I continue to mourn the loss of cognitive realism at Apple. They were the guardians of great user interface design, the creators of so many brilliant software concepts, the bright shining light in a dark world ruled by Microsoft. But over the last twenty years, Apple has lost its mental energy. Like a senescent old man, it keeps making more and more design blunders. Here’s the latest:
The other day, I happened to notice this message at the top of the screen when I turned on my iPhone:
“Silent Mode?” I asked. “What’s that?” I’d never seen this before. Apparently, though, I wasn’t going to hear any incoming telephone calls or text messages. That was NOT acceptable! I had to turn it off. So I went to Settings and looked at “Sound and Haptics”, the place where you set things about sound on the iPhone. But it didn’t have anything about “Silent Mode”, so I poked around looking for something else. After several minutes of wasted effort, I decided that I needed help.
Me: "Hey Siri”
Siri: “Uh-huh?”
Me: “How do I turn off Silent Mode?”
Siri: “I can’t help you with that.”
WHAT?!??! Siri doesn’t know about the iPhone she lives on?!?!!
So I turned to my Mac, where the keyboard is usable, and searched the web. I quickly found the answer. Apple added a new button to the iPhone 14, but it’s not what you’d expect:
It’s the leftmost button in this image of the side of the iPhone. Look very closely: it’s NOT a pushbutton, it’s a sliding button. You can push it down, turning Silent Mode on. Pushing it back up turns Silet Mode off.
Now, the idea behind Silent Mode is a good one. Before Silent Mode, if you wanted to mute your iPhone for a meeting or sneaking past the guard at the secret army base, you had to turn on your iPhone, enter your passcode, go to Settings, go to the Sound tab, and turn off sound. This little button takes only a second.
IF YOU KNOW ABOUT IT!
At this point, Apple designers will contemptuously snort “RTFM”, an acronym meaning “Read the ____ Manual”. In so doing, they reveal just how far Apple has sunk, because RTFM is the battle cry of every incompetent software designer. I used that battle cry just once, on the first program I designed for Atari. My supervisor, with great tact, lured me into thinking about the user experience. I learned the lesson, changed my outlook, and never went back.
Not so Apple. Sic transit gloria.