my 83 year old mother was able to use (almost) all the features of iOS when she first got an iPhone, in 2012. It genuinely changed her life and meant she could participate in a world I dont think she ever expected to be comfortable in. She tried and failed to use a PC for years. Local library lessons, family time (and patience) etc, but she always needed support. the iPhone as different, it was simple to use with familiar user interactions with every app. Roll forwards to 2025, gradually bit by unnecessary bit bells, whistles and complexity has bled in from every angle. Last week I did a FaceTime call with her to help her log in to an app on her phone. She can do it fine on her iPad that hasn't been updated. this was like going back to her PC days - too complicated and giving her features she didn't ask for, or need.
what was it Steve Jobs said?
"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer — so what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. Sort of the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."
I've worked at companies that don't really have to sell on features. The product people still come up with new ideas constantly and don't pay attention to the quality. Heck, engineers will gin up new systems to build if they're bored.
For marketing reasons (and App Store predatory capture) they decided to make the iPhone more like a computer. Yet I do not know a single "normal" iOS user who actually make use of all the stuff. They all ask me to do stuff on a "real" computer". Meanwhile I know how to use the "advanced" iOS bits but it is so convoluted and slow that I would rather not.
Special mention to "files management" with the most retarded counter-intuitive behavior one could think of. Even when you know how it will behave, it still feels like a mystery how you are going to find back your files. Especially since the "Files" app always open up to some random unexpected place.
They tried to "copy" Android more powerful features but failed because they want too much control and are insane with "security". Yet iOS lack the simplicity it once had. And iPadOS is still a joke as a real computer OS alternative.
what was it Steve Jobs said?
"If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer — so what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. Sort of the product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product."