Apple Photos is more difficult to use today than it was 10 years ago. Not joking. (The name might have changed but the program that did the same thing).
I don't generally use Apple, so I don't know what they've done. But I can guess it is a result of several factors. e.g.:
*) Increasing complexity. To keep up with competitors, or to move ahead, they add increasing numbers of features that, generally, fewer people use. These need promoting, so are given a higher prominence in the UI than older features - because the money and effort has gone into developing them, and they *may* turn out to be a popular differentiator from their competitors.
*) Hiding complexity. The more features software has, the greater the more complex the UI becomes. In software that does not mind the users having to learn (e.g. Photoshop or Gimp) they make a choice to keep the UI complex, and that the user will have to learn. For mass-market software, they want to make it as easy for the user to use the software as possible - and that means hiding some features further down the UI, or even remove them.
This conflict means that the new and shiny often gets more prominence in UI than older features the users actually use more frequently. It also means that the UI options continually change as the New and Shiny gets added prominently. This leads to utterly terrible software such as MS Outlook Express (Rest in Hell...)
What *should* happen is that they survey what the users do most with the app, and prioritise those. What I don't want is MS Outlook asking me at the top of each email whether I want a summary by Copilot. No, I blooming well don't!
(This is an old problem: it was mentioned in a human factors course I took in the mid-nineties...)
Apple Photos is more difficult to use today than it was 10 years ago. Not joking. (The name might have changed but the program that did the same thing).
I don't generally use Apple, so I don't know what they've done. But I can guess it is a result of several factors. e.g.:
*) Increasing complexity. To keep up with competitors, or to move ahead, they add increasing numbers of features that, generally, fewer people use. These need promoting, so are given a higher prominence in the UI than older features - because the money and effort has gone into developing them, and they *may* turn out to be a popular differentiator from their competitors.
*) Hiding complexity. The more features software has, the greater the more complex the UI becomes. In software that does not mind the users having to learn (e.g. Photoshop or Gimp) they make a choice to keep the UI complex, and that the user will have to learn. For mass-market software, they want to make it as easy for the user to use the software as possible - and that means hiding some features further down the UI, or even remove them.
This conflict means that the new and shiny often gets more prominence in UI than older features the users actually use more frequently. It also leads to utterly terrible software such as MS Outlook Express (Rest in Hell...) It also means that the UI options continually change as the New and Shiny gets added prominently.
What *should* happen is that they survey what the users do most with the app, and prioritise those. What I don't want is MS Outlook asking me at the top of each email whether I want a summary by Copilot. No, I blooming well don't!
(This is an old problem: it was mentioned in a human factors course I took in the mid-nineties...)
I’d be much, much happier about stupid Copilot questions if the app actually worked at all. Mine usually doesn’t.
Incidentally, I had a small tech-related snafu yesterday. Mrs J was having a semi-confidential work meeting on her mobile in the study. I got into her car to go swimming; but her mobile is connected to her car via Bluetooth. So when I started the car, I suddenly found the call coming out of the radio. I had to apologise to the people she was talking to and end the call.
Is it me or does 'undocumented' make it sound like people have lost their birth certificates and not yet applied for a driving license or passport ?!
It is, usually, a generous description.
80% of undocumented migrants are illegal immigrants, pure and simple.
The other 20% are more complicated: there are adults who were brought to the US as children, and have had a US schooling, and never known any other life. There are those who came to the US with visas (like supporters of the US in Afghanistan), who are not getting their visas renewed, but who cannot return to Afghanistan.
Incidentally, I had a small tech-related snafu yesterday. Mrs J was having a semi-confidential work meeting on her mobile in the study. I got into her car to go swimming; but her mobile is connected to her car via Bluetooth. So when I started the car, I suddenly found the call coming out of the radio. I had to apologise to the people she was talking to and end the call.
Surely you just chose to connect the cars Bluetooth to your phone?
