[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:22:32 -0400, Nick Sabalausky  
<SeeWebsiteToContactMe at semitwist.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:24:07 -0400
> "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> That works too, but doesn't warrant rants about how you haven't
>> learned how to use the fucking thing :)
>>
>
> It's *volume* controls, there doesn't need to be *anything* to learn.

OK, so this is what you'd rather have:

1. Want to listen to music in the library on my headphones.  But I have  
the silent switch on to prevent calls, and since there is only one volume,  
I have to turn it off, and turn up the volume.  Then a phone call arrives,  
and I can't make that silent because it's all the same volume, bothers  
everyone else in the library.

2. Want my ringer as high as possible so I can hear it when a call  
arrives.  But I start playing a game, and it BLASTS the initial music have  
to quicky turn down the volume.

No, I think the current design, while not perfect, is *WAY* better than a  
single volume.  I would rather actually have *more* granularity in  
volume.  Doing it your way means everyone, not just you, needs to fiddle  
with the volume knob for every single thing they want to do.  That may  
make you happy, but it would piss off the rest of the users :)

>>
>> 1. ringer volume affects all sounds except for music/video/games
>> 2. Silent switch will ringer volume to 0 for all sounds except for
>> find-my-iphone and alarm clock
>> 3. If playing a game/video/music, the volume buttons affect that
>> volume, otherwise, they affect ringer volume.
>>
>> Wow, you are right, three whole rules.
>
> And each one with exceptions, the rules as a whole aren't particularly
> intuitive.

They aren't?  They make complete sense to me.  You even admit that it  
makes sense to have find my iphone play its alerts as loud as possible.  I  
contend that if you use alarm clock what it is for, (i.e. waking you up)  
there is no problem there either.  Those are the only exceptions.

Besides, you don't have to "memorize" these rules, most of the time, it is  
what a normal person would expect.

> And then there's the question of what rules you forgot. I can think of
> one right now:
>
> 4. If you're in the camera app then the volume button takes a picture
> instead of adjusting volume.

I admit, I completely forgot about this one.  Simply because I rarely use  
it :)  It was a gimmicky feature, and doesn't hurt anything, but I find it  
unusable, simply because my natural inclination, being a right-handed  
person, is to rotate the phone left to go into landscape mode, If I want  
to use the button, my sequence is to rotate left, then realize the  
button's on the other side, flip 180 degrees, then realize my finger is in  
front of the lens, etc.  I think this is essentially an orthogonal problem  
because there is no volume control in camera, and that "feature" doesn't  
interfere with any other use of the phone.  When I read about it though, I  
thought it was a good idea.

Interestingly enough, Apple doesn't even *let* you use the volume control  
for anything but volume in your own apps.  Doing it is clunky in any case,  
you have to take over the volume, disable anything that is playing, then  
make sure the volume is not at min/max.  When you detect the "volume" goes  
up or down, take action, then reset the volume.  Very lame.

>> That's way more than 1.  I stand corrected :)
>>
>
> Now compare that to a normal device:
>
> 1. The volume control adjusts the volume.
>
> Gee, how horrible to have one trivially intuitive rule and no
> exceptions.

Right, and now I'm stuck in "Nick mode", where I'm constantly worrying  
about and changing the volume to deal with the current situation.  No  
thanks.

> Bottom line, they took something trivial, complicated it, and people
> hail them as genius visionaries.

s/complicated/improved/

This isn't really genius, nor is it unprecedented (iPhone is not the first  
to control ringer and game/music volume separately).  It's just common  
sense.

>> > You might like Win7. It's very Mac-like out-of-the-box which is
>> > exactly why I hate it ;)
>>
>> No, it's nowhere near the same level.  I have Win 7, had it from the
>> day of its release, and while it's WAY better than XP,
>
> Heh, yea I had a feeling. Like I said, Win7 is very Mac-like as far as
> windows goes. I find it interesting that while I absolutely can't stand
> Win7 (at least without *heavy* non-standard configuring and some
> hacks), Mac people OTOH tend to see it as a big improvement over XP.
> It's Microsoft OSX.

I wasn't a mac user until november of last year.  And even then I didn't  
start using it in earnest until February of this year, when my iOS side  
business picked up.  I still used my Linux laptop for almost everything  
else, and my Win7 machine at home.  I barely used the Mac, and that was  
just to run xcode.

About 4 months ago, I had to start developing for an arm-based  
single-board-computer.  The manufacturer provided a fully-configured  
VMWare Linux image.  Only option for the MAC was to try/buy VMWare Fusion  
(VMWare does not make a free VMWare player for Mac, and it was required  
that this run on the Mac).

