- Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended.
No more. Now, although the products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist.
I deliberately snub and avoid all Apple software updates, but that doesn't stop them getting pushed through when I'm not there to actively opt out (don't get me started on that either). So I've just recently entered the phase of being unable to rid my iPhone of that damn U2 album, it's nice to hear I've got more to look forward to. I jailbroke my last phone to have an SNES emulator. Now, it looks like I'll be jailbreaking this one to install a third-party app that performs an incredibly basic function - playing my fucking music and managing my library without all this DRM-integrated-cloud-iBeats-autopush bullshit. Across the board, the managements of dominant software firms push for radical changes (often in user interface) that the user does not want or need. Now that I'm finally used to the Windows "ribbon menu" interface, I can count on it changing in the near future. But perhaps it's good for the brain, re-learning a new interface. Still pisses me off when I'm in a rush.