Poll: how long have you been into D

H. S. Teoh hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx
Mon Jul 8 12:21:24 PDT 2013


On Mon, Jul 08, 2013 at 05:48:55AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Jul 2013 16:51:32 -0700
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
[...]
> > Yeah ever since my wife got an iPhone, our attempts to fall asleep
> > have been constantly interrupted by annoying dings and zings every
> > so often from stray emails, notifications,
> 
> Yup.
> 
> >people sending text messages
> > in the middle of the night for no good reason, etc..
> > 
> 
> Call me a disgruntled die-hard IM fan, but I always got annoyed at
> people who took issue with odd-hour SMS. Whether GAIM, Outlook, or SMS,
> if you don't want incoming messages interrupting you, then *turn the
> damn speakers off*. Makes no damn sense to leave it on and then bitch
> about what's obviously going to happen.

Mind you, I do tell her to just turn the thing off at the first ding.
But that's already too late if it happens at 3am and I can't fall back
to sleep. :-P

I guess the annoyance factor comes from the fact that the first ding or
two is generally ignorable -- a ding in the middle of the night once in
a while is OK, I'll just turn over and forget about it. But after the
thing keeps going off 5-6 times in a row, I feel a rather strong urge to
chuck it out the window (or apply a Large Blunt Instrument).


> Of course, these stupid devices will also vibrate and light up and do
> everything short of spray water and smack you in the face, but really
> that's just part of a bigger problem: They need to have a proper,
> convenient, sleep mode anyway.  They can call it a "shut the fucking
> thing up" mode. :)

Y'know what would be an awesome feature? A configurable volume level
scheduler, like those old turn-on-the-light-at-night power dials, that
automatically shuts off the volume at night, and turns it back on in the
morning.

Better yet, turn it off during the times in the week where you're in a
library / concert / meeting when it shouldn't be going off. Get enough
people to use it, and we might stop having to make the now-obligatory
announcement "please turn off your cellphones" all the time (and have
people *still* get loud noisy ringtones in the middle of it).

Anybody wanna code up a D app for this? It might be the killer app that
makes D famous. ;-)


> Neither of my Palm devices ever pulled any of that "look at me! look
> at me!" shit (Well, aside from the alarms that I *deliberately* set,
> and also twice a year when DST would start/end - but even then it
> didn't go nearly as multisensory-hyperactive as this iStuff does every
> time one of your contacts types or farts or whatever...and on iOS the
> stupid thing does it *twice*...I got so sick of that damn thing
> *repeating* every fucking SMS I received whenever I chose not to give
> it the attention it demanded. iOS really makes me miss Apple 2).

Heh.

Funny anecdote: I used to have such fond memories of the old Apple II
and all the good ole programs it had, until one day, in a fit of
nostalgia, I decided to fire up an Apple emulator and load up one of
those old skool Apple II games that, in my memory, was so awesome and so
much better than today's offerings. I was confronted with the good ole
']' Applesoft Basic prompt, and the next few minutes was a
nostalgia-shattering experience of realizing to my horror that I had
forgotten most of the DOS commands and being rewarded with the utterly
unfriendly and unhelpful "?SYNTAX ERROR" message.

When I finally got the game to load up, I tried playing it through for
the next half hour or so, and discovered to my chagrin that it was a LOT
worse than I had remembered it. The interface sucked, the gameplay
mechanics were boring, and the content was shallow. I suppose we tend to
only retain the good memories; experiencing the real thing again after
so many decades confronted me with the stark reality that the good ole
days, perhaps, weren't *that* good after all. :-(


> > We try to make the best of it, though. I set my morning alarm to a
> > rooster call, and she set hers to dogs barking. A hilarious way to
> > wake up. :-P
> > 
> 
> Heh. If I faced that every morning, both devices would end up launched
> out the window within the first week ;)

Well, it's different when you deliberately set it up to do that. :-P


[...]
> > Yeah I could never figure out what was running in the background on
> > my old iPod. And couldn't find a way to manage background tasks
> > either.  It would just run slower and slower until a crawl, and then
> > finally just freeze and fail to respond to anything (or run at 1
> > screen update every 5 minutes -- completely unusable). Then it's
> > time for the two-finger salute -- power + home for 10 seconds to
> > hard-reboot the contraption.
> > 
> 
> On the iPhones, you can hold the button (uhh, yea, *THE* button) for a
> couple secs (don't recall if you have to already be on the home
> screen) and it'll show a taskbar/dock-like thing that's basically
> equivalent to Android 4's task switcher (except tinier). But like I
> said, I could never tell whether or not iOS included "recently used
> but not running" junk in that like Android does. Or if it was even
> some sort of "suspended apps" thing. Or whatever. It never gave any
> indication what was going on with them.

