As much as I don’t like negative threads, there’s one thing in iOS that really irritates me, and I want to air it…
Pressing and holding the tab button in Safari to access tab groups, should have a haptic response.
Because it doesn’t, I often end up opening the tab view instead, so I have to huff a little, hit Done, then try again. I don’t know why it annoys me that it doesn’t because none of the other buttons in Safari do, but I feel like it should.
No, I have not contacted Tim Apple about this. Yes, I probably should.
Spellcheck, and it perfectly encapsulates Apple’s view of their customers, that Apple knows what’s best, better than their customers. In iOS, if you have spellcheck turned on, it automatically changes your words based on what it assumes you meant. You have to actually tap the word bubble that pops up to cancel it, which seems completely ass-backwards to me. The word bubble should be their suggestion, but then let the user make that call. They just assume you’re the idiot and they’re right. Sometimes that’s fine, but sometimes I’m just using slang or an abbreviation or a foreign word or it completely picks the wrong word and spellcheck fucks you over.
Yeah that’s so ducking annoying.
Incredibly, I went out to buy a duck for our Christmas roast the other day, and at one text my wife to tell her “I’m just looking for a fuck”.
At least it wasn’t your mother.
They just fucking changed this so it autocorrects to your most commonly fucking typed words, they even fucking pointed it out in the presentation.
See, works great. I even tried to type 🦆ing and it autocorrected to F.
Autocorrect has gotten significantly better. I don’t even need to swype anymore.
Yes, spell check… autocorrect. Rage inducing.
Also, something happened in newer releases of iOS, where sometimes you can’t tap your finger to place the cursor on a paragraph of text. Ends up selecting an entire word instead of putting the cursor between words. Sometimes does that, sometimes places cursor. It’s random, or at least I don’t know what causes it to get in that mode.
Also, another thing that boils my blood. Typing on this thing, getting almost an entire paragraph typed out, then suddenly the last sentence is selected, and the next character I type replaces it all, essentially deleting everything. Sure I can undo but it completely demolishes the stack in my brain that I was trying to convey.
A little known feature, you can hold space and swipe left/right to control text cursor.
It works but it was so much better on 3D Touch. You could 3D Touch the entire keyboard and swipe.
RIP
I was going to mention this if nobody else had. Easily the thing that makes me angriest most frequently on my iPhone is its behavior when trying to type out and edit longer comments. I honestly don’t know what’s going on when it starts acting funky, but the more time I spend, the weirder it gets. Sometimes I’ll try to place the cursor and it will select a word on a completely different line (it just happened when typing this up that I selected a word in the latest line of this comment and it selected the very first “I” at the top and started overwriting it). Sometimes when I try to change or retype a word, autocorrect suggests the new word mashed together with the old word. When a comment gets too long, the screen bumps up to the top of the page after every new word is added so it’s almost impossible to see what I’m typing. I don’t know if it’s the iPhone, the browser, or the webpage, but it’s a terrible experience.
Then sometimes it’s perfectly fine.
settings > keyboard > auto-correction: off
…
that was pretty easy…Right, but now there’s no autocorrect at all. A middle ground would be nice.
it underlines misspelled words… works pretty good for me
The latest version of iOS changes the words if you have spellcheck on. I think it underlines the misspelled words if you have spellcheck off.
no, it only changes it with autocorrect
The removal of 3D Touch
I’m still so mad about that. I was so excited to have that feature but I was a broke college student through the whole of its lifespan. I ended up jumping from an iPhone 6 to a 12 mini, missing 3D touch entirely.
6 to 12 mini gang! I hate it they abandoned the mini’s. I’ll prob get an SE next.
I hate it too! I got a good deal on the 14 pro but really wish it was the size of the mini. Just felt so much easier to hold
6 to XR, so yeah, same.
Recently switched from Android. What’s pissing me off the most is the back button on every app being on the top left. They chose the least accessible place to put the most common action.
