Help with iPhone.

Hmm, I don't have any contacts without phone numbers. I think most people access the Contacts list through the Phone app, not through the separate Contacts app.

Yeah it doesn't appear they really offer any kind of filtering. You see the whole list and you can search at the top. It updates pretty quickly as you type, showing the subset of contacts with matching strings to whatever you enter in the search field.

You can also tag them as Favorites so that you have a subset of your complete contacts list.

The other thing they're trying to encourage is to use Siri, as in "call xxx" and so forth. That's one of the few things I use Siri for.

 

If you're having problems with any technical gadget of any sort, try and look around, perhaps under furniture and so on, for Orangpelupa's cat that might be hiding there.

 

I don't know if there are limits to Favorites.

As for the importing from Outlook, I don't know, maybe there are third party utilities which could export it in a format that is better.

I know on Macs, they use something called the vCard format for contacts so maybe Outlook has their own and the fields don't map one to one when importing.

Lot of others must have dealt with this problem, since there are a lot of Outlook users out there. So maybe Google something about syncing or importing Outlook contacts into iPhone.

 

This is largely an artifact of Apple and Google moving to these flat HMIs - many fields just look like background. Studies have shown that people waste like 30% more time trying to figure out the "modern" flat HMIs on Android and iOS.

 

Yup the new iOS look after the old boss died is confusing, even for me that's not color blind. Heck, some icons even have Grey icon on top of light Grey background. Jeez. Or light text on light semi transparent background.

At least that was my experience with my friend's iPhone. As I never had any.

 

I got my first iPhone a couple years back. It was an iPhone 6. Since then I switched to a 6S+ which I liked until recently when the update to iOS 11 turned it into a glacial experience. I want to go back to Android but the iPhone ecosystem - particularly the hand-off between computer and phone for imessages, is better than Android. Every time I'd get some sort of computer-SMS sync on android it would break with an update. At least you can tweak Android with more contrast, etc.

 

There's options for that in settings. To do this, just open the settings app and open the accessibility subsection and look around, or perhaps more simply, use search function, like, typing in 'color blind' or somesuch.

I love the simplistic look of flat UIs, but sometimes the reductiveness is a hindrance. Thin typefaces, poor color contrast UI elements and stuff like that don't help much when my eyesight is not as sharp as it used to be. Also, being too simplistic in UI design is also a hindrance, like, you must swipe sideways to show the time when a text message was sent or received. Neat if you know you can do this, but infuriating if you don't, and need to know. There's no on-screen indicator letting you know there's more information hiding offscreen!

Edit: I also think there's increase contrast option in accessibility settings.

 

Also, iOS needs a back button. That's the single-best feature of Android.

 

You can turn one on, again in accessibilities. I forget what it's called. It'll appear in the top-left corner.

 

May be worth getting a free class if you live near an Apple Store.

 

More than 1 button is confusing for the average Apple user. It's literally taken years to gradually work up their users to the concepts of functions beyond a Home button and apps icons. It makes them very popular devices because they're very easy to use.

@Silent_Buddha have you looked at the Outlook app at all? It might provide some better integration for iOS. Apples are very nice if you stay within their ecosystem but they have never really liked integrating well with anything outside it.

 

Hm, not sure you're experiencing what you're experiencing. Skype does not do this for me... It just does skype's own messages, and I don't think it has asked for permissions to my messages. Maybe so long ago I forgot. Go to the settings app, find skype, and remove its permissions to access messages, that should in theory do it.

I'm with ya. I've never liked iOS home screen, and its folder system and way to manage and move apps is just utter and complete shite. It left-aligns everything too, so if something is added or removed to a row other app icons may move, screwing up my muscle memory. It's really badly thought-through. But it works decently for most people it seems, so seemingly little pressure to change anything.

Ya! Winphone OS was great, concept- and design-wise. I rather loved it from what I saw. On touch devices, metro UI seems very well thought-out (never liked it on PCs tho - too big and dumbed-down there, and generally too different in style and appearance to classic windows UI; plus, not suited for KB/M input I felt.)

 

I don't want to hear any complaints about iOS or Android - it was all of you fools who didn't buy enough Pres or Nokia N9s that led to the demise of webOS and Meego, both of which were orders of magnitude superior to iOS and Android. Heck in webOS you could watch your app ACTUALLY RUNNING in card view because, you know, it was like multitasking. Crap hardware and crap corporate support after HP bought it, but I still like firing up my Pre3 for a reminder of what a good OS could look like...

Too bad about Windows Phone, but you might be able to pick up some BBOS 10 devices still.