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Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

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Re: Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

#91

Post by tzs »

plz-remove-card wrote: post #87
tzs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that baffling. It let them keep the exact same form factor as the previous non-rechargeable Magic Mouse, and the mouse can go long enough between charges and charges so fast that they knew in practice 99.99% of Mac users would not have a problem with it. It charges to full in a couple hours and lasts at least a month on a full charge so almost everyone has plenty of opportunities to charge it at times when t…

lol, this is such a victim-blaming answer, the design is bananas there's no excuse for it. Changing the form-factor slightly is worth it so you can plug the damn thing in while charging.

It can't be victim-blaming because there are no victims. 99.99% of people who have those mice will never find themselves in a situation where not being able to charge while using affects them.

The 0.01% who manage to find themselves with an empty battery will be slightly inconvenienced for two minutes while they charge it up enough to get to the end of their day.

Re: Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

#92

Post by [deleted] »

nightowl_games wrote: post #89
_nalply wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never use the word "Cancel" in a warning dialog. It is easy to get confused. Cancel what? Cancel Bluetooth? Cancel the turning off of Bluetooth? Better are two buttons like this: [Keep Bluetooth running] [Disable Bluetooth]. Mac OS does this often right. I say this somewhat grudgingly.

Cancel maybe better than that because the confused user doesn't know what the current state of the system is. Cancel means "don't do anything". "Keep" implies the same thing, but I think cancel would confuse less grandparents.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

#93

Post by cassianoleal »

tzs wrote: post #72
ydnaclementine wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"No grandpa, hit the one that looks like it has a pretzel on it"

Or "the key that has the word 'command' printed on it" or "the key one left of the space bar" or "the key one right of the space bar". Or, if their Mac supports "Hey Siri" and it is enabled, "Hey Siri, Open Bluetooth File Exchange".

Or, you know... just show them in the camera since they're still on Zoom.

Re: Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

#94

Post by RulerOf »

retrac wrote: post #78
dontlaugh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dongle is definitely not using Bluetooth. Wireless peripherals with USB dongles generally have their own custom radio protocol, for better or worse.

Before later revisions of Bluetooth with ultra-low-power modes, a mouse using Bluetooth was considerably more power-hungry than dedicated radio interfaces -- short battery life.

I had one of those, a Logitech MX1000.

It needed to charge multiple times per week in a cradle and always indicated the battery life when it was moved around.

It would die in the middle of playing DotA, so I had two and would pause the game with the admin commands on my host bot for just long enough to pull the waiting one out of the dock and press the pairing buttons. Fun times lol.

Re: Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

#95

Post by girishso »

beAbU wrote: post #50

This is the 2020s equivalent of setting the display resolution beyond what your monitor could handle back in the Win2k days. Back then it did not revert the settings back after 20 seconds!

That reminds me of setting unsupported display resolution back in the mid 90s on Windows 95, resulted in blank screen. Luckily my brother and I knew the UI by heart, rebooted the machine -> opened "Start" menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Display -> Move to Settings tab -> Change to working resolution -> Apply -> Reboot - all on the blank screen using keyboard, it worked though!

Re: Tell HN: How an elderly couple I know had their computer 'stop working'

#96

Post by veeti »

SpaceL10n wrote: post #10

Great question. Something like, "This computer has no input devices. Check your keyboard and mouse." Seems like pretty important use case for a personal computer targeting people who may not have grown up around computers or even finished high school. As a user of personal computers, I should be able to easily determine if my computer is configured for basic use.

Reminds me of the classic BIOS error message:

"Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue"

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