[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.

[CharlesW]

Always!

[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.

[doctorpangloss]

> That's a bit of an unusual way of looking at iPhones.

This is the kind of comment that becomes a downvote magnet. An unusual look is the point.

I don't think it's true that there's some frontend-web-developer-graphic-design-nerd-sense-of-UX superiority to iPhones compared to Android phones. That's what this is about. There's a bunch of observations written here by non-elderly people trying to reason about why iPhones work better for the elderly than Android phones or whatever. Man, just get them a cable TV subscription and pay for it, because that's what they really want: free TV. That's what everyone wants.

It's only in this country that iPhones have such high market share. The fact is, Android or iPhone, the end user is mostly using it to consume the same garbage - mindless freakshow television in TikTok and YouTube.

Mostly couldn't be more true of a generalization either. The sum of the time spent on consuming linear video content on phones is probably like, 90-99% of the time spent on the devices. Even accounting for people playing long session video games in Asia, because children are overall a small part of the population, and adults are for the most part not playing games.

All of these hard, true facts about how utterly narrow an average user's usage of phones attacks sacrosanct magical thoughts in HN readers' heads regarding the diversity of the experiences people are having on computers. They think it's this wondrous world of diverse meaning. There's some truth to that. It may be you and I are having wondrous diverse meaningful experiences. But the average person is scrolling TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

People who disagree and downvote: at the end of the day, how do you know? I mean, have you ever seen the engagement statistics for Apple Photos? For a banking app? Making phone calls? No! But there are countless surveys, all pointing to ridiculous numbers of hours spent in TikTok. 90m a day on average for Americans. That means 1 in 5 people may be spending 180m too! Who do you know spends 90m a day taking photos, banking, making calls? It's far more rare. You can look at the engagement for Google Maps and Spotify, which may be the only non-social media, non-TV apps with high engagement, but it would be intellectually dishonest to count Google Maps - you're using your car for navigation with an appliance, not your phone - and Spotify is an aberration, although still passive mindless consumption, a better more affordable UX compared to radio. If you could watch TV while driving a car, people would, and that would be it for radio and Spotify.

So of course a phone can converge a bunch of other activities. But it doesn't mean that I'm wrong. I know they have a bunch of functionality. The question is, does it matter? No. The average person wants freakshow TV. I'm not the first or the last person to say this. It has never been so stark though.

[tim333]

My mum's 88 and found the iPhone's esim facility useful recently recently when she flew to NYC to represent a British womens group at the UN. I think you overgeneralize a bit about old people just wanting to click dumb content.

[emodendroket]

I don't think I agree with your starting premise that watching cable television is anything like using social media, even at its least edifying.

[FrontierProject]

This type of comment gets downvoted because its right on the border of incoherent rambling. You say there's no ux difference for the elderly between iPhones and Androids, I say you're dead wrong. I've invariably become the IT guy for most of my extended family, and all of the elderly members found an iPhone easier to manage. Once I got one of them to switch, they convinced the rest.

Your argument is basically pure conjecture, everyone in the thread was talking about their personal experience with elderly family members. And your argument is there is no difference between the two devices, based on surveys for the usage percentage of TikTok? Are you kidding me? Has the thought not occured to you that elderly people might be a minority and outlier in such a survey?

Even granting that 90% of elderly screen time is spent watching TikTok, that does absolutely nothing to prove your claim that there is no difference between Android or iPhone for this purpose. Someone above mentioned a simple example of the differences between the two. Androids have an airplane mode toggle in their notification tray while iPhones don't. This is pretty much the sole reason for elderly Android users constantly turning on airplane mode, a problem which is almost nonexistent with iPhone users.

[doctorpangloss]

I'm saying that the difference between the UX of Android and iPhone for the purpose of watching free TV is small, while the difference between a real cable television subscription and an iPhone/Android phone is large. Frontend web developers have zero relevant experience that would give them some insight as to how to "design" "better" television.

I am not really talking about IT burden for your family or whatever, which I also think is erroneously attributed to UX. Of course, if you wanted to reduce your IT burden, you could just say, "No," and nothing bad would happen. They would figure things out.

