[HN Gopher] Apple changed how reading books works in iOS 16 ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-17 23:00 UTC)