[HN Gopher] Apple changed how reading books works in iOS 16
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Apple changed how reading books works in iOS 16
Author : ingve
Score : 257 points
Date : 2022-12-17 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| reading books on something without an e-ink display is goofy in
| the first place.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| No I read on my iPhone which I keep in my pocket - I have that
| with me and don't need to carry a larger thing in a bag. But I
| don't use Apple's Books it just feels wrong - I used Stanza and
| when Amazon broke it I switched to Marvin
|
| I do use ereaders and if I travel for some time I'll use it..
| drclau wrote:
| I remember the time when it was "reading books on something
| without paper and ink is goofy in the first place". :)
|
| I gave up on e-ink readers a few years ago and donated a couple
| of them. I am reading books in eletronic format on iPhones.
| It's just more practical, I don't need to carry a second and
| usually larger device with me, and ... I don't need an external
| light when it's too dark to read. Plus, the newer iPhones with
| OLED displays are pretty good for reading.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Totally agree. The ability to read on my phone has been such
| a boon. My close up vision has degraded to the point where I
| need readers for a paperback, but readers make me ill. The
| OLED screen on the phone means I can read in the dark without
| lighting up the room, which is handy since I often read in
| the middle of the night if insomnia wakes me up.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's a bold statement, but I agree. Reading is an evening
| activity for me, that means the phone is put away, computer is
| in the office, TV is off. There will be no reading on any
| display that is backlit, that would defeat the purpose for me.
|
| I understand that it's useful to sometimes have access to books
| on a computer, phone or table, but that's for professional use
| in my mind, and not a replacement for a physical book in the
| same sense a device with e-ink displays are.
|
| Even if you read on the iPad, I don't fully understand why
| you'd want the page animations anyway. Still the complain in
| the article is weird, just accept it and move on, if you're
| waiting for Apple to switch back I feel your going to wait a
| very long time.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Disagree _specifically for the case of pre-16 Apple Books_.
|
| The ability to fiddle with page corners, half-flip pages then
| flip them back, that kind of thing, made it much more like
| reading a real book, and it was my favorite way to read ebooks,
| followed at a distance by e-ink readers, and then, very
| distantly, by every other non-e-ink way to read ebooks that
| wasn't Apple Books.
|
| Not joking that the page flip animation was _the_ thing that
| made the Apple version far and away my favorite way to read
| ebooks. The new animation doesn 't just lose that quality, it's
| also notably bad even among the all-some-degree-of-bad
| animations of reader apps in general (not counting pre-16 Apple
| Books).
| robin_reala wrote:
| The biggest problem with Apple Books (from a producer point of
| view) is that they removed the ability to connect dev tools to
| it. Up until the Catalyst rebuild you could open Safari dev
| tools, connect it to the Books instance, and use it to inspect
| CSS, highlight particular elements, and basically do anything you
| can in a browser.
|
| This might not sound like much, but Books is unfortunately laden
| with weird bugs that don't exist in normal Safari. They managed
| to fix the one I reported about srcset not working for images (it
| just didn't display anything) but flex / grid display with 100vh
| is completely broken, and there's a bunch more minor things like
| broken page-break functionality. And the debugging cycle
| currently is to make changes, repackage the book, reload the book
| in Books, and hope for the best.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| I'm normally sentimental about things, but I couldn't care less
| about this one. They've updated other features in the app (after
| about ten years...) and this kitschy little bastard had to go. It
| was cool when I first saw it on my iPhone 4...
| donkeyboy wrote:
| This was my exact reaction when I upgraded to ios16. I spent 20
| mins looking how to get the page turn animation back. Sad
| 4qz wrote:
| This is a good change but it doesn't go far enough. Infinite
| scroll is obviously the best way to read long form content.
| Unfortunately, most book sales are by people who like the idea of
| reading books more than actually reading
| rootusrootus wrote:
| "Obviously the best way" is probably too strong, though for me
| I do much prefer scroll mode for reading novels. And I like
| reading on my phone, because then I can read a few pages
| anywhere I want.
| zerocrates wrote:
| You think? I tend to find I get "lost" more easily in a big
| scrolling document, particularly if I'm coming back to it
| several times before finishing, as would usually be the case
| with a book.
|
| In the case of e-ink e-readers you also face the issue that
| their screen updating tech is really better suited to full page
| replacements then line- or pixel-level scroll, though of course
| that doesn't apply to Apple's devices.
| pimlottc wrote:
| That's... bizarre. They didn't make the animation non-
| skeuomorphic, they just switched to a different and very weird
| skeuomorphism that has nothing to do with how actual books work.
| It's worse than if they had just made it completely flat.
| tempusr wrote:
| I'm gonna shill for apple and say that this is probably an
| oversight. Something that has been around for years and
| everyone expects to work as such that fell out of QA testing.
| Hopefully they bring it back after realizing their slipup.
|
| That being said, I've used Kindle for years because it's online
| etc. They have had this same feature for years on their mobile
| versions so I don't get how this was a killer feature of Books.
| eCa wrote:
| > fell out of QA testing
|
| That's not really a change you miss if you do any QA of that
| app at all. And if it _was_ missed that's even worse for
| Apple than if it was a conscious choice.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I'm trying to imagine QA testing that doesn't ever actually
| turn the page
| brundolf wrote:
| It's very clearly a choice and not a bug
|
| But what I could imagine is that it fell out of _product_
| oversight and an engineer just came along and said "well
| that's a really complicated piece of code, I don't want to
| maintain that, I'll replace it with something simple", and
| nobody pushed back because this isn't a high-priority feature
| any more
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| My shill for Apple here is that the simple sliding animation
| is much better. I never liked that book animation. It felt
| heavy and distracting and out of place like most
| skeuomorphism.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It wasn't just skeuomorphic, it had a functional component.
| It helped you keep your place and maintain context as you
| turned the page, just as you'd do with your finger while
| reading a real book.
|
| No one has ever designed a physical book that works
| anything like the new page-turning approach, and you have
| to believe there's a reason for that.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The Apple Books version wasn't _just_ a static animation--you
| could partially flip the page, flip it back, make just the
| corner flip up a little then push it back in place, et c.,
| all with smooth and responsive enough operation that it was
| close-enough to feeling like a real, physical thing. The
| "back" of the page, as it flipped, showed the text from the
| front as if it were showing through thin paper, it wasn't
| just blank. Lots of apps have page flip animations but most
| of them are both non-interactive and bad. Apple's was
| interactive and good. Dunno if Kindle's is as good--I used it
| long ago and my recollection was a slow, ugly, non-
| interactive page flip animation, but it may have changed
| since then.
