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iPadOS Discoverability Trouble (mondaynote.com) 41

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Apple this year differentiated the iPad by creating a superset of iOS that only works on the company's tablet, the cleanly named iPadOS. In theory, iPadOS fixes the many shortcomings of previous iOS versions that tried to serve two masters, the iPad and the iPhone. But some fundamental issues remain. From a column: Apple's iPadOS page is adamant that a world of possibilities is now "ours." The "Features" section provides a long, long list of new iPad talents. Without getting into the embarrassing details about the klutziness that makes me a good product tester because I tend to do things that knowledgeable users already know how to do, I'm confused and frustrated by all of these "possibilities." For relatively simple tasks such as using multiple apps side by side or opening more than one window for an app such as Pages, the iPad support site is cryptic and, in some cases, just plain wrong. As just one example, the on-line guidance advises: "go to Settings > General > Multitasking & Dock..." Trouble is, the General section of Settings on my iPad Pro doesn't have a Multitasking & Dock section. A little bit of foraging gets me to the Home Screen & Dock section where, yes, the Multitasking adjustments are available.

On the positive side, one now has a real Safari browser, equivalent in most regards to the "desktop" version, and the ability to open two independent windows side by side. Because I feel self-conscious about my mental and motor skills, I compared notes with a learned friend, a persistent fellow who forced himself to learn touch typing by erasing the letters on his keyboard. He, too, finds iPadOS discoverability to be severely lacking. There are lot of new and possibly helpful features but, unlike the 1984 Mac, not enough in the way of the hints that menu bars and pull-down menus provide. It all feels unfinished, a long, long list of potentially winning features that are out of the reach of this mere mortal and that I assume will remain undiscovered by many others. Kvetching aside, we know that Apple plays the long game. Today's stylus equipped and mouse-capable iPad shows great promise. (I connected my trusted Microsoft Mouse and its two buttons and wheel -- no problem.) It clearly has the potential to become a multifaceted device capable of a wide range of interactions. From the simplest one-finger control enjoyed by children and adults alike to the windows and pointing device interactions "power users" hope for, the iPad shows great potential -- and the need for more work to make the new features more discoverable.
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iPadOS Discoverability Trouble More

iPadOS Discoverability Trouble

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  • More people know that you might think (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday October 28, 2019 @07:02PM (#59356616)

    UI's these days are rife everywhere with discoverability issues.

    However what is also true, is there are a TON of articles for popular platforms with tips and tricks showing how to use the advanced features... it's not uncommon to find some fairly non-technical person who knows some gesture in iOS I never learned, because I don't look at the tip sites!

    So it's an open question for me if discoverability is truly so important these days when information spreads so readily... discoverability comes at a cost of complexity and often screen real estate, so it's not like it costs nothing to add it. Slashdot of all places should appreciate advanced features that seem hard to discover.

    • I didn't realize there was new stuff in the iPad. I got a list of "hey, you can do this now!" after upgrading, but inevitably the ones I wanted to use failed when I followed the directions given. Just as the article says, the setting doesn't appear when I was told it existed. I didn't bother looking further though. Had no idea multitasking was available or I would have used it.

      • Several new features are designed for larger and larger screens. Expect a Max iPad to be announced any day now. Perhaps Apple fans will once again line up outside the stores to get their maxipad.

        • This reminds me of an old comic where people were carrying mainframes like boomboxes.

          In this case, I imagine, that some day, people will carry massive "phable(t)s" the size of tables on their shoulders, so razor-thin that unless you've got a steel shirt and glove, they'll be lopping off your arm and fingers at the same time.

          Apple - It's only a flesh wound!

      • I didn't realize there was new stuff in the iPad. I got a list of "hey, you can do this now!" after upgrading, but inevitably the ones I wanted to use failed when I followed the directions given. Just as the article says, the setting doesn't appear when I was told it existed. I didn't bother looking further though. Had no idea multitasking was available or I would have used it.

        Spotlight is your friend.

