Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by bmurphy1976 » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #20

There 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…

I have a problem rather frequently with Google maps. I zoom in to a small 3x3 mile area and search for something like Chinese restaurants. What usually happens is Google either zooms out to the entire city (a 100x100 mile area) or it zooms away completely back to my home city. That's fucking annoying.

Then I manually place everything back to where I actually wanted it and had it in the first place, and lo and behold it's showing me every kind of restaurant instead of Chinese restaurants. I have to click the search this area button which of course conveniently wasn't on the original screen to get the results I wanted in the first place.

Then I click on a restaurant to look at the pictures and read the reviews and when I'm done I naturally click the back button and it's all gone. I'm back to some other screen, maybe an empty map or one of the screens I was on previously that I didn't want, but it's almost never the list of Chinese restaurants in the small geographic area I was researching in the first place.

And that's just one example of one problem I regularly have with Google Maps. It's a horrible horrible user experience if you aren't using it in the way they think you should be using it.

I don't think this is a power user use case. Everybody wants to look up Chinese restaurants at a family or friend's house at some point in their life. Why is this so fucking hard?

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

#232

Post by kabdib » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #134

kabdib wrote: post #72

I had an Atari ST in a closet, and decided to get rid of it a while back. I pulled it out to test it. The boot sequence, all the way to a desktop with a mouse that moves, takes less than one second. If you boot from a hard drive, maybe another second. For a while I just kept hitting the reset button, marveling at the speed at which the ST came up. Most machines I work with these days take minutes to get rolling. Okay…

> The boot sequence, all the way to a desktop with a mouse that moves, takes less than one second. That's an exceptional case though - the GUI OS was hardwired in ROM. The Amiga was an otherwise comparable machine that had to load much of the OS from disk, and it did take its time to boot to desktop.

Even when the OS was loaded off of a hard drive, the boot time was still about 2-3 seconds (I did measure this).

Not really exceptional.

It took maybe a minute to load off floppy disk. That is STILL shorter than the POST time for every machine I work with these days, with the possible exception of the Raspberry Pi in the closet.

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

#233

Post by kabdib » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

throwGuardian wrote: post #191

kabdib wrote: post #72

I had an Atari ST in a closet, and decided to get rid of it a while back. I pulled it out to test it. The boot sequence, all the way to a desktop with a mouse that moves, takes less than one second. If you boot from a hard drive, maybe another second. For a while I just kept hitting the reset button, marveling at the speed at which the ST came up. Most machines I work with these days take minutes to get rolling. Okay…

An SSD can make a world of difference. Most of the time spent during boot up is in executing random reads (of about 4Kb size) from storage, and SSDs are a factor of magnitude faster there

Sorry, most of a box's boot time is the BIOS and other stuff. The servers I run at work take 3-4 minutes to boot, the last twenty seconds or so is the OS coming up. The consumer PCs I use have a similar ratio.

POST time is crazy bad. It's almost like the engineers working on it don't care.

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

#234

Post by gowld » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #161

JoeSmithson wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tested this and it works as follows; - Open Maps - Search destination. It autocompletes after about 5 characters - Select destination - Screen changes to infobox about the location. There is a prominent "Directions" button - Press "Directions" - It changes to a route view, the Start is autocompleted to Current Location but obviously editable - Press into start location edit box - I can type location or "Choose…

That is 9 or so manual steps and it doesn't become clear until step 7 or so that it can even be done! There's nothing intuitive about this and when someone knows how it works that must be because they've either learned it from someone or kept on experimenting with it until they figured it out. compare this to the original that they "simplified" away: - Open app in navigation mode (step 1) - it shows two boxes, where…

Obviously it's fewer steps if you combine some steps into 1 when paraphrasing.

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

#235

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #53

PostPost wrote: post #44

Earlier 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 it's a map. That's what you do with maps. You browse them, you study them, you mark them up.

I use Google Maps almost daily and this is also my complaint. It's not a hyper-specific use case. Google Maps are good for navigating from point A to point B when you are sure of both, but they suck at being a map. For instance, lack of always-on street names and weird POI handling makes them problematic to use when you want to explore the area you're in.

