I don't know where you stand on the link. So my comment is on the link itself.
The linked article plays on a "class warfare" division between iPhone and Android. Yet I notice that the 32GB Galaxy Nexus, just launched, is $299 with a contract, the same price as the 32GB iPhone 4S, and $100 more expensive than the 16GB iPhone 4S. This isn't a class difference, it's a quality difference.
If you mentioned in a prior post that you went out to dinner with some friends and it was terrible because the food was bad and Steve forgot his wallet, and Steve posts about having a good time with his friends at dinner that night
Ah, but here we're talking about "shadow accounts", so there are no posts from Steve to associate with.
I don't doubt for a minute that useful data mining can be done by between people who have Facebook accounts, and make at least some of it public. I'm dismissing the possibility that there can be any credit rating information to be gained on people who are not on facebook, from looking at public data of people who are on facebook.
Right. So if I post "Steve still owes me that $50, don't think he's ever going to pay it back" on facebook, what's the data mining heuristic by which one of the people named Steve gets his credit rating adjusted?
OK maybe it's not looking at that. Maybe it's just knowing me that adjusts his credit rating up or down. OK, so what is the heuristic by which one of the Steve Wrights in the world is going to get his credit rating adjusted because I tag a photo with "Steve Wright"?
People who don't need to have a false persona for work. That is, I grant you, a minority. But it makes for a much happier life for those that are in that position.
I know 3 people named Steve Wright. How does Facebook know which one I'm referring to at any particular time.
And how many John Smith's are there?
Now for sure, if I send a facebook invite to one of them, then Facebook have an email address. But that's about it for data they can collect about people with no account.
Oh, and facial recognition in photos won't do it. iPhoto has facial recognition, but I'd estimate it's suggestions are only about 60% right, even after all the training it's had from my confirmations. An unassisted facial recogniser will be next to useless.
You're absolutely right, they are different. The trouble is that any freedom you give the press to skirt the law for noble investigation will also be used by them for gutter press purposes.
In the UK, even though the NOTW and other tabloids used phone hacking for all sorts of gutter press reasons, and the entire country is disgusted, there are still plenty of people arguing against putting restrictions on the press, because of those rare times they break the law for good.
I don't know what means should be used to distinguish between them. But I'm satisfied that in the UK at least the damage done by the press has far outweighed the good done by them. And thus I'd tend to go with the option of not allowing any special privileges when they break the law, no matter what the story.
Add WordStar to your list. That was the de-facto monopoly Word Processor when I started. And mailmerge was a separate app.
Mailmerge and other things were gradually accreted onto Word Processors as I said because vendors had to sell new versions, and compete with competitors, at a time when feature checklists were a major marketing tool. People are suckered into feature checklists, believing they are getting more for their money. But the truth is they become less productive as their apps have ever more complex UIs.
Consider, again the electric drill. Why don't carpenters carry an electric drill for each size bit, instead of a drill with an exchangeable bit? Surely customizing the bit indicates that the drill is trying to do too much?
Not at all. As you point out the conceptual model of an electric drill is a thing that makes holes. The bit size is only a parameter. It doesn't do something different. By the time you get to using an electric drill for things that aren't drilling holes... sanding, grinding, sawing... yes you can get attachments for those things, but you're better off with dedicated power tools for those jobs.
You posit a separate mail-merging app -- one that must be maintained and updated separately. One that must, on its own, parse the file format of the original word processor, and handle its own rendering. How does it print?
But there you are talking about the convenience of the machine, or the developer. Applications should be designed for the user. All the things you mention are perfectly possible with either libraries or industry standard formats.
What level of editing does it allow?
Mail-merge is that which takes a document with field markers, and substitutes data from a file, usually of names and addresses. I'd expect to be able to edit the names and addresses. Possibly to take a Word-Processed file without field markers and to insert them in the mail merge app. But general editing of the document itself is the Word Processors job.
What if you want to save a copy of the result?
Do it.
