9 ms·

Bill Belichick Throws in the Tablet

93 points by kitwalker12 10y ago

liquidise 10y ago
This speaks to a higher level perception about software. Bugs and crashes, however inconsistent, irreparably damage the sentiment about using a technology. Younger folks grew up in an age with these inconsistencies and are less perturbed by them. To older folks though, manual systems rarely "fail" during use. The bar of acceptance is a great deal higher when your reliability and availability are compared to pencil and paper. Long story short: quality is always important. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically.
- andrewstuart2 10y ago
  I think it's also important to remember more specifically in the realm of quality that computers are not the answer to every problem. They're extremely complex electronics that can have bugs anywhere in the stack from hardware to software, and are bound by certain constraints that physical media are not (for example, the availability of electricity, or lack of harmful interference). Sometimes I don't need to remember everything I've drawn on a whiteboard. And what's more, if I'm using a smart board that reboots in the middle of brainstorming, I'm thrown majorly off my groove and it may take a long time to recover my train of thought after troubleshooting. So the complexity affords tremendous flexibility, but unavoidably at the cost of reliability.
- sly010 10y ago
  Unfortunately more often than not the person who pays for the software is rarely the one who uses it. The end result is that software is purchased based on promises in the marketing material, not based on quality.
- tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
  if a play that might win or lose your game is hinging on you being able to use a piece of software to do something, your quality requirement will be just as high regardless of your age... that would be like saying that a young trader might care less about a bug in their trading software that lost them $$$ compared an older trader...
  - tstrass 10y ago
    Fair point if the problems are just crashes, but I wouldn't be surprised if Belichick was getting that frustrated over much more minor things at a time when the game is not on the line. In my experience many older people have extremely low tolerance for usage of technology not going perfectly. For example, I could picture BB chucking the tablet from something like a slight lag when navigating menus or even just dissonance between how the app works and how he expects it to work (regardless whether or not poor design is to blame).
    - mountaineer22 10y ago
      Sounds more like Larry Ellison and a home automation controller.
    - jbooth 10y ago
      There's a maximum of 40 seconds in between plays.. add in the time for players getting up from a pile, and then the time for them to run to their positions on the line, he's got maybe 25 seconds where this thing absolutely has to work. It's not a matter of being impatient if it's flaky for 10 seconds.
    - jpindar 10y ago
      It's not a question of impatience at lag. This is a real-time application. Would you expect a race car driver or fighter pilot to use a system that doesn't respond in in time?
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Do you think that as old folks exit the market, inconsistences will be further tolerated?
- mikestew 10y ago
  Younger folks grew up in an age with these inconsistencies and are less perturbed by them. Oh, I don't know if I'd go that far. If since you were young you awakened each morning by being beaten with a stick, you might think that's just the way of things, but it's still unpleasant and you'd probably pay a good sum to make it stop. No, the difference is that the oldsters have been putting up with this shit for over thirty years (flashing VCR clocks, anyone?). You've shaved one yak, you've shaved them all. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically. Because oldsters don't "get" technology? They don't want to give up their pen and paper? No, because they've got thirty years of experience backing their decisions: your shit doesn't work, and until proven otherwise they're going to stick with that assumption. I know I'm personally surprised when a piece of purchased technology does what it says on the tin. So it has nothing to do with oldster vs. youngster. It has to do with "busy man has a job to do, a job that has nothing to do with yaks or shaving them" vs. "I'm going to spend my time dicking around with this tablet when I should be calling plays".
- bmm6o 10y ago
  > Long story short: quality is always important. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically. The alternative interpretation is that younger users will put up with lower quality even when it is not rational. Football isn't the most important thing in the world, but within it communication and data-gathering are mission-critical. If your processes are not reliable, that's a problem. You're accepting a risk that they will not work when you need them. And the trade-off is for an incremental improvement when they do work? Why would a rational actor find that acceptable? Rather than being an old luddite, maybe Belichick is one of the few coaches with enough clout to call out the NFL's solution as being unacceptable.
  - bmm6o 10y ago
    > The alternative interpretation And that's even accepting the interpretation of this as old vs. young, which I would need more than 1 data point for.
- greedo 10y ago
  Younger folks... My TWC cable net connection has been dropping on a daily basis for the last two months. Resetting the modem solves it until the next outage. (TWC has since replaced a shit ton of stuff to fix this). So everyday, my two special snowflakes would get pissed when the Wifi would go nowhere. They would text me expecting me to fix it even when I'm in the office. They would text me when I was watching football (my only sacrosanct timeslot). They would text me when taking a dump. I could feel my blood pressure rise everytime I heard the phrase "The WiFi is down!" So no, I think you're completely wrong about youngsters being less perturbed. When I was their age, my motto was "I want my MTV..." Their motto is "I want my WiFi..."
  - superdaniel 10y ago
    If you're talking about the built-in wifi on the TWC given box then I would try using a third party access point. I was having the same problems as you and that solved it for me.
    - greedo 10y ago
      No, I'm using an Airport. The entire connection was down, but it was more annoying since the kids could connect to wifi, but it wasn't able to get outbound.
  - conductr 10y ago
    Teach them to reset the damn thing themselves
  - danielweber 10y ago
    "Dad, Hurricane Matthew took out the cable. Fix it!"
- vlunkr 10y ago
  I don't know, I know plenty of "young" people who are outraged if their internet is out for 5 minutes.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  My view is quite the opposite. I've been using technology since the 1970s, worked with it since the 1990s, and my main set of gripes are things which intentionally suck. As in pretty much every last systems aspect of my Samsung, Logitech, and Google-mediated tablet experience. There are parts of this that I like. The battery life, display, and WiFi connectivity are pretty awesome. The OS, shell tools (there is a shell, it's just ... completely fucking crippled), advertising-orientation, lack of any user-centric controls, lack of user-centric data management, alteratives to store your data on the cloud^W^Wsomebody else's server, a ham-fisted locked-down experience from Samsung, crap hardware design and crap warranty service from Logitech. I know all of that can be far better than it is, and that each of these companies are paying people whose jobs it is to specifically make the experience suck. That is what this grumpy old techie's view is.
- VLM 10y ago
