Helping my octogenarian mom with her iPhone is the most painful experience. She often calls me about something that has “popped up” in some app that she’s using. I tell her to just close it and she says “how?” I then say something like “just click the OK button … or the Done or Close buttons, that will be some unknown color … or click the X in the upper right or maybe the upper left corner … or click “Done” or “Close” in the toolbar, on the left or right sides … or maybe the thing has slid up from the bottom and you need to swipe down to get rid of it … or maybe you need to click the Home tab on the app’s bottom bar.”
I’ve actually been an iOS mobile developer for 15 years now. Anybody who thinks there’s any sort of consistent, intuitive design principles behind Apple products is insane.
At least it’s the same type of phone you use. My mom has a cheap android phone, with all sorts of crap and limitations from the provider. I guess it’s cheap, but sometimes it’s just not worth it. Anyhow, I haven’t used an Android phone in at least ten years, have no idea about all the crap on hers, and she doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe what she sees or does, but I’m supposed to help over the phone?
But at least Android still has the option to enable the old button bar at the bottom of the screen, it has a back button that pretty much closes everything that opens up.
Pixel changes the navigation mode to gesture only by default. You can go and turn that back to three button mode and it is pretty successful, If you know it’s there.
I find Samsung’s one UI implementation to be dodgy when apps go full screen sometimes it doesn’t like to stay on, sometimes when apps come out of autohide there’s a race condition and the app will appear over the bar rendering it unselectable. That bugs been there for years. It’s also irritating that the button positions on vanilla and one UI are backward of each other.
I do have some personal experience to ‘prove’ the contrary, since I gave my grandmother an iPhone, it become much easier to deal with. That might be bias though, as that is my primary device as well, so I might just be more used to it compared to troubleshooting Android devices.
My grandmother has always had iPhones and I’ve always been on the android side of the fence. She’s been struggling with spam texts and unfortunately I’m not seeing an obvious way to stop them. Meanwhile my pixel automagically tosses basically all spam texts usually before I even see them. Honestly the spam is becoming a problem because she’s getting so many texts from organizations begging for donations and she doesn’t actually know how much she actually has set up to donate every month or to whom
I’ve been wondering about that. It would certainly be easier if my mom had the same type of phone I do, and I can find all the accessibility options, but it’s just too expensive for something she uses only as a telephone
Helping my octogenarian mom with her iPhone is the most painful experience. She often calls me about something that has “popped up” in some app that she’s using. I tell her to just close it and she says “how?” I then say something like “just click the OK button … or the Done or Close buttons, that will be some unknown color … or click the X in the upper right or maybe the upper left corner … or click “Done” or “Close” in the toolbar, on the left or right sides … or maybe the thing has slid up from the bottom and you need to swipe down to get rid of it … or maybe you need to click the Home tab on the app’s bottom bar.”
I’ve actually been an iOS mobile developer for 15 years now. Anybody who thinks there’s any sort of consistent, intuitive design principles behind Apple products is insane.
At least it’s the same type of phone you use. My mom has a cheap android phone, with all sorts of crap and limitations from the provider. I guess it’s cheap, but sometimes it’s just not worth it. Anyhow, I haven’t used an Android phone in at least ten years, have no idea about all the crap on hers, and she doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe what she sees or does, but I’m supposed to help over the phone?
It’s much easier if she has an Android phone, you can just use TeamViewer to see and control her phone remotely https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamviewer.host.market
Android is on board with that crap too. Software Buttons that don’t always pop and gestures are trash.
But at least Android still has the option to enable the old button bar at the bottom of the screen, it has a back button that pretty much closes everything that opens up.
Pixel changes the navigation mode to gesture only by default. You can go and turn that back to three button mode and it is pretty successful, If you know it’s there.
I find Samsung’s one UI implementation to be dodgy when apps go full screen sometimes it doesn’t like to stay on, sometimes when apps come out of autohide there’s a race condition and the app will appear over the bar rendering it unselectable. That bugs been there for years. It’s also irritating that the button positions on vanilla and one UI are backward of each other.
The gestures in Android do the same thing as the button bar, so even when I use gestures I always have a dedicated back gesture.
I feel this lol
I do have some personal experience to ‘prove’ the contrary, since I gave my grandmother an iPhone, it become much easier to deal with. That might be bias though, as that is my primary device as well, so I might just be more used to it compared to troubleshooting Android devices.
My grandmother has always had iPhones and I’ve always been on the android side of the fence. She’s been struggling with spam texts and unfortunately I’m not seeing an obvious way to stop them. Meanwhile my pixel automagically tosses basically all spam texts usually before I even see them. Honestly the spam is becoming a problem because she’s getting so many texts from organizations begging for donations and she doesn’t actually know how much she actually has set up to donate every month or to whom
I’ve been wondering about that. It would certainly be easier if my mom had the same type of phone I do, and I can find all the accessibility options, but it’s just too expensive for something she uses only as a telephone