Why iOS 7 Is Making Some Users Feel 'Sick' 261
dryriver sends this story from The Guardian:
"The introduction of fake zooms, parallax, sliding and other changes in Apple's new iPhone and iPad software has a very real effect on people with vestibular disorders. ... It makes frequent use of zoom and slide animations; the home screen boasts parallax, with icons apparently floating above subtly animating wallpaper. And it's making people sick. Triggers and symptoms vary, but TidePool mobile app developer Jenni Leder's experience is not uncommon. A self-professed power-user, she frequently switches apps; but on iOS 7, this has caused headaches and feelings associated with motion sickness. 'I now have to close my eyes or cover the screen during transitions, which is ridiculous,' she told The Guardian, adding that there's nowhere to hide: 'It's not apps that affect me, but accessing them. Tap a folder and the view zooms in. Tap an app and it's like flying through the icon and landing in that app's micro world — and I'm getting dizzy on the journey there.' Reactions to screen-based systems — especially those utilizing 3D effects — aren't new. Cynthia Ryan, executive director of the Vestibular Disorders Association, says 3D effects can cause 'intense nausea, dizziness and vertigo,' sometimes from general vision problems, but also from visual-vestibular conflict. She added symptoms 'manifest more severely if a viewer already has a disorder of the vestibular system.'"
Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not an iOS user, but i know in Android these effects are very easily toggleable by the user.
Re:Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Informative)
http://gigaom.com/2013/09/27/is-ios-7-making-you-seasick-heres-how-to-turn-off-the-parallax-effect/ [gigaom.com]
Re: Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Informative)
That only affects parallax in the home screen and very few other types of "motion" in the UI. It does nothing to stop the "zoom" effects that happen when you wake the device start an app, or do anything that was fine in iOS 6 but annoying now even if you don't have this medical condition because it makes you wait a second all over the place for the stupid animation to complete.
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Saying someone has to be mentally ill in order to be effected by motion sickness is like saying a person needs to have physical issues in order to get into an auto accident. It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, whatsoever.
Get off your high horse and read the article.
No, I'm saying that anyone who becomes nauseous from animations from opening or switching apps on a "phone" has to be using their phone for an abnormal amount of time and switching apps often which some would define as a mental disorder much like compulsive gambling, alcoholism and drug abuse.
I actually read the article but nowhere in there is any mention of the duration of use. I am assuming that they are spending way too much time using them and possibly using their phones on a train or other form of ve
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If one has to summarise a single short paragraph consisting of three short sentences with a TL;DR, I think humanity need to end, now, and need to pass the baton to a more intelligent species.
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Re:Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not an iOS user either, but I know that I design all of my interfaces for people with vestibular disorders.
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For millions and millions of dollars' profit, it would pay to be aware of such things. Apple's cluelessness is reinforced by this eye-candy design decision.
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Jobs' "don't hold it that way" response to antennagate notwithstanding, Apple is one of the few companies that actually listens to user feedback and usually responds by acknowledging their mistakes and fixing them, or at least quietly fixing them.
My experience servicing Apple products (desktops, laptops, handhelds) has been quite different from your assertion:
1. Chronic problem reveals itself on new machines (wavy screens in CRT days, laptops DOA, other manufacturing/reliability issues)
2. Contact Apple under service contract.
3. Reply comes back from Apple that no one else is experiencing this issue so it must be one of:
- damage in transit: contact shipper, warranty does not cover
- AC power issues at site
- user does not understand how to use: educate
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"One recent large epidemiological study estimates that as many as 35% adults aged 40 years or older in the United Statesâ"approximately 69 million Americansâ"have experienced some form of vestibular dysfunction. - See more at: [vestibular.org] http://vestibular.org/understanding-vestibular-disorder [vestibular.org]."
Good for you. And your profits.
Yes you can turn it off. Next story please. (Score:5, Funny)
YES you can turn them off in the settings in iOS7. By the way the next version of Android will have a screen lock wallpaper of hypnotoad. You can turn it off but strangely you feel compelled not to. Everyone would be talking about this but hypnotoad tells them not to.
Re:hypnotoad says you are a liar (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new hypnotoad overlords.