  My experience with kids is they live in an infinite sea of data, much like past generations felt like they live in an infinite sea of raw material or petroleum to use as they see fit eternally or infinite sea of environment to pollute. Also kids know modern technology is cheap and disposable and replace often whereas old people are stuck in the Waltons TV show era "had to save up for two years in the great depression to buy that radio that cost a whole paycheck back when it was new and I see no reason to buy another" so nothing is ever tossed out. So we're watching a TV episode my mythtv recorded and heavy rain always knocks out the OTA PBS signal so there's some digital breakup and the kids are like "skip it, its broken" because they are from an era of infinite youtube entertainment where something as good or better is always a "next" button away. They have no pity or empathy bad content is to be euthanized with aggressive application of the "next" button. Meanwhile I'm an old timer and I have invested in this episode of The Woodwrights Shop and I want to watch this damn episode even if I only get to see half of it between the signal breaking up. When I grew up an episode of Star Trek cost like $40 and was purchased on a VHS (or Beta) video tape and content was incredible valuable as the minimum wage was like $3/hr; for my kids content is infinite always available and totally worthless. You can always hit next and find something free that's probably better. They are about the same with apps and games. Unless a game operates in what old timers would call newbie mode where its impossible to fail and you get little skinner box rewards every 10 seconds, they just delete it and find something "better". The game crashed? Don't restart, delete and reload. Oh well, for better or worse every game has 500 clones on ITMS to load on the ipad. Maybe clone #283 will be better than this one! I also see a behavior with old people where TVs used to cost like a months salary so you replace them like windows, either roughly never, or when they break. How do I explain this to grannie that I can argue all day but when the CRT emission and therefore brightness drops in the amount of time I've spent arguing with grannie I could have earned enough money to buy a TV better than what she'd be throwing out, but great depression this and that and surely a smart electrician like me can replace a vacuum tube in her TV like uncle so and so did in 1962 and it would be all better and ugh ugh ugh so once again old people have a touch of early adopter syndrome and even junk is not to be thrown away, not realizing that modern stuff is both disposable and cheap. The only thing worse than arguing with an elderly relative about their 1980s magnavox TV is arguing with another old relative about their $100 2012 model thats already burned out the backlight because old people watch 18 hours per day of TV.
- madenine 10y ago
  Most people who use/consume mass-market, popular technology have grown accustomed to user-friendly environments and devices that just work right out of the box - so they have an expectation that things will just work. In my experience, that isn't limited by age - and if anything I see the opposite, with the young being so used to great UX that their concept of technology stops at the GUI.
davesque 10y ago
Not sure this really says anything bad about Microsoft. Is it really hard to imagine an NFL coach losing his temper with something let alone a computer?
- Balgair 10y ago
  Have you watched a Pats game? Belichick is about as wordy as a granite counter-top in game and is like a cemetery in front of journalists. That he bothered to complain, let alone did some much to reporters, indicates that there are VERY big problems with them.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    And the fact that he previously said there were issues but he was trying to work through them, then years later decided he couldn't deal with it anymore speaks volumes. He actually did give it a shot, for years, and it never got better.
  - davesque 10y ago
    I don't think that's a very sound viewpoint to take on this. The facts that Belichick happens to be the coach of a major NFL team and appears to have a very calm demeanor don't make his opinions on this matter any more valid than the next guy. It's also not a stretch to say that NFL coaches are mostly from older generations and have never had a lot of incentive to embrace computer technology. Furthermore, they head up highly competitive teams of large male athletes in a culture which prizes assertiveness and displays of aggression. Put all these things together and you get one guy who's uniquely poised to get frustrated with technology. You also get someone who's uniquely ill-equipped to speak of that technology's actual shortcomings. For instance, the way these issues are described makes it sound like they're having network connectivity issues which are not related to the particular device they're trying to connect to the network. But did he throw the wireless AP at the wall? Nope, he threw the tablet at the wall.
- thesehands 10y ago
  Bill Belichick in his episode of a Football Life lived with the clock being wrong in his car because he simply couldn't change it[0]. I'd argue that all this currently shows is that the system was not worth the time for BB to get to grips with. This is not to say that its a bad system, just that it didn't work for one user. It's only news because BB happens to be in the conversation for greatest Head Coach of an NFL team ever. [0] http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england-patriots/09000d5d8226fa64/A-Football-Life-Car-trouble http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england-patriots/09000d5d8226f...
arcanus 10y ago
> Microsoft entered into a long-term sponsorship partnership with the league in 2013. At the time, the N.F.L. had a list of demands for the equipment, including ruggedness, ease of use, size, effectiveness in extreme temperature and glare resistance. > In 2014, Belichick noted that the system had crashed, but seemed mostly cool with it. “I’d say that’s all kind of part of the game,” he said. > “I just can’t take it anymore,” he said at a news conference Tuesday. This is an under-reported challenge of the increasing automation narrative: we need more robust systems.
- treehau5 10y ago
  Robust systems are achievable already. We need managers that understand quality takes proper planning, time, and deep, concentrated, uninterrupted work.
  - SteveNuts 10y ago
    And money. Don't forget about lots and lots of money. I'm going through this headache right now.
    - ChuckMcM 10y ago
      This is a huge challenge for quality software. As others have noted there is a disconnect between users, developers, managers, and quality/reliability engineering such that nobody seems to have enough of the picture to make the best decisions. Sales wants more features to be competitive. Management wants to ship it because it will generate revenue. QRE/Manufacturing wants more time to test all of the features and their interactions. And everywhere money gets squeezed out, sales wants to offer a discount to "win the deal", management wants to improve the margins by lowering the cost to develop, and the factory wants to ship product faster and spend less time qualifying it.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    But at $Startup they have an open office plan and meetings every 20 minutes and they make $Product!
bennettfeely 10y ago
Also must be quite depressing for Microsoft when the announcers refer to the Surface tablets as iPads during the game.
xemdetia 10y ago
What a terrible URL: http://.../football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-guy.html http://.../football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-g... I think there is a lot to be said about the fact that any event that has as much tech as an NFL broadcast and that it is never setup permanently will always run into some issue. The base complaint seems to be just that the league gives him the stuff too late to work out any unforeseen issues, and so it just is a sprint to troubleshoot week after week where he could just show up with briefcase full of printed plays and this just not be a problem. It's not like he has a shortage of bodies for manual labour on the sidelines.
- danso 10y ago
  I think this article was submitted yesterday with the original headline. Looking at newsdiffs, looks like this is a case where a copy editor tried to be clever, and later on, people realized that the clever bit resulted in a tangible inaccuracy: http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/sports/football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-guy.html http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/10...
- Twirrim 10y ago
  your URL got shortened in the most bizarre way (I swear I'm seeing this happen more and more often on HN)
  - freehunter 10y ago
    He intentionally removed the domain name to highlight the rest of the permalink. It's the same URL as linked in the title, but he's highlighting the "bill-might-be-a-mac-guy" part of it.
- freehunter 10y ago
  I know that the writers come up with the original title which is transferred to the URL and the editors change it to fit the style of the newspaper a little better, but the editors should have the ability/responsibility to edit the URL as well. I agree the permalink is a little ridiculous.
Twirrim 10y ago
Mostly what stands out to me from this is that they only get the tablets just a few hours before the game. That's ridiculous, unless the NFL is also providing all the technical support (which Bill's actual rant doesn't imply they do.) Having just a short time to use, test and get them ready for the game is incredibly lousy, and certainly won't give the team's IT people any chance to seriously troubleshoot and improve the situation. It doesn't matter who makes the tech, or how solid it is. You can't just throw tech at a problem and expect it to solve it.
- coleca 10y ago
