Live data from Hacker News

The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

uxdesign.cc

321–330 of 490 posts

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sort of “set to X decibels louder than ambient noise” feature would be pretty amazing, actually.

My car does this and it's annoying as crap. Luckily it is easily disabled. Audi calls it GALA - "Graduated Audio Level Adjustment."

In my VW it's linked to the car speed and I would not want to give this away. Turning the volume up and down when entering the highway or a slow stretch was really annoying on my old car.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be useful if you pointed out what you’re referring to. I assume it’s the little volume control on QuickTime player?

It took me more than a few seconds to even find the control. I guess that's why it's so bad!

To be honest, without reading the comments I actually would not have realized that there's a volume control visible on this screen.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#324
It's a long time ago, but I remember a real world volume control even worse than these playful examples.

My friend had a Hifi set where turning the volume knob would digitally update the dB value on the display.

This in itself is a bad idea, as most people don't understand decibels and how it's a non-linear scale.

But it gets worse. The dB value did not indicate current output, it indicated "remaining" dB that the set could output.

So if the value is 0, it means volume is at full output. Of course, you'd normally notice that when music is playing, but you can have the scare of your life when thinking its down and then switching input sources. Or turning of music, dialing down, and then turning it on again.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#325

Car manufacturers are easily the winners here. If your car’s audio system doesn’t have a simple knob you can grab and twist, well, that just sucks.

Ford moved volume control to the touchscreen, but people wanted a knob. Solution? They stuck a knob to the touchscreen. Under the knob is an artificial "finger" that touches the screen. I haven't used it personally so all I can say is it's a hilarious solution. https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/02/im-obsessed-with-the-ford-...

This reminds me how on some home audio systems when you change volume using buttons on remote control, a servo motor turns knob of the potentiometer.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#326

Apple's volume control is laughable. That stupid blipping noise for "feedback" as if you couldn't hear the sounds that is already playing. Naturally the bip is at a squarker bursting volume because all the hip kids listem to music compressed into oblivion and a bit of spare dynamic range is not something any Apple customer will ever understand. I am sure many fanbois bemoan the fact that their hi-fi does not have the…

That "blip" is to give you feedback when sound isn't actually playing. And, you can turn it off if you want to (System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects > Play feedback when volume is changed). I leave mine turned off; holding down Shift temporarily re-enables it.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#327

Apple's volume control is laughable. That stupid blipping noise for "feedback" as if you couldn't hear the sounds that is already playing. Naturally the bip is at a squarker bursting volume because all the hip kids listem to music compressed into oblivion and a bit of spare dynamic range is not something any Apple customer will ever understand. I am sure many fanbois bemoan the fact that their hi-fi does not have the…

I haven't heard that blip in years. Is it still around?

Edit: I see you can enable it, does it default to off on the touchbar Macbooks?

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#328
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams’ notifications on Mac are an ongoing debacle. Because they are Microsoft’s own implementation, rather than using the system API, not only do they not respect DND, they also helpfully get lost behind other notifications that come in from properly designed applications. According to the Microsoft admin updates I’m subscribed to, native notifications on Mac have been in a beta channel for months, with a full rollo…

To add insult, the notifications are a separate window on macOS. So when you use cmd+tab to switch _to_ Teams, you might end up in that notifications window. Even when there are no Teams notifications, that window remains. This is very painful when in full-screen mode, as cmd-tabbing to Teams simply doesn’t work. I’m on the beta where you can switch to native notifications, but they’ve only implemented that (poorly)…

If you’re on a 2nd space in macOS, typing CMD-TAB to switch to the Teams window in 1st space will NOT display Teams and will keep you in 2nd space.

Breaking the native CMD-TAB shortcut is breathtaking…

(Workaround: switch to any other app in 1st space first, then switch to Teams…)

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#329
post #36

I think the worst UI is simply the Teams one, because it presents as an app volume control but then simply controls the global device volume . Fuck off, you are not the only app running. But that comes second to the microphone gain control, which Teams similarly exerts unilateral control over - only this time through an automated algorithm that for some microphone types just ends up muting them entirely. It's wild, y…

Microsoft Teams UI is so bad in so many different ways. And in worst way possible - where it works enough for management to not ditch it, but doing something ridiculous on every occasion.

Re: The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)

#330
post #59

Apple won this back in 1999: https://i.imgur.com/V9WQ8Gc.png

Speaking of Apple, it is more than a little frustrating that if I start driving with Google Maps, and I realise it's too quiet, the volume control changes the Ringer instead of the media volume unless I time it to be while she is speaking. Which is kind of tough if it's really quiet, and hard to catch during shorter snippets anyway. I remember on Android when the app had focus it'd always change the media volume in t…

Cleverness over predictability. Instead of removing or even hiding complexity they obfuscate it. It seems like a consistent theme with Apple's designs.
Post reply on HN