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hypnotoad, hypnotoad. what is hypnotoad?
oh,wait... never mind ........
hail hypnotoad
Re:Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Insightful)
For some of us, the appeal of "computers" is that they do what you want them to do, nothing more, nothing less (even if they had bugs, there was always a logical reason why it was doing "something you didn't ask it to do".)
Nowadays computers are doing all sorts of stuff you don't want them to, and didn't ask them to. By design.
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Re:Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Informative)
Body is incompatible (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, your body has been found to be incompatible with this Apple product, please upgrade your body before continuing.
Re:Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can't you turn the effects off? (Score:5, Informative)
I've noticed that setting "increased contrast" seem to help with the speed of the zooming and sliding.
I've got other beefs with ios7 though, like the too-thin font for the clock on the lock screen, the annoyingly slow fade in/out, and safari constantly hiding/showing controls when I scroll a webpage (down vs up). None of which seems configurable.
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Not there at all. You probably have a 4S. Considering how Apple eschews external model numbers, I could see how it's easy to forget which it is.
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Wasn't Windows XP the most successful software Microsoft has ever produced?
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Well yes, but considering the crap that came later on, that made XP look good in comparison.
AND previously, don't forget.
Windows XP was awesome because it was better than pretty much everything before it (from MS, at least). XP, better than ME or 98 or 95, or 3.11.
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Give MS some credit for once, at least you can turn it off.
On the plus side... (Score:4, Funny)
It's now been replaced, with a brand new phone of the same configuration at no cost to myself. That is brilliant customer service, Apple. Cheers.
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a brand new phone of the same configuration
Are you saying that you now have a newer model (e.g. you went from iPhone 4S to 5 or 5S or 5C)? That makes a difference?
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I think you misunderstood his point - whether or not the hardware was updated, it was the same interface. The interface was the problem, not the phone.
I'm starting to think that my $125 waterproof Android phone is superior to an $800 iBling in a whole lot of ways (my daughter has an iPhone, she wants one like mine now).
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Yes, I did misunderstand. "Cheers" was sarcastic, I now assume... I thought the OP was saying that he got a newer phone that somewhat made it better.
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Are you comparing the subsidized price of an android phone to the unsubsidized price of an iPhone?
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The iphone 5 with 16gb is +/- 516 euros here in the Netherlands (cheapest price)
The Galaxy S4 with 16gb is +/- 486 euros here (cheapest price) (and bigger screen and better specs)
Both unsubsidized, but Mcgrew is a known troll, so don't take him too seriously
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And I rest my case.
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No, my phone wasn't subsidized; I'm not on a contract. $45 a month unlimited everything, price goes down $5 with every 6 on-time payments. Bought it after my feature phone's screen broke off, $125 on my card. I can switch carriers tomorrow with no penalty whatever.
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"btw. what decent smarthone has this pricetag? none?"
Every one you don't get through a middle man and get directly from the manufacturer in China.
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Because it was new and shiny.
You had one and they didn't.
Greed is never satisfied.
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>> with a brand new phone of the same configuration .... so they replaced your phone with an exact duplicate? huh?
Re:On the plus side... (Score:5, Informative)
Probably because of Apple's extremely annoying policy that you cannot downgrade iOS anymore a couple of days after they release a new version. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHSH_Blob [wikipedia.org] for more details. The ability to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3/6.1.4 was disabled around 22 September.
Since iOS 7 was only released recently, there are probably still quite a few devices with iOS 6.1.3/6.1.4 in the channel, and that person probably got such a device in exchange for his iOS 7 "upgraded" one.
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> Probably because of Apple's extremely annoying policy that you cannot downgrade iOS anymore a couple of days after they release a new version.
I wonder if Apple's stance will ultimately be "just use it, you'll get used to it". We've heard that stance from another manufacturer recently.
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> Probably because of Apple's extremely annoying policy that you cannot downgrade iOS anymore a couple of days after they release a new version.
I wonder if Apple's stance will ultimately be "just use it, you'll get used to it". We've heard that stance from another manufacturer recently.
What do you mean "will be"? This has ALWAYS been Apple's stance, ever since the old Mac Classic days. They have always had the attitude that their products are absolutely perfect right out of the box, and adding any configuration options would ruin this perfect experience.
