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Comment by andrelaszlo | Hacker News Reader

I agree. I felt like this article wanted to make a big deal out of something... well, not super significant.

"The options icon is three vertical dots, rather than the three horizontal dots favored by Apple."

You could also argue that for someone using Google products, it makes sense that they look and behave roughly the same no matter which platform you're on. The interface is the brand [0] so why try to make it look like an Apple product when it's not?

Or maybe the article is right, maybe cognitive workload increases when the options icon is suddenly drawn using vertical dots instead of horizontal ones. I could only find three arguments in the text. One: it's what Microsoft did in the 90's. Two: Users deserve consistency. Three: (implicit) I bought an iPhone because I like the design, and now Google is forcing me to use their apps which doesn't look AS NICE! :)

[0]: https://ia.net/know-how/the-interface-of-a-cheeseburger

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> You could also argue that for someone using Google products, it makes sense that they look and behave roughly the same no matter which platform you're on.

That is true if you expect Users to change between devices. But most of the users I observe have only limited amount of devices and typically stay in one camp (i.e. iPhone+iPad) and those care about not having to relearn each UI for each app.

True Google tries to push their design as their identity, but that's Google's interest, not the user's.

I meant using the web app on a computer and the native app on a phone. I usually do both in a single day for docs, gmail, maps, YouTube etc. Maybe my behavior is not typical.

The point being that we already KNOW the design language of Google, so the argument seems to be purely about esthetics. The design is consistent, just between Google products instead of between apps on the platform. I didn't get why Google pushing Apple's design would be more in the user's interest?

Tip for confused iPhone users : tilt your head/phone 90 degrees :) and the mystery button will turn into a menu button!

Is it unexpected or wrong that Google act in its own interest?

> But most of the users I observe have only limited amount of devices and typically stay in one camp (i.e. iPhone+iPad) and those care about not having to relearn each UI for each app.

Actually most people are in the iPhone + Windows PC (+ Chrome browser) camp. You're a blinkered outlier if the people you see around you only use Apple products

>You could also argue that for someone using Google products, it makes sense that they look and behave roughly the same no matter which platform you're on.

The real question is do people's brains actually work that way. Is someone using Google Maps on an iPhone or Google Maps on an iPhone.

It's my experience that people context switch based on platform, not application. When I'm on an iPhone I expect it to work like an iPhone and when I'm on the desktop I expect it work like a desktop -- regardless of the individual applications I'm using.

Honestly, I think you'd find it amazing how unintuitive three dots (vertical or horizontal) ends up being. If you're not a millennial, dots and just dots. I see a lot of confused seniors not knowing where options are on their webmail clients because someone at Yahoo or Outlook or whomever decided three-dots-menu-icons was totally necessary on desktop browsers.

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