Just a few days into my iOS challenge I started to look a little differently at the Apple users in my life
They describe Apple products with marketing slogans like it just works as though they actually believe them
And it made me wonder does Apple have one version of their products for the true believers?
And then a different one for the scrubs like me because my time with the iPhone 16 plus has been absolutely riddled with
unintuitive design choices Unnecessarily limited functionality and some of the weirdest bugs that I've encountered on a supposedly finished product in years
but Mama Sebastian didn't raise no quitters So I've stuck it out for more than the month that I promised and I've compiled a lot of thoughts both from myself and
From helpful members of our community who see the world through more pink lady lenses
And some of their points were extremely valid turns out I really was just holding it wrong and over time
There's a lot about iOS that I've learned to love even on my own
But there's also a lot that well to say how I really feel I'd probably have to use language that might not sit well with my sponsor
Let's kick this off with some positive vibes. I am a big fan of the app library
I know it isn't new but as someone who hasn't daily driven an iOS device in a while
It's new to me and any effort to organize the pure chaos that most of us carry around in our pockets is much appreciated
Like finally the ability to put your icons anywhere you want
I also appreciate the intuitive and slick way that iOS handles switching between picture-in-picture and background media playback
I mean, how cool is this as for my other primary use of my phone?
You know phone calls that got a big improvement, too
I get so many different kinds of calls these days phone teams
What's up, whatever and iOS streamlines this experience by unifying the interface between all these different apps
Which is especially nice when I'm in the car it even consolidates my call logs
So I don't have to remember who prefers what when I mash a contact to call them back
Multi-widget stacks are super cool I don't actually know if they're new or not, but I don't really care quick access and high information density
Always get a thumbs up from me and I use them all the time to quickly check the weather
Quickly check my calendar now. I've heard that these are a thing on newer Samsung devices as well
But look this video is not a comprehensive comparison matrix of every software feature that's ever existed
It's my thoughts on coming back to iOS after an extended absence and some of those changes really are refreshing
Screenshot management has leveled up in a big way and is full of nice to have
It's like I love the ability to quickly delete rather than archive my screenshot after I've shared it with someone and
I love the little pop-up in the dynamic island to help manage my AirPods
If they're paired to my laptop already and I'm sitting working, but an incoming phone call comes in
It'll be like hey want me to grab those and I'm like yeah
Thanks Actually any sort of interaction between the iPhone and other Apple devices is pretty great
Like my Apple watch unlocking without needing to mash in the pin if I have my phone unlocked nearby
So efficient speaking of efficiency I probably plugged this thing into my nightstand to charge maybe
Four or five times over the entire month plus that I was using it which probably sounds bonkers
But what I found was that just plugging in during my daily commute plus the occasional longer trip was enough to keep me going
For literally a week at a time unless I was binging a show all day or something
iOS then noticed this and piped up with a suggestion that I switched to 80% maximum charging in order to prolong the life of my battery
That is the kind of proactive user handholding that I can really get behind and the same goes for how aggressive
iOS gets about prompting the user to mute or block app notifications and tracking
To be clear androids tools for managing these things are pretty good to actually very granular
But what Android doesn't do is get all up in your grill about them like iOS does which results in an experience where if you get a
Notification on your iPhone you can be pretty darn sure that it's something you wanted to see or you can easily get rid of it
Now pretty much everything so far has been mostly to do with the software
But I've got to say I kind of like the hardware to the screen on the iPhone 16 family is
Incredible with outstanding brightness for watching videos outside not to mention
They're super dim mode that supposedly gets all the way down to one knit and makes nighttime reading way more comfortable for me
Oh, here's a fun one. You know how phones are supposed to be, you know phones
I'm getting way better call and data reception near my house and not just against my ancient note 9
But even against my wife's galaxy s23 ultra so I can finally close my garage door from the driveway
All right, you guys think that's enough positivity to appease the Apple stands if not
I could probably keep going for an entire videos worth, but
Unfortunately, I could probably go multiple videos about the things that I didn't love so much
So we should probably address at least some of them. Let's start with how slow the device feels which okay
No, wait, hold on step away from the comment section. I recognize this is absolutely not a slow device
But that makes it all the more frustrating when it feels like Apple's interface decisions are holding me back
Like the animations. They're beautiful. I love the way the home screen icons come
Flying in the first time that it loads after you set up a new iPhone
But I don't need to see it Every time I unlock my phone guys
I've got urgent Facebook marketplace doom-scrolling to do and yes before you ask
I did turn on reduce motion and I even tried prefer crossfade another gorgeous animation by the way
But none of that had the desired effect of getting the fluff out of my way so I can just use my phone
I'm just picking what I get to look at while I wait for the UI to catch up with me while we're at it
By the way, why is this setting and so many other useful ones hidden away in accessibility options?