I find the task switcher in Android only marginally useful. Mainly it's
a "recently-used apps" list for loading up a recent app that's otherwise
buried too deeply in the reams of pages of mostly-useless apps. Most of
the time, due to the location of the menu button, I end up accidentally
calling up the task switcher just because my right palm happens to hover
over the touch screen too closely, and it would switch out from under me
to another app at the next touch, usually while I was in the middle of
doing something else. Rather annoying.

The task *manager*, OTOH, is eminently useful for killing off unwanted
background processes. :)  Including core android processes, if you so
wish... I haven't dared to try that yet. :-P


> > After I got all the data and apps I needed on my Android, I retired
> > the iPod and haven't turned back since.
> > 
> 
> Yea, the only reason I'd ever have an iHipster device at this
> point would be for cross-platform mobile development. There's plenty I
> hate about Android even compared to iOS (The VMed systems API, and
> Google persistently trying to get you to give them all your personal
> data, as opposed to Apple's native code and "Don't wanna use iCloud?
> Ok, yea sure, back everything up directly to your own computer then,
> that's cool with us.")

I created a separate google persona just for my Android. I only use it
for the apps that utterly refuse to work without it, like the various
calendar apps. So far I've managed to stay away from the google+ app,
dropbox, facebook, and all of the other stuff that insists on accessing
stuff they shouldn't need to access in order to function. It always
makes me suspicious when, for example, a single-player game app requires
"full internet access", sometimes "access to personal account info",
etc.. Why on earth does a single-player game need to access the
internet?! If it were on my desktop PC, I'd run it only inside a sandbox
prepped with a virtual network populated with honeypots. :-P


> But overall, Android is definitely less irritating, less idiotic (ex:
> sideways keyboard is accessible *consistently*, user-selectable
> default apps for various things), and is just overall the lesser of
> the two evils.

I found Android *far* more configurable to my liking than any of the
iOfferings. On the iPod/iPhone I feel like I'm trying to climb Mt.
Everest with my left foot glued to my right ear, just because Somebody
decided that you have to do things that way, and that way alone.


[...]
> > You *could* just move it to your front screen, y'know! ;-) That's
> > what the home button's for. Two clicks to kill off a misbehaving app
> > (of which there are too many, sad to say -- browsers being one of
> > the frequent offenders).
> > 
> 
> Hmm, I could have sworn that on mine the task manager was simply a
> somewhat buried *part* of the settings program. I guess it's kinda
> been awhile though.

I dunno, on my Android (icecream sandwich) it's a separate app. Took me
a while to find it, though. My phone came with way too many useless apps
preinstalled. One of these days I need to get around to uninstalling
apps that I never use.


> In any case, that's still not as nice as if the task switcher simply
> didn't insist on cluttering itself with "recently used" junk that
> isn't even running. But yea, sticking the task manager on home would
> have at least been an improvement.

I thought the task switcher was basically a "recently used" list. If you
wanna know what's *actually* running, use the task manager. :)


[...]
> > > Last I heard you do still have to use a Mac to submit to the App
> > > Store, and again, you have to use that one particular proprietary
> > > toolkit (which also means no D), but at least it's *possible* to
> > > make iOS stuff without putting up with OSX.
> > [...]
> > 
> > Good luck having D apps accepted by the App Store.
> 
> I'd be surprised if those dumbfucks in App Store Approvals would even
> notice.
[...]

They'd notice if your app was a superior browser that threatens the
dominance of Safari. :) Or a video player that *gasp* can play more
formats than the crippled built-in video player can (*ahem*VLC
player*cough*). Basically anything that threatens the dominance of
Apple's own offerings. (I'm not making this up -- google for why VLC
player was removed from AppStore. Or why only Opera Mobile Mini exists
in AppStore.)


T

-- 
Two wrongs don't make a right; but three rights do make a left...


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