Incidentally, I had a small tech-related snafu yesterday. Mrs J was having a semi-confidential work meeting on her mobile in the study. I got into her car to go swimming; but her mobile is connected to her car via Bluetooth. So when I started the car, I suddenly found the call coming out of the radio. I had to apologise to the people she was talking to and end the call.
Surely you just chose to connect the cars Bluetooth to your phone?
No. Her phone was already paired to her car, as she uses handsfree whilst driving. All I did was turn the car on, and the car obviously detected her phone nearby in the house, paired to it automatically, noticed there was a conversation and broke into it. All I did was turn the car on. I'm not even sure I turned the radio on. AFAIAA it did not involve my phone.
My *guess* is that this is done so you can seamlessly continue a conversation started outside the car when you get into the car. It doesn't work very well if you are not the person in the car, though...
Incidentally, I had a small tech-related snafu yesterday. Mrs J was having a semi-confidential work meeting on her mobile in the study. I got into her car to go swimming; but her mobile is connected to her car via Bluetooth. So when I started the car, I suddenly found the call coming out of the radio. I had to apologise to the people she was talking to and end the call.
Surely you just chose to connect the cars Bluetooth to your phone?
No. Her phone was already paired to her car, as she uses handsfree whilst driving. All I did was turn the car on, and the car obviously detected her phone nearby in the house, paired to it automatically, noticed there was a conversation and broke into it. All I did was turn the car on. I'm not even sure I turned the radio on. AFAIAA it did not involve my phone.
My *guess* is that this is done so you can seamlessly continue a conversation started outside the car when you get into the car. It doesn't work very well if you are not the person in the car, though...
(2018 Hyundai i20 and Samsung phone)
Mine does this too. Annoying if you've jumped in the car with friends and it starts blaring our whatever weird music you were listening to on your run.
Incidentally, I had a small tech-related snafu yesterday. Mrs J was having a semi-confidential work meeting on her mobile in the study. I got into her car to go swimming; but her mobile is connected to her car via Bluetooth. So when I started the car, I suddenly found the call coming out of the radio. I had to apologise to the people she was talking to and end the call.
Surely you just chose to connect the cars Bluetooth to your phone?
No. Her phone was already paired to her car, as she uses handsfree whilst driving. All I did was turn the car on, and the car obviously detected her phone nearby in the house, paired to it automatically, noticed there was a conversation and broke into it. All I did was turn the car on. I'm not even sure I turned the radio on. AFAIAA it did not involve my phone.
My *guess* is that this is done so you can seamlessly continue a conversation started outside the car when you get into the car. It doesn't work very well if you are not the person in the car, though...
(2018 Hyundai i20 and Samsung phone)
My point was that if you had also paired your phone to the car, you could have gone to the Bluetooth settings and connected your own phone, which would have disconnected your wife's.
Surely even the Supreme Court isn’t going to let him get away with that?
If it does, then he’s going to be an even bigger disaster for America than I thought, and I expected a pretty big disaster.
It’s been obvious for some time that Trump’s vision is dictatorship. Putin is his role model.
I have no doubt that he's malicious. I just wonder whether he's now cognitively capable of having a coherent plan, or whether he's more like a small child throwing random tantrums. But no doubt some of the malicious people around him have plans.
One is that the new authoritarians hate to be contradicted.
The other is that they are almost fatally online, so they do long screeds on TwiX.
We haven't really seen anything like it here since Dom Cummings.
The grimmest phenomenon of all is that these people only believe in democracy in so far as it is a vehicle for themselves to seize power. Once that is achieved, they will do everything possible to prevent their removal.
Surely even the Supreme Court isn’t going to let him get away with that?
If it does, then he’s going to be an even bigger disaster for America than I thought, and I expected a pretty big disaster.
What happens next? Deploying federal troops against the people will be problematic. So he creates a squad of men wearing black fatigues and masks, and deploys these armed “guardians” into woke cities with a mandate to simply shoot anyone who looks at them funny.
Armed masked mobs running around abducting people is the will of the people.
Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom · 1h U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes.
They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President.
This is un-American.
Its a bit sad when Americans don't seem to know their own history. In 1957 that radical Dwight Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne to protect 9 black pupils being integrated into a school in Little Rock Arkansas. He also federalised the whole of the state's National Guard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine
My future wife had an exchange trip in New England whilst at school in the 1970s. The class were doing a history test which was multiple choice. They said she could have a go if she wanted. She was almost the only one in the class to get 100%. So this is maybe not a new thing.
Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom · 1h U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes.
They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President.
This is un-American.
Its a bit sad when Americans don't seem to know their own history. In 1957 that radical Dwight Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne to protect 9 black pupils being integrated into a school in Little Rock Arkansas. He also federalised the whole of the state's National Guard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine
My future wife had an exchange trip in New England whilst at school in the 1970s. The class were doing a history test which was multiple choice. They said she could have a go if she wanted. She was almost the only one in the class to get 100%. So this is maybe not a new thing.
Eisnehower followed a process and was acting to enforce a court order that the Governor in question had refused to (in writing). He did it reluctantly and with very strict orders to the soldiers and National Guard on what they could and couldn't do.
That is rather different from a not overbright drunk deciding to deploy marines and telling them to shoot at anyone who looks at them in a funny way because Trump wants to make his base angry.
(Before anyone says, we do it in this country, that is true but (a) the law is different and (b) I'm not sure the Troubles in Northern Ireland would be an optimal example for America to follow.)
The other way of looking at this is to compare the increase in NLW which has increased substantially. The effect, which is to be welcomed, is that there is less being paid to subsidise workers albeit at the cost of increase in unemployment. Zombie companies that cannot exist without paying NLW and higher should be culled and culled regularly.
And before anyone waxes on about a life on Benefits, my pic of the day. Could you exist on this - paid every 4 weeks?
The other way of looking at this is to compare the increase in NLW which has increased substantially. The effect, which is to be welcomed, is that there is less being paid to subsidise workers albeit at the cost of increase in unemployment. Zombie companies that cannot exist without paying NLW and higher should be culled and culled regularly.
And before anyone waxes on about a life on Benefits, my pic of the day. Could you exist on this - paid every 4 weeks?
This completely overlooks the regressive changes to employers NI and the impact that will have had.
Acyn @Acyn · 1h Speaker Johnson: Thank you for your bold visionary leadership—it is key to this great success we are achieving—I believe he will be the most consequential president of the modern era if not all of American history
===
Do these fawning stunted pygmies have any idea how they will look in the history books?
Fisked (is that really named for Robert Fisk?)
Speaker Johnson: Thank you for your bold visionary leadership—
Ok that’s a bit much
it is key to this great success we are achieving—
To be fair, the GOP has survived - for now - albeit at the cost of all dignity and sense of self worth. That’s a “great success” by some definition
I believe he will be the most consequential president of the modern era if not all of American history
Actually that’s a fair point - at least of the modern era. And throughout American history there’s only a few more consequential - Lincoln, FDR etc. Not counting Washington because his consequential actions were before he was President:
Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom · 1h U.S. Marines have served honorably across multiple wars in defense of democracy. They are heroes.
They shouldn't be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfill the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President.
This is un-American.
Its a bit sad when Americans don't seem to know their own history. In 1957 that radical Dwight Eisenhower used the 101st Airborne to protect 9 black pupils being integrated into a school in Little Rock Arkansas. He also federalised the whole of the state's National Guard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine
My future wife had an exchange trip in New England whilst at school in the 1970s. The class were doing a history test which was multiple choice. They said she could have a go if she wanted. She was almost the only one in the class to get 100%. So this is maybe not a new thing.
Eisnehower followed a process and was acting to enforce a court order that the Governor in question had refused to (in writing). He did it reluctantly and with very strict orders to the soldiers and National Guard on what they could and couldn't do.