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

#236

Post by peter_retief » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

Absolutely agree, I remember when hospital clinical data was captured by keyboard hotkeys with no mice. It was quick to learn and lightning fast to capture and search. Along came progress in the form of a visual basic frontend. Network traffic escalated, frozen screens became common, data was corrupted, the computer that was supposed to save time sucked up the energy of busy professionals. This was 30 years ago and it is still in use.

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

#237

Post by gowld » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #192

frobozz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not conducted a survey, but they strike me as reasonably common desires. On a 4-5 hour road trip, I want to take the kids to see a castle or something somewhere around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way. Even just wanting to have lunch somewhere other than Hilton Park or Newport Pagnell would be such a use case. I have also wanted it for visiting someone - I'm going to their house, what is my most convenient option for buy…

I think there is an anti-car bias in Google Maps and similar services. Everything is oriented around the model of "reserve a hotel", "reserve a flight", like you really are on rails like a European. Today's online maps aren't up to the freedom that motorists have to make small deviations from a route. For instance if I drive from here to Boston I am likely to stay at a hotel en-route, that could be anywhere from Alba…

Google Maps shows search results annotated with how much time they add as a detour.

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

#238

Post by aurbano » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #154

sonofaplum wrote: post #53

Earlier 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?

This is exactly what I usually want to do with maps. I have a route I want to plan, and I want to do more than one thing along my route, or see what else is in the area. It's futile in Google Maps. I see no reason that supporting this thing that old mapping software used to support would elevate it "above" other use cases. If you just want a single route, you do one search and you see the result and you never click t…

Not trying to just nitpick, but if we assume that the Google Maps use research and data from users when planning features then the feature you're after may actually not be very common.

And your answer to someone asking "Why do you think that use case is that common?", your first line literally just talks about your use case from your point of view:

> This is exactly what _I_ usually want to do with maps. _I_ have a route _I_ want to plan, and _I_ want to do more than one thing along my route, or see what else is in the area. It's futile in Google Maps.

I'm not saying that wouldn't be useful, it's just that maybe not that many people need it... I guess it was built with the idea that you would just open more tabs to search other things?

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

#239

Post by eitland » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #209

eitland wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changed to an iPhone XR a few weeks ago. The cheap model of iPhone and it still feels way faster than the my latest androids, including Samsung S7 edge and other flagship phones (and yes, I bought them new). I've stuck with Android until now, but now that I can replace the keyboard on iPhone I gave it a chance and I'm super happy with it.

You are comparing a 3 gen old device to the previous gen iPhone. iPhone 7 I had is noticeably laggy with maps and other heavy apps. Meanwhile my Samsung S10e (equivalent to the XR) has more than sufficient performance and has a better screen for a lower price.

I tried to hint at this being a problem also when I bought them new, but I can see that it wasn't to clearly written.

My point is that my current iPhone is the first phone since my Samsung S2 that hasn't disappointed me by being slow more or less immediately after unboxing it.

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

#240

Post by WanderPanda » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #192

frobozz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not conducted a survey, but they strike me as reasonably common desires. On a 4-5 hour road trip, I want to take the kids to see a castle or something somewhere around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way. Even just wanting to have lunch somewhere other than Hilton Park or Newport Pagnell would be such a use case. I have also wanted it for visiting someone - I'm going to their house, what is my most convenient option for buy…

I think there is an anti-car bias in Google Maps and similar services. Everything is oriented around the model of "reserve a hotel", "reserve a flight", like you really are on rails like a European. Today's online maps aren't up to the freedom that motorists have to make small deviations from a route. For instance if I drive from here to Boston I am likely to stay at a hotel en-route, that could be anywhere from Alba…

Wouldn't agree with regard to Apple Maps being "anti-car" when there isn't even a bike mode. Walking- and car-mode are unusable for cycling, with car-mode taking bad routes for cyclists and walking mode giving directions way too late, when a cyclist is already on/past the crossing.