|
| [EDIT] Two key real-book-reading behaviors this enabled, that
| a non-interactive page flip animation (which I personally
| find a ton worse than _no_ animation) does not:
|
| 1) You could "play" with the corner and edge of the page
| while reading. Great for fidgeters, and analogous to what
| some of us do when reading real books.
|
| 2) You could _start_ to flip the page as you were nearing the
| end of the current page.
| dymk wrote:
| I disagree that something like this could have been an
| oversight. A designer spent time coming up with the new
| animation, it was approved by somebody in a project
| management role, and engineers had to spend time implementing
| the new feature.
|
| Apple has an intense culture of dogfooding, so it would
| surprise me very much if someone in a leadership position
| didn't experience the new page-flipping animation, much less
| explicitly approve its design.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I wish they would tone down and or remove all skeuomorphic and
| animations across all of macOS iOS and iPadOS. They are
| distracting to me and I usually turn them off in the
| accessibility settings.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| You can turn most of them off. That said most of us would
| prefer more skeuomorphic UIs
| gnicholas wrote:
| I think it makes sense to have the page turn process take a
| little time and have a little bit of visual transition. Our
| visual processing system isn't great at knowing whether a new
| screen of text has been loaded, especially, if we're blinking
| when it happens. Having a brief animation helps us know that
| yes, you did just tap the edge of the screen, and accordingly
| the page has been turned.
| dymk wrote:
| Sounds like Apple gave you a way to solve your problem.
| Personally, I like the animations, but I'm glad users have
| the option to turn them on and off as they wish.
| risyachka wrote:
| It often seems like the only reason many companies constantly
| update design is because they have design departments that need
| to do something.
| bambax wrote:
| Absolutely. And they could at least leave the previous
| animation as an option. Why punish loyal users? Maybe it's
| also just to show who's boss.
| wolpoli wrote:
| It is trendy right now to add superfluous animation to delight
| the user. In this case, they decided to slide in the next page
| at a different rate than the previous page. It is worse than
| before because we can't really start reading until we fully
| turn the page.
| ksec wrote:
| > They didn't make the animation non-skeuomorphic,.......that
| has nothing to do with how actual books work.
|
| Then it _is_ non-skeuomorphic.
|
| And they have been removing it bit by bit since they kicked out
| Scott Forstall.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| One wonders if Forstall would be the Jobs type figure to
| return to on the back of a white horse aquihire should Apple
| ever fall into dire straits again.
|
| I don't think he's actually working anywhere that could be
| bought, though.
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's not skeuomorphic to books but it does replicate (sort
| of) what it might look like if a book were printed out a
| stack on index cards. The shading and the motion is
| definitely meant to make it feel like a physical object
| moving.
| masklinn wrote:
| > it does replicate (sort of) what it might look like if a
| book were printed out a stack on index cards.
|
| Except with a stack of cards (or pages) the bottom page
| would not be moving. The visual is more reminiscent of some
| sort of assembly / processing line.
| itake wrote:
| Isn't that exactly how most modern websites are designed?
| Like look at Google's Material design. UIs are basically
| cards sliding around the screen.
| Bud wrote:
| Worst of all is how the following page inexplicably has a
| rather dark gray filter applied to it until it's fully visible.
| Just awful.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Ah, thanks, I knew something was frustrating me as it
| appears.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| That's so sad. I used to play with that page turning animation
| back on my iPhone 4 just because it was so cool.
|
| I hate the era we're in now of changing software to be worse just
| so they can say they changed it.
|
| It's gotten to the point where any announcement of a software
| update gets an initial reflexive negative reaction from me, as
| these days they're more often steps backwards than improvements.
| kmfrk wrote:
| I know no one at Apple uses iTunes on Windows, but surely these
| people read _books_? And yet the iBooks experience has been a
| disaster for years with little to no improvement.
| Twisell wrote:
| I never got accustomed to reading book on my iPhone It never felt
| quite right despite (or maybe because of) the skeuomorphism
| attempt.
|
| Am I the only one thinking the new animation actually looks
| better? The page seem to quickly fade away with less distractions
| and might enable to focus more on the text flow.
|
| If anything knowing the interface evolved is actually encouraging
| me to give it another go.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The old animation was a must-have for those of us who fiddle
| with edges of pages when reading physical books. Only method of
| ebook reading I've seen that satisfied that particular
| I-suspect-uncommon-but-not-rare book-reading behavior. Not the
| same as running a finger over the corner of the whole block of
| pages, but close enough.
| Twisell wrote:
| However during the transition the text is sometimes
| obfuscated by a huge white space that doesn't exist on a real
| book that is indeed recto/verso printed.
|
| It's fun for fidgeting but I personally find it way more
| visually distracting than the new behavior.
| draw_down wrote:
| For better or worse, whimsy and playfulness are majorly out in
| terms of design these days. I thought the page curl was a nicely
| done bit of frippery in an app that is really a pain to use. for
| me I'm afraid are many worse things about the app than removing
| that animation. Search is bad, no way to open more than one book
| at once, the list goes on.
| hilyen wrote:
| Rather them work on natural reading of the books with Text To
| Speech. People with disabilities such as Dyslexia, ADHD, partial
| or total Blindness have to hobble on with the terrible TTS
| available. You have to select the text to get it to read, which
| means you will have to do that each page. A simple play & stop
| button for "read aloud" would solve this. They love to think
| about use cases to make things easier for their users, but have
| they hired disabled people to give comment? This has been a
| glaring issue to me, and I've told Apple, but nothing ever comes
| of it. Cool animation though .
| evan_ wrote:
| I wonder if that's a compromise with the publishing house, who
| would prefer people buy audiobooks if they want to listen to
| the book being read.
| teeray wrote:
| Kindle added this animation style to their app, and I love using
| the app more because of it. It was one thing I lived about
| Apple's eBooks that I didn't get on Kindle (but the catalogue and
| other features made up for it).
| gcanyon wrote:
| Overall there are many more practical settings that are available
| in the new UI. I don't remember everything that _wasn 't_ in the
| previous version, but I don't remember things like line spacing,
| character spacing, and word spacing. Of course, new features
| don't _have_ to come at the expense of existing features,
| especially not when we 're comparing page turn animations to text
| rendering, but as people say, this could be part of a transition
| to swift, so it's expected that there would be trade-offs in re-
| implementing features. I'm thinking more people are positively
| impacted by things like text rendering than page turning.
