> They need to fix Safari on iOS so that it doesn't open the same site over and over again in a different tab each time.
Seems to work perfectly fine for me.
> They also need to catch up to the rest of the world and give the user a choice of which browser to open up by default on iOS.
It's not as simple as that. If you want an OS that everyone can use, options are your enemy. Would I like to be able to decide the standard browser on my OS? To be honest, I don't care in this instance since I like Safari better than the alternatives, but sure, the choice would be great to have should that change.
> If you want an OS that everyone can use, options are your enemy.
That's a ridiculously absurd notion and it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not even going to ask you because you've got no evidence for this whatsoever.
It equates exactly to "Choices are bad". Perhaps that is true for marketing purposes but not for solving actual real-life problems. I guess we have our answer now though because "more marketing and less functionality" fits precisely within Apple's modus-operandi.
Sucks for you, you should probably talk to apple about it since it's probably a bug.
> Yes, it is.
No it isn't, and it has been shown numerous times. You have probably experienced it yourself with a parent or someone else needing your help because they were trying to do change their wallpaper on their windows pc and now their internet is not working anymore. More options equals more complexity which isn't good if you need your phone to work for as many people as possible.
iOS even has had its fair share of problems with this for example with its third-party keyboards with people installing them from the App Store and coming back later and having no idea how they did turn them on, or that they even did so, they just did what the app told them to do while they thought they were installing some game and now they can't hit the keys any more because it's all different, and they don't remember what happened nor how to get things back to normal.
> That's a ridiculously absurd notion and it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not even going to ask you because you've got no evidence for this whatsoever.
No it isn't, and a very famous and popular book was even written about it by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less which spiked a lot of research on the topic. You should read it.
> It equates exactly to "Choices are bad". Perhaps that is true for marketing purposes but not for solving actual real-life problems. I guess we have our answer now though because "more marketing and less functionality" fits precisely within Apple's modus-operandi.
Yes it is. It might not be optimal for you specifically, but if they made a phone that worked perfectly for you, it possibly wouldn't work perfectly for me, and surely not for my grandmother. Why? Because we need very different things from our phones. If you introduce all the features all 700+ million of active iPhone users need/want, the phone would be a complete cluster fuck. Even if you took the features of a few 100 select but very different people, that would be the case.
I would say that Android phones is a perfect example of why more (choices) is less (good). I can't remember when I last had to help someone with a problem with their iOS devices, but every time I am with a family member that uses android, they have a bunch of problems piled up for me they need help with. Of course, it's not only android but just as much the terrible apps that is on the android platform, but low quality apps is something the android platform enables, so it's kinda it's fault too.
The solution is not to put every single option into iOS. It's to have a wider range of operating systems that are tailored for different groups of people, like hacker types, the "I only call, text and facebook" type, and so on, but that costs a lot more money and takes a lot more time than making a single device that everybody buys.
I still don't see any evidence. All I see is badly formed opinion. How about a citation?
The simple truth is that either software does what you need it to do or it doesn't. In this case, I need iOS to open Chrome instead of Safari. Since there is no option to change the default browser or ability to uninstall Safari (thereby making Chrome my default), I consider iOS to be badly broken in this regard.
Your position is clearly indefensible here once you consider that the Mac OS lets you change default browsers. Why should there be a choice on Apple's desktop OS but not their mobile OS? I look forward to hearing the byzantine logic that you'll come up with for justifying that one...
Also keep in mind that this isn't just any old option. This is the type of option that the EU sued Microsoft over. Hopefully someone will force Apple to do the same. Too bad their global market share is tiny. I guess the rest of the world likes options, huh?
The book is based on research, and there are a lot more research that has been done on the subject since it was published. Feel free to read the book and the follow-up studies, or don't, but I am not gonna go and read it again to find citations to post here.
What surprises me is that you don't seem to agree any bit with the notion that less is more. I however see it all the time in my work as a developer. It's easy to add features in one long list, but users don't respond well to that. What makes a product that users appreciate is a tight package where features has been distilled to what is important and lets the user access the features they need in a convenient way. What doesn't make a user happy is when they have to hunt around for functionality or can't remember how to do stuff because there is to many features that clutters the interface and makes the experience of using the product more complex.
