A rant on iOS 13

[AMSOS]

Am I the only one noticing these issues with iOS 13? I much love my iPhone, but I'm noticing too many of these issues to ignore them:

-In Mail, there are now 3 ways of replying to the same email. Two of those are curved arrows--one at the bottom of the email, the other is one of the buttons at the bottom of the Mail app--and the third is when you slide an email to the left to see a blue coloured reply arrow.

-Updates has been "hidden" away in the App Store. So, they don't want us to update, or set everything to auto-update?

-In the Health app, it takes me several clicks to see my weekly activities. Earlier, I could set it so that was the first screen that opened up. And, there is no option to set this in the app settings.

-FaceTime is royally messed up. Earlier, I could see the audio and video call buttons as soon as I opened the app. Now, you have to press the blue i icon in the circle, and then move your finger down and then choose from two clumsily placed (because too close) icons.

-How many shortcuts for the podcast and music player do they want us to use? When a file is playing, you can make changes from the playing menu in notifications. But then this is also available in the control centre.

-Because of the sliding and layering menu design, I now see only the top portion of "Find on page," or "Use as Wallpaper" in the Share menu. I can make it work, but you see half a button. Is this really Apple?

-Particularly bad is the new cut-copy-paste-select all options. It all worked perfectly with iOS 12 and I wouldn't have minded them removing the magnifying glass. But now I have the cursor "sticks" all the time and I find it so much more inconvenient to place it exactly where I want. The quickness of operation is all gone.

-In Apple News I put in the name of stories from a channel and it throw up any results. Basically, there is no way to get back older stories even if you know their titles. I opened the channel in Safari and then used the Share menu to open the story in News.

When I look back at how much I enjoyed using iOS 12, I am appalled to see these changes. Admittedly, none of these are a deal-breaker, but I am left wondering where Apple is heading with it design!

I am looking to hear from others who may echo my thoughts here, and if there is some way we could reach out to Apple about all this.

Thanks for reading!

 

[now i see it]

It's the apple way. Create something approaching excellence, then ruin it in future updates in the name of progress.
Anyone remember Snow Leopard?

 

[tranceking26]

I am glad to have updates hidden out the way.

For example, If I accidentally update imgur I'll get adverts in the newer version. No thanks.

 

[Apple_Robert]

You are the only iPhone user noticing such things.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

i kept my iPhone X on 12.4.1 to keep full functionality of 3D touch mainly and by far it's the most stable OS the phone has ever had. My iPad is on 13.5.1 and it is fine but it does suffer a few issues that started at the release of iOS 13 and have never been remedied throughout the subsequent updates Apple has released. If iOS 13 is the last OS my Air2 will receive, I really hope Apple will iron out the bugs eventually.

 

[Starfia]

You are the only iPhone user noticing such things.

(Laughs)

One heck of a polling system you have, BasicGreatGuy.

 

[Shirasaki]

This is what is happening when there is no clear direction of design and conflicted interests across high rank designers. It looks like Apple is stumbling their way through a path they carved before, which sounds ridiculous.

Of course, I’m not an insider of anything, so feel free to ignore what I say. But what I find most annoying among those issues OP mentioned is updates. Not like clicking one more button is a HUGE deal, but sign out from updates menu takes multiple swipes. God knows what’s the reason behind that design decision.

Also the narrative of “you are the only one having this issue” is just blatant ignorance.

 

[Apple_Robert]

This is what is happening when there is no clear direction of design and conflicted interests across high rank designers. It looks like Apple is stumbling their way through a path they carved before, which sounds ridiculous.

Of course, I’m not an insider of anything, so feel free to ignore what I say. But what I find most annoying among those issues OP mentioned is updates. Not like clicking one more button is a HUGE deal, but sign out from updates menu takes multiple swipes. God knows what’s the reason behind that design decision.

Also the narrative of “you are the only one having this issue” is just blatant ignorance.

