I have been using computers for over 60 years, starting with a cards in/cards out IBM 650 to Univac mainframes to the earliest personal computer to “The Computer for the Rest of Us” (The Macintosh). Look up the ad “Why 1984 will not be 1984”.
Unfortunately, 1984 arrived with Apple’s OS X. Everything has changed from gradual changes to complete changes that make previous data unusable, requiring days and weeks to update. Many of these changes are difficult to decipher or many hours to undo (like an update that moved giga-bytes of data to the cloud.
Now Yahoo! had done that with it Finance pages.
For years, I have kept a spreadsheet of weekly data for several stocks or mutual funds. I had Yahoo! set up to give me closing prices every Friday.
I missed a week and when I tried to have Yahoo! give me my data, nothing happened. i went to bed frustrated not knowing what had changed.
On Saturday, I figured out that I had to completely rebuild my list. When I requested the list, I found out that it had the high and low prices but not the closing prices which is what I really wanted.
I went to Yahoo! help section and found out that I was not alone. Many commenters were very upset about the changes.
Well, back to figuring out how to get the data I want.
https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/382977-finance/suggestions/38499625-think-your-changes-out-before-springing-them-on-us
Showing posts with label Macintosh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Macintosh. Show all posts
Sunday, September 01, 2019
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Where did the “computer for the rest of us” go
Where did the “computer for the rest of us” go.
I have been programming and using computers since 1959, some self-taught, some with help of others.
I wrote my first small program for Ohio Oil on an IBM 650 (cards in, cards out). I started with Elliot Organik’s Programming the IBM 650 and the help of other programmers.
I next encountered the Burroughs 3500(?) as a graduate student at Case Institute of Technology.
Then I worked nearly 20 years at Univac working on the Univac 1107 and later models.
Then the personal computer became more interesting and I went out on my own. Then in 1984 Apple came out with the Macintosh. This was the “Computer for the Rest of Us”. It was simpler to use, almost intuitive. I was smitten and have moved up whenever I chose or could afford to.
But somewhere along the way Apple lost its way. Each new group of Apple programmers had to change the Mac OS to their way.
One of the most gratuitous changes was a couple of years ago when printer orientation went haywire.
For a long time I could put an envelope in the back tray of an Epson WF-3640. Push it in so far and tell my Mac to print the envelope. Whoosh! Done!
Then somebody in Epson or Apple decided to change the software. The orientation displayed on the Mac was different. I forgot all the little things I had to do differently. The envelope had to be put in the back tray opposite what was shown on the tray. I forget all the details but sometimes the envelope went through without even being printed.
I just looked up on the Epson website about printing envelopes from one of the front trays. I followed all the directions, but the printer insisted on an envelope being in the back tray!!!
Enough debugging for the day. I would rather read a history book.
I have been programming and using computers since 1959, some self-taught, some with help of others.
I wrote my first small program for Ohio Oil on an IBM 650 (cards in, cards out). I started with Elliot Organik’s Programming the IBM 650 and the help of other programmers.
I next encountered the Burroughs 3500(?) as a graduate student at Case Institute of Technology.
Then I worked nearly 20 years at Univac working on the Univac 1107 and later models.
Then the personal computer became more interesting and I went out on my own. Then in 1984 Apple came out with the Macintosh. This was the “Computer for the Rest of Us”. It was simpler to use, almost intuitive. I was smitten and have moved up whenever I chose or could afford to.
But somewhere along the way Apple lost its way. Each new group of Apple programmers had to change the Mac OS to their way.
One of the most gratuitous changes was a couple of years ago when printer orientation went haywire.
For a long time I could put an envelope in the back tray of an Epson WF-3640. Push it in so far and tell my Mac to print the envelope. Whoosh! Done!
Then somebody in Epson or Apple decided to change the software. The orientation displayed on the Mac was different. I forgot all the little things I had to do differently. The envelope had to be put in the back tray opposite what was shown on the tray. I forget all the details but sometimes the envelope went through without even being printed.
I just looked up on the Epson website about printing envelopes from one of the front trays. I followed all the directions, but the printer insisted on an envelope being in the back tray!!!
Enough debugging for the day. I would rather read a history book.
