back to article Your software hates you and your devices think you're stupid

“I want you to kill Barbra Streisand.” Yup, no problem, I’ll enjoy doing that. Anyone else? “Kylie Minogue. And bloody Madonna, I can’t stand her any more.” Consider them bumped off. It’s sounding a little misogynistic, though. Are you sure? “Leave Chaka Khan alone.” Fine, Chaka survives to sing another day. Anyone else …

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      A friend bought a new car - including an expensive option of an MP3 player with the lauded ability to store tracks numbering in the thousands.

      It was soon discovered that when you switched it on - it always started at the first track. If you wanted a specific track you had to press a sequence of buttons to select one. This took some time as the albums you had added via the USB port were stored only as their component tracks - in a single flat directory of all tracks. So you could only advance one track at a time.

      1. Franco

        Re: There's an island somewhere...

        Sounds like mine. Admittedly it does remember last track played and carry on from there, but there are 2 play options. Play All or Play Random. You can't change the criteria for ordering the tracks in any way that I have found, so it's alphabetical by artist. It will not, despite what the manual says, recognise any playlist format that VLC, Windows Media Player (that's what the manual says to use, not my choice) or any other media player I have tried can create, so listening to an album in the order that the artist intended is "tricky". The same device is supposed to allow voice commands to make calls and quite simply can't, at least not for anyone with Mc or Mac in their name and as I am Scottish, there's 1 or 2 of them.

        Sometimes I miss the days when every media player had a pencil or a BIC Biro next to it, as an emergency tape winding tool.

        1. DiViDeD

          Re: Play All or Play Random

          That's my bloody phone, right there. Like an optimistic noob, I stuck a whole collection of audio plays, mostly series, into my phone's music folder, each in its own subfolder.

          OK, let's listen to Counter Measures. Oh, no Counter Measures tracks (just Track001, Track 01, Track 1, Trackoo2, etc).

          Not to worry, there's a Folders view option, and I named the folders CM01, CM02, and so on. OK. Folder view. Hmmm.. Series 01, Series 1, Serries001. WTF? Try Artist. Big Finish, maybe? 'Unknown Artist', 'Leavenworth', 'Ladysmith Black Simon' (I shit you not). Oh look, there's an icon menu. Cue 37 identical pictures of Sylvester McCoy, each with the phrase 'Track.....' under it.

          Once you finally get it sorted out (by reconnecting to the PC and *manually* changing all the filenames and deleting the File Properties info), it's ready to go.

          Ah. Series 1, Episode 1. Followed by S3 Ep 5??. Oh, the player has 'helpfully started in Shuffle, for my convenience. OK, change to loop folder. S1 Ep 1, followed by S1, Ep1 ad infinitum.

          User experience? Google Play 1, User 0. And late for work.

          Now, where did I put those cassette copies and my Walkman?

      2. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: There's an island somewhere...

        I've produced audio tracks for cars before so that people can listen to audio books. Often the problem is that the car will forget your place and send you back, so my main task is chopping the audio up so that you can use the fast forward button to jump through sections as if they were separate tracks. I've written a piece of software that chops during long periods of silence which results in pretty good breaks and there isn't any weird popping noises and ... I'm off topic. Sorry. My original point was that these small portions were useful because pressing the fast forward button to jump from track to track was better than holding it down to try to move inside one. That never seems to get you anywhere. Either it moves forward at about 3x normal speed, so you have no chance of getting to the middle without having held your finger on the button for a minute or two, or they made it exponential. That seems logical, as usually you just want to jump a bit, but if it gets to the point where it's skipping five minutes at a go, the function is once again useless.

        Of course the cars learned that I was about to defeat them, so they suddenly seem to have adopted the tactic of sometimes jumping to a completely random track when they finished with one. I've moved on to suggesting that people just get a car with an analog audio connection and use something else that will actually read the device and play the files in order.

    2. Anonymous Custard

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      I think my previous toaster came from there.

      It was allegedly a 4-slice one, consisting of two long slots. Of course these slots were about an inch too short for two slices of bread laid landscape, and the depth was such that putting them portrait meant the top couple of inches poked out when it was toasting.

