As from my perspective as an UX designer the jog dial feature on the new ATV 4K simply does not work as expected.
I'm using the new ATV for 2 days now. Until I've read this post here I really thought that my remote has a hardware failure. When I'm pressing the pause key I've assumed that rotating clockwise with my finger on the outer perimeter starts the jog dial action intuitively. Then I found out that moving on the bottom half of the perimeter the direction is reversed despite rotating clockwise with my finger. Men may think that this is a feature - but that's not the jog dial action Apple has developed. I assume that 8 or 9 from 10 users will not learn how to activate the jog dial feature successfully. Even if I'm trying to activate the jog dial feature by myself, only 1 of 4 attempts will succeed - that's a failure rate of 75%.
So you could say that I'm too stupid to use the new Apple remote (that may be the case!) or that the feature simply is unsuitable for most users.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SCRUBBING (Jog dial) - People are doing it wrong. All you need to do is pause whatever is playing and then gently touch and hold the perimeter of the wheel without moving for about half a second or so, and the scrubbing indicator will appear and you can begin rotating. It took me a minute or so to figure it out but it works consistently if you do it properly. Although I don’t find it any more useful really than scrubbing by sliding left and right. Hope this helps
What a disaster. You have to PAUSE first?!?!
The disaster is not the obligatory press to PAUSE before trying to activate the jog dial feature. The problem is that most users will assume that from this moment on the jog dial feature is active. But thats a false conclusion. In this case they're trying to move their finger clockwise (or counter-clockwise). As soon as the finger is touching the upper half of the perimeter the feature works as expected (apparently!). But as soon as the finger enters the bottom half of the perimeter the direction unexpectedly is turned around. The possibility that an average user understands to activate the real jog dial feature by tapping the perimeter holding it for a second simply is escapist.
BTW: On the iPod the jog dial worked as expected. As soon as you pressed on Pause (the center button) you could INSTANTLY and easily rotate clockwise or counter clockwise without any further action needed.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SCRUBBING (Jog dial) - People are doing it wrong. All you need to do is pause whatever is playing and then gently touch and hold the perimeter of the wheel without moving for about half a second or so, and the scrubbing indicator will appear and you can begin rotating. It took me a minute or so to figure it out but it works consistently if you do it properly. Although I don’t find it any more useful really than scrubbing by sliding left and right. Hope this helps
What a disaster. You have to PAUSE first?!?!
The disaster is not the obligatory press to PAUSE before trying to activate the jog dial feature. The problem is that most users will assume that from this moment on the jog dial feature is active. But thats a false conclusion. In this case they're trying to move their finger clockwise (or counter-clockwise). As soon as the finger is touching the upper half of the perimeter the feature works as expected (apparently!). But as soon as the finger enters the bottom half of the perimeter the direction unexpectedly is turned around. The possibility that an average user understands to activate the real jog dial feature by tapping the perimeter holding it for a second simply is escapist.
BTW: On the iPod the jog dial worked as expected. As soon as you pressed on Pause (the center button) you could INSTANTLY and easily rotate clockwise or counter clockwise without any further action needed.
On the iPod you could instantly and easily use the jog wheel without pausing, it just affected volume instead of scrubbing. Since volume has its own control on the Siri Remote Apple should be able to figure out from context what the user is trying to do.
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