Saturday, November 25, 2017
More computer woes
After I installed Norton Anti-Virus, I decided to upgrade to put it on some other devices. I have yet to successfully do so. I sent the following letter to Symantec:
I thought adding new devices to my Norton Anti-Virus subscription would be a piece of cake. It has been a nightmare of changing circumstances. Somewhere along the line, even the email address on my subscription was changed to I know not what.
I really prefer using email to ask questions, but your only choices are Chat Room or telephone call. Both of these put the customer and employee under pressure to keep doing something. Haste makes waste.
I have been going around and around trying to follow the directions for installing Norton on additional devices. It has devolved into just giving me the choice to buy it from the App Store.
Please email me detailed instructions on how to get my email account recognized again and to install Norton Anti-Virus on an iPad mini, and iPad, and an iPhone.
- End of letter
I tried again today at a coffee shop to put Norton Antivirus on my wife’s iPad Mini. Everything worked fine until I was taken to the App Store. I forget the details, but the App Store hung up after I put in my wife’s credit card info. Why a credit card was needed for a free download, I don’t know I finally turned her iPad off.
Later I tried to make a donation to a local charity. I made a mistake typing in the credit card number, and it turned to box to a rose background. It was really hard to see what corrections I was making. I eventually got all the correct information in and pressed the “Donate” button. Nothing happened. The only way I got out of that as to close the window. This is the first time that such a glitch has occurred on the site.
After reading many of the comments to https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/many-apples-design-innovations-make-products-worse-195651509.html, I don’t feel so badly. But Apple doesn’t see to be listening to “The Rest of Us”.
I thought adding new devices to my Norton Anti-Virus subscription would be a piece of cake. It has been a nightmare of changing circumstances. Somewhere along the line, even the email address on my subscription was changed to I know not what.
I really prefer using email to ask questions, but your only choices are Chat Room or telephone call. Both of these put the customer and employee under pressure to keep doing something. Haste makes waste.
I have been going around and around trying to follow the directions for installing Norton on additional devices. It has devolved into just giving me the choice to buy it from the App Store.
Please email me detailed instructions on how to get my email account recognized again and to install Norton Anti-Virus on an iPad mini, and iPad, and an iPhone.
- End of letter
I tried again today at a coffee shop to put Norton Antivirus on my wife’s iPad Mini. Everything worked fine until I was taken to the App Store. I forget the details, but the App Store hung up after I put in my wife’s credit card info. Why a credit card was needed for a free download, I don’t know I finally turned her iPad off.
Later I tried to make a donation to a local charity. I made a mistake typing in the credit card number, and it turned to box to a rose background. It was really hard to see what corrections I was making. I eventually got all the correct information in and pressed the “Donate” button. Nothing happened. The only way I got out of that as to close the window. This is the first time that such a glitch has occurred on the site.
After reading many of the comments to https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/many-apples-design-innovations-make-products-worse-195651509.html, I don’t feel so badly. But Apple doesn’t see to be listening to “The Rest of Us”.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Has Apple left the “rest of us” behind?
I am sending the following paper letter to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
Tim Cook
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014
Dear Mr. Cook,
It is 1984 and Apple is Big Brother!
I have been debugging software, my own and others’, for fifty-nine years. In 1983 I left corporate life to work on personal computers. Some of them were more difficult to program than the main-frames I had worked on.
Then came Apple and the Macintosh in 1984. By September I had my first Mac (and a Lisa). Pascal was a joy of simplicity, even if I had to do it through the Lisa. Every time a new Mac came out, I was eager to buy one as soon as possible. More storage, more speed. Hurray!
One of the standing jokes was that Mac owners didn’t need manuals because of WIMP. About the only thing I needed a manual for was how to use diacritical marks in text (åäéñ).
Then OS X came. I never did recover everything that I had on my on-the-floor box. For awhile, I did upgrade to a new OS X. But changes started making old stuff obsolete. Or changes were rather gratuitous. Did iPhoto really need new background colors? Did iPhoto need to change how photos were annotated? It seems that changes were made more to keep programmers busy than give the users truly better software.
I’ve been in that position before. I didn’t want to maintain the old mainframe software; I wanted to work on the new hardware.
I have a long list of peeves of how Apple software changed gratuitously from simple one-step operations to operations with a hidden second step. I got to the point that I would only change major levels of software when I bought a new computer.