      So either way around you always ended up with a band of untoasted bread at one end of one side on each slice.

      Said abomination has now been replaced by a nice 4-slot twin toaster, and all is tasty and golden.

      1. David Nash Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: There's an island somewhere...

        Upvoted for using the terms Portrait and Landscape for slices of bread!

        Isn't there a toaster somewhere that can burn an actual portrait into your toast?

        1. Anonymous Custard
          Trollface

          Re: There's an island somewhere...

          I know the audience here :)

          For your other question -

          http://www.tech-lane.com.cn/first%20product.html

          Seemingly available via eBay or several other auction sites.

      2. ocratato

        Re: There's an island somewhere...

        I quite like the dial on my toaster:

        1 does nearly done toast

        2 does burnt toast

        I've never tried 3,4,5 or 6

        I assume 6 is for testing the smoke alarm.

        1. Loud Speaker

          Re: There's an island somewhere...

          I assume 6 is for testing the smoke alarm.

          No. That is 4. 6 is to burn the building down.

        2. David Nash Silver badge

          Re: There's an island somewhere...

          Mine does nearly done on one side and burnt on the other side.

    3. Andytug

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      Also, in the case of dishwashers, claiming it'll wash 12 place settings. Which it will, if you had a takeaway so haven't used a single pan, pot, jug, etc. In reality it's half that.

    4. Lyndon Hills 1

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      Phones will have buttons running parallel on both sides, so that pressing the one on the right means you also press the one on the left.

      Which just happens to be how you restart the bloody thing.

    5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      Taiwan?

      1. Chris G

        Re: There's an island somewhere...

        A friend had her kitchen completely rebuilt, everything was fitted including the microwave. All made by a company that sounds like the French slang for Germans.

        When she fancied warming up some leftovers in the microwave, she realised how bloody complicated the buttons were and had no idea of the sequence to make it work, so she called me 'cos I'm technical, I, of course had no idea how it worked either.

        I said I would print off the manual from the interthingy for her as the kitchen fitters had left no paperwork at all, trouble was there was no visible model number either.

        After looking online at their range of microwaves I found the model and discovered you had to have not only the model number but the serial as well because different countries had different manuals and different UIs.

        Taking the damned thing out of the cabinet was a bitch, found the data plate and got the numbers, putting the thing back in the cabinet was a bigger bitch.

        We made it work from the manual and found the 'browning element didn't work so it had to come out again to be replaced. The built in oven was also a sod to operate and needed the same rigmarole.

        One make I would never buy for kitchens based on that experience and yes, I would hang the sod/s who designed it.

        1. JimBob42

          Re: There's an island somewhere...

          I had to google that. It's weird that I've never seen that before.

          https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-French-call-the-Germans-bosch-in-World-War-1

    6. Denarius
      Thumb Up

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      right on. I have a washing machine with lots of buttons, dials with incoherent markings. It seems both knobs do same thing in different ways, none of them useful. No way to do just a spin cycle, no way to just do a simple wash. no manual. Only known effect of buttons is to make any process longer. How I wish I still had the 30 year old mechanical clunker that used more water but one could select a single function as required or any clearly marked cycle selections using one knob.

      1. Tom 7

        Re: There's an island somewhere...

        We have a Samsung(?) washing machine that went wrong while in guarantee. The engineers practically moved in. Three new motherboards and lots of other bits. The motherboards ran all sorts of tests and diagnostics but never ever solved the problem. It does four or five washes fine and then stops mid cycle with an error number that appears in none of their manuals!

        If you switch it off and on at the mains it will do four or five washes before stopping mid cycle again - but never when the engineer is there.

    7. Bill B
      FAIL

      Re: There's an island somewhere...

      “Phones will have buttons running parallel on both sides, so that pressing the one on the right means you also press the one on the left”

      Yes. This. The plonker who put the volume controls on the opposite side to the off button. You know which phone I’m talking about.