| jasamer wrote:
| The page turn animation was truly excellent. I have seen a few
| other apps/sites try to copy it, some of them did it pretty well.
| But one detail I've never seen anyone else do: the text of the
| curled page is "distorted" in 3D, as one would expect of a real
| page. The closer the letters are to the part of the page that's
| orthogonal to the screen, the more the are squished.
|
| It's an effect that's quite complicated to do. You need to put
| the page on a 3D cone and render that. I have quite a bit of
| experience with UI kit animations, but I don't know how I would
| do that one.
| maram wrote:
| >>The page turn animation was truly excellent.
|
| iPhone iOS design used to be excellent. Since Apple switched to
| flat design, it was very clear that they were heading toward
| this path. I wrote about it in 2016: " I predict that the
| technological disparity will increase dramatically. Most of the
| efforts that Steve Jobs put to "push the human race forward,"
| by making tech products easy-to-use to everyone, will be
| wasted."
|
| https://medium.com/@maram5/could-the-iphone-sales-decline-be...
| lostmsu wrote:
| At some point page turning as in physical book becomes an
| anachronism like the floppy disk icon on save buttons. Do you
| expect your browser to flip pages upon navigation?
| spikeagally wrote:
| At some point. That point is a long long way away.
| s3p wrote:
| Difference of opinion. Others may believe that point is
| today.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Are you sure? There's an entire generation of people born
| after 2000 who probably read more electronic books than
| physical ones.
| spikeagally wrote:
| I don't have any data to back it up but I doubt that.
| Schools are still mostly using paper text books. And I
| reckon school libraries are still the main source of
| books for kids (who typically don't have money to buy
| books). Family members who want to buy you a book as a
| gift, will do that on paper as gifting ebooks is trickier
| and less personal.
|
| To be honest, I would bet that the if younger
| demographics are reading less paper books it's because
| they're reading less generally rather than switching to
| digital.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I have one app that does it, it doesn't do the corner curl, but
| it does do the side curl with the reverse text showing on the
| other side. It uses OpenGL to do it and that is how you can do
| it.
| AB1908 wrote:
| Moon Reader seems to imitate it well enough.
| minusf wrote:
| maybe i'm just unsophisticated but what exactly is the point of
| it? all this work for basically nothing. and we wonder why our
| apps are bloated and need ridiculously overpowered hw.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| It brings joy to many users. Not all, granted.
|
| The HW is already needed for games.
| Grustaf wrote:
| It's probably done on the GPU, requiring almost no power at
| all. As far as 3d graphics goes, it's very very simple.
| Groxx wrote:
| Yeah. Essentially no power and essentially no space was
| spent on that. It's barely more computationally complicated
| than sliding the page.
|
| There are lots of things to dislike about feature and size
| bloat, but this is among the worst possible examples.
| ben_w wrote:
| There is something about reading on a screen which just isn't
| quite as "good" as reading on paper. I don't know what it is.
|
| Is it the reflectance/emission? Perhaps, Kindles are better
| than iPads; is it the resolution? Perhaps, retina iPads are
| better than pre/non-retina tablets; is it the tactile
| sensation? Perhaps, I find matt paper better than the gloss
| of many magazines, and the new Paperwhite is half way between
| on that score.
|
| Perhaps I'm just remembering good times from my childhood,
| and skeuomorphisms are a way to catch that.
|
| But no, a 3D animation like this is not the reason why apps
| are bloated. Other similar animations were smooth on a 450
| MHz G3.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| It's because paper doesn't EMIT light; it only reflects it.
| This simple fact was ignored for the last 30+ years of OS
| vendors pushing inverse color schemes on us. I see it as a
| vestige of the "desktop publishing" fad of the late
| '80s/early '90s, which sought to make the computer screen
| an analogy for a piece of paper. Or Apple's attempt to look
| "different."
|
| Now all of a sudden people finally realized that reading
| dark text off the surface of a glaring light bulb all day
| is a shitty way to work, and vendors have backpedaled
| clumsily to offering a hard-coded "dark mode." But we
| already had an even-better solution: Windows let users set
| up their own system-wide color scheme, from Windows 3.1
| through XP or even Vista. Any properly-constructed
| application would inherit the system colors for various on-
| screen elements and guarantee legibility. If you wanted to
| change the look of all your applications, you had one
| central place to do it. And if, as a developer, you wanted
| to guarantee a color scheme, all you had to do was make
| sure you overrode both foreground and background colors.
|
| But Microsoft actually REMOVED that capability just in time
| for it to become desirable to more people than ever.
| Brilliant.
| plonk wrote:
| Screens aren't precise and aren't natural. If you have good
| enough vision or a bad enough screen, you see that it's a
| bunch of squares that try to imitate shapes, and even have
| spaces between them.
|
| Also, the lighting looks fake. Even on good modern screens,
| there's a billboard feeling I can't ignore. I think that's
| your reflectance/emission point; it's not light reflecting
| on an object like literally everything you look at, it's an
| object blasting light at you trying to make it look real.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > There is something about reading on a screen which just
| isn't quite as "good" as reading on paper. I don't know
| what it is.
|
| For me it's the exact opposite. I read a _lot_ , mostly on
| my Kindle Oasis (139 titles this year so far according to
| Kindle Insights) and on the very rare occasion I read a
| paper book I'm reminded how annoying reading paper books
| is.
|
| There are several issues with reading paper books:
|
| First, the physical format, long books are thick and
| unwieldy. There is no comfortable way to read in bed. You
| either read laying on your back, holding the book above
| your face, which is uncomfortable to hold and tires your
| arms. When laying on your side the fact that books fold in
| the middle is super annoying, if you open the book at a
| 90deg angle you can only really read one page and you have
| to turn yourself after every page. Holding it open fully
| also isn't comfortable.
|
| Next, there is the light issue. Paper only reflects light,
| meaning you always need an external light source. It's much
| easier for me to immerse myself in a story reading in a
| dark room. Another issue with external light is that you
| have to orient yourself relative to the light source.
| Again, when reading in bed this is a problem if your light
| source is on your nightstand. If you turn to a different
| side you are lying in your own shadow.
|
| Last, there is the problem of logistics. As I said I go
| through a lot of books. If I had to buy these physically I
| would have run out of storage space years ago. Books would
| be piling up all over my apartment. Getting my hands on
| them in the first place would also be a problem. I can
| browse books online and find something I'm in the mood for
| right now and be reading it in 30 seconds instead if
| waiting days for delivery. I can binge through a series in
| days instead of weeks.
|
| No, I really don't want to go back to dead tree books and I
| can't believe people put up with the inconvenience when
| there is no longer a need to.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The books underlying required even more work and they're just
| a bunch of bytes that accomplish nothing. Some of them are
| even about something made up entirely and serve no purpose.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Joy and delight are ultimately liabilities, and humans will
| be better off if we remove the need for them.
