iPadOS Discoverability Trouble

https://mondaynote.com/ipados-discoverability-trouble-488d2d40ee1

by LaSombra • 7 years ago

94 96 7 years ago

close043• 7 years ago

Some of the conclusions are only looking at a single factor and ignoring the rest.

The most natural explanation for the decline [in sales] is that the iPad failed to fulfill initial expectations that it would be a general-purpose device that could replace our Macs and PCs.

People didn't buy iPads in 2014 because they actually thought they would replace their PC, or for the the promise that a future model will in 2021. They bought them because they were leaps and bounds better than the one they already had, they did more and better. My iPad 1 was woefully outdated by the time the iPad 3 came out just 2 years later. You could feel it in the performance, the screen resolution, etc. My 5 year old iPad Air 2 is still kicking ass and has easily at least another year or 2 left in it. And when I upgrade it's because of the lack of support, not that I can feel it buckling under the workload.

As markets mature the improvements are getting smaller and smaller and the product is more than adequate for longer periods. That's the real benefit of the maturity of the market. Today it's harder to justify the upgrade even if it would be perfectly able to replace your PC.

alistairSH2• 7 years ago

Agreed. I don't buy iPads frequently because, like laptops, they last a long time and the gains from generation to generation are quite small. I have owned three - all iPad Minis - and two are still working just fine.

I bought a Mini 1, then replaced it with a Mini 2. At some point after that, I adde a Mini 4. The 2 stays by my bedside for quick surfing, checking weather, etc. The 4 is my main tablet.

I may eventually replace the Mini 2 with an iPad Pro in an attempt to replace my aging MacBook Air, but that's a lot of money and I haven't convinced myself that's the way I want to go. There's still something to be said for a proper laptop.

scarface7410• 7 years ago

You’re giving the iPad 1 way too much credit. It was outdated the day it came out. It only had 256MB of RAM. The iPhone 4 released 3 months later had 512MB of RAM.

The iPhone 4 ran up to iOS 7. The iPad stopped at iOS 5 and ran it badly. The iPad 2 released a year later with 512MB of RAM ran up to iOS 9.

m45t3r• 7 years ago

Both the first iPad and the third iPad (the first retina one) were pretty bad. The third iPad, thanks to its retina screen and its anemic GPU to drive its high resolution screen was outdated pretty fast (iPad 4 was released only 7 months later).

close043• 7 years ago

I compared iPad 1 because I had it. The story of iPad 2 is not much different. When the 4 came out it was faster, had more RAM, much better screen, etc. Every product reaches a stage where improvements stop being so obvious year over year and the upgrade seems less and less justified. What used to be a 2-3 year upgrade cycle can now easily be a 5+ year one.

deltron3030• 7 years ago

They bought them because they were leaps and bounds better than the one they already had, they did more and better.

In my opinion it's all about the apps, the overall adoption is just a reflection of apps conquering certain hobby niches and activities that already exist outside of the Appstore, activities that favor some kind of tactile interaction. That's why music making and painting apps are so popular on the iPad, people use them as replacements for actual physical devices, not for replacing computers. That's why coding on an iPad is still very niche and not a thing, desktops and laptops are already perfect for that.

simonh• 7 years ago

I suspect the surge of sales was due to broad publicity and pent up demand for a simpler approach to computing. If you look at the customer satisfaction numbers, they're almost unnaturally good, so I can' see any evidence of customer disappointment. I think the fallback was simply a return to a long term mean.

baggy_trough• 7 years ago

I've never discovered, and therefore never use, any features of iPadOS that go beyond iOS. I probably don't even know half of the iOS features.

Discoverability is a huge problem. Another huge problem is slight variations in gestures or press duration that have widely varying and confusing results.

mark_l_watson2• 7 years ago

It does take some effort to learn how to use newer features. My biggest complaint was figuring out how to activate “search everything on my iPad” because they changed to location/gesture. An iPad is much less valuable if you can’t simply search local content. Anyway, relief was had after twenty minutes of web searching.