My post was sarcasm to remind the op and many others here, that posting the question “am I that only one...” is unnecessary and not a good way to start an OP. I see the same question asked here every day. It is the lazy man’s way to ask a question you already know the answer to. It is akin to asking a question to others and then answering it in the next breath.

No man is an island unto himself. As such, there is somebody in this tech world that has experienced the same or similar problems or concerns about the hardware or software etc.

iOS 13 is much improved over iOS 12. At the same time, it is anemic in a lot of areas that Apple promoted and promised at WWDC.

 

[Jimmy James]

Deleted.

 

[Tozovac]

Am I the only one noticing these issues with iOS 13? I much love my iPhone, but I'm noticing too many of these issues to ignore them:

.....

When I look back at how much I enjoyed using iOS 12, I am appalled to see these changes. Admittedly, none of these are a deal-breaker, but I am left wondering where Apple is heading with it design!

I am looking to hear from others who may echo my thoughts here, and if there is some way we could reach out to Apple about all this.

You’re so not alone.

Don’t forget about the countless instances now when important text strings are shortened with ellipses such that their meaning is incomprehensible and requires more work to delve into understanding what the “button” (playfully disguised as text-only) means....all in the name of keeping the text string short and unobtrusive in order to maintain a clean work area full of a lot of blank space that blends seamlessly (confusingly) into the controls/interface area such that it no longer “distracts the user.”

Every iOS starting with iOS7 seemed full of more compromises, contradictions and steps backwards than iOS6 after Jony‘s team of unnecessary plastic surgeons brought “something new and fresh.” Not saying that everything about iOS13 is still as compromised nor saying everything about iOS6 was inarguably perfect, but looking past the woodgrain, leather stitching, and green felt that offended some in iOS6, most everything about iOS6 & prior was rooted in intuitive function while most everything in iOS7 and still now is arbitrarily shackled/rooted to a minimalistic form reinvented around 2013.

I’ve ranted about Apple’s clunky iOS design in this post about clunky website design (which I should have titled “why is interface design so awful today, generally”) for years here:

Why is website design so awful today, generally?

Aha. Lots of unused white space? ✅ Removal of any color strip at the top, now looking like any other windows 10 window, blending in with all the rest of the monochromatic lemmings-designed similar moderN interfaces, increasing the difficulty to quickly identify different windows on the screen...

forums.macrumors.com

This is what is happening when there is no clear direction of design and conflicted interests across high rank designers.

This is it. Apple reinvents virtually every facet of its mobile UI in iOS7 focusing on a purposefully minimalistic look championed by a minimimalist hardware designer instead of maintaining a focus on function championed by UI experts who observed human nature over decades and then catered to human nature in the interface design, and you can’t help but wind up with an interface full of guesses, contradictions, questionable inefficiencies, and compromises as Apple and non-Apple designers take stabs at adhering to a minimalistic aesthetic while, oh so ironically, the interface is tasked to do more and more over time.

 

[mr.datsun]

Apple do make some bad decisions with their UI updates. It should be possible to reinstall the original iOS that our devices came with, if we want.

I battled with auto-updates on my iPhone 6s, which was running iOS9. I had to delete the auto-downloaded updates regularly and keep my self from regularly being tricked into an update being installed overnight. My iPhone 8 uses iOS11 and not having auto iOS updates for the first time has been a real boon. I do not want my iPhone experience controlled and continually messed round with by Apple and their fickle-minded design team. I will not update to iOS13 until I see a real need for it.

And the built-in music player has not really been any good since iOS5, which is why is use a vintage iPOD Touch.

 

[I7guy]

You’re so not alone.
….
This is it. Apple reinvents virtually every facet of its mobile UI in iOS7 focusing on a purposefully minimalistic look championed by a minimimalist hardware designer instead of maintaining a focus on function championed by UI experts who observed human nature over decades and then catered to human nature in the interface design, and you can’t help but wind up with an interface full of guesses, contradictions, questionable inefficiencies, and compromises as Apple and non-Apple designers take stabs at adhering to a minimalistic aesthetic while, oh so ironically, the interface is tasked to do more and more over time.