In fairness, most apps have a swipe action to go back. The button is almost vestigial.
What? Where do you swipe and on which direction?
from the left screen edge towards right.
So still inconvenient.
lol my guy it’s the most intuitive, straightforward, natural way to go back that I can imagine. You just swipe the window back.
From the right to the left, yes. But from the left, you still have to reach your thumb across.
On my phone, everything is done symmetrical. Swipe from left or right edge towards
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middle. Back
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middle down. Switch between 2 last apps
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middle down and hold. Kill/close current app
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middle up. Multi task window
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middle up and hold. Home
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bottom up. Home
Left-to-right makes sense in iOS because new pages or screens in an app typically animate in from Right-To-Left, so the back gesture is just the opposite of that.
Different OS, different paradigm.
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To switch apps, you swipe left and right along the little bar along the bottom of the screen. You can also swipe up on it to go to the app switcher view.
Not to return to the previous app. Here in Denmark, we often have to logon through an official logon app. But to return to the app logging into, you must either press upper left corner or manually switch app. Swiping from the left, will not exit and return to previous app
same… you can swipe back a lot of times though…
You can swipe left and right along the bottom (where the little bar is) to switch apps.
Also apps fill in the Home Screen from the top left… why.
I’m curious. What made you switch from Android. I went from Apple to Android and I can never go back to a walled garden
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My old phone had reached ‘thoroughly shagged out’ levels of wear and I needed a replacement.
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iPhone seemed to be an easy to use and well polished interface (and it has been for the most part, despite this back button weirdness).
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iPhones by most accounts have really good build quality now.
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I’m absolutely done with Google and their data harvesting ways. Apple are much better, and sure they no doubt record usage habits for their own purposes, there’s little evidence I’ve seen that they sell that data on. Also, I cannot be arsed to fuck around with GrapheneOS, I like privacy, but I’m not militant about it, and still want access to apps.
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I like the aesthetic.
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I never had an iPhone, and if I’m ever to have a valid opinion on them, I ought to use one instead of blindly following a brand and repeating second hand opinions.
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For similar reasons to 6, I want to try a Mac at some point soon as well, and iPhone has some neat tricks with it.
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The camera quality is fantastic.
While I came from outside a walled garden, I used maybe two apps which had to be sideloaded. The only one I really miss is newpipe, but there’s browser based solutions for YouTube. I’ve just reached a point in my life where I want my phone to ‘just work’ and I don’t care about being a power user, least of all on my phone.
The rest seem like reasonable reasons to switch. As for 4, I am on GrapheneOS and it’s been pretty usable. All my apps work even banking. You can still install google apps from Aurora Store or even the Google Play store if you want and the apps will be sandboxed. If you want to stay as private and secure as possible on ios though, I recommend trying out the lockdown mode.
As for 7, I’ve tried macs in the past and they’re really not for me. I much more like my arch linux and grapheneos setup. I prefer not having Apple track me everywhere I go using their mesh tracking system.
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It made since when iPhones were small enough to be used with one hand.
Now that they are all phablets, they introduced the double tap on the home button to slide the top half of the screen down. No idea if this shortcut exists for devices without a home button.
It still exists, you swipe down on the bar at the bottom of the screen. You can also set up a feature called “Back Tap” and set a double or triple-tap on the back of the phone to trigger it or any number of other actions.
It’s one of the things keeping me from moving. I need a back button and the software ones are dumb AF.
Why tho? Genuinely curious.
When windows steal focus in macOS. If I am opening an app it should be able to open in the background while I do something else. Same with a “file copy” dialog in Finder. So many apps and windows repeatedly steal focus and push themselves to the top and it’s so frustrating.
Oh Christ yes. If I’m using an app, then I don’t give a shit if another app wants my attention.
Yes! Don’t you bounce your icon at me, bitch. I see you and I will get there when I’m ready.
