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Comment by haseman | Hacker News Reader

Could easily be solved by a setting that turns off accl switching and allows users to make a two finger twisting gesture on the screen to rotate it.

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The iPhone's accessibility makes use of a lot of the two finger gestures already. Not this one, but most others. http://www.apple.com/iphone/how-to/index.html#accessibility.....

This particular gesture doesn't really make sense for Apple to use (for rotation, or anything else); its not very intuitive. It doesn't map to any other gesture that users have done on the computer before. Apple would have to teach users how to use this gesture. Its one thing for a game to have ann instruction screen, but quite another for the iPhone to do so.

Preview and a few other OS X apps do currently support a rotational gesture on trackpads. It's not very widespread or widely-known, but it is there already.

I wouldn't suggest it as a default setting. If power users want an alternative to holding the device up and shaking it until it switches, this could be it. You make good points, it's not intuitive, but it is a solution that wouldn't require more cluttering UI

Where else is there an "Only for power users" feature in iPhone OS? There's no precedent for this sort of behavior in the iPhone's UI anywhere. No other built-in app has that kind of setting. The closest that I can think of is the developers debug menu in Safari. And thats not "hidden", its just tucked away because its only meant for developing and does get in the way otherwise.

A lot of the iPhone settings could be considered for "power users". There's a setting to tell the phone what to do when the home button is pressed; there's one to turn on Caps Lock, Shake to Shuffle, change the Photos' slideshow transition... they aren't unreconicilably technical, but they're subtle tweaks to functionality that power users would enjoy most.

In my informal poll of iPhone users, those I would consider non-technical also were frustrated with auto-rotation. I don't think this is something for power users only.

I'm not saying that the problem is only a power users problem. Just that the proposed solution is. A simple toggle switch somewhere in Settings.app would work just fine. Or some other solution. Just not this particular solution, a multifinger rotating gesture to rotate the device.

However, if it's an option deep in Settings, it's likely that many people who are infuriated with auto-rotation won't find it. By making the UI offer more control and responsiveness, it will help even those users who don't want to go digging into Settings.

I'm not sure (see article) -- it would mean every app developer would have to test with it on and off to make sure that gesture didn't get in the way of their UI. It's also hard for users annoyed with the feature to discover.

I suspect that particular gesture is a little awkward. Try it! Getting enough motion to reliably detect it as something different to a scroll or pinch is almost painful.

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