On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:52:15 -0400, Nick Sabalausky
<SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:02:57 -0400
> "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:22:32 -0400, Nick Sabalausky
>> <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:24:07 -0400
>> > "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> That works too, but doesn't warrant rants about how you haven't
>> >> learned how to use the fucking thing :)
>> >>
>> >
>> > It's *volume* controls, there doesn't need to be *anything* to
>> > learn.
>>
>> OK, so this is what you'd rather have:
>>
> [...single volume...]
>>
>> No, I think the current design, while not perfect, is *WAY* better
>> than a single volume.
>>
>
> No, that's not it at all. The problem is the *lack* of any master volume
> control whatsoever, not the existence of finer-grained volume controls.
>
> My walkman example was perhaps misleading.

There is a master volume control.  It has two volumes, on and off, and
it's called the silent switch ;)

>> >>
>> >> 1. ringer volume affects all sounds except for music/video/games
>> >> 2. Silent switch will ringer volume to 0 for all sounds except for
>> >> find-my-iphone and alarm clock
>> >> 3. If playing a game/video/music, the volume buttons affect that
>> >> volume, otherwise, they affect ringer volume.
>> >>
>> >> Wow, you are right, three whole rules.
>> >
>> > And each one with exceptions, the rules as a whole aren't
>> > particularly intuitive.
>>
>> They aren't?  They make complete sense to me.  You even admit that
>> it makes sense to have find my iphone play its alerts as loud as
>> possible.
>
> No, only the "find iPhone" one. The iPhone has no fucking idea what
> environment I'm in. I *definitely* don't want it screeching "PAY
> ATTENTION TO MEEEE!!!!" indiscriminately whenever it damn well feels
> like it.

When does it do that?

>> I contend that if you use alarm clock what it is for,
>> (i.e. waking you up) there is no problem there either.  Those are the
>> only exceptions.
>>
>
> Keep in mind, when I started talking "alarms" I didn't just mean "alarm
> clock". Pardon if I'm not completely up on official iTerminology.

All other alerts are silenced by the silent switch.  I don't even know if
that's the correct term for that switch.

I just discovered through testing that timer has the same feature as
alarm.  I find that incorrect.  If I have the silent switch enabled, the
timer should just vibrate.

In fact, I don't think there's a way to make the timer "just vibrate" in
any way.  That's counter-intuitive and I will agree with you on that one.

>> Besides, you don't have to "memorize" these rules, most of the time,
>> it is what a normal person would expect.
>>
>
> What a normal person does not expect is for the device to take the
> user's commands as mere suggestions.

At least in the case of alarm clock, the user has said both "wake me up at
this time" and "be silent."  Apple chose "wake me up".  The alternative is
that the phone stays silent, and you don't wake up.  Much worse.

>> > 4. If you're in the camera app then the volume button takes a
>> > picture instead of adjusting volume.
>>
>> I admit, I completely forgot about this one.  Simply because I rarely
>> use it :)  It was a gimmicky feature, and doesn't hurt anything, but
>> I find it unusable, simply because my natural inclination, being a
>> right-handed person, is to rotate the phone left to go into landscape
>> mode, If I want to use the button, my sequence is to rotate left,
>> then realize the button's on the other side, flip 180 degrees, then
>> realize my finger is in front of the lens, etc.  I think this is
>> essentially an orthogonal problem because there is no volume control
>> in camera, and that "feature" doesn't interfere with any other use of
>> the phone.  When I read about it though, I thought it was a good idea.
>>
>
> I can never remember which way I'm supposed to tilt the stupid thing for
> landscape photos. It *shouldn't* matter, but then when you go grab your
> photos (and videos!!) off the device you find the stupid thing decided
> to ignore the accelerometer and save them upside-down.

I have seen strange things there, sometimes a photo/video comes in rotated
(I see it pass by the Windows photo import preview), but then when I look
at the photo in Explorer, it's correctly rotated.

I have not seen it show photos or videos incorrectly rotated once
downloaded.

> As for buttons and such, the Zire 71 had a great design for the camera:
> Slide the face upward and the normally-protected lens is revealed,
> along with a "shutter" button (no need for modal "volume button"
> contrivances), *and* it goes directly into the camera program. So
> basically a real camera instead of a mere a camera "app",
> always trivially accessible, and always the same easy way. And yea,
> it's a moving part, but it *still* far outlasted the life of the
> (unfortunately non-replaceable) battery. *That* was brilliant design. I
> wish apple had copied it.

Hehe, they have something like that, the photo icon on the lock screen
slides up to reveal the photo app.  Yeah, it's not a hardware button, but
it does sound similar.

I have to say, this is one of the better improvements, especially with
those of us who have kids.

>
> It didn't have an accelerometer (this *was* a decade ago, after all) so
> it couldn't determine the current "tilt" and auto-rotate photos
> accordingly (like the iPhone *should* have been able to do), but it had
> an easy built-in "rotate photo" feature that even iPhone's built-ins
> won't do (at least not in any realistically discoverable way).

While viewing a photo, tap the screen to bring up the controls.  Click
"Edit" (upper right corner), then you can rotate the photo.  Don't think
you can do the same with a video.

Don't think I agree that an Edit button on the main photo viewing screen
is not realistically discoverable.

I will say though, like any UI, you have to get used to the mechanisms
that are standard.  One of the things that I didn't know for a while is
how to get controls to come up.  Generally that's a single tap in the
middle of the screen.  If you didn't know that, it would be difficult to
discover.

>> > Bottom line, they took something trivial, complicated it, and people
>> > hail them as genius visionaries.
>>
>> s/complicated/improved/
>>
>> This isn't really genius, nor is it unprecedented (iPhone is not the
>> first to control ringer and game/music volume separately).  It's just
>> common sense.
>>
>
> Ok again, clarification:
>
> Independently controllable ringer/game/music volumes: Good

OK, I get it now.

> Complete *lack* of any way to control *overall* volume: Bad

Well, there is the silent switch.  Which is a bit blunt, but it
effectively is a "master volume" with two levels.

>> So no, I'm not a MAC person, I'm a Unix/Linux person.  But Mac seems
>> to have done Unix better than Linux :)
>
> That was never my impression with macs. For example, I'll take even a
> mediocre linux GUI over Finder/etc any day. I don't understand why
> mac...*users*...inevitably have such trouble with the idea that someone
> could actually dislike it when it's (apperently) so objectively
> wonderful.

Finder could be better, but Nautilus sucks.  I'd rather use command line
than Nautilus.  And actually, I did :)

However, I think Finder is only usable once you force it to show you all
hidden files.  It pisses me off royally when an OS decides I don't know
enough to allow me to see hidden files.

At least on Windows, that was a setting in advanced options.  On MAC, you
have to use some obscure commands to enable hidden files, that I think was
pretty lame.

>> It was an example.  But it was one that I noticed right away coming
>> from Ubuntu with Unity.  Unity tries to be very MAC-like,
>
> That's why switched to Debian for my linux stuff instead of upgrading
> to the newer Ubuntus, and also why I'm not moving to Gnome 3. Too much
> Apple-envy for my tastes.

For my VMWare image for work, I chose Linux Mint with the default GUI, and
it works pretty well.  I like it better than Unity.

>> If I had to summarize why I like MacOS better than windows -- the GUI
>> is a complete GUI, and as good as Windows (unlike Linux),
>
> See I disagree with that. I like XP's GUI (with luna disabled), but I
> hate having to use OSX GUIs and OSX-alike GUIs (such as Win7). Linux
> GUIs are definitely clunky, but when they're not aping Mac or iOS then
> I can at least get by with them.

You may misunderstand when I say *complete* GUI, I mean you can do
everything with the GUI, and everything is seamless.  There is no run
"system preferences" for some settings, and "Compiz settings" for others,
like in Ubuntu.  Same as Windows, one place to find everything -- control
panel.

The style may not fit your tastes, and I can't really argue that point --
it's your taste that matters to you, not mine.  But my point is, it is
*functional* and can do everything I need it to.