I hate this so much! Some apps do this even multiple times during startup.
Yes! You push them to the background and then they jump back up front again. Who asked for this? Why is this? Whyyy???
To be fair this also happens in Windows (Zoom anyone?) and probably Linux too, although for the latter that may be customizable.
Yep, this bad design is everywhere. Typing my password when a text editor opens…
It’s even worse when using stage manager
Yes! If you have a full screen app open with stage manager active on your primary desktop, swiping between the full screen app and the desktop basically becomes a game of app roulette.
It is possible to turn this off. I did.
So… do you mind telling the rest of us how to do this? I don’t see a setting anywhere to change this behavior.
Siri is pretty much useless. When I see how well something like Alexa works, I really don’t understand how Apple can be so far behind on that technology.
I have Alexa. It’s pretty crappy too.
The thing that bugs me about Alexa is that I will ask a question and it will answer as it should, but then continues, “By the way, …” and tells me something completely unrelated. I understand they are trying to inform of other features and capabilities, but I don’t want to hear about them and wish I could turn this off.
I’ve used both extensively and Alexa is miles ahead of Siri.
This is the biggest issue for me too, but Apple is working on on-device LLMs so I’m hoping they use that to improve Siri drastically
Yes and if you want to use your phone in your car then you have to have Siri enabled. It’s the one thing I won’t enable to use CarPlay.
I only use Siri to start timers when cooking, do quick maths and conversions, and to pull up random things that my wife and I are discussing that we don’t know the answer to. It works well with just those use-cases.
Agree. Recently purchased an Homepod Mini for my Mac Mini and Siri is so bad compared to Alexa.
I use Alexa and Siri. Siri is leaps and bounds better than Alexa.
Set a timer on the iPhone, both iPhone and Apple Watch will ring. Set a timer on the Apple Watch, only the watch will ring.
Also all used timers in the past are not synced on both devices.
Also, why doesn’t my watch show the timer I set on the phone by default? I just set a timer for five minutes. Why else do you think I’m looking at the watch?
This drives me bonkers. The timers should be synced.
I can’t simply copy a music file and set it as a ring tone. It’s the most basic feature that android has since forever, and I need to do a pagan ritual with iTunes and audio editors to maybe make it work.
No and they clearly could but then you wouldn’t need to buy them from the ringtone store. In other news, you can use any song as a custom alarm’s sound… but not your daily Sleep alarm.
wait, you still use your smartphone as a phone?!?
IKR? Talk about the tiniest thing ever…
What bothers me is that Apple doesn’t document its features very completely. Here’s an example:
In CarPlay, I do a lot of navigating using Apple Maps. I discovered years ago that I could say “Details” to Siri to get the map to zoom in to allow me to see upcoming turns. I could say “overview” to get it to zoom out to show me the whole trip on the map. Very useful! I had to discover this feature by accident, though. As far as I know, there’s no button in the interface to do this, and there certainly isn’t a list of commands that Siri users can use, CarPlay or otherwise.
Even more infuriating is that this feature was removed about six months ago. Does it exist under some other spoken command? Who knows? Apple doesn’t document anything!
I wish I’d known about the Siri command but the details/overview navigation option still exists. It’s toggled by tapping the button on the top-right of the screenshot shown on this support page: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/get-turn-by-turn-directions-iph215b053f6/ios
I’ve used this button before. I swear it does something slightly different than saying “details” did. Like it doesn’t preserve North-up map orientation or something. Without having the old voice command, I can’t check to verify. Thank you for taking the time to highlight the button, though!
Just don’t rely on Siri for anything and you won’t be disappointed. I finally said “enough is enough” when she stopped even letting me rate the song that was playing.
Complete lack of support for clipboard history. This annoys me daily.
If you’re talking about MacOS, I’ve been using Maccy for this
Sorry, right, I was referring to iOS. On macOS I use Alfred for clipboard history. Works great.
