Pundits have been screaming for years that Apple needed to show us something new. Naturally, now that it has, they’re complaining about them changing things.
Writing for Fast Company, Jesus Diaz is back to declare “The iPhone X Is A User Experience Nightmare.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Branden, Žiga and Chris.)
Please, do your iPhone X-owning friends a favor and tell them that the phone they’re going nuts over on Twitter is a “user experience nightmare”. Certainly they should know that they’re living a lie and people always appreciate it when they’re told something they’re enjoying is, in fact, garbage.
Need proof?
Well, yes.
Just take a look at this cheat sheet published alongside the Wall Street Journal’s iPhone X review:
Okay, let’s do that. Here’s the first tip:
To wake the screen tap anywhere
WAIT BACK UP OH GOD THIS IS SO CONFUSING TAP WHERE YOU SAY? [Taps on random objects about the room.] IT’S NOT WAKING BUT IT SAID “TAP ANYWHERE” WHYYYY ISSSS THISSSS HAPPENING TOOOO MEEEEEE
Back in June of 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone, there was no cheat sheet.
This is a throwaway line and it should be thrown away because it’s a baloney sandwich on baloney bread with baloney mayonnaise put into a lunch box featuring the famed superhero Baloneyman. Actually, wait, keep the sandwich because the Macalope went too far and now it sounds cool somehow. Still throw the sentence away.
First of all, Apple didn’t create the cheat sheet Diaz embeds, The Wall Street Journal did. Even so, if we’re looking for Apple-supplied primers for the original iPhone, look no further than the 25-minute guided tour Apple released in June of 2007 (tip o’ the antlers to Aulia). 25 whole minutes! As for primers provided by other people, there’s the first edition of iPhone for Dummies, published in 2007.
But even if the original iPhone was easier to figure out, it’s probably because you had never used a device like it before. Your brain was looking for a new way to do things. The reason the iPhone X might be harder is because your brain is already used to using an iPhone in a different way. Even so, the basics are simply not that hard and some are easier.
[The original iPhone’s] user experience led you to immediate discovery starting with the simple and genius Swipe to unlock bar at the bottom of the screen.
Yeah. And you pick up the iPhone X and look at it to unlock it. Oh, the unimaginable overly-complicated drudgery Apple has now saddled us with.
Oh, what’s this button at the bottom of the phone. Click–boom!–and you’re back home.
Swiping up to go to the home screen is even better. Here’s what designer Max Voltar had to say:
Took both kids 10 seconds to figure out how to go to the home screen on the X. Such an easy transition to not having a button.
Diaz also rails against iPad gestures, almost all of which are additional conveniences and are not required to be able to use the device. A cynical person might conclude that Diaz is piling on just to complain about things but we are not so cynical. No, not we.
But remember that there is no home button–or TouchID–on the iPhone X because of Apple’s own inability to make it work with its edge-to-edge screen.
Because the technology doesn’t exist yet.
Is literally everything about the iPhone X and it’s new gestures sunshine and rainbows? No. A lot of people aren’t crazy about moving Control Center to the upper right corner. But the original iPhone didn’t have copy/paste.
Diaz grudgingly admits that the reviewers he quotes still all think the iPhone X is pretty great. Despite the positive reviews, though, he calls it a “user experience nightmare”. If you’re thinking maybe there’s something else going on here, you might be right.