Yeah, but that's complicated and scary. Everyone knows that for consumer products, the best thing to do is hide as much info from the user... excuse me, person... as possible. At least, that's what the focus group said.
They also said that a frowny face on the BSOD, rather than an actual error number, enhances the user experience.
This is why most progress bars these days (from people who know what they are doing) will make the bar fill up quickly at first, but as time goes on the progress fills up slower and slower. That way the progress bar is always moving and letting you know that the program is working, but it will never hit 100% until it is actually done.
Installation was fantastic. When Flash was new under Macromedia, I remember it being only 300K, and it installed immediately without a reboot or restarting the browser. Java at the time weighed in at (I believe) over 12MB and required a reboot. So did most other media players.
Games. Casual gaming on the PC owes itself almost entirely to Flash. Java sucked, and the alternative was to download and install an EXE, which could do just about anything to your PC. Flash made it possible to run games instantly, directly, without an install, on both PC and Mac. It was the Steam of the day, and worked when everything else failed miserably.
Cartoons. Doing stuff in vectors reduced bandwidth a thousand fold. Say what you want about HTML5 and movie codecs, but if you want to do vector animation, Flash is still your only option.
Educational apps. Ever been to a tech site where they have some kind of visual interactive application to show how the technology works? Java should have dominated in this area, but installing Java was painful, the download was huge, and at one time, Java applets couldn't play audio, because that was considered a security violation. Yes, in an attempt to crack down on the annoying audio and MIDI craze, Java banned all audio in applets for a while. No wonder tech sites dumped Java and went to Flash for their presentations.
Say what you will of closed-source, proprietary media players, but all things that tried to compete with Flash have royally sucked. Flash is most definitely useful, and will continue to exist until HTML stops being garbage (which may take another 10 years or so -- if ever).
I work for a medical distributor. Our standards for shipping quality are supposed to be much higher than companies like UPS. However, the quality of our operation suffers tremendously from the massive volume we are expected to ship every day.
All of our packages travel on a conveyor belt system without being placed in a tote. Smaller, expensive items are repacked into larger boxes, but these then also go directly on to the belt. Needless to say, belt jams and other mishaps result in considerable damage to product, ranging from scrapes, shavings, and rips (which go to the customer) to holes being punched into the sides (which may be inspected and repacked into other boxes before being shipped, but are usually just taped). So long as the customers accept delivery, that's the quality we continue to deliver. Despite damages and returns processing, we make a decent profit, so the only thing that matters is that line A is larger than line B.
I was surprised to see what the inside of the NewEgg warehouse looks like. All product goes down the conveyor belt in plastic totes, preventing damage. It puts our filthy operation to shame, and I'd bet those $300 video cards aren't much more expensive than the medical devices we deliver. If damages occur regularly, the blame should go to penny-pinching management for providing such a destructive work environment, not the employees.
BTW, I also worked for the USPS in one of their central hubs during the holiday season. Their operation didn't involve a conveyor belt, but it did involve literally throwing boxes into large cardboard tubs sitting on pallets, which were then driven into delivery trucks. The speed we were expected to maintain was the problem, not minimum wage druggies or thugs.
I can't comment on UPS. I've never worked for them, and from what I hear, I don't want to because their operation is even more hectic than ours.
No console ever gets big without 1st party IP. I hear tons of talk about tech specs and the price (the usual fanboy banter about "specs"), but I haven't heard about any games being endorsed by or coming directly from the OUYA holding company.
I hate the fact that Nintendo basically didn't bother trying with the hardware of the Wii, but I do agree with their marketing stance that it's less about specs, and all about fun games.
Verdict: less chance of success than a 20-In-One retro hand-held system.
Many social programs and forms of regulation exist because the public is too lazy to stick up for their own rights. It's a long, slow downward spiral until we reach a breaking point.
Perhaps that breaking point will be if corporations write EULAs that exclude hardware warranties. Hey, if a product dies, that hurts our reputation, and then people won't buy our product. See? The industry can regulate itself, so warranties aren't necessary.
I still find it puzzling that people consider four years of support for any software product amazing, especially when you still have to pay for updates.
Saying honor is outdated suggests that it was once important. Where was the honor when factories were chaining their doors shut so the workers couldn't leave until the end of the day?
What's outdated is the idea that people can have a life outside of the network of toys and gadgets. Sure, you can take away my rights and freedom, but please, please don't take away my entertainment!
I'd like a smart phone, but I won't buy one in their existing form. Too much money, too much bullshit. I'm happy with a dumb phone for now.
No, I mean literally impossible. As in, I have tried for minutes at a time of all sorts of D-pad combinations to select it, and I have never been able to. The cursor just moves in all directions around it.