>> I feel like I get the best of all worlds.
>
> Yea, but to get that, you have to use OSX as your *primary*
> environment, and stick with expensive iHardware. Might work for you,
> but those are all deal-breakers for me.

It's not what I would have chosen (at first), but I wanted to write iOS
apps, and Mac is the only way to do it (at least the complete thing,
including submission, but I admit I wasn't aware of marmalade).

It's one of those things where I reluctantly bought it, and started using
it, then was pleasantly surprised with the UI, and finally addicted.  I
hope Apple doesn't turn to shit, because I'll be upset if I have to give
up this experience.

But I must say, the expensive hardware (quad-core i7) kicks the pants off
of any other machine I've ever used.

>> And don't get me started on the trackpad.  I *hated* using my Dell
>> touchpad on my Linux laptop every time after I had been using my Mac
>> trackpad.
>>
>
> I always considered trackpads completely useless until I got my current
> Asus laptop. It's surprisingly usable in a pinch, and in fact I
> honestly couldn't believe how much they've improved (or that they
> even managed to improve at all). And yet I still go for my trackball
> instead whenever possible because it's sooo much better.

No, this is a multi-touch pad, not a synaptics touchpad (on most standard
laptops).  Way different. The best feature is the 2-finger scroll.  Don't
know how I lived without that!

And I've tried Apple's magic mouse, it sucks.  The trackpad is awesome.

>
>
>> The one thing I would rip out of OSX and throw against the wall is
>> the mail app.  Its interface and experience is awesome.  But it
>> frequently corrupts messages and doesn't properly save outgoing
>> mail.  Not good for a mail application.
>>
>
> I didn't have corruption issues with it, but I did find it to be rather
> gimped and straight-jacketed much like the rest of the system.

ech, I guess the corruption issues have been happening since OSX 10.6.
Many posts in the apple forums.

I guess mail doesn't get the attention it needs over at Apple.

Come to think of it, iCal kinda sucks too, I could live without that.

>> >> Interesting that's what you see as the defining point of that
>> >> story :)
>> >
>> > It's a story that always did stike me as odd: Here we have a grown
>> > man (one who was *well known* to be unstable, asinine, drug-soaked
>> > and frankly, borderline megalomaniacal) that's going around throwing
>> > tantrums, and largely because he doesn't understand "cover" or
>> > "case" or what obviously happens to plastic when you bash keys
>> > against it, and it gets interpreted by millions as "Wow, look how
>> > great he was!" I don't get it.
>>
>> Having amassed more money than US treasury, based on his ideas and
>> hard work, seems to suggest he was pretty successful :)  Not that I
>> completely equate money with greatness, but if success of a product
>> is measured by how well it sells, then he was very great.  Present
>> company notwithstanding, most people like apple products and think
>> they are good/best of breed.
>>
>
> He was a salesman. Their job is to sell people on crap.

Wow, have you ever liked anything in your life?  A salesperson's job is to
sell a product.  Whether that product is good or not certainly helps the
sale, and not all salespeople just sell no matter what.  The best salesman
tells you *not* to buy something because it doesn't fit you.  This doesn't
work when your job is to sell crappy stuff (you will not end up selling
anything).

> Successfully unloading broken freezers on eskimos and dog shit
> to...anyone...isn't really deserving of praise or appreciation or
> anything but condemnation.

Oh, I totally agree.  Fuck all those salespeople, I just cut out the
middle man and go to dogshitfreezers.com.  And they think I'm so stupid,
how's that commision check now?

>> I think if it didn't have a big apple symbol on the back, you would
>> be less inclined to try and destroy it :)  Just my opinion.
>>
>
> I'm sure most people would assume that, particularly since I dislike
> something that "everyone knows is undeniably great". I know there's no
> way I can ever convince anyone of this, but I don't do things backwards
> like that: I hate apple *because* I don't like their products or their
> business. The other way around makes absolutely no sense.

I think we probably are both a couple of pots calling each other kettles,
or... something.

> I'd love for apple to start putting out good stuff because...I *like*
> good stuff. Hell, I love the Apple II. And I loved Sherlock/Watson
> (part of what got me to try OSX). If I want to see apple destroyed it's
> because they keep putting out poorly-designed, overpriced, Orwellian
> bullshit and instead of dismissing it like in the 90's people are
> actually praising the shit now that it has a glossy finish and the
> name "Jobs". Oh, and because it sold well :/...which I always found to
> be a bizarre reason to appreciate anything.
>
> *I* think that people wouldn't be so quick to praise Apple's last
> decade of products if they didn't have "Steve Jobs has returned!",
> "Designed by Jobs!" attached. (And the iPhone 5 obviously still has a
> lot of Jobs legacy, esp since it's basically the 4S with higher specs.)

I think that's very wrong.  My reasons for liking apple products are
because they are good products.  I can explain my history if you want, but
I tend to think you won't believe it.

Truth is, people who don't like a brand will find a reason to complain,
and people who like a brand will find a reason to forgive.  It's the same
with D and any other product.

By all means, I don't think Apple's products are flawless.  Just less
flawed.

>> I have brands that I hate too due to prior experience too.  I'm sure
>> you would be able to find anyone who *hates* a certain brand of car
>> because they bought a lemon from them at one time, even though
>> statistics show there are *always* some bad apples (no pun intended)
>> in otherwise good products.  These can be badly designed single
>> products (*cough* Vista) or simply one instance of a product with
>> defective parts.  I think humans have a tendency to put too much
>> emphasis on anecdotal experience rather than scientifically detected
>> trends.  And I think the sometimes prohibitive costs of some of
>> theses gadgets plays a large part -- You aren't likely to go out and
>> buy another $200 iPhone, for instance, if your previous two broke
>> within a year.  Even though most people don't have that experience.
>>
>
> So therefore if someone argues against something popular, then it must
> be due to such a fallacy as that, because what's popular clearly must be
> good, right? Because those people who do like it must be liking it for
> purely objective reasons, right?

No, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying basing your perception of a
new product on your experience with another product from the same brand is
not always objective.  And that's not always a bad thing -- there's a
reason humans learn from their experience.  I never said what's "popular"
is good, that's BS.  I'm saying past experiences bias our decisions (all
of us, myself included).  I sure as hell will *never* buy another motorola
bluetooth headset again.

But this isn't fashion.  People don't buy shit electronics that don't work
just because they have a brand name.  At least not after two consecutive
failures.  Look at Microsoft.  They had extremely good brand recognition,
and a huge market share, as well as being basically the only pre-installed
OS on most PCs.

Yet, along came Vista, and you saw a huge decline in sales for them,
because it *SUCKED*.  Brand name doesn't help you if your products suck.
However, because of their brand, Vista didn't seem to impact the success
of Windows 7 (a great product IMO).

So while popularity isn't the cause of success, it certainly is a
reflection of it.

But let's face it, popularity is a huge market driver.  If people you know
like something, you tend to trust their opinion.  If people you aren't so
fond of like something, you may tend to dislike that thing.

Saying you don't like something because it's popular (not saying you are
saying that) is *still* an opinion driven by popularity!

For example, if you learned that the new iOS 6 has better integration with
facebook, a popular (but I'm pretty sure from past posts I've seen from
you, a revolting) service, are you a) less likely to like iPhone (and no,
I don't mean facebook like), b) more likely, or c) neutral?

If you didn't answer c, then you are letting your bias get in the way.
Period.

I personally will *never* sign up for facebook (sorry Andrei), and
therefore will never use facebook integration on my phone.  But it doesn't
make me less likely to like iPhone, because it doesn't impact me at all.

Now, if iOS suddenly *required* me to use facebook, that would be a
problem for me.

> You're arguing that most people are non-objective. If that's so, then
> the objective viewpoint would be an unpopular one. Kinda like "Apple
> products suck". Or is it that the "humans are often non-objective" only
> applies to negative opinions? People are always being objective when
> they say something positive?

Most people *are* non-objective.  It's very difficult to have a truly
objective view.  And you can't really measure everything objectively,
especially with something as broad as intuition or ease-of-use.