With hundreds of millions of ios users there is sure to be some disagreement. But in my own opinion, ios 13 is leaps above ios 6. ios 4,5,6 was not a panacea to learn either, with the learning curve being full of guesses, contradictions and quesitionable inefficiencies and compromises.

YMMV.

 

[Tozovac]

With hundreds of millions of ios users there is sure to be some disagreement. But in my own opinion, ios 13 is leaps above ios 6. ios 4,5,6 was not a panacea to learn either, with the learning curve being full of guesses, contradictions and quesitionable inefficiencies and compromises.

YMMV.

It did vary. I found the amount of puzzles and guesses when encountering new apps to be the same from ios7 thru current, generally. I rarely recall being puzzles or stymied as much before iOS7. MM did vary.

 

[I7guy]

It did vary. I found the amount of puzzles and guesses when encountering new apps to be the same from ios7 thru current, generally. I rarely recall being puzzles or stymied as much before iOS7. MM did vary.

Memories get fuzzy over time. iOS 6 in fuzzy retrospective, 8 years ago, may have been perfect. But the past is rarely perfect, just remembered that way.

Kind of like longing for “the good old days”.

 

[Sebski]

I think Apple keep making the iOS over complicated year afer year. It came to the point when after every new release I wait usually until November-December time to install it. Not only to allow time for bug fixing but mostly because I have to read forums and watch tutorials to find out if some features actually still work the same way they worked in previous version.

 

[Tozovac]

Memories get fuzzy over time. iOS 6 in fuzzy retrospective, 8 years ago, may have been perfect. But the past is rarely perfect, just remembered that way.

Kind of like longing for “the good old days”.

iOS 6 was not perfect. But a new way I’ve come to characterize things is: and methods in iOS 6 and before were pretty darn good about thinking how the user thinks. Lent it self to very much to th feeling “it just works” back then. With iOS 7 and after, one just has to think like what the designer was thinking, in order to best figure things out and navigate.

 

[I7guy]

iOS 6 was not perfect. But a new way I’ve come to characterize things is: and methods in iOS 6 and before were pretty darn good about thinking how the user thinks. Lent it self to very much to th feeling “it just works” back then. With iOS 7 and after, one just has to think like what the designer was thinking, in order to best figure things out and navigate.

I know when I am working with iOS getting done whatever needs to be done...I’m getting work done not thinking about what the designer was thinking.

ios 6 wasn’t perfect and no iteration is. But, imo, iOS 7 from a(my) user perspective isnt nearly as unintuitive as made out to be.

 

[Dizzler]

Am I the only one noticing these issues with iOS 13? I much love my iPhone, but I'm noticing too many of these issues to ignore them:

-Particularly bad is the new cut-copy-paste-select all options. It all worked perfectly with iOS 12 and I wouldn't have minded them removing the magnifying glass. But now I have the cursor "sticks" all the time and I find it so much more inconvenient to place it exactly where I want. The quickness of operation is all gone.

^^^^
This is my biggest issue—the loss of the magnifing glass. That function was perfect for us older folks. Apple, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it just to make it look pretty!

 

[Tozovac]

^^^^
This is my biggest issue—the loss of the magnifing glass. That function was perfect for us older folks. Apple, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it just to make it look pretty!

Or, don’t remove something just because you think something needs to be “less” for the next iteration. Make it optional at least.

to this day, but one of my biggest beefs is iOS 7‘s hiding the controls in safari, requiring extra actions just to see them again. Phone and iPad screens keep getting bigger and bigger, for crying out loud, why do they have to be hidden, just to get the controls out-of-the-way For that made up theme of wanting to not distract the user? Like the controls distracted the user so much before iOS 7. At least make them optional.

 

[dk001]

@AMSOS - So true. I love the hardware, like the interaction and sharing across my Apple devices ... when they work. It became a sad day when my main phone (Android) has far less issues than my Pro Max. iOS has far too many issues.