  Since the tablets are operating wirelessly it becomes very hard to test since the conditions before the game aren't the same as what occurs during the game. All the fans with their smartphones aren't there yet polluting the airwaves until the game starts (some don't make it in until after the game has already started). Also worth noting that some of the reporters were complaining at last week's game that the WiFi was down in the press box at Gillette Stadium at the start of the game. There could have been a bigger networking issue going on there. The Pats use Extreme Networks WiFi gear in the stadium.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > Since the tablets are operating wirelessly it becomes very hard to test since the conditions before the game aren't the same as what occurs during the game. All the fans with their smartphones aren't there yet polluting the airwaves until the game starts (some don't make it in until after the game has already started). By now, the IT team should know the gametime environment very well. It should no longer be a surprise to them.
    - jpindar 10y ago
      Knowing roughly what conditions to expect is not the same as actually testing equipment under those conditions. The team staff aren't trying to simulate or predict anything, they're trying to test the performance of the specific tablets they get, under game conditions. On gameday there are thousands of different rf sources - deliberate and otherwise - in the stadium. You can't simulate that in as much detail as needed.
pyrophane 10y ago
Now, I have to preface this by saying that I don't know much about football and even less about coaching it, but I wonder how much of this speaks to a lack of a real need for a technology solution for coaches. If it were providing a lot of value to them, I imagine they'd have a harder giving it up. This NFL suggests that there is such a need: "Since Microsoft has been a partner of the N.F.L. and implemented their technology on our sidelines, the efficiency and speed of communication between coaches has greatly increased." But of course, that is the NFL speaking about a partner's product, so I can't imagine them saying anything else.
- spaceisballer 10y ago
  They probably implemented it with no real need. I'm sure some coaches appreciate it. But really I'm sure MS wants them used on the sidelines so they are on TV so they can advertise the tablets.
  - greedo 10y ago
    $400 million reasons...
  - gertef 10y ago
    Remember when they were new and the TV announcers were paid to say "check out those Microsoft Surface tablets" and the coaches were just using them as iPad holders?
- s3r3nity 10y ago
  My read of it is that there are absolutely a lot of problems that tablets/electronic devices could solve on the sidelines of an NFL game. However, the urgency and real-time nature of football such that a lot of money and careers can be made/destroyed by a single game, any/all bugs are immediately seen as a significant hinderance.
- yk 10y ago
  Belichick is considered the best coach in football of the last twenty odd years, so he has probably his process with pen and paper nailed down. And the thing is, new technology requires a learning curve both individually and also on a larger scale culturally, so I would guess that tablets after a year or so of use would provide a lot of value, however they do not do so now.
zeveb 10y ago
I've seen this time and time again in multiple different industries. Electronics technology & software are truly great and wonderful, but they are still too immature (the latter more so) to be truly reliable. I'm confident that someday they will actually be superior to physical technology like pads of paper, but they're just not there yet. Honestly, I don't really expect them to get where they need to be within my lifetime. For that matter, high-tech stuff isn't as reliable as low-tech stuff. I know that when I pick up my landline wired headset that I will have crystal-clear calling, every single time; I don't know that with my cordless phone; I don't know that with my cellphone. I know that when I pick up a pen & paper, that I will be able to quickly write and draw whatever I want; I don't know that with my laptop, nor with my tablet, nor with my phone.
vermontdevil 10y ago
He also noted that the comms system fails regularly. Seems NFL sets them up a few hours before kickoff. Perhaps it is time for NFL to improve their tech support in all areas. There might be a relationship between the tablet issues and the problems with the comms system.
edw519 10y ago
This is what inevitably happens when you have a solution looking for a problem. I have 2 "systems" at work... One includes email and a white board with index cards taped to the wall next to it. The other includes Jira, Confluence, Infor, Sharepoint, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe Illustrator, GIMP, Skype, Webex, Success Factors, and a whole bunch of other stuff. If I don't need all this horrible shit to build software, why would anyone need any of it to play football?
tw04 10y ago
I'm guessing it has far more to do with network connectivity than the tablet itself. The problems he describes to me sound like exactly what I would expect in a stadium filled with 100,000 cellphones emitting wifi and cellular interference. I'm guessing the NFL didn't get clearance from the FCC to use a dedicated wavelength within the stadium to isolate their systems from noise.
- notatoad 10y ago
  >I'm guessing the NFL didn't get clearance from the FCC to use a dedicated wavelength within the stadium to isolate their systems from noise. if they had, would the surface tablets have been able to use it? I'm not aware of any licensed spectrum that standard wifi cards are capable of communicating on.
  - frisco 10y ago
    Channel 14 is used in some Asian markets but illegal in the US, there's consumer hardware that can use it out there.
- mikey_p 10y ago
  There is actually an immense amount of coordination that goes into an NFL game, even more so for the Super Bowl: * http://blog.rfvenue.com/karl-voss/ http://blog.rfvenue.com/karl-voss/ "... at the Super Bowl we manage ... basically anything D/C to light that is allowed inside the NFL venues.
  - erobbins 10y ago
    Yep. I had a friend who worked the Super Bowl, his only job was to detect and locate (and handle) rogue sources of RF energy.
- gdulli 10y ago
  > I'm guessing it has far more to do with network connectivity than the tablet itself That view is reinforced here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill-belichick-dumps-surface-tablets-in-five-minute-rant/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill-belichi... "Microsoft's hardware isn't necessarily the culprit here, merely the victim. The NFL uses a lot of wireless hardware—communications headsets, public Wi-Fi networks, private networks for the tablets, networks for the press, and more."
wtvanhest 10y ago
I own two computers and have a work laptop (all PCs): Computer 1: Dell - Works as expected Computer 2: Lenovo Thinkpad (work) - Old, works amazing Computer 3: Surface pro - Randomly unresponsive, often times the keyboard has to be disconnected and reconnected. Often times it just freaks out and starts clicking where I am not clicking. I followed all troubleshooting steps. It is terrible.
dhemmerling 10y ago
Surface is getting all the heat in the article, but in the linked interview [1] he blames pretty much every part of the infrastructure other than the interface: > The other communication systems involve the press box to the coaches on the field, and then the coach on the field, the signal caller, or the coach-to-quarterback, coach-to-signal caller system. Those fail on a regular basis. > And again, there's a lot of equipment involved, too. There are headsets in the helmets, there's the belt pack, that communication, there's a hookup or connection to internet service or that process and so forth with the coaches and the press box. So, there are a number of pieces of equipment, there is a number of connections that are on different frequencies. > And then during the game sometimes something happens and it has to be fixed, and first of all, you have to figure out what the problem is. Is it a battery? Is it the helmet? Is it the coaches' pack? Is it the battery on the coaches' pack? I mean you know, again, it could be one of 15 different things. [1] http://www.patriots.com/news/2016/10/18/bill-belichick-conference-call-transcript-1018 http://www.patriots.com/news/2016/10/18/bill-belichick-confe...
- josefresco 10y ago
  THIS. Read the transcript, he rants almost exclusively about the entire "system" and it's many parts that all seem to fail at some point. The "tablet" issue is a minor sub point but you know ... clicks = money so the headline "Bill Belichick Hates Microsoft Surface" is what every "journalist" went with.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    True, but the Belichick quote near the front of the article is > “As you have probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets,” he said. ...so I would just attribute this to people naturally referring to the frontend of the system they're using as the system itself. When he said "I'm done with the tablets" perhaps he means "I'm done with the system that I am using from my tablet". It seems almost as if NFL confesses that it's not [necessarily] MS here, "... multiple factors that can cause issues within our sideline communications system either related to or outside of Microsoft’s technology."
