The Better Toy

For this week's installment of iFails, let's talk about the Zoom app on iPhone and what it cannot do. 

Zoom became a major market force during the "pandemic" as it offered a reasonable platform for communication via internet when people were sheltering inside. This author prefers Teams due to functionality, but Zoom is certainly a fine platform and has been used many times to communicate with persons of all sorts. 

A network outage beyond this author's control forced attendance on a Zoom meeting with a client. As it was one of the first Zoom meetings since being hired by this employer, the name displayed was this author's first initial and last name. When the attempt was made to change the name displayed (usually using the triple dots on a laptop/desktop or on an Android), it was discovered that there were no triple dots. Nor did the iPhone have any other buttons available to mute, unmute, turn camera on/off, or any of the other rudimentary functions the app has. 

A Google search on this author's android yielded many search results. Some said to pull down from the top to access. That just brought up the control screen (which that action usually does). Some search results said pull up from the bottom. That just brought up the primary screen where the apps are accessed. Sometimes, pulling up from the bottom also had the same effect as pulling left to right, and sometimes, pulling down can also have the same effect. Evidently, the iPhone arbitrarily decides what the next screen will be when you swipe in one of the four major directions. 

Nevertheless, it was discovered that the Zoom app simply didn't have these functionalities. Now, extensive Google searching will say that these functionalities exist on the iPhone Zoom app, but personal experience showed that to be a fabrication. Ironically, these buttons were available on the next call. And they were used. But then they went away for a third meeting. No prompts could pull it up. 

You would think such a popular platform would fix these relatively small UX issues. But, this author has noted that most iPhone users have no complaints because they simply don't know that there is better out there. And, funny enough, they think their platform is somehow better. 

This author observed in 2012, and it still holds true to this day:

"The iPhone is better as a toy - for playing games. The other platforms are better for working."