[matsemann]

Yeah, for a decade now it's been a UX disaster. It "works", because so many people are used to it, but look at a new user trying to navigate iOS, it's bonkers. Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?). The home button has like 11 different functions depending on how you press it and when.

[spragl]

Im an iPhone user. I want it to take as little space as possible physically and mentally, and try to use it as little as possible. My experience has been that it was easy learning to use it by just bumbling around.

That is, until two weeks ago when I got my new iPhone. I had to, the old one couldnt upgrade to the newest iOS.

I feel ashamed to admit, that I had one or two days of extreme frustration just learning to do basic stuff. It was not about the shape of icons, but more along the lines of what you write. Swiping patterns, button press sequences, and the time you should hold down a button. It is ridiculous.

Some of the blame is on me for not being mobile phone savvy, but it is indisputable that the UX has deterioted significantly. I suspect it will just get worse going forward.

[wingerlang]

This seems exaggerated. I recently moved to iOS 26 from iOS 16. They work exactly the same in my experience.

Except for the fact that you can’t scrub on the native video player by swiping anywhere, you now have to use the time-bar. Drives me nuts.

[spragl]

I dont know what to say. I relate a personal experience. Yours was different. Good for you.

My problem was not using apps, but the other stuff. I did as I was used to, stubbornly bumbling around, feeling sure I would run into the solution. But I never did. I had to look up instructions, several times. That was never necessary with my old iPhone.

[al_borland]

> Swiping from random directions achieves different things

I haven't used iOS 27 yet, but from what I've seen it's going to get worse. We already have swiping down from the top left or top right bringing up different things, while swiping down anywhere else in the middle of the screen brings up search... unless you're swiping down at the bottom of the screen, then it's Reachability. From what I understand, iOS 27 will also bring swiping down from the Dynamic Island to trigger Siri. So that's 3 different behaviors from a swipe down from somewhere on the top of a <3" wide screen, with no real way to know what's going on intuitively.

[hecifato]

Something that I ended up loving about iOS was the relative simplicity it had compared to Android at the time I started using the iPhone in 2017. iOS 10 and 11 were great. People complained about things like all apps needing to be on the homescreen or not being able to place apps arbitrarily, but at the same time that "lack" of function is part of what made iOS easy to use and understand.

I find nowadays iOS is as complex as the Android I remember. I can navigate it just fine because I'm used to it but even my parents who've been using iPhones longer than me have found themselves getting lost in the OS with iOS 26 in particular.

[ksec]

It was even better before 2017.

I used to describe iPhone being an Appliance, with some smart function added to it. Android was a PC trying to made into a Phone form factor and act like an appliance.

It was that simplicity of iPhone that was great.

And you are right now iPhone and Android have converge in many ways it has added complexity. And no one seems to be doing anything about it. And somehow after 15 years of UX Craig Federighi is still popular and gets no blame for it.

[bigyabai]

It was a weal-and-woe situation. The lockdown was tolerable with such a weak device, but portended a lot of the App Store issues that Apple grapples with today.

Back then, the coolest way to use an iPhone or iPod was to put Cydia on it. You could run emulators, live wallpapers, sideloaded apps, pretty much anything that Android had was at the tip of your fingers. Once Apple pushed for a return to the locked-down software distribution philosophy, I gave up on iOS and started dailying Android instead.

[jaffa2]

1. Ive been using apple iphone since 2010 and i jave an iphone air right now. I still dont know how/why/when i seem to accidentally call the AI thing where the side of my acreen go all all funny. Ive never done it intentionally and i dont know how but every so often i trigger it.

2. Can apple ‘regress’ the camera app so the it is easy to use. The interface is a disaster of mixed inputs and over loaded widgets. Theres so many modes and sub modes. Swipe to zoom works mostly except when it changes modes. I spend about 10 seconds every tone inise the camera app just making it take a picture because accidentally touching it in the wrong place switches to some other mode.

3. The genrel consistency has went downhill. Its difficult sometimes now to know just how to interact with an app.

4. Search box. If i do another attempt at a web search when i am in mail search box i dunno. Either unify it or make it distinct. Also sometime its at the top sometimes the bottom

[matsemann]

About (2), it reminds me of a video I saw once of someone trying to take a picture at a sport event, or how my parents try to do it. Hold the phone with an awkward grip to point it towards what you want, with one hand free. Accidentally touch the edge of the screen and click something with the gripping hand. Then try to zoom in with your free hand, but one finger hits the screen first due to the angle of the phone so you do a swipe instead and go to selfie mode. Swipe fervently to get back. Try again, click screen to focus. But just as you click a notification pops up and you press it.

[jaffa2]

EXACTLY. I'm a tech savvy user and know about all these things. But it's still too damn difficult to use without all that jeopardy. It didn't used to be like this.

[al_borland]

1. This is generally from holding in the lock button (the upper button on the right side). Maybe you're accidentally holding it in while gripping the phone. Some people tend to rest their thumb there and might start holding it on accident.