> And your argument is there is no difference between the two devices, based on surveys for the usage percentage of TikTok?

Yes. I mean, isn't that the definition of form versus function? I'm trying to show you that the primary function of these devices is really, "Watch TikTok," which is a colorful way of saying, consume linear video content effortlessly. Everything else is dwarfed. Another POV is, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube all agree with me: they don't charge more to show ads to Android users compared to iOS users, they charge more for targeting and the size of that audience in unexpected ways, but not in a way that makes sense for, "iOS users are better." Even if I agree with you that they are!

What people observe is true: Do I think the aesthetic experience of an iPhone makes these normal educated people more confident in solving their problems themselves rather than asking you? Yes, but that's a different thing than UX. There are lots of grandmas using Samsung phones, and I think that's because Samsung, as a manufacturer, cares about the aesthetics more. Maybe not OUR grandmas, but grandmas everywhere else in the world.

> Has the thought not occurred to you that elderly people might be a minority and outlier in such a survey?

Elderly people definitely watch average, meaning LARGE, amounts of television. I think they are also going to be average users of TikTok. Everybody who touches TikTok likes it.

[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.

[darrylb42]

The downside of flexibility. Choose input method is the system list. Holding the space bar is the keyboard's method. I sometimes switch to a non-Google keyboard and the Choose input method way of switching is how I get back. I didn't know about the long press on the spacebar method, learned something new today.

[eythian]

I have a third. I have two languages defined, and because of that I have a little globe to the left of the spacebar. Tapping that switches the default one (as far as I can tell, it biases what word it thinks you're aiming for to that language.)

Somehow I always find it's on the secondary language and I haven't worked out if I'm doing that by accident or it's changing on its own.

[Groxx]

For a small bit of context:

The "hold the space bar" method is entirely your keyboard's feature, not Android. Though it is a relatively common pattern in keyboards on both OSes, in its defense (iOS uses it too).

But I don't think I'd recommend Gboard to someone who needs a simplified experience. Gboard is very complicated.

[asoneth]

> But I don't think I'd recommend Gboard to someone who needs a simplified experience. Gboard is very complicated.

Exactly. I'm not keen to attempt to explain the distinction between an input method and a keyboard language setting to a five-year-old or a reluctant 85-year-old. Nor am I keen to troubleshoot how they managed to get something as basic as a keyboard into a weird state.

Don't get me wrong, I personally appreciate the flexibility, use Android on my personal device, and I help my folks and some of my uncles when they run into an issue on their Android phones that they can't solve after a little searching. But through trial-and-error I've concluded that any family members who reach out to me at the first sign of trouble need to be in the Apple ecosystem.

[Groxx]

Yeah, I broadly agree. Better accessibility tools and better built-in apps mean you can just lock it down tight and it's probably good enough without much more effort... and that's a big deal.

With Android... it depends on the manufacturer. But mostly it's much more complicated and you'll have to find long-term stable apps (good luck![1]) because the OEM probably bundled ad-ridden or obtuse stuff.

1: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/simple-mobile-tools-sold-to-zi...

[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.

[SoftTalker]

If you need to combine a modifier key with a mouse gesture you've lost. There's just zero way to frame that as anything but a kludge.

Double-clicking the title bar, a typical Apple feature that is totally undiscoverable except by stumbling upon it or having someone show you.

[adamomada]

But not of course by reading the instructions that come with it, right?

[TylerE]

I don’t remember any instructions coming with any Mac I’ve bought I. The last decades. The license/warranty info sure, but actual printed documentation is limited to a couple pages of to plug stuff together.

[latexr]

Print instructions would get outdated with each OS release. But they do have comprehensive online instructions which do cover how to maximise windows.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchlp2469/mac

In addition, macOS and iOS come with a “Tips” app (yellow with a lightbulb icon) which covers several topics.

[TylerE]

Oth of which involve extra motions (I have mild RSI issues, no no bueno), all to enable a behavior I can’t stand.

[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.

[reverius42]

Microsoft Word is available on iPad. I believe it’s a port of the real thing and thus has full file format compatibility.

[fartfeatures]

The issue is old people don't like change. If an older person is used to the WIMP interface there is no point forcing them to change how they do everything.