        If you can get anywhere close to describing or spelling a suspected new feature, type that into the "Search" (Spotlight) on your iOS/iPadOS device and watch the results pour in. You'll get websites, Apps, as well as local things like "Settings" that comply with your search term.

        I don't have a new enough iPad for iPadOS; but the concept worked with my iPhone 6 running iOS 12; so I assume it will work at least as well with iPadOS (13.x).

        • Hah, I can't even get to spotlight... It's on my phone, cant see it on ipad. Nothing in settings about this. Gripe with all these mobile devices, ios or android - an utter lack of any documentation despite none of this being intuitive.

          I found a web page about the multitasking. I got Outlook to put a calendar to the side, but I can't interact with the other app, and this feels more like an Outlook feature than an ipad feature. (and now outlook calendar is always there if I swipe from left) Following direc

    • Re:More people know that you might think (Score:4, Interesting)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Monday October 28, 2019 @08:19PM (#59356758)

      Yup, and it's not just Appe, Windows even more than Apple and to a lesser extent Android have the same problem. It's part of the "flat UI" brain rot, huge amounts of blank space, hair-thin fonts, no visible distinction between UI elements, and every other thing you want to do becomes an escape-room puzzle as you try and figure out which combination of gestures, swipes, and clicks on invisible UI elements leading to more invisible UI elements you need to do to achieve the action you want.

      Years ago, companies used to actually do usability testing and pick the best one (or, in notorious cases like the ribbon in Word, second-best one because they optimised for Auntie May writing a thank-you letter, not serious users of word processors). Now its just a bunch of latte-sipping birkenstock-wearing hipsters seeing who can outdo the other in terms of "creative" design elements.

      • I disagree - Microsoft did a LOT of research into the ribbon. Their target were clerical employees and recent college graduates with minimal training.

        I personally love the ribbon, and have seen it improve productivity quickly. It also allows for more and easier customization than was possible previously. I have a custom ribbon in my company. Having it with drop downs like the old days just wouldn't have worked as well, I don't think.

  • Apple's doc people suck these day, so their docs have been outsourced to third parties.

    https://www.macrumors.com/roun... [macrumors.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rlwinm ( 6158720 )

      Their engineering teams are bested in skill by their documentation folks. Have you tried to use Xcode recently? I have to maintain one iOS app. It's my most dreaded task.

      I used to love MacOS. Years ago I got fed up with the way it was going and switched to a Lenovo with Linux as my daily driver.

      • Their engineering teams are bested in skill by their documentation folks. Have you tried to use Xcode recently? I have to maintain one iOS app. It's my most dreaded task.

        I used to love MacOS. Years ago I got fed up with the way it was going and switched to a Lenovo with Linux as my daily driver.

        Yeah, because the user documentation for Linux is sooooo much better [rollseyes].

        Bitch, Please.

    • This is nothing new. Apple's doc, what there is of them, have always sucked.

  • I’d have used the term “Asperger’s sufferer”.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      "Sufferer"? People with autism without cognitive or language delay don't "suffer" from the condition itself. They do suffer from others' discrimination against people with the condition.

  • Discoverability: a forgotten concept (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GPS Pilot ( 3683 ) on Monday October 28, 2019 @08:51PM (#59356824)

    Mobile apps have no help system, no user manual, no tooltips. Supposedly, these things are not needed because all functionality is intuitive.

    Hardly! Even seasoned tech users are often stymied by the meaning of cryptic, unlabeled symbols and icons. Mobile apps are compromised versions of desktop apps to begin with, and it is impossible to discover much of their functionality to boot.

    Classic Mac OS had the pinnacle of discoverability: Balloon Help [wikipedia.org]. This system was like tooltips on steroids. Just hover your mouse pointer over a GUI element, such as a menu item, and Balloon Help would not only give you a thorough explanation of it, it would give invaluable dynamic information such as why the item is currently greyed-out.

    20 years later, no OS has anything as useful as Balloon Help.

    • Lists with no search function that you have to look through manually, like our ancestors did!