- malenm 10y ago
DeBraid 10y ago
> Zack Cox of New England Sports Network timed Belichick’s denunciation of NFL technology at 5 minutes 25 seconds
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I wonder if there is an actual product here or if there is just a product placement. And by that I mean has anyone sat down with coaches and said "Given what you do in a game on the sidelines, the choices you are making, the questions you are asking, and options you are trying to weigh; Is there a way to improve the tools you've already been using with some automation?" Anyone know?
- mountaineer22 10y ago
  I don't, but why would a coach give up his expert knowledge to all other coaches he is potentially competing against? The incentives for all parties involved in this situation is less than ideal.
  - TillE 10y ago
    I'm sure there are plenty of retired NFL coaches out there who would be willing to advise.
    - favorited 10y ago
      That assumes that the needs of retired coaches are the same as the needs of coaches today.
greedo 10y ago
Network issues are most likely the problem, especially if the devices are issued by the NFL prior to gametime. A coach needs a few things to really make this valuable. First they need a play chart for selecting the appropriate play call for the corresponding down and distance. This can be a canned application that doesn't require network connectivity after it's been loaded, but networking would allow an assistant to update the player personnel availability in real time so that you don't call a play with improper personnel. The other thing the tablets replaced was the physical photos the teams used to use to review plays. The NFL previously made the teams use B&W photos sent down to the sidelines. They don't want the teams to use live replays for some reason, though the monstrous displays in most stadiums make this dumb. So if you take out the network connection, these lose a lot of their value. I can't imagine a more hostile environment for Wifi than a stadium packed with a bazillion cellphones, plus goofy atmospherics due to design.
babesh 10y ago
Did you know that 30 years ago, Polaroids were the new hotness? The difference between those and today's tablets is that the Polaroids were utterly reliable. Both provide additional value from what was there before. The interesting question is why the new tablet/network is unreliable. My contention is that many physical processes are not vulnerable to single points of failure but that software is.
6stringmerc 10y ago
On the one hand, it's a reasoned, eloquent, logical gripe about technology not functioning as intended for its target audience, an NFL head coach. On the other hand, this is Bill Belichick doing the talking, so I take the bulk of his complaints about the communications equipment with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you're not familiar with Mr. Belichick, he's earned the reputation of being worthy of suspicion when it comes to either exploiting a loophole in the rules or potentially breaking them outright and trying to explain them away[1]. A quick search[2] dredges up numerous cases of NFL teams visiting Gillette Stadium and experiencing significant communications system difficulties. So, the cynic in me would like to pose a tentative solution to Bill: If his team would shut off whatever jammers and bullshit disruption devices they're using on the visiting opponents, maybe his equipment wouldn't fuck up as much either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_videotaping_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_vide... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=radio+trouble+gillette+stadium+nfl&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=radio+trouble+gillette+stadi...
- mikey_p 10y ago
  I'm not saying it's impossible (given the history with on field equipment – aka deflategate), but it's seems highly unlikely given that the NFL hires RF specialists with spectrum analyzers and direction finding equipment just to hunt down unauthorized transmissions at games.
  - turnip123942 10y ago
    The broad scientific consensus is that the deflation of the balls occurred naturally and there was no foul-play involved. [0]http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/10/04/tom-brady-deflategate-ideal-gas-law http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/10/04/tom-brady-deflategate-ideal... [1]http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/03/12/deflate-gate-science-goodell http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/03/12/deflate-gate-scienc... [2]https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/deflategate-favored-foul-play-over-science https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/deflategate-... [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwxXsEltyas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwxXsEltyas [4]http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/05/27/scientists-file-amicus-brief-tom-brady/ http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/05/27/scientists-file-a...
dredmorbius 10y ago
It's not just capabilities, but reliability that matters. If I've got a system that takes a bit of consistent prodding to happen, or can do A & B reliably but not C, and it is consistent about that, it's almost always far more acceptable than a system which works most of the time without prodding but then falls down copletely, or a system that does A, B, & C, but fails to work right 10% of the time. That little bit of uncertainty pokes an sticks at you. It's always at the back of your consciousness. A football coach's job is to coach the game. It's not to to try to figure out what's wrong with his comms equipment or even if it's working correctly or incorrectly. Closely related: the paradox of automation. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how...
stevehawk 10y ago
Technology seems to be a huge issue at the Patriots home stadium. Pretty much every visiting team coach that's been there complains about headset failures / communication issues between coaches/on-field captains. Mike Tomlin said "It's always the case" when speaking about them failing. Like countless other people are saying in other comments - this is likely just a huge radio frequency collision issue for all of the wireless operations of any stadium.
- hackuser 10y ago
  From TFA: Belichick was also unhappy with the other communications systems at the game, like the ones between the press box and the sideline and between the coach and the quarterback. “Those fail on a regular basis,” he said. He noted that the league does not supply the equipment to the teams until a few hours before the game, making troubleshooting difficult. “So I would just say there are problems in every game,” he said. “There were problems last week, but there were problems the week before that, too. Some are worse than others. Sometimes both teams have them, sometimes one team has them and the other team doesn’t have them.”
- favorited 10y ago
  The home team says it too.
wyager 10y ago
I'm not sure if wifi is actually the problem here as many are claiming, this is a good read about sports frequency coordination: http://www.radioworld.com/article/photo-holding-page/279450 http://www.radioworld.com/article/photo-holding-page/279450 Frequency management in a stadium is very hard. It's mostly done by volunteer ham radio people.
elchief 10y ago
I have a feeling that the NFL doesn't really need tablets on the sideline, but Paul Allen (MS Founder, Owner of the Seahawks) had something to do with it.
samfisher83 10y ago
How much values does Microsoft derive from paying 80 million/year to use these tablets.
mmgutz 10y ago
Has anybody ever used a tablet or laptop outside? They're unreadable. This isn't a problem with surface, it's a problem with most electronic devices in the sunlight. There probably are other glitches but low tech film isn't going away anytime soon.
woodandsteel 10y ago
Hahahahaha, Microsoft really screwed itself on this. Ipads are more reliable and have a better gui, so why is the NFL using surface tablets? It's because Apple didn't need to push the ipad, but surface was really new and Microsoft really needed to promote it anyway possible, so it made a huge marketing push on the NFL, no doubt making it financially very attractive and promising all sorts of help. What Microsoft seems to have not thought out is it would work out well for the coaches only if the entire network system worked flawlessly, or surface would get rejected by association, and so they should have given extensive help to make sure that happened. But they apparently didn't do that, the network screwed up endlessly, and sure enough, surface is being painted as no good.

