[nsriv]

Very slightly unrelated, but this trend is one of the reasons I went Android after the iPhone removed the home button. I think it became meaningfully harder to explain interactions to older users in my family and just when they got the hang of "force touch" it also went away.

First thing I do on new Pixel phones is enable 3 button navigation, but lately that's also falling out of favor in UI terms, with apps assuming bottom navigation bar and not accounting for the larger spacing of 3 button nav and putting content or text behind it.

[RachelF]

Similarly the disappearing menu items in common software.

Take a simple example: Open a read-only file in MS Word. There is no option to save? Where's it gone? Why can I edit but not save the file?

A much better user experience would be to enable and not hide the Save option. When the user tries to save, tell them "I cannot save this file because of blah" and then tell them what they can do to fix it.

[cosmic_cheese]

The Mac HIG specifies exactly this: don’t hide temporarily unavailable options, disable them. Disabling communicates to the user the relationships between data, state, etc and adds discoverability.

[int_19h]

This has been the norm on every desktop. But lately I don't think app designers know what "HIG" even is. Everything is web (or tries real hard to look like it even when it's native apps...), which is to say, everything is broken.

[urbandw311er]

I half agree. The save option should be disabled, since there is something very frustrating about enabling a control that cannot be used. However, there could be a label (or a warning button that displays such a label) explaining why the option is disabled.

[zhivota]

I am the same, long time Android user and when I borrow my wife's iPhone it is an exercise in frustration. Interactions are hidden, not intuitive, or just plain missing.

Now that Pixel cameras outclass iPhone cameras, and even Samsung is on par, there is really no reason to ever switch to the Apple ecosystem anymore IMO.

[Aeolun]

> there is really no reason to ever switch to the Apple ecosystem anymore IMO

Not having anything to do with Google is a pretty good reason I think.

[sheiyei]

The best one, unfortunately it's a terrible user experience for a high cost.

[Aeolun]

Kinda. I was always upset that Apple never let me do everything I wanted with my hardware, but as my usage pattern changed, I started to value the convenience of a more or less consistent system over discoverability.

[SoftTalker]

> [iPhone] Interactions are hidden, not intuitive, or just plain missing.

And they aren't even consistent from app to app. That's perhaps the most frustrating thing.

[cosmic_cheese]

That’s thanks to third party devs, not Apple. If you look primarily at proper native UIKit/SwiftUI apps, there’s a lot more consistency, but there’s a lot of cross platform lowest common denominator garbage out there that pays zero mind to platform conventions.

You see this under macOS, too. A lot of Electron apps for instance replace the window manager’s standard titlebar with some custom thing that doesn’t implement chunks of the standard titlebar’s functionality. It’s frustrating.

[SoftTalker]

In Messages, to create a new message tap the pencil-in-a-square icon in the upper right corner.

In Notes, to create a new Note, tap the pencil-in-a-square icon in the lower right corner.

In Calendar, to create a new appointment, tap the + icon in the upper right corner.

In Reminders, to create a new reminder, tap the + in a blue circle in the lower left corner. At least it offers a text label "New Reminder"

These are all Apple apps and they all do it differently. And that's not even getting into gestures and other actions that you just have to stumble upon to even know they exist.

[cosmic_cheese]

Consistency has been on the decline within Apple apps for sure, but it gets much worse after introducing cross platform apps into the mix.

The main one I end up missing most is the swipe to go back gesture within apps. It comes for “free” when using UIKit and SwiftUI navigation primitives (UINavigationController, UISplitViewController, and their SwiftUI counterparts) but it’s almost always missing from apps built with React Native and such.

[jama211]

If you were a long time iphone user you’d say the same thing about android. It’s just about what you’re used to dude.

[matsemann]

Not really. In Android there will be a back button, on iPhone you're supposed to know to swipe in some direction. On Android there will be a button to show running apps, on iPhone you will need to swipe correctly from somewhere. When 3d touch existed I think there were like 11 different ways of pressing the home button depending on context.

[Kwpolska]

Modern Android defaults to the same random swipe experience as iOS. But you can go back to the much more usable three-button setup.

[int_19h]

Android by default is also swipe swipe swipe. You need to tweak the settings to get the older and saner 3-button setup back.

As far as the Back button, on iOS the norm is for it to be present somewhere in the UI of the app in any context where there's a "back" to go to. For cross-app switching, there's an OS-supplied Back button in the status bar on top, again, showing only when it's relevant (admittedly it's very tiny and easy to miss). Having two might sound complicated but tbh I rather prefer it that way because in Android it can sometimes be confusing as to what the single global Back button will do in any given case (i.e. whether it'll navigate within the current app, or switch you back to the previous app).