What if you want to change formatting?
Word Processor.
You see these are two very different tasks that may not even be performed by the same person. For example creating the document will often be a marketing task. Merging names and addresses in an admin or operations task. You may not want the operations staff doing mail-merging to be at risk of accidentally or misguidedly editing the formatting or text of the document itself.
Sure, they often are performed by the same person, and yet it is still a very different task, that may be performed at different times.
The big win of not having the mail-merge functionality cluttering up the Word Process UI is shared by the 90% of WP users that never need to do mail-merging.
Meanwhile the task of doing mail-merging is made simpler for those that do it by having a UI dedicated to just that job.
"It may be"? You don't know? And yet it's one of the things stopping you buying an iPad?
In other words you don't have any real reason for wanting SD card support. Truth is SD card support just adds complexity to the UI, and a slew of security issues, without adding anything that many people are going to find useful.
I'm reminded of when people used to buy cassette "ghetto blasters" by the number of buttons they had on them, regardless of the fact that none of them made the sound better.
If you're pointing out that the car actually works as a point of achievement, your bar is very low. Yeah, your Kia is obviously really good, compared to an Edsel.
Since you know almost every detail of the use case, you can specialize ruthlessly, and so I agree that electric drills don't need a lot of flexibility. But word processors are used by a tremendously wide variety of people for a staggering array of tasks -- some of them will never, ever need to print, and some will never, ever need to fool with drawing, and some will never, ever need to fool with scripting, and so forth.
The whole premise of a modern word processor is that each person needs a subset of advanced editing functionality, non-aligned with someone else's subset; forcing a user to sift through features that are of absolutely no value because you feel they would waste time if they were given the opportunity to customize the layout is, exactly, condescension.
What you're really talking about there is not "modern word processors" but MS Word. That has pretty much the monopoly. And the open source competitor Open/Libre Office competes as most open source does by copying.
It got to be this enormous monolithic thing because every few years Microsoft wanted to sell an upgrade, and so they added features. For 20 years.
And so now, understandably you find it too complex, and want to hide the things you don't use. But that's the wrong fix. The problem is it tries to do too much. Much of the functionality of office should be catered for by other apps. For example mail merging should be done by a separate app. People that don't do mail-merging won't install that app. So the UI disappears without any need for customising.
Yes, an electric drill is a specialised tool that doesn't require any customising. And a carpenter has a tool box full of many other specialist tools, that also don't need customising. By using them in combination, he does a wide variety of work. That's how computing should be.
The fact that people can use a smartphone for anything they like whilst driving does not provide a reason for not limiting dedicated automotive products to those things that are safe. Can you not see the ramifications for Renault if it released a driver targeted device that plays games? Moral and legal? If not you;re not living in the real world.
If you want to avoid having angry birds play, then just get Google (or have the device manufacturer because they can) enhance Androids "Car Mode" to filter out the launching of applications that do not have a "use while driving" flag. I highly doubt that the writers of Angry Birds is going to go out of their way to make sure someone can play the game while driving.
The writers of Angry Birds might not. Some developer from Russia, Hungry or South Korea probably will. The developer community as a whole can't be trusted to only release responsible software. They just want to make a profit. It requires someone else to moderate their excesses. And given that its got Renault's name on it, they are the obvious ones to do that job.
What you're doing here is trying to fit the world around how Android works, rather than the other way around.
An e-reader would be pretty much limited to text-book and hand-outs replacement. A tablet gives them access to all sorts of touch based educational apps too. If you RTFA, you'll see that that's part of it.
Aren't you the guy carrying on elsewhere about how programs can't be condescending?
Yes.
And here you are describing the very process by which a condescending UI is designed. "Well, the users can't handle that, so we'd better not give them the option."
I didn't say that, so don't use quotation marks. It's your opinion that not giving customisation options is "condescending". I don't agree. If you buy an electric drill from a hardware store, do you expect a choice of colours? Tools don't need customisation.
