Comment by eitland

Comment by eitland a day ago

3 replies

My understanding is they are just stubborn. They once did it this way and now it is "the Apple way".

Recent example: Apple used to hide "search in page" in the share menu in mobile safari. Far from obvious, but at some point one discovers it because there is no other place to look for it.

Now they have finally decided to make a standard fly dropping overflow menu and hide the share button there. But interestingly you still need to open the share menu from there to find the search button.

Meanwhile other buttons that weren't as obviously misplaced in "share" like "Add to Bookmarks" are now on the top level together with the share button.

Same goes for the arguments against things like cut and paste in finder: they didn't create it back in the day and now there is a complete mythology about why cut and paste in Finder would actually be stupid and almost evil.

swores a day ago

FYI, an easier way to search in pages in Safari is to just type what you want to search for in the address bar, and then at the bottom of the list of suggestions (you may need to scroll it down) you can tap "On this page".

  • eitland 6 hours ago

    After 7 years I learned. Thank you!

    How did you learn this hack?

    • swores 2 hours ago

      Glad to have helped!

      I just noticed it randomly many years ago, I don't remember the occasion but I guess I was scrolling trying to find a page in history lazily and noticed it at the bottom.

      It's an example that sums up feature discoverability (well, lack of) on iPhones - there are so many things like this, that are really useful to know if you find out about them but the only way to find out is luck or having a friend tell you. Occasionally the official Apple "Tips" app has useful stuff, but not much.

      I actually have a thing in my family Signal chat of every few weeks sharing a new random iPhone tip, as I'm by far the nerdiest in the group. Maybe I should collate them all into a "hard to discover Tips" blog and share on HN...