@Tozovac - Mail, Messages, Reminders, varying controls differing depending on where you are in an app, buried controls, Settings, Spell Check, ... Far too many for a long term OS of this type. I keep saying “maybe the next ...” Yet it has been a while.

@Shirasaki - Apple looks to be lost in the forest ... iOS has become a polyglot of visual languages.

 

[AMSOS]

It's the apple way. Create something approaching excellence, then ruin it in future updates in the name of progress.
Anyone remember Snow Leopard?

Exactly! The early Mac OSs were rock stable. And while Mac OS is still fine, I've seen it go downhill over the years. I used to find the coloured tags really useful as visual cues, and now they are tiny dots, which are pretty much useless!
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i kept my iPhone X on 12.4.1 to keep full functionality of 3D touch mainly and by far it's the most stable OS the phone has ever had. My iPad is on 13.5.1 and it is fine but it does suffer a few issues that started at the release of iOS 13 and have never been remedied throughout the subsequent updates Apple has released. If iOS 13 is the last OS my Air2 will receive, I really hope Apple will iron out the bugs eventually.

I loved 12.4.1 too! It was really smooth, and there were no bugs. How many times on iOS 13 have I seen the LTE icon "stick" to its place even when I've switched on the Wi-Fi!
And oh, the other day, iOS crashed on me while using FaceTime. The screen just wouldn't come on, and I was getting calls and texts.
Luckily, the force restart came up and I was able to reboot. Like I said, it's not egregious now, but I'm forced to wonder where this is all going.
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This is what is happening when there is no clear direction of design and conflicted interests across high rank designers. It looks like Apple is stumbling their way through a path they carved before, which sounds ridiculous.

Of course, I’m not an insider of anything, so feel free to ignore what I say. But what I find most annoying among those issues OP mentioned is updates. Not like clicking one more button is a HUGE deal, but sign out from updates menu takes multiple swipes. God knows what’s the reason behind that design decision.

Also the narrative of “you are the only one having this issue” is just blatant ignorance.

So true.
Can say something more about signing out? I hadn't even noticed it before, maybe because it's at the bottom. Do you prefer to keep yourself signed out? Why?

 

[AMSOS]

You’re so not alone.

Don’t forget about the countless instances now when important text strings are shortened with ellipses such that their meaning is incomprehensible and requires more work to delve into understanding what the “button” (playfully disguised as text-only) means....all in the name of keeping the text string short and unobtrusive in order to maintain a clean work area full of a lot of blank space that blends seamlessly (confusingly) into the controls/interface area such that it no longer “distracts the user.”

Every iOS starting with iOS7 seemed full of more compromises, contradictions and steps backwards than iOS6 after Jony‘s team of unnecessary plastic surgeons brought “something new and fresh.” Not saying that everything about iOS13 is still as compromised nor saying everything about iOS6 was inarguably perfect, but looking past the woodgrain, leather stitching, and green felt that offended some in iOS6, most everything about iOS6 & prior was rooted in intuitive function while most everything in iOS7 and still now is arbitrarily shackled/rooted to a minimalistic form reinvented around 2013.

I’ve ranted about Apple’s clunky iOS design in this post about clunky website design (which I should have titled “why is interface design so awful today, generally”) for years here:

Why is website design so awful today, generally?

Aha. Lots of unused white space? ✅ Removal of any color strip at the top, now looking like any other windows 10 window, blending in with all the rest of the monochromatic lemmings-designed similar moderN interfaces, increasing the difficulty to quickly identify different windows on the screen...

forums.macrumors.com

This is it. Apple reinvents virtually every facet of its mobile UI in iOS7 focusing on a purposefully minimalistic look championed by a minimimalist hardware designer instead of maintaining a focus on function championed by UI experts who observed human nature over decades and then catered to human nature in the interface design, and you can’t help but wind up with an interface full of guesses, contradictions, questionable inefficiencies, and compromises as Apple and non-Apple designers take stabs at adhering to a minimalistic aesthetic while, oh so ironically, the interface is tasked to do more and more over time.