Then, either deliberately or accidentally, I upgraded to Sierra on my lap top. Fortunately I was at a coffee shop with unlimited internet access instead of at home with a limited monthly access. One of the big surprises was that Sierra dumped all of my Document folder to iCloud!! It was lots of “fun” moving it back to my MacBook Air. I know lots of people who would have to go to Geek Squad or other help professionals to get through this.
My wife’s iMac is swiftly deteriorating. Again, we have to do a lot of fussing to move data to my old MacBook Pro. The disk drive no longer works. Fortunately, we have some large capacity thumb drives so we were able to move her Document folder to the MacBook Pro.
And thumb drives get me to another of my Apple peeves. If one pulls out a thumb drive without “deleting” it, all the data is lost. This is really a 1984 nightmare.
How many of “the rest of us” has Apple left behind?
Tim Cook
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014
Dear Mr. Cook,
It is 1984 and Apple is Big Brother!
I have been debugging software, my own and others’, for fifty-nine years. In 1983 I left corporate life to work on personal computers. Some of them were more difficult to program than the main-frames I had worked on.
Then came Apple and the Macintosh in 1984. By September I had my first Mac (and a Lisa). Pascal was a joy of simplicity, even if I had to do it through the Lisa. Every time a new Mac came out, I was eager to buy one as soon as possible. More storage, more speed. Hurray!
One of the standing jokes was that Mac owners didn’t need manuals because of WIMP. About the only thing I needed a manual for was how to use diacritical marks in text (åäéñ).
Then OS X came. I never did recover everything that I had on my on-the-floor box. For awhile, I did upgrade to a new OS X. But changes started making old stuff obsolete. Or changes were rather gratuitous. Did iPhoto really need new background colors? Did iPhoto need to change how photos were annotated? It seems that changes were made more to keep programmers busy than give the users truly better software.
I’ve been in that position before. I didn’t want to maintain the old mainframe software; I wanted to work on the new hardware.
I have a long list of peeves of how Apple software changed gratuitously from simple one-step operations to operations with a hidden second step. I got to the point that I would only change major levels of software when I bought a new computer.
Then, either deliberately or accidentally, I upgraded to Sierra on my lap top. Fortunately I was at a coffee shop with unlimited internet access instead of at home with a limited monthly access. One of the big surprises was that Sierra dumped all of my Document folder to iCloud!! It was lots of “fun” moving it back to my MacBook Air. I know lots of people who would have to go to Geek Squad or other help professionals to get through this.
My wife’s iMac is swiftly deteriorating. Again, we have to do a lot of fussing to move data to my old MacBook Pro. The disk drive no longer works. Fortunately, we have some large capacity thumb drives so we were able to move her Document folder to the MacBook Pro.
And thumb drives get me to another of my Apple peeves. If one pulls out a thumb drive without “deleting” it, all the data is lost. This is really a 1984 nightmare.
How many of “the rest of us” has Apple left behind?
Monday, September 04, 2017
The Macintosh Has Lost Its Way
After some of the problems that I’ve had with the Apple, I reread Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way. I remembered it as being about how to design user-friendly software, but it is about all the ways to make a great software company from product design to user groups to interaction with other companies.
What I was looking for is on pages 55-56:
“Great products are elegant. They may have many features, but the features are tastefully and transparently implemented.” P. 52
However, "elegant" and “transparently implemented” have gone by the wayside. See “Computers Under the Control of Magicians”, “Don’t get caught on Sierra”, and “More Update Craziness”.
A counterpoint is “Now Apple’s really ‘for the rest os us’” by Michael Gartenberg, Macworld, 2010-06-23. But I think things have gone quite a bit downhill since 2010.
What I was looking for is on pages 55-56:
“Great products are elegant. They may have many features, but the features are tastefully and transparently implemented.” P. 52
However, "elegant" and “transparently implemented” have gone by the wayside. See “Computers Under the Control of Magicians”, “Don’t get caught on Sierra”, and “More Update Craziness”.
A counterpoint is “Now Apple’s really ‘for the rest os us’” by Michael Gartenberg, Macworld, 2010-06-23. But I think things have gone quite a bit downhill since 2010.
Monday, July 31, 2017
More update craziness
Somewhere, somehow in all the back and forth about getting my Epson WF-3640 all the presets were many: letter, envelope, and others I’ve forgotten.
The other day I finally got two-sided letter printing to print properly. For some reason the second side was upside down from the front side. I finally figured out that I had to have the presets for two-sided printing set to long-edge. I never had had to worry about that before. In all this grand “improvement” the preset was set to short-edge. For the first time ever with many printers, I had to set a preset called “Two-sided printing”.
