Pascal Assaleh

Apple broke the Photos app in iOS 18 because they stopped thinking about it as a Utility and started treating it like an app they are trying to grow casual usage of, which is insane. Apple’s goal should **never** be to increase usage of it like it’s some social product or game. Their goal should be to provide whatever a user is trying to find when they open it. Here are my primary use cases: (1) I need to find an item in my library that was added recently so I can edit it, share it, copy it, etc. (2) I need to find an item that was added to my library long enough ago that just scrolling back and glancing at thumbnails quickly is laborious or won’t lead to success without frustration For #1, the best way to solve that is to show me a chronological list of items as quickly as possible For #2, the best way to solve that is to have a Search feature that can accept arbitrary queries like “pumpkin patch” or “last Thanksgiving” or “baby pics” or “Dad with a beard” I don’t care about moments, slideshows, dynamic collections, memories, or anything else Photos is trying to put in my face. I don’t open Photos to stroll down memory lane, I open it for 1 of the 2 use cases outlined above. So what did Apple do? They jumbled the quick list of recent items with a bunch of dynamic collections and memories into a new main screen, but more egregiously they took Search out of the tab bar (closest to my thumb) and put it at the top right of the screen, which is the 2nd hardest region to reach when holding a phone. Moving Search to an ergonomically inconvenient location would be bad enough, but Apple designers took it a frustrating step further by shrinking the tap target wayyyyyy down from iOS 17. How much smaller is it? 91% smaller by area compared to the iOS 17 tab. 91% fewer individual pixels to try to tap on, now placed in the most inconvenient location they could find.