iOS 16 Installed on Almost 70% of iPhones Nearly 100 Days After Launch

[9594864]

You make some excellent points but disagree on this one - from a usability perspective, having the notifications where you can more easily interact with them (especially one-handed) is probably the best change Apple has made in a long time. It's a concept Steve Jobs always championed for. It definitely challenged the predominant notifications paradigm in smartphones, but as most phones are much larger these days, it makes perfect sense.

I want them front-and-center right under the date/clock, as they were, or, if a user had widgets, they’d start just below the widgets. These devices are 2-handed for 95% of operations. You can do very little while maintaining one-handed use now. You can open the phone a respond to a simple text with one hand, then put the phone back in your pocket, but if you need more than that it’s mostly a no-go, and you’d have to place your other hand on the device. For example, if you have to get the control center down, or reach apps up top. Yes, you can use Reachability, but that’s a very unintuitive and difficult action for most to even invoke (swipe downward on the tiny space of the home bar).

Unarguably, notifications at the bottom are easier to reach, but because they are at the bottom, they’re more obscured. What do I mean? Notifications aren’t paid attention to as well, and could be ignored, at the bottom. Users turn their display on many many times each day just to check the current time-of-day. Apple moved notifications out of the periphery of the clock, clear to the bottom of the screen. Where they were was right in the user’s attention, provoking the user’s attention, as notifications should. The ability to reach them does not take precedence over the attention-drawing importance of them front-and-center.

I’d allow them to start in the old space or the bottom, based on a notion in Settings>Notifications though.

However, I’d like to point out the idiocy of Apple design… they decided to move notifications to the bottom of the Lock Screen for 2 reasons, one was the ability to more easily reach them, and the other was to not obscure the Lock Screen image as much. Notifications, by their nature, should absolutely obscure the Lock Screen or any screen because their entire purpose is to draw attention. iOS 16 introduced the ability to literally observe the clock with the 3D Lock Screen image effects…

Think about this: notifications are at the very bottom of the display on the Lock Screen. In order to invoke the Lock Screen if you’re currently using the device is to swipe down from the absolute top of the display. So you literally have to use 2 hands to swipe down the Notification Center where your notifications will be ready for one-handed use at the very bottom of the display.

Moreover, they didn’t think to add an option to move notification banners to the bottom of the screen too. It’s very easy to move notification banners to the bottom of the screen and have a 1. Second delay to keep users from accidentally tapping the banner as they’re using the device and one popped up. They could easily have a little half-circle pop out from the left-edge if the bottom of the display, which just shows a small app icon of the notification you just got. Then you could pull that half-circle out to read the banner, wait for it to disappear, or push it back into the side to instantly disappear. Or, you could tap it to go straight to that app’s notification.

Apple just doesn’t have good designers anymore sadly.

 

[whatgift]

I want them front-and-center right under the date/clock, as they were, or, if a user had widgets, they’d start just below the widgets. These devices are 2-handed for 95% of operations. You can do very little while maintaining one-handed use now. You can open the phone a respond to a simple text with one hand, then put the phone back in your pocket, but if you need more than that it’s mostly a no-go, and you’d have to place your other hand on the device. For example, if you have to get the control center down, or reach apps up top. Yes, you can use Reachability, but that’s a very unintuitive and difficult action for most to even invoke (swipe downward on the tiny space of the home bar).

Unarguably, notifications at the bottom are easier to reach, but because they are at the bottom, they’re more obscured. What do I mean? Notifications aren’t paid attention to as well, and could be ignored, at the bottom. Users turn their display on many many times each day just to check the current time-of-day. Apple moved notifications out of the periphery of the clock, clear to the bottom of the screen. Where they were was right in the user’s attention, provoking the user’s attention, as notifications should. The ability to reach them does not take precedence over the attention-drawing importance of them front-and-center.

I’d allow them to start in the old space or the bottom, based on a notion in Settings>Notifications though.

However, I’d like to point out the idiocy of Apple design… they decided to move notifications to the bottom of the Lock Screen for 2 reasons, one was the ability to more easily reach them, and the other was to not obscure the Lock Screen image as much. Notifications, by their nature, should absolutely obscure the Lock Screen or any screen because their entire purpose is to draw attention. iOS 16 introduced the ability to literally observe the clock with the 3D Lock Screen image effects…

Think about this: notifications are at the very bottom of the display on the Lock Screen. In order to invoke the Lock Screen if you’re currently using the device is to swipe down from the absolute top of the display. So you literally have to use 2 hands to swipe down the Notification Center where your notifications will be ready for one-handed use at the very bottom of the display.

Moreover, they didn’t think to add an option to move notification banners to the bottom of the screen too. It’s very easy to move notification banners to the bottom of the screen and have a 1. Second delay to keep users from accidentally tapping the banner as they’re using the device and one popped up. They could easily have a little half-circle pop out from the left-edge if the bottom of the display, which just shows a small app icon of the notification you just got. Then you could pull that half-circle out to read the banner, wait for it to disappear, or push it back into the side to instantly disappear. Or, you could tap it to go straight to that app’s notification.

Apple just doesn’t have good designers anymore sadly.

Once again, I disagree that having notifications at the bottom is bad design, while you make some fair points. Notification banners have a completely different purpose, and are designed to keep out of the way while you are using the device - putting them at the bottom would defeat that purpose. I doubt many people interact with those banners, and Apple would have metrics to support that assertion.

Edit: I imagine if there was a usable way of bringing the control centre and notifications centre gestures to the bottom of the screen, you can bet Apple would be doing it.

 

[9594864]

Once again, I disagree that having notifications at the bottom is bad design, while you make some fair points. Notification banners have a completely different purpose, and are designed to keep out of the way while you are using the device - putting them at the bottom would defeat that purpose. I doubt many people interact with those banners, and Apple would have metrics to support that assertion.

Edit: I imagine if there was a usable way of bringing the control centre and notifications centre gestures to the bottom of the screen, you can bet Apple would be doing it.

The left and right swiping on the home bar should have never been for multitasking. It’s near-useless for multitasking because a swipe/hold/release instantly brings multitasking up, and you can switch to the previous app almost as fast as the left and right swipe.

What should they have done?

Swiping left should have moved control center in from the right. Swiping right should’ve move Notification Center in from the left. Simple. Easy. Fast. Within reach. Categorically superior to multitasking when the main multitasking gesture is already right there.

See. Apple is garbage, they fail miserably continually because they don’t think things through any longer.

P.S. I would’ve still maintained the downward gestures from the top, in addition to the swiping on the home bar, for easy-of-use. Some people would have remembered the swiping down from the top easier than the left and right swiping on the home bar, and I want the maximum number of users to know how to invoke a feature.