71–80 of 418 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then don't use a Mac. Your solution to the dead-end of reporting bugs to Apple, is to recommend that I don't use a Mac? No, the solution is that Apple open their bug reporting up.
They don't seem to want to do that. Now what?
So, your amazing feat of engineering phone, with a color retina display, audio-video capabillity, 700.000 apps, gyroscope, HD cameras, etc has some extra stuff taking 3GB drive space (of the 16GB device). Your amazing, multi million lines of code Windows desktop, the work of some 1000 people or more, has a problem with indexing. The protocol and apps that connect you via email to everyone you want, free, globally and…
You've totally missed the point of his post. You're talking about Scott Hanselman here, he does understand all that.
"Is this a speed problem? Are we feeling we have to develop too fast and loose? Is it a quality issue? Have we forgotten the art and science of Software QA? Is it a people problem? Are folks just not passionate about their software enough to fix it? I think it's all of the above. We need to care and we need the collective will to fix it."
I.e, he attributes things to lack of: care, passionate people, the forgotten art and science of QA, etc. Which is BS. There will ALWAYS be many bugs and problems in systems that large in scope and complexity.
And it's not because "the guys that designed, say, GMail or FCP (that he complains about) do not care, or lack passion, or have forgotten the "art and science" of software QA.
Plus, the kind of bugs he describes are not that important compared to what we have actually achieved and DOES work.
FCP crashing when you "scroll too fast" while rendering?
Give me a break, these linear editing systems cost tens of millions of dollars, took half a room, and didn't operate in real time just 15 years ago. Oh, and had just as many bugs, and you needed support staff from Avid or whatever to come over to set them up. Now thousands of people all over the world edit their films and documentaries in their laptops.
- Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones.
- All contacts in one .txt document.
- Memorize most frequently used contacts.
- No smart phone.
- No tablet.
- No Kindle.
- No palm pilot.
- No Facebook.
- New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology.
- Wash dishes by hand. (Fuck the 48 buttons on the dishwasher.)
- Use Firefox.
- Use dedicated Casio camera with USB interface.
I don't use any modern technology that replaces perfectly good methods with something unnecessary just because everyone else is doing it.
The big lie is we as humans have it all together. That we are the superior species on the planet and we can do what the hell we want. Global warming, destruction of nature, loss of liberty because governments we elect betray us - don't worry, somebody else will fix that, probably some Y Combinator startup. No wait, driverless cars are the answer. Us humans hallucinate in our own private world more than we interface w…
>With the terrifying state the planet is in, we should all be upset. Eh, really? What I find so amusing about people like you and me (and OP) whining about how imperfect the world is that the world has gotten so much better, even in our lifetimes. And yeah, if you are a white American-born male, it might not seem that way- in fact, the world might not have gotten better for you. If you aren't skilled, it almost certa…
So, your amazing feat of engineering phone, with a color retina display, audio-video capabillity, 700.000 apps, gyroscope, HD cameras, etc has some extra stuff taking 3GB drive space (of the 16GB device). Your amazing, multi million lines of code Windows desktop, the work of some 1000 people or more, has a problem with indexing. The protocol and apps that connect you via email to everyone you want, free, globally and…
Stop. Re-read the post. Try to understand the point of the post. Understand what it is he's saying about process , craftsmanship and trying to fix things that are broken instead of making excuses. Understand it as a call to action to do better, to be better and to care more. Then re-read your response and see what a defensive crouch you immediately took. How that immediate defensive reaction led you to miss these poi…
"Calls to action to do better" are a dime a dozen.
You can get them in $5 self-help books, motivational posters and bs marketing gurus. For all I know, they come free with Cheetos.
The problems he describes are not because of some "lack of craftmanship". They are inevitable in large scale, enormous complexity systems, that also have to SHIP some day. Things that CAN get fixed, ARE getting fixed.
>Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution, and I believe that Scott is explicitly calling for the latter and implicitly calling for the rest.
Saying that "Time, money, education and understanding are required to implement a solution" means absolutely nothing. At best is a platitude that goes without saying.
Do you or Scott thinks that the major software players do not spend time, money, education and understanding on what they are making?
Microsoft, one of the software makers he complains about (and he knows internally), spends tons of money on testing and QA. And it has some of the top minds in software engineering. Ditto for Apple, ditto for Google.
My sentiments exactly. I got so tired of being upset with the horrendous human design in modern technology that I took action. What I've done: - Buy 2 $350 laptops every year. Move all data. Give away old ones. - All contacts in one .txt document. - Memorize most frequently used contacts. - No smart phone. - No tablet. - No Kindle. - No palm pilot. - No Facebook. - New car ('12 Hyandai) with minimal technology. - Was…
...but no smart phone? Blasphemous.
As irritating as all these bugs are, you, the consumer, will not wait for a perfect product but will instead settle for the crappy one that's already available. Maybe this will change for areas where innovation reaches some kind of plateau, marginal utility of new whizbang features will fall and marginal utility of bug-freeness will rise.
Reading his laundry-list of paper cuts, it looks like many of them (around 50%?) relate to one particular issue: synchronisation. It keeps coming up, time and again, from his email woes (seriously, folks, didn't we solve this one back in 1980?) through to the borked address books, contact lists, and photo streams. Sync software usually takes a conservative approach to deleting or merging records, and leaves duplicate…
The tradeoff is a more reliable "less messy" world, but much less innovation.
This doesn't mean that software requires less QA or design, just that it's a trade-off of two different modes of operating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't seem to want to do that. Now what?
Get lots of technical people who want good bug reporting to want open bug tracking.
If it gets enough attention, Apple will have to care.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My position is the ultimate market-deciding capitalist answer: I don't buy broken products.
How do you know the product is broken before you buy it?