Next confusion is printing an envelope. No preset and the preview shows a jumble of printing. I got the presets for an envelope all set and placed an envelope in the rear tray with the flap on the top pointing to the left.
Nope! The software printed on the flap side with top pointing to the right. I had noticed the same misdirection in one of the trays, months ago.
Just another example of what professors Russel and Vinsel wrote about lack of maintenance: “Maintenance vs. innovation”
http://magree.blogspot.com/2017/07/maintenance-vs-innovation.html.
The other day I finally got two-sided letter printing to print properly. For some reason the second side was upside down from the front side. I finally figured out that I had to have the presets for two-sided printing set to long-edge. I never had had to worry about that before. In all this grand “improvement” the preset was set to short-edge. For the first time ever with many printers, I had to set a preset called “Two-sided printing”.
Next confusion is printing an envelope. No preset and the preview shows a jumble of printing. I got the presets for an envelope all set and placed an envelope in the rear tray with the flap on the top pointing to the left.
Nope! The software printed on the flap side with top pointing to the right. I had noticed the same misdirection in one of the trays, months ago.
Just another example of what professors Russel and Vinsel wrote about lack of maintenance: “Maintenance vs. innovation”
http://magree.blogspot.com/2017/07/maintenance-vs-innovation.html.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Maintenance vs. innovation
Professors Andrew Russell and Les Vinsel wrote an interesting column for the New York Times that addresses the problems of many current Mac users who are trying to decipher how things that used to work are now mysterious black boxes: “Let’s Get Excited About Maintenance”, New York Times, 2017-07-22.
See also "Don’t get cut on Sierra" and "Computers under the control of magicians".
See also "Don’t get cut on Sierra" and "Computers under the control of magicians".
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Don’t get cut on Sierra (Apple's latest OS)
Sierra is Spanish for saw and is the name of Apple’s latest operating system OS 10.12.
However, it is not for everybody. It has lots of gotchas that will cost the unwary in time and money.
When you upgrade, it moves your entire Document folder to iCloud. One, the Document folder may contain more data than you have room for in your iCloud account. Two, you will have to always have access to the web to access your data.
The first is not a big problem in that Apple will ask you to upgrade your iCloud space. In my case, 50GB cost me 99 cents a month, automatically taken out of my checking account.
The second can be a really big problem if you either work offline a lot or have limited wireless service. Although I did the upgrade at a coffee shop, I think home usage added a couple of GBs in only a day or two.
My current plan is for 15GB per month and I generally use about 8GB. It used to be rather simple to calculate total prices, but it seems that AT&T is making calculations even more obscure. I gave up for now trying to calculate the cost of unlimited service.
At least I have a nearby AT&T store. I plan to stop by soon for a power-cord gadget. I’ll ask if they can help me calculate the true cost to a significant upgrade.
I think I have all the really important, current “Document” data moved off iCloud and accessible without an internet connection. Now the next question is how do I back that data up to iCloud at my convenience.
P.S. I found out that the latest Epson software for my printer is valid for older operating systems. The list only gives the latest two OS’s but another page shows it would work for several older OS’s. Sigh!
However, it is not for everybody. It has lots of gotchas that will cost the unwary in time and money.
When you upgrade, it moves your entire Document folder to iCloud. One, the Document folder may contain more data than you have room for in your iCloud account. Two, you will have to always have access to the web to access your data.
The first is not a big problem in that Apple will ask you to upgrade your iCloud space. In my case, 50GB cost me 99 cents a month, automatically taken out of my checking account.
The second can be a really big problem if you either work offline a lot or have limited wireless service. Although I did the upgrade at a coffee shop, I think home usage added a couple of GBs in only a day or two.
My current plan is for 15GB per month and I generally use about 8GB. It used to be rather simple to calculate total prices, but it seems that AT&T is making calculations even more obscure. I gave up for now trying to calculate the cost of unlimited service.
At least I have a nearby AT&T store. I plan to stop by soon for a power-cord gadget. I’ll ask if they can help me calculate the true cost to a significant upgrade.
I think I have all the really important, current “Document” data moved off iCloud and accessible without an internet connection. Now the next question is how do I back that data up to iCloud at my convenience.
