29 Nov 2022

What I Don't Like About iOS

Antony

So, I’ve been using iOS now for around 2 months. There’s a lot to like, but also a lot to dislike. Google and Apple have copied each other many, many times, but some of my gripes are actually that they have deliberately not copied each other on some key areas, seemingly just to be different.

Google copied multi-touch, and generally the touchscreen entirely from Apple. Remember when Android required a full keyboard? And then when Android required soft buttons, followed by navigation buttons in the UI? Now Google just copied iOS’s navigation UI completely. Fine. Who cares, Apple got it right, and it wouldn’t make sense for Google to ‘invent’ something inferior just to be different. So why isn’t this always the case?

Apple’s notifications are objectively awful. They’re so much worse than Android’s notifications. The reasons for this are purely historical, and Apple seems to simply not want to copy Google’s superior solution. It’s annoying, and it’s easy to miss notifications on iOS, especially for apps either in a folder, or not on your primary homescreen.

So, what else don’t I like about iOS?

Siri. It’s far, far worse than Google Assistant.
Quick camera access. On Android I can double press the power button to open the camera. Stupidly, that opens Apple Wallet on my iPhone, something I use 10x less often than the camera. You can’t change it. You can enable a shortcut to open the camera with a double or triple tap on the back of the iPhone, but it’s not reliable.
The keyboard. Google’s stock keyboard is better, and so is navigating around text, or copy/pasting. Selecting text on iOS also sucks.
Control Centre. Why are some things in there but not others. Why isn’t the settings icon in Control Centre??? Why do I need to waste valuable real estate on my homescreen for the settings icon?
No app draw. Why? It’s great for infrequently used apps, and it’s organized alphabetically.
Accessing Wi-Fi/Bluetooth from the Control Centre. To actually access Wi-Fi settings, I have to go to Control Centre click and hold Wi-Fi, wait, then click and hold Wi-Fi again, wait, and then click Wi-Fi Settings. Why Apple, why?
This one isn’t Apple’s fault, but some of Google’s apps are worse on iOS. CarPlay apps like YouTube Music seem deliberately bad. I cannot do anything except play music. I can’t ‘like’ a song, or even see what song is going to play next.
Apple’s ‘silent switch’ doesn’t actually silence the phone. It just mutes the ringtone. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an iPhone user accidentally play a video on Twitter during a meeting, presumably thinking their iPhone was muted.
Apple’s ‘silent switch’ has no visible UX on the homescreen. So if you switch your iPhone to ‘silent’, you’ll probably forget to turn it back on, as there’s no way to know from the screen. You can only tell by looking at the switch, on the side of the phone. Bonkers! I’ve left my iPhone on silent for hours before by accident. I’ve worked around this by just not using the silent switch at all. I silence the phone using shortcuts (either location or date/time based).