I use my iPad more than all my laptops and iPhone combined. It is my default device. I use my iPhone much less since I tend to leave it at home and just use my AppleWatch for getting calls, text messages, and listening to audio books/podcasts/music on my AirPods. I only use laptops for deep learning (I have one with a good GPU) and programming.

sjy7• 7 years ago

May I ask how you use the "search everything on my iPad" feature? Do you depend on iCloud to store the master copy of all your files on all your devices? I don't, and I assume that's why I've never been able to get anything useful out of the system-wide search feature, but I'd be interested in making it work if I could.

mark_l_watson2• 7 years ago

No, the search is active when on the desktop and you swipe down from the center of the screen. The search functionality searches the data associated with most apps on my iPad, and shows internet search results below results for files in your iPad.

Ididntdothis2• 7 years ago

Totally agree. I have experienced several times that somehow I managed to get two apps onto the split screen but I have no idea how I did it and it was not obvious how to get back to normal. Same with things like undo and other text input features . It seems there are a ton of features but there is just no way of finding them.

I think around the time of Windows 95 and macOS back then they put a lot of emphasis on consistent user experience and discoverability. The current state of affairs feels like a big regression.

shantly• 7 years ago

I liked it better when it was a slab of glass that could become a bunch of different tools on-demand, with some light ability to pass info between the tools. And I think discoverability in iOS generally has been trending down fast since iOS7 came out. I don't know any of the new crap, I just accidentally do new stuff sometimes then have to figure out how to make it go away.

iOS6+iPad: the most recent mainstream OS & device I'd feel sort-of OK about saddling my elderly computer-illiterate relatives with.

Ididntdothis2• 7 years ago

Especially with iPadOS I feel they are slowly back to building a full size desktop OS but they don’t want to admit that to themselves so they keep pretending to be as simple as the first iOS versions were.

xnzakg• 7 years ago

Well, one of the nice things about a split screen view is that you don't need two iPads if you want to open a pdf on one and write notes on another, which is a problem I have with my reMarkable tablet. There's definitely better ways of implementing that than the way iPadOS currently does it though.

0x38B• 7 years ago

In Safari, if you press and drag a tab on the tab bar to rearrange it, it's easy to open split view instead, with your tab in a new Safari window.

To get the tab back, you have to open the tab switcher and drag it back to its original window. But the new Safari window is still there...

In my usage at work, I'm sticking to alt-tabbing and quick Slide Over use. Even though my 12.9" iPad Pro has the space, juggling split views (swapping apps in and out, encountering bugs) was slowing me down.

sixothree2• 7 years ago

I've been able to do split screen a few times. But mostly I end up losing my original application. It seems some applications cannot exist in split screen (?) and don't bother to indicate that you will lose your existing layout?

I learned about long pressing the space bar less than a month ago. Apparently that has existed for years. Ugh. This thing is awful. Just plain awful.

ihuman• 7 years ago

If an app doesn't support split screen, the screen won't split when you drag an app to the right (before your let go). It makes a different animation to show the new app will replace the running app.

robocat• 7 years ago

What's worse is that you can end up with multiple copies of the Safari app running. This is very confusing, and breaks the fundamental "tap Safari to open Safari" because it doesn't always open the correct one. Android avoids this.

On Android another confusion is that swipe from edge no longer works because the split has no edge of the screen. I presume iPadOS has the same issue.

The Android split screen functionality is also bloody hard to find (press ■, then tap app icon at top centre of each screen shot).

_ea1k• 7 years ago

The sad thing is that it seems like it has gotten worse. When I first started using the iPad a few years ago, I remember a pretty simple set of gestures (using multitouch) to do things like this.

Now, I literally have no idea how to go to split screen on the same device.

pfranz2• 7 years ago

I have felt similar to you. Gesture based interfaces aren't discoverable and there's no mental model or coherence everyone is building on.

But playing devils advocate, I remember in the 90s and early 2000s an older generation taking computer classes to do basic things for work. All of the thought and consistency just didn't click with them. They spent 8 hours at work, but didn't spend their nights/weekends poking at and discovering the system. But the classes gave enough instruction for them to be productive.

