[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[Nick Sabalausky]

> > I'm looking at the photos on my iPhone through Explorer right now
> > and aside from the screenshots, the majority of them are either
> > sideways or upside-down.
> 
> Wait, did you *download* them?  Or are you just browsing via the USB  
> cable?  When you download them via the camera import feature of
> Windows (I think XP has that), it corrects the rotation.  I have no
> idea why it waits until then.
> 
> > The bizarre thing is, when I look at them through "Photos" on the
> > device itself, it actually shows them all correctly. Which means
> > that the device *knows* how they're supposed to be but doesn't
> > bother to actually save them correctly.
> 
> I don't think the photos are meant to be browsed that way.  See this  
> thread here https://discussions.apple.com/message/16514340#16514340
> 
> I think explorer must not be using the rotation field (seems odd),
> but the camera import rotates the picture on import.
> 

Ugh, yea, exactly. I can't do a normal file copy? I can't email them?
The way apple handled photo orientation is just terrible. Like the one
guy said in there, at the very *least*, they should have allowed an
option to actually store them rotated since there's obviously so damn
much that doesn't support that metadata flag.


> 
> The "back button" is the rotate.  I agree it's not very well drawn,
> it should be more like a quarter-turn and less snazzy (just a quarter
> circle arrow would be better).
> 

Ugh, geez...

I miss words. I didn't mind non-word toolbar buttons on the desktop,
because then you have the concept of "hover" which will trigger the
words until you learn the icons (and then get annoyed because you
usually can't turn off the tooltips once you no longer need them...).

Plus toolbar buttons on the desktop aren't so damn abstract. Android's
guilty of that too, their wordless icons are just getting more and more
abstract (and thus, obscure) with each new version. Yea, they're
prettier now, but who cares about pretty when it's not usable?


> Besides, I don't think rotating that picture will help much ;)
> 

Very true ;)

> 
> My brother has an android with dedicated buttons, but they are part
> of the touch screen (they aren't displayed, they are inlays, but are
> part of the whole touch sensitive screen).

Yea, that's how mine is, too (Nexus S 4G). I prefer the older ones with
physical buttons, but at least this is better than the latest ones which
merely draw it on the screen (which means they can decide to make
the "standard" buttons disappear on a whim...gee, great...)

I think they're just trying to "be like apple" and minimize the amount
of anything tactile. I can't think of any other sane reason for it.

> >
> > Finder is easily still my
> > least favorite though. I actually *liked* one of the views it had
> > (the multi-column one) until I actually started using it firsthand.
> 
> That is the default, and I absolutely love it.  However, only with
> my trackpad, where I can easily scroll horizontally.

With KatMouse (http://ehiti.de/katmouse/ - I won't use
Windows without it), I can easily scroll horizontally by pointing at the
horiz scroll bar and using the scroll wheel. Not as handy as on a
trackpad, but at least I don't have to be using a trackpad to do it ;)

I do wish tilting scroll wheels were more common though.

> 
> I really would like to have a folder view on the left though, for
> copying files like in Windows.  You know how you can open the
> directory you want to copy from, then go find the folder you want to
> copy to, but not open it, and just drag the files?  That is perfect.
> With Finder, I have to drag the file to "Documents" shortcut, then
> wait until it pulls that up, then go navigating through
> subdirectories while holding down the button.
> 

Yea, for me, that was actually one of my biggest issues with finder. I
rely on the dual-pane too much to give it up. Finder's
tree-view-with-folders-AND-files is sometimes nice (It's common on Linux
file managers, too), but without that extra folder-tree on the left, I
found I just couldn't be using it for everyday work. It's a non-starter
for me.


> > Yea, "Show hidden files" is one of the first things I do when I
> > install a new OS. And "Show my f*** extensions" on windows.
> 
> Hells yeah!  It always strikes me as comical that MS created that  
> "feature" and it created a whole class of openme.txt.exe viruses.
> Yet instead of just removing that misfeature, they built legions of
> extra CPU-consuming mail filtering and anti-virus software to prevent
> people from having any files with multiple extensions, only to piss
> off people who tried to use .tar.gz files :)
> 

Yup :)

They seem to think their "Type" field solves the issue, and maybe that
works fine for average Joes, but I'm not an average Joe and I don't
want to be playing guessing games about "Ok, what's the Microsoft term
for a .XXXXX file?" Or "What the hell file type is a 'Configuration
settings' again?" And then there's different file types that will have
the *same* Microsoft "Type".


> It never seemed to bother *anyone* in DOS or Windows 3.1, I think
> that was a huge design mistake.
> 

To be fair though, back then, there were fewer idiots using computers.

And I'm not entirely joking. I mean think about, say, the 80's. Who
were the most common people using computers? There were plenty of
exceptions, but mostly it was people who knew what they were doing.
That's because the people who *didn't* know what they were doing would
either not buy one, or just let it collect dust. Now everyone uses them,
including the "dummies" who previously avoided them.