> The option to change the default browser causes no confusion in their desktop OS and it wouldn't in iOS either.
That can be argued, but I can see a few scenarios that will be problematic for the less tech savvy users.
1) Do you present an option when the user installs another browser to set it as a default, or do you guide them on how to go to the settings and do it?
2) What happens when the user uninstalls the browser, maybe by mistake after having been prompted or guided to set it as default? Should the system a) ask the user to first switch to another browser, or b) notify that if they uninstall it, a default browser will be chosen?
3) What to do now that someone has by mistake deleted chrome, which is the only browser they have used on the phone ever and doesn't even know safari exists? They will have to go to a genius bar or ask someone they know for help to how to either download chrome again (possibly) or to be told about safari
4) what happens when the user by mistake (or not recalling doing so) put chrome as default browser but want to go back to safari?
All these things I just came up with on a whim (there are probably many more) is usability complexity that will put less tech savvy users in problematic and/or confusing scenarios that overall can make them appreciate the phone less and could potentially lead to less sold devices.
These are not problems I personally would have, but they are problems that Apple, whoms goal is to sell as many devices as possible, wish to be without. Adding options is possibly adding confusion that can lead to less sales.
> You won't cite anything because you can't. It's quite clear that you're wrong. Sorry.
I didn't cite anything, yes, I mentioned a famous psychology book and research area that is specifically saying that I am right. It's not something I just thought of, you know.
BTW, here's just one way that you can reproduce the problem with iOS Safari (there are many others) - simply highlight any text in iOS, tap "Look Up" and then hit "Search Web". Safari opens a brand new tab for Google, for every search.
That's how my wife ended up with 276 open tabs in Safari and that's why it was slow on her iPhone.
If you don't think that's a problem, then I don't know what to tell you except: You're wrong.
With Chrome as the default, the user would see all those tabs and close them. Furthermore, if you think Apple is doing any of this to help the user have a better experience, you're even more wrong.
Anyway, maybe you don't talk to your grandparents as much as I talk to mine, but mine constantly have problems with hidden functionality and lack of options in iOS. Don't even get them started about printing from iOS.
> If you don't think that's a problem, then I don't know what to tell you except: You're wrong.
It's a problem she doesn't know about the 276 tab, but is it a problem that a new tab is opened when you look up "her" instead of replacing the tab where you looked up "him"? No, I don't think it is a problem.
Am I correct in saying that what you have a problem with isn't that it opens a new tab if you open a new page, but that it doesn't in "default mode" show how many tabs you have open, because that is a different problem entirely, which I can agree with. iOS do have problems, indeed, but shy of a few options like customisations of controlcenter which lands in iOS 11, I don't think that is one of them in general. Personally, though, there are some options I'd like to see, but they wouldn't make the overall OS better, it would just make it better for me specifically.
> Anyway, maybe you don't talk to your grandparents as much as I talk to mine, but mine constantly have problems with hidden functionality and lack of options in iOS. Don't even get them started about printing from iOS.
I do all the time, but the problems they have isn't with iOS but with third-party functionality, such as with a printer that says it supports AirPrint but it doesn't work anyways and other printers work fine, or when they create a group message that includes people that don't use iMessage, it ends up in separate message-items, but I don't blame that on iOS because they can't do anything about those things.
> hidden functionality and lack of options in iOS
I've never had any "casual" iOS user say that to me, except for cases where people use Google Chrome on Windows and ask when first getting an iOS device if they can use Chrome there too, but that is hardly a problem.
Seems to work perfectly fine for me.
> They also need to catch up to the rest of the world and give the user a choice of which browser to open up by default on iOS.
It's not as simple as that. If you want an OS that everyone can use, options are your enemy. Would I like to be able to decide the standard browser on my OS? To be honest, I don't care in this instance since I like Safari better than the alternatives, but sure, the choice would be great to have should that change.