Stephen Hackett, writing for 512 Pixels:
With iOS 5, Apple introduced Notification Center, the pull-down shade that houses missed notifications and messages all in one place.
With iOS 7, Apple added Today, a section of Notification Center that users can fill with first- and third-party widgets, as well as Control Center, a quick way to get at commonly-used utilities with a flick up from the bottom of the display.
I don’t think this has aged very well, unfortunately, and it’s mostly Control Center’s fault. In addition to it being confusing to have a hidden panel at the top of the screen, having one at the bottom too is a lot to handle for some users. But there’s a bigger problem in my mind: Control Center just does way too many things.
Read the article for specifics, but I agree 100%. Apple could solve this by giving users the ability to either turn on/off Control Center items or, better yet, completely customize it by dragging items on and off.
Disagree completely. I think Android version (two steps pull down) is more confusing. One step pull down is always simpler.
Even so, you have to admit that being able to customize it would make it better.
OMG Control Center was the single best addition to iOS 7. It made total sense, and gives me quick access to things that I was constantly having to dig into settings for. Customizable? Sure, that would be nice. But it’s one of my very favorite features even as is.
Being able to customize control center would be awesome. Mark Gurman hinted on Twitter that Apple was testing this internally with 9.3 so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it with iOS 10.
Yes, IMO the Android version is even more hidden than on iOS. I know several people who never knew control center existed but once I showed them how to use it they use it all the time now.
It’s in a no man’s land: weak for serious users, yet confusing for the masses.
Anyone reading The Loop is likely a power user and would love to customize Control Center (e.g. replace the calc with hotspot!) But people like my mom? She’s not even aware that it exists.
wait, what? “It’s too complicated, so let’s make it more customizable!” yyyeaah….my senior parents arent going to be customizing anything, so that doesnt reduce complexity, it increases it.
no, we dont have to admit that. customizability, while fun for geeks, doesnt make things better for normal people. geeks often forget this.
thats kind of the way it goes for shortcut-based functionality, tho. noting in CC cant be done elsewhere, it’s just a shortcut. one has to be taught shortcuts (keyboard shortcuts, swipe shortcuts, whatever)
This is a stupid idea. Quit being lazy and just learn the new interface. Those who can’t or won’t do that simply don’t qualify to be Apple owners and are welcome to switch to something else.
Orientation lock and Flashlight only appear in CC.
If they aren’t going to be customizing anything how does the complexity change at all?
Customizable could also mean the ability to remove unnecessary options.
I would think owning an Apple product is all it takes to qualify as an Apple owner.
Which often means a geek has to remove the things for a non-geek, meaning the non-geek can’t really use their phone out of the box, and leading to non-geeks not buying the phones in the first place or returning them in frustration.
Granted, the simple version could be the default, and the geeks will find the extras, maybe, but increasingly I find that it’s just a subset of geeks that want to fiddle with things they don’t usually fiddle with.
Customization is a decent enough idea, but I think the jury is still out on whether it is the best thing to do.
Didn’t realize that, but I agree with kyron’s point in principle.
I agree with the point made earlier that the Control Center (for the most part) does what people can do anyway, but provides a shortcut. What I really hated was when the user had to swipe down on desktop to get the search functionality, and this was the only way in iOS 7, but I’m glad they brought the search page back (left of the homepage) back in iOS 9.
Some people on this thread are talking about how non-geeks don’t use CC. When I say being able to customize it would make it better, I mean it would make it better for the people who use it. If you don’t use it or even know it exists, how it functions means nothing to you.
If done right, I think they can make CC more customizable, without making it more complicated. This isn’t always the case. I think a data toggle would be good for those who watch their data closely or are getting close to their limit that month.
Just curious. What are the use cases for orientation lock? The only time I’ve used it is when I took a picture with the phone looking down and the original orientation was off.
Considering the number of times I accidentally bring up the CC, I imagine plenty of non-geeks have seen it. Maybe they used it, maybe not. It definitely can be simplified, though, because the number of options it has is a bit much even for me. A default simple view with option for geekery seems best.
This is much ado about what bothers Hackett. “I love the top row and screen brightness settings, but as I get closer to the bottom of the screen, the usefulness of Control Center lessens.” FOR HIM.
While the bottom row isn’t something I use much, that’s why it’s at the bottom. I occasionally use Airdrop and Airplay from the CC. I OFTEN use the play/pause control as well as the top controls.
It’s silly to argue that CC does too much and that we should thus allow it to do anything anyone wants by allowing customization. As it is, the iOS approach works well, cognitively – informational things (notifications, widgets) are on the top. Control things are on the bottom. By fixing these, you don’t have to deal with all of the complexity of what controls can be added to CC, where, when (lockscreen? Or not?). I’d wager that the items in the CC are those items that most people would have there and that most people wouldn’t ever both changing the layout.