I just saw this *ridiculously* biased "test" of apple iPhone 5 vs. Samsung
Galaxy S III on durability.  I bet these people thought they were being
truly objective too...

http://youtu.be/bLW0HrVeoD8

-Steve

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:10:09 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 07:52:15PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> 
> > A lot of the videogames I've played have independent adjustable SFX/music/voice volumes. I've even happily made use of that. And I'm damn glad that the TV *still* has a properly working volume control despite that because I make even more use of that.
> 
> Yeah I almost never play games with music on, 'cos I generally find the music not to my liking. SFX I sometimes leave on low, though on handhelds I generally turn both off. But the option to only have SFX without music is a plus. I *have* deleted apps before that didn't allow independent settings.
> 

I never used to mute videogame music until they started licensing stuff from the record labels. Like all that "EA Trax" stuff. Blech. Last generation, that was one of the great things about the XBox: custom soundtracks. My brother introduced me to Quarashi's Jinx album which made for a far better soundtrack for THPS2X than the built-in songs. The Tony Hawk games from 3 onward were almost unplayable with the built-in music enabled.

Unfortunately, my most frequent use of game audio controls is to fix the piss-poor mixing that's common in a lot of games. When you can't hear important voiceovers because they're quieter than the music or sfx (example: Splinter Cell 3), it's nice to be able to fix that screwup by cranking up the voice volume, and turning everything else down.

I've often wished I could turn off the elevator music in Wii Sports Resort without having to mute the whole thing.

But of course, all that still doesn't mean I'd ever be willing to give
up the TV's "adjust *everything's* volume". Individual controls let you
adjust the "mix" ie relative volume relations, and then a
master volume is indispensible for normal "I need this thing
louder/quieter".


> 
> [...]
> > > I feel like I get the best of all worlds.
> > 
> > Yea, but to get that, you have to use OSX as your *primary* environment, and stick with expensive iHardware. Might work for you, but those are all deal-breakers for me.
> 
> I find it sad that Apple has left its original philosophy of open protocols and specs so that you can make it interoperate with stuff.

Absolutely. That's one of my biggest irritations with modern Apple.

> For all their flaws, PCs are much more palatable 'cos you can replace parts that you don't like with alternatives. With closed hardware and vendor lock-in, I can't say that Macs are exactly near the top of the list for hardware I'd consider buying. I've had a bad experience with PC laptops already (after 2 years parts starting wearing out and I can't replace them 'cos they need specialized tools that vary from vendor to vendor -- no choice but to buy a brand new one though the old one could've continued to work if a few basic parts were replaced) -- I don't feel like I want to repeat that experience. So yeah, this is a deal-breaker for me too.
> 

Yeah.

> 
> [...]
> > > The one thing I would rip out of OSX and throw against the wall is the mail app.  Its interface and experience is awesome.  But it frequently corrupts messages and doesn't properly save outgoing mail.  Not good for a mail application.
> 
> Ahhh how I love Mutt. ;-)
> 

I've been finding Mutt very useful for when I'm ssh'ed into my server
to create a temporary throwaway address. Doing "mutt
-f /path/to/mailbox" is so much more convenient than setting up a
POP3 GUI client. I need to learn how to use mutt better though, as I've
just been fumbling around with it.

For my usual mailboxes though, I prefer typical GUI desktop clients. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find one that I like. Outlook Express has a bunch of problems (no spellcheck, can't send UTF, proprietary storage, etc). Windows Mail won't be an option when I move to Linux or upgrade back to XP. Claws mail is just generally buggy and never does anything in the background (feels almost like it might be purely single-threaded). And I'm not a big fan of Opera and don't really want to use a web browser as my desktop mail client.

I think I might actually try moving to Thunderbird even though I'm generally unhappy with Mozilla software/practices, and didn't like it last time I tried (for example, it kept trying to bold/italic/underline parts of text in my *plaintext* views, and the people on the "help" forums just complained that I should shut up and like it - which is consistent with what usually happens when I inquire about customizing parts of Mozilla's so-called "most customizable browser in the world").


> 
> > I didn't have corruption issues with it, but I did find it to be rather gimped and straight-jacketed much like the rest of the system.
> [...]
> 
> I find pretty much all GUI mail apps (both webmail and local MUAs) strait-jacketed. Anything that doesn't let you configure mail headers is unusable to me, and HTML by default gets on my nerves so much it's not even funny.

I never care about mail headers (unless I'm debugging something mail-related, which isn't often), but I *ALWAYS* have HTML disabled. I'll never use a mail client that doesn't let me turn HTML off. Not only do I not want to deal with any tracker-images (or god forbid, JS emails), but in my experience "HTML email" just means it's too easy, and far too tempting, for other people to make the stuff they send me really, really ugly ;) "Just the words, ma'am."

On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:52:05 -0400
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> There is a master volume control.  It has two volumes, on and off, and it's called the silent switch ;)
> 

Calling that a master volume control is a stretch.


> >> They aren't?  They make complete sense to me.  You even admit that it makes sense to have find my iphone play its alerts as loud as possible.
> >
> > No, only the "find iPhone" one. The iPhone has no fucking idea what environment I'm in. I *definitely* don't want it screeching "PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEE!!!!" indiscriminately whenever it damn well feels like it.
> 
> When does it do that?
> 

I thought you were just saying that the iPhone plays it's alerts as loud as possible?

> 
> I just discovered through testing that timer has the same feature as alarm.  I find that incorrect.  If I have the silent switch enabled, the timer should just vibrate.
> 
> In fact, I don't think there's a way to make the timer "just vibrate" in any way.  That's counter-intuitive and I will agree with you on that one.
> 

Yea, see there's just too much "surprise" involved, IMO.

> I have seen strange things there, sometimes a photo/video comes in rotated (I see it pass by the Windows photo import preview), but then when I look at the photo in Explorer, it's correctly rotated.
> 

I'm looking at the photos on my iPhone through Explorer right now and aside from the screenshots, the majority of them are either sideways or upside-down.

The bizarre thing is, when I look at them through "Photos" on the device itself, it actually shows them all correctly. Which means that the device *knows* how they're supposed to be but doesn't bother to actually save them correctly.

> I have not seen it show photos or videos incorrectly rotated once downloaded.
> 

I just copied all of them to my local machine, and they're still rotated wrong. Makes sense though, I wouldn't expect (or want) a file copy to affect content.

> 
> Hehe, they have something like that, the photo icon on the lock screen slides up to reveal the photo app.  Yeah, it's not a hardware button, but it does sound similar.
> 

Doesn't protect the lens though, and it doesn't provide a physical button which would obviate the need to hijack the volume button. (It *is* at least a little better than not being able to access the camera from the lock screen at all.)

I can't even tell you how many times I've accidentally gone back to the home screen when trying to take a picture. But I'll at least grant that *that* error was due to me being accustomed to my Zire71 (which, when slid open, has the "shutter" button exactly where the iPhone's home button is).


> I have to say, this is one of the better improvements, especially with those of us who have kids.
> 

Yea, one-size-fits-all design :/

That said, I do like to use "kids" as an argument for having an OS-level "disable software eject" option for optical drives. ;)  "Ok, I'll just leave that to burn..." Walk away. It finishes and ejects. Kid waddles by. "Ohh, a pretty shiny object! Should I eat it or flush it?"

> >
> > It didn't have an accelerometer (this *was* a decade ago, after all) so it couldn't determine the current "tilt" and auto-rotate photos accordingly (like the iPhone *should* have been able to do), but it had an easy built-in "rotate photo" feature that even iPhone's built-ins won't do (at least not in any realistically discoverable way).
> 
> While viewing a photo, tap the screen to bring up the controls.  Click "Edit" (upper right corner), then you can rotate the photo.  Don't think you can do the same with a video.
> 
> Don't think I agree that an Edit button on the main photo viewing screen is not realistically discoverable.
> 

I don't see any rotate there:

http://semitwist.com/download/img/shots/IMG_0859.PNG

I just see the "Back" button then...umm "Do a Magic Trick?" (WTF?), then I'm guessing maybe "Anti-Red-Eye", and...ok, I'm pretty sure that last one's crop, I remember seeing it in one or two image editing programs.

