[forgotmypw17]

why?

pride in worksmanship, perhaps...

because 1% is still quite a few users for whom the experience sucks...

or perhaps just plain old empathy...

because not every customer can just replace their device...

or... i dunno... just avoiding someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news?

[mattmanser]

And then you make it suck for everyone else.

Mobile first often made the experience suck for desktops.

Tiny screen first just makes the experience suck for everyone.

The author says: Also, I don’t care if the statistics for small devices is less than 1%, it’s just pure respect for those users.

But that's a false dichotomy.

[afavour]

> Tiny screen first just makes the experience suck for everyone.

No it doesn’t. iOS’s UI toolkit has numerous tools to allow a design to adapt to screen size. There’s no reason an adjustment for a smaller screen would have any effect on a larger one.

[skohan]

I'm quite sure all the screenshots in the article are the result of adaptive designs being broken due to edge cases. Constraint-based adaptive designs are great, but they have their limits. Unless you have a very simple design it is not going to work on every form factor.

[bradley_taunt]

> Mobile first often made the experience suck for desktops.

I’d have to argue that poor design work in general is the cause for this. “Mobile first” never meant to neglect the desktop experience - designers who do that are just poor designers to begin with.

[forgotmypw17]

>And then you make it suck for everyone else.

In Russian, there is a saying: To a poor dancer, their own butt gets in the way...

[kcmastrpc]

none of these reasons negate the cost of implementing layouts for _literally every device on the planet_. it's not practical, nor do the bean counters really care because the loss in revenue is very much less than the cost of implementation.

[konjin]

How does any of that make money?

[forgotmypw17]

I don't recall claiming that it does...

Although I would think that this type of experience would steer one away from using the software or recommending it, this eventually reducing the revenue.

But more importantly, it would weigh on my conscience as a developer and reduce the quality of my sleep, which to me is more important than money by a long shot.

[burntoutfire]

Wasn't that the original value proposution of the Apple products under Jobs? That the overall craftsmanship was high and they just didn't feel crappy like their competitors'?

[forgotmypw17]

it certainly seemed that way to me at the time... i miss ios 3.

[skohan]

When iOS3 was a thing, there was exactly one screen size to support at one resolution, and when you went to the home screen the app closed so you could count on a predictable state every time the app opened. We used to measure design elements in number of pixels back then. It was a much simpler time.

[paulcole]

> someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news

The horror!

My mom will for sure delete her local bank’s app if she sees the post showing that the padding is a few pixels off on a phone she doesn’t own.

[forgotmypw17]

I don't know about you, but I would be ashamed if something I wrote showed up in this article...

[oneeyedpigeon]

There are more readers of hacker news besides your mom.