I can't change that unnecessary slowdowns are going to bother me like this thing that Apple does where it animates all
The steps to get to a setting that I have searched for or clicked a shortcut to
The rationale that I've heard for this behavior is that it's trying to teach me where I should have gone
But I got there with a shortcut. Is that not an okay way to do it?
Who cares if I know all the breadcrumbs? Adding insult to injury depending on how I try to go back
I get to click through all of those screens that it zipped through on the way back to the thing
I actually cared about which brings me to a pretty big subject
Going back on iOS is objectively bad and
Okay, alright, something can't be objectively bad But what it can be is objectively inconsistent
Which from a user interface and user experience standpoint is well objectively bad
I can't believe that Apple still hasn't mandated an official Apple way to go back
They seem to be big fans of the swipe in from the left
But they only use it just enough to trick you into thinking that it should work all the time and then BAM
An app hits you with clicking on the top left like my old iPhone 4 or
Canceling in the top right like this and even the occasional swipe in another direction now app makers
Absolutely share some of the blame for this but guys we are 17 years into this experiment
So I think it might be time for Apple to just take the darn reins or
Maybe in other cases loosen them overall. I found carplay to be pretty okay
My car doesn't have a physical button for previous track
So if I wanted to have media controls and my map on screen at the same time
I had to use split screen which I don't prefer I like a nice big map
But that's probably more of a me problem And you can't blame the handset makers for all the dumb things that the car manufacturers are gonna do so let's not worry about that
Let's worry about the buggy-ness that I experienced every once in a while the volume would crank itself
And I ran into this issue twice. It's probably worth noting
I saw this with some random Bluetooth earbuds too though, so maybe it's not carplay related
Actually now that I think about it, there were more problems with audio
Notification volume would occasionally go super loud. There's all the cabling
which is apparently an iOS 18 bug and
Compared to Android Adjusting the volume level of anything you aren't actively using is super non-obvious
Like Andy, how do I change the volume of my like system tap sounds when I'm listening to media for example?
Nobody like how do I change the volume of that?
If you've never touched Android, this is gonna blow your freaking mind no matter what I'm doing if I touch the volume button
I can adjust my ringtone my notifications my media and my system sounds the fact that that doesn't exist
iOS users should be riding in the streets
I know this next one is gonna get lost in translation as Android and iPhone users are coming from completely different experiences here
But oh my goodness the iPhone keyboard is missing so many things that I completely take for granted as basic functions of an Android keyboard
For example while the iOS keyboard does let you hold down a key in order to modify your letters with whatever
Diacritical mark you need or even sneak in the occasional thorn yog or asset
Android lets you use the same technique to access numbers and common punctuation from the first layer of the keyboard
You can even dial in the delay so that you barely have to slow down to insert one of those secondary characters
And this is an absolute godsend for those of us who write our texts like our AP English 12 teacher might grade us on them
Now I tried switching over to my usual alt keyboard Swift key on iOS
But somehow all these years later it is still trash on the iPhone
Core features are missing like the aforementioned long-press tuning and even the ability to resize the keyboard and in general it just
Beals off with worse predictions and a more tedious process for going back and making corrections
Like maybe I want to type rhis it auto corrects to this
I go back want no, no, I meant rhis and I should be able to fix the accidental auto correct and my capitalization at the same
Time on the iPhone Not so much
Now if I had to guess I'd say that this limitation probably comes down to Apple giving keyboard apps far less access to user inputs
Which is probably a good thing, but it makes for an overall
significantly worse typing experience on my keyboard of choice
Which also just would occasionally disappear leaving me with the default
Weird now one thing that's better about iOS is the super responsive long-press keyboard shortcut to reposition the cursor
I like it, but I also don't struggle with fine motor control
And it's usually faster for me to just tap the point in the middle of a word anyway, so
Not being able to do that on the iPhone Actually kind of drove me crazy now. I've got a lot more things to get through so let's rapid-fire a few
I can't get to the home screen without physically swiping the screen after authenticating and then it's animation time again
Just got him on my way and let me use my phone. I can't change the size of the app grid
I'm stuck at four wide on the normal iPhone 16. That would be fine
But if you're giving me all these extra pixels on the plus I'd really like to use them
It's like they intend for their larger devices to just be for the elderly or people who have trouble with the smaller screens
And here's a weird one. I ran into this problem while rearranging apps
I think maybe the ones I place manually might behave differently than the ones that are automatically placed
Sometimes it just gets confused. I don't know in fairness
Apple's new to this whole putting things where you want them thing and here's a funny one when I was migrating in the first place
Apple's move to iOS app failed twice before actually working and
Even then it basically just copied SMS photos and WhatsApp
I had to manually sign into everything including my Google account, which left me wondering what exactly was the point of this
I'm not sure, but I'd like to talk about that Google account for a minute in the past
iOS had an account section in the settings app where you could centrally manage and sync your different accounts for email calendar