> I will say though, like any UI, you have to get used to the mechanisms that are standard.  One of the things that I didn't know for a while is how to get controls to come up.  Generally that's a single tap in the middle of the screen.  If you didn't know that, it would be difficult to discover.
> 

Android has an actual button for "Settings". Much easier to discover (despite not actually saying "settings" - or anything at all, really). And easier to use since it usually brings up a list of real words unlike the contrived hieroglyphs used throughout most of Android and iOS.

Or...at least the older Androids did. The damn newer ones replaced the few buttons it used to have with on-screen touch abominations. At least, for the buttons they didn't eliminate outright in their quest to clone the iPhone misfeature-for-misfeature. The settings button might have been one of the ones they killed off entirely, I don't remember offhand.


> >> So no, I'm not a MAC person, I'm a Unix/Linux person.  But Mac seems to have done Unix better than Linux :)
> >
> > That was never my impression with macs. For example, I'll take even a mediocre linux GUI over Finder/etc any day. I don't understand why mac...*users*...inevitably have such trouble with the idea that someone could actually dislike it when it's (apperently) so objectively wonderful.
> 
> Finder could be better, but Nautilus sucks.  I'd rather use command line than Nautilus.  And actually, I did :)
> 

I agree Nautilus sucks (and back in the day, it was bloated as hell, too).  Best one I've found on Linux is Dolphin, and I'm not real big on that either. Out of all of them, Finder is easily still my least favorite though. I actually *liked* one of the views it had (the multi-column one) until I actually started using it firsthand.

> However, I think Finder is only usable once you force it to show you all hidden files.  It pisses me off royally when an OS decides I don't know enough to allow me to see hidden files.
> 

Yea, "Show hidden files" is one of the first things I do when I install a new OS. And "Show my f*** extensions" on windows.


> >> It was an example.  But it was one that I noticed right away coming from Ubuntu with Unity.  Unity tries to be very MAC-like,
> >
> > That's why switched to Debian for my linux stuff instead of upgrading to the newer Ubuntus, and also why I'm not moving to Gnome 3. Too much Apple-envy for my tastes.
> 
> For my VMWare image for work, I chose Linux Mint with the default GUI, and it works pretty well.  I like it better than Unity.
> 

I don't know what Mint uses, but I always thought Unity was a bit of a misstep for Canonical. It's like Canonical pulling a "Metro".


> >> If I had to summarize why I like MacOS better than windows -- the GUI is a complete GUI, and as good as Windows (unlike Linux),
> >
> > See I disagree with that. I like XP's GUI (with luna disabled), but I hate having to use OSX GUIs and OSX-alike GUIs (such as Win7). Linux GUIs are definitely clunky, but when they're not aping Mac or iOS then I can at least get by with them.
> 
> You may misunderstand when I say *complete* GUI, I mean you can do everything with the GUI, and everything is seamless.  There is no run "system preferences" for some settings, and "Compiz settings" for others, like in Ubuntu.

Ok, yea, Linux has always been weak in that regard.

> Same as Windows, one place to find everything -- control panel.
> 

Well, sort of... :/

> The style may not fit your tastes, and I can't really argue that point -- it's your taste that matters to you, not mine.  But my point is, it is *functional* and can do everything I need it to.
> 

Right, I get that. Fair enough. My point has been that Mac doesn't work for me.

> But I must say, the expensive hardware (quad-core i7) kicks the pants off of any other machine I've ever used.
> 

I recently moved from a 32-bit single-core XP to a 64-bit dual-core Win7 (don't remember exactly what CPU, but it's Intel and newer/faster than the Core 2 Duo). Video processing is waaay faster, compiling C++ is slightly faster, and everything else I do is...pretty much the same. All of it already ran fine on the old system, so there's not much left for this one to improve on speed-wise.

> >> And don't get me started on the trackpad.  I *hated* using my Dell touchpad on my Linux laptop every time after I had been using my Mac trackpad.
> >>
> >
> > I always considered trackpads completely useless until I got my current Asus laptop. It's surprisingly usable in a pinch, and in fact I honestly couldn't believe how much they've improved (or that they even managed to improve at all). And yet I still go for my trackball instead whenever possible because it's sooo much better.
> 
> No, this is a multi-touch pad, not a synaptics touchpad (on most standard laptops).  Way different. The best feature is the 2-finger scroll.  Don't know how I lived without that!
> 

Multitouch is standard on all laptops these days, including mine. In fact, this does 2-finger scroll, too (I did it just now), and has a bunch of other gestures including 3-finger ones, and all totally configurable.

Two-finger scroll is ok, but personally I *much* prefer the "circular"-motion scrolling (forget what they call it) - it's actually just about as good as a scroll wheel.

> And I've tried Apple's magic mouse, it sucks.

Is that the one they had five or ten years ago as a "two-button scroll mouse" but was touch-sensitive instead of having actual mouse buttons? I've only come across one person who ever liked it - and it definitely wasn't me.

> The trackpad is awesome.
> 

I've used it. It's awesome, just like mine, in the sense that it's a trackpad that's not 100% useless. I'm still not of fan of them though.

> 
> ech, I guess the corruption issues have been happening since OSX 10.6. Many posts in the apple forums.
> 
> I guess mail doesn't get the attention it needs over at Apple.
> 
> Come to think of it, iCal kinda sucks too, I could live without that.
> 

Apple is very A.D.D. They catch a whiff of something they want to do, go nuts with it (but not to the point of feature-completeness), and more or less forget about everything else. To this day, iTunes still can't play Vorbis like, uhh, every other music player in the world. iTunes used to be their pride and joy, now they just dick around with its button placements once in a while and use it as a convenient dumping ground for anything involving their handheld devices - ie, their latest interest.


> >
> > He was a salesman. Their job is to sell people on crap.
> 
> Wow, have you ever liked anything in your life?

Megaman's pretty fucking awesome ;)

And I loved PalmOS. And Apple II, like I said. Got to drive a Saab 9-3 Turbo once, that was pretty cool. If I started talking about music, movies, videogames and TV shows I liked, I'd be here all night ;)


> > Successfully unloading broken freezers on eskimos and dog shit to...anyone...isn't really deserving of praise or appreciation or anything but condemnation.
> 
> Oh, I totally agree.  Fuck all those salespeople, I just cut out the middle man and go to dogshitfreezers.com.  And they think I'm so stupid, how's that commision check now?
> 

Heh heh :)

> >> I think if it didn't have a big apple symbol on the back, you would be less inclined to try and destroy it :)  Just my opinion.
> >>
> >
> > I'm sure most people would assume that, particularly since I dislike something that "everyone knows is undeniably great". I know there's no way I can ever convince anyone of this, but I don't do things backwards like that: I hate apple *because* I don't like their products or their business. The other way around makes absolutely no sense.
> 
> I think we probably are both a couple of pots calling each other kettles, or... something.
> 

Probably ;)

> >
> > *I* think that people wouldn't be so quick to praise Apple's last decade of products if they didn't have "Steve Jobs has returned!", "Designed by Jobs!" attached. (And the iPhone 5 obviously still has a lot of Jobs legacy, esp since it's basically the 4S with higher specs.)
> 
> I think that's very wrong.  My reasons for liking apple products are because they are good products.  I can explain my history if you want, but I tend to think you won't believe it.
> 

I was just (un)cleverly turning it around there. Didn't actually mean
it.

Although I don't doubt there *are* people like that out there...

> No, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying basing your perception of a new product on your experience with another product from the same brand is not always objective.  And that's not always a bad thing -- there's a reason humans learn from their experience.  I never said what's "popular" is good, that's BS.  I'm saying past experiences bias our decisions (all of us, myself included).  I sure as hell will *never* buy another motorola bluetooth headset again.
> 
[...]
> 
> Saying you don't like something because it's popular (not saying you are saying that) is *still* an opinion driven by popularity!

All fine, but I don't see how any of it leads you to conclude that I'm dismissing Apple products on account of them being from Apple.

> 
> I personally will *never* sign up for facebook (sorry Andrei), and

Bizarrely enough, I likely will, but only because these
multiplayer-enabled mobile games (I'm working on one - hopefully it
won't suck *too* bad) apparently need (for some definition of
"need" ;) ) to support facebook-based login these days. So I gotta be
able to test it.