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So, what now? "You're looking at it wrong"?
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As long as Apple still signs the older iOS version, you should be able to downgrade (even via iTunes). See e.g. http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/06/downgrade-ios-7-to-ios-6.html [iphonehacks.com] . You could call it a hack, but since it's standard iTunes functionality I don't think it really is.
"U/X" budget justification (Score:2)
Maybe it was all the other B.S. "U/X" crap that you cannot change...like the emaciated font for the lock screen time/date
The reason is "U/X"...or more specifically, to justify all the money they budgeted for 'user experience designers' in the design process.
Everyone knows the user is the most important part of the equation and that 'good design' is good. After that, its like debating the definition of 'feminism' at a gun show. There i
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I didn't make any 'art vs science' distinction. I'm talking all about the *science*
And how in corporate tech design, "U/X" uses the language of science but is not...that's the problem...
I think this relates to your misunderstanding, or maybe I'm wrong...I honestly dont' know what you mean by the above st
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Yes, I turned all those effects off, and it was still making me feel nauseous.
It's now been replaced, with a brand new phone of the same configuration at no cost to myself. That is brilliant customer service, Apple. Cheers.
Ah, that reminds me of the old line: I said it was an upgrade, not an improvement.
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Disable option? (Score:3)
Is there really no way to disable the animations? Could you customize the wallpaper to be a single colour so there is no visible movement?
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Except that doesn't disable animations. All it does it removes the parallax effect as clearly mentioned in the article.
The lack of a solution is the bigger problem. Apple provides a "Reduce Motion" option within the iOS 7 Settings app, but it is poorly labelled; it merely disables the parallax effect, but doesn't stop zooming or sliding.
Re:Disable option? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, maybe these billions and billions of motion-sick people... shouldn't have upgraded?
Would have been nice to know ahead of time. When friends ask if they should upgrade, I point them to the articles regarding motion sickness, and the warning that you can't go back once you upgrade. But that doesn't help the huge mass of people who upgraded before the problem was noticed.
What kind of company Apple has become will be clearly delineated by their reaction to this. They could release a patch that allows you to easily shut off the animations (not just "reduce"). Or, they could deny the problem and tell people you're looking at it wrong. It'll be interesting to see which response they choose.
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I thought it was possible to downgrade by restoring from an old backup from the computer?
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Not everyone is a geek. There are millions of users out there that don't have the depth of understanding in electronic devices to make those kinds of decisions. When your community is largely made up of geeks, it's easy to forget this.
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Exactly how much "depth of understanding in electronic devices" does it take to look at a demo in a store before buying (or in this case, downloading) something new??
To do that, not a lot. To understand that you should do that, perhaps more.
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DISABLE, not reduce, moron. Go back to school.
Patent Violation (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure this is a violation of Microsoft's patent on Software as a Sickness.
Amateurs (Score:5, Informative)
This is not new. Apple does not seem to have any competent GUI people anymore, just "designers". And of course, competent testing would have found that problem. I expect in a while we will be hearing that thy did know this but management did not took it seriously. Like the the one time where Apple management thought thy knew more about antenna design that the guys that do it for a living.
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And of course, competent testing would have found that problem.
I don't think Apple does a great deal of real world testing on their products, in order to keep them super secret until the day of release. The new animations were not in the early previews of iOS 7 IIRC. Also, the only test that really mattered was if Steve Jobs liked it.
This tends to backfire quite often. iPhone 4 antenna issues, Apple Maps, and now this.
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That's right. Steve Jobs personally designed the iPhone antenna.
I'm pretty sure that even in the Jobs days, Apple had more than one manager.
Arrested app development (Score:2)
Why all of a sudden? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be insensitive to people with vestibular disorders, but why is this the first I'm hearing about this? OSes from Windows to OSX to Linux to Android, etc. etc., have employed various zooming/sliding/wobbling/parallax animations for years now. I've only played with iOS 7 that smallest bit, but is it really so different from everything else that's it's causing a sudden wave of heretofore unseen motion sickness?
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This is the same problem many of us have with first person shooters. If you've heard people complain about getting motion sick while gaming, you've heard of this before.