I haven't played the game in over a year, so I can't remember what UI element it is, but it's in the store/tuning section of your garage, in the same place where you buy engine/muffler/tire upgrades. There's one upgrade selection that's not aligned to a grid, and as far as I can tell, is not selectable. Lack of testing, no doubt.
I sold my copy of GT4 shortly after I got it for similar reasons. The haphazardly organized race map wasn't actually broken, but it was so frustrating to navigate, I just kept playing GT3 instead.
I used to work in a photography store. When these kiosks became available, people were always complaining about how bad the touchscreens were. The interfaces were designed properly, with a small number of large buttons that were easy to select. Yet, people still hated using them. They are slow and tiring, taking as much as a half hour to cycle through just a few reprints.
What's the most likely explanation: people aren't used to touch screens, or that touchscreens simple aren't as good as traditional interfaces?
I liken it to comparing the difference between old BIOSes and that newfangled UEFI crap. Navigating the text-based UIs in the BIOS is simple, painless, and efficient. I have nothing good to say about my new Gigabyte UEFI firmware, which is exclusively GUI, and takes 10 times longer to do anything.
Another comparison is the UI in the Gran Turismo games on the Playstation. The interfaces have always been a mess of UI elements being placed at random locations, even though you were supposed to use a D-pad for navigation and the cursor jumps between selections. There are some UI elements [in the tuning store] in GT5 that are literally impossible to select because the selection cursor jumps diagonally around the item you want. I'm sure Polyphony Digital thinks the UI is just fine, though, because it sure does look pretty and took a lot of work and testing to create... even if it doesn't work.
When I need to go to theirs, its amazing how many folks run their stuff in full screen - I don't know how they manage... it just doesn't work for me
Are they doing the same work as you? Are their needs the same?
I surf the web, do graphics, and record audio in full screen all the time. When I do web development, I have ten windows open at once. How I manage my desktop depends on the work I'm doing, rather than following a draconian design philosophy.
You could continue buying XP at retail for many, many years.
Vista didn't last anywhere near as long, and Win7 will likely be wiped out even sooner, given the push to release new versions of Windows more frequently.
A new version of OSX every year doesn't bother me, since each release is more like a service pack and very little changes. A new version of Windows every year makes me worry.
Cleaning matte screens is a pain, though, compared to a quick wipe of a glossy screen. I love my matte IPS as a desktop display, but mobile devices generally work better overall with glossy.
Off topic: I thought the iPhone would be a failure, since people would constantly be wiping off their face grease. I admit, it never occurred to me that nobody would use the iPhone as a phone, so there's usually not much to wipe except the occasional fingerprint.
The subsidized handset business model is popular with typical US customers because customers do not realize that they are actually paying full price for their handset through what is essentially an installment plan
Or roughly, Twitter toys are more important than math.
I tell people I don't have a smartphone because I don't want to pay around $2,500 for a shiny gadget over the life of the contract. They look at me like I have five heads and can't figure out where I got that number.
Rough rough rough, and not something people coming from say OS X or even Windows 7 would expect.
I'd like to know why marketing hype is so important when releasing a free product. Commercial products I can understand, but not FOSS.
Is it fear of looking like a laggard, or just plain ego?
Also, I cringe when developers insist that the bugs will eventually be fixed, but at the same time defend their awful designs. Some of the issues with the Fedora installer are not really bugs, but poor design choices. Those tend to be the result of inexperience or haughty stubbornness, and usually don't get fixed in any hurry.
You should see what people can hack into an A600 or A1200 these days. Those were the "keyboards with a computer attached", and they still had full, 32-bit internal expansion slots built in as standard.
Apples were expandable? Since when? I thought Jobs insisted that the original Macs shouldn't even have upgradable memory. PowerMacs were the machines that charged a $500 premium just for the weird folding cases and the privilege of having expansion slots.
What never ceases to amaze me is how we treat such brilliant people. I was surprised to hear how old his equipment is, how difficult it is to keep running, and how little his personal assistants are paid.
I understand he is not a rich man and caretaking is naturally expensive, but I would have expected more goodwill sponsors to come forward, if only for publicity's sake.
I'm still wondering how yogurt can still be sold as such in the USA. The only true yogurt I know of in my local grocery store is the store brand itself, which is actually made with milk and sugar. All the name brands are made with food starch and gelatin, and they taste more like waxy pudding than yogurt.
Many of those things involved using another standard and not complying with it.
If Microsoft makes their own formats, that's called competition. Thankfully, IE is not ruler of the Internet any longer, and it's arguable that Windows isn't, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Big deal. Policy, not method, is the problem.
I was really interested in the Tesla S, until I saw the interior and found that everything is operated from the large touch screen display.
No thanks. I will only buy a car with knobs and buttons for radio and climate controls.
Yeah, but that's complicated and scary. Everyone knows that for consumer products, the best thing to do is hide as much info from the user... excuse me, person... as possible. At least, that's what the focus group said.