Will never use it for anything beyond that though.

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 01:55:54 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 21:52:05 -0400
> "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> There is a master volume control.  It has two volumes, on and off, and
>> it's called the silent switch ;)
>>
>
> Calling that a master volume control is a stretch.

Yeah I know.  But it's about the closest thing you can get to a physical master volume on the iPhone.

>> >> They aren't?  They make complete sense to me.  You even admit that
>> >> it makes sense to have find my iphone play its alerts as loud as
>> >> possible.
>> >
>> > No, only the "find iPhone" one. The iPhone has no fucking idea what
>> > environment I'm in. I *definitely* don't want it screeching "PAY
>> > ATTENTION TO MEEEE!!!!" indiscriminately whenever it damn well feels
>> > like it.
>>
>> When does it do that?
>>
>
> I thought you were just saying that the iPhone plays it's alerts as
> loud as possible?

The only alert which is not played at the set ringer volume that I know of is the find-my-iphone alert (which I think you agree makes sense).  All the other alerts (alarm, message notification, timer expired, etc.) play at the ringer volume.

>
>>
>> I just discovered through testing that timer has the same feature as
>> alarm.  I find that incorrect.  If I have the silent switch enabled,
>> the timer should just vibrate.
>>
>> In fact, I don't think there's a way to make the timer "just vibrate"
>> in any way.  That's counter-intuitive and I will agree with you on
>> that one.
>>
>
> Yea, see there's just too much "surprise" involved, IMO.

To me, that is not a critical issue.  I've had an iPhone since June of 2010, and I didn't even realize this until now (and I use my iPhone for pretty much everything).  But if you are *looking* for problems, this certainly was not as well thought out as the other sounds.

>> I have seen strange things there, sometimes a photo/video comes in
>> rotated (I see it pass by the Windows photo import preview), but then
>> when I look at the photo in Explorer, it's correctly rotated.
>>
>
> I'm looking at the photos on my iPhone through Explorer right now and
> aside from the screenshots, the majority of them are either sideways or
> upside-down.

Wait, did you *download* them?  Or are you just browsing via the USB cable?  When you download them via the camera import feature of Windows (I think XP has that), it corrects the rotation.  I have no idea why it waits until then.

> The bizarre thing is, when I look at them through "Photos" on the
> device itself, it actually shows them all correctly. Which means that
> the device *knows* how they're supposed to be but doesn't bother to
> actually save them correctly.

I don't think the photos are meant to be browsed that way.  See this thread here https://discussions.apple.com/message/16514340#16514340

I think explorer must not be using the rotation field (seems odd), but the camera import rotates the picture on import.

>
> Doesn't protect the lens though, and it doesn't provide a physical
> button which would obviate the need to hijack the volume button. (It
> *is* at least a little better than not being able to access the camera
> from the lock screen at all.)

Weren't you the one advocating a case?

And the hijacking of the button, as I said before, is a misfeature.  It doesn't really hurt, but it's too poorly positioned to be useful IMO.

>> I have to say, this is one of the better improvements, especially with
>> those of us who have kids.
>>
>
> Yea, one-size-fits-all design :/

Oh, it was annoying when the kids were doing something cute, and you have to type in your code to unlock, then go find the camera app, wait for it to load (I think they actually improved the load time too) and by that time, it was over.  One of the perks of having a camera on your phone is you always have it with you.

> That said, I do like to use "kids" as an argument for having an
> OS-level "disable software eject" option for optical drives. ;)  "Ok,
> I'll just leave that to burn..." Walk away. It finishes and ejects. Kid
> waddles by. "Ohh, a pretty shiny object! Should I eat it or flush it?"

Or use it as a frisbee :)  Then you can damage two things at once!

>> While viewing a photo, tap the screen to bring up the controls.  Click
>> "Edit" (upper right corner), then you can rotate the photo.  Don't
>> think you can do the same with a video.
>>
>> Don't think I agree that an Edit button on the main photo viewing
>> screen is not realistically discoverable.
>>
>
> I don't see any rotate there:
>
> http://semitwist.com/download/img/shots/IMG_0859.PNG
>
> I just see the "Back" button then...umm "Do a Magic Trick?" (WTF?),
> then I'm guessing maybe "Anti-Red-Eye", and...ok, I'm pretty sure that
> last one's crop, I remember seeing it in one or two image editing
> programs.

The "back button" is the rotate.  I agree it's not very well drawn, it should be more like a quarter-turn and less snazzy (just a quarter circle arrow would be better).

The button on the top that says "Cancel" is actually the back button.

Besides, I don't think rotating that picture will help much ;)

>
> Android has an actual button for "Settings". Much easier to discover
> (despite not actually saying "settings" - or anything at all, really).
> And easier to use since it usually brings up a list of real words
> unlike the contrived hieroglyphs used throughout most of Android and
> iOS.
>
> Or...at least the older Androids did. The damn newer ones replaced the
> few buttons it used to have with on-screen touch abominations. At
> least, for the buttons they didn't eliminate outright in their quest to
> clone the iPhone misfeature-for-misfeature. The settings button might
> have been one of the ones they killed off entirely, I don't remember
> offhand.

My brother has an android with dedicated buttons, but they are part of the touch screen (they aren't displayed, they are inlays, but are part of the whole touch sensitive screen).  They misfunction sometimes, and it annoys.  He wishes they were real buttons.

I can't deny that the home button is overused for things, and it would make more sense to have a dedicated menu button.  It's not like there's no room on the bottom of the phone...

>> >> So no, I'm not a MAC person, I'm a Unix/Linux person.  But Mac
>> >> seems to have done Unix better than Linux :)
>> >
>> > That was never my impression with macs. For example, I'll take even
>> > a mediocre linux GUI over Finder/etc any day. I don't understand why
>> > mac...*users*...inevitably have such trouble with the idea that
>> > someone could actually dislike it when it's (apperently) so
>> > objectively wonderful.
>>
>> Finder could be better, but Nautilus sucks.  I'd rather use command
>> line than Nautilus.  And actually, I did :)
>>
>
> I agree Nautilus sucks (and back in the day, it was bloated as hell,
> too).  Best one I've found on Linux is Dolphin, and I'm not real big on
> that either. Out of all of them, Finder is easily still my least
> favorite though. I actually *liked* one of the views it had (the
> multi-column one) until I actually started using it firsthand.

That is the default, and I absolutely love it.  However, only with my trackpad, where I can easily scroll horizontally.

I really would like to have a folder view on the left though, for copying files like in Windows.  You know how you can open the directory you want to copy from, then go find the folder you want to copy to, but not open it, and just drag the files?  That is perfect.  With Finder, I have to drag the file to "Documents" shortcut, then wait until it pulls that up, then go navigating through subdirectories while holding down the button.

>> However, I think Finder is only usable once you force it to show you
>> all hidden files.  It pisses me off royally when an OS decides I
>> don't know enough to allow me to see hidden files.
>>
>
> Yea, "Show hidden files" is one of the first things I do when I install
> a new OS. And "Show my f*** extensions" on windows.

Hells yeah!  It always strikes me as comical that MS created that "feature" and it created a whole class of openme.txt.exe viruses.  Yet instead of just removing that misfeature, they built legions of extra CPU-consuming mail filtering and anti-virus software to prevent people from having any files with multiple extensions, only to piss off people who tried to use .tar.gz files :)

It never seemed to bother *anyone* in DOS or Windows 3.1, I think that was a huge design mistake.

>> >> It was an example.  But it was one that I noticed right away coming
>> >> from Ubuntu with Unity.  Unity tries to be very MAC-like,
>> >
>> > That's why switched to Debian for my linux stuff instead of
>> > upgrading to the newer Ubuntus, and also why I'm not moving to
>> > Gnome 3. Too much Apple-envy for my tastes.
>>
>> For my VMWare image for work, I chose Linux Mint with the default
>> GUI, and it works pretty well.  I like it better than Unity.
>>
>
> I don't know what Mint uses, but I always thought Unity was a bit of a
> misstep for Canonical. It's like Canonical pulling a "Metro".

