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Software sucks

shitpost.plover.com

51–60 of 93 posts

Re: Software sucks

#51
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or why's it so hard to get it to show a street name? It will show some, and it won't show others. If the one you want is in the latter category you've got a lot of zooming before you see it. Ugh.

That and for some reason the scale only shows up while your zooming and for a couple seconds after. I want to see it all the time, damn it!

Go to settings and select "Show scale on map" / "Always".

Re: Software sucks

#52
Budapest, a city of two million has place names only unique per district, there are 23 of them. So this is ubiquitous there, for example if you enter "deak ter" it will bring up some insignificant spot out in the boondocks instead of the central square of the city with three underground lines, the terminal of the airport bus and so on...

Re: Software sucks

#53
post #43

The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit. Fixing a bug almost never excites users, and even if it did in this case, they won't see a measurable increase of users of their software, so you can't prove a profit increase. Even if a bug is fixed, the effort might be wasted when a large overhaul of the system happens be…

> The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit.

Exactly. The answer to any complaint like the one described in this article (and I have similar ones about my phone all the time) is "how much would you be willing to pay to fix this?"

Of course, it doesn't help that, even if I were willing to pay to fix this, I have no way of doing so; even if, say, 100,000 or 100 million users would all be willing to pay to fix it, so that the amount in play might actually be enough to compensate a developer to do the work, we have no way of coordinating such a payment. That's not just because the companies involved are large; it's because the software running on, say, my phone is a cost center to begin with, not a profit center. The profits come from locking users into multi-year contracts, and "too many bugs/misfeatures in the software on the phone" is so far down the list of things the phone provider is worried about people switching for that there is no motivation to spend money on it.

> which might cause a bug like this to cost tens of thousands of company dollars to fix, while the benefit to each user (and therefore the company) would be a tiny fraction of a cent

But if there are 100 million users, that might still work out to a tidy profit--if the users could somehow coordinate the payment, and convince the company that the alternative to accepting the payment and fixing the problem was that all 100 million of them switch providers. In the real world, of course, this will never happen.

Re: Software sucks

#54
post #34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the list is sorted with the closest / most recent hits on top. It's way better than just seeing a bunch of pins on a map.

Pretty sure it's sorted by average rating first. The place literally across the road from me is a screen down the list (on mobile) because it's got lower reviews (by about one star or so) than the place 7km away which is at the top of the list.

Like most things Google, I don't think it's that simple. It seems to rank on multiple factors including distance, rating, if you've been there before, if you've saved it, popularity and surely lots of other signals. My search results from your location are probably different than your search results.

Re: Software sucks

#55

Unrelated but similar and I feel like venting... On Google Maps you'll search for something, and the results are shown as a list that almost covers the entire map. It's Google MAPS and it hides the map for so many things. I'd rather go to a place that's 3 miles straight down a free way than 2 miles of stop lights, but I don't know that if the map is covered!

> I'd rather go to a place that's 3 miles straight down a free way than 2 miles of stop lights

This is a big pet peev of mine. I optimize for easier driving; less turns and less stops over saving a minute or two. But as smart as they try to be, they never seem to learn anything from _the route I actually take_. You'd think the Google lady would catch on that; when he drives home from work (5+ times a week) we always recommend that he take this Avenue but for some reason he always goes out of the way to take the Highway and I have to recalculate. I'd think they'd analyze every "recalculating" as potential bad advice and learn from it.

Re: Software sucks

#56
post #21

I feel that the worst new "feature" in Google Maps is when you're on your way to your destination and it suddenly suggests you might first want to go to a random place you've never heard of before. You then have 3 seconds to tap "No" before it silently adds the destination (and 15-30 minutes of extra driving) to your route. I have found no way to disable this feature. I'm worried that there could be people who were i…

That seems crazy! I've never heard of this feature. Maybe you should contact support. Surely they'd have thought that through more!

Support?? This is Google we're talking about

Re: Software sucks

#57

I feel that the worst new "feature" in Google Maps is when you're on your way to your destination and it suddenly suggests you might first want to go to a random place you've never heard of before. You then have 3 seconds to tap "No" before it silently adds the destination (and 15-30 minutes of extra driving) to your route. I have found no way to disable this feature. I'm worried that there could be people who were i…

I have never heard of this. And judging by other responses, nobody else has, either.

Are you sure you're not confusing that with rerouting you based on traffic? And that the extra driving was done to get around a traffic jam?

EDIT: Are you tapping the map while driving? https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/LqK7zqz6...

Also, why are people using Google Maps instead of Waze for navigation?

Re: Software sucks

#58
post #4

I'm working on b2b software and when working with the designers at http://fairpixels.pro I've learned many things from their approach as to why (a lot of) software sucks. Personal example: I've been measuring qualitative feedback users have been giving us and passing it to them to make design updates. They (design team) would come back with me with questions about data & metrics. They were more interested in what the…

Just to add onto this, there's a whole field of people who design things with human psychology in mind. For example, when you got onto Twitter, they _could_ show you how many notifications you have right away, but they implemented an artificial delay so you stare at it intently and when it finally shows you feel gratification [1].

So while a design may not make sense right away, there may be other factors at play.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/vv5jkb/the-secret-ways-so...

Re: Software sucks

#59

The HN hug of death strikes again. Cached version from Google: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:E3wiNT...

Definitely not. My site hits the front page of Reddit a few times a year and handles it just fine. Today's HN hit was only about twice as much traffic as a typical day.

Re: Software sucks

#60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, that's really bad if that's the case; it means that a mis-click can poison your search results and make them less useful. I get that Google's all about saving clicks now, but I've noticed between maps and other apps (Google Music comes to mind) the extra inference sometimes just makes me scared to click on things. Can you at least long press or something to remove a location from your history?

This is usually true for any big website you browse on the internet. Any click on Facebook or Amazon is influencing the content you're going to see. Google has a user history website where you can see everything they recorded from Search and other apps, and you can delete the entries

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with modern recommendation systems. It's like somebody decided "no, the user can't click a 'show-me-more-like-this' button, it has to be automatic" and now I have to treat every website like I'm doing reinforcement training with a cat.

But at least with AI there's something marginally close to an excuse, because you need a ton of data to make it work. With maps it's just plain and simple bad UX design, I can't think of any reason why locations shouldn't be sorted by last visited instead of last clicked.

> Google has a user history website

From a usability standpoint, if it's not accessible from the same same interface where your results are displayed, then it doesn't exist.

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