Re:Why all of a sudden? (Score:5, Informative)
In a nutshell, vestibular disorders are weird and the triggers are subtle. Certain movements won't bother most people, but if you smooth them out, adjust the speed, tweak the effect, things get weird.
I went through an episode of labyrinthitis (an inner ear problem) a few years ago, and it was crazy what would and wouldn't trigger problems. For example, I could watch videos of someone running a dog in agility, but first-person video of any kind was nasty and when that tsunami trashed Japan, I nearly hurled trying to watch footage of the waves on Youtube. I could actually run my dog in agility, spinning and sprinting and and dodging and pretty much anything physical while standing up, but being in a moving vehicle or even just bending over... ugh.
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In a nutshell, vestibular disorders are weird and the triggers are subtle. Certain movements won't bother most people, but if you smooth them out, adjust the speed, tweak the effect, things get weird.
I discovered, back when Doom came out in the 90s, that it didn't take much for games with a lot of motion - especially FPS - to induce motion sickness. I've sometimes had the same issue when I watch a movie in a theater.
But iOS 7 hasn't bugged me at all.
I am not intending to discount the experiences of the people reporting this, because I know how uncomfortable motion-induced nausea can be. But this has to be a very tiny percentage of iOS users.
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With Apple's sales, a very tiny percentage of iOS7 users is a heckuva lot of people. If the iOS7 versus iOS6 changes increased that number by, say, a factor of five, you might be looking a decent size city worth of people suddenly finding iOS uncomfortable to use.
Re:Why all of a sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, it's worse when the effect covers a larger amount of the region you're paying attention to visually. In this case, it covers the entire screen, which is awful. There are movement effects in (for example) OSX but they are basically always against a fixed background. That's not true in iOS 7 according to TFA, where you get effects like the whole screen sliding or zooming, with acceleration and deceleration and realistic parallax effects. These effects are intended to evoke the feeling that the user is moving (as opposed to the feeling that objects are moving around on the screen), so it's not surprising that they trigger people who have what is effectively the worst case of motion sickness imaginable.
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in none of those does it really happen that much in normal workflow.
you probably know a bunch of chicks who can't even watch someone play a 3d game though..
Re:Why all of a sudden? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, other operating systems and interfaces have implemented similar effects. But Apple implemented them everywhere possible. Just unlocking the screen causes a zoom-out-to-your-previously-opened-app effect. I can't say that it makes me sick, but it can be disorienting and distracting. It's definitely a case of effects for effects sake.
There isn't much you can do on the system without triggering some 3d effect.
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Not to be insensitive to people with vestibular disorders, but why is this the first I'm hearing about this?
Because now it's about Apple and the iPhone and that generates page views and drives advertising. Now it's a real story where, before, it wasn't.
I'm guessing you already knew the answer but I'm stating it to make it official.
Gratuitious animations (Score:5, Informative)
As usual on /., many commenters above failed to either read the article or actually try it themselves.
You can turn off the background paralax effect. But, really, that is quite subtle and not that objectionable. I turned it off, simply because I figured it eats CPU, GPU or both unnecessarily.
The new animations are gratuitious - they don't seem to serve any useful purpose. They are just plain silly-looking. Home-page icons now fly-in from all different angles. Drag a page, and now you are no longer dragging a skewmorphic piece of paper, but a skewmorphic sheet of silly-putty - drag at the right side, and the page warps, your finger "stretches" the right-hand side of the page. This kind of stuff was all the rage on Linux desktops - about 5 years ago. By now, everybody still running Linux has gotten tired of it and turned that nonsense off. The "bounce" now has a "warp" effect as part of it as well - the page deforms when it bounces.
It's like playing a bad ho-hum video game where they amped-up the effects because of lack of compelling content.
No, you can't disable these effects.
I'd imagine that if there is a medical issue with this, it is worse on iPad, because it fills more of your field of view when you are using it.
Well, yes you can. You can downgrade to a device that Apple has deemed incapable of rendering these effects. I think you need, say, an iPhone 4.
Apple seems to have become recently brain-dead when it comes to practical aspects of UI. And I hate to say it, but it must be due to Ivy, because they were quite good about it before. He is really, really good at designing appealing surfaces and finishes and packaging. UIs, not so much.