I liked unity at first, and I like the design of it.  But it doesn't work right, because apps are not built to use it.  That was my point.

Looked it up, Mint has two shells, MATE and Cinnamon.  I think I settled on MATE, the start menu was like the best of both XP and Win7.

See here:  http://www.linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/katya/menu.png

That's a couple versions back, but start menu looks reasonably the same.

>> But I must say, the expensive hardware (quad-core i7) kicks the pants
>> off of any other machine I've ever used.
>>
>
> I recently moved from a 32-bit single-core XP to a 64-bit dual-core
> Win7 (don't remember exactly what CPU, but it's Intel and newer/faster
> than the Core 2 Duo). Video processing is waaay faster, compiling C++
> is slightly faster, and everything else I do is...pretty much the same.
> All of it already ran fine on the old system, so there's not much left
> for this one to improve on speed-wise.

I think my old laptop was centrino with "hyperthreading"  (it was that old).

It doesn't hurt that I doubled my mac to 8GB of ram, especially in the VMWare dept. :)

>> No, this is a multi-touch pad, not a synaptics touchpad (on most
>> standard laptops).  Way different. The best feature is the 2-finger
>> scroll.  Don't know how I lived without that!
>>
>
> Multitouch is standard on all laptops these days, including mine. In
> fact, this does 2-finger scroll, too (I did it just now), and has a
> bunch of other gestures including 3-finger ones, and all totally
> configurable.

Oh, that's cool!  I didn't know.  I know that I've seen HPs where the "buttons" were just drawings on the touchpad.  But they sucked, didn't always work right.  And then if you wanted to hold down the button while scrolling, didn't work at all.

Must be they got it right by copying apple :)  Or maybe apple copied them, I don't know.

> Two-finger scroll is ok, but personally I *much* prefer the
> "circular"-motion scrolling (forget what they call it) - it's actually
> just about as good as a scroll wheel.

What I like about the 2-finger scroll is that it goes all 4 directions, it's like panning.  And I don't have to move my finger to a certain spot.

>
>> And I've tried Apple's magic mouse, it sucks.
>
> Is that the one they had five or ten years ago as a "two-button scroll
> mouse" but was touch-sensitive instead of having actual mouse buttons?
> I've only come across one person who ever liked it - and it definitely
> wasn't me.

It has no buttons or visible delineations, you have to just "know" that if you click on a certain spot (and you better not have your other fingers down) that it will be the correct mouse button.  Not my cup of tea.

If you swipe one finger, it scrolls.

My biggest gripe is that it was very uncomfortable to hold.

And this was after using it for about 30 minutes.

Compare that to the trackpad where you click with two fingers down for right-click.  In fact, the trackpad supports way more gestures, and gives you a large surface to use.

When I do get an iMac (need to save up some more), I will be opting for the trackpad instead of the MM.

>> No, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying basing your perception of
>> a new product on your experience with another product from the same
>> brand is not always objective.  And that's not always a bad thing --
>> there's a reason humans learn from their experience.  I never said
>> what's "popular" is good, that's BS.  I'm saying past experiences
>> bias our decisions (all of us, myself included).  I sure as hell will
>> *never* buy another motorola bluetooth headset again.
>>
> [...]
>>
>> Saying you don't like something because it's popular (not saying you
>> are saying that) is *still* an opinion driven by popularity!
>
> All fine, but I don't see how any of it leads you to conclude that I'm
> dismissing Apple products on account of them being from Apple.

Your posts seem to always include a general disdain of all things Apple (frankly, all things "new technology").  It's hard to separate the cause from the effect...

I apologize if I was too assuming.

>>
>> I personally will *never* sign up for facebook (sorry Andrei), and
>
> Bizarrely enough, I likely will, but only because these
> multiplayer-enabled mobile games (I'm working on one - hopefully it
> won't suck *too* bad) apparently need (for some definition of
> "need" ;) ) to support facebook-based login these days. So I gotta be
> able to test it.

Hehe.  I almost always immediately delete an app that won't let me proceed without logging in to facebook.  There is no reason for that, unless it, um... is the facebook app :)  There is a general assumption by many applications/websites that *everyone* uses facebook.  I refuse to pretend that I have 800 "friends".  I have friends, I know who they are.  I don't need to know what's going on with them every second of the day.

Besides, my wife is on facebook, and if any important news happens via FB, she'll tell me :)

-Steve

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 09:55:48PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote: [...]
> > > > The one thing I would rip out of OSX and throw against the wall is the mail app.  Its interface and experience is awesome.  But it frequently corrupts messages and doesn't properly save outgoing mail.  Not good for a mail application.
> > 
> > Ahhh how I love Mutt. ;-)
> > 
> 
> I've been finding Mutt very useful for when I'm ssh'ed into my server to create a temporary throwaway address. Doing "mutt -f /path/to/mailbox" is so much more convenient than setting up a POP3 GUI client. I need to learn how to use mutt better though, as I've just been fumbling around with it.

Well, mutt's tagline is that it sucks, all MUAs suck, mutt just sucks less. :-)


> For my usual mailboxes though, I prefer typical GUI desktop clients. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find one that I like.

Maybe you should write one in D. ;-)

For one thing, having a MIME library in D would be awesome.


> Outlook Express has a bunch of problems (no spellcheck, can't send UTF, proprietary storage, etc). Windows Mail won't be an option when I move to Linux or upgrade back to XP. Claws mail is just generally buggy and never does anything in the background (feels almost like it might be purely single-threaded). And I'm not a big fan of Opera and don't really want to use a web browser as my desktop mail client.

I'm a big Opera fan, because Opera lets me configure stuff to work the way I want it to. But I never use it for mail (I don't like using a browser as an MUA, I think that's just feeping creaturism). And recent releases of Opera are starting to show signs of instability and excessive memory consumption, unlike earlier releases, and I'm starting to wonder if I might want to switch to Firefox...


> I think I might actually try moving to Thunderbird even though I'm generally unhappy with Mozilla software/practices, and didn't like it last time I tried (for example, it kept trying to bold/italic/underline parts of text in my *plaintext* views, and the people on the "help" forums just complained that I should shut up and like it - which is consistent with what usually happens when I inquire about customizing parts of Mozilla's so-called "most customizable browser in the world").

... but if it's that unconfigurable, then Opera might just be the lesser of two evils. I have to admit that I've tried using Firefox as my primary browser before, and I didn't like it. It's too IE-like for my tastes.


[...]
> > I find pretty much all GUI mail apps (both webmail and local MUAs) strait-jacketed. Anything that doesn't let you configure mail headers is unusable to me, and HTML by default gets on my nerves so much it's not even funny.
> 
> I never care about mail headers (unless I'm debugging something mail-related, which isn't often), but I *ALWAYS* have HTML disabled. I'll never use a mail client that doesn't let me turn HTML off. Not only do I not want to deal with any tracker-images (or god forbid, JS emails), but in my experience "HTML email" just means it's too easy, and far too tempting, for other people to make the stuff they send me really, really ugly ;) "Just the words, ma'am."
[...]

That's why I liked Markdown. :) Give users _basic_, logical markup that also just happens to be readable in plaintext that can be sent verbatim over the wire, and can be optionally written/read in HTML. Email doesn't need HTML, the only really necessary stuff is a bit of logical markup for people who find plaintext "too primitive". HTML is overkill.

Not to mention... it's not just the JS or tracker images, but have you ever been asked to make HTML email newsletters that have to look the same across the board? Ever looked at the standards for HTML emails? Haha, fooled you. There is no standard. Every webmail and their neighbour's open relay have their own conventions for HTML email. Nothing is compatible.  You can't rely on CSS because many webmails strip CSS and JS. Google Mail strips embedded style tags. Different webmails strip different things, and have different ways of formatting the same thing (often implemented by invasive mangling of the HTML). The result is that people revert to using table-based formatting and *shudder* font tags *shudder* 'cos that's the only way you can get things to even remotely resemble something sane. It's 1995 all over again, two decades later.


