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“Just remove the duck” (2013)

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Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#281

Post by sukilot »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #42
mvdwoord wrote: post #8

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was foo…

Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to…

Jobs also insisted on the awful hockey puck mouse because he thought that a perfect circle was more important than ergonomics.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#282

Post by sukilot »

jjoonathan wrote: post #268
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people who really love Apple's mice, even the notorious "hockey puck" one. (Which to be fair was actually pretty comfortable to use, assuming you ever got the damn thing pointing the right way.) I'm not one of them, but I'm not really a huge fan of mice, period -- and their current weirdo mouse-with-touch-surface certainly offers a lot of gesture control, and it's not that uncomfortable. (Granted, "The…

> even the notorious "hockey puck" one I've always wondered why people hate on it so much -- even if someone prefers to point with their arm rather than their fingers, surely they can understand the appeal of using fingers to point at things?

Fingerpointing is touchscreen. The puck mouse was just awkward pushing with fingers.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#283

Post by agumonkey »

ars wrote: post #141
agumonkey wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love a exhaustive course on this kind of fakery.

How about buttons by crosswalks that don't do anything?

Can't say, my driving instructor told me to pay attention to people near them because it does affect traffic lights (and even sequences of them). Other than that, it's pretty possible it's just a decoy to trigger pedestrians patience because they think lights are about to switch.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#284

Post by larrys »

lotharbot wrote: post #239
larrys wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that obviously Johnson was aware of how the knob worked. And I find that it's funny that people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking and should or would play games with him. "Oh there he goes again" type of thing. I don't think you get to be in a position of being able to fly a President or Vice President of any country by having an attitude and not being fully respe…

> "Johnson was aware of how the knob worked" No, he wasn't. It was intentionally put in place to deceive him, and the deception worked. > "people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking" Most VPs could get the temperature adjusted to their liking. Johnson was a special kind of control freak. He liked to make people uncomfortable by making it extra hot, extra cold, walking around naked…

This book backs up what you are saying (in part):

https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA13&lpg=P...

However as another commenter pointed out the "phony" switch worked.

Plus according the the above book not only did the crewman adjust the temperature when he saw the light flash, but Johnson felt the temperature was adjusted.

The idea here is not whether or not Johnson understood the technology. But I find it hard to believe that a man who is vice President of the United States is so easily duped. He asked for a switch to adjust temperature and he got a switch that could adjust temperature.

Despite the fact that "one of our volunteers was the plane's crew chief" do you think that it's at all possible that the story was somewhat embellished for effect? (Not saying it was but we are not talking about sworn court testimony when someone relates something that happened many years prior, right?)

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#285

Post by sukilot »

bluedino wrote: post #270
TallGuyShort wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to…

Didn't Steve email some iPhone project manager at 11:30pm because he noticed the shade of yellow on one of icons changed slightly?

He emailed a Google VP.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#286

Post by arjunrc »

lmkg wrote: post #202
sstradling wrote: post #193

I'm reminded of a blog post by an old govvie that hated this approach. His argument was that every time we work around a problem in our process, whether it was a bad system or an incompetent co-worker or manager, we became the problem. Every time we added a duck or built a workaround we were building frameworks that would hold a bad policy in place for longer than if we just stopped and said "that's stupid". Adding t…

There's merit to this position. You can think of this as the process/organization equivalent to technical debt. Every problem that you introduce a hacky work-around, that root problem sticks around and keeps generating more and more hacks and work-arounds. The end result is incompetent management. That doesn't mean it's always the wrong decision, though. Sometimes, technical debt is the right trade-off. Sometimes the…

This is how corporate life works & it took five years for me to come to terms with it. However, I have done much better as an Employee (in the eyes of my Manager/Company) ever since.

Once you develop a good reputation by playing the game, you can always fix old bad decisions & at that point, your superiors would actually encourage you to do so.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#287

Post by Ensorceled »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #259
Ensorceled wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all personal on my side; hell, the story is probably apocryphal. I never said he was right or that I agreed with him, in fact I hate Apple Mice and actually find them too small. No idea where you are even getting that. My point is that Steve Jobs was renowned for an obsessive, manic attention to exactly these kinds of detail and usually knew what he wanted and would blow up when he didn't get it; so it takes a…

>Not at all personal on my side; hell, the story is probably apocryphal. You called dchichkov's argument "idiotically cynical". That's a personal attack, even if you didn't mean it that way. >I never said he was right or that I agreed with him, in fact I hate Apple Mice and actually find them too small. No idea where you are even getting that. When you say "completely revolutionize multiple technology industries ACTU…

> You called dchichkov's argument "idiotically cynical". That's a personal attack, even if you didn't mean it that way.

No, I'll admit I meant it that way and I'll stand by it. What I meant is that it isn't a personal issue for me as I thought you were claiming. Those are different things.

> When you say "completely revolutionize multiple technology industries ACTUALLY had vision and a sense of aesthetics" in response to a comment that suggested he was reading expressions, that very heavily implies that Steve was correct. You need to work on wording if you have "no idea" how I got that impression.

No. I'm saying I believe (assuming the story is true) Jobs correctly detected the 1mm difference. I'm also saying I don't agree that the 1mm difference was the right call, certainly not for me. Jobs sense of aesthetics resulted in many great products but a few duds as well.

My point is that since Jobs is literally (in)famous for attention to small details and being a complete hard ass about seeing those details through to the end product, it is silly to not only question a story about his attention to small details but to offer another option as "most likely".

It does not mean I think Jobs walked on water and was always right.

This has blown up way farther than a quick throw away line.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#288

Post by lotharbot »

larrys wrote: post #284
lotharbot wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Johnson was aware of how the knob worked" No, he wasn't. It was intentionally put in place to deceive him, and the deception worked. > "people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking" Most VPs could get the temperature adjusted to their liking. Johnson was a special kind of control freak. He liked to make people uncomfortable by making it extra hot, extra cold, walking around naked…

This book backs up what you are saying (in part): https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA13&lpg=P... However as another commenter pointed out the "phony" switch worked. Plus according the the above book not only did the crewman adjust the temperature when he saw the light flash, but Johnson felt the temperature was adjusted. The idea here is not whether or not Johnson understood the technology. But I fin…

> "I find it hard to believe that a man who is vice President of the United States is so easily duped"

You don't think highly-ranked Air Force officials can pull off a deceptive trick like this? They couldn't give the VP a switch, lie to him about what it did, and then manually mimic what he was trying to do but to a lesser degree? (They would also sometimes start with a large effect and then slowly return the temperature to normal.)

> "do you think that it's at all possible that the story was somewhat embellished"

We had multiple sources for this particular story.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#289

Post by ConceptJunkie »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #42
mvdwoord wrote: post #8

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was foo…

Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to…

Kudos to Steve Jobs for being able to recognize the difference of what he was actually asking for.

Re: “Just remove the duck” (2013)

#290

Post by doki_pen »

It's not about leaving your mark, it's about posturing. I used to work in a kitchen. At the end of the night the manager would do a walk through and always find something not to their liking that needed to be finished before you went home. Sometimes it would be simple, sometimes it took a long time. I got in the habit of leaving something simple and obvious, like a splotch of mayo on the counter, and it resolved the issue.
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