93 points by kitwalker12 10y ago

This speaks to a higher level perception about software. Bugs and crashes, however inconsistent, irreparably damage the sentiment about using a technology. Younger folks grew up in an age with these inconsistencies and are less perturbed by them. To older folks though, manual systems rarely "fail" during use. The bar of acceptance is a great deal higher when your reliability and availability are compared to pencil and paper. Long story short: quality is always important. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically.

andrewstuart2 10y ago
I think it's also important to remember more specifically in the realm of quality that computers are not the answer to every problem. They're extremely complex electronics that can have bugs anywhere in the stack from hardware to software, and are bound by certain constraints that physical media are not (for example, the availability of electricity, or lack of harmful interference). Sometimes I don't need to remember everything I've drawn on a whiteboard. And what's more, if I'm using a smart board that reboots in the middle of brainstorming, I'm thrown majorly off my groove and it may take a long time to recover my train of thought after troubleshooting. So the complexity affords tremendous flexibility, but unavoidably at the cost of reliability.
sly010 10y ago
Unfortunately more often than not the person who pays for the software is rarely the one who uses it. The end result is that software is purchased based on promises in the marketing material, not based on quality.
tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
if a play that might win or lose your game is hinging on you being able to use a piece of software to do something, your quality requirement will be just as high regardless of your age... that would be like saying that a young trader might care less about a bug in their trading software that lost them $$$ compared an older trader...
- tstrass 10y ago
  Fair point if the problems are just crashes, but I wouldn't be surprised if Belichick was getting that frustrated over much more minor things at a time when the game is not on the line. In my experience many older people have extremely low tolerance for usage of technology not going perfectly. For example, I could picture BB chucking the tablet from something like a slight lag when navigating menus or even just dissonance between how the app works and how he expects it to work (regardless whether or not poor design is to blame).
  - mountaineer22 10y ago
    Sounds more like Larry Ellison and a home automation controller.
  - jbooth 10y ago
    There's a maximum of 40 seconds in between plays.. add in the time for players getting up from a pile, and then the time for them to run to their positions on the line, he's got maybe 25 seconds where this thing absolutely has to work. It's not a matter of being impatient if it's flaky for 10 seconds.
  - jpindar 10y ago
    It's not a question of impatience at lag. This is a real-time application. Would you expect a race car driver or fighter pilot to use a system that doesn't respond in in time?
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Do you think that as old folks exit the market, inconsistences will be further tolerated?
mikestew 10y ago
Younger folks grew up in an age with these inconsistencies and are less perturbed by them. Oh, I don't know if I'd go that far. If since you were young you awakened each morning by being beaten with a stick, you might think that's just the way of things, but it's still unpleasant and you'd probably pay a good sum to make it stop. No, the difference is that the oldsters have been putting up with this shit for over thirty years (flashing VCR clocks, anyone?). You've shaved one yak, you've shaved them all. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically. Because oldsters don't "get" technology? They don't want to give up their pen and paper? No, because they've got thirty years of experience backing their decisions: your shit doesn't work, and until proven otherwise they're going to stick with that assumption. I know I'm personally surprised when a piece of purchased technology does what it says on the tin. So it has nothing to do with oldster vs. youngster. It has to do with "busy man has a job to do, a job that has nothing to do with yaks or shaving them" vs. "I'm going to spend my time dicking around with this tablet when I should be calling plays".
bmm6o 10y ago
> Long story short: quality is always important. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically. The alternative interpretation is that younger users will put up with lower quality even when it is not rational. Football isn't the most important thing in the world, but within it communication and data-gathering are mission-critical. If your processes are not reliable, that's a problem. You're accepting a risk that they will not work when you need them. And the trade-off is for an incremental improvement when they do work? Why would a rational actor find that acceptable? Rather than being an old luddite, maybe Belichick is one of the few coaches with enough clout to call out the NFL's solution as being unacceptable.
- bmm6o 10y ago
  > The alternative interpretation And that's even accepting the interpretation of this as old vs. young, which I would need more than 1 data point for.
greedo 10y ago
Younger folks... My TWC cable net connection has been dropping on a daily basis for the last two months. Resetting the modem solves it until the next outage. (TWC has since replaced a shit ton of stuff to fix this). So everyday, my two special snowflakes would get pissed when the Wifi would go nowhere. They would text me expecting me to fix it even when I'm in the office. They would text me when I was watching football (my only sacrosanct timeslot). They would text me when taking a dump. I could feel my blood pressure rise everytime I heard the phrase "The WiFi is down!" So no, I think you're completely wrong about youngsters being less perturbed. When I was their age, my motto was "I want my MTV..." Their motto is "I want my WiFi..."
- superdaniel 10y ago
  If you're talking about the built-in wifi on the TWC given box then I would try using a third party access point. I was having the same problems as you and that solved it for me.
  - greedo 10y ago
    No, I'm using an Airport. The entire connection was down, but it was more annoying since the kids could connect to wifi, but it wasn't able to get outbound.
- conductr 10y ago
  Teach them to reset the damn thing themselves
- danielweber 10y ago
  "Dad, Hurricane Matthew took out the cable. Fix it!"
vlunkr 10y ago
I don't know, I know plenty of "young" people who are outraged if their internet is out for 5 minutes.
dredmorbius 10y ago
My view is quite the opposite. I've been using technology since the 1970s, worked with it since the 1990s, and my main set of gripes are things which intentionally suck. As in pretty much every last systems aspect of my Samsung, Logitech, and Google-mediated tablet experience. There are parts of this that I like. The battery life, display, and WiFi connectivity are pretty awesome. The OS, shell tools (there is a shell, it's just ... completely fucking crippled), advertising-orientation, lack of any user-centric controls, lack of user-centric data management, alteratives to store your data on the cloud^W^Wsomebody else's server, a ham-fisted locked-down experience from Samsung, crap hardware design and crap warranty service from Logitech. I know all of that can be far better than it is, and that each of these companies are paying people whose jobs it is to specifically make the experience suck. That is what this grumpy old techie's view is.
VLM 10y ago
My experience with kids is they live in an infinite sea of data, much like past generations felt like they live in an infinite sea of raw material or petroleum to use as they see fit eternally or infinite sea of environment to pollute. Also kids know modern technology is cheap and disposable and replace often whereas old people are stuck in the Waltons TV show era "had to save up for two years in the great depression to buy that radio that cost a whole paycheck back when it was new and I see no reason to buy another" so nothing is ever tossed out. So we're watching a TV episode my mythtv recorded and heavy rain always knocks out the OTA PBS signal so there's some digital breakup and the kids are like "skip it, its broken" because they are from an era of infinite youtube entertainment where something as good or better is always a "next" button away. They have no pity or empathy bad content is to be euthanized with aggressive application of the "next" button. Meanwhile I'm an old timer and I have invested in this episode of The Woodwrights Shop and I want to watch this damn episode even if I only get to see half of it between the signal breaking up. When I grew up an episode of Star Trek cost like $40 and was purchased on a VHS (or Beta) video tape and content was incredible valuable as the minimum wage was like $3/hr; for my kids content is infinite always available and totally worthless. You can always hit next and find something free that's probably better. They are about the same with apps and games. Unless a game operates in what old timers would call newbie mode where its impossible to fail and you get little skinner box rewards every 10 seconds, they just delete it and find something "better". The game crashed? Don't restart, delete and reload. Oh well, for better or worse every game has 500 clones on ITMS to load on the ipad. Maybe clone #283 will be better than this one! I also see a behavior with old people where TVs used to cost like a months salary so you replace them like windows, either roughly never, or when they break. How do I explain this to grannie that I can argue all day but when the CRT emission and therefore brightness drops in the amount of time I've spent arguing with grannie I could have earned enough money to buy a TV better than what she'd be throwing out, but great depression this and that and surely a smart electrician like me can replace a vacuum tube in her TV like uncle so and so did in 1962 and it would be all better and ugh ugh ugh so once again old people have a touch of early adopter syndrome and even junk is not to be thrown away, not realizing that modern stuff is both disposable and cheap. The only thing worse than arguing with an elderly relative about their 1980s magnavox TV is arguing with another old relative about their $100 2012 model thats already burned out the backlight because old people watch 18 hours per day of TV.
madenine 10y ago
Most people who use/consume mass-market, popular technology have grown accustomed to user-friendly environments and devices that just work right out of the box - so they have an expectation that things will just work. In my experience, that isn't limited by age - and if anything I see the opposite, with the young being so used to great UX that their concept of technology stops at the GUI.