Another example of the non-functionaly of the new UI - buttons. It seems now that many buttons have absolute NO feedback that you have pressed them. I imagine the concept here is that the button is meant to perform some action, and the action itself is the confirmation that the button was pressed.
(Of course, a button is a skewmorphism, and we don't want skewmorphisms, right? So, I guess I shouldn't say "button" but "that word that's a bit bigger and fatter than the other words, and is off by iteself, that if you touch it something happens"...)
Somebody should have telegraphed that message to the poor developers who were given the impossible task to insure that the "action" happens soon enough for the user to connect their touching something on the screen with the "action" - regardless of the amount of work the action might take, and, oh, regardless of any other background processing that might be going-on in the device. Well, actually, I suppose somebody did, and those developers probably now feel like shit for having failed, even thought they could not have possibly suceeded.
Re:Gratuitious animations (Score:4, Informative)
Just because you don't understand the design philosophy behind iOS 7 doesn't mean the animations don't serve their purpose. The idea behind iOS 7 is to convey depth levels of content, to provide cognitive breadcrumbs about where you're going and where you just came from both in terms of inter-app navigation and within the system UI. Home icons don't "fly in from all different angles", you zoom into and out of the icon you launched or backed out of. Contrast this with previous versions of iOS where you it always zoomed straight into the middle of the screen. You can argue as to the efficacy of the animations in providing visual cues about where in the hierarchical stack of information you are, but they are in no way done without purpose.
Sorry, what? What part of the system or Apple apps animate in this fashion?
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Home icons don't "fly in from all different angles", you zoom into and out of the icon you launched or backed out of.
And each icon is in a different location on the screen, so the zooming is "from all different angles".
Just (Score:2, Insightful)
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First world problems.
And yet here you are commenting on them. Shouldn't you be digging a well in Tanzania?
Re:Just (Score:5, Insightful)
First world problems.
Having vertigo so bad you can't even stand up without vomiting or at least falling over, much less walk or drive a vehicle to or from any kind of employment, is not the sort of easily dismissible non-problem to which that phrase is usually applied. Vertigo-induced nausea is a real, life-impacting and difficult to deal with medical issue. And you'd all better hope someone figures out exactly why this is happening and how to prevent it before someone starts putting visual interfaces like this in moving vehicles. The last thing we need is drivers on the freeway suddenly having vertigo from glancing at their in-dash navigation screen.
But more to the point of my subject line: There is something totally bizarre happening here. The parent comment is a prime example of a sort of (for lack of a better word) "anti-compassion" that seems to have been triggered by this story. It's like a push-button that makes normal human beings explode with derisive hatred. Even the /. editors appear to be on the bandwagon. Notice how they've put quotes around the word "sick" in the article title (even though the actual news stories do not quote that word), implying that there is no actual sickness involved, and the byline is "from the you're-not-supposed-to-eat-the-phone dept.," implying that the user has to do something monumentally stupid to deliberately invoke the effect, such as staring at the phone for 10 minutes while moving it around to trigger the parallax motion. Neither of these implied things is true in the slightest. The sickness is quite real, and easily-triggered in seconds for some of those affected.
I happened to be reading MacRumors yesterday when this story showed up in their sidebar. I checked it out and was absolutely appalled at the level of rage and vitriol in the comments that were being up-modded to the main article page. The forums were not much better. About 90% of the comments were from people who were expressing outright hatred of the "pathetic" "losers" who had dared to say that their precious iPhones were making them sick. I thought maybe there was so much backlash against the victims of nausea because it was a Mac-related forum. But coming here to /. where there is plenty of Apple-hate to go around I now realize this issue triggers a gaping primary defect in both human logic and compassion. The comments here are largely identical to the MacRumors forum posts; blaming the victims and/or unequivocally dismissing the problem as something that is either imagined, totally unimportant or completely fabricated. A large portion of the population appears to be constitutionally incapable of believing or acknowledging that this issue is real or serious, simply because it hasn't affected them personally. And it seems to go far beyond the usual "I got mine so screw you" type reaction. It's more like "I don't see the problem so FUCK YOU YOU'RE NOT FIT TO LIVE GO DIE IN A GAS CHAMBER!!!!ONE!!!!". By the way that's almost a literal quote of some of the posts I saw on MacRumors. I don't even have the imagination to begin to exaggerate what I've seen posted.