      It's a a small wonder they even got a copy/paste function! Insanely cumbersome as it is. (If I remember correctly, the first iPhone did not have that feature. While Nokia's Series 60 smartphones often had a dedicated physical button for it.)

      Also missing: Cursor keys or an equivalent joystick.
      And why the freaking fuck is it designed so that you can never see the damn part of the screen you are touching?? The only dam

      • Lists with no search function that you have to look through manually, like our ancestors did!

        Hah, just yesterday I installed Youtube Music on android as their regular Youtube app kept spamming me about it, and the first thing I did was try to create a "mix channel" or whatever its called. Up pops a scrolling list of artists... 3 per line, maybe 6 lines total on screen at a time. I scrolled down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down, ..., and 20 minutes later reached the end.

        Not once was Natalie Merchant there, the only artist I wanted to include.

        Its the hubris of the fuck

    • The iPad has a pretty decent User Guide: https://support.apple.com/guid... [apple.com]
      with details on the darker corners of the default applications. Likewise, apps like Pages and Numbers have comprehensive manuals. I’m not making the claim that this is better than Balloon Help (your mention of it brought me back) and I’m certainly not making the claim that there’s anything intuitive about gestures like “pinch with five fingers while rotating counter clockwise and dragging to the upper left

    • Balloon Help was a good idea in theory. In Apple's implementation, however, it was either on all the time (in which case you'd constantly get balloons all over the place as you moved your mouse) or it was off. There was no easy way to turn it on temporarily, ideally only while holding some key(s).
  • if you cant discover new features then you cant find the bug in those new features.
  • Just check, and I have a âoeMultitasking & Dockâ option under âoeGeneralâ. Iâ(TM)m guessing the OP is either using a previous version of iPadOS, or is set to a locality other than US.

  • Apple users really have a strange definition of "power user"...

    Hint: A power user would not ever even go near an iDevice!
    A power user adapts the system to him, instead of the other way around.
    A power user actually uses the computer, automating his work away, instead of fixed-function appliances that just happen to be implemented on a computer.
    And a power user does not use a touch screen keyboard.

    The iPad may contain a computer. But it manages to not even qualify as one to the user. And intentionally so.
    If t

    • The problem is that something with a decent keyboard and an operating system that respects users' freedom is probably physically much larger than an iPad. This makes it more cumbersome to carry for use while away from home. Or should a power user carry a full-size laptop into, say, a grocery store to use while waiting for their partner to finish their shopping?

  • iPadOS broke multitasking for apps in folders on dock. Since you can only multitask with apps from the dock, and I hate seeing recent apps, all my apps were in folders on my dock, working just fine, in iOS12.

    Yesterday, finally, 13.2 brought back multitasking for apps in folders in the dock.

    It's like Apple doesn't really care about whether their stuff works.

    • iPadOS broke multitasking for apps in folders on dock. Since you can only multitask with apps from the dock, and I hate seeing recent apps, all my apps were in folders on my dock, working just fine, in iOS12.

      Yesterday, finally, 13.2 brought back multitasking for apps in folders in the dock.

      It's like Apple doesn't really care about whether their stuff works.

      Actually, I read a comment a couple of weeks ago (on here, IIRC, but I can't find it again) from a Poster who was obviously on the iOS/iPadOS Dev. Team.

      They claimed that some features intended for iOS and iPadOS 13.0 were not available at release-time, and it will be 13.3 that will finally have those OSes feature-complete "as designed".

      And so, the addition (adding-back) that last-bit of functionality to Multitasking sounds like it is right in-line with what that Poster said.

      And before you start whining, all

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dster76 ( 877693 )
        I'm trying to follow what you're saying. Multitasking from apps in folders on the dock worked for the first ~10 months I had an iPad pro. Then, when I upgraded to iPad OS, this functionality broke, until the latest patch which appeared yesterday.

        What does this have to do with "features intended for iPadOS"? My comment was about a stable, basic, old feature that made multitasking usable for me, which was broken for a couple of months on release of iPadOS, not about some new feature with the latest operat

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