Doc and support is a non-issue. Support request? Options->Interface->Change to default interface. Done!
And then when you've finished you need to inform the user how to change back to their customisations, otherwise they're pissed that you broke their app. Two extra things that need doing. And all for nothing.
I don't recognise my Garmin Nuvi at all from your description. For example the only mode where the current position doesn't stay central is the off-road/pedestrian mode, and that uses a blue dot, not a car icon.
I wonder if maybe you have an old version. I have a Nuvi 1390, bought about 18 months ago.
Either that or there's some option we've got set differently. Sorry can't investigate now, I haven't got it with me.
The one that do recognise is the missing feature of alternate routes at the route planning stage. Though I either have it set to most economical or quickest routes, and that is what I actually want, so I'll almost always plan to take the route suggested. It's during the trip that I might decide to overrule the route, based on my opinion of traffic or because I fancy a more scenic route. So I just take my turn off the recommended route at the time and let it recalculate the route then. So I can't say that I've ever missed the opportunity to choose from alternatives at route planning time.
Yes, it's the same data. And whilst Google Maps is good for it's aerial and satellite photos and it's street views, the road data is terrible. There are discontinuities where one trip in the google streetmapping cars didn't quite meet up with another trip in a joining road. And there are busses only streets that are not marked as such. etc.
I don't doubt that the poor location accuracy is due to inferior GPS in smartphones, but my experience of it is on a Samsung Galaxy S II. That's not one of the cheap Androids.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know where you stand on the link. So my comment is on the link itself.
The linked article plays on a "class warfare" division between iPhone and Android. Yet I notice that the 32GB Galaxy Nexus, just launched, is $299 with a contract, the same price as the 32GB iPhone 4S, and $100 more expensive than the 16GB iPhone 4S. This isn't a class difference, it's a quality difference.
That's all I needed! A fourth Steve Wright. Two of them celebrities. Damn you non-unique people identifiers!
If you mentioned in a prior post that you went out to dinner with some friends and it was terrible because the food was bad and Steve forgot his wallet, and Steve posts about having a good time with his friends at dinner that night
Ah, but here we're talking about "shadow accounts", so there are no posts from Steve to associate with.
I don't doubt for a minute that useful data mining can be done by between people who have Facebook accounts, and make at least some of it public. I'm dismissing the possibility that there can be any credit rating information to be gained on people who are not on facebook, from looking at public data of people who are on facebook.
Right. So if I post "Steve still owes me that $50, don't think he's ever going to pay it back" on facebook, what's the data mining heuristic by which one of the people named Steve gets his credit rating adjusted?
OK maybe it's not looking at that. Maybe it's just knowing me that adjusts his credit rating up or down. OK, so what is the heuristic by which one of the Steve Wrights in the world is going to get his credit rating adjusted because I tag a photo with "Steve Wright"?
Sorry, it just doesn't work.
People who don't need to have a false persona for work. That is, I grant you, a minority. But it makes for a much happier life for those that are in that position.
I know 3 people named Steve Wright. How does Facebook know which one I'm referring to at any particular time.
And how many John Smith's are there?
Now for sure, if I send a facebook invite to one of them, then Facebook have an email address. But that's about it for data they can collect about people with no account.
Oh, and facial recognition in photos won't do it. iPhoto has facial recognition, but I'd estimate it's suggestions are only about 60% right, even after all the training it's had from my confirmations. An unassisted facial recogniser will be next to useless.
You're absolutely right, they are different. The trouble is that any freedom you give the press to skirt the law for noble investigation will also be used by them for gutter press purposes.
In the UK, even though the NOTW and other tabloids used phone hacking for all sorts of gutter press reasons, and the entire country is disgusted, there are still plenty of people arguing against putting restrictions on the press, because of those rare times they break the law for good.
I don't know what means should be used to distinguish between them. But I'm satisfied that in the UK at least the damage done by the press has far outweighed the good done by them. And thus I'd tend to go with the option of not allowing any special privileges when they break the law, no matter what the story.
