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The “data” in question doesn’t really prove anything, there are a lot of different ways to interpret it. For example, it could be that iOS users are generally less technically savvy than Android users so need to look up things more often. It could be that iOS users perform the tasks in question more often than Android users. I don’t use iOS so I can’t comment on its intuitiveness, but this is really not the best way to show that one is more intuitive than the other.
Exactly my thought. The first thing I thought of was that there is a stereotype out there that iPhone is easier to use than Android, which apparently requires you to have more technical knowledge. Along with the Apple brand reputation, people who are less technically savvy tend to opt for iPhone more often, in my opinion. This would skew the data against iOS.
I carry an Android as my personal cell phone, and an iPhone for work. I would probably be considered a more technically savvy user, but for my cell phone I generally just want it to work.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m never irritated by my Android, but I’ve been forced to interact with iPhones for almost as long as I’ve used Android, and in my experience, the iPhone is less intuitive.
I find myself giving up trying to figure out how to do something in the iPhone, then googling it, and when I see how to do it, I’m baffled that they would imagine it is is intuitive. For some actions, even knowing how to do it, I have to try a couple times to get it to work.
I feel like the iPhone is only intuitive for iPhone users, if that makes sense.
I think that in terms of user interface, the iPhone tends to lag behind Android in usability. It seems like Apple decided on a philosophy of user interface, declared it the one true path, and they won’t change it just because it doesn’t work well.
Of course, the plural of anecdote is not data, and all of that is just my experience. I’m also an older nerd (53), used to Linux and CLI. I grew up alongside the graphical UIs we see today, but when people are talking about most modern apps and social media, I start yelling at them to get off my lawn. I have, until recently, stuck with stock android, and I absolutely HATE having Samsung’s pointless cruft on my S10.
However, my wife is not a computer nerd, and she uses Android. She got her mother the same phone she has (on my recommendation: now she can support her mom - not my first rodeo). Her mom had embraced it completely, to the point of getting rid of her computer and her home internet and just using the cell phone for everything.
My parents use Android…poorly. I honestly don’t think they’d be any better off with an iPhone. Maybe worse.
I agree that iPhone is intuitive for iPhone users, and by extension mac users as well. It is one of the things that I do not like about Apple products. They have their own way of doing things and you are wrong if you want to do it another way.
As a frequent user of both operating systems and one that has been dailydriving and toying them since the quite early days (iPhone OS 3; Android 2.x), I do agree iOS is getting less intuitive while Android is getting better over their respecctive iterations.