      And if anyone tells me I’m holding it wrong I’ll ... I’ll... Let’s put it this way. It may not fit sideways but I’ll have a damn good try.

  1. Cuddles

    your devices think you're stupid

    To be fair, they have a point.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: your devices think you're stupid

      I could never set the timer on the video recorder to record properly. I can, however, design a video recorder that I can program the way I think it should work.

  2. tiggity Silver badge

    80s music was mostly dire

    Fully agree with Dabbsy on that (a few exceptions, but generally awful)

    1. Mark 110

      Re: 80s music was mostly dire

      I always liked The Cure . . . 'Boooooys Dooooon't Crrrrrryyyyyy' . . . . yes they do. About their gadgets :-)

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: 80s music was mostly dire

      "generally awful"

      I only say that (and worse things) about 70's disco "music". I'd like more 80's music, please. What passes for "popular" nowadays [with the exception of groups like 'Muse'] is pretty much mundane crap.

      And the disney-esque teeny-bopper stuff tends to sound like a hammer pounding into my brain. I sometimes hear it when I channel surf past some disney channel tween/teen thing. no thanks.

      1970's era 110bpm disco "thunka-clappa-thunka-clappa" was the worst, though. "music" at the speed of sex. At least they sped it up to 130bpm or so in the 80's and stopped the high-hat abuse (with more than 2 chords in the song!). Yeah, I guess the 80's, with its often keyboard-centric 'new wave' sound, brought in more piano players (that had some music theory knowledge) to play keyboards, instead of the "stamped out of plastic" 1-2 chord specials that made up a lot of 70's "disco". Every song by KC and the Sunshine Band, the BGs, and a handful of others, sounded the same. THE! SAME!. It was like the epitome of "formulaic".

      70's disco: "generally awful" indeed.

      /me goes back listening to anime theme songs and straight-ahead jazz. and Muse. and Metallica. and 80's music. Oh my! Actual talent was needed to create them.

      1. Denarius

        Re: 80s music was mostly dire

        must be age. I noticed that when cleaning out my own MP3s lately that many of the 70s cassette tracks were no longer wanted. At the time they seemed good. Fewer 80s tracks, even fewer 90s. The later ones were tracks where the music was original or lyrics intelligent. I discovered that my tastes have moved to 60s even. Except I still like ABBA.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please don't kill me with downvotes...

    ...but I'm currently a website developer and thus the website's de-facto UX designer.

    My biggest battle with interface design isn't creating and styling the controls, nor coming up with a suitable design that meets the needs of the user, nor even finding out what the user wants (though that last one can be tricky). No, the biggest battle is trying to bounce back EVERY SINGLE BLOODY STUPID IDEA THAT THE PHB HAS THAT WILL WRECK THE WHOLE THING!!! </bob-mode>. Some of these ideas sound reasonable in a vacuum, but the idea that a user interface is something that has to be designed as a whole or that some interface ideas just won't work with others is one that can apparently never be properly explained.

    I won't even get started on the marketing department...

    Anon, for obvious reasons

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      Anon, for obvious reasons

      Down at UXDA...

      "Hi, I'm Barry and I'm a UX designer. I want to stop designing crappy websites."

      "Well done, Barry!"

      "Yes, well done."

      "We've all been there Barry, we understand."

    2. John G Imrie
      Happy

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      I was about to down vote you, but then you mentioned the marketing department's impact on UX design. You have my sympathies.

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      "I won't even get started on the marketing department"

      I think you should. With extreme prejudice.

    4. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      Let me guess ... every single one of those ideas from the PHB would be just fine if the UI only had to do the one use-case that he (I'll stick my neck out here) was thinking about when he came up with it.

    5. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      heh - bob mode - that's funny!

      I hope your web site is light on script and doesn't use ginormous 'canned' style sheets. otherwise, it'll be like every other bandwidth-piggy garbage website on "teh intarwebs". Just sayin'...

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      You have my sympathies. Really. I went through that the first five years when the WWW was shiny and new. "Solutions" prior and since, I have total control. That one era? Yikes!