> Looked it up, Mint has two shells, MATE and Cinnamon.  I think I
> settled on MATE, the start menu was like the best of both XP and Win7.
> 

Hmm, I've never heard of either of those. Looking it up, apparently
MATE is a fork of the now-abandoned GNOME 2. Yea, that's not too bad. I
used GNOME 2 and found it occasionally trying to be more mac-like than I
would have preferred, but it wasn't bad overall (although the taskbar
seemed a little buggy - it only ever used about 50% of the space
available, weird). And it certainly beat the hell out of KDE 4 (even the
so-called "good" versions of KDE4 stink) and what I've seen of GNOME 3.


> >> But I must say, the expensive hardware (quad-core i7) kicks the
> >> pants off of any other machine I've ever used.
> >>
> >
> > I recently moved from a 32-bit single-core XP to a 64-bit dual-core
> > Win7 (don't remember exactly what CPU, but it's Intel and
> > newer/faster than the Core 2 Duo). Video processing is waaay
> > faster, compiling C++ is slightly faster, and everything else I do
> > is...pretty much the same. All of it already ran fine on the old
> > system, so there's not much left for this one to improve on
> > speed-wise.
> 
> I think my old laptop was centrino with "hyperthreading"  (it was
> that old).
> 

Hah! My desktop (ie my primary system until a few months ago) pre-dated
hyperthreading. <g>

My previous *laptop* was...I think it was about a P2 or
so, definitely <1GHz, and it had a PCMCIA slot, parallel/serial
ports and even a (yes, *a*) USB 1.1 port ;) It was awesome because it
could read DVDs (but couldn't burn anything) and had an *active matrix*
display, wow!

That laptop's been completely useless for many years now, of
course.


> I know that I've seen HPs where
> the "buttons" were just drawings on the touchpad.

Yeech!

> > Two-finger scroll is ok, but personally I *much* prefer the
> > "circular"-motion scrolling (forget what they call it) - it's
> > actually just about as good as a scroll wheel.
> 
> What I like about the 2-finger scroll is that it goes all 4
> directions, it's like panning.  And I don't have to move my finger to
> a certain spot.
> 

I'm not sure this one does that (although in some apps I can do
that by middle-dragging on my trackball - I wish it was all though).

But, and maybe I'm being paranoid, I have a very strong suspicion
that limitation is due to an apple patent. They *have* been
very patent-litigious in recent years, and it doesn't seem like the
kind of feature anyone would actually have any trouble getting right.


> >
> >> And I've tried Apple's magic mouse, it sucks.
> >
> > Is that the one they had five or ten years ago as a "two-button
> > scroll mouse" but was touch-sensitive instead of having actual
> > mouse buttons? I've only come across one person who ever liked it -
> > and it definitely wasn't me.
> 
> It has no buttons or visible delineations, you have to just "know"
> that if you click on a certain spot (and you better not have your
> other fingers down) that it will be the correct mouse button.  Not my
> cup of tea.
> 
> If you swipe one finger, it scrolls.
> 
> My biggest gripe is that it was very uncomfortable to hold.
> 

Yea, sounds like the one I tried years ago at some apple store. IIRC,
you couldn't even rest your fingers on the mouse because that would be a
"click". You had to hover *over* the "button".


> 
> Your posts seem to always include a general disdain of all things
> Apple (frankly, all things "new technology").

Apple and I do seem to have very different tastes in general.

> It's hard to separate
> the cause from the effect...
> 
> I apologize if I was too assuming.
> 

Fair enough.

> >>
> >> I personally will *never* sign up for facebook (sorry Andrei), and
> >
> > Bizarrely enough, I likely will, but only because these
> > multiplayer-enabled mobile games (I'm working on one - hopefully it
> > won't suck *too* bad) apparently need (for some definition of
> > "need" ;) ) to support facebook-based login these days. So I gotta
> > be able to test it.
> 
> Hehe.  I almost always immediately delete an app that won't let me
> proceed without logging in to facebook.  There is no reason for that,
> unless it, um... is the facebook app :)

Yea. In our case, we're aiming for the "Words with Friends" model where
"Log in with Facebook" is merely an option.

> There is a general
> assumption by many applications/websites that *everyone* uses
> facebook.

I know! And it's not just software, it's all business in general. They
noticed that it's popular so they think that means "nearly everyone uses
it" when the reality is that even as popular as it is, it's still only a
*minority* of internet users. Same with twitter.


> I refuse to pretend that I have 800 "friends".  I have
> friends, I know who they are.  I don't need to know what's going on
> with them every second of the day.
> 

Yea, I think at the very least they really botched the wording on that.
That's been a pretty common jab made towards facebook. And I can't
disagree with it.

> Besides, my wife is on facebook, and if any important news happens
> via FB, she'll tell me :)
> 

Heh. Similar situation here. My brother and sister are both on it, so
I'll catch wind of any family news from FB. My parents, like me, aren't
on FB either so they get the same benefit, too, although they usually
hear much sooner I do ;)