301–310 of 613 posts
If he read the manual he'd know the off-switch for Switch controller is clicking the pair button one time.
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I don't mean to nitpick, but please refer to my comment regarding the inability of being able to inventory everything that can possibly go wrong in a computerized system. That's especially true given that if you take any successful engineering project, you'll see that its useful lifetime usually spans several individual engineering careers. Take something like Windows, or even Android for example. The people who were…
For the example you gave, as a user, what would you do with "Error: 0xFHJAD1234"? The best you could do is report it to Apple (or whoever). But, the error alone doesn't achieve anything. You would have been better off with "Something broke, click here to send log to Apple." (which is roughly what the book recommends - replace the error with something actionable).
It turns out that if you actually do take the time to report the error, no matter how obscure it is, someone in a dark corner of the internet will spend enough time on it that they'll even see fit to document it for others to help their own selves out. And given that, per my initial post, nobody is smart enough to understand how the computer system/software they're creating is going to work under all circumstances, providing error verbosity is sometimes the most empowering thing you can give to your users.
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It's a book actually: The Design of Everyday Things
That's such a godawful book. In my view it epitomizes everything that is wrong with design today. And the worst part is that comments like these make it come off as the go-to reference to actually solving these problems. The reasons it's the worst design guidance out there is that it teaches: 1) that engineers should NOT be entrusted/involved with user design. 2) to conceptualize users as blissful idiots. 3) that obs…
I don't think you read the book. I read the book in 2000/2001. The emphasis was on helping the user.
Not a single line in that entire book, IIRC, advocates silently failing. I have no idea how you came up with that interpretation, when almost every single example in that book highlights "silent failure" as something to avoid.
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> It sounds like your complaint isn't with the advice from the book, but rather that Apple didn't follow it. They did hide away the error messages, but they didn't provide help and insight. > If they had done so, you'd have (presumably) been told in the software that there was a problem with certain albums, and been walked through a flow that would fix said problem. Or maybe a link to a support page that'd do the sam…
> The parent post addresses this: there are so many ways for for the system to fail that it’s not feasible to “inventory every possible problem in a computerized system and then provide a graceful exit”. So where an error is not gracefully handled, the system should allow for a human to see the error and solve the problem, rather than throw away the error. Yes, that's what I said as well. It's why I said the problem…
If it's not possible to always give help and advice, sometimes you have to give an error message and unless the book mentions that then it is definitely fair to blame the book.
Counter-example: quartz wristwatches don't have off switches. And that's completely fine with me.
Lithium batteries, even when they don't provide power, slowly lose power. They can also "degrade" when they're not in designated voltage range. This is one reason why most batteries are soldered, because they need to be regulated at all times. So no, you cannot "turn off" a battery. A battery should either provide power, or be plugged to a charger.
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ikr? They have these things now, they call them "AAA" batteries...holy heck, you can take them out, and they even make rechargeable ones. Like, if your thing doesn't work, you can just swap the batteries instead of waiting N hours for it to charge itself....what a concept.
Rechargeable AAAs are crap though. Power density sucks. Voltage level sucks (and voltage regulators will suck the battery dry before your micro does). And the form factor sucks. I'd sooner have a 18650-family (e.g. 14240 or 14500) become standard than a bunch of AAAs.
Not in my experience: our main TV is connected to a 2008 computer running Linux Mint that we use for netflix and amz prime. I've been using it in this way since 2016. The remote is an off-the-shelf wireless pointer thingy with a few buttons on it (works like a Wii controller) that takes 2x AAA batteries.
I've been recharging those 2x AAA batteries since 1996, and it still works fine enough that I don't feel compelled to replace them.
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I disagree. Measurements are funny things depending on the level of detail you need; analog versions of measurements are very clunky when you need precision. (now this is a bit much for bathroom scales and kitchen scales, but it was the calipers that interested me). When I need under .01 precision, my analog calipers just do not do the job as well as my electronic calipers. I can read them, but the last couple of tho…
Is your caliper really that accurate and calibrated? In my experience you need a calibrated micrometer for that level of accuracy, especially to get a consistent measurements between several persons