[jama211]

Ahh so you’re making assumptions about iPhones without even knowing how they work at all, your zealous yet nonsensical input makes more sense now.

[int_19h]

I had the same story, which is why the last phone I got for my grandma was an iPhone SE (which still has the home button). This way, no matter where she ends up, there's this large and obvious thing that she can press to return back to the familiarity of the home screen.

[strogonoff]

I am firmly in the “key UI elements should be visible” camp. I also agree that Apple violates that rule occasionally.

However, I think they do a decent job at resisting it in general, and specifically I disagree that removing the home button constitutes hiding an UI element. I see it as a change in interaction, after which the gesture is no longer “press” but “swipe” and the UI element is not a button but edge of the screen itself. It is debatable whether it is intuitive or better in general, but I personally think it is rather similar to double-clicking an icon to launch an app, or right-clicking to invoke a context menu: neither have any visual cues, both are used all the time for some pretty key functions, but as soon as it becomes an intuition it does not add friction.

You may say Apple is way too liberal in forcing new intuitions like that, and I would agree in some cases (like address bar drag on Safari!), but would disagree in case of the home button (they went with it and they firmly stuck with it, and they kept around a model with the button for a few more years until 2025).

Regarding explaining the lack of home button: on iOS, there is an accessibility feature that puts on your screen a small draggable circle, which when pressed displays a configurable selection of shortcuts—with text labels—including the home button and a bunch of other pretty useful switches. Believe it or not, I know people who kept this circle around specifically when hardware home button was a thing, because they did not want to wear out the only thing they saw as a moving part!

[fauigerzigerk]

>the gesture is no longer “press” but “swipe” and the UI element is not a button but edge of the screen itself.

Right, but while it's obvious to everyone that a button is a control, it's not obvious that an edge is a control. On top of that, swiping up from the bottom edge triggers two completely different actions depending on exactly when/where you lift your finger off the screen.

Why not move the physical home button to the back of the phone?

[strogonoff]

I think a button that is located behind the screen fits the definition of “hidden interface control” more so than a swipeable screen edge.

Forwhat it’s worth, back tap is a feature of iOS to which you can assign an action, though it only triggers on double or triple tap.

[fauigerzigerk]

>I think a button that is located behind the screen fits the definition of “hidden interface control” more so than a swipeable screen edge.

I couldn't disagree more.

A big physical button on the surface of the device that is both visible and touchable is completely unmissable. More importantly, it's unmistakably a control. There is simply no other explanation for its existence than being a control.

The edge of the screen on the other hand exists because the screen has to end somewhere. There is no hint whatsoever that it doubles as a control when touched in a certain way or that it doubles as multiple different controls when touched slightly differently.

That said, I'm not a dogmatic "UI physicalist" (if that's a thing). I hate the physical mute switch for instance and I'm not a huge fan of the physical double click to authorise purchases. And I don't want scrollbars constantly in my face.

I do believe that new ways of interacting with hardware can be introduced over time even if hidden. There's a legitimate trade-off beteween discoverability and productivity once you're familiar with the way a device works.

The problem is that some people really struggle with gestures even when they know they exist. I watched people fail to answer calls on Android because it required them to swipe up an on-screen icon.

The number of things you can do swiping or just touching somewhere near the bottom of the screen is staggering and constantly changing.

[strogonoff]

> There is no hint

Like there is no hint for double click, right-click context menu, pinch to zoom, force/long tap, swipe anywhere in any direction, etc. I do not want to repeat my comment. To each their own.

[fingerlocks]

Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch -> Back Tap -> Tap Back of iPhone for Home

You're welcome

[strogonoff]

How well does it work? I configured some action on back tap, but on my old phone it only allows binding it to double tap and triggers strictly accidentally (I cannot trigger it when I actually want to). Are you saying new iPhones have better sensors that improve back tap?

[fauigerzigerk]

The point of the home button was that it's an obvious, unmissable control. A hidden gesture that's off by default is pretty much the exact opposite of that.

[fingerlocks]

You can bring back the home button in virtual form as well, also in accessibility settings.

[mjmas]

Since the iPhone 7 it was no longer a moving part (only pressure sensitive)

[strogonoff]

Indeed, but people still saw it as a moving part.

[Jaxan]

I still have my iPhone with home button. That’s also a solution ;-)