    7. Tom 7

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      I designed (in VB it was so long ago) a web site to sell a few hundred thousand products to a few tens of thousands of regular customers. I wrote it in VB so others who worked there could understand what was going on and help. The marketing department were a serious pain in the arse - different styling every month or so. So I wrote them an interface so they could change the styling as a when they pleased, that shut them up - it seems they only want to change shit when someone else has to do it. That was a light bulb moment, Since then I have endeavoured to ensure that anyone who has any input basically takes full responsibility for it where possible.

      Try it some time - manglement really fucking hate not having someone else to blame. It leaves them naked and vulnerable but its worth staying late a couple of weeks to get them out of your hair if you can suss out how to get them to do their own work.

    8. Loud Speaker

      Re: Please don't kill me with downvotes...

      I won't even get started on the marketing department

      Please, start a Kickstarter for that ... you will be a millionaire overnight.

  4. TheProf
    Happy

    Vinyl tinted glasses

    Yeah! Playing Bring It On Home is so much easier on vinyl.

    Hold 12" sleeve gently in one hand and slip the inner liner out. Repeat above to extract vinyl and holding the record by the edges carefully examine the paper label to find out which side the required track is on. Holding record in one hand use the other hand to lift lid of record player. Place disc on turntable and commence decontamination routine. (Varies between users but dust and static elimination is usually required.)

    Set turntable to required speed and carefully lift record arm off cradle and, squinting in the poor light, try to locate the 2mm wide space between tracks and gingerly place stylus on the record surface. Lift record arm and try again until correct track is found. Close turntable lid and retire to comfy chair for 8 minutes of listening bliss.

    The alternative is a remote control for your CD player that has enough buttons on it to look ridiculous be useful.

    G**gle this Sony RM-D7M and prepare to be amazed. (It's for a Minidisc player.)

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Vinyl tinted glasses

      And if you happen to scratch said bit of Vinyl, you end up with a 'Communication Breakdown' reprise.

      The sad thing is that with the increasing 'phonification' of GUI's, a single swipe in the wrong direction will be enough to send the thing off playing 'When the Levee Breaks'.

      I blame MS and to some extent Apple for this.

      And don't even get me started on 'Hey Alexa, play "Bring it on Home"'

      1. Rich 11

        Re: Vinyl tinted glasses

        The first command I tested Alexa with was "Alexa, play Taikatalvi." I thought it'd be so distinctive it couldn't possibly be confused with anything else in my collection. Four tries, four failures. I gave up when she started playing Abba. I don't even own any Abba!

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Vinyl tinted glasses

          "I gave up when she started playing Abba"

          Abba - the soft-rock of 70's disco. They *almost* made it palatable. Almost. At least they used more than 2 chords.

          /me fortunately has the mental discipline to expunge "Dancing Queen" from my brain. But I bet _YOU_ don't, ha ha ha ha ha! enjoy the ear worm. you are welcome

          1. Rich 11

            Re: Vinyl tinted glasses

            Abba - the soft-rock of 70's disco. They *almost* made it palatable.

            Your understanding of 70s rock and disco appears to be somewhat orthogonal to mine.

            Abba were briefly original with Waterloo. After that they were not; they helped define the era only by being mundane. To say they were the soft rock of disco is like saying the Osmonds were the heavy metal of funk because of Crazy Horses.

    2. cantbebothered

      Re: Vinyl tinted glasses

      Don't forget setting up your tonearm to the correct weight and tracking force specified by the manufacture of your cartridge, after first finding a compatible cartridge.

      Then buying a cartridge, assuming you have a turntable they still make them for, pick out from loads of different models with rapidly fluctuating prices between models with incomprehensible advantages/disadvantages.

      And if you don't set it up right, you'll shorten the life of your records.

    3. JimBob42

      Re: Vinyl tinted glasses

      I have a Sony CDP-690. The remote control was a little smaller than the MD player ones (I have those too). It seems like a reasonable compromise between enough buttons to be useful, but not enough to make the remote ridiculous. Seems, but is not. The later MD remotes were much better for entering text. What would have been really great is a Bluetooth link to the year 2015 so we could use a full keyboard from Logitech or something.

