Hidden Setting Controls Tap-a-Call in Phone App
Put simply, an interface shouldn’t make it too easy to perform a destructive action or create more work for you, and inadvertent calls can easily create more work. You may prefer a different behavior than I do, but I hope we can all agree that it’s good to have a choice of whether a tap on a recent call initiates a callback or opens its associated contact.
But isn’t it weird that the way you toggle the tap-a-call behavior is by switching the Phone app’s view? What if you like Unified view but prefer that tapping a recent call starts a callback rather than opening a contact?
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Here’s the odd part: if you switch the Phone app to Classic view and then return to Settings, the Tap Recents to Call switch disappears, and Hold Assist Detection slides up. […] This is deeply wrong. “User interface elements should not come and go based on settings adjusted elsewhere,” said Paul Kafasis, while holding his nose and fanning the air with his hand, in an exaggerated gesture of disgust aimed at Apple.
Previously:
I’d argue that Apple used to offer options like this all the time. The Music app on the original iPhone (which app was actually named “iPod” for a while) let you customize all the tabs at the bottom. All of Apple’s good Mac apps (the AppKit ones, primarily) still let you customize the entire toolbar. The problem isn’t that Apple now offers two very different interfaces for the Phone app. The problem is that Apple stopped offering users ways to significantly tailor apps to their own needs and tastes — and the proof that they stopped is that so many people now think it’s so strange that they’re offering two options for how the Phone app should look and work.
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No need to dig two or three levels deep into the Settings app. You can just switch right there in the main screen of the Phone app itself.
I tried the new design for a while, and it’s fine, but I decided I prefer the old, ununified view.
Engst really likes this aspect of the Unified view, because the old behavior made it too easy to initiate a call accidentally, just by tapping on a row in the list. I’ve made many of those accidental calls the same way, and so I prefer the new Unified behavior for the same reason. Classic’s tap-almost-anywhere-in-the-row-to-start-a-call behavior is a vestige of some decisions with the original iPhone that haven’t held up over the intervening 20 years. With the original iPhone, Apple was still stuck — correctly, probably! — in the mindset that the iPhone was first and foremost a cellular telephone, and initiating phone calls should be a primary one-tap action. No one thinks of the iPhone as primarily a telephone these days, and it just isn’t iOS-y to have an action initiate just by tapping anywhere in a row in a scrolling list. You don’t tap on an email message to reply to it. You tap a Reply button.
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Engst and I discussed this at length during his appearance on The Talk Show earlier this week. Especially after talking it through with him on the show, I think I understand both what Apple was thinking, and also why their solution feels so wrong.
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There’s a conflict here. You can’t have the two views default to different row-tapping behavior if one single switch applies to both views.
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The confusion would be eliminated if the Classic/Unified toggle were mirrored in Settings. That would make it clear why “Tap Recents to Call” only appears when you’re using Unified — because your choice to use Unified (or Classic) would be right there.
That the phone part of iPhone is so weird and requires esoteric knowledge and a “Classic” switch is bananas.
John called me a few weeks ago and somehow I fumbled the notification, then I tried to call him back and couldn’t work it out, and finally he just called me again.
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Adam's instructions don't allow me to turn off tap-to-call for Classic mode. (Sadly. I tried toggling it on and back off in Unified mode and that didn't help. I tried toggling it on in Unified mode in case having one setting in one mode meant the other mode would use the opposite, but still no joy.)
Given that this setting only applies to Unified mode (unless others are seeing different behavior than I am), it seems appropriate that it's only present in Unified mode, yes? Or is the complaint actually that there's not Unified/Classic toggle in Settings, so changing the mode doesn't give any clue that the options have changed?
@Andrew I think the normal pattern has been that an option that’s not available should be visible but disabled, perhaps with text that explains why it’s disabled.
Exceptions don't strike me as especially unusual or unexpected, not that I can readily call up an example. (The HIG indirectly says that the main menus should disable but not hide items, but I don't see or recall such guidance for settings.)
To be clear, I agree that discoverability is important. But I don't think I agree that hiding a setting is inherently problematic. And in this specific case I very much feel the problem is that the setting — for no apparent reason — doesn't apply to Classic mode.
