Tom Warren, The Verge:
For the longest time, pressing the home button on an iPad or iPhone was the fail-safe way to take you back to Apple’s grid of iOS apps. That changed with the all-screen iPhone X. A swipe up from the bottom is the new home gesture (which also unlocks the device) on Apple’s flagship phone, but that same gesture brings up the dock on the iPad. If, like me, you switch between the two devices fairly regularly throughout the day, then it takes a few minutes to adjust your muscle memory each time you switch.
An interesting issue. Same issue with Control Center.
To me, this is a migration issue, as iOS deals with the move from hardware with Home buttons to those without, the move from no Face ID to iOS devices with.
Spend a minute scrolling through the animated GIFs in Tom’s article. The confusion is clear.
This is why I held off on the X and went with the 8. I’m an iPad user and wanted to have consistency between my phone and pad. I have no problem with Face ID, just want it everywhere all at once.
For what it’s worth, I have both an iPhone X and an iPad Pro, and to me, the issue is overblown. I’ve easily gotten used to two slightly different experiences.
Both of them use swipe up as a major gesture; it’d be great if they align, and I hope Apple is working towards that.
Right. It’s not an issue, it’s just a transition bump (small bump or none at all) for some that I saw when ordering the new iPhone and decided to go with the 8. I have no regrets, I’ll have Face ID at some point and I’m in no rush.
Also, without a physical button, app developers can take over your phone and make it hard to leave the app. For example, for some stupid reason, I let my granddaughter play some free games on my iPhone X. But when I try to quit some of those games, it seems to resist my every attempt to use gestures to switch apps, or close the one in the window. Very, very annoying. The game gets deleted instantly once I get it out of the way.
The main thing that bugs me about the iPhone X UI is that when I am on a phone call and I want to swipe up to unlock the phone so that I can look up something or send the person I’m talking to a file or photo, it takes two actions.
Try this. Start a phone call and let the phone lock.
Then, when you swipe up to unlock (being careful to avoid the end call button), the phone will not unlock. Instead, it send you to the regular non-phone UI lock screen. You can then swipe up again and it will unlock.
This is extremely poor UI design. There is no reason for the phone not to unlock on the first swipe up from the bottom.
Just take the home button off my iPad and I’ll be happy! ✌️
This article from The Verge is just incorrect. My brain has zero issues with the differences because the form-factor and usage cases are so different it is never conflated. Just the way you hold the iPhone vs the iPad prevents any mental conflict of the gestures.
Anyway, I got used to swiping up for Home on the iPad long before the iPhone X came along – I never press the button. Up to multitasking which probably has what I want and is, tbh, my real Home screen on the iPad, quickly tap on the background if you want to go to the actual Home screen.
I don’t think app devs can prevent the swipe up on the X. I haven’t seen this.
Apple used to be the standard bearer for user interface consistency. The firsts Mac and it’s “evangelists” recruited developers and provided a rigid UI API-set that made every app behave and looked the same for similar UI functions.
Now Apple has become one of the biggest non-conformists between devices and within their own apps. And 3rd parties no longer have the shining example of Apple to follow, and interfaces are all over the map.
In my book, there is no excuse for iOS 11 to have not unified gestures across devices while introducing the iPhone X Face ID. They should have switched the control gesture to top-down on all devices. Why couldn’t a swipe up take you to the home page on all devices? Home button or not?
Once you get the the app scroller view, why do you have to press and hold on iPhone X before you can remove an app while you simply flick-up on all other devices?
Why do some apps use a + icon to open new documents and others (notes, email) use a scribe icon?
And the freaking “undo” icon moves all over the document in different apps.
Mac and iOS apps used to be the pinnacle of UI design. Now every app and device is its own experiment.
Jim in Boulder
Yeah, I finally figured that out.