    4. DiViDeD

      Re: G**gle this Sony RM-D7M

      OMG!! I've never SEEN a better example of button porn!

  5. Joe Harrison

    I just bought an MP3 player actually

    If you're listening to anything other than music (dictation, language tuition, whatever) you are 99% certainly going to want to keep toggling the pause button. Just try that on a phone, in a hammock, I double dare you.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: I just bought an MP3 player actually

      "Just try that on a phone, in a hammock, I double dare you." Joe Harrison.

      That's why I spent a small sum (less than a quart at the local) on a tiny bluetooth remote control for my phone. That way I can pause / restart even if i'm not wearing bt headphones

  6. iron Silver badge

    "I frantically press at FF multiple times to get to track 10.... and now I’ve gone past the end and find myself back at track 1 again."

    I used to have a cheap Sony CD player that would go back from track 1 to the last track on the disc when pressing the back button, much easier. You bought the wrong CD player.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      My Sony hi-fi unit is happy for you to insert a CD - but resolutely stays in radio mode rather than automatically switching to CD mode. Why else have I just inserted a CD? I then have to hunt for the remote control - as the buttons on the unit have hard to read dark grey legends on black. It's hard to even find the flush black buttons on the black case.

      Even when it is already in CD mode - it whirrs a few times - then displays how many tracks are on the CD. You then have to find the remote to tell it that you really do want to play the CD in the aesthetic order it was produced by the artist.

      1. IfYouInsist
        FAIL

        The Panasonic micro-hi-fi in my living room has a tiny segmented display that outputs a jerky scrolling HELLO when turned on and a jerky scrolling GOODBYE when shutting down. During CD playback it displays... minutes and seconds the current track has been playing, which is utterly useless. Either track number or time remaining would be more useful. I even suspect both of those could be displayed simultaneously (as long as the track is shorter than 10 minutes or its number is less than 100). Oh well...

      2. Anonymous Custard
        Joke

        @AC a couple of posts up - Did you get it cheap from the estate of the dearly missed Douglas Adams by chance?

        Just be glad it hasn't got an AI or personality option...

      3. Charles 9

        "Why else have I just inserted a CD?"

        So I can play the CD LATER while I have the thought in my head, but I DON'T want to play it YET.

        And as for a button that can actually read a mind an "play the song I want to hear," how well will it work against a chronically-indecisive mind that thinks, "I think A would be niceOHNOICHANGEDMYMIND...B insteadWAITWAITWAIT or rather C..." Plus there's the whole, "Do what I really need even if I'm not thinking about it, not what I want even though I'm thinking it all wrong."

        Meanwhile, people are so used to turnkey solutions that if you can't do it without instructions, you're simply not doing it right...even though it's practically impossible for someone to use a computer who has never used one before. Hell, the only reason I was able to work my first computer (a Commodore 128) pretty quickly was because I'd manage to teach myself how to use a typewriter when I was only six or so.

      4. Denarius

        laptops, computers

        noticed how some ?? and ??? laptops had black power buttons on a black fascia. I had to cover buttons with white tape or whiteout so I could find them. What fool came up with that ? Probably a relative of the architect that refused to put handles or push bards/plates on the ground floor glass doors in glass walls because it would spoil the look. Yes, deliberately disguised the doors. Trying to get inside was frustrating. How the local building gestapo allowed it in development application baffles me.

        Seems human interface design has become a lost skill in all fields. About time to make memorising "The Psychology of Everyday Things" mandatory for all PHBs, sales weasels, architects and designers. Competancy test is full recitation, verbally to an audience of pedants. Failure to do so is grounds for refusing imports.

        1. DiViDeD

          Re: laptops, computers

          "architect that refused to put handles or push bards/plates on the ground floor glass doors in glass walls because it would spoil the look"

          Ah, someone else shares one of my pet peeves with architects. The other door related one is, when you have a door that is opened by pushing from one direction and pulling from the other, they will invariably put grab handles on both sides so as to give the punter no unnecessary clues about which way this door swings.

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