T

-- 
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking.

On Sep 24, 2012, at 6:55 PM, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:10:09 -0700
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 07:52:15PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> 
>>> A lot of the videogames I've played have independent adjustable SFX/music/voice volumes. I've even happily made use of that. And I'm damn glad that the TV *still* has a properly working volume control despite that because I make even more use of that.
>> 
>> Yeah I almost never play games with music on, 'cos I generally find the music not to my liking. SFX I sometimes leave on low, though on handhelds I generally turn both off. But the option to only have SFX without music is a plus. I *have* deleted apps before that didn't allow independent settings.
>> 
> 
> I never used to mute videogame music until they started licensing stuff from the record labels. Like all that "EA Trax" stuff. Blech. Last generation, that was one of the great things about the XBox: custom soundtracks. My brother introduced me to Quarashi's Jinx album which made for a far better soundtrack for THPS2X than the built-in songs. The Tony Hawk games from 3 onward were almost unplayable with the built-in music enabled.

One really interesting side effect of using licensed music in games is that it can prevent the game from being re-released as a "classic" later on, ported to other platforms, etc, if the licensing deal didn't include a clause for that (which is typically the case). There have been games re-released in the past few years with no music track because the license didn't allow for its inclusion.

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:10:07 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 09:55:48PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > For my usual mailboxes though, I prefer typical GUI desktop clients. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find one that I like.
> 
> Maybe you should write one in D. ;-)
> 

Heh, I'd love to, and I've even had that in mind for some time now (a few years). Problem is there's a *lot* of things I'd like to do, and all on top of other things I *have* to do ;)

My current pet project ATM is a blog^H^H^H^H*article* system using vibe.d and Adam's HTML DOM (the combination of which are making development a *breeze*...in the rare cases I actually get to work on it). It won't be as fully-featured as wordpress or tangocms, but at least it'll do what I want, how I want, and won't go anywhere near PHP ;)

> For one thing, having a MIME library in D would be awesome.
> 

Maybe I'm just not awake enough yet but: What exactly would it do? Just be a mapping of "file extension" <--> "mime type"?

> 
> I'm a big Opera fan, because Opera lets me configure stuff to work the way I want it to. But I never use it for mail (I don't like using a browser as an MUA, I think that's just feeping creaturism). And recent releases of Opera are starting to show signs of instability and excessive memory consumption, unlike earlier releases, and I'm starting to wonder if I might want to switch to Firefox...
> 

Newer Operas also got rid of the "native-ish" theme, which is why I'm not upgrading past v10. It may seem trivial, but skinned apps *really* bug me.

I find the UIs in the FF4-onward to be completely intolerable. Even FF3's UI was god-awful, and then they managed to make it worse with 4 by going all "Chrome-envy".


> ... but if it's that unconfigurable, then Opera might just be the lesser of two evils. I have to admit that I've tried using Firefox as my primary browser before, and I didn't like it. It's too IE-like for my tastes.
> 

That was probably a long time ago, as FF is basically a Chrome knock-off now. Then again, so is IE now...

Speaking of, I wrote a "not-a-blog" post about these browser issues just a few months back:

<http://semitwist.com/articles/article/view/the-perfect-browser-is-easy!-yet-it-still-doesn-t-exist...>

(Yea, TangoCMS uses loooong urls.)

> The result is that people revert to using table-based formatting and

Hey, I *like* table-based formatting :). Beats the hell out of trying to
kluge together sane layouts/flowing with CSS. And nobody's
ever going to convince me that HTML isn't the presentation layer.

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 05:36:48PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:10:07 -0700
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 09:55:48PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > > For my usual mailboxes though, I prefer typical GUI desktop clients.  Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find one that I like.
> > 
> > Maybe you should write one in D. ;-)
> > 
> 
> Heh, I'd love to, and I've even had that in mind for some time now (a few years). Problem is there's a *lot* of things I'd like to do, and all on top of other things I *have* to do ;)

Ah yes. I have that problem too. Too many pet projects, too little time.


[...]
> > For one thing, having a MIME library in D would be awesome.
> > 
> 
> Maybe I'm just not awake enough yet but: What exactly would it do? Just be a mapping of "file extension" <--> "mime type"?

I must've been half-asleep when I wrote that. I meant a mail-handling library that can handle MIME attachments.


> > I'm a big Opera fan, because Opera lets me configure stuff to work the way I want it to. But I never use it for mail (I don't like using a browser as an MUA, I think that's just feeping creaturism). And recent releases of Opera are starting to show signs of instability and excessive memory consumption, unlike earlier releases, and I'm starting to wonder if I might want to switch to Firefox...
> > 
> 
> Newer Operas also got rid of the "native-ish" theme, which is why I'm not upgrading past v10. It may seem trivial, but skinned apps *really* bug me.

Skinned apps don't bug me at all. I tend to like apps where you can delete useless buttons off the UI and turn off toolbars and stuff you never use. As well as configure custom keyboard bindings ('cos I hate having to use the mouse unless it's needed for an *inherently* graphical task, like picking out pixels).


> I find the UIs in the FF4-onward to be completely intolerable. Even FF3's UI was god-awful, and then they managed to make it worse with 4 by going all "Chrome-envy".

What I'd _really_ like, is browser *library*, where you get to assemble your own browser from premade parts. Like replace the lousy UI front end with a custom interface. Applications nowadays suffer from excessive unnecessary integration. Software should be made reusable, dammit. And I don't mean just code reuse on the level of functions. I mean entire software systems that are pluggable and inter-connectible. If there's a browser that has a good back-end renderer but lousy UI, it should be possible to rip out the UI part and substitute it with the UI of another browser that has a better UI but lousy back-end. And if there's a browser that comes with unnecessary bloat like a mail app, it should be possible to outright _delete_ the mail component off the HD and have just the browser part working. Software these days is just so monolithic and clumsy. We need a new paradigm.


[...]
> > The result is that people revert to using table-based formatting and
> 
> Hey, I *like* table-based formatting :). Beats the hell out of trying to kluge together sane layouts/flowing with CSS. And nobody's ever going to convince me that HTML isn't the presentation layer.

I say trash it all, tables, HTML, everything. Markdown is good enough for email. If you need more than that, go buy a real website and post it there instead of transmitting that crap over SMTP.


T

-- 
This is a tpyo.

On Tuesday, 25 September 2012 at 22:49:36 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I must've been half-asleep when I wrote that. I meant a mail-handling library that can handle MIME attachments.

I did a simple one a while ago. Jush pushed to github:

https://github.com/adamdruppe/misc-stuff-including-D-programming-language-web-stuff/blob/fd7bfd5c250901a8c546b502772f18fe019ed7e9/email.d

Nothing really special, but it works for what I've tried with it so far.

I need to do a parser soon too, to replace my current indexOf hacks in my mail reading apps. Eh, I'll get around to it eventually.

> > I'm looking at the photos on my iPhone through Explorer right now and aside from the screenshots, the majority of them are either sideways or upside-down.
> 
> Wait, did you *download* them?  Or are you just browsing via the USB cable?  When you download them via the camera import feature of Windows (I think XP has that), it corrects the rotation.  I have no idea why it waits until then.
> 
> > The bizarre thing is, when I look at them through "Photos" on the device itself, it actually shows them all correctly. Which means that the device *knows* how they're supposed to be but doesn't bother to actually save them correctly.
> 
> I don't think the photos are meant to be browsed that way.  See this thread here https://discussions.apple.com/message/16514340#16514340
> 
> I think explorer must not be using the rotation field (seems odd), but the camera import rotates the picture on import.
> 

Ugh, yea, exactly. I can't do a normal file copy? I can't email them? The way apple handled photo orientation is just terrible. Like the one guy said in there, at the very *least*, they should have allowed an option to actually store them rotated since there's obviously so damn much that doesn't support that metadata flag.


> 
> The "back button" is the rotate.  I agree it's not very well drawn, it should be more like a quarter-turn and less snazzy (just a quarter circle arrow would be better).
> 

Ugh, geez...

