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Comment by polalavik | Hacker News Reader

And now dumber than ever. At least on my iPhone 6s with the latest update. Now you have to go through 2 screens to send a photo to someone in imessage, whereas before the most recent photos were easily accessible. And on facetime you have to pull up a menu [that covers the entire screen] to flip the camera around, and if you accidentally hit it a couple times theres no way to know which way your camera is facing without closing the menu.

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I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was feeling old when I became confused by the facetime pull up menu and accidentally disconnected the call, unable to figure out if the camera was flipped, and how to get back to the call.

They’re preparing for Group FaceTime.

Agreed on this one. Does FaceTime really have that many controls that they need a separate menu rather than just lining the ever larger device screens with them?

Accessing the recent photos is now accessed directly as one of those "iMessage App" icons that appears in the ribbon above the keyboard. However, the UI change is annoying and I constantly open the camera (though you can also get to recent photos by tapping the icon at the upper left of the camera, when inside messages).

This is far and away the most annoying change for change's sake they did. Battery screen is a very close second. If I go to the "Last 10 Days" tab and click a blue bar, I can see my total hour usage. Can I click a green bar and get the exact percentage? Nope.

I'm still on iOS 10 (I know, I know) because I can't handle how they butchered that perfect control center.

Two screens to send a photo sound like a bit of a hassle.

On my Sony phone I can take a photo, press the "share" button to get a context based share menu and my most recent signal/email contacts appear right at the top ready to send without leaving the camera app at all. If I want to send it to someone not on that list I have to get into another screen but not two.

The Facetime menu sounds quite crazy and very "un-Apple".

I see my mother struggle quite a bit with her iphone as well and she wants a dumb phone again but I think that would happen with an android too!

>On my Sony phone I can take a photo, press the "share" button to get a context based share menu and my most recent signal/email contacts appear right at the top ready to send without leaving the camera app at all. If I want to send it to someone not on that list I have to get into another screen but not two.

You can do that on the iPhone too. What the person you're replying to is talking about is if you're already in messages, the interface for pulling a photo in is now an extra step over what it was before.

Ah that makes a bit more sense. It it only for apple apps or does it integrate with 3rd party apps like signal as well?

It's actually not. The gallery has just been moved to a Messages app, right above the keyboard (the Photos icon). It's a bit jarring to get used to, though.

Yeah, this took me a while to get used to because I was used to navigating to photos via the camera icon. Now, they are separate flows, although the camera still lets you get to the photos.

If you let the app bar show above the keyboard, you should be able to select photos by tapping on the appropriate icon in that row, which will show your latest photos. I agree that it is a usability regression but this option was better than always having to tap twice to attach a photo.

ah there it is. This feature resonates well with the article - 'iphones hide their functions'

They did it to load the keyboard faster.

To take a photo and send it, tap the camera icon, to attach an already taken photo, tap the photos icon.

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