That is rather different from a not overbright drunk deciding to deploy marines and telling them to shoot at anyone who looks at them in a funny way because Trump wants to make his base angry.
(Before anyone says, we do it in this country, that is true but (a) the law is different and (b) I'm not sure the Troubles in Northern Ireland would be an optimal example for America to follow.)
Just be grateful that Leon is merely an entertainer
Comments
*) Increasing complexity. To keep up with competitors, or to move ahead, they add increasing numbers of features that, generally, fewer people use. These need promoting, so are given a higher prominence in the UI than older features - because the money and effort has gone into developing them, and they *may* turn out to be a popular differentiator from their competitors.
*) Hiding complexity. The more features software has, the greater the more complex the UI becomes. In software that does not mind the users having to learn (e.g. Photoshop or Gimp) they make a choice to keep the UI complex, and that the user will have to learn. For mass-market software, they want to make it as easy for the user to use the software as possible - and that means hiding some features further down the UI, or even remove them.
This conflict means that the new and shiny often gets more prominence in UI than older features the users actually use more frequently. It also means that the UI options continually change as the New and Shiny gets added prominently. This leads to utterly terrible software such as MS Outlook Express (Rest in Hell...)
What *should* happen is that they survey what the users do most with the app, and prioritise those. What I don't want is MS Outlook asking me at the top of each email whether I want a summary by Copilot. No, I blooming well don't!
(This is an old problem: it was mentioned in a human factors course I took in the mid-nineties...)
Surely even the Supreme Court isn’t going to let him get away with that?
If it does, then he’s going to be an even bigger disaster for America than I thought, and I expected a pretty big disaster.
80% of undocumented migrants are illegal immigrants, pure and simple.
The other 20% are more complicated: there are adults who were brought to the US as children, and have had a US schooling, and never known any other life. There are those who came to the US with visas (like supporters of the US in Afghanistan), who are not getting their visas renewed, but who cannot return to Afghanistan.
My *guess* is that this is done so you can seamlessly continue a conversation started outside the car when you get into the car. It doesn't work very well if you are not the person in the car, though...
(2018 Hyundai i20 and Samsung phone)
Can’t remember the same level of naked partisanship when Biden was president.
https://x.com/dhsgov/status/1932166819965444464?s=61
One is that the new authoritarians hate to be contradicted.
The other is that they are almost fatally online, so they do long screeds on TwiX.
We haven't really seen anything like it here since Dom Cummings.
@verbednoun.bsky.social
Sometimes it takes a raging asshole to fight a deranged lunatic.
The Reeves effect.
https://x.com/julianhjessop/status/1932320645150363766?s=61
Armed masked mobs running around abducting people is the will of the people.
Almost half of that number, for example, have been resident in the US more than two decades, with all that implies,
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/analysis-who-are-the-immigrants-who-come-to-the-u-s-heres-the-data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine
My future wife had an exchange trip in New England whilst at school in the 1970s. The class were doing a history test which was multiple choice. They said she could have a go if she wanted. She was almost the only one in the class to get 100%. So this is maybe not a new thing.
NEW THREAD
That is rather different from a not overbright drunk deciding to deploy marines and telling them to shoot at anyone who looks at them in a funny way because Trump wants to make his base angry.
(Before anyone says, we do it in this country, that is true but (a) the law is different and (b) I'm not sure the Troubles in Northern Ireland would be an optimal example for America to follow.)
And before anyone waxes on about a life on Benefits, my pic of the day. Could you exist on this - paid every 4 weeks?
Speaker Johnson: Thank you for your bold visionary leadership—
Ok that’s a bit much
it is key to this great success we are achieving—
To be fair, the GOP has survived - for now - albeit at the cost of all dignity and sense of self worth. That’s a “great success” by some definition
I believe he will be the most consequential president of the modern era if not all of American history
Actually that’s a fair point - at least of the modern era. And throughout American history there’s only a few more consequential - Lincoln, FDR etc. Not counting Washington because his consequential actions were before he was President:
It’s just not in a good way…