They also said that a frowny face on the BSOD, rather than an actual error number, enhances the user experience.
This is why most progress bars these days (from people who know what they are doing) will make the bar fill up quickly at first, but as time goes on the progress fills up slower and slower. That way the progress bar is always moving and letting you know that the program is working, but it will never hit 100% until it is actually done.
Installation was fantastic. When Flash was new under Macromedia, I remember it being only 300K, and it installed immediately without a reboot or restarting the browser. Java at the time weighed in at (I believe) over 12MB and required a reboot. So did most other media players.
Games. Casual gaming on the PC owes itself almost entirely to Flash. Java sucked, and the alternative was to download and install an EXE, which could do just about anything to your PC. Flash made it possible to run games instantly, directly, without an install, on both PC and Mac. It was the Steam of the day, and worked when everything else failed miserably.
Cartoons. Doing stuff in vectors reduced bandwidth a thousand fold. Say what you want about HTML5 and movie codecs, but if you want to do vector animation, Flash is still your only option.
Educational apps. Ever been to a tech site where they have some kind of visual interactive application to show how the technology works? Java should have dominated in this area, but installing Java was painful, the download was huge, and at one time, Java applets couldn't play audio, because that was considered a security violation. Yes, in an attempt to crack down on the annoying audio and MIDI craze, Java banned all audio in applets for a while. No wonder tech sites dumped Java and went to Flash for their presentations.
Say what you will of closed-source, proprietary media players, but all things that tried to compete with Flash have royally sucked. Flash is most definitely useful, and will continue to exist until HTML stops being garbage (which may take another 10 years or so -- if ever).
I work for a medical distributor. Our standards for shipping quality are supposed to be much higher than companies like UPS. However, the quality of our operation suffers tremendously from the massive volume we are expected to ship every day.
All of our packages travel on a conveyor belt system without being placed in a tote. Smaller, expensive items are repacked into larger boxes, but these then also go directly on to the belt. Needless to say, belt jams and other mishaps result in considerable damage to product, ranging from scrapes, shavings, and rips (which go to the customer) to holes being punched into the sides (which may be inspected and repacked into other boxes before being shipped, but are usually just taped). So long as the customers accept delivery, that's the quality we continue to deliver. Despite damages and returns processing, we make a decent profit, so the only thing that matters is that line A is larger than line B.
I was surprised to see what the inside of the NewEgg warehouse looks like. All product goes down the conveyor belt in plastic totes, preventing damage. It puts our filthy operation to shame, and I'd bet those $300 video cards aren't much more expensive than the medical devices we deliver. If damages occur regularly, the blame should go to penny-pinching management for providing such a destructive work environment, not the employees.
BTW, I also worked for the USPS in one of their central hubs during the holiday season. Their operation didn't involve a conveyor belt, but it did involve literally throwing boxes into large cardboard tubs sitting on pallets, which were then driven into delivery trucks. The speed we were expected to maintain was the problem, not minimum wage druggies or thugs.
I can't comment on UPS. I've never worked for them, and from what I hear, I don't want to because their operation is even more hectic than ours.
So again, what is there not to like about it?
No console ever gets big without 1st party IP. I hear tons of talk about tech specs and the price (the usual fanboy banter about "specs"), but I haven't heard about any games being endorsed by or coming directly from the OUYA holding company.
I hate the fact that Nintendo basically didn't bother trying with the hardware of the Wii, but I do agree with their marketing stance that it's less about specs, and all about fun games.
Verdict: less chance of success than a 20-In-One retro hand-held system.
academic rigor
Ah, so that's why if anyone thinks JavaScript is bad, fans will quickly snap, "You just don't get it."
I find it funny how yet another Windows8 story ran last week, and there were many suggestions that businesses should all switch to the Mac.
Many social programs and forms of regulation exist because the public is too lazy to stick up for their own rights. It's a long, slow downward spiral until we reach a breaking point.
Perhaps that breaking point will be if corporations write EULAs that exclude hardware warranties. Hey, if a product dies, that hurts our reputation, and then people won't buy our product. See? The industry can regulate itself, so warranties aren't necessary.
I still find it puzzling that people consider four years of support for any software product amazing, especially when you still have to pay for updates.
Saying honor is outdated suggests that it was once important. Where was the honor when factories were chaining their doors shut so the workers couldn't leave until the end of the day?
What's outdated is the idea that people can have a life outside of the network of toys and gadgets. Sure, you can take away my rights and freedom, but please, please don't take away my entertainment!
I'd like a smart phone, but I won't buy one in their existing form. Too much money, too much bullshit. I'm happy with a dumb phone for now.
I'd rather see an open DirectX spec ported to other platforms than see OpenGL take over everything.