4. The top vs bottom search boxes drive me nuts. I still instinctively reach for the top of the screen for search, so going to the bottom is weird. The move to the bottom is also a symptom of the phones being too large, so they have to move all the UI users interact with down to the bottom. Not being 100% consistent with it makes it hard to retrain my habits around it.

[jaffa2]

I press the lock button long, short, tap, it doesn’t do ‘the thing’ like yellow wobbles around the edge of screen.

[KPGv2]

> Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?)

Cultural context, the same way you'd know tapping on an icon opens an app.

[matsemann]

No, tapping something visible and seeing what happens is discoverable. And Apple used to have skeuomorphism to help with affordance. Swiping from various directions and other hidden shortcuts aren't discoverable, and my guess is most users can't find half of the features of their phone.

[xdertz]

Tapping something is discoverable and a basic human instinct. How the hell do you discover "swipe up from the bottom edge and then slightly right" to open the app switcher?

[al_borland]

You don't have to do the slightly right thing, it's just a bit more fluid. If you swipe up and wait a split second before letting go, it also works. There is haptic feedback once the mode triggers. It's fast, but requires intention vs a fluid swipe.

[busymom0]

For me, the swipe to go to home gesture on iOS very often conflicts with my swipe to go to all tabs in Safari.

[jaapz]

I have an ipad that I mainly use to open YouTube... If I had q nickel for every time some random gesture accidentally triggered some weird feature, I'd certainly have a few nickels.

[altern8]

That's what made me switch to Android.

At least you can have 3-button navigation

[KronisLV]

I moved over from my old Android to an iPhone (needed to develop an iOS app for a freelance thing too) and that was the first thing that cause me off guard - it’s like controls that should be buttons of some kind were just omitted.

[jaffa2]

Its just as bad. Please define ‘back’

[MayeulC]

1. Hide virtual keyboard if shown

2. Go to previous app view. This is app-dependent though it will probably, successively with each press:

a. Close menus if open (context, sidebar, etc)

b. Go to previous (web)page if web/file browser c. Go out of submenus (ex: settings/WiFi -> settings) if not in a browser or if the oldest page has been reached. Keeps walking the tree upwards.

3. Reach the main app view (usually the one you land on when opening the app)

4. One more press minimizes the app.

It is fairly consistent, but some apps decide otherwise:

* some will minimize as soon as you press it (I've seen games do it)

* some will open a new menu (again, games: pause menu)

* some will seemingly walk you the history of visited pages instead of the hierarchy -- which may make sense but can be confusing

* some old apps will display a toast "press back twice to exit". This used to be common back when physical buttons were the norm, but I haven't seen this message a lot.

So, mostly consistent with some weird-behaving apps. Same as on desktop I guess?

[doright]

I prefer 3-button navigation, but it seems most of the web has decided that gesture-based navigation has won, and it's an awful experience sometimes. They assume you will always swipe down to close popup modals like full-size images, so pressing back will instead navigate out of the page. And half the time, navigating forward puts you right back on top of the modal again!

It breaks the intuition that one tap == one piece of state on the navigation stack.

[jaffa2]

Go to previous (web)page if web/file browser

Keeps walking the tree upwards.

If i switch to my browser and hit back what happens : I go back to my previous app ? I go back in my browser page cache history ? I go back to the page that opened that web page i'm looking at ? something else ?

also mixing Back and Up is just wrong. I've had arguments with people that don't understand the difference.

[jaffa2]

brilliant. when i last used an android google apps were the worst for abusing the back button. maybe it's changed since then. sometimes it went up. sometimes previous. sometimes quit.

[kevin_thibedeau]

My favorite was long pressing back to show the history. Perfect for escaping from a nav hijack page or returning to a page multiple steps ahead in history. Swipes are a downgrade in functionality.

[altern8]

Back means the previous screen.

If you're in Chrome, the previous entry in the history. If you're in YouTube, the previous video. If you were previously on the main screen and you just clicked into an app, the main screen.

What's confusing about it? Seems very intuitive to me, it's like CTRL+Z, it always changes what it does but the behavior is to undo the latest action.

[jaffa2]

On YouTube if enter a comment and decide i dont want to submit it after all, does back close the comment window and take me to the video, or does it take me to the previous video i viewed.

If i click a link in youtube and browser opens, does clicking back take me back to YouTube? Back in the browser? Back to the previous video.?

[Oanid]

Quirks, nonetheless, but after using the app for a few hours the logic starts to click.

To answer your questions, I'm guessing:

- Pressing Back in YouTube closes the comments so you can continue watching the video.

- If you tap a link in YouTube and it opens a browser, it'll default to an in-app browser with an X in the upper-left. If you've disabled that browser, pressing Back returns you to YouTube.

[altern8]

As much as you're trying to find a way to prove it's complicated, it rollbacks your previous action. Extremely simple and intuitive.

[petee]

Even thats slowly being depreciated for gestures as the default option. A bunch of Google's own apps won't play nice with it anymore on the flagship Pixel, drawing buttons underneath