this is an unpopular opinion but i know the aesthetic reason for apple not implementing this for so long, and like eveything, it’s to make money.
android design is pretty good, but user created android phones home screens can often look pretty hateful, often with 4-6 screens of more empty space than icons, tons of widgets with an inconsistent design scheme, random half empty folders and a notification bar overcrowded with overshrunk icons. android phones often look like old Windows XP desktops—even on flagship distributions.
in contrast to google, apple cares what your phone looks like because they have a highly visual brand.
apple, by not allowing placement anywhere intentionally enforced a consistent top-left to bottom-right aesthetic which is now ubiquitous to the brand. among other design decisions, the result is that when you blur your eyes and look at a phone home screen you can tell whether it is apple or not.
- but the functionality is worse, yes i know.
- but it actually does look worse too, to you maybe, but not to apple. my belief is they did this for the same reason they put the magic mouse’s lighting port on the bottom (to keep users from always using it plugged in. which looks “ugly”).
the power of a strong and unmistakable brand is incomparable. in many cases, the value of a brand can even outperform raw product utility when it comes to customer satisfaction, a theory which i believe apple has been leveraging in this case very much intentionally despite the seeming paradox of utility.
edit: already getting downvoted to heck i should have known better than to be aware of basic marketing principles lol. i promise you im not defending apple im just explaining why they did this to make more money.
You wrote all that and only used a single upper case letter. Impressive
Don’t second guess the willingness of an Apple-hater to spend that much time dissecting something bad Apple has done.
i count at least three but thanks lol
I’d be shocked if they just cloned Android’s default functionality and called it a day. Like the App Library, they’re probably going to try to have a unique spin on it, and will try to address some of the user experience quirks that a lot of iOS users don’t like.
I’ll bet money that it’s going to be pre structured layouts that look nice, like the Apple Watch, with one layout being “go nuts.” A CMS template system for the Home Screen.
i could definitely see that happening
I actually overall like the App Library, I just hate that the categories shift around seemingly at random. But I slowly keep removing more apps from the Home Screen; at some point my goal is to get down to one Home Screen with my most used apps and everything else is in the App Library.
Im manifesting this 😭
Wow… I never thought of the Magic Mouse thing, yet you’re entirely correct. Everyone would use it like that, and honestly it does look better without being plugged in (although everything else about it sucks, I hate that damn mouse)
thanks haha this is the first time ive brought up the mindset behind it without being called a shill or something 😭
i personally do like the magic mouse i like the lil touchpad on top but i can definitely see how it would suck weeeeeener for gaming or perhaps design applications, probably a lot more than those examples too
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okay
Your explanation and the whole comment in general didn’t make me like and understand Apple. It made me understand and fiercely hate Apple products even more.
absolutely fair
I totally agree, and would argue that this enshittification for their own benefit began around the iPhone 4 and iOS 7. Things were beautiful to see in promotional videos but they wrecked years of visual conventions and features for aesthetics. The actively choose profits and aesthetics over their users.
The Magic Mouse thing is also about the battery, a battery kept plugged in all the time is more likely to swell.
It’s also about cable wear and tear. With a molded, fixed cable you can do proper boot and strain relief. A pluggable charge cable would be ribbons in like three months.
I have to disagree on one point – that iOS home screens somehow look more orderly because they’re full of icons arranged in a strict top-left-to-bottom-right fashion. It doesn’t look any less cluttered than an overly full Windows desktop.
I found desktops that limit themselves to core functionality and maybe a nice wallpaper to be better looking and more usable since the days of Windows 95 and that hasn’t changed since.
That “strict grid of icons” look certainly is uniform across iDevices and that’s what appeals to Apple but I never found it to be particularly attractive.
we actually agree on this point. i don’t argue they look more orderly i argue they look uniform across the ecosystem which was central to my thesis :)
Your comment isn’t even that pro-Apple, and it’s much more generous towards Android’s design than you’d find on any other space titled apple_enthusiast.
And generally speaking isn’t that the exact reason they gave for not adding widgets right away? I thought this was more well known fact than an opinion.
i was getting close to -10 points for a second 😭 i guess the sane people that don’t just knee jerk vote were asleep
idk about the widgets lore i literally don’t follow apple at all i just happen to know about marketing and design stuff
I noticed lemmy to have way less reactionary voting compared to reddit. Your comment makes a lot of sense. Just look at this mess lol but at the end of the day it’s my phone and my mess.
They’re getting this now? I could do that on my old LG G5.
G5? This has been thing since I got my Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini in 2010
iOS lookin more like Android with each release.
And as a developer android is looking more and more like iOS as it becomes more restricted on what you can do.
The two are converging
Source: literally spending my day today dealing with every more restrictive APIs on newer Android versions
yea, i get a lot of these changes and lock downs suck, but i can also see why they are needed from a security stand point. Proper sand boxing, requiring permission to access to camera and microphone, ect all seem like good changes.
One of the ones I’m working on today I’m actually exempted from being disallowed its use, although it does still require some changes.
I’m still dreading the moment I submit the app though and their AI declares I don’t meet the requirements, and I go into the doom pit of their non existent support.