Not perfect, but I use this.
Yeah that’s probably the best solution but like you say, pretty inelegant.
Once they allow side loading we will be freee :)
If you’re in the EU or Japan, possibly. My guess is really doing it right (without impact on battery life) would require root. Or Apple supporting it officially with apis and everything.
The solution I linked above is installed through AltStore and works perfectly. No jailbreak required. Official support for sideloading will eliminate the need for AltStore, but shouldn’t impact the functionality of Clip.
Can’t you use a third party keyboard for clipboard history on iOS? That’s how it works on Android.
I think we do have this ability, but then we also have a few apps that will straight up block third party apps, mostly related to security, which is when you may want clipboard history sometimes like when copying a password from a password manager.
My job recently implemented new measures that extend to Outlook and Teams on my iPhone that won’t let me use third party keyboards in these apps anymore.
That you can´t disable the open camera gesture on the lock screen. Drives me crazy …
Dude, I miss when lock screens were lock screens. I want nothing on my lock screen other than an unlock method. I’m always hitting flashlight and camera when I pick up my phone. Then when I cave, and decide to start using the camera button for quick pictures, it requires the most perfect press, right in the center, otherwise it refuses to register. It’s engraging.
Edit: as I type this on an iOS device, I am deciding I hate autocorrect more.
I like the new widgets for the lock screen in iPad OS 17 but I really hope Apple decides one day that camera is an option.
Agree. Autocorrect is really annoying, especially on the iPad so I installed Google keyboard. Using an Android smartphone makes using the Apple keyboard even worse.
Cutting and pasting files not being a thing
The change a few years back when a lot of apps changed the “maximize” button to full screen instead and not only does that suck it’s inconsistent between apps
There not being a shortcut key to switch between monitor modes
They can’t keep the best part of the OS consistent. The system preferences menu was well organized years ago. Every few months they fuck with it in a way that makes it a little worse
“Natural” scrolling suddenly was default and precisely opposite to how people had been scrolling for 20 years
Updates keep changing apps – just pick a way and stick with it
Xcode is bloated garbage
Natural scrolling confused me for a good hour or so, but I figured I’d stick with it. I’m glad I did, because it actually does make more sense to me.
The same thing happened to me. I spent years changing the setting to traditional scrolling. Then, one day, my brain just flipped, and now I make registry edits to Windows to enable natural scrolling there, too. I suddenly can’t live without it.
Natural - you’re moving the content
Unnatural (?) - you’re moving the scroll bar
I hate “natural” scrolling so much lol, I reverse it first thing with each new OS install
Cutting and pasting files not being a thing
On macOS? Press option+v to move the file instead of copying it. I actually think it’s better because it means you have “more time” to decide which action to do (vs. ctrl+x where you have to decide upfront).
I mean that’s just called moving. Another way to do cut + paste, except on MacOS we don’t have this specific option, vs every other OS I’ve used, we do.
What do you mean? It is a direct substitute for the cut action on Windows (and Linux desktops which copied the shortcuts from Windows) with a minimal change to how you use it. Cut and paste is just moving as well, and I don’t think you have an exact equivalent to option+v on other OSes either.
I don’t think you have an exact equivalent to option+v on other OSes either.
If that were true, it wouldn’t bother me, but it’s not. You can move files by dragging on at least windows, if between drives you just need to hold shift iirc
I never said it prevented me from moving files. I said it was annoying to be missing the option to do it that specific way. It’s just a personal preference.
Fair enough, I suppose. I guess I can understand considering I’ve spent significant effort to remap keys on Linux (especially cmd/ctrl) to be more like the Mac equivalent so the key sets I change between aren’t as different from each other.
All the processing power in an iPad, but no calculator. But my Apple watch has one.
How advanced of a calculator do you need? You can do a lot with the search bar.
I’d like a calculator that doesn’t require internet, so not advanced at all…
Using the search bar in iPad OS to solve equations does not require access to the internet.