The reaction I've seen in both of these forums is so extreme it's actually kind of terrifying. It's so far outside of my realm of understanding that it is literally giving me the shakes because it strongly implies that even after decades living on this planet I don't understand what makes the average human tick AT ALL. It's no wonder I've never liked associating with more than two humans simultaneously. Y'all SCARY. Irrational doesn't even begin to describe it.
If I was a neurologist or psychologist I could probably get a grant to study this phenomenon.
Final note: Even as I took the time to compose this post the dismissive parent comment went from a score of 1 to +4, Insightful. Is it because most people have never experienced debilitating motion sickness and thus cannot believe it's real? I don't know, and that's what spooks me.
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Totally bizarre? You must be new here - it's absolutely bog standard for Slashdot.
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Even as I took the time to compose this post the dismissive parent comment went from a score of 1 to +4, Insightful. Is it because most people have never experienced debilitating motion sickness and thus cannot believe it's real?
I think the "First World Problems" comment was more about iOS7-induced motion sickness than motion sickness in general.
An obvious solution would be not to use a cell phone that causes motion sickness. So this is only a 'big problem' for people who believe that they absolutely must use iOS7 -- i.e. people with an entitled "first world" mindset.
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Birds, when ill, will feign being perfectly healthy right up until they drop dead. Many humans, when ill, will feign being healthy until they can no longer hold up the façade and fall over unconscious.
Most animals, when witnessing another similar animal that is very ill, will react with revulsion and fear.
It's prossibly* a result of a few millions years of natural selection. Those who stay away from their brethren when ill tend to live, whereas those that stick around and contract the disease tend to d
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The reaction I've seen in both of these forums is so extreme it's actually kind of terrifying. It's so far outside of my realm of understanding that it is literally giving me the shakes
I get seasick reading in a moving car... so I don't read in a moving car.
These transitions don't happen except by user input... so just don't look at the screen when you do something that causes these transitions.
Is it because most people have never experienced debilitating motion sickness and thus cannot believe it's real? I don't know, and that's what spooks me.
The reaction is so disparaging and heartless because the people with the problem, even if real, are massive whiners.
"I now have to close my eyes or cover the screen during transitions, which is ridiculous," she told The Guardian
These people have an easy solution and it is really just pure whining. It's first world problem. These complaining are histrionics, like your "literally giving me the shakes" is.
You know what makes me mad? Those people having so little sympathy for the blind, deaf, paralyzed, or others with *real* problems to overcome that they think their complaints are anywhere nearly on the same level.
Thanks, you've provided another wonderful example of the completely hyperbolically irrational hatred that this simple story has triggered. No one has been claiming that their phone is blinding, deafening or paralyzing them, nor are they claiming that their motion sickness is somehow life threatening. They're just saying the phone is giving them motion sickness. It's a really simple, non-threatening statement. And if the issue doesn't affect you it makes ZERO sense that you felt compelled to come here filled
Apple (Score:3, Funny)
Bling (Score:4, Insightful)
Parallax? That's so Angry Biirds.
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Those "features" are nothing more than visual bling. This suggests Apple is running out of great ideas and resorting to fancy instead of functional? I can name a whole list of UI features that would be awesome and seem innovative, while actually doing useful.
Like Android's Active Desktop... Er, Live Wallpaper?
The wiki reason some users feel sick (Score:2)
IPhones use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation [wikipedia.org] (PWM) to dim its display cycling on and off rapidly above the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold [wikipedia.org] not only is this annoying and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthenopia [wikipedia.org] inducing to some it is wholly unnecessary.
What is happening with the animations at certain brightness levels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_cycle [wikipedia.org]of the PWM creates a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance [wikipedia.org]
with screen movements shadowed by the moving appendag
Microsoft Zune & Windows Phone had this for ye (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft Zune & Windows Phone had this parallax feature for years. It was on the first Zune HD back in 2009.
Why didn't we ever hear about people getting sick on their Zunes and Windows Phones?
Oh, wait, nevermind.