Last night I was watching my 3 year old son playing with a keyboard (piano). It's battery powered, there's an on/off switch, and a volume slider. It "turns off" after a few minutes to save battery and you have to switch it off/on for it to work. He gets very confused and thinks its broken--sometimes it times out, if he fixes that the volume may be down, at some point the batteries will die. I was thinking about the interface for a grand piano. It's always on and there's a physical lid that closes when it "turns off." That interface makes much more sense to him. Sure, that interface is better and more discoverable, but it costs much more, loses flexibility, and isn't as portable. I'm not actually saying one is better than the other. It was just something I was thinking about.

trimbo• 7 years ago

Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini said this years ago

https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi...

dmix• 7 years ago

No more discoverability, no more recoverability, just the barest remnants of feedback. Why? Not because this was to be a gestural interface, but because Apple simultaneously made a radical move toward visual simplicity and elegance at the expense of learnability, usability, and productivity.

Bingo, this is the thing that designers always mistake with minimalism. It doesn't just mean taking everything away, it's about minimal amount of headaches and avoiding information overload.

But that ranks far lower on the problem totem pole than not knowing how to do anything because it's all hidden or simply not obvious or explained.

tonyedgecombe2• 7 years ago

The iPad seems squeezed at both ends, from the bottom phones are nearly as powerful and at the top laptops aren't much heavier.

They are good for ageing parents and grandparents though, my mother in law loves hers and we like not having to deal with PC issues.

rbritton2• 7 years ago

I’m split on that. On one hand, I have fewer tech support calls because my mom generally has fewer problems with an iPad, but when she does have problems, there is no option to use any kind of remote desktop software. For me, the killer “parental help” feature would be a way to remotely see what’s on their screen and either annotate it somehow or be able to interact with it.

Someone12342• 7 years ago

I never really thought about that before but you're absolutely right. I've literally had to video call someone and had them point their phone at the iPad just to provide basic technical support. Why can't we remote into an iPad?

leggomylibro3• 7 years ago

There is still a bit of a gap in the market for small 10-12" laptops, but Chromebooks are eating those customers pretty quickly.

IMO, tablets are still a decent choice for people who think that 13" is too big for a laptop, although iPads may not work well for that because you're stuck with the default OS.

tonyedgecombe2• 7 years ago

I always liked the look of the 11" MacBook Air although I must admit I never tried it.

taude2• 7 years ago

I replied above to the wrong parent, but I wanted to say that I like the idea of an 11" ipad-clamshell. I use a Brydge keyboard now, and would like to see how well Apple could do that integration. I'm also a former 11" MB Air person who did a lot of development on that little one.

levythe2• 7 years ago

I honestly don't think a chromebook accomplishes much I would want a computer in that form factor to do. Guess that goes to show I'm perpetually not the target audience.

pjmlp• 7 years ago

Not in Europe they aren't.

You hardly see a Chromebook anywhere in most consumer shops, and when they appear, it looks like testing waters, followed by endless promotions to try to get rid of them.

It is all about Windows 10 over here.

AllanHoustonSt• 7 years ago

I absolutely love my ipad for casual/quick content consumption and as my main pdf/ebook reader.

For videos I don’t always want to sit in front of my TV and web browsing on the higher end ipads I actually find more enjoyable than on a laptop.

Sure it’s an expensive device for such niche uses but I’m willing to pay the premium. The hardware’s also specced to be competitive for quite a few years.

taude2• 7 years ago

I'd personally love to see an 11" iPad-clambook. As it is now, I use one of those Brydge keyboards and it makes the iPad a 98% home computer for me. I'd love to see how small and integration Apple could do by attaching a permanent keyboard to an iPad. Plus, the clamshell is just such a superior stand for getting the iPad to stand up on the couch, in bed, at the right angles on a kitchen counter, etc...

samatman2• 7 years ago

I adore my 12.9" 3rd Gen iPad Pro. In fact I spend too much time on it.

Being able to read PDFs at native size, Procreate with the Pencil, even just endlessly scrolling Twitter with a flick of the stylus, watching video, it's great.

I also agree with TFA about discoverability, I was annoyed to have to relearn how to get the search bar, and the multi-app gestures seem half-baked. As a developer I'm used to having to research how things work, but it's got to be a pain for more casual users.

IMHO the Pro iPad is on the verge of being a better computer for most people's use cases. iPadOS, as distinct from iOS, is fairly new software, and I'm hoping the recent issues are just growing pains.

sjy7• 7 years ago

iPadOS, as distinct from iOS, is fairly new software

Isn’t this just marketing bullshit from Apple? The number of new features in iPadOS that aren’t supported on all iOS devices is comparable to previous major iOS releases. I have found it to be especially buggy at launch compared to those previous releases though.

sylens• 7 years ago

Watching the WWDC keynote this year, I knew that I would never use 90% of what they were showing. It's too esoteric to discover and I would use it infrequently so it would never become a habit.

