[hbn]

I switched to an iPhone and I'm using proprietary applications, but ones that don't randomly change their UI on a regular basis whenever some nameless product manager decides they want to use me to gather some new engagement metrics by rearranging UIs on my phone

[heleninboodler]

They do make arbitrary changes to the UI, though, and when that happens, you can be damn sure it's because some turtleneck somewhere decreed that the new way is the One True Way and there's no amount of user complaining that will fix it.

[shrimp_emoji]

No, they just entomb you into a comfy walled garden where it's only easy to do what Apple lets you do and where you hope some change made by some nameless product manager/CEO autocrat doesn't force you to buy more expensive hardware.

[shadowgovt]

Yeah, it's pretty great. Best walled garden on the market by a country mile.

[serf]

> Yeah, it's pretty great. Best walled garden on the market by a country mile.

a lot of us avoid supporting such behavior from corporations because we view it as unethical or immoral and damaging to the sector in general -- regardless of how good the ux/ui may be.

[shadowgovt]

The nice thing about living in a world of free people is that is a choice a person can make.

[jchw]

That’s funny. I mean I use iOS and sure the UI is nice… but if you are thinking there’s not needless silly UI changes… how many major versions have you been through?

Some of the bad phone UX ideas started on iPhone. Like removing the physical button at the bottom in favor of annoying gestures and no touch ID. And iOS 7 removed all of the borders everywhere, it’s arguably more radical than Google Material, a UI design I also am not really that fond of.

I guess if you mean there’s no A/B testing or it moves slower then probably. But, it definitely moves. That becomes apparent any time you load an app from the App Store that hasn’t been updated in a while and suddenly your phone looks and feels like it did 2 years ago across the whole UI.

[hbn]

They've definitely changed the overall look, but a good amount of their apps are pretty much identical in how you use them from the original iPhone in 2007. Notes, Messages, Contacts, etc are all relatively unchanged, except for additional features. The biggest overhaul was probably the recent change to Safari where they brought the address bar to the bottom, which was a consideration based on how big phones have gotten, and allows you to reach things easier.

And at the very least, these changes come from normal app updates either from the App Store or OS updates. And it's usually a pretty big deal when they change something, and gets a formal announcement months in advance where someone high up gets up in front of the world and pitches why the change is an improvement (not to say it always is). Whereas Google just randomly shunts out new UI updates on a regular basis and enables them for random people. Usually someone posting about their new UI on reddit is the first place you'll hear about the redesigns.

[bjelkeman-again]

At least with Safari address bar, I found a setting to move it back to the top.

[WorldMaker]

I appreciated when iOS Firefox added a setting to move it down to the bottom. As an old WinPhone user, I missed having that key navigation tool at the bottom. It really does make one-handed phone usage easier.

[ajross]

> ones that don't randomly change their UI on a regular basis

I'm genuinely curious what apps you're talking about here. Everyone does this nonsense. Everything changes all the time. Everything. I don't like it either, but to state that it somehow doesn't happen in the Apple ecosystem seems like a pretty big whopper.

[hbn]

Here's a random example: I think it was like 2017, 2018 when Google launched messages for web. For starters, when it launched, it was located at messages.android.com

I don't think it was much time later before they moved it to messages.google.com, which i think was in line with their SMS's apps like 5th rebranding, this time from Android Messages to Google Messages.

Originally the app had an overall blue theme, and for individual contacts you could change the color of your conversation with them so each chat thread was themed. This even had the neat effect that it would sync with the web version. However, it only lasted like a week maybe before Google completely redesigned Messages to be all white themed, and killed the chat themes entirely so all message threads were now blue and white to look like the iPhone messages app.

That wasn't a rare experience, and I haven't encountered anything like it since switching to an iPhone.

[richardfey]

Wow..imagine the churn amongst the teams working on this