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Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

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Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#71

Post by joe_fishfish »

mistercow wrote: post #62

I think the tweet in the opening screenshot is simply wrong. I would argue that you almost always want paste to preserve the pasteboard formatting. Most copy/paste is within the same document, where you obviously want the odd bolded or italicized word to retain its formatting. But you don't notice those cases, because everything is working as expected. What you notice is that when you paste from an external source, t…

So if you make paste match the formatting of the destination not the source, both you and the tweeter are happy. Make a funky shortcut to override this if you want but this should be the default.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#73

Post by cblconfederate »

It has been a long time since programs were written in a sane way: with lots of functionality so that experienced users can figure out a routine speed and become blazingly fast. Modern computing has decided to make people dumb. They like them like that, mindless drones who can only scroll and press YES. In life you get what you pay for, and right now we get users who don't care because they don't know, and big tech keeps feeding them more of the same.

When developers care more about imposing their opinions on others they have jumped to the class of people who care about power. They are the new lawyers and people should start making jokes about them being at the bottom of the sea.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#74

Post by akarma »

mistercow wrote: post #62

I think the tweet in the opening screenshot is simply wrong. I would argue that you almost always want paste to preserve the pasteboard formatting. Most copy/paste is within the same document, where you obviously want the odd bolded or italicized word to retain its formatting. But you don't notice those cases, because everything is working as expected. What you notice is that when you paste from an external source, t…

In my case, I almost always want paste to override most formatting — if I copy something from a website, I want it to match my formatting.

What I'm looking for, though, is particularly for the font itself, the font color and maybe the size to match. If something is bolded, or italicized, that should ideally be retained.

A good configuration could be to ask whether you want the formatting of what you're pasting to match the document, and then ask if they want to set that choice as default.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#75

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

mistercow wrote: post #62

I think the tweet in the opening screenshot is simply wrong. I would argue that you almost always want paste to preserve the pasteboard formatting. Most copy/paste is within the same document, where you obviously want the odd bolded or italicized word to retain its formatting. But you don't notice those cases, because everything is working as expected. What you notice is that when you paste from an external source, t…

Not only that, but I think the "average user" probably has lesser taste than the tweeter. They see a blue font on the text they are copying from some random web page, they expect a blue font when they paste it. This would be especially important to the average user if they are copying a lot of text with bullets and headers.

So the tweet may be describing a better practice for many use cases, but it may not be the practice most people want.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#76

Post by jiofih »

pranau wrote: post #68
jiofih wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon. Apple’s system doesn’t use much of your bandwidth or have anyone else’s data going through your device (it’s completely anonymous).

Can you please explain how Apple’s Find My is anonymous while Sidewalk is not? As far as I understand, Find My collects device location information through other iPhones and then upload them to Apple’s cloud where it can be viewed by you. Apple states that this is done in a privacy preserving way by using rotating identifiers. In the case of Amazon, they state that all the device information being relayed through you…

Sidewalk is carrying all kinds of data from other users. You have absolutely no idea what. It’s a loosely defined system that Amazon controls remotely at their will. The encryption stops you from snooping like any other TLS traffic, but Amazon itself is the receiver on the other end. And it piggybacks on your own internet connection - 80Kbps is a huge amount of data.

Find My identifiers have a single purpose, are useless to anything but the owners device, cannot be used by Apple for tracking, ads or whatever, and id be surprised if the entire payload after a day out is > 8KB total. These look completely different to me.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#77

Post by permo-w »

mistercow wrote: post #62

I think the tweet in the opening screenshot is simply wrong. I would argue that you almost always want paste to preserve the pasteboard formatting. Most copy/paste is within the same document, where you obviously want the odd bolded or italicized word to retain its formatting. But you don't notice those cases, because everything is working as expected. What you notice is that when you paste from an external source, t…

I suspect that a more nuanced approach could suit general users the best. Retain boldness, italics and underlining, change to fit target colour and font.

Boldness, italics and underlining actually denote meaning, whereas font and colour are generally just aesthetic

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#78

Post by kuu »

pranau wrote: post #64
hermannj314 wrote: post #9

Amazon recently turned on support for Amazon Sidewalk on all of their hardware in my home (convention) and decided it was fine to do this because I could opt out (configuration). That decision was the final straw for me. Every Amazon device is now unplugged, Prime membership and Amazon music canceled, no longer shopping on their site. Doing what is "easy for the average user" is not sufficient for me, some configurat…

Can someone explain why there’s so much outrage against Amazon Sidewalk when it’s doing a similar thing to Apple’s Find My/AirTags which was met with almost universal praise?

I guess some of the reasons are that Sidewalk is:

- For a product that was already owned and did not need it until now

- Activated by default, as optional opt-out instead of opt-in

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#79

Post by II2II »

MattGaiser wrote: post #5

> I will design it for the average user rather than the power user. But do power users or average users drive purchasing and ensure market share? I was at a company that tried to switch to Google Cloud over Office 365. Know what saved MSFT? The Excel and Word power users. Average users had no opinion, but the power users all wanted Office.

In the context of this article, "average user" and "power user" does not have much meaning. Take the copy-paste example. One group of users is going to find paste-with-formatting more practical while another group of users is going to find paste-without-formatting more useful. The distinction has more to do with the task at hand than the ability of the user. Consider someone working withing a document or within a set of documents for a project. Losing formatting means they will have to go back to recreate it. Now consider someone pulling information from various sources. Maintaining formatting means a loss of consistency in the destination, so it is less desirable.

As for the opinion of average verses power users, I suspect it has a lot more to do with expectations. Power users are more inclined to expect software to do work for them, while the average user seems to be willing to work for the software. As an example, take a table that spans multiple pages. Power users will expect an option to add the table heading on each page, while the average user will do it themselves manually (even if the feature exists and even if they have to redo the work each time the page boundaries change).

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#80

Post by fnimick »

dgb23 wrote: post #41
hermannj314 wrote: post #9

Amazon recently turned on support for Amazon Sidewalk on all of their hardware in my home (convention) and decided it was fine to do this because I could opt out (configuration). That decision was the final straw for me. Every Amazon device is now unplugged, Prime membership and Amazon music canceled, no longer shopping on their site. Doing what is "easy for the average user" is not sufficient for me, some configurat…

> I shouldn't have to constantly worry that a remote code change could turn my hardware into a new source of revenue for you while I am on vacation at the beach. This is it. It actually induces some kind of anxiety and mild paranoia. We can also very easily support companies that don't treat their customers this way, or their workers, or business partners...

Unfortunately, companies that don't extract maximum revenue from their customers/workers get outcompeted and put out of business by those that do.
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