[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:02:57 -0400
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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:
> 
[...single volume...]
> 
> No, I think the current design, while not perfect, is *WAY* better
> than a single volume.
> 

No, that's not it at all. The problem is the *lack* of any master volume
control whatsoever, not the existence of finer-grained volume controls.

My walkman example was perhaps misleading.

> >>
> >> 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.

No, only the "find iPhone" one. The iPhone has no fucking idea what
environment I'm in. I *definitely* don't want it screeching "PAY
ATTENTION TO MEEEE!!!!" indiscriminately whenever it damn well feels
like it.


> 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.
> 

Keep in mind, when I started talking "alarms" I didn't just mean "alarm
clock". Pardon if I'm not completely up on official iTerminology.


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

What a normal person expects is for turning down a device's volume
to...turn down the device's volume. Or for "silent" to actually *be*
silent.

What a normal person does not expect is for the device to take the
user's commands as mere suggestions.


> > 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.
> 

I can never remember which way I'm supposed to tilt the stupid thing for
landscape photos. It *shouldn't* matter, but then when you go grab your
photos (and videos!!) off the device you find the stupid thing decided
to ignore the accelerometer and save them upside-down.

As for buttons and such, the Zire 71 had a great design for the camera:
Slide the face upward and the normally-protected lens is revealed,
along with a "shutter" button (no need for modal "volume button"
contrivances), *and* it goes directly into the camera program. So
basically a real camera instead of a mere a camera "app",
always trivially accessible, and always the same easy way. And yea,
it's a moving part, but it *still* far outlasted the life of the
(unfortunately non-replaceable) battery. *That* was brilliant design. I
wish apple had copied it.

It didn't have an accelerometer (this *was* a decade ago, after all) so
it couldn't determine the current "tilt" and auto-rotate photos
accordingly (like the iPhone *should* have been able to do), but it had
an easy built-in "rotate photo" feature that even iPhone's built-ins
won't do (at least not in any realistically discoverable way).


> >> 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.
> 

No, as I said above.

> > 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.
> 

Ok again, clarification:

Independently controllable ringer/game/music volumes: Good

Complete *lack* of any way to control *overall* volume: Bad

A lot of the videogames I've played have independent adjustable
SFX/music/voice volumes. I've even happily made use of that. And I'm
damn glad that the TV *still* has a properly working volume control
despite that because I make even more use of that.

> So no, I'm not a MAC person, I'm a Unix/Linux person.  But Mac seems
> to have done Unix better than Linux :)

That was never my impression with macs. For example, I'll take even a
mediocre linux GUI over Finder/etc any day. I don't understand why
mac...*users*...inevitably have such trouble with the idea that someone
could actually dislike it when it's (apperently) so objectively
wonderful.


> 
> 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,

That's why switched to Debian for my linux stuff instead of upgrading
to the newer Ubuntus, and also why I'm not moving to Gnome 3. Too much
Apple-envy for my tastes.


> 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),

See I disagree with that. I like XP's GUI (with luna disabled), but I
hate having to use OSX GUIs and OSX-alike GUIs (such as Win7). Linux
GUIs are definitely clunky, but when they're not aping Mac or iOS then
I can at least get by with them.

> but it does Unix *SOOO* much better than cygwin.

Cygwin's not even worth considering. As far as I'm concerned it may as
well not exist. When I do linux it's either a VM or a physical linux
box (connected to my primary system with Synergy+, a software KVM that
absolutely rules).

> I feel like I get the best of all worlds.

Yea, but to get that, you have to use OSX as your *primary*
environment, and stick with expensive iHardware. Might work for you,
but those are all deal-breakers for me.


> 
> 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.
> 

I always considered trackpads completely useless until I got my current
Asus laptop. It's surprisingly usable in a pinch, and in fact I
honestly couldn't believe how much they've improved (or that they
even managed to improve at all). And yet I still go for my trackball
instead whenever possible because it's sooo much better.


> 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.
> 

I didn't have corruption issues with it, but I did find it to be rather
gimped and straight-jacketed much like the rest of the system.


> >> 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.
> 

He was a salesman. Their job is to sell people on crap.
Successfully unloading broken freezers on eskimos and dog shit
to...anyone...isn't really deserving of praise or appreciation or
anything but condemnation.

> 
> 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'm sure most people would assume that, particularly since I dislike
something that "everyone knows is undeniably great". I know there's no
way I can ever convince anyone of this, but I don't do things backwards
like that: I hate apple *because* I don't like their products or their
business. The other way around makes absolutely no sense.

I'd love for apple to start putting out good stuff because...I *like*
good stuff. Hell, I love the Apple II. And I loved Sherlock/Watson
(part of what got me to try OSX). If I want to see apple destroyed it's
because they keep putting out poorly-designed, overpriced, Orwellian
bullshit and instead of dismissing it like in the 90's people are
actually praising the shit now that it has a glossy finish and the
name "Jobs". Oh, and because it sold well :/...which I always found to
be a bizarre reason to appreciate anything.

*I* think that people wouldn't be so quick to praise Apple's last
decade of products if they didn't have "Steve Jobs has returned!",
"Designed by Jobs!" attached. (And the iPhone 5 obviously still has a
lot of Jobs legacy, esp since it's basically the 4S with higher specs.)


> 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.
> 

So therefore if someone argues against something popular, then it must
be due to such a fallacy as that, because what's popular clearly must be
good, right? Because those people who do like it must be liking it for
purely objective reasons, right?

You're arguing that most people are non-objective. If that's so, then
the objective viewpoint would be an unpopular one. Kinda like "Apple
products suck". Or is it that the "humans are often non-objective" only
applies to negative opinions? People are always being objective when
they say something positive?