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| I assume you are being sarcastic
| Gigachad wrote:
| HN would have us eat soy paste from a tube because normal
| food is bloated.
| yborg wrote:
| Not sure if ironic, but this is literally true. Remember
| Soylent, the food of the SV ubermensch? Yeah.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Features will be removed until morale improves.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| >all this work for basically nothing. and we wonder why our
| apps are bloated and need ridiculously overpowered hw.
|
| Attention to detail. Craftsmanship.
|
| Caring...
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Exactly this. The new animation looks cheap and carelessly
| made. Attention to detail is what separates excellent from
| mediocre products.
| meindnoch wrote:
| >It's an effect that's quite complicated to do. You need to put
| the page on a 3D cone and render that. I have quite a bit of
| experience with UI kit animations, but I don't know how I would
| do that one.
|
| It's not possible with public UIKit / CoreAnimation APIs. Those
| only support homogenous linear transformations (i.e. 4x4
| matrix). You may try using the private CAMeshTransform API to
| achieve such an effect: https://ciechanow.ski/mesh-transforms/
| Grustaf wrote:
| You can actually do it in UIKit by chopping it up into strips
| and using affine transforms, I've seen it done. Not that I
| think this is UIKit, it's probably a very simple OpenGL shader.
| zffr wrote:
| I doubt it was OpenGL/Metal directly. It is more likely to be
| something like CAMeshTransform (https://ciechanow.ski/mesh-
| transforms/)
| asplake wrote:
| Tip: if you suffer from vertigo, disable the animation
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| But did it alternate between the left and right pages? The
| swipe from left page to right page shouldn't have been a page-
| turn; it should be a horizontal scroll across the book's
| binding. The swipe after THAT should be a page-turn.
| ilyt wrote:
| Seems like designers at Apple need to find excuse for their
| employment again and started fucking with perfectly functional
| things...
| meindnoch wrote:
| I still remember when the Music app had a landscape mode with
| Cover Flow... :'(
| armatav wrote:
| Terrible choice by Apple - o m g; you're not kidding on the weird
| asymptote towards ugly-low-effort-minimal.
| nbzso wrote:
| I am amazed at the progressive downfall of Apple over UX and UI
| in their products. Recently, I moved to downgrade my Mac Mini
| 2018 to Monterey over the horrible performance hit and
| overheating that I've got with Ventura. I don't understand how is
| this possible. Don't let me start about red colored "text" over
| dark background button. Grrrr....
|
| Someone in Apple HQ must find the old HIG and make it mandatory.
| muhehe wrote:
| > But even if I were to buy a Kobo or Boox or something, that
| wouldn't help me with the dozens of books I've already purchased
| on Apple's platform
|
| THIS is the real problem. Books (or music, movie, whatever) tied
| to one specific platform, without any chance to migrate somewhere
| else - somewhere where is more comfortable/convenient for you.
| ArjenM wrote:
| > "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a
| pricing issue. It's a service issue,"
|
| Ownership of data should be included in service, but rarely is.
| maronato wrote:
| You can export a purchased book from Books on your Mac by
| dragging it out of the app
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7967098
| muhehe wrote:
| Can you confirm it works? Is from 2017 and afaik content
| bought through apple store has DRM.
| comex wrote:
| I just tried dragging a purchased book to Finder, and it
| only gives me a .webloc pointing to the book's store URL.
| On the other hand, if I manually locate the book in ~/Libra
| ry/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBook
| s/Books, it appears to just be an (unzipped) ePub without
| any encryption.
| Kye wrote:
| Doesn't work if you don't have a Mac.
| mwint wrote:
| Go to an Apple Store and do it, or buy an old MacBook Air /
| Mac mini for ~nothing off eBay.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _[Edited due to misunderstanding. Apologies.]_
|
| Still, signing into public devices with your private
| credentials and data is a bad idea. What if they kick you
| out of the store or take away the device your were toying
| with before you manage to wipe/reset it?
| akerl_ wrote:
| The person you're replying to is suggesting "go to the
| apple store and use one of their demo computers to export
| the book", not "go to the apple store and buy a Mac".
| waboremo wrote:
| Which is also a very bad idea, never sign into demo
| devices anywhere.
| verdenti wrote:
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| private property is deprecated
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Modern day serfs
| bambax wrote:
| Whenever I buy Kindle books I run them through the DeDRM plugin
| in Calibre. Most come out DRM free. Those that don't get
| returned immediately.
|
| Being tied to a specific platform is unacceptable.
| voisin wrote:
| Getting rid of the ability to export highlights has been insanely
| frustrating and has meant I can only use this app for reading
| fiction that I don't generally highlight.
| mercacona wrote:
| I replaced Books with Yomu to keep my annotations and
| highlights.
| quitit wrote:
| With Apple: complain loudly and make a case, there are countless
| examples of that working, including on massive initiatives.
| Despite their shortcomings they do indeed read everything sent to
| /feedback
| dmitriid wrote:
| Why do you need loud complaints and writing feedback when this
| doesn't even pass _common sense_? See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34030839
| comex wrote:
| Huh. I always _hated_ that page turning animation, because it
| obscured the content and made it difficult to quickly swipe back
| and forth.
|
| It was also slow, interrupting my reading flow. When I'm reading
| something exciting, I always start reading at a fast pace, and
| the interruption in reading while I turn each page feels like a
| video constantly stopping to buffer.
|
| Both of these factors apply to physical books to _some_ extent,
| but much less so - mainly because you can fit much more text on a
| book page than on a phone screen, and also because you can turn a
| physical page quite fast.
|
| Slow page turns are also the reason I don't like ePaper readers.
| In that case it's not an animation slowing things down, but the
| ePaper refresh time.
