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We need physical audio kill switches

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Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#371

Post by perryizgr8 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #192

>I hit the mute button on my MacBook Pro Touchbar, and it took a solid two seconds for it to register. My ears were ringing throughout the whole call. This is unacceptable. The USB-C era MacBook Pros had some serious degradation in the audio department. The previous much loved generation, you plug headphones in the audio system switches to them so fast it's perceivable as instant, the USB-C era there is at best a 0.5…

I have an old Macbook air, and it has weird behavior with the headphone jack, too. Suppose I am playing a youtube video on the laptop speakers. I pause it, grab my headphones, plug them in and resume playback. For a split second, the sound will play from the speakers, and then switch to the headphones. Even though the headphones were plugged in ~10 seconds ago.

My new HP laptop is even worse. If you plug in a headphone while audio is playing, it will just crash the app that is playing. Youtube tab will crash, vlc will crash, Zoom will crash, Skype will crash. It's something I never thought remotely possible.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#372

Post by taneq »

tetris11 wrote: post #27
onion-soup wrote: post #11

Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.

Every microwave I have ever owned have been under $30, purely because I didn't want to go digital. Analogue egg-timer knob - good enough accuracy, and instantly pliable

Yep, our current microwave actually has a really well thought-out digital interface. Probably the best digital microwave interface I've ever seen. Still inferior to the analog twist-knob on the one we had when I was a kid.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#373

Post by puranjay »

WalterBright wrote: post #276
pilsetnieks wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Steve Jobs really do that? Unless you mean going from a text based CLI to a graphic UI but even those had plenty of words, especially those well thought out. When Jobs had to choose a washing machine for his family, he chose a Miele with plenty of words on it: https://9to5mac.com/2011/03/07/how-steve-jobs-picks-a-washer...

> Did Steve Jobs really do that? Famously, using a trash can instead of "DELETE". A Mac evangelist came to my workplace shortly after the Mac was released. His entire presentation was about how icons were far better than words. He asserted the function of the icons was obvious, and so needed no explanation. He passed around a sheet of paper with a bunch of icons on it, and said isn't that right? This all fell apart w…

Words are better than icons - as long as you speak the language.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#374

Post by ckolkey »

icelancer wrote: post #132
liability wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least microwaves with digital controls actually have full numpads. Every digital-control oven I've ever had the misfortune of using only has increment/decrement buttons. Want to set the oven to 450F? Have fun pressing the increment button twenty times for five degree increments starting at 350F. It's an abomination.

This is such a weird thing that we accept as normal. Completely agree it's absurd that on the microwave we have a numpad and on an oven we have up/down arrows with an arbitrary starting point (mine is 350 degF).

I'm on my phone, so it's a bit difficult to look up, but 350 isn't actually arbitrary. It's a temperature that is hot enough to allow you to get a maliard reaction without being so hot that you easily burn food.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#375

Post by skohan »

jayd16 wrote: post #345
skohan wrote: post #126

I've been thinking the same about power switches lately. If I turn a flashlight, or an old radio on or off, I flip a switch and get the result I want. With my 65 EUR gamepad, or 300 EUR headphones, I hold a button and wait several seconds for the result. Why has UX regressed so much in these areas?

Probably because you actually don't want your gamepad to turn off as you fumble a combo or your headphones to turn off as you operate buttons you can't see. In other cases its usually to double dip on input components.

I don't want a button, I want a physical switch with two positions in a place where I am not likely to switch it accidentally.

And when I switch it, it should turn on or off fast enough close to instantly: this should not be a high-cost operation which requires a UX mitigation.

If I toggle a light switch accidentally, I'm not concerned about it, because it's so easy and fast to correct my mistake.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#376

Post by CamperBob2 »

puranjay wrote: post #373
WalterBright wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did Steve Jobs really do that? Famously, using a trash can instead of "DELETE". A Mac evangelist came to my workplace shortly after the Mac was released. His entire presentation was about how icons were far better than words. He asserted the function of the icons was obvious, and so needed no explanation. He passed around a sheet of paper with a bunch of icons on it, and said isn't that right? This all fell apart w…

Words are better than icons - as long as you speak the language.

Or if you're a verbal thinker rather than a visual thinker. I can learn enough of $LANGUAGE to operate a control panel in less time than I can puzzle out the average set of Ikea assembly instructions.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#377

Post by atorodius »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #361
onion-soup wrote: post #11

Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.

One of my favourite features (if you could call it a feature) of gas stoves is that you can immediately tell if it's on or not. It's a lot easier to accidentally melt a plastic chopping board onto an electric stove than a gas one, and much harder to clean off when you do.

I don’t get why stoves don’t have some more obvious visual indicator for this. Could imagine a circle of red LEDs around each stove.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#378

Post by jwr »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #361
onion-soup wrote: post #11

Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.

One of my favourite features (if you could call it a feature) of gas stoves is that you can immediately tell if it's on or not. It's a lot easier to accidentally melt a plastic chopping board onto an electric stove than a gas one, and much harder to clean off when you do.

> much harder to clean off when you do

That's only true for the type of electric stove that is still (bizarrely) popular in the US, with exposed spiral heaters. At least in the EU electric stoves are all glass. And many of them are induction heaters, which means your plastic chopping board wouldn't even notice being on the heater.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#379

Post by beenBoutIT »

onion-soup wrote: post #11

Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.

The advent of touchscreen technology and its subsequent ubiquitous adoption replacing physical controls of all kinds across devices of all kinds is easily the single most ruinous thing to happen to UI in the modern history of design.

Re: We need physical audio kill switches

#380

Post by antfarm »

onion-soup wrote: post #11

Nothing will ever come close to convenience of analogue volume knobs. They give both immediate action and infinite granular control. Same goes for kitchen stoves. All the modern touch controls with step-based control is the absolute nightmare in terms of UI.

Maybe a fader.
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