IF someone just HAS to have all that customization and tweaking because they spend hours doing it? Android is likely the OS for them.
Yes, that I agree with.
Hackett argues that the current CC is too complex. He then wants to add complexity by making it customizable.
There is also the panel that comes out from right with apps in it, which I triggered accidentally about 30 times before using it once and finding that it is basically good for clock and texts and nothing else, and then I learned to just be careful where I touch, which is the lesson of iOS 7–9. My iPhone is right here if I need a second app. And my Mac is nearby too since iPad sucks so much now, it chases me Back to My Mac. I actually prefer the mouse again, which I have always hated. But the touch in iOS has become absurd. You can’t see all the hidden buttons, so not only is there additional cognitive load (distraction, interruption) when you want to press a button, you also have to work extra hard not to hit all the hidden buttons. It turned it from something that was fun to use and explore into something that is really annoying to use.
My mother got a new iPad with no side switch, so I had to teach her Control Center, because the iPad lives in a keyboard case (horizontal only) and yet even when locked horizontal, it changes to vertical after software updates and some other situations. And you have to unlock the orientation lock, turn horizontal, lock it again. But with the keyboard case, it is almost impossible to do the slide-from-bottom thing. She was stunned at everything about that. She should be.
Not to mention, if you are going to take off the side switch, couldn’t some genius figure out how to detect if the iPad is being held by someone who is laying down? It has been almost 10 years now since iPhone shipped.
Today I was using an Apple app that had Cancel and Done hidden buttons (aka words) at the top of a pop-up, and at the bottom it said “Export Here” which I thought was a message telling me that Done would cause a file to be exported there, but the file did not show up. Turns out, “Export Here” was also a hidden button, and I had to press that to do the export. It made me long for like a System 7 box with Cancel and OK buttons in it.
If I want to be abused like that, Microsoft and Google will do it much cheaper.
The whole interface needs to be redone from scratch, lead by somebody who cares and knows what they are doing. Today’s iOS is a committee-driven, lack of editorial oversight, poorly-designed mess of things bolted onto a phone OS from 10 years ago. You have to be a tech blogger to love it. And since I don’t love it, I might as well use my Mac or even Windows, and I certainly don’t buy any iOS apps anymore. A friend of mine who is a developer complained about falling sales of his iPad app and I told him: port to Windows. If iPad is going to be so much like Windows, you are going to need to cast a broad net to find paying customers. Free apps are all an iPad deserves today. If Apple redoes iOS to make it IKEA (bland, low-quality, unreliable) don’t expect users to buy your leather chair of an app.
If you don’t think the interface has to be redone, compare the size of the lock screen media transport buttons (play a song or podcast, then lock the screen) which are absurdly small and jammed together, not to mention ugly and no fun, to the size of the space between apps on your home screen, which is enormous.
And I have typed quotes backwards since the keyboard typeface turned to one with ambiguous quote marks. That is, I wrote ”quote“ a bunch of times, because both the typeface I was typing in and the keyboard have ambiguous quotes. Thank-you Apple for just not caring at all, just slap on the font from Apple Watch and put it on the keyboard too, even though it is inappropriate for that.
I think the last few years of Apple software are as embarrassing as the early 1990’s. So much self-sabotage and just not giving a shit. It is like a dream the Microsoft CEO had and it came true. After a decade of Microsoft copying Apple, Apple just threw everything out and built Windows for iPads. A friend of mine literally though the Apple+IBM deal was that IBM makes iOS now. That Apple stopped making software and farmed that all out to IBM. I thought, yes it makes sense to think that.
Hackett argues for customization so he can remove options, making it less complex.
I was responding to kyron, who argues against customization because it would increase complexity for his parents, even tho they won’t use customization.
in HIS case, yes. But to add customization you won’t just have to design for him, but for the general case which means adding, removing, rearranging (and if something can’t be moved to a given spot, designing and coding the rules for that). All of that adds complexity. If you think they could just enable removal… come on. You know the outcry (Why can’t I add things there!!??? etc).
Or we can leave it fixed and realize that it very likely covers the vast majority of quick functions that are the target of CC and that people like Hackett aren’t really harmed by the presence of the bottom row even if it’s useless to them.
No. Customization options lead to useless fiddling. I wouldn’t mind changing which calculator launches, but otherwise I really don’t give a damn.
I use it quite often when I’m laying sideway on the bed to read or to watch video. (iPad)
That makes sense.
Might be more accurate to say “A little might not hurt, but nobody ever talks about doing just a little”
I think orientation lock on the iPhone would probably be more useful if it could lock your device in landscape mode. (It always locks you into portrait mode.) But that would require more iPhone apps to support landscape, such as springboard itself.
So was Export not the action color, or was the action color used on other controls?