No, I mean literally impossible. As in, I have tried for minutes at a time of all sorts of D-pad combinations to select it, and I have never been able to. The cursor just moves in all directions around it.
I haven't played the game in over a year, so I can't remember what UI element it is, but it's in the store/tuning section of your garage, in the same place where you buy engine/muffler/tire upgrades. There's one upgrade selection that's not aligned to a grid, and as far as I can tell, is not selectable. Lack of testing, no doubt.
I sold my copy of GT4 shortly after I got it for similar reasons. The haphazardly organized race map wasn't actually broken, but it was so frustrating to navigate, I just kept playing GT3 instead.
I used to work in a photography store. When these kiosks became available, people were always complaining about how bad the touchscreens were. The interfaces were designed properly, with a small number of large buttons that were easy to select. Yet, people still hated using them. They are slow and tiring, taking as much as a half hour to cycle through just a few reprints.
What's the most likely explanation: people aren't used to touch screens, or that touchscreens simple aren't as good as traditional interfaces?
I liken it to comparing the difference between old BIOSes and that newfangled UEFI crap. Navigating the text-based UIs in the BIOS is simple, painless, and efficient. I have nothing good to say about my new Gigabyte UEFI firmware, which is exclusively GUI, and takes 10 times longer to do anything.
Another comparison is the UI in the Gran Turismo games on the Playstation. The interfaces have always been a mess of UI elements being placed at random locations, even though you were supposed to use a D-pad for navigation and the cursor jumps between selections. There are some UI elements [in the tuning store] in GT5 that are literally impossible to select because the selection cursor jumps diagonally around the item you want. I'm sure Polyphony Digital thinks the UI is just fine, though, because it sure does look pretty and took a lot of work and testing to create... even if it doesn't work.
When I need to go to theirs, its amazing how many folks run their stuff in full screen - I don't know how they manage... it just doesn't work for me
Are they doing the same work as you? Are their needs the same?
I surf the web, do graphics, and record audio in full screen all the time. When I do web development, I have ten windows open at once. How I manage my desktop depends on the work I'm doing, rather than following a draconian design philosophy.
You could continue buying XP at retail for many, many years.
Vista didn't last anywhere near as long, and Win7 will likely be wiped out even sooner, given the push to release new versions of Windows more frequently.
A new version of OSX every year doesn't bother me, since each release is more like a service pack and very little changes. A new version of Windows every year makes me worry.
As someone who hates trackpads with a passion, I'm glad somebody got up-voted for mentioning trackballs.
Cleaning matte screens is a pain, though, compared to a quick wipe of a glossy screen. I love my matte IPS as a desktop display, but mobile devices generally work better overall with glossy.
Off topic: I thought the iPhone would be a failure, since people would constantly be wiping off their face grease. I admit, it never occurred to me that nobody would use the iPhone as a phone, so there's usually not much to wipe except the occasional fingerprint.
The subsidized handset business model is popular with typical US customers because customers do not realize that they are actually paying full price for their handset through what is essentially an installment plan
Or roughly, Twitter toys are more important than math.
I tell people I don't have a smartphone because I don't want to pay around $2,500 for a shiny gadget over the life of the contract. They look at me like I have five heads and can't figure out where I got that number.
Rough rough rough, and not something people coming from say OS X or even Windows 7 would expect.
I'd like to know why marketing hype is so important when releasing a free product. Commercial products I can understand, but not FOSS.
Is it fear of looking like a laggard, or just plain ego?
Also, I cringe when developers insist that the bugs will eventually be fixed, but at the same time defend their awful designs. Some of the issues with the Fedora installer are not really bugs, but poor design choices. Those tend to be the result of inexperience or haughty stubbornness, and usually don't get fixed in any hurry.
You should see what people can hack into an A600 or A1200 these days. Those were the "keyboards with a computer attached", and they still had full, 32-bit internal expansion slots built in as standard.
Apples were expandable? Since when? I thought Jobs insisted that the original Macs shouldn't even have upgradable memory. PowerMacs were the machines that charged a $500 premium just for the weird folding cases and the privilege of having expansion slots.
What never ceases to amaze me is how we treat such brilliant people. I was surprised to hear how old his equipment is, how difficult it is to keep running, and how little his personal assistants are paid.
I understand he is not a rich man and caretaking is naturally expensive, but I would have expected more goodwill sponsors to come forward, if only for publicity's sake.
I'm still wondering how yogurt can still be sold as such in the USA. The only true yogurt I know of in my local grocery store is the store brand itself, which is actually made with milk and sugar. All the name brands are made with food starch and gelatin, and they taste more like waxy pudding than yogurt.
Many of those things involved using another standard and not complying with it.
If Microsoft makes their own formats, that's called competition. Thankfully, IE is not ruler of the Internet any longer, and it's arguable that Windows isn't, either.