If you have a keyboard, press command-space. You can then enter an equation that you want to solve in the search bar. If the syntax is correct, it will give you the solution. Try this equation as an example:
(2+pi)/(3^3)
It will display this result: 0.1904293575
If you press enter and you do have internet access, then it will send the equation to Safari and execute a search in your default search engine. I’m not sure why it odes that; that doesn’t seem too useful.
Some other operations you can do in the search bar:
sqrt(n), cos(n), sin(n), tan(n), log(n), ln(n), etc.
Some other functions that I’ve used in Excel also work in the search bar, such as min(12,2)
My guess is that it supports many or all of the functions that are supported in Numbers.
With this, you should be able to quickly solve just about anything you would type into a calculator app.
Sorry, my mistake. I just thought that a multi trillion dollar company that makes the hardware and OS for my tablet could install the calculator program from their other similar architecture hardware with an OS that shares a very large amount of the same code base (that actually used to be the code base).
You are correct I should just do this other round about way that requires more steps to get the search bar opened each time to do what should be a very simple operation.
Separate volume sliders in iOS for ringtone,media, notification, and alarms
Fucking this, it really kills me me that after all this time we still don’t have this level of configuration. There is clearly a difference between alarm volume and audio volume, so give us separate sliders!
Agreed. And why can we not permanently change the Timer notification sound? If you change it in app, then close, it will revert to the Redial sound. And unlike the Alarm, Ring tone, etc, there’s no option to change it in settings. So annoying.
This is still not a thing???
I decided to get an 15 this year after using Pixels for a while. I haven’t seen it if it exists…
Ringtone volume is set under “Sounds & Haptics” in settings.
It’s a “sticky” setting in that, if you have “change with buttons” turned off, you have to go back to settings to adjust the notification/ringtone volume, but I’ve always treated ringtones as on/off rather than specific volume levels, because of the silent switch. I don’t ever want my phone to ring loud, so I have the volume set low just in case I happened to forget to put it in silent mode.
Thanks, that’s a bit helpful. I think Apple could take a few steps or design changes to make these easier to adjust in a single place using the buttons. I think I’m still very used to android though, so maybe I’m just whining.
It should be in control center, or configurable to be put there.
The lack of real mouse support in iPad OS.
My gaming rig is currently out of commission undergoing repairs, but I was luckily able to continue participating in my multiplayer Baldur’s Gate 3 nights using Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming. However, I’ve been forced to learn how to play using a controller, because iPad OS does not have real mouse support.
I was able to plug my iPad into a thunderbolt dock which gives me keyboard input, wired internet, and a “cursor”, but the cursor is only a simulation of touch input rather than an actual cursor.
I can see how for games that could be frustrating, but when going around the general interface I quite like the adaptive cursor and how it snaps to buttons and changes based on context.
Oh yeah for native iPad features it’s kinda neat, albeit it takes some getting used to. But when you just want a basic mouse, it would be nice to have it behave that way when there aren’t fancy native UI elements to snap to.
It bugs me immensely that, in order to have Hot Corners, you have to turn on Assistive Touch and have that button floating on the screen.
I dislike how inconsistent or broken scrolling can be for third party mice. And the lack of customization options for extra buttons.
MacBook: I use two screens and I constantly move the bottom bar between them by accident. The only built-in way to override that is to fix both screens as the same workspace, but this means any time you use fullscreen, the other screen also switches to “another” workspace.
I switched from Windows a few years ago, and I had the hardest time getting used to moving/maximizing/resizing windows on Mac.
Not sure if that’s what you mean, but if so then “Rectangle” solved all my window management problems, so much so I bought the pro version almost immediately.
This is really annoying, also sometimes (usually after going fullscreen) when double clicking the window bar. When it should go almost from windowed to maximize, it ignores the bottom bar and go almost full screen with the bottom bar obstructing the maximized windows