davesque 10y ago

Not sure this really says anything bad about Microsoft. Is it really hard to imagine an NFL coach losing his temper with something let alone a computer?

Balgair 10y ago
Have you watched a Pats game? Belichick is about as wordy as a granite counter-top in game and is like a cemetery in front of journalists. That he bothered to complain, let alone did some much to reporters, indicates that there are VERY big problems with them.
- freehunter 10y ago
  And the fact that he previously said there were issues but he was trying to work through them, then years later decided he couldn't deal with it anymore speaks volumes. He actually did give it a shot, for years, and it never got better.
- davesque 10y ago
  I don't think that's a very sound viewpoint to take on this. The facts that Belichick happens to be the coach of a major NFL team and appears to have a very calm demeanor don't make his opinions on this matter any more valid than the next guy. It's also not a stretch to say that NFL coaches are mostly from older generations and have never had a lot of incentive to embrace computer technology. Furthermore, they head up highly competitive teams of large male athletes in a culture which prizes assertiveness and displays of aggression. Put all these things together and you get one guy who's uniquely poised to get frustrated with technology. You also get someone who's uniquely ill-equipped to speak of that technology's actual shortcomings. For instance, the way these issues are described makes it sound like they're having network connectivity issues which are not related to the particular device they're trying to connect to the network. But did he throw the wireless AP at the wall? Nope, he threw the tablet at the wall.
thesehands 10y ago
Bill Belichick in his episode of a Football Life lived with the clock being wrong in his car because he simply couldn't change it[0]. I'd argue that all this currently shows is that the system was not worth the time for BB to get to grips with. This is not to say that its a bad system, just that it didn't work for one user. It's only news because BB happens to be in the conversation for greatest Head Coach of an NFL team ever. [0] http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england-patriots/09000d5d8226fa64/A-Football-Life-Car-trouble http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england-patriots/09000d5d8226f...

arcanus 10y ago

> Microsoft entered into a long-term sponsorship partnership with the league in 2013. At the time, the N.F.L. had a list of demands for the equipment, including ruggedness, ease of use, size, effectiveness in extreme temperature and glare resistance. > In 2014, Belichick noted that the system had crashed, but seemed mostly cool with it. “I’d say that’s all kind of part of the game,” he said. > “I just can’t take it anymore,” he said at a news conference Tuesday. This is an under-reported challenge of the increasing automation narrative: we need more robust systems.

treehau5 10y ago
Robust systems are achievable already. We need managers that understand quality takes proper planning, time, and deep, concentrated, uninterrupted work.
- SteveNuts 10y ago
  And money. Don't forget about lots and lots of money. I'm going through this headache right now.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    This is a huge challenge for quality software. As others have noted there is a disconnect between users, developers, managers, and quality/reliability engineering such that nobody seems to have enough of the picture to make the best decisions. Sales wants more features to be competitive. Management wants to ship it because it will generate revenue. QRE/Manufacturing wants more time to test all of the features and their interactions. And everywhere money gets squeezed out, sales wants to offer a discount to "win the deal", management wants to improve the margins by lowering the cost to develop, and the factory wants to ship product faster and spend less time qualifying it.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  But at $Startup they have an open office plan and meetings every 20 minutes and they make $Product!

bennettfeely 10y ago

Also must be quite depressing for Microsoft when the announcers refer to the Surface tablets as iPads during the game.

xemdetia 10y ago

What a terrible URL: http://.../football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-guy.html http://.../football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-g... I think there is a lot to be said about the fact that any event that has as much tech as an NFL broadcast and that it is never setup permanently will always run into some issue. The base complaint seems to be just that the league gives him the stuff too late to work out any unforeseen issues, and so it just is a sprint to troubleshoot week after week where he could just show up with briefcase full of printed plays and this just not be a problem. It's not like he has a shortage of bodies for manual labour on the sidelines.

danso 10y ago
I think this article was submitted yesterday with the original headline. Looking at newsdiffs, looks like this is a case where a copy editor tried to be clever, and later on, people realized that the clever bit resulted in a tangible inaccuracy: http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/sports/football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-guy.html http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/10...
Twirrim 10y ago
your URL got shortened in the most bizarre way (I swear I'm seeing this happen more and more often on HN)
- freehunter 10y ago
  He intentionally removed the domain name to highlight the rest of the permalink. It's the same URL as linked in the title, but he's highlighting the "bill-might-be-a-mac-guy" part of it.
freehunter 10y ago
I know that the writers come up with the original title which is transferred to the URL and the editors change it to fit the style of the newspaper a little better, but the editors should have the ability/responsibility to edit the URL as well. I agree the permalink is a little ridiculous.