Contacts all that kind of stuff That seems to be gone now, but I work for a G-suite organization
So I'm gonna need my Google calendar to tell me what it is that I'm doing today
This is where past experience with iOS got in my way
The account setting was gone and I couldn't find an obvious way to add an account in the calendar app
So I started looking for workarounds and ultimately discovered that if you open the iOS mail app
It immediately prompts you to add a Google mail account
Which will also sync my Google calendar in the native calendar app now
I ended up getting attacked pretty hard for calling this out on the land show, but I'm holding firm that this is a prime example of
spectacularly unintuitive design The justification I was given for this is that app settings including accounts should be managed from within the settings app and
the apps menu and then the individual app and that is Apple's
Aspiration, but as we've seen with back functionality Apple's aspirations don't always match reality
So let's play a quick game called find the account management menu
in the app Yeah, this one's in the app
Another one that's in the app They're pretty much all within the apps themselves and while the first-party mail app
Does have account management buried four layers deep within the menu the Apple preferred way for some reason
It still prompts you to sign in that first time you open it meaning that if you're trying to sign into an account from within an app
That is a perfectly reasonable expectation
Even if you had no prior experience with other platforms the good news for Apple though is that the solution to this is simple when I click
calendars add calendar add calendar and then I have this account thing here
That should just be a drop-down that should prompt me to add another account instead of it just doing nothing
You're welcome now to be clear. This isn't a deal breaker by any means
It just means the next time that an Apple fan tells me it's just so gosh darn intuitive
I don't know if I'm gonna be able to help it. I might actually laugh in their face
Maybe a little doom-scrolling will calm me down and oh boy
If you want the long version of this rant you can check out the WAN Show from a couple of weeks ago
But the TLDR is when I flick my finger in my newsfeed or on reddit
I expect the screen to move at the same speed that my finger moved and then decelerate from there
I do not expect it to move at whatever
relaxed chill pace that some Apple focus group has determined is the most
Aesthetically pleasing in order to hide their 60 Hertz refresh rate
Another thing I touched on during that WAN Show segment is buttons particularly this new camera button here
Out of the box. I kept accidentally hitting it only to have a user point out to me that I could configure it to require a double-click
Huh, well, that's super cool. I thought I wonder what other apps I could make it look no
camera and camera adjacent only Speaking of the camera boy was that ever an upgrade though as someone coming from a six-year-old device
I don't know what to say other than I should hope so and
Besides my main focus isn't on the particular iPhone
But rather my overall experience with iOS 18 an experience
I could probably go on for hours about but Tim Apple a more relevant meme than ever these days
Doesn't have hours to watch this video. So how about I boil it down to just one thing that I need fixed?
Let's talk about rotation locks most iPhone users I run into don't even realize this
But for a good ten years now, you've been able to lock an iPad in landscape orientation
But not an iPhone now we use iPhones as our teleprompters here at Linus Media Group and because we can't lock them in
Landscape mode we have to train all of our camera operators in a maneuver that we call the dip to reorient the screen
It's something we do so often that we don't even really think about it anymore. So
Why bring it up? Because when I was going through the list of apps in my account since the migration wizard didn't actually copy my apps over like
It said it would and I had to do so manually. I came across jetpack joyride and I was like, oh my goodness
I haven't played that since the last time I daily died iOS. It's been years and I immediately fired it up
I played it for a second Then I put my phone down to make a note about something and when I picked it back up the game was upside down
I showed this on the WAN Show as well. I gave it the old wiggle. I tried to reorient it
But no it would only work in one of the two possible landscape orientations. What the heck Apple?
these kinds of Arbitrary distinctions like which way is the approved landscape orientation?
Assuming I'm allowed to be in landscape at all do nothing for your user. They do nothing for your profits
So why? To be clear
iOS has come a long way over the last few years and it can do so much more than it used to do
Find my is a godsend Spotlight still rules air drop is legitimately super cool as long as everyone around me has an iPhone
But Apple still has some work to do to be willing to accept that after the iPhone leaves the factory
It's my iPhone and if I want to hold it like this instead of like this or I want to use it as a teleprompter
That's my business if I want to move the dynamic island to the other side
That should be my decision too and until Apple's willing to truly embrace that rather than begrudgingly give us little breadcrumbs
I just don't think this is for me
Which doesn't mean that it's bad if you love your iPhone and it works for you. You are not wrong
Just don't get upset if you run around declaring that your preferred ecosystem is the best and not everyone agrees with you
Especially if you've never spent significant time on the other side of the divide
Maybe we need some kind of cultural exchange program, you know like six months of seeing how the other half lives
That could be a really interesting experiment now if you'll excuse me. I need to go hide from some fanboys
Oh, but not before I tell you about our sponsor for some more raw initial thoughts
Why don't you check out the WAN segment from a few weeks ago? Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Make sure you subscribe. See you later