I wish Apple would be consistent with their reasoning abilities :/ Much of it is great, so it's that much more confusing for people when there are things that make no sense.
The gestures on iPhones come to mind. I'm used to them and find them indispensable now, but what? Swipe down on one side and it brings me some controls, swipe down on the other and I see my lock screen? Where am I? What's happening? No reason or logic.
I switched back to an iPhone SE, and it’s so much better at UX. There’s a single home button that removes you from any app. Swiping down from the top anywhere brings up your notifications. Swiping up from the bottom anywhere brings up controls. Double tapping the home button while locked brings up your credit cards, which are also authorized because the home button has a fingerprint reader. Holding down the power button brings you to the power off screen. This phone has functionally been an upgrade in usability across the board compared to my iPhone mini.
It used to be that swiping down would lock the screen and swiping up would show Control Center. But when iPhones lost the home button, swiping up took up its click behaviours. Swiping down from the left for locking the screen and swiping down from the right to show Control Center is indeed somewhat awkward, but it’s not immediatelly clear to me what alternative they could’ve gone with that would leave you with the same level of quick access as before.
1. It's your notification tray, you know, the thing that's been default behavior of swiping down on smartphones since their inception.
2. It's not one side or the other either. It used to be that anywhere you swiped down opened the notification tray. Now only the right side has a different effect, opening control center. The notification tray still takes over two-thirds of the swipe-down space at the top.
The gestures on iPhones come to mind. I'm used to them and find them indispensable now, but what? Swipe down on one side and it brings me some controls, swipe down on the other and I see my lock screen? Where am I? What's happening? No reason or logic.