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Whatever works for you

marco.org

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Re: Whatever works for you

#61

Post by shasta »

tptacek wrote: post #31
vectorpush wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing luigi's point. He's simply remarking that the OP didn't have to advocate a change in use pattern in order to lend his expertise to his friend's father. Instead, the OP made the choice not to use his time assisting someone who doesn't want to "go all Apple". Of course, the OP isn't obligated to offer free tech support, but he certainly could have helped.

No, he couldn't, because his "help" will set the guy back. That's what he's saying. You might disagree, but then explain why.

Why don't you explain why his help would have "set the guy back?". The closest the article comes to justifying this claim is that (from memory) "[the author] doesn't know shit about outlook or windows architecture". But as luigi and vectorpush have noted, as someone with general tech savvy, he could still have helped.

Re: Whatever works for you

#62

Post by Tloewald »

pnathan wrote: post #7

The flip side to this is as computer professionals, what we do with a computer and how we have built our workflow significantly accelerates our work with a computer. E.g., easy file versioning and sync is fundamentally a solved problem, if you are willing to take the initial hit of workflow modification (git, sftp, etc). So it's okay to teach people how to do it faster and better.

Computers are such a broad topic these days that assuming your expertise will simply translate to any problem domain is the height of foolishness.

Easy file versioning and sync are only solved for a very specific use case that corresponds very poorly to most people's lives (photo library?) There's a priceless rant from John Siracusa about his sister ignoring Time Machine's warnings tha the backup device had failed for months because it didn't actually incapacitate her computer.

Re: Whatever works for you

#63

Post by luriel »

voxmatt wrote: post #28
luigi wrote: post #16

There's a difference between trying to help a guy solve a specific problem and trying to evangelize him to switch to your preferred platform. There are tons of resources on the Web devoted to syncing Outlook with the iPhone. Maybe someone more tech savvy (like Marco) could have helped. Instead he said he "couldn't help him". He really meant "I don't want to try to help you".

I think you're misreading the whole thrust of the article. What Marco was getting at was that he can't help him in light of his (Outlook user's) expectations. The article is saying (1) Marco has a use pattern that works well for Marco, (2) that use pattern could be pushed on someone else in a way that fixes the user's problem as Marco sees it, (3) but Marco has come to the realization that the problem lies with the u…

> but Marco has come to the realization that the problem lies with the user's personal use pattern combined with his expectations for the technology. I think that's really insightful.

No, the real problem lies with the technology over-promising and under-delivering.

There is no reason why the problems the user was experiencing should exist, other than that software quality is appalling.

Re: Whatever works for you

#64

Post by tuananh »

wisetech wrote: post #53

I share the same feelings for this guy. Recently, I had an argument with my father about uploading photos efficiently: He got an iPhone4s and took pictures with it. Now my father uses Windows and does not know much about transferring pictures the right way, instead he does what he knows–email the picture to yourself. My mother who uses a mac, but still computer illiterate, wanted to get pictures off his iPhone so she…

Unlike your father, my dad is really excited about that Photostream feature :)

Re: Whatever works for you

#65

Post by luriel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54
xarien wrote: post #50

Maybe I'm not reading it correctly, but it seems like a pretty simple issue to resolve by syncing outlook to gmail / google calendar along with an android phone... The current email host should be set to forward to gmail and outlook repointed to gmail as well. If the user wants access to email offline, they can just enable POP. Syncing the calendar is even easier... It seems like he's more interested in working with…

Except that syncing anything to Android phones is broken beyond repair (try syncing an repetitive task with hours specified, e.g. "Every Monday, 18:00-20:00" with Google Calendar app...), as will probably be many things on the way. The point (or at least, one of them) of the post is that sometimes user has constrains coming from his job, personality, or preferred mode of operations, that will make it impossible to us…

Syncing anything to anything seems to almost be invariably broken beyond repair, specially between products made by different companies.

Interoperativity among syncing systems, even following the myriad of 'standards' for this seems to be hopeless.

> Also, our technology is broken on that angle; things simply are not expected to work well with each other from the start.

I think this is the core root of the problem, which it seems everyone in this discussion is ignoring. If Syncing was not so badly broken we wouldn't have this discussion to begin with (and same goes for most other common problems of this kind, this is simple stuff that should have worked without a hitch for ages).

Re: Whatever works for you

#66

Post by rabenfrass »

shasta wrote: post #61
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he couldn't, because his "help" will set the guy back. That's what he's saying. You might disagree, but then explain why.

Why don't you explain why his help would have "set the guy back?". The closest the article comes to justifying this claim is that (from memory) "[the author] doesn't know shit about outlook or windows architecture". But as luigi and vectorpush have noted, as someone with general tech savvy, he could still have helped.

You can 1) throw in a suggestion, 2) blindly suggest whatever works for you as the best way, 3) learn about the goals, setup, and knowledge of the user as the first step. The point of the article is: 2) is a mistake.

Re: Whatever works for you

#67

Post by CausticMango »

dasil003 wrote: post #60
daleharvey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I at least, and I think most people, have a distinction between 'fan of' and 'fanboy' Where the line is that a fan of a something can talk about its virtues and concede its limits, but a fanboy will gloss over any limitations as irrelevant / wrong "its not a bug its a feature"

I have a real problem with the word fanboy because this distinction is rarely made well in practice. 95% of the time it's hurled as an epithet by someone who simply disagrees. Even worse, the word is disproportionately used by people who do not have particularly well-reasoned opinions. So for me, non-ironic use of the word fanboy flips the bozo bit.

Agreed; I have long since given up caring about being called a fanboy. I like what I like and I make no apologies for it.

That's one reason I prefer Apple kit -- I am no longer fascinated by twiddling with things to get them to work. Apple gear tends to work without twiddling more than the other crap (though not always). I'm not interested in trying to get stuff to work that doesn't.

Re: Whatever works for you

#68

Post by ishbits »

I've been using OpenBSD or FreeBSD or Linux as my primary desktop OS since about 1996.. As of last week, all my laptop/desktop usage is now Mac OS.

The Linux desktop experience really isn't that much better than it was in the Helix Gnome days and as I get older I want to fiddle less with my OS, and just work on some ideas I have brewing.

I should point out that back then I was a kernel hacker type, and my ideas were kernel based (for work and play). But now they are userland based, and Mac provides an awesome platform for that without getting in the way.

Re: Whatever works for you

#69

Post by toddheasley »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #55
nl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in Ireland or Japan or some other tiny island where everything is on the wrong side? Australia is pretty large... 78 countries (28% of the worlds traffic) drive on the left [1]. These include countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia with fairly significant populations. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic#Ju...

> 78 countries (28% of the worlds traffic) drive on the left. Thanks for data, I didn't realize how many left-driving countries were there; I thought it was only UK and Australia. Still, they don't drive on the right side. :).

I can assure you that this was in the United States.

Re: Whatever works for you

#70

Post by [deleted] »

toddheasley wrote: post #40

My wife's friend recently moved from a large city, where she didn't have a car, to live with her boyfriend in a smaller town. It's a smaller town without much public transit. My wife's friend knows how to drive, but her boyfriend's car has a manual transmission. On a recent visit, the friend is complaining that her boyfriend won't teach her how to drive his car. Being proud of the fact that I (barely) know how to dri…

[deleted]
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