Someone12342• 7 years ago

This was a large criticism I had of Force Touch ("3D Touch"), and why I was not at all surprised when it "died."

Force Touch may have been an impressive technological showpiece, but at its core it had no discoverability and you couldn't really even describe how to use it, new users just had to experiment.

This resulted in apps being unable to use it for important functionality, because it would never be found. Which ultimately resulted in most UI designs ignoring it entirely and leading to its own irrelevance.

A mouse's right click has the same issue, and many users never "discover" that either. I've met people who only know how to use the clipboard in Microsoft Office applications because it has a UI for it (via the Clipboard section in the ribbon). They simply don't right click, ever.

robenkleene8• 7 years ago

Curious what you think the conclusion should be from that? E.g., if 3D Touch should be removed because not enough people used it, does that mean right click should be removed for the same reason?

It seems really obvious to me that computers should scale from the most basic of users to the most skilled of users, and features that only benefit a small percentage of users are still important because they let skilled users be more effective.

This is the fatal flaw in modern Apple's design approach of allocating resources based on how popular features are (at least that's how it appears from the outside), rather than addressing areas where the device fails to scale to the needs to skilled users. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to keep the device from reaching its full potential. This is directly why the iPad, while a great device for unskilled users, has failed to capture any market share in any of the skilled tasks that people use desktop computers for[1].

There's so much backwards thinking that come out of Apple because they can't seem to make anything for skilled users anymore, like Apple pitching the iPad as the future ("what's a computer"), while everything that Apple makes is made using Macs.

[1] https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-ha...

ridiculous_fish• 7 years ago

Right click should be an accelerator. Everything you can accomplish via right click should be also be available via the menu bar, or other easily discoverable UI.

3D touch should have been an accelerator for long press.

https://medium.com/@eliz_kilic/how-apple-can-fix-3d-touch-2f...

scarface7410• 7 years ago

rather than addressing areas where the device fails to scale to the needs to skilled users.

How is it a “fatal flaw” seeing that Apple’s iPad+Mac business is more successful in terms of profit than any PC manufacturer? It seems like it is doing just as well ignoring “advanced users” as it is doing ignoring “the enterprise”

sjy7• 7 years ago

That article seems to be about the Mac App Store, not the iPad. Don’t you think the fact that an iPad has a maximum screen size of 13”, and is designed to be used with your fingers, might be at least as significant a reason why it hasn’t replaced desktop computers? I’m no fan of the App Store, but these are some significant limitations that must be accepted on a mobile device. It’s not like Android phones or tablets are any better in this regard.

woah• 7 years ago

Also, a force touch almost always corresponds to a long touch, so there wasn’t really much of a point to it as far as I could tell.

benhurmarcel• 7 years ago

That wasn't the case on iOS 12

jarjoura2• 7 years ago

"3D touch" on the iPhone 11 is a mess now because it activates some intentful interaction by simply leaving your thumb on the display for too long. I applaud the decision to replace it for longer battery life, and I still do miss it a little bit. For example, the lock screen camera was nice to force touch.

ProfessorLayton• 7 years ago

It was further complicated because Apple never went all-in on 3D Touch. Some phones had it, others didn't, and tablets never got it at all.

This resulted in interactions being optimized for the lowest common denominator (ie pretend it doesn't exist, or treat is like a power feature.)

__bazinga__• 7 years ago

There were some great UI suggestions from the community for how Apple could have indicated that a component supported a 3D Touch gesture. There are still a lot of places where I think subtle "hints" would increase discoverability without negatively impacting the iOS aesthetic.

FerretFred• 7 years ago

Files! I bought an iPad Mini 2019 and loved it - it replaced my iPad 2 which was no longer getting updates and that still works fine as a music player.