Thanks for your detailed reply! Clearly, there is a lot afoot that needs rectifying.
I had actually never thought about blank space and how it may be left unutilised. That's an interesting thing to think about.
So, I've read about some rumours suggesting that there may be a redesign of the iOS on the cards with iOS 15. Maybe they'll address at least of your concerns?
In general, are you saying you want to go back to the 3D look of earlier iOS versions? I don't mind the flat look, though the 3D might just be more involving. But it is all certainly too clunky at the moment.
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Apple do make some bad decisions with their UI updates. It should be possible to reinstall the original iOS that our devices came with, if we want.

I battled with auto-updates on my iPhone 6s, which was running iOS9. I had to delete the auto-downloaded updates regularly and keep my self from regularly being tricked into an update being installed overnight. My iPhone 8 uses iOS11 and not having auto iOS updates for the first time has been a real boon. I do not want my iPhone experience controlled and continually messed round with by Apple and their fickle-minded design team. I will not update to iOS13 until I see a real need for it.

And the built-in music player has not really been any good since iOS5, which is why is use a vintage iPOD Touch.

I would do the same. I really liked the smoothness and general operation of iOS 12, but then feel that I need to keep upgrading for the security updates.
If you are going to stick to iOS 11, won't you miss important security updates, which is after all one of the key advantages of Apple over Android?

 

[Shirasaki]

Can say something more about signing out? I hadn't even noticed it before, maybe because it's at the bottom. Do you prefer to keep yourself signed out? Why?

I have two accounts from two regions for playing games or enjoying contents that are not available in my original region. Since I buy apps and contents from both regions, updating apps sometimes require me to sign out and sign back in using another account.

The atrocious design of the new “updates card” feature in iOS 13 takes “sign out” button at the very bottom of the updated app list, which will probably never gets cleared on its own if at all. So, every time I want to sign out I need to scroll multiple times to the bottom and tap sign out, and scroll all the way back to the top to sign in using another account. Before anyone whining “you can do so somewhere else”, no, the sign out button position in iOS 13 makes absolutely no sense, and it isn’t like my use case is invalid or something.
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I need to keep upgrading for the security updates.

With iOS 13.5 jailbreak, upgrading for security updates is a bit ironic imo. I used to update as soon as possible, nowadays far more reluctant, cause a broken software is way worse than any “may or may not affects me” security updates.

 

[I7guy]

...
[snip]
With iOS 13.5 jailbreak, upgrading for security updates is a bit ironic imo. I used to update as soon as possible, nowadays far more reluctant, cause a broken software is way worse than any “may or may not affects me” security updates.

I update because I want the serious vulnerabilities patched, such as the mail bug, several emoji bugs, etc. I update within 24 hours and never had the software broken to the point of unusability. Finding and fixing these vulnerabilities are a cat and mouse game.

 

[AMSOS]

I have two accounts from two regions for playing games or enjoying contents that are not available in my original region. Since I buy apps and contents from both regions, updating apps sometimes require me to sign out and sign back in using another account.

The atrocious design of the new “updates card” feature in iOS 13 takes “sign out” button at the very bottom of the updated app list, which will probably never gets cleared on its own if at all. So, every time I want to sign out I need to scroll multiple times to the bottom and tap sign out, and scroll all the way back to the top to sign in using another account. Before anyone whining “you can do so somewhere else”, no, the sign out button position in iOS 13 makes absolutely no sense, and it isn’t like my use case is invalid or something.
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Sounds quite irritating. I would react like you if I had to do that often!

With iOS 13.5 jailbreak, upgrading for security updates is a bit ironic imo. I used to update as soon as possible, nowadays far more reluctant, cause a broken software is way worse than any “may or may not affects me” security updates.

I am not sure what you mean by 13.5 jailbreak. Isn't that something people have been doing to iOS for a long time?

Is there some way I could go back to 12.4.1? I am unsure if that's a good idea, since everyone keeps insisting that we need the latest software!