|
| Anyway, this is why I used to use the iOS Kindle app instead of
| Apple Books (nee iBooks) - because the Kindle app uses a simple
| horizontal sliding animation (similar to Libby in the article)
| that is faster and doesn't obscure content. However, Apple Books
| eventually added a mode that removes pages altogether in favor of
| a continuous vertical scroll, which I now use.
|
| I just briefly tried Apple Books' new page turning animation, and
| I definitely prefer it, though it's still a bit slow and I still
| prefer the vertical scroll. Perhaps the change was made with
| users like me in mind.
|
| Which is not to say I'm happy with the old animation being taken
| away from users who liked it! I appreciate that my sensitivity to
| interruptions is idiosyncratic, and the old animation certainly
| had superior aesthetics. Ideally it would be a setting.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Am I crazy for thinking that the scroll view is significantly
| better than the paginated view, regardless of the animation used?
| odysseus wrote:
| Scroll view is way better, it's how you do most of your other
| reading on the phone.
|
| The old page flip animation was always distracting to me. I
| haven't used the new one.
| verdenti wrote:
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I didn't even realize they had a paginated view, I haven't used
| that (on Apple Books or Kindle either one) in forever. Scroll
| view is much better.
|
| My only complaint with the iOS 16 version of Books is that it's
| way, way too easy to double tap a bookmark into existence. I've
| gotten good at ignoring it. Kinda like it's too easy to create
| a section of highlighted text on the Kindle app. Both of these
| are probably just a case of 'holding it wrong' but whatever.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Depends on the device... phone vs tablet.
| n42 wrote:
| I find I switch depending on the type of book. Technical books
| I prefer scrolling and fiction I prefer page flip
| filoeleven wrote:
| I was surprised to see how many people are using the paged view
| too! Scrolling with dark mode is the only way I read ebooks.
| Works well in any indoor lighting, and it's great for reading
| in bed too.
| amelius wrote:
| > and I may never be happy again
|
| This is what a monoculture gets us. We need more competition, and
| hardware to be open so we can get even more competition (also
| free competition).
| 33955985 wrote:
| I suspect we'll see a return of the page turn animation before
| the next full release. It doesn't make sense for them to leave
| such a basic feature behind, especially since iBooks is a front
| end to a revenue stream.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It doesn't make sense for them to leave such a basic feature
| behind, especially since iBooks is a front end to a revenue
| stream.
|
| The basic features they butchered/implemented for the "front
| end to revenue stream":
|
| - jarring animation that cannot be turned off
|
| - scrolling is now relegated to a weird small control in
| settings that has no relation to the actual book you're reading
|
| - "lock orientation" locks orientation in portrait mode
|
| - accessing table of contents is now three taps
|
| - accessing font settings is now three taps
|
| - table of contents + scrolling + searchig + themes + scroll
| lock + bookmarks ... all of that is accessed through a tiny
| gray icon that is nearly indistinguishable from surrounding
| text. Also, this icon is unique, and has never been used
| anywhere in iOS or MacOS
|
| - closing a book is now a tiny gray x that is almost
| indistinguishable from the text
|
| All this passed design -> design approval -> engineering
| managers -> programmers -> qa -> launch check lists.
|
| By the way, when it launched in iOS 16, the close icon and the
| "kitchen sink" icon would always pe present, they only fixed it
| a month or two later.
|
| Yup. This is the state of a "frontend to the revenue stream".
| Done and approved by people who have never read a single book
| on iOS (and MacOS where it was also butchered), or perhaps have
| never read a single book in their life, period.
|
| Edit: their animation is also "least effort" attempt: they hide
| page numbers when animation, then it takes up to two seconds
| for them to reappear.
| macintux wrote:
| I use Books on my iPad Pro extensively, and I can't believe
| how miserable the experience is with the new release. Such a
| disappointment.
| 33955985 wrote:
| I held off updating to 16.0 because of it, sucks because I
| wanted some other features but I'll wait.
| goosedragons wrote:
| It was kinda fun in 2010 for a few minutes I guess. But it
| certainly isn't something worth chaining your book purchases to
| Apple products for. If you REALLY want this though at least Moon+
| Reader on Android has it, both one mimicking Google's and
| Apple's!
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Holy. The way the title remains "suspended" over the animation is
| horrendous. How does something like this come out of Apple's
| design team?
| Grustaf wrote:
| I like it. Not only do I think it looks pretty nice, it makes
| sense visually since it would be weird to scroll away the book
| title only to scroll it back in for the next page.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It feels like I was looking at a pile of cards, and then
| magical scissors cut a window out of the top one just before it
| moves.
|
| But then the window doesn't move with the card that it was cut
| from, so I realize I was mistaken. There is no window or
| magical scissors. Instead, I have momentarily acquired x-ray
| vision but it only works on part of the card.
| xattt wrote:
| "Customer research shows that digital natives have low
| attention spans, so we introduced a persistent reminder of the
| title of the book they are reading in between page slides."
|
| - Internal Apple design presentation
|
| /s
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I will say, I'll read entire ebooks and by the end still have
| trouble recalling the title and author. Never a problem I've
| had with physical books.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This happens to me, too! If I read a physical book I can
| easily recall the author and the title months and even
| years later. But when I read digital books I often struggle
| to remember a book's name and have to look it up if I want
| to recommend it to someone.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| My guess is it's mostly because the physical book's
| cover's always visible in your environment, even when
| you're not reading, so you see the title and author's
| name a lot more. Some e-readers put the cover on when in
| sleep mode, but that's small, black-n-white, only on one
| side (no spine) so it's easily covered up, et c.
|
| Books also often put some or all of that info at the top
| of every page or every other page, while many reader apps
| hide it most of the time, I suppose to save space for
| body text.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| OneAd free Kindles (can) display the cover of the book
| you're currently reading during idle mode. I love it
| because I used to leave a book on a coffee table or my
| desk as a kind of physical invitation to read (instead of
| watching TV or playing video games or derping on my
| phone).
|
| Such a tiny feature, but since I've turned it on it has
| nudged me to read hours more each week.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| It feels like this was a change made by people who simply
| don't read books.
|
| Apple doesn't even allow this kind of transition in their own
| slide decks, at least they didn't when I worked there.
| samirsd wrote:
| also annoying how when you "sample" a book the title of the
| book is displayed over every single page. certainly makes me
| want to buy it just to get rid of that annoying view... the
| update just sucks.