But FILES! Gah! What a MESS. With 13.1.x it improved, but I still manage to lose files that I mail to myself from the PC. They go to "My iPad" apparently, but not always. I wanted to use MiniKeepass with a password and a keyfile, but despite following the dev's instructions and some experimentation I just could not get it to find the key file. So it's deleted for now. I hope they fix it soon..

dingus2• 7 years ago

Beware: don't share dot files with the Files app. I tried to sync a git directory and now my Files app is filled with several hundred git object files (bf13ee59588b878f1d780c5cc8cd2e3410eaba, etc) that cannot be selected, moved, or deleted because they allegedly "do not exist" according to the error dialog.

sjy7• 7 years ago

That sucks. Do you know of any way to fix it, other than backing up the data in each app separately using means other than iTunes/iCloud backup, and then restoring the iPad to factory state, which would take hours?

What did you use to sync? I've been able to sync Git repositories in GoodReader and Working Copy, but I have found the Files app's SMB support, and integration with apps like Secure Shellfish, to be buggy and unreliable.

sjy7• 7 years ago

I got super excited about the USB drive support and started telling everyone who would listen about how it would solve all our work-related problems with transferring gigabytes of documents onto iPads securely. Then I tried using it with about 10 different USB devices, and was unable to use any of them to successfully copy a 10 GB folder with thousands of files in it into 'On My iPad.' Working with one file at a time was OK, but I managed to get Files into an unresponsive state that could only be cured with a reboot more than once by accessing and copying large folders. I’m convinced nobody at Apple actually tried to use iOS's USB support for “Pro” tasks – it doesn't work.

_s• 7 years ago

A "Pro" user to most companies is someone who can send / receive emails, and create / edit / share documents, plus google things they don't know.

A "regular" user is one who uses their device primarily for consumption; facebook, netflix and music.

The missing tier is "creators", developers / designers etc - and they find themselves lumped in with "pro" users yet their requirements are just a little bit higher. The market for "creators" is marginal, so it'll never be a focus.

For full control, there's "enterprise" versions of most software but come at a huge cost. This is where some "creators" find themselves as well when "pro" doesn't quite cut it, but generally find "enterprise" is overkill.

jccalhoun3• 7 years ago

After hearing about how great ios was I finally bought the new ipad after being android only for years (I had an ipod touch years ago). Maybe I've just been into the Android ecosystem too long but there are a lot of things about ios/ipados that I just can't stand.

How is there no way on ios to just see a list of all the apps I have installed? Having to spend time thinking about where an icon should be or if it it should be in a folder or not seems to antiquated. Someone told me i could swipe to search for an app but as the article says that is totally undiscovered.

I can't install an app from a web browser on my desktop computer? I guess I took for granted that you could just go to the google play store and have an app installed on your phone or tablet.

People always talked about how bad apps looked on android tablets because they weren't designed for tablets. I never noticed it but I can say the way ios does it is not better. Having the app in a little window with a huge black border? Ok, so you expand it but there are still black bars on the sides? How is that better?

I know that with recent versions of android that google has been moving away from dedicated back button but I am in the habit of flicking up to get the back button and using that. I know you can swipe from the left to go back but I'm just not used to that.

Is there a way to stop apps from begging for reviews and notification access? I know I could do that on android but I don't know how to do it on ios.

eitland• 7 years ago

Upvoted you, but I have a very different experience: I have an iPad now as my first iOS device.

I think it is wonderful, the reason I waited so long before getting one was because of how utterly disappointed I was with Macbook Pro and OSX a decade ago.

Yes, some things are crazy annoying on iOS as well like

- the missing scroll bars

- and the fact that every app seems to have to do things in their own weird way,

- and the fact that it cannot remember that I want to use the SwiftKey keyboard

but some things are extremely much zbetter it seems: for example it was amazing when I realized I could drag a thing with one finger and then use the other hand to navigate to the correct app, navigate in the app to the correct spot and only then realize the dragged object.

The pencil also works, and became even more responsive with the update a few weeks ago.

For me I'm still years away from giving their computer OS a chance at all, but given how well the iPad works for me I have considered taking the risk and buying an iPhone next time.

That doesn't invalidate your experience however, it only proves that UX is highly subjective.

samatman2• 7 years ago

You're getting downvoted because there's a way to do most of those things.

Which is ironic, in a thread entitled "iPadOS Discoverability Trouble".

