You can draw or write on a physical card, or add a scratch etc.

The Apple thing where you can switch cards is a weird interface too, even after you have done it a few times.

> The same is true in a physical card wallet.

Not at all.

In my physical wallet, those identical looking cards have different names on them, ie. <myfirstname mylastname> and <mylastname - partnerslastname> for joint accounts. I can also mark them up with a marker, or request a different picture from some banks.

In iOS I need to remember that the one ending with 0044 is mine, and 0073 is for our joint account. I have no way to add an alias or distinguish them otherwise. This is ridiculous.

First; have you heard of a sharpie?

Second; have you tried this with actual 80yr olds with early onset? Because I have. It doesn’t work, not even close. The steps require to get to that point are impossible for an 80yr old with early onset to even get close to. From trust, to setup, to even the stupid double-click with arthritic fingers, it’s fraught with roadblocks. And forget swiping.

This is a massive problem. The lack of care for options to equip seniors with usable iPhones is a massive problem right now. It is causing suffering both in the seniors and in the people who love them.

But it’s not true of a physical wallet. I have 8 locations in my bi-fold wallet I can place any given card, orientation-wise.

Lower left, lower right, upper left, upper right, inside left, inside right, dollar bills left, dollar bills right.

> The biggest UX issue Apple has for that persona isn't the wallet, it's the lack of physical home button.

I'm in my 40s and don't have much trouble with reaching Home by swiping up from the bottom. But anecdotally, when I observe a person who is 65+ operate their iPhones, 9 times out of 10 they experience problems swiping up from bottom to reach Home. The swipe up does nothing, presumably because they aren't starting the swipe from low enough on the screen.

> The same is true in a physical card wallet.

You can markup a card in a physical wallet. And then originally identical cards become visually distinguishable.

> the lack of physical home button

You can use the Accessibility settings to add a virtual home button that's always displayed in the same place on-screen. That seems to work pretty well for the older folks I know.

> “The biggest UX issue Apple has for that persona isn't the wallet, it's the lack of physical home button”

So true! Also my 84 year old mother can never figure the difference between a web site and an app. If I could add a home button and solve the second issue her life would be much better.

Apple and Tesla are two companies that somehow have a widespread reputation for great UX that I think are absolutely atrocious in that area. It's not just 70 yearolds, an iphone is unusuable for someone of any age if they've never used one before and don't have someone to tell them how to do core actions like back or home.

Tesla loves to hide critical functionality in non-standard places, often buried in touch screen menus. They can move items at any time. That's insane to me, but I guess I'm the outlier.

Android's move to gestures is lame copycat behavior. I've actually seen people online defending it on the grounds that using gestures feels cooler. Maybe that explains it, many people will take UI gimmicks over solid usability.

I put a small piece of tape over my gym card since wife has identical one. Freedom of customization

What does an 80 year old (or anyone really) need with more than one or two cards on a daily basis where this would be an issue? Not being flippant; I legit want to know what leads to this. I have multiple cards but there's only one I use 99% of the time, and it's pink so it stands out.

And lack of a "back" button. Although they have sort of improved that with the little teeny tiny back arrow that sometimes appears in the upper left of the screen and is hard to click

>The same is true in a physical card wallet.

If only a digital UI didn't have the same skeuomorpic limitations a physical card has ...oh wait!

(And it's not true that the same issue is true in a physical card wallet. In a physical card, either you get a different design from the bank, or you can trivially write on it with a marker or add a sticker to differentiate it).

>An 80 year old with early onset challenges can work this wallet, pick a card, and then hold the phone to the reader at a store.

A, yes, the standard target group for iOS and the Wallet app in particular.

I swear, the arguments people make...

So? Computers are the dream machine, we should strive to do better than physical reality, not mimic it.

> The same is true in a physical card wallet.

That’s why Apple has to copy the problem for the wallet?

Except that personalized cards have been a thing since I've had a card in 2014...

If you have multiple cards with the same bank you'll need to remember the last 4 digits. It's total bs

This is silly. "It matches a 70 year old's muscle memory" should not be the sole test of good design; if it were, then we would be plugging mouses and keyboards into our phones.

That's ridiculous. The card number has nothing to do with the account number.

[dead]

your current wallet lets you add labels or stickers to your cards.

classic Apple situation - look, this is super clean, intuitive software! but if you want a reasonable level of flexibility that you would expect elsewhere, you are SOL.

You say good. I'd call it minimal. Minimal doesn't mean good.

For example, I have bold text, larger text. On my mac I have all these contrast increasing settings enabled, simply because it's *not* good "design"

It's good that it's minimal, but this minimalism is also why many things don't work (timemachine, icloud files/photos -> everything needs to be automatic, causing recurring downloads follewed cache eviction of those files). Etc etc etc

Apple is capable of beautiful and minimalistic designs, but their usability has been terrible since basically the iPod.

Minimal is often an enemy of usable.

How so?

Which something? The identical-ness of your particular collection of cards, in the wallet?

Apple has my location at every moment of my life, from birth to natural death, and they can't switch the default card based on the store I'm in?

Will wonders never cease.

Because the cards aren't different cards.

In my case, I have a personal card and a shared card from the same bank. The card type is the same, one just happens to have my spouse as a co-owner.

Some banks do allow you to pick a card look/image. Most don't.

But whatever the case, Apple really should allow tagging cards in the Wallet with a small icon/emoji/something. It doesn't need to be fancy - just enough to visually distinguish two otherwise visually similar cards.