The press have to obey all the same laws everybody else does. When they don't, they deserve the legal ramifications they get, same as the rest of us.
Add WordStar to your list. That was the de-facto monopoly Word Processor when I started. And mailmerge was a separate app.
Mailmerge and other things were gradually accreted onto Word Processors as I said because vendors had to sell new versions, and compete with competitors, at a time when feature checklists were a major marketing tool. People are suckered into feature checklists, believing they are getting more for their money. But the truth is they become less productive as their apps have ever more complex UIs.
Consider, again the electric drill. Why don't carpenters carry an electric drill for each size bit, instead of a drill with an exchangeable bit? Surely customizing the bit indicates that the drill is trying to do too much?
Not at all. As you point out the conceptual model of an electric drill is a thing that makes holes. The bit size is only a parameter. It doesn't do something different. By the time you get to using an electric drill for things that aren't drilling holes... sanding, grinding, sawing... yes you can get attachments for those things, but you're better off with dedicated power tools for those jobs.
You posit a separate mail-merging app -- one that must be maintained and updated separately. One that must, on its own, parse the file format of the original word processor, and handle its own rendering. How does it print?
But there you are talking about the convenience of the machine, or the developer. Applications should be designed for the user. All the things you mention are perfectly possible with either libraries or industry standard formats.
What level of editing does it allow?
Mail-merge is that which takes a document with field markers, and substitutes data from a file, usually of names and addresses. I'd expect to be able to edit the names and addresses. Possibly to take a Word-Processed file without field markers and to insert them in the mail merge app. But general editing of the document itself is the Word Processors job.
What if you want to save a copy of the result?
Do it.
What if you want to change formatting?
Word Processor.
You see these are two very different tasks that may not even be performed by the same person. For example creating the document will often be a marketing task. Merging names and addresses in an admin or operations task. You may not want the operations staff doing mail-merging to be at risk of accidentally or misguidedly editing the formatting or text of the document itself.
Sure, they often are performed by the same person, and yet it is still a very different task, that may be performed at different times.
The big win of not having the mail-merge functionality cluttering up the Word Process UI is shared by the 90% of WP users that never need to do mail-merging.
Meanwhile the task of doing mail-merging is made simpler for those that do it by having a UI dedicated to just that job.
fanboi
Tell me, do you have a reason for spelling fanboy with an "i"? Or is it that you are following a trend without really knowing why?
That's doubly ironic.
I believe the name of the show was "Visitors" then.
No, it was "V" right from the start. I remember it well.
V for Vendetta. Must be before your time, eh?
Says the guy that doesn't know that V with reptilian aliens was a 1980s show.
"It may be"? You don't know? And yet it's one of the things stopping you buying an iPad?
In other words you don't have any real reason for wanting SD card support. Truth is SD card support just adds complexity to the UI, and a slew of security issues, without adding anything that many people are going to find useful.
I'm reminded of when people used to buy cassette "ghetto blasters" by the number of buttons they had on them, regardless of the fact that none of them made the sound better.
Yeah, you already said that. I'm wondering why. Is it a sneakernet thing?
The missing SD card slot is the top one of three missing features that prevents me from buying an iPad
Why?
If you're pointing out that the car actually works as a point of achievement, your bar is very low. Yeah, your Kia is obviously really good, compared to an Edsel.
Android, the Kia of the tablet world.
The best selling tablet doesn't have an SD card, so no, that's not one of the problems.
Since you know almost every detail of the use case, you can specialize ruthlessly, and so I agree that electric drills don't need a lot of flexibility. But word processors are used by a tremendously wide variety of people for a staggering array of tasks -- some of them will never, ever need to print, and some will never, ever need to fool with drawing, and some will never, ever need to fool with scripting, and so forth.