At least on Apple it’s possible to interact with a human pretty easily.
@Shadywack @Dex otherwise they are saying monopoly 😂
The original iTunes Store app was placed in the bottom right corner. How they resuscitated this tech is beyond me.
Big whoop.
This is not revolutionary as Android had had this for I want to say a decade, but this is a huge deal in usability because the way Apple handles app ordering is ludicrous.
This should be fun to play with for a little bit, but I put a lot of thought into my current layout and I’m not sure how much I really want to mess with it at this point.
Wtf lol
Only took them 18 major version releases. Maybe one day we’ll get to choose an alarm snooze timer than isn’t 9 minutes something.
⁰_0
SERIOUSLY. I’m currently stuck with an iPhone and was so annoyed when I found out you just couldn’t define the snooze duration. Like, what?
How long did it android manufacturers take to implement features that actually matter, like filming in Dolby Vision / HDR? Fanboyism is not cool.
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No these are not basic features, most users don’t really care about it. You don’t think Apple does research? How can Apple have such an huge market share if those things are things that people are desperate for like you act? And no, I can’t take a full camera on my backpack trips, every ounce counts. Plenty of people shoot with their phone, don’t act like you don’t know this.
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like filming in Dolby Vision / HDR
Listen, Android isn’t any better than iOS overall, but to pretend that this is something that matters to anything but edge cases on rare occasions is just lying.
Yeah my phone is literally unusable without the “feature” to place icons somewhere else 😂
If you don’t k ow how many users shoot videos with their phones, you might want to look up the stats. You are talking about stuff you don’t know anything about.
IDK man, HDR is a pretty big deal for me…
That makes you an edge case.
Eh, it’s the same on the Android side of the fence. There are big and small features that Google has been comically slow to crib from iOS.
I’ve definitely said “fucking finally” to things like overflow scrolling animations, and the “wild” idea that users should get 5+ of major OS releases.
Android still doesn’t have shake-to-undo. I use iOS and Android and switch between them regularly for work, and every time I typo something or accidentally delete a bunch of text on Android, it’s incredibly jarring to not have the undo capability.
I use Gboard as a keyboard and it’s got an undo button. Maybe try that (your mileage may vary)
Eh, it’s the same on the Android side of the fence. There are big and small features that Google has been comically slow to crib from iOS.
I’ve definitely said “fucking finally” to things like overflow scrolling animations,
Those things like overflow scrolling, keyboard peak, etc… were only held back because Apple would patent it prevent it from being put into Android and would file frivolous lawsuits against other phone manufacturers to try and get them not to use them, even when some android variants already had it built in before apple patented it in the first place. (I still facepalm at apple trying to sue others over a rounded rectangle shaped phone)
And those patents lawsuits only stopped because other phone companies called bullshit and started threatening apple with their own patents.
and the “wild” idea that users should get 5+ of major OS releases.
TL;DR on this point: not much of an issue anymore.
This isn’t an android/iOS thing, it’s a manufacturer thing. If a chip isn’t supported by it’s manufacturer, then no software on it can be supported. Different manufacturers had different support windows, but Qualcomm became notorious for making chips, then only supporting them for 2 years so they could sell a new “supported” one (and watch the money roll in). Once they saw other the larger players getting pissed off and poking around with the idea of making their own chips, Qualcomm quickly decided that they could support their chips for longer. Now they have to since both Google and Samsung have made public promises for 5-7 year support cycles. Of course, that hasn’t stopped other phones from already reaching 7 years of official support before. (A notable example being Fairphone 2 who used a Qualcomm chip while they were still in their shitty behaviour phase and managed to support it for 7 years, 2 years Qualcomm support then 5 years of their own support despite Qualcomm.)
Also, when Google was pissed at Qualcomm they decided to start modularising their OS and pulling chunks out of it out of needing direct hardware support. This means that even if chip support were to stop, it would only affect the background / lowest-level-invisible-to-the-user parts of the OS, and all the user visible parts of the OS could be updated independently (starting with Project Treble, and going all out with Project Mainline). This basically means that entire chunks of the OS can be updated the same way an app can be, early 2010 Qualcomm companies be damned.
This also has the weird thing of android not really being a “version” per se, one phone might have different components of Android 10/11/12/13/14/etc… running at the same time. The components themselves have their own versions.
My next phone is an Android probably because Apple stopped making “small” phones.
And so did android manufacturers. The last small-ish Android phone, the Asus Zenfone is now also ginormous in its latest revision…
Like, below 6“ there’s the ZenFone 10, the iPhone 13 mini (both not current gen but still up to date), the Sony Xperia 10 IV (the V is above 6“), and a bunch of rugged phones (that aren’t exactly small either) and a few cheap af phones that are exactly 6"
The marked is harsh to us small phone fans…
The big ones, true. But at least with Android there’s some sort of a possibility that somebody tries. Like the Unihertz Titan and Jelly models. Unfortunately stuck at Android 13 officially.
