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Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#181

Post by FussyZeus »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #166
FussyZeus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the guesses need to be good . I make it a point to avoid criticizing applications for not being power usery enough but there's a line you can draw where it becomes clear that the guesses are too frequent and consuming too much computing power, just to be ignored. I've seen this a lot with my mother in particular, who is certainly not a power user but knows enough to get by, struggle to use software that's tryi…

It's like how Microsoft announced they were going to use advanced AI to predict when would be a good time to reboot people's PCs for updates instead of, you know, just fucking letting them pick.

Or the myriad of ways I struggle with my Apple products that are almost universally black boxes in which stuff goes and functionality comes out, without any way to change or debug behaviors.

Apple seems to get it right pretty consistently, which is why I keep their stuff. But when it does manage to go wrong, holy shit debugging it is an absolute nightmare.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#182

Post by jeffhuys »

BubRoss wrote: post #30
joncrane wrote: post #2

Kind 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.

It depends on the TV or tuner box. Some are very fast and some are very slow. It is something you have to test before buying if you can.

Yeah, it sucks though that most tv providers supply the lowest-specced box they can provide. For my parents it was bad when they bought a 4k television, and the box "supports" that, though since some firmware update it starts lagging every 20secs. Dropped frames and the usual video-"smudge". I hope they get a (FREE) update soon. Because this is just a broken promise.

And I'm not even talking about the Netflix "app" that's on there. Holy s#!t that's slow. Or the TV-guide. They now resort to teletext because that's much faster... I mean...

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#183

Post by PaulHoule »

The "things shifting around" may be very deliberate.

I've noticed that many advertising-supported pages (say trade publications such as 'FierceWireless') are a disaster on mobile with ads and other intrusive pop-ins causing page elements to move all around to the point where it isn't worth trying to click anything because it won't be there by the time your finger gets there -- but "oops!" you clicked on an ad so the cash register goes KA-CHING!

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#184

Post by josinalvo »

naravara wrote: post #141
feanaro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a large part of the unintuitiveness of keyboard interfaces is not actually an intrinsic quality of keyboard interfaces since they're so often conflated with command-line or TUI interfaces. There might be an alternative but yet undiscovered paradigm which combines the best of both worlds: keyboard control and intuitive, beautiful, graphical widgets. To motivate this with a somewhat blunt example, what if w…

>To motivate this with a somewhat blunt example, what if we had a typical GUI but named each control (button, field, etc) with a short code (1-2 letters), in the style of Vimperator/Tridactyl/Vimium? Excel basically does this. If you hold down alt it hovers the companion hotkey above each function on the ribbon. It is very handy for learning your way around. I think this is actually the big challenge with keyboard in…

> no clue what they're doing when you put a controller in their hands.

May I agree to that?

I am a power user by any measure (CS major and program for a living) but still fail to grasp the controls of the simplest video game, to the point that, after hours of play, I still confuse (say) jump and attack

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#186

Post by dwheeler »

It is absolutely true. I don't know of any current computer that comes close to the low latency of the 8-bit Apple //e for example. Here's a survey:

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/261148-modern-computer...

That survey shows that the Apple //e latency from keypress to screen display of 30 milliseconds is something current computers don't even approach, even though their processors are far faster.

Here's another article: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-latency-problem-why-modern-gamin...

Of course there are reasons for this. We demand a lot more functionality. But there are costs to the functionality. In addition, most systems are not designed to minimize latency or jitter.

I believe we could do a lot better, but it would require that more hardware and software developers care about it.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#187

Post by WaltPurvis »

"There's no reason for Twitter to use a mouse. There's nothing mousey about this website, not a damn thing twitter: i need to navigate through a linear list and perform one of four actions on discrete items, almost all text-based"

He's apparently never bothered to learn Twitter's built-in keyboard shortcuts. You can do almost everything on Twitter without touching a mouse.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#188

Post by jessriedel »

ineedasername wrote: post #175
normalnorm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. So you are telling me that wanting to see the name of a given street without having to zoom 10000x (and even then sometimes...) or figuring out how to get the directions to and from somewhere are "power users needs"? Give me a break. Google maps was way easier to user as a map b…

Getting directions is simple. Even the author doesn't take issue with that specific functionality. And I've never had an issue with Google maps hiding street names when there was ample room to show them, but if you're more than a little zoomed out, there isn't that room. Showing only major roads is a decent trade off, as is the mouse scroll wheel for zoom in/out. Or maybe it's my own failure of imagination: how would…

There are definitely cases where I am so zoomed in that only a couple of roads are visible on the entire screen, yet there is no name on a road and I have to drag the view down the road multiple screen widths until I can see the name. (This isn't a trade-off for advertising, it's just a flaw.)

Edit: In fact, I just confirmed it now. Opened up Google Maps and started looking at small roads. For the third road I checked, Maps wouldn't show a name no matter how far I zoomed in, and I had to drag the view as described above.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#189

Post by blackearl »

keedon wrote: post #137
blackearl wrote: post #26

>Mice are bad. Mice are absolutely terrible. Bah humbug, I hate modern technology! This luddite author should go into goat herding if they hate modern tech so much.

The computer mouse was invented back in the 60s, its hardly modern technology

Doesn't that make the author even more wrong?

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#190

Post by simias »

ineedasername wrote: post #175
normalnorm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> popular service 'x' doesn't exactly fit my power user need 'y', therefore x is hopelessly borked, poorly designed, and borderline useless. So you are telling me that wanting to see the name of a given street without having to zoom 10000x (and even then sometimes...) or figuring out how to get the directions to and from somewhere are "power users needs"? Give me a break. Google maps was way easier to user as a map b…

Getting directions is simple. Even the author doesn't take issue with that specific functionality. And I've never had an issue with Google maps hiding street names when there was ample room to show them, but if you're more than a little zoomed out, there isn't that room. Showing only major roads is a decent trade off, as is the mouse scroll wheel for zoom in/out. Or maybe it's my own failure of imagination: how would…

It's really not about not having enough room. An example that I found immediately zooming at some random location on Google Maps: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20191219-174804_map.png

Note that none of the larger roads leading to the roundabout at the top-left is named, while some (but not all) smaller streets names are here. Instead you have the "D509" label copy/pasted haphazardly but that's not the actual name of the boulevard that would be used on a post address so it's of very limited use (and even leaving those labels in there's plenty of room to add the actual street name).

Here's Open Street Map for the same map at a similar zoom level: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20191219-175553_map-osm.png

OSM doesn't have all the bells and whistles of GMaps, but as far as the map itself it's vastly superior IMO.

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