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Why didn't we ever hear about people getting sick on their Zunes and Windows Phones?
Because it was a commonly accepted feature of Microsoft products?
Internet vectored infection! (Score:2)
This could become worse than the Dancing Plague of 1518 or the June Bug epidemic of 1962!
Worse, this shows every sign of being a hysterical contagion, capable of being transmitted over the Internet and infecting it's victims through contact with their computers, tablets, and smartphones!
The good news is that I know of a possible cure, and if I can reach my Kickstarter goal of $500,000, I can begin work on a treatment for the unfortunate victims...
Really? How long does it take to get sick? (Score:2)
Who are these people? Are they trust fund babies? Do they not work for a living? Do they not have classes?
Put down the phone and do your work and/or course work. It might be that your body is trying to tell you something. You are an addict and you need to go outside and interact with regular people instead of wasting your life
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What Would Jobs Have Said?
"They're looking at it wrong." "Apple products just aren't for everybody." etc.
This is the guy who wanted all media apps to look like the current trend (at the time) brushed metal of stereo gear, but I thought skeuomorphism was dead under new Apple?
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What Would Jobs Have Said?
"They're looking at it wrong." "Apple products just aren't for everybody." etc.
Heh. He would have gone on to explain that Apple makes premium products for premium people, and if you are susceptible to motion sickness, then perhaps you are not worthy of owning the Apple brand... :-)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Okey, this might not have any relevance at all, but I thought that it was quite funny, so I decided to post a little anecdote. Quakeworld - a quake 1 'mod' - tends to give me motion sickness if I'm not used to it. It takes approximately 3 weeks to accustom to its effects. Watching demos, though. Playing takes about 1 week. Quake 3 on the other hand gave me another kind of motion sickness, but only the Quake3 final. Quake3 test 1.08 was simply fine and impressive. None of the above stated effects. To pick a
Re:And it's of course Apple's fault (Score:4, Interesting)
Okey, this might not have any relevance at all, but I thought that it was quite funny, so I decided to post a little anecdote. Quakeworld - a quake 1 'mod' - tends to give me motion sickness if I'm not used to it.
These guys need to get accounts or I need to get mod points. Apple should have known better, considering that this effect was known fifteen years or more ago; I had a fairly popular Quake site back then (1998-2003) and got quite a few emails from readers talking about this in Quake II, and bigger sites than mine were covering it as well.
Research fail on Apple's part. Hubris or stupidity? Both?
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The way to find out about this sort of problem is to field-test the late beta design, run it through a lot of focus groups, power users and grannies and teenagers, folks with visual handicaps etc. and then analyse the data and revise the design if necessary before releasing v1.0 to the public. Of course if you want to keep the look and feel of your GUI a close secret it's difficult to do that but it gives some important folks a chance to stand up on stage and say "and just one last thing..."
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A simple Google search (or maybe the wayback machine) would have told them.
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> Research fail on Apple's part. Hubris or stupidity? Both?
Jobs isn't around anymore.
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You really shouldn't repost articles from other websites in their entirety. You've just taken advertising dollars away from information week, and indirectly from the authors pocket, and given them to Dice, and indirectly, idiots like Timothy lord.
That's lose - lose all the way around.
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing the point. It's not that we should all get down to the lowest common denominator, it's about having useless visual bling (that is annoying and distracting even for a healthy person) that serves no useful purpose and CAN'T BE SWITCHED off making the phone unusable for people with a medical condition.
Again, the solution is not to force everyone to use a static UI, it's to give people the choice. Which is something Apple never does, I guess because then there would be people who switch it off and then complain that it does not work. I am an iPhone 5 user recently switched from Android and while the phone works just fine, I sorely miss the ability to actually customise anything.
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Oddly enough, the iPhone has the best accessibility solution for blind and visual impaired users on the market.
I don't know how that happened either. It must have been an oversight.
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As much as I find Apple a disagreeable company, you really should have known better than to install a beta-quality OS on your phone. I don't think Google would have personally done any different in this instance, though it may have been easier to reverse yourself.
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Hear, hear!
Some people are sensitive to light. I have the brightness on my phone turned almost all the way down. People ask me why the screen is so dim, but it looks awful bright to me.