The whole premise of a modern word processor is that each person needs a subset of advanced editing functionality, non-aligned with someone else's subset; forcing a user to sift through features that are of absolutely no value because you feel they would waste time if they were given the opportunity to customize the layout is, exactly, condescension.
What you're really talking about there is not "modern word processors" but MS Word. That has pretty much the monopoly. And the open source competitor Open/Libre Office competes as most open source does by copying.
It got to be this enormous monolithic thing because every few years Microsoft wanted to sell an upgrade, and so they added features. For 20 years.
And so now, understandably you find it too complex, and want to hide the things you don't use. But that's the wrong fix. The problem is it tries to do too much. Much of the functionality of office should be catered for by other apps. For example mail merging should be done by a separate app. People that don't do mail-merging won't install that app. So the UI disappears without any need for customising.
Yes, an electric drill is a specialised tool that doesn't require any customising. And a carpenter has a tool box full of many other specialist tools, that also don't need customising. By using them in combination, he does a wide variety of work. That's how computing should be.
The fact that people can use a smartphone for anything they like whilst driving does not provide a reason for not limiting dedicated automotive products to those things that are safe. Can you not see the ramifications for Renault if it released a driver targeted device that plays games? Moral and legal? If not you;re not living in the real world.
If you want to avoid having angry birds play, then just get Google (or have the device manufacturer because they can) enhance Androids "Car Mode" to filter out the launching of applications that do not have a "use while driving" flag. I highly doubt that the writers of Angry Birds is going to go out of their way to make sure someone can play the game while driving.
The writers of Angry Birds might not. Some developer from Russia, Hungry or South Korea probably will. The developer community as a whole can't be trusted to only release responsible software. They just want to make a profit. It requires someone else to moderate their excesses. And given that its got Renault's name on it, they are the obvious ones to do that job.
What you're doing here is trying to fit the world around how Android works, rather than the other way around.
An e-reader would be pretty much limited to text-book and hand-outs replacement. A tablet gives them access to all sorts of touch based educational apps too. If you RTFA, you'll see that that's part of it.
But they're not using ANY TABLET, they're using iPads.
Aren't you the guy carrying on elsewhere about how programs can't be condescending?
Yes.
And here you are describing the very process by which a condescending UI is designed. "Well, the users can't handle that, so we'd better not give them the option."
I didn't say that, so don't use quotation marks. It's your opinion that not giving customisation options is "condescending". I don't agree. If you buy an electric drill from a hardware store, do you expect a choice of colours? Tools don't need customisation.
Doc and support is a non-issue. Support request? Options->Interface->Change to default interface. Done!
And then when you've finished you need to inform the user how to change back to their customisations, otherwise they're pissed that you broke their app. Two extra things that need doing. And all for nothing.
Customisation is such an all round waste of time.
I don't recognise my Garmin Nuvi at all from your description. For example the only mode where the current position doesn't stay central is the off-road/pedestrian mode, and that uses a blue dot, not a car icon.
I wonder if maybe you have an old version. I have a Nuvi 1390, bought about 18 months ago.
Either that or there's some option we've got set differently. Sorry can't investigate now, I haven't got it with me.
The one that do recognise is the missing feature of alternate routes at the route planning stage. Though I either have it set to most economical or quickest routes, and that is what I actually want, so I'll almost always plan to take the route suggested. It's during the trip that I might decide to overrule the route, based on my opinion of traffic or because I fancy a more scenic route. So I just take my turn off the recommended route at the time and let it recalculate the route then. So I can't say that I've ever missed the opportunity to choose from alternatives at route planning time.
Yes, it's the same data. And whilst Google Maps is good for it's aerial and satellite photos and it's street views, the road data is terrible. There are discontinuities where one trip in the google streetmapping cars didn't quite meet up with another trip in a joining road. And there are busses only streets that are not marked as such. etc.
I don't doubt that the poor location accuracy is due to inferior GPS in smartphones, but my experience of it is on a Samsung Galaxy S II. That's not one of the cheap Androids.
You're better off having a dedicated satnav.