Twirrim 10y ago

Mostly what stands out to me from this is that they only get the tablets just a few hours before the game. That's ridiculous, unless the NFL is also providing all the technical support (which Bill's actual rant doesn't imply they do.) Having just a short time to use, test and get them ready for the game is incredibly lousy, and certainly won't give the team's IT people any chance to seriously troubleshoot and improve the situation. It doesn't matter who makes the tech, or how solid it is. You can't just throw tech at a problem and expect it to solve it.

coleca 10y ago
Since the tablets are operating wirelessly it becomes very hard to test since the conditions before the game aren't the same as what occurs during the game. All the fans with their smartphones aren't there yet polluting the airwaves until the game starts (some don't make it in until after the game has already started). Also worth noting that some of the reporters were complaining at last week's game that the WiFi was down in the press box at Gillette Stadium at the start of the game. There could have been a bigger networking issue going on there. The Pats use Extreme Networks WiFi gear in the stadium.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > Since the tablets are operating wirelessly it becomes very hard to test since the conditions before the game aren't the same as what occurs during the game. All the fans with their smartphones aren't there yet polluting the airwaves until the game starts (some don't make it in until after the game has already started). By now, the IT team should know the gametime environment very well. It should no longer be a surprise to them.
  - jpindar 10y ago
    Knowing roughly what conditions to expect is not the same as actually testing equipment under those conditions. The team staff aren't trying to simulate or predict anything, they're trying to test the performance of the specific tablets they get, under game conditions. On gameday there are thousands of different rf sources - deliberate and otherwise - in the stadium. You can't simulate that in as much detail as needed.

pyrophane 10y ago

Now, I have to preface this by saying that I don't know much about football and even less about coaching it, but I wonder how much of this speaks to a lack of a real need for a technology solution for coaches. If it were providing a lot of value to them, I imagine they'd have a harder giving it up. This NFL suggests that there is such a need: "Since Microsoft has been a partner of the N.F.L. and implemented their technology on our sidelines, the efficiency and speed of communication between coaches has greatly increased." But of course, that is the NFL speaking about a partner's product, so I can't imagine them saying anything else.

spaceisballer 10y ago
They probably implemented it with no real need. I'm sure some coaches appreciate it. But really I'm sure MS wants them used on the sidelines so they are on TV so they can advertise the tablets.
- greedo 10y ago
  $400 million reasons...
- gertef 10y ago
  Remember when they were new and the TV announcers were paid to say "check out those Microsoft Surface tablets" and the coaches were just using them as iPad holders?
s3r3nity 10y ago
My read of it is that there are absolutely a lot of problems that tablets/electronic devices could solve on the sidelines of an NFL game. However, the urgency and real-time nature of football such that a lot of money and careers can be made/destroyed by a single game, any/all bugs are immediately seen as a significant hinderance.
yk 10y ago
Belichick is considered the best coach in football of the last twenty odd years, so he has probably his process with pen and paper nailed down. And the thing is, new technology requires a learning curve both individually and also on a larger scale culturally, so I would guess that tablets after a year or so of use would provide a lot of value, however they do not do so now.

zeveb 10y ago

I've seen this time and time again in multiple different industries. Electronics technology & software are truly great and wonderful, but they are still too immature (the latter more so) to be truly reliable. I'm confident that someday they will actually be superior to physical technology like pads of paper, but they're just not there yet. Honestly, I don't really expect them to get where they need to be within my lifetime. For that matter, high-tech stuff isn't as reliable as low-tech stuff. I know that when I pick up my landline wired headset that I will have crystal-clear calling, every single time; I don't know that with my cordless phone; I don't know that with my cellphone. I know that when I pick up a pen & paper, that I will be able to quickly write and draw whatever I want; I don't know that with my laptop, nor with my tablet, nor with my phone.

vermontdevil 10y ago

He also noted that the comms system fails regularly. Seems NFL sets them up a few hours before kickoff. Perhaps it is time for NFL to improve their tech support in all areas. There might be a relationship between the tablet issues and the problems with the comms system.

edw519 10y ago

This is what inevitably happens when you have a solution looking for a problem. I have 2 "systems" at work... One includes email and a white board with index cards taped to the wall next to it. The other includes Jira, Confluence, Infor, Sharepoint, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe Illustrator, GIMP, Skype, Webex, Success Factors, and a whole bunch of other stuff. If I don't need all this horrible shit to build software, why would anyone need any of it to play football?

tw04 10y ago

I'm guessing it has far more to do with network connectivity than the tablet itself. The problems he describes to me sound like exactly what I would expect in a stadium filled with 100,000 cellphones emitting wifi and cellular interference. I'm guessing the NFL didn't get clearance from the FCC to use a dedicated wavelength within the stadium to isolate their systems from noise.

notatoad 10y ago
>I'm guessing the NFL didn't get clearance from the FCC to use a dedicated wavelength within the stadium to isolate their systems from noise. if they had, would the surface tablets have been able to use it? I'm not aware of any licensed spectrum that standard wifi cards are capable of communicating on.
- frisco 10y ago
  Channel 14 is used in some Asian markets but illegal in the US, there's consumer hardware that can use it out there.
mikey_p 10y ago
There is actually an immense amount of coordination that goes into an NFL game, even more so for the Super Bowl: * http://blog.rfvenue.com/karl-voss/ http://blog.rfvenue.com/karl-voss/ "... at the Super Bowl we manage ... basically anything D/C to light that is allowed inside the NFL venues.
- erobbins 10y ago
  Yep. I had a friend who worked the Super Bowl, his only job was to detect and locate (and handle) rogue sources of RF energy.
gdulli 10y ago
> I'm guessing it has far more to do with network connectivity than the tablet itself That view is reinforced here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill-belichick-dumps-surface-tablets-in-five-minute-rant/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill-belichi... "Microsoft's hardware isn't necessarily the culprit here, merely the victim. The NFL uses a lot of wireless hardware—communications headsets, public Wi-Fi networks, private networks for the tablets, networks for the press, and more."

wtvanhest 10y ago

I own two computers and have a work laptop (all PCs): Computer 1: Dell - Works as expected Computer 2: Lenovo Thinkpad (work) - Old, works amazing Computer 3: Surface pro - Randomly unresponsive, often times the keyboard has to be disconnected and reconnected. Often times it just freaks out and starts clicking where I am not clicking. I followed all troubleshooting steps. It is terrible.

dhemmerling 10y ago

Surface is getting all the heat in the article, but in the linked interview [1] he blames pretty much every part of the infrastructure other than the interface: > The other communication systems involve the press box to the coaches on the field, and then the coach on the field, the signal caller, or the coach-to-quarterback, coach-to-signal caller system. Those fail on a regular basis. > And again, there's a lot of equipment involved, too. There are headsets in the helmets, there's the belt pack, that communication, there's a hookup or connection to internet service or that process and so forth with the coaches and the press box. So, there are a number of pieces of equipment, there is a number of connections that are on different frequencies. > And then during the game sometimes something happens and it has to be fixed, and first of all, you have to figure out what the problem is. Is it a battery? Is it the helmet? Is it the coaches' pack? Is it the battery on the coaches' pack? I mean you know, again, it could be one of 15 different things. [1] http://www.patriots.com/news/2016/10/18/bill-belichick-conference-call-transcript-1018 http://www.patriots.com/news/2016/10/18/bill-belichick-confe...