Yea and also their screens are comically small. The Jelly‘s 3“ are barely useable… I want sub 6“ not sub 4“…
It’s a matter of how you use it and for what, really. My watch screen is 1.5"
Yea but like, then why bother with android at all? KaiOS seems to do everything you‘d want it to do, if you’re looking for a device that small. Or really just a standalone smartwatch.
When I talk about small phones, I want a phone without compromise (besides maybe battery). I want to be able to use any app, consume content, communicate via mail or chat apps on a useably sized keyboard, etc. I just want it to be below 6“ (Or rather around 5“ considering modern borderless designs). I loved the 4“ iPhone sizes and I love my 5.4“ iPhone 13 mini. Wouldn’t really want a phone bigger than those 5.4“ and also wouldn’t really want a device much smaller in footprint than the old 4“ iphones.
There’s the 2nd gen SE although they said it sold poorly.
I got my parents those. They are crap devices.
What’s crap about it? I really like mine. Small, thin, snappy, good battery, never heats up. Beats the hell out of my Zenfone.
I got the second gen SE and thought it was great overall. Sometimes I still miss the fingerprint scanner.
Yeah I like mine a lot. There’s not a lot of small phones nowadays that aren’t just meant to be as cheap as possible.
In other news, Apple sued Google and Samsung for copying the feature
That’s not a feature already???
Oooh wow will they let you change your brightness and font too?
What an amazing cutting edge breakthrough. Truly frontier technology. The mind boggles.
I thought we’d seen it all when they finally let people change the default notification sound in iOS 17!
I will be shocked if they figure out how to use MP3 files as notification sounds. Then I’ll believe we are truly living in the future.
Now that’s just fantasy talk
I’m sorry, I’m browsing from /all. You don’t actually mean they only started allowing notification sound customization 17 versions into their OS, right? You’re making a joke?
Because holy hell, what basic functionality that should have been included over a decade ago.
You could change the defaults for a number of things, but not the miscellaneous stuff. The “default” category is new.
It’s really weird, because Apple has been selling tones forever, and they had a tone selection component already. It’s like someone just never prioritized the day of work in their jira backlog.
You could change certain notification sounds, like for iMessage, the built-in mail app, ringtones, etc. Individual apps could set their own custom notification sound as well, or enable a setting that allowed users to change them. But there was also a default, “general” notification sound set by Apple that would be used by any app that hadn’t specified a notification sound, and that could not be changed by the user. It was perhaps the single most annoying thing when I switched from Android.
More specifically, it looks like the change came in iOS 17.2 after Apple changed the default notification sound for everyone in iOS 17 from the one they’d used for years. I guess enough people hated the change and wanted to go back that they finally gave users an option to pick their own.
Still can’t change the Apple Watch default sound, apparently.
You’ve always been able to change it for built in applications (messages, mail, phone, etc.). I assume the above poster was joking? Or maybe there’s some nuanced feature they added around it recently.
You could only change certain applications, if they allowed it. But the general, default notification sound was decided by Apple and couldn’t be changed until 17.2.
Look at the new emojis though. Pure art
What was Android’s most recent groundbreaking feature, and when was it released?
Nobody said android is making leaps and bounds recently either. Just a stupid joke about how long it took them to add this very basic feature lol
Oh, you mean the same stupid joke we can read in literally every comment thread about Apple adding features to iOS?
Oh… you’re one of those apple fans.
Oh… you’re one of those critics.
Lol dude I made a joke and you are clearly just taking it personally. Showing clear anger over phones.
Not sure where I showed ‘clear anger’ but you do you.
I know people have been horny for this for the longest time - just like the app drawer, but honestly if I wanted this, I would’ve bought an Android phone. I need a way to disable the shitty app drawer and this upcoming “feature” cuz I never asked for it.
I have yet to see anyone use the app drawer in the wild (gods know I sure as hell don’t).
Completely useless especially since pull-down Home Screen to search is so robust.
I use it semi regularly because I’ve limited myself to just two pages of Home Screen, and spatially, it is faster to launch a couple of apps that I use semi regularly, but didn’t make it to the Home Screen. It is faster than Spotlight search for me because it is super fast to short swipe twice and tap the icon, instead of longer pulling down spotlight, orient the keyboard and wait for search results to populate. I understand this is not for everyone as most people I know have more than two screens of icons, and would take more time to get to the drawer, but at least it works for me.
I think another thing that might make it faster is if Focus based Home Screen is used, the amount of pages could be drastically reduced in various customized focus modes… but I’ve never gotten into that and frankly I’m inclined to think that’s a super power user mode very few outside of Apple dives into.
Edit: also spotlight search is slower when you’d need to change keyboard languages to search for a non-default language app, especially if the other language is slower/less familiar to input (Chinese and Japanese comes to mind for me).
EXACTLY! It’s so annoying and I remember you could disable it until you couldn’t for whatever stupid reason. Now I just leave the apps that I don’t use more than once every two weeks in there and search for them. Imagine actually wading through those folders looking for an app and not calling yourself a lunatic when Spotlight is so much faster.
Guess they’re doing the easy stuff now that the hard stuff is out of the way.
