This also reminds me of the conspiracy perpetrated by the industry to remove the antiglare treatment of laptop screens and at the same time reduce the screen area by changing the aspect ratio. All this, of course, was done solely for the benefit of the consumer. (Oh, that, and a wild ornament around the keyboard.)
Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
111–120 of 451 posts
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#112Kind of related: does anyone else notice how long it takes to change channels on the TV these days? It used to be instantaneous when cable first came out and at some point it became this laggy experience where you'll press buttons on the remote and the channel takes forever to change. I hate it and it's one of the reasons I don't have cable any more.
The central reason is that modern video codecs use I-frames and P-frames (sometimes also B-frames; even though as far as I am aware, these are not used for TV broadcasts); see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Video_compression... I-frames are only sent, say, once or twice a second. When a channel is switched, the TV has to wait for the next I-frame, since P-frames (and B-frames) only encode the difference t…
> When a channel is switched, the TV has to wait for the next I-frame, since P-frames (and B-frames) only encode the difference to the previous I-frame (or to the previous and next I-frame in the case of B-frames).
You can apply the encoded difference to a grey (or black!) screen, the way (IIRC) VLC does in such cases. This means that the user immediately gets a hint of what's happening onscreen, especially since the audio can start playing immediately (also, often the P/B-frames replace a large portion of the on-screen content as people move around, etc.). Surely it isn't any worse than analog TV "snow".
If it looks too weird for the average user, make it an "advanced" option - 'quick' channel changes or something.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#113[deleted]
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#114See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law
Ah, the same Nickle's Worth who said (iirc), "Europeans call me by name. Americans call me by value."
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#115This seems to be conflating several separate problems
1) I can't manipulate data in my resultset well enough in google map.
2) Searches are too slow.
3) Mousing is bad.
Now, you can argue that those are related.
The first two are an argument for moving away from full-page post/response applications to SPA-style applications where the data is all in browser memory and as you manipulate it you're doing stuff on the client and pulling data from the server as needed, desktop style.
The latter? I don't know why he had to go back to DOS guis. Plenty of windowed UIs are very keyboard friendly. Tab indexes, hotkeys, etc.
> GUIs are in no way more intuitive than keyboard interfaces using function keys such as the POS I posted earlier. Nor do they need to be.
This is where he loses me. I remember the days of keyboard UIs. They almost all suffered from being opaque. You can't say "the problem is opaque UIs" when that describes the vast majority of keyboard-based UIs.
While there are obviously ways to create exceptions, GUIs are intrinsically more self-documenting than keyboard inputs, because GUIs require that the UI be presented on the screen to the user, and keyboard inputs do not.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#116Kind of related: does anyone else notice how long it takes to change channels on the TV these days? It used to be instantaneous when cable first came out and at some point it became this laggy experience where you'll press buttons on the remote and the channel takes forever to change. I hate it and it's one of the reasons I don't have cable any more.
My favorite "the world is terrible" curmudgeon observation is how awful hotel TVs (and hotel TV remotes) are. Every single hotel room TV I've had the displeasure of using in the last N years takes more than 20 seconds to turn on after multiple button-presses, starts out on a terrible in-house channel at high volume regardless of the last-watched channel+volume, takes multiple seconds to change channels, and has no re…
While in Japan, the TVs would often turn on the moment you entered the room. This was fine, as I would mute them or turn them off. At one hotel, I managed to bug one out such that volume didn't work anymore. No worries, I'll just turn it off. Except when I went to turn it off, it crashed the TV app and it automatically restarted. All the wires were integrated so they couldn't be tampered with and the unit had no real buttons. I thought I was going to have to sleep with the same four very excitable adverts on rotation blasting into my ears!
Mercifully, pressing the TV Source button triggered a different app that didn't crash when I pressed the off button, and in what must be the software engineering achievement of the decade, the off button turned off the screen.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?
Search for destinations along your route is (finally) a feature in the gmaps mobile app. It isn't in the web-app. Apparently Google agrees that it is a desirable feature. Why does the UI-limited, small screen experience surpass the rich desktop experience?
You can do it on the desktop app, via the add a stop feature. If you add a stop and then enter a search term ("coffee shops"), you'll see matching results along your route. (IIRC it doesn't show you the added travel time like the mobile app does, though. Maybe that's what you're referring to?)
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless I'm very mistaken about modern digital transmissions, cable coming into the house is still based on a broadcast system, which means you're getting everything all the time. The frames are all there for every channel, they're just not being read. I don't know how much processing or memory it would take to read and store frames for surrounding channels to the one you're on, but I imagine its possible.
probably not much because you don't need to decompress them, just keep in volatile memory
>
probably not much because you don't need to decompress them, just keep in volatile memory
How do you plan to obtain I-frames without decompressing them?
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#119There are some good points here, but of course I am going to ignore those to talk instead about the stuff I disagree with! The section about google maps follows a form of criticism that is widespread and particularly annoys me, namely => popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. There is always room for improvement, but a…
Edit: yes. Rewrote half of it. The thing with Google Maps was that it was actually reasonably good and intuitive on mobile until sometime 5 or 7 years ago when someone decided it had to be "simplified". The old version was easy: you enter "to" and "from", and it gives you a route. I think it also had multiple entry points so you could choose "navigate", "browse" and "timeline" or something directly from the system me…
>The thing with Google Maps was that it was actually reasonably good and intuitive on mobile until sometime 5 or 7 years ago when someone (probably a UX designer : ) decided it had to be simplified.
All Google stuff ended up doing this when they started trying to standardize their "design language" across their services. They developed a very annoying habit of hiding every useful function or bit of relevant contextual information inside a poorly marked hamburger menu somewhere. It's extremely annoying from a discoverability perspective and I strongly suspect any UX designers involved lost a lot of arguments for a decision like that to get codified.
Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The example for maps is not a "hyper specific use case": "The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding." That's a common use case. The problem with Google maps (and the problem with a lot of modern software) is, as you say, it makes a lot of gu…
Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?
Because if you plan to travel far you often want to plan a stop along the way to eat, use the toilet and refill anf maybe rest a bit in some hopefully interesting place.