On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:35:53 -0700 Ali Çehreli <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 09/17/2012 03:08 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote: > > On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:18:51 -0700 > > "H. S. Teoh"<[email protected]> wrote: > > >> Any time you hear "smart" and "software" in the same sentence, be > >> prepared for something dumb. > >> > > > > Heh, I actually say pretty much the same thing myself very often. > > Couldn't agree more. If you were around me in person, you'd > > frequently hear "I hate when (devices|programs) try to be smart." > > Smart(.*) is a red flag for "badly designed" or "unreliable". > > > > That's actually been an even bigger thing with me lately than ever > > before since, because of work, I have a call phone for the first > > time now - two actually, an iPhone and an Android - and I > > absolutely *HATE* both the damn things (with the iPhone being > > slightly worse). *Everything* about them is just wrong, backwards, > > idiotic. They even managed to take something as trivial to get > > right as volume controls and *completely* fuck it up in every > > imaginable way. And of course, Android aped Apple's idiotic lead > > on that, as usual. > > I have to jump in on this discussion: Those have been exactly my > feelings since I've gotten my "smart" phone about two years ago. I > cannot believe the lack of usability! :) I have an Android but of > course I have played with iPhones as well. Let me tell you: the > emperor has no clothes! :) > Finally, someone who's with me on that! I thought I was the only one! > They have imagined a "phone", where being able to answer the call is > completely by luck if the phone has been in your pocket when the call > arrived! Chances are, you will touch something on the "smart" screen > and reject the call by some random reason like "I am in class." (No, > I am not a student or a teacher at this time; but that exact scenario > happened to me multiple times.) > Oh man, I could go on for pages listing the issues I have with them. > Imagine a device where the *entire* screen is touchable with > different areas meaning different things depending on context! The > users can only cradle it gently but they can't hold it firmly! Wow! I > can't believe how this whole idea took off. Later generations will > have a good laugh at these devices. > And worse: When you *do* want to interact with it, you can't do so accurately, because it's *completely unresponsive* to anything even remotely accurate like a fingernail or stylus. Not that they even *have* any place to keep a stylus. And the idiotic claim rationalizing that is that capacitive touchscreens are supposedly "more accurate" than resistive. Which is bullshit because a finger can *never* be sanely considered even remotely as accurate as a fingernail or a non-capacitive stylus. Like you said: No clothes on this emperor. Speaking of resistive touchscreens and stylus, that reminds me: I miss the PalmOS devices. I loved my Visor and Zire71. If they hadn't killed them off with that WebOS junk (and if the assholes at Xerox hadn't helped by killing off the *good* version of Grafitti with their goddamn software patents), then I think a modern PalmOS incarnation would have been a fantastic alternative to iOS/Android. PalmOS 6 was looking great, but never materialized due to the one thing that made it so great: It wasn't trying to ape Apple's moronic ideas. Hell, that's why it's impossible to get a good portable music player: They all decided they *had* to ape Apple. Shit, if I wanted a portable music player with minimal storage, proprietary communications, and a non-tactile poorly-designed interface, I'd have actually *gotten* an iPod (either iTouch or pre-iTouch, they're both junk). I *don't* want that Apple-style junk, that's *why* I went looking for non-Apple devices! The best I could find was a Toshiba Gigabeat F hacked up with the Rockbox firmware, but even that could have been a lot better by toning down the Apple-envy (damn touch-sensitive "buttons"). (Incidentally, the Zune 1 would have been *perfect* if MS's insistence on aping Apple's "Don't let anyone access it like the USB HDD it literally is" hadn't single-handedly rendered it useless. Well, and if MS knew how to make non-trivial hardware that didn't break down at the drop of a hat. Zune 2 was junk, though.) > Thanks for letting me vent. :) > Heh. One thing I've learned about myself: I love to complain :) I don't like having things *to* complain about, but when I do...