I miss words. I didn't mind non-word toolbar buttons on the desktop, because then you have the concept of "hover" which will trigger the words until you learn the icons (and then get annoyed because you usually can't turn off the tooltips once you no longer need them...).

Plus toolbar buttons on the desktop aren't so damn abstract. Android's guilty of that too, their wordless icons are just getting more and more abstract (and thus, obscure) with each new version. Yea, they're prettier now, but who cares about pretty when it's not usable?


> Besides, I don't think rotating that picture will help much ;)
> 

Very true ;)

> 
> My brother has an android with dedicated buttons, but they are part of the touch screen (they aren't displayed, they are inlays, but are part of the whole touch sensitive screen).

Yea, that's how mine is, too (Nexus S 4G). I prefer the older ones with
physical buttons, but at least this is better than the latest ones which
merely draw it on the screen (which means they can decide to make
the "standard" buttons disappear on a whim...gee, great...)

I think they're just trying to "be like apple" and minimize the amount of anything tactile. I can't think of any other sane reason for it.

> >
> > Finder is easily still my
> > least favorite though. I actually *liked* one of the views it had
> > (the multi-column one) until I actually started using it firsthand.
> 
> That is the default, and I absolutely love it.  However, only with my trackpad, where I can easily scroll horizontally.

With KatMouse (http://ehiti.de/katmouse/ - I won't use
Windows without it), I can easily scroll horizontally by pointing at the
horiz scroll bar and using the scroll wheel. Not as handy as on a
trackpad, but at least I don't have to be using a trackpad to do it ;)

I do wish tilting scroll wheels were more common though.

> 
> I really would like to have a folder view on the left though, for copying files like in Windows.  You know how you can open the directory you want to copy from, then go find the folder you want to copy to, but not open it, and just drag the files?  That is perfect. With Finder, I have to drag the file to "Documents" shortcut, then wait until it pulls that up, then go navigating through subdirectories while holding down the button.
> 

Yea, for me, that was actually one of my biggest issues with finder. I rely on the dual-pane too much to give it up. Finder's tree-view-with-folders-AND-files is sometimes nice (It's common on Linux file managers, too), but without that extra folder-tree on the left, I found I just couldn't be using it for everyday work. It's a non-starter for me.


> > Yea, "Show hidden files" is one of the first things I do when I install a new OS. And "Show my f*** extensions" on windows.
> 
> Hells yeah!  It always strikes me as comical that MS created that "feature" and it created a whole class of openme.txt.exe viruses. Yet instead of just removing that misfeature, they built legions of extra CPU-consuming mail filtering and anti-virus software to prevent people from having any files with multiple extensions, only to piss off people who tried to use .tar.gz files :)
> 

Yup :)

They seem to think their "Type" field solves the issue, and maybe that works fine for average Joes, but I'm not an average Joe and I don't want to be playing guessing games about "Ok, what's the Microsoft term for a .XXXXX file?" Or "What the hell file type is a 'Configuration settings' again?" And then there's different file types that will have the *same* Microsoft "Type".


> It never seemed to bother *anyone* in DOS or Windows 3.1, I think that was a huge design mistake.
> 

To be fair though, back then, there were fewer idiots using computers.

And I'm not entirely joking. I mean think about, say, the 80's. Who were the most common people using computers? There were plenty of exceptions, but mostly it was people who knew what they were doing. That's because the people who *didn't* know what they were doing would either not buy one, or just let it collect dust. Now everyone uses them, including the "dummies" who previously avoided them.


> Looked it up, Mint has two shells, MATE and Cinnamon.  I think I settled on MATE, the start menu was like the best of both XP and Win7.
> 

Hmm, I've never heard of either of those. Looking it up, apparently MATE is a fork of the now-abandoned GNOME 2. Yea, that's not too bad. I used GNOME 2 and found it occasionally trying to be more mac-like than I would have preferred, but it wasn't bad overall (although the taskbar seemed a little buggy - it only ever used about 50% of the space available, weird). And it certainly beat the hell out of KDE 4 (even the so-called "good" versions of KDE4 stink) and what I've seen of GNOME 3.


> >> But I must say, the expensive hardware (quad-core i7) kicks the pants off of any other machine I've ever used.
> >>
> >
> > I recently moved from a 32-bit single-core XP to a 64-bit dual-core Win7 (don't remember exactly what CPU, but it's Intel and newer/faster than the Core 2 Duo). Video processing is waaay faster, compiling C++ is slightly faster, and everything else I do is...pretty much the same. All of it already ran fine on the old system, so there's not much left for this one to improve on speed-wise.
> 
> I think my old laptop was centrino with "hyperthreading"  (it was
> that old).
> 

Hah! My desktop (ie my primary system until a few months ago) pre-dated
hyperthreading. <g>

My previous *laptop* was...I think it was about a P2 or
so, definitely <1GHz, and it had a PCMCIA slot, parallel/serial
ports and even a (yes, *a*) USB 1.1 port ;) It was awesome because it
could read DVDs (but couldn't burn anything) and had an *active matrix*
display, wow!

That laptop's been completely useless for many years now, of course.


> I know that I've seen HPs where
> the "buttons" were just drawings on the touchpad.

Yeech!

> > Two-finger scroll is ok, but personally I *much* prefer the "circular"-motion scrolling (forget what they call it) - it's actually just about as good as a scroll wheel.
> 
> What I like about the 2-finger scroll is that it goes all 4 directions, it's like panning.  And I don't have to move my finger to a certain spot.
> 

I'm not sure this one does that (although in some apps I can do that by middle-dragging on my trackball - I wish it was all though).

But, and maybe I'm being paranoid, I have a very strong suspicion
that limitation is due to an apple patent. They *have* been
very patent-litigious in recent years, and it doesn't seem like the
kind of feature anyone would actually have any trouble getting right.


> >
> >> And I've tried Apple's magic mouse, it sucks.
> >
> > Is that the one they had five or ten years ago as a "two-button scroll mouse" but was touch-sensitive instead of having actual mouse buttons? I've only come across one person who ever liked it - and it definitely wasn't me.
> 
> It has no buttons or visible delineations, you have to just "know" that if you click on a certain spot (and you better not have your other fingers down) that it will be the correct mouse button.  Not my cup of tea.
> 
> If you swipe one finger, it scrolls.
> 
> My biggest gripe is that it was very uncomfortable to hold.
> 

Yea, sounds like the one I tried years ago at some apple store. IIRC, you couldn't even rest your fingers on the mouse because that would be a "click". You had to hover *over* the "button".


> 
> Your posts seem to always include a general disdain of all things Apple (frankly, all things "new technology").

Apple and I do seem to have very different tastes in general.

> It's hard to separate
> the cause from the effect...
> 
> I apologize if I was too assuming.
> 

Fair enough.

> >>
> >> I personally will *never* sign up for facebook (sorry Andrei), and
> >
> > Bizarrely enough, I likely will, but only because these multiplayer-enabled mobile games (I'm working on one - hopefully it won't suck *too* bad) apparently need (for some definition of "need" ;) ) to support facebook-based login these days. So I gotta be able to test it.
> 
> Hehe.  I almost always immediately delete an app that won't let me proceed without logging in to facebook.  There is no reason for that, unless it, um... is the facebook app :)

Yea. In our case, we're aiming for the "Words with Friends" model where "Log in with Facebook" is merely an option.

> There is a general
> assumption by many applications/websites that *everyone* uses
> facebook.

I know! And it's not just software, it's all business in general. They noticed that it's popular so they think that means "nearly everyone uses it" when the reality is that even as popular as it is, it's still only a *minority* of internet users. Same with twitter.


> I refuse to pretend that I have 800 "friends".  I have
> friends, I know who they are.  I don't need to know what's going on
> with them every second of the day.
> 

Yea, I think at the very least they really botched the wording on that. That's been a pretty common jab made towards facebook. And I can't disagree with it.

> Besides, my wife is on facebook, and if any important news happens via FB, she'll tell me :)
> 

Heh. Similar situation here. My brother and sister are both on it, so I'll catch wind of any family news from FB. My parents, like me, aren't on FB either so they get the same benefit, too, although they usually hear much sooner I do ;)