The way iPadOS handles iPhone apps made more sense when iPads were smaller and single-app. I personally just don't use iPhone only apps, I have a phone for that and don't want to look at a blown-up phone app, complete with a huge phone-style keyboard.

freehunter• 7 years ago

How is there no way on ios to just see a list of all the apps I have installed?

The default way apps are installed is into a giant list of all the apps you have installed. If they're in folders, its because you put them there manually.

apps not designed for tablets

These kinds of apps aren't super common, but just scaling is probably the best way to handle it. An iPhone and an iPad have different screen ratios and stretching it to fit 100% would skew the aspect ratio.

jccalhoun3• 7 years ago

What I am looking for is like the app drawer on android where there is an alphabetical list. It seems like apple just puts an icon on the screen in the order that apps were installed?

I just looked at there are 13 apps on my ipad that aren't designed for tablets including fast food apps, dating apps, and even google fit (which I use because my phone is android). Maybe I just have bad taste in apps.

saagarjha• 7 years ago

Is there a way to stop apps from begging for reviews and notification access? I know I could do that on android but I don't know how to do it on ios.

Settings > iTunes and App Store > In-App Ratings and Reviews.

jccalhoun3• 7 years ago

Thanks! I knew there had to be a way!

annoyingnoob2• 7 years ago

Just give it to a kid, with no instructions. I would have eaten it up as kid, and figured it all out.

My first computer experience was on a PC with MS-DOS booted from a floppy. There was no help and no documentation, discover-ability was based on your ability to find commands and understand how they worked. It took a while but I mastered MS-DOS. Comparatively, we've come a long way and the iPad is easy to use.

I think I'm going to get my daughter an iPad Pro for her 10th birthday. She can run all the apps she likes on her iPod and do all of her school work (mostly on Google Docs). Its perfect for her and has everything she needs. She will have no trouble with discover-ability, she will use her time and intuition to figure it out.

jarjoura2• 7 years ago

I'd argue this is mostly because kids have the time to sit there and figure it out. They also have zero expectations for the way things should work, so they can try to do something until it does what they want.

Not sure this is valid argument for building a device that the majority of users will find frustrating.

I think the problem I have with iOS/iPad OS 13 is that Apple went into this as a zero-sum game. Replace how it worked before, because trust their designers who know better, it's MUCH better now, right? Instead of giving people the option to try something new, to see if it makes their lives better by removing friction, they've instead added friction to some set of users. Inherent in this is genuinely a smugness and lack of empathy, that's all. People will adapt and learn to love the changes over time, but it's really not ok to do this to your users.

annoyingnoob2• 7 years ago

The complaints seem kind of minor to me. Is moving from one major release of Android to another any different? I think adults are capable of adjusting their expectations and engaging curiosity.

pfranz2• 7 years ago

This isn't specifically speaking to your point about iPad OS 13, but I actually think that example fits very well to the desktops of the 90s everyone talks about those as thoughtfully designed and discoverable. Kids at the time took the time to learn all it. Parents needed to take classes to learn the basics to do their job. Even now, those former kids get called in when something "breaks."

idoh• 7 years ago

As an iPad Pro user for work, here is one area where discoverability is better on the iPad than the Mac - learning keyboard shortcuts:

On the iPad, hold down ⌘, then keyboard shortcuts show up. So much easier than on a Mac. My tip is to gradually add these keyboard shortcuts to your Anki deck.

ActorNightly• 7 years ago

"he original Macintosh is a good example of great product. The mouse pointing device took seconds to understand and just few more as it grew buttons and a wheel. Technopriests argued, perhaps “correctly”, that they could do more with the Command Line, but the Mac’s graphical user interface, with its pull-down menus and movable windows, gave the Rest of Us a power we’d never known, it did more — and did it better — than we initially perceived."

I dunno if just forgot or have a bad memory from childhood, but I specifically remember things taking insanely long on a Mac compared to a Windows PC. Our high school got new iMac G3s in 2002, whereas at home we had a Windows 95 as our family computer. Applications ran way faster on our home computer, whereas the iMacs would just lock up and not respond for the longest time.

baby• 7 years ago

I still don’t have a clue how to do a lot of the splitscreen stuff with my ipad pro. I sometimes do it by accident, or get stuck in a multitask UI. Discoverability is horrible.

iPadOS Discoverability Trouble

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