4 ms·

Sorry, I disagree. > If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure their systems Everyone I

Sorry, I disagree. > If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure their systems Everyone I know who doesn't work in tech "configures" their system by calling me and saying, "it doesn't work" (no other details provided), and asking if I can just fix it. > I rarely meet this "average user"...who isn't interested in using non-standard software...doesn't care about privacy...will use only the easiest and cheapest solution Consider yourself lucky, and consider the circles you travel in are may not be reflective of the majority of users.

badRNG 5y ago
Everyone's anecdotes will be different (and may differ along generational lines.) For a more concrete example of users seeking non-standard software, within a few years of it coming out Chrome became the most popular desktop web browser, surpassing IE. People perferred the experience on Chrome over that on IE to a considerable degree. On the privacy front, 96% of users opt out of surveillance-based advertising [1] when empowered to do so. The longer we consider concepts like user freedom and privacy as only things that "HN elites" would appreciate, the more tolerable user-hostile design choices will be among HN types. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...
dont__panic 5y ago
I'm inclined to agree with you on this one. I spend a lot of time and effort customizing my setup so it fits my needs perfectly. Because I believe that spending even a day or two on setup for a system I'm going to use for a year+ is well worth my time. So many of my coworkers at every job have just blindly accepted all defaults for Windows, macOS, etc. setups. Even when something really annoys them, they'll only occasionally express it... and when I show them that it's a setting they can actually change to better suit their workflow, they're super grateful and excited at this new thing they learned. As if they couldn't possibly have navigated to preferences on their own. Even things that are massively broken, like my dad's router that was constantly overheating and shutting down because it was stacked in the back of a closet surrounded by other crap, many people just accept and move on from. My personal favorite? I'm constantly frustrated by almost everything I do in the Spotify app: - General lagginess, slowness to start up or respond to clicks - loading in albums and playlists that reorganizes the homescreen as a I scroll and try to click on things - albums I click on that never load unless I back out and click on them again - music that shows up as "playing" but doesn't actually play any audio - unplugging headphones leading to half a second of audio blasting out my speakers because the app takes so long to respond to the headphone disconnect event... I asked a software engineer friend if he's ever frustrated by those same things. He said "it's fine." I showed him some of these frustrations (because they're very replicable). He said "it's fine. It plays music, what else do you want it to do?" Most people are content with mediocrity. Perfect example: the folks who use built-in apps on Samsung phones that display ads in between weather and text messages and emails.

badRNG 5y ago

Everyone's anecdotes will be different (and may differ along generational lines.) For a more concrete example of users seeking non-standard software, within a few years of it coming out Chrome became the most popular desktop web browser, surpassing IE. People perferred the experience on Chrome over that on IE to a considerable degree. On the privacy front, 96% of users opt out of surveillance-based advertising [1] when empowered to do so. The longer we consider concepts like user freedom and privacy as only things that "HN elites" would appreciate, the more tolerable user-hostile design choices will be among HN types. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...

dont__panic 5y ago

I'm inclined to agree with you on this one. I spend a lot of time and effort customizing my setup so it fits my needs perfectly. Because I believe that spending even a day or two on setup for a system I'm going to use for a year+ is well worth my time. So many of my coworkers at every job have just blindly accepted all defaults for Windows, macOS, etc. setups. Even when something really annoys them, they'll only occasionally express it... and when I show them that it's a setting they can actually change to better suit their workflow, they're super grateful and excited at this new thing they learned. As if they couldn't possibly have navigated to preferences on their own. Even things that are massively broken, like my dad's router that was constantly overheating and shutting down because it was stacked in the back of a closet surrounded by other crap, many people just accept and move on from. My personal favorite? I'm constantly frustrated by almost everything I do in the Spotify app: - General lagginess, slowness to start up or respond to clicks - loading in albums and playlists that reorganizes the homescreen as a I scroll and try to click on things - albums I click on that never load unless I back out and click on them again - music that shows up as "playing" but doesn't actually play any audio - unplugging headphones leading to half a second of audio blasting out my speakers because the app takes so long to respond to the headphone disconnect event... I asked a software engineer friend if he's ever frustrated by those same things. He said "it's fine." I showed him some of these frustrations (because they're very replicable). He said "it's fine. It plays music, what else do you want it to do?" Most people are content with mediocrity. Perfect example: the folks who use built-in apps on Samsung phones that display ads in between weather and text messages and emails.