Score:2)
>"how the most revolutionary product of our time was designed and developed."
Oh what marketing-driven pompousness! Shall I barf now or later (or both)? In whose time? Mine? I can think of a zillion "revolutionary" products/inventions/technologies in MY time, none of which include the incremental step of the iPhone over the many PDAs and smart phones before it. Here are a few-
Unix, LED, computer mouse, GUI, MRI, GPS, Ethernet, ATM, Tesla Roadster/S/whichever, solar panel, pocket calculator, DNA seque
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90% of the world uses non-iPhone phones, 87% in the USA. I would hardly call an iPhone a supercomputer, and all smartphones have "the internet". And then you throw curse words at me? Brilliant.
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You threatened his bubble. It's perfectly understandable that he reacted with profanity.
My first mobile computing device had a 68xxx family processor in it, just like the one in the first generation Macintosh. It even (!!!) was designed by former Apple engineers. I refer to my trusty Palm III of course.
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Android buttons are hardly better (Score:2)
I have to say that I like the recent set of Android buttons: back, home, tasks. Three icons, they look reasonably logical, and they are all useful.
But Android tried many permutations on the way there, and on phones with hardware buttons you often see the back button on the right. You may also have a menu, camera or search button, again included in a random permutation. They really should have come up with a more sensible way of organising the buttons than in a straight row.
The holy trinity (Score:2)
Seemed like the perfect trio: Back, Home & Menu.
Unfortunately Android (apps) seems to be moving away from there as well...
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No buttons needed (Score:2)
Just look at the BlackBerry 10 devices. Completely touchscreen, no buttons on the front of the device. Only power and volume buttons on the side. Swipe up to wake up the device or go back to the home screen.
I miss my Z10.
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The lack of a back button is the reason I'll never buy an iPhone. Just one button is a waste of space.
They eventually gave in and added "back button" as an arrow at the top left of the screen. Still not as usable, though.
Re:I always cursed Jobs for this too.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I always cursed Jobs for this too.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming from an Android world, this honestly confused the shit out of me on iOS when I needed to beta test an app. It had an option to launch Apple Maps from within it for navigation, and I've yet to figure out how the fuck to get back to the app I was in without going all the way back to the home screen an re-launching it. How the hell is that supposed to be a "good" user experience!?
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Back when I had an iPod Touch, you could double-click the Home button and it would bring up a row of icons for the Apps you had recently run. You could go back to re-run an App quickly with that trick.
Of course, eventually the Home button on my iPod Touch got flaky, because it was a physical button and moisture could get into it. So even single clicking became difficult. Double-clicking reliably became very difficult.
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Well, at least you don't come from the Maemo world, where all applications have a close button and there's a systray! I'm barely able to get used to the Android way. Don't ask me about iPhone's!
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That was the theory, but everyone realized the Android back button was fraught with issues. Sometimes pushing it brought you all the way to the first screen of the app, and if you hit it again, it quit the app. Sometimes it brought you back just one screen, other times it brought you out of the multi-screen process you were in an
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I miss WebOS's swipe left.
In iOS, if enter Safari & open a web page, then another one, then you click the 'share' icon, you have to use different methods to go back for each step
To exit the sharing, it's a 'cancel' button at the bottom of the screen. To close a given web page, it's click the 'tabs' icon, then the 'x' in the upper left corner of the tab in question. To exit the app, you click the 'home' button.
In WebOS, you just kept swiping left. (although, that would also go 'back' in navigation).
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Not having a dedicated back button (even if it were part of the touch screen) is what drives me crazy about the iPhone. I do think this was a mistake. The notion of "back" makes perfect sense. Even outside of Android's Intent-app-mixing UI. I want to go back to where I was. Imagine not having a back button on your browser!
That's probably why iOS now has a Back Button.
But unlike Android's it has a consistent, and "Titled" behavior. Actually, there are two types of Back-Buttons in iOS. When down in a sub-view inside of an App, there is a " Level-Above" button at the top-left of the screen that let's you "pop-up" to the previous level in the same App. If you are already at the Top-Level in an App, iOS places a "Back to (previousAppName)" Button (more like a "Link"), again at the top-left of the screen.
So there you go: All the f
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Can you really blame him? iSheeps are not known for their intelligence. So yes, a back button or a menu would explode their brains.
Ya know, it really doesn't do you any favors to attempt to insult others' intelligence, while creating such unintelligent blunder like saying "iSheeps".
The plural of "sheep" is... "sheep".
Moron.