| dmd wrote:
| FYI, the animation can be turned off with the global "Reduce
| Motion" setting, which really makes iOS much more livable in
| general.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _But it genuinely was a feature that made me choose to buy
| e-books on Apple's platform instead of anyone else's -- and given
| how same-y most book stores and reading apps are in the broad
| strokes, it really is the details that get you locked into an
| ecosystem._
|
| Although I've used Macs for decades and iPhones since day one, I
| typically purchase ebooks on third-party platforms. If I buy an
| Android tablet, a non-Apple computer, or some other device that
| hasn't been invented yet, I don't want to be locked out of my
| prior purchases.
| passwordoops wrote:
| _Old man shakes fist at cloud rant_
|
| Lord I wish we could go back to the days of pay a flat one time
| fee and own the dang software so I don't get "improvements"
| shoved down my throat
|
| _Old man rant over_
| vbezhenar wrote:
| You can stay on iOS 15. Nobody shoves iOS 16 down your throat.
| Apple even backports fixes for most dangerous vulnerabilities
| for quite some time.
|
| What you can't do is downgrade once you've found that you're
| not happy with upgrade. That's the most bizarre Apple thing.
| Unless you can jailbreak. Not sure if it works nowadays, back
| in days I was very happy to downgrade to iOS 6 with jailbreak
| on my iPhone 4S.
| dataflow wrote:
| How long do you think people will be able to stay on old
| versions of software like iOS 15? 5 years? 10 years? 30
| years? Their lifetime?
| fsflover wrote:
| This is exactly why I avoid iPhones and prefer to support
| GNU/Linux on the phones. Such phones will have a lifetime
| support without anti-features.
| egb wrote:
| No, they forced iOS16 by only backporting security fixes for
| devices that can't run iOS16
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/apple-releases-
| ios-1...
| yftsui wrote:
| No, i think they are just messing up the devices force
| using iOS16 they think they can get away with. iPad Pro
| (2021) get iOS 15.7.2 update.
| passwordoops wrote:
| I get what you're saying about staying on an old version,
| but, and we can split hairs here, preventing downgrade is in
| effect a forced upgrade.
|
| Ideally, there should be a system where security patches are
| installed, but anythingv what is optional and reversible
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I wish there is the option of customization. This should be an
| option in the settings of the app nothing more.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Not sure exactly what you mean, but I assume customization in
| this context is the choice to pick what updates are
| implemented in your session/device.
|
| I like it in theory but supporting it can be unwieldy,
| especially for design-led orgs that like to tinker and
| introduce changes a lot (not dissing, just not my
| preference). Like how many versions and combinations do you
| support? I've worked in an app company once, and supporting
| web, iOS, and Android was somewhat annoying enough. Can't
| imagine adding in support for old versions.
|
| OTOH it could force more deliberation and discipline on the
| part of product teams before going all-in on whatever shiny
| new object caught their eye this month
| null_object wrote:
| Aw come on. I get the HN thirst to knock Apple about absolutely
| everything, but the page turn animation is utter bullshit.
|
| When I'm reading a _real_ book I don't see some absurd 'scrolling
| over page turn' - I just turn the page. It's over in the blink of
| an eye, and isn't some "joyful" imaginative experience, at all.
| waboremo wrote:
| Vast majority of animations are done in the blink of an eye.
| When done well, you barely notice them, it just feels good.
| When done poorly (most new page turning animations), it becomes
| noticeably odd and that's one of the worst qualities for an
| animation to have.
| fearthetelomere wrote:
| It may seem trivial, but I assure you it's valid criticism.
| FWIW, I've stopped using the Books app on my Ipad in favor of
| emailing my ebooks to my Kindle account and reading it through
| the Kindle app.
|
| Why couldn't they have an option to keep the old animation? In
| 2022, it should be that simple, but of course...
|
| It's not that I loved the old animation, but rather that I
| can't stand the current one. It's like I'm rotating a deck of
| cards, taking one off the top of the pile and putting it
| underneath. Not very pleasant to me, and also not an animation
| style I've seen used in any other book apps to my knowledge. I
| wonder why that is?
| masklinn wrote:
| Nope, sorry, you're wrong. The page turning animation was
| _delightful_.
|
| If you didn't care for it, you could ignore it, it was _fast_.
| But it showed that the designers of iBooks had cared about it
| being an experience of _reading books_.
|
| The new animation is just... weird. It's not an actual thing
| and makes no sense. It doesn't even look like you're yeeting
| the top page out of the pile since the bottom one moves.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > I get the HN thirst to knock Apple about absolutely
| everything, but the page turn animation is utter bullshit.
|
| No, it's not.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Like you, I could not care less about the page turning
| animation. As long as I see the next page it's fine with me.
|
| The thing that prompts me to comment is that this feels like
| yet another place where the "artfulness" of software is getting
| optimized out of things. Whatever any of us thinks of the
| animation, it was clearly the result of clever work by the team
| putting out the app. The two ways of turning the page give a
| different feel and have a different character.
|
| I think how apps feel - and the engineering behind making them
| feel a certain way - often does not get its due. I think we, as
| an industry, should do more to celebrate people doing things
| "the hard way" because it's nice - and not dismiss it as
| "absurd."
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Ha, selling this animation (implemented using ActionScript) more
| than once covered my rent during uni:)
| xenonite wrote:
| So why is the page flipping animation missing in iOS16?
|
| My blind guess: due to the rewrite of the iBooks app in Swift,
| they did not find a swift way to take over the performance
| critical code in Objective C for the page flipping animation.
| zffr wrote:
| My blind guess: The code for the page flip animation was
| old/complicated, and the engineer who wrote the code left the
| team. No one else felt comfortable maintaining the code, and
| Design saw this as an opportunity to simplify the UI.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| You may already be aware of this, but it is very easy to mix
| Swift and ObjC in the same codebase. There's nothing technical
| stopping them from plucking the ObjC page-turning transition
| into the Swift app.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Swift and Objc? Sure. Swiftui and uikit? Not as easy.
|
| Is it technically possible? Yes. is it easy? Maybe not.
| myko wrote:
| > Swiftui and uikit?
|
| It's pretty easy and basically required to do anything
| useful if you need to support iOS 14, or god forbid, iOS 13
| Grustaf wrote:
| On the contrary it's very, very easy, in both directions.
| They made integration very simple and powerful
| sebastien_b wrote:
| Which seems to imply that Apple, which counts 1000+
| engineers[1], and spent $5B+ on a "spaceship" campus[2], is
| just "lazy".
|
| 1 https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reveals-
| lineup-...