So I bought VMWare Fusion.  Once I realized, I could run all my other  
Linux development for my day-job under a VMWare image, and I could run an  
old copy of XP Pro that I had purchased a long time ago, I could simply  
use my Mac for all business-related tasks.

I decided to try switching, took about a week to transfer all my stuff  
over.  Loving it ever since.

So no, I'm not a MAC person, I'm a Unix/Linux person.  But Mac seems to  
have done Unix better than Linux :)  And with VMWare Fusion, I can run MS  
office (no not MAC office, which is crap AIUI) when I need it.


> Well, we can make any OS look good by picking one nice feature.
>
> And personally, I actually like that shutdown serves as a "close all".
> There's a number of programs that do have settings for roughly "when
> starting, resume wherever I left off last time". I always end up
> turning that off because it just means I usually have to close whatever
> it auto-opened anyway. When I close/exit/etc something, it's generally
> because I'm done with that task. So auto-resumes just get in
> my way. OS is the same thing: If it auto-resumed everything, then I
> would just have to go closing most of it myself. Makes more work for
> me in it's quest to be "helpful".

It was an example.  But it was one that I noticed right away coming from  
Ubuntu with Unity.  Unity tries to be very MAC-like, but is fighting and  
strong-arming applications into compliance.  It doesn't always work.

For example, Netbeans still has a menu bar, even though Unity tries to put  
the menu bar at the top of the screen.  So it ends up with 2 menu bars,  
the one at the top being empty.  And Unity's feature of "searching all  
menu options" (also a mac ripoff) doesn't work in those apps.

If I had to summarize why I like MacOS better than windows -- the GUI is a  
complete GUI, and as good as Windows (unlike Linux), but it does Unix  
*SOOO* much better than cygwin.  I feel like I get the best of all worlds.

And don't get me started on the trackpad.  I *hated* using my Dell  
touchpad on my Linux laptop every time after I had been using my Mac  
trackpad.

The one thing I would rip out of OSX and throw against the wall is the  
mail app.  Its interface and experience is awesome.  But it frequently  
corrupts messages and doesn't properly save outgoing mail.  Not good for a  
mail application.

>> Interesting that's what you see as the defining point of that
>> story :)
>
> It's a story that always did stike me as odd: Here we have a grown
> man (one who was *well known* to be unstable, asinine, drug-soaked and
> frankly, borderline megalomaniacal) that's going around throwing
> tantrums, and largely because he doesn't understand "cover" or "case"
> or what obviously happens to plastic when you bash keys against it, and
> it gets interpreted by millions as "Wow, look how great he was!" I don't
> get it.

Having amassed more money than US treasury, based on his ideas and hard  
work, seems to suggest he was pretty successful :)  Not that I completely  
equate money with greatness, but if success of a product is measured by  
how well it sells, then he was very great.  Present company  
notwithstanding, most people like apple products and think they are  
good/best of breed.

I think in order to succeed in producing a good product, you have to kind  
of have a somewhat high opinion of yourself, and having the balls to take  
risks on designs that may not be popular but, when engineered correct,  
produce a superior product.  Imagine how D would be if Walter allowed  
every idea that came across the newsgroup to be implemented.  I hated the  
idea of unshared-by-default, but now I think it's probably the most  
important improvement to the language so far.  Not by itself, but the  
things it enables.

>
>> Especially considering your calm, controlled statements
>> about Apple products...
>>
>
> Heh, well, like I said my hatred for Apple and Apple products comes
> from having used them and been around them. I actually *liked* my OSX
> machine when I first got it. And then it, and the whole Jobs culture,
> and the way Apple runs their business, successfully turned me against
> Apple. And now I have this iPhone which, while having even been *useful*
> when out-of-town when I first got it - due to it essentially being a
> wirelessly internet-connected PDA - everything else about it just makes
> me want to smash it into a concrete wall nearly every time I use it.
> And I've never had that temptation from *any* other device before (hard
> as that may be to believe ;) )
>

I think if it didn't have a big apple symbol on the back, you would be  
less inclined to try and destroy it :)  Just my opinion.

I have brands that I hate too due to prior experience too.  I'm sure you  
would be able to find anyone who *hates* a certain brand of car because  
they bought a lemon from them at one time, even though statistics show  
there are *always* some bad apples (no pun intended) in otherwise good  
products.  These can be badly designed single products (*cough* Vista) or  
simply one instance of a product with defective parts.  I think humans  
have a tendency to put too much emphasis on anecdotal experience rather  
than scientifically detected trends.  And I think the sometimes  
prohibitive costs of some of theses gadgets plays a large part -- You  
aren't likely to go out and buy another $200 iPhone, for instance, if your  
previous two broke within a year.  Even though most people don't have that  
experience.

-Steve