In the tech industry we love metaphors, citing cultural references that make you sound smart in hipster loving social circles. One particular domain where this is prevalent is in user experience (UX). For example, if I quote user experience is like a joke … lots of people would promptly complete the phrase. Apple is frequently eulogised for this. It’s nice that we get inspired by the A players. However, I regularly see occurences where this notion is taken too far. Here is one, with iBooks. I’ll first add a screenshot then I’ll comment on what I don’t like about it.
I’m focusing on the Swift books from iBooks Store. I had older versions on my computer and didn’t update them for quite some time. I’d been mainly using the iPad as my eBook reader. This week I thought to get Swift 3 versions on my Mac but they were nowhere to be found. I thought to remove them and rebuild my library, only then, as I delete a title I now see the option to GET it back and this time with the latest version. In effect, my copy was overshadowing the latest version in the Store. I find this too subtle.
Not to mention. As I download several titles in quick successions, I am prompted to login multiple times. That just feels wrong, and it is wrong. I can imagine what is going on, but I cannot imagine anyone being happy with this. These authentication challenges are just the opposite of too subtle, they are outright annoying and pointless.
Featured image: stock.adobe.com