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Comment by edent | Hacker News Reader

I get that. But how do you first learn about the standard way?

Admittedly, it has been several years since I used an iPhone - but I don't remember it ever telling me that slide-to-delete was a thing. I literally had to ask on Twitter to find out - https://twitter.com/search?q=delete%20podcast%20from%3Aedent...

I agree that there are some things which work best hidden - pull to refresh, for example - but it needs to be consistent and explained.

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I think Apple’s argument for why slide to delete is not explained would be that it’s a shortcut — the explicit way to delete is to tap “edit” or “select” in a view, which exposes an explicit delete button on each row, or the ability to select rows and delete multiple. This is all explicit through buttons in the UI, and all of Apple’s apps tend to have this behavior (I can’t speak as to whatever UI you were trying to use 12 years ago). I would call that the “standard” way, whereas slide to delete is the fast way.

The old Macintosh computers came with a floppy that walked the user through using the computer. How to click. How to drag. Very basic stuff, but it was all new to the world at the time. Now, you are assumed to know all that.

The iPhone/touch paradigm never had such an easy on ramp for consumers. Or if it did, they dismantled it before I got on that ride.

Personally, I think this reflects pure hubris on the part of Apple, and it’s one reason that I have not owned a mac for 20 years.

True, ui action discoverability is harder these days, but somehow I learned to swipe to delete, but I don’t know how. Maybe I was told, or saw a video? My point is, that the interactions are common enough that I think most people learn them from other people, whereas in the early days of personal computers guides were important because users had no previous knowledge, nor anyone else, to turn to.

One method I’ve seen of introducing the behavior is to have the list element slightly “bounce” sideways on load, giving a peak of the red/green color underneath.

Hey, that's a great idea!

It's a bit of a pain to implement, because I'd need to make sure that it only did it for displayed rows, and only once, but that's pretty cool.

Thanks!

Another option is to go to Settings->General->Storage->Podcasts and delete from there.

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