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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)

#151

Post by BlueTemplar »

toddmorey wrote: post #99
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #35

This post again with its ridiculous ranting examples. "This text searching program that searches text against text is way faster and simpler than a fully rendered, interactive map of the entire world with accurate roads and precision at the foot / meter level." No. Shit, really? Get out of town. Yes, some very popular apps have bad UX. But some apps have incredible UX. Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the g…

I do wish shortcuts on web apps would be more universally implemented and more universally discoverable. I wish browsers had a common hotkey that would show available shortcuts, for example. The biggest problem with his argument is that, done correctly, a mouse augments the keyboard and does not replace it. If you've ever seen a good print production artist, that person can absolutely FLY around a very visual program…

I wish people stopped using the browser like it's an OS.

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

#153

Post by opless »

ModernMech wrote: post #95
soulofmischief wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can easily setup a command line interface or Linux system and move blazing fast Well... not really. Terminal response times are way slower than they used to be in the 80's. Sure, we have greater throughput, but we also have greater latency. https://danluu.com/term-latency/

There's also this: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/143 (Weird slowness scolling text in the console ) """ It's caused by conhost.exe excessively hammering the registry to query the following two values: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell\TabletMode HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM\ColorPrevalence Having previously reported this issue through Feedback Hub (to no avail), let m…

It's a very common problem/solution. Since the beginning of Windows NT I believe

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

#154

Post by webmobdev »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #35

This post again with its ridiculous ranting examples. "This text searching program that searches text against text is way faster and simpler than a fully rendered, interactive map of the entire world with accurate roads and precision at the foot / meter level." No. Shit, really? Get out of town. Yes, some very popular apps have bad UX. But some apps have incredible UX. Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the g…

> Cherry picking the bad ones while ignoring the good ones to prove a point is boring and not reflective of the actual industry.

Can you give us examples of the "good ones" for the "bad" examples he cited.

> These posts fondly remember just the speed, but always seem to forget the frustrations, or re-imagine them to be something we treasured.

No, he is saying that certain paradigms made computers fast in the past and instead of adopting and working progressively on them, we have totally abandoned them. He is not advocating embracing the past, wart and all, but only of what was good. He is not asking us to ditch Windows or Macs or the web and go back to our DOS / Unix era.

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

#155

Post by SubiculumCode »

ncallaway wrote: post #100
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map . It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-t…

> It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map. It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-turn directions for people who know where they are and where they are going; As it turns out, that is probably the most popular use case for maps in the world. Note also that for most smartphone users of Google Maps the use-case is actually much broader than that. The UI flow also totally…

Only thing I'd like is for maps to not give directions for the parts that are obvious for you since you'd done that part a million times i.e. from your home, turn right to get to the freeway

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

#158

Post by pjc50 »

Arnt wrote: post #98
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I'd say the examples are perfectly good and on-point. While dealing with autoexec.bat and random BSODs wasn't fun, it's entirely orthogonal to the fact that a DOS-era POS still offers orders of magnitude better UX than current-era browser POSes, or than most web apps for that matter. It also doesn't change the fact that Google Maps is very bad at being a map . It's entire UI flow is oriented for giving turn-by-t…

What makes Google Maps bad? My computer in 1983 didn't have a map application at all, how can Google Maps possibly be bad compared to that? And if I had had a map application (I'm sure they existed) it would have taken several minutes to load from cassette tape. That's not faster than Google Maps, either perceptually or objectively.

There was the BBC Domesday book that let you scroll around annotated maps on a BBC micro. They loaded in near-realtime from laserdisc. It was fantastically expensive, and also so tightly tied to its technology that it was impossible to emulate for years.

I believe around 2010 the BBC managed to get it on the web, but this seems to have died again.

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

#160

Post by SilasX »

ergothus wrote: post #4

> almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 .... amber-screen library computer in 1998: type in two words and hit F3. search results appear instantly. .... now: type in two words, wait for an AJAX popup. get a throbber for five seconds. oops you pressed a key, your results are erased So we start with something 15 years AFTER the title as evidence of the "good" times, then make a vague…

>Um....no. [Wikipedia is] less convenient than a mouse, but way better than the function key-based commands than the author lists.

Okay, but slap on an extension, and Wikipedia is much more usable without a mouse! For example, VimFX/Vimium allow you to click links (and do a bunch of other stuff) from the keyboard, and that makes it tremendously more usable.

Of course, that’s only true because Wikipedia is standards compliant and doesn’t break extensions’ ability to see links, which is not universally true of websites.

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