|
| 2 https://www.weetas.com/article/apple-spaceship/
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I don't think it's what happened in this case, but
| extremely lazy crap makes it all the way to public
| releases for _all_ the tech giants. Engineer count and
| cash-on-hand don 't seem to have much to do with it.
| rrdharan wrote:
| I know this is in favor of your point but just wanted to
| note that Apple has way more than 1000 engineers, I think
| closer to 20,000...
| akira2501 wrote:
| If you have a monopoly over a platform, what is there to
| keep you from being lazy? Plenty of rich lazy fools spend
| lavishly, it wouldn't be an original story.
| skybrian wrote:
| The size of a team working on one product at a large
| company has nothing to do with the size of the company or
| its real estate budget.
|
| Sure, they could put more people on any particular
| project, if they thought it was important. But that's not
| necessarily going to make a UI decision any better.
|
| Nobody outside Apple is likely to know how these
| decisions were made. We just see the results.
| csande17 wrote:
| Whether it was the choice of an individual engineer or
| designer, or the choice of a high-level executive to not
| put anyone who cared about design on the Books team, the
| fact remains that Apple chose not to keep this animation.
|
| You can blame companies for making bad decisions -- you
| can even describe them as "lazy" -- even if you don't
| know the exact details of the process the company uses to
| make bad decisions.
| TheTon wrote:
| I really doubt the issue is technical. The page curl rendering
| itself was implemented in Core Animation. The application side
| just set the parameters for the position of the curl. It worked
| well even on the original iPad.
|
| I have no inside knowledge but I would be shocked if it was
| anything other than an aesthetic choice to eliminate the page
| curl.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Maybe that was how Apple operated under Steve Jobs
| (developers would work days and nights to make Steve Jobs
| vision work despite technical challenges) but unfortunately
| it does not seem to be how Apple operates anymore.
|
| The redesign of System Preferences / Settings in macOS 13
| shows that they do not care about any details any more at
| all. It looks like some manager said: "Make it look like on
| iPad", and some overworked dev changed the UI in the way that
| was the least amount of effort, and they shipped it without
| checking if the result is usable at all.
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The redesign is due to rewriting System Preferences in
| SwiftUI.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I wonder if the usability issues are a result of using
| Swift UI (because it's just too hard to make good UIs in
| SwiftUI) or because they just don't care about usability
| any more.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think, as with the questionable quality of the
| Catalyst-created macOS apps that preceded the new System
| Preferences, it was a desire to show off a new framework
| while it is still in a semi-beta unfinished state, let
| alone before the best practices for these new
| technologies have been devised yet.
| 9dev wrote:
| Right?? It's absurd how I sometimes wait three seconds for
| it to switch the pane content after clicking another
| settings category, downright infuriating.
| Grustaf wrote:
| 1. Swift is not slower than objective-c 2. They could keep this
| in Objective-C if they wanted to 3. It's most likely done on
| the GPU anyway
| dymk wrote:
| There is no way that the change was due to performance. The old
| page flipping animation was delightful, but in no way
| computationally significant on iPhones even 5 years ago.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| It was 'computationally significant' on Am486DX4/100 with
| that DHTML (Java applet actually).
|
| Every browser nowadays can imitate page flip with CSS only.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yeah, it may well be they're using SwiftUI, which doesn't give
| them that control at all.
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| Not really you can port or bridge that code over.
| hitgeek wrote:
| the page turn animation was probably the main reason i bought the
| original ipad. it was just so delightful. like some others, i
| miss the skeuomorphism of the original ios.
| ncann wrote:
| Some comparisons with other apps:
|
| - Google Play Books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOJ15ysPsRo
|
| - eReader Prestigio: https://youtu.be/YdNCElSHJbE?t=79
| the-printer wrote:
| As a vertical scroller I am indifferent to this decision. What
| matters to be is what Yomu and GoodLinks offer: changing the line
| height and exporting highlights.
|
| The default leading in Apple Books is decent, but I switch fonts
| at a whim and many require adjustments. And nothing is more
| irritating than copying an excerpt from a book and having to
| remove the extra text about the title of the book, the book's
| author and the copyright information.
|
| Plus the way Yomu exports highlights is really interesting.
| Archipelagia wrote:
| > E-reader fans might say that I should be doing my reading on a
| dedicated device that's not as subject to ever-changing software
|
| Oh boy, if you think dedicated devices don't have the same
| problem of frustrating updates, then I got some bad news for you.
| I still remember how annoyed I was when Kindle update added
| recommendations (=ads) on my home menu.
| kace91 wrote:
| Does that also show up in the ads free version? I'm looking at
| getting a kindle and that might be a deal breaker to me, I'll
| have to look at alternatives
| mrweasel wrote:
| This might be a result of my Kindle being old, it's the 2012
| model. It doesn't have ads.
|
| I am concerned that it might break, because none of the newer
| Kindle work like the old one. It has button, a non-touch
| display and isn't backlit, all things I consider must have
| feature, or non-features. Personally I don't understand why
| they didn't just stop development at that point and just
| lowered prices as the components became less and less
| expensive.
| 43920 wrote:
| Not defending the first two (physical page turn buttons are
| great!) but on my 2018 paperwhite, the backlight will turn
| off entirely at the lowest brightness setting.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Sounds like the Kindle Keyboard. I bought an extra one just
| because the Kindles all went downhill after that one.
| urtrs wrote:
| Yes. The home menu is filled with "recommendations". Most
| read, trending, new releases...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I just stopped connecting the Kindles and Kobos to WiFi
| fsflover wrote:
| Consider PineTab, which runs free software.
| rchaud wrote:
| TLDR: new iOS Books app removes the "page turn" animation from
| older generations. It is now a simple "slide" transition.