josefresco 10y ago
THIS. Read the transcript, he rants almost exclusively about the entire "system" and it's many parts that all seem to fail at some point. The "tablet" issue is a minor sub point but you know ... clicks = money so the headline "Bill Belichick Hates Microsoft Surface" is what every "journalist" went with.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  True, but the Belichick quote near the front of the article is > “As you have probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets,” he said. ...so I would just attribute this to people naturally referring to the frontend of the system they're using as the system itself. When he said "I'm done with the tablets" perhaps he means "I'm done with the system that I am using from my tablet". It seems almost as if NFL confesses that it's not [necessarily] MS here, "... multiple factors that can cause issues within our sideline communications system either related to or outside of Microsoft’s technology."
malenm 10y ago

DeBraid 10y ago

> Zack Cox of New England Sports Network timed Belichick’s denunciation of NFL technology at 5 minutes 25 seconds

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I wonder if there is an actual product here or if there is just a product placement. And by that I mean has anyone sat down with coaches and said "Given what you do in a game on the sidelines, the choices you are making, the questions you are asking, and options you are trying to weigh; Is there a way to improve the tools you've already been using with some automation?" Anyone know?

mountaineer22 10y ago
I don't, but why would a coach give up his expert knowledge to all other coaches he is potentially competing against? The incentives for all parties involved in this situation is less than ideal.
- TillE 10y ago
  I'm sure there are plenty of retired NFL coaches out there who would be willing to advise.
  - favorited 10y ago
    That assumes that the needs of retired coaches are the same as the needs of coaches today.

greedo 10y ago

Network issues are most likely the problem, especially if the devices are issued by the NFL prior to gametime. A coach needs a few things to really make this valuable. First they need a play chart for selecting the appropriate play call for the corresponding down and distance. This can be a canned application that doesn't require network connectivity after it's been loaded, but networking would allow an assistant to update the player personnel availability in real time so that you don't call a play with improper personnel. The other thing the tablets replaced was the physical photos the teams used to use to review plays. The NFL previously made the teams use B&W photos sent down to the sidelines. They don't want the teams to use live replays for some reason, though the monstrous displays in most stadiums make this dumb. So if you take out the network connection, these lose a lot of their value. I can't imagine a more hostile environment for Wifi than a stadium packed with a bazillion cellphones, plus goofy atmospherics due to design.

babesh 10y ago

Did you know that 30 years ago, Polaroids were the new hotness? The difference between those and today's tablets is that the Polaroids were utterly reliable. Both provide additional value from what was there before. The interesting question is why the new tablet/network is unreliable. My contention is that many physical processes are not vulnerable to single points of failure but that software is.

6stringmerc 10y ago

On the one hand, it's a reasoned, eloquent, logical gripe about technology not functioning as intended for its target audience, an NFL head coach. On the other hand, this is Bill Belichick doing the talking, so I take the bulk of his complaints about the communications equipment with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you're not familiar with Mr. Belichick, he's earned the reputation of being worthy of suspicion when it comes to either exploiting a loophole in the rules or potentially breaking them outright and trying to explain them away[1]. A quick search[2] dredges up numerous cases of NFL teams visiting Gillette Stadium and experiencing significant communications system difficulties. So, the cynic in me would like to pose a tentative solution to Bill: If his team would shut off whatever jammers and bullshit disruption devices they're using on the visiting opponents, maybe his equipment wouldn't fuck up as much either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_videotaping_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_vide... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=radio+trouble+gillette+stadium+nfl&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=radio+trouble+gillette+stadi...

mikey_p 10y ago
I'm not saying it's impossible (given the history with on field equipment – aka deflategate), but it's seems highly unlikely given that the NFL hires RF specialists with spectrum analyzers and direction finding equipment just to hunt down unauthorized transmissions at games.
- turnip123942 10y ago
  The broad scientific consensus is that the deflation of the balls occurred naturally and there was no foul-play involved. [0]http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/10/04/tom-brady-deflategate-ideal-gas-law http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/10/04/tom-brady-deflategate-ideal... [1]http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/03/12/deflate-gate-science-goodell http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/03/12/deflate-gate-scienc... [2]https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/deflategate-favored-foul-play-over-science https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/deflategate-... [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwxXsEltyas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwxXsEltyas [4]http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/05/27/scientists-file-amicus-brief-tom-brady/ http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/05/27/scientists-file-a...

dredmorbius 10y ago

It's not just capabilities, but reliability that matters. If I've got a system that takes a bit of consistent prodding to happen, or can do A & B reliably but not C, and it is consistent about that, it's almost always far more acceptable than a system which works most of the time without prodding but then falls down copletely, or a system that does A, B, & C, but fails to work right 10% of the time. That little bit of uncertainty pokes an sticks at you. It's always at the back of your consciousness. A football coach's job is to coach the game. It's not to to try to figure out what's wrong with his comms equipment or even if it's working correctly or incorrectly. Closely related: the paradox of automation. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how...

stevehawk 10y ago

Technology seems to be a huge issue at the Patriots home stadium. Pretty much every visiting team coach that's been there complains about headset failures / communication issues between coaches/on-field captains. Mike Tomlin said "It's always the case" when speaking about them failing. Like countless other people are saying in other comments - this is likely just a huge radio frequency collision issue for all of the wireless operations of any stadium.

hackuser 10y ago
From TFA: Belichick was also unhappy with the other communications systems at the game, like the ones between the press box and the sideline and between the coach and the quarterback. “Those fail on a regular basis,” he said. He noted that the league does not supply the equipment to the teams until a few hours before the game, making troubleshooting difficult. “So I would just say there are problems in every game,” he said. “There were problems last week, but there were problems the week before that, too. Some are worse than others. Sometimes both teams have them, sometimes one team has them and the other team doesn’t have them.”
favorited 10y ago
The home team says it too.

wyager 10y ago

I'm not sure if wifi is actually the problem here as many are claiming, this is a good read about sports frequency coordination: http://www.radioworld.com/article/photo-holding-page/279450 http://www.radioworld.com/article/photo-holding-page/279450 Frequency management in a stadium is very hard. It's mostly done by volunteer ham radio people.

elchief 10y ago

I have a feeling that the NFL doesn't really need tablets on the sideline, but Paul Allen (MS Founder, Owner of the Seahawks) had something to do with it.

samfisher83 10y ago

How much values does Microsoft derive from paying 80 million/year to use these tablets.

mmgutz 10y ago

Has anybody ever used a tablet or laptop outside? They're unreadable. This isn't a problem with surface, it's a problem with most electronic devices in the sunlight. There probably are other glitches but low tech film isn't going away anytime soon.

woodandsteel 10y ago

Hahahahaha, Microsoft really screwed itself on this. Ipads are more reliable and have a better gui, so why is the NFL using surface tablets? It's because Apple didn't need to push the ipad, but surface was really new and Microsoft really needed to promote it anyway possible, so it made a huge marketing push on the NFL, no doubt making it financially very attractive and promising all sorts of help. What Microsoft seems to have not thought out is it would work out well for the coaches only if the entire network system worked flawlessly, or surface would get rejected by association, and so they should have given extensive help to make sure that happened. But they apparently didn't do that, the network screwed up endlessly, and sure enough, surface is being painted as no good.