... > I'm not sure what the harshness towards 'average users' is all about. > While Slimserver and Squeezebox are wonderful and have a fantastic > number of options, it does sometimes seem that ease of use and > simplicity take a back seat. Again, only going by my experience, but > I've had the SB2 for going on a year now, and my wife still can't get > the hang of it. She's far from a techie, but she still prefers to take > 5 CDs from their cases, put them in the player and hit shuffle... This > is as opposed to our Tivo, which, in a sense, is a similar type of > device. She took to that very easily, and now couldn't live without it. > There is something to be said for ease of use. > > Sorry about the threadjack there, but it was just a bit discouraging to > see a couple of posts with folks disparaging 'average users' who may not > live and breath this stuff and want to spend every waking moment > fiddling with it... ...
The harshness is not towards "average users" at all, for I fully understand their motivations. One's spouse, roommate, uncle, &c doesn't learn how to use a certain technology because they don't need to or want to, and that is fine -- there are certainly plenty of things that all of us choose not to learn. What I am personally harsh towards is people who trot out the "average users" straw man argument in support of whatever pet feature they want. A non-Perl server, a native interface, non-transcoded support for 17 bazillion codecs, a different screen, a TV interface, blah de blah. All of it is questioned for validity at some point, and at some point the idea's defenders come out with "but it's necessary for the poor average user!" No, it isn't. If the user wants to use the product, they will learn to do so. It really isn't that difficult for anyone who's met the prerequisites of having a computer, a collection of digital music, and a stereo. I must admit that I'm particularly sensitive to this line of fallacious argument as I've spent many years on Linux help lists, where it is trotted out for a turn in the spotlight about once per hour. This list is still at the once per day level, which is arguably good. Oh, one more thing while I'm still in rant mode -- anyone planning to hit the Soundbridge button while playing their average user tune would be advised to visit http://www.rokulabs.com/forums/ -- hit search, type in "average user", and enjoy the same arguments. I particularly enjoy that the first thread is about transcoding :) -- Jack At Monkeynoodle.Org: It's A Scientific Venture... "Believe what you're told; there'd be chaos if everyone thought for themselves." -- Top Dog hotdog stand, Berkeley, CA _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
