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If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

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Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#311

Post by wruza »

crispinb wrote: post #277
davrosthedalek wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that small command-line tools "the unix way" combined with a competently written -h help page is quite discoverable. Maybe not for a general computer newbie, but certainly for people used to /other/ cli tools.

This only seems to work in practise for tools that are very small, otherwise exceptional writing is required (which, by definition, will rarely occur). I can't imagine (to pick a particularly extreme example) that anyone has ever learned to use git by reading the man pages. In contrast, even features in pretty poor GUI apps are by default generally discoverable.

For svn and specifically git GUIs with lots of options and insane defaults, I usually do not have a fcuking clue what exact command will yet another cool wrapper execute and how it will report back. Too many times I fought the result of people clicking around and completely messing the repo with no idea what they’ve exactly done. So, our company has a simple but strict rule: you’re allowed to update/pull/commit/push via gui, but nothing more and never touch any checkboxes in there.

If you can’t spend time on one of your main tools docs to grasp what “merge -r 403:480 -c -473 ^/branches/rt0” does and how to command it, then sit there and code, folks will do maintenance for you.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#312

Post by harrygeez »

jng wrote: post #264
jjoonathan wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite experience here. 2015 Dell Precision M6800 issues (all non-linux-related have been replicated by >=1 coworker): Spurious thermal throttle activation occasionally reduces performance to molassas Bluescreen in network drivers ~ once a week Unless you disable integrated/discrete graphics switching, it fails to recognize external displays HDD makes strange grinding noise every month or so, but hasn't failed yet.…

How did you get the MBP trackpad replaced for $30 and in 2h? I have the one in my MacBook Air in a similar state and Apple quotes 150+ EUR and leaving it for one week at their tech support...

US Apple Stores have on-site repair.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#313

Post by girvo »

BlindMidget wrote: post #232
derefr wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of Apple as one of those black holes that absorbs devs: people land there, and then—if they can hack the culture—tend to stay for their careers. Is this not true any more? Where does ex-Apple dev talent tend to go? (Microsoft? Indie app development?)

Honestly all the great apple devs from the early 2ks have either moved into consulting or entrepreneurial activity or, more likely and worryingly, they've been promoted into management roles at apple where they're managing a team of engineers not quite as good as they were. You see this everywhere, at every company. That's my guess.

Are you seriously arguing that engineers were better “back in the day” and engineers now are not as good? Surely I must be misunderstanding you.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#314

Post by crispinb »

wruza wrote: post #311
crispinb wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only seems to work in practise for tools that are very small, otherwise exceptional writing is required (which, by definition, will rarely occur). I can't imagine (to pick a particularly extreme example) that anyone has ever learned to use git by reading the man pages. In contrast, even features in pretty poor GUI apps are by default generally discoverable.

For svn and specifically git GUIs with lots of options and insane defaults, I usually do not have a fcuking clue what exact command will yet another cool wrapper execute and how it will report back. Too many times I fought the result of people clicking around and completely messing the repo with no idea what they’ve exactly done. So, our company has a simple but strict rule: you’re allowed to update/pull/commit/push…

The parent was about discoverability -- you've argued that discoverability isn't necessarily useful for tools where people need to have some idea of what the tool is doing. There are many tasks where the user needs to have an accurate mental model and a grasp of the details. I completely agree with that.

Still, GUI programs are very clearly more discoverable than cli ones. How far and where discoverability is the best approach to educating a user is a separate question.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#315

Post by canadianhacker »

If we're bashing Apple's engineering quality, have no further look than the Apple Music App on Android.

Some examples:

* App crashed for no apparent reason multiple times

* Bug where on multiple occasions music won't be added to my playlists

* Bug where music not downloading after pressing the cloud icon. I always have to press it twice before the download begins, which seems like an obvious bug

Like, these are features that should be nailed down. I developed an android app which did file downloads. Press the button and download begins or is queued. Will tell users that the download fails, which is better than nothing.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#316

Post by j45 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #254
davidkuhta wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just reading about something similar in the "Ask HN: What essay/blogpost do you keep going back to reread?" post Joel Spolsky's point: They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15407114

I reject that comparison. This is not rewriting a core product with tens of millions of lines of code. This is a small utility program. It's very often no problem to just make a new utility program. Especially one that's in the single digits on how many coder-months it costs.

I don't know if a rewrite is about whether it's large or small, it's about the years of hardening many scenarios.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#317

Post by wruza »

crispinb wrote: post #314
wruza wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For svn and specifically git GUIs with lots of options and insane defaults, I usually do not have a fcuking clue what exact command will yet another cool wrapper execute and how it will report back. Too many times I fought the result of people clicking around and completely messing the repo with no idea what they’ve exactly done. So, our company has a simple but strict rule: you’re allowed to update/pull/commit/push…

The parent was about discoverability -- you've argued that discoverability isn't necessarily useful for tools where people need to have some idea of what the tool is doing. There are many tasks where the user needs to have an accurate mental model and a grasp of the details. I completely agree with that. Still, GUI programs are very clearly more discoverable than cli ones. How far and where discoverability is the bes…

>where people need to have some idea of what the tool is doing

Not exactly. Wrappers can (and tend to) “enhance” and hide details from those who actually have idea. This kind of breaks discoverability into confusion, that’s what my rant was about.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#319

Post by beedogs »

thought_alarm wrote: post #49

How did Disk Utility.app go from being one of the great built-in OS X utilities to the embarrassing amateurish shit show that it is today? Perhaps the same people responsible for the file system engineering are also responsible for developing this user-facing application. They might excel at low level system engineering, but they are utterly unqualified to develop a high level GUI application. Spend 5 minutes with th…

Idono. HFS+ is pretty terrible, too. The people who wrote it surely could've written Disk Utility.

Re: If macOS High Sierra shows your password instead of the password hint

#320

Post by astrange »

exikyut wrote: post #282
KGIII wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most-common complaints that I see about Apple is that they have allowed macOS' quality to steadily decline and the most-common speculation has been that this declination in quality is because macOS makes Apple less money than iOS. The iOS-using products are Apple's cash cow. It does make sense that they'd prioritize working on iOS. However, what doesn't make sense is that Apple certainly has enough resourc…

Manglement seems to have collectively forgotten that iOS app quality is dependent on macOS and tooling quality. Improve macOS, you put a lightness in devs' steps everywhere and iOS apps get even better. It seems that macOS has gotten completely bogged down (like really, really bogged down) and mired in bureaucracy. What I just described is a "little thing" that's very very hard to quantify to non-engineers, sadly. (I…

Xcode is just an app (minus some bits shared with iTunes). What problems are you having updating it?
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