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's not a simple slide transition, it is some sort of odd
| slide-out-and-reveal-slide-in-underneath animation that has no
| analogue to any existing reading experience. A plain sliding
| transition (like reading a physical scroll) would be an
| improvement over what they did.
| vr46 wrote:
| Apple devices are nowhere near as playful and fun as they used to
| be. Source, just had to drag out and tidy my accidental
| collection of Macs and iPhones including my Mac classic and
| Powerbook 180 from the 1990s, a Titanium G4, a Powermac 8100, and
| there's definitely real fun, not just nostalgia, missing from the
| modern era.
| crazygringo wrote:
| True, but honestly I don't really miss it either. Yes,
| interfaces used to be whiz-bang, lickable-glossy, mega-3D,
| skeumorphism etc. But after the initial "wow" wears off, it's
| all just kind of... _busy_ and distracting.
|
| It took me a while to warm up to "flat design", but now I can't
| ever see myself (or the industry) going back. By allowing the
| interface to recede, you allow the content to shine. Generally
| you want to focus on the document, the photo, the text, the
| movie -- not the controls around it.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| That's not how human works. We love non-functional things
| around us. I doubt that you live in a white cube.
|
| Our minds are pretty good at focusing on important stuff. We
| don't need white margins for that. We can focus on important
| stuff even with non-white margins. And those non-white
| margins might actually bring some joy when you can't focus
| anymore, because brain focus is finite.
|
| There's no way for industry not going back. It'll go back. It
| always did. We move in spiral. We just need to completely
| forget how good skeuomorphic interfaces were, so companies
| will sell those again. Probably executed much better.
| surfpel wrote:
| > That's not how human works.
|
| Then I must be GPT model because those non-functional
| things are way too distracting.
|
| Jokes aside, I hated the page animation. It was amusing for
| the first minute but it felt weird to interact with it.
| Sticky is the only word that comes to mind, but not quite
| that. Glad it's gone.
| a4isms wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this, I definitely miss some of
| the playfulness of years long gone.
|
| But a simile comes to mind: The whizz-bang interfaces were
| like illuminated manuscripts. Beautiful. Works of art.
| Literal human artistic treasures.
|
| But when I'm reading an email, I do not need dragons curled
| around drop caps.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I would pay for that feature. With AI scanning the
| paragraph text, we might even be able to get relevant
| illumination images generated on the fly. I want this now,
| whereas five minutes ago I had never thought of it.
| thrill wrote:
| "But when I'm reading an email, I do not need dragons
| curled around drop caps."
|
| I might actually bother to read such an email.
| a4isms wrote:
| Now all we need is a Markdown dialect supporting
| illumination.
| vr46 wrote:
| This supposed argument of letting the "content" shine makes
| no real sense, because crappy design doesn't become magically
| less crappy because it suddenly looks simpler and flatter.
|
| Design is about solving human problems and helping humans
| accomplish things, not about how it looks.
| quitit wrote:
| iOS 6 on iPad is charming to use. I get that people were tired
| of skeuomorphism and the bright candy colours sell, but I think
| the muted colours and texture helped with long term use -
| making it functionally better.
| indiantinker wrote:
| Apple is literally breaking all the things that work in the name
| of innovation and upgrade :(
| jlarocco wrote:
| I'm not an Apple books user, but I find almost every skeuomorphic
| animation annoying and useless. Does the app have a way to turn
| those off?
|
| I strongly prefer the continuous scrolling mode from the Kindle.
|
| On further thought, any kind of UI animation bothers me. I don't
| need the computer to waste my time, I just want it to do what I
| told it.
| samirsd wrote:
| Yea I felt the same way and cried internally for a bit and then
| forgot about it. I appreciate someone writing about it. I really
| hope they bring it back. I don't think the redesign really
| brought about any improvements... just change for the sake of
| change.
| marstall wrote:
| yeah. this was disappointing. I hope to get used to it, but for
| the moment it really detracts from my very enjoyable little
| stolen dad moments here and there reading Ian McKuen on my phone
| at a bar. feels like I'm reading a xeroxed copy of a book.
| mcculley wrote:
| What annoys me is that there is more lag in the app. When opening
| the app just to get in some reading when I have some free time,
| there is a 1-2 second lag just to open a book that I have been
| reading. I am on an iPhone 11 Pro. Opening a book should be
| instantaneous. But it gets slower with each update.
| MutableLambda wrote:
| I agree. One of the reasons I chose iOS over Android around
| 2012 was because it worked really smooth, no stutters,
| everything is responsive. They are gradually removing it since
| iOS 7, the contact list was the first victim (you click on it,
| it displays, half a second after it updates, but you could have
| clicked a contact already and now you're calling the wrong
| person).
| WalterBright wrote:
| One reason I still use my old DOS editor (recompiled for modern
| machines) is it loads instantly. And I mean instantly.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I still laugh when I use my toddlers iPad 1 which is now over a
| decade old.
|
| That iPad has a more responsive keyboard than my iPad Pro.
| aSithLord wrote:
| As good as apple hardware devs are its software devs are the same
| in the other direction.
| viburnum wrote:
| I can't figure out how to get the controls to recede so that the
| app only shows the book text.
| drclau wrote:
| Tap on the screen, somewhere close to the vertical center line
| to avoid triggering a page change.
| BadThink6655321 wrote:
| They also "broke" the ability to set/remove a bookmark by double-
| tapping the page. The more Books degrades to become like Kindle,
| the less incentive I have to buy books from the Apple store.
| xemoka wrote:
| That's weird, I have the exact opposite issue, I'm constantly
| triggering the bookmark via double-tap where in iOS 15 it was
| never an issue.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Agreed, this is my problem too. By the time I'm finished with
| a novel I have hundreds of pointless bookmarks.
| igammarays wrote:
| Huh, good to know I wasn't the only one that really enjoyed that
| animation. It made Apple Books so much more pleasant compare to
| any other ereader.
| theferalrobot wrote:
| Weird, I am on iOS 16 on both my iphone and ipad and i still have
| the swipe animation for books. Apple doesn't really do much A/B
| testing so this really kinda surprises me.
|
| Edit: Think I figured it out - looks like PDFs still have the
| page turn animation on iOS but epubs are using the new animation
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| rickreynoldssf wrote:
| Didn't the person who thought that was a good idea have something
| better to do? Is it time for a good old fashion layoff in Apple's
| design team?
| g42gregory wrote:
| I highly recommend not to tie your personal happiness to a
| particular UI/UX choice, in a single App, from a technology
| provider who does not know you and does not care about you as a
| person, on a device that you probably shouldn't spend much time
| on anyway. Instead, I think it's more productive to diligently
| look for alternatives.
| markeibes wrote:
| How are you supposed to actively tie your happiness to
| something?
| c-fe wrote:
| In general I feel the books app got so much worse with the iOS 16
| update that it is partly responsible for me selling my iPad to
| get a dedicated e-reader
| yftsui wrote:
| honestly, i don't think books app get better since iOS 12, it
| is always getting worse. Either starting in iOS14 or 15, if you
| have multiple devices and all use sort by most recent read, one
| or few device will lost that order once in a while and sort the
| library with a bizarre order and lots of old books with wrong
| reading progress.
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