TBH, as soon as I saw the change from a Wacom digitizer to N-Trig's I cringed. I don't know what differences there are between the technologies they each use, but Wacom's is definitely more responsive on the whole. I like that they aren't using a 16:9 aspect ratio for the screen, but the switch away from Wacom kept me from making the Surface an automatic purchase.
Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
131–140 of 256 posts
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#132"You hear a lot about MS being this massive company that doesn’t listen but that’s really not fair in this case." Every large company is made up of thousands of individual people, many of which really care about making a good product and making customers happy. The whole question in managing a big company is how to get out of the way of that natural process, while still coordinating all the disparate groups so that t…
Actually MS has always listened. The problem has been (a) whom they listened to (the user has usually not been their customer) and (b) lack of "taste". MS Office is, for good and ill, exactly what you get when you give users what they ask for and have no taste.
Office 2013, specifically Excel and Word are fantastic.
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
money? "optimal experience" I'm all for supporting open source. But seriously, it took me about 20-30 hours to get my FreeNAS setup working (the way I wanted) (getting the hardware together, configuring... lots and lots of configuring). And I'm definitely not going to say that that project is "end user friendly". I really really love open source projects but I'm willing to put down that they don't always meet the end…
Pretty sure chillingeffect's idea is to have Microsoft behind it, so I'm not sure how that applies.
Sorry, I didn't really understand the parents as that. I guess a more on topic reason might be:
They can barely manage a team of their own engineers to get this product out. Throwing more guys at it isn't going to help necessarily. Not without significantly more overhead and more managers. I think mystical man month definitely still applies to open source projects as well.
that and microsoft is just not good at managing open source. And I can't imagine anyone would want to work on the windows kernel without being paid to do so >_>
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#134Why don't they just take off the Windows button? Can't you just swipe in from the right side of the screen to see the on-screen version? There's a Windows button in the task bar as well.
It's more or less like the home button on an iPhone or iPad. Gestures are good, but there are scenarios where you can't easily use them or a novice user won't know about them. The Start button doesn't always show up in Desktop scenarios.
Also, I think you can use it to wake a device from sleep?
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
all the issues he experienced seem like they would be quite obvious It's the classic QA paradox. The typical hacker world view doesn't prioritize such feel issues enough. Even in today's UX focused world, stylus specific issues aren't widely understood. Combine the dynamics of the Asch conformity experiment, and it makes perfect sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnT2FcuZaYI
The typical hacker shouldn't be testing this device, then. I'm sure Microsoft has someone with the skills on their teams.
Yes, but did the management of the team realize the above, and did that manager make sure the team would work to produce good results in this area?
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
People make mistakes. Every piece of software ever written has bugs: I don't think that means everyone's process is rotten. It just means they are human.
Ok, but large corporations are supposed to be able to avoid human centric mistakes with good operations workflows that provide checks and balances in their pipeline. I would assume MS is not shipping products directly from the engineering lab to the factory, so for something glaring to get all the way to the customer then there is something wrong in their process that failed to correct for human error.
Ok, but large corporations are supposed to be able to avoid human centric mistakes
They are not supposed to be worse?
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#137Some people are wondering (here and on the previous post) how this problem could have escaped usability testing. My guess is, Gabe seems to have a somewhat unusual grip, so it's more than plausible nobody anticipated this problem. I am not a professional artist, but I've been drawing for more than two decades now. I also have an original Surface Pro because I really wanted to get my hands on a Wacom that could do more than just draw. I've churned out tons of sketches on it using Sketchbook Express.
When his first review of the Pro 3 came out, I could not understand why he had problems with the home button. When I draw, my palm tends to rest on the lower right corner of the screen. This is also how I've seen most other sketchers draw. I could not position myself such that I'd hit where the home button on the Pro 3 is.
However, I've also seen enough people write with really (to me) weird grips. I imagine that it extends to drawing as well.
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#138"You hear a lot about MS being this massive company that doesn’t listen but that’s really not fair in this case." Every large company is made up of thousands of individual people, many of which really care about making a good product and making customers happy. The whole question in managing a big company is how to get out of the way of that natural process, while still coordinating all the disparate groups so that t…
Actually MS has always listened. The problem has been (a) whom they listened to (the user has usually not been their customer) and (b) lack of "taste". MS Office is, for good and ill, exactly what you get when you give users what they ask for and have no taste.
Whatever are you complaining about? Little as I am a fan of the WYSIWYG philosophy, Office is a genuinely spectacular product.
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article, it sounds like the Microsoft folks were kicking themselves for that oversight. To their credit, I've made similar mistakes in my career.
Yes, me too. However i'd hope that for a product as big and important to MS as this then there would be more checks and balances in place to make sure that such things don't get overlooked. It's understandable for one engineer to overlook it, maybe even a whole team but for an entire division of design, engineering, QA, marketing etc? Something is rotten in their process.
The developers were probably using non-final hardware and/or sharing engineering samples if they had samples at all rather than developing drivers to the datasheet. By the time the marketing team got their hands on them the advertising may be booked and pre-orders received from retailers (if they ever actually get their hands on products rather than just arranging final mock ups or production trial run results shipment for photo-shoots etc.).
QA should have had a short window to study this type of issue but is it something that they would delay shipment over?
Basically I would expect the product to ship on schedule unless there was a really critical problem and that there wouldn't be slack in the schedule for weeks of refinement. Component orders may be place 6 months ahead to secure supply so it is hard to flex the schedule without causing inventory problems not to mention messing customers about.
Based on my experience in a CE company that wasn't Microsoft.
Re: Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually MS has always listened. The problem has been (a) whom they listened to (the user has usually not been their customer) and (b) lack of "taste". MS Office is, for good and ill, exactly what you get when you give users what they ask for and have no taste.
Whatever are you complaining about? Little as I am a fan of the WYSIWYG philosophy, Office is a genuinely spectacular product.
Office, like Excel, was mostly complete years ago. The iterations on file format and ribbon bar? Not so useful for most users.