P.S. I found out that the latest Epson software for my printer is valid for older operating systems. The list only gives the latest two OS’s but another page shows it would work for several older OS’s. Sigh!
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Computers under the control of magicians
How many of you are old enough to remember:
“The computer for the rest of us” and
“1984 will not be like 1984”
These were two of the slogans that Apple used in 1984 when it introduced the Mac. I loved it with its WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pictures). Almost everything you needed to know was on the screen.
Many Mac users of that time were eager for the newest operating system or newest Mac: hard drives, multi-tasking, color.
I can’t pinpoint when it all changed, but I stopped looking forward to the latest operating system. Features that worked fine on OS P were a nightmare on OS Q. It seemed that the gratuitous changes were made only to keep programmers employed. Or that a new set of programmers had to do it their way no matter what most long-time customers wanted.
This has been one of those bad years for me.
Sometime in March or April, Apple made a minor update. It did not seem like a big deal and I installed it. I found out much to my chagrin that my Epson WF-3640 would no longer accept paper from anything but Tray 2. I thought the machine didn’t work and exchanged it with Best Buy on a warranty. The second one did the same thing.
After a couple of calls to Epson I learned that Apple had changed the print dialog to all the information the user needed from being on the screen to being buried under certain choices. Once I had that info, I could print from whatever tray I chose.
Then Apple provided a gratuitous “EPSON Printer Software Update, Version 3.3”. I downloaded and installed it. Now my printer didn’t work at all!
A third person at Epson said it was my cable. Well, as I talked to him, I did have my external hard drive connected, not the printer. But when I was off the phone and had the proper connection, it still didn’t work.
I next tried the the friendly folks at Geek Squad. I described the basic problem and they were ready to set me up with a Geek Squad account. Each time I got near the bottom of the payment window it would disappear. What were they ready to blame: my browser (Safari). What? There are dozens of payment windows that work just find with Safari.
I had to go elsewhere and excused myself.
Today, I despaired and went to Best Buy to buy another cable. i also bought a couple of thumb drives to replace those that I “crashed” by taking them out of the USB slot before closing them. Another story for another day maybe.
I plugged my new cable into my MacBook and into the printer. Nothing happened. I couldn’t print.
I didn’t keep track of the buttons I pushed on the printer and the computer, but the results varied widely as to what happened. Eventually my Mac and my Epson printer connected properly with one another. I really don’t want to be a scientist who keeps meticulous notes on every step and every observation. After all, the Mac is the computer for the rest of us. And after 58 years being involved with computers (from punched cards to rooms full of tape drives) I just want to be an ordinary user.
Then I exchanged the new cable for the old cable. Everything worked as it should.
As a senior wailed in the computer lab when I was a graduate assistant, “That isn’t what I meant!
“The computer for the rest of us” and
“1984 will not be like 1984”
These were two of the slogans that Apple used in 1984 when it introduced the Mac. I loved it with its WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pictures). Almost everything you needed to know was on the screen.
Many Mac users of that time were eager for the newest operating system or newest Mac: hard drives, multi-tasking, color.
I can’t pinpoint when it all changed, but I stopped looking forward to the latest operating system. Features that worked fine on OS P were a nightmare on OS Q. It seemed that the gratuitous changes were made only to keep programmers employed. Or that a new set of programmers had to do it their way no matter what most long-time customers wanted.
This has been one of those bad years for me.
Sometime in March or April, Apple made a minor update. It did not seem like a big deal and I installed it. I found out much to my chagrin that my Epson WF-3640 would no longer accept paper from anything but Tray 2. I thought the machine didn’t work and exchanged it with Best Buy on a warranty. The second one did the same thing.
After a couple of calls to Epson I learned that Apple had changed the print dialog to all the information the user needed from being on the screen to being buried under certain choices. Once I had that info, I could print from whatever tray I chose.
Then Apple provided a gratuitous “EPSON Printer Software Update, Version 3.3”. I downloaded and installed it. Now my printer didn’t work at all!
A third person at Epson said it was my cable. Well, as I talked to him, I did have my external hard drive connected, not the printer. But when I was off the phone and had the proper connection, it still didn’t work.
I next tried the the friendly folks at Geek Squad. I described the basic problem and they were ready to set me up with a Geek Squad account. Each time I got near the bottom of the payment window it would disappear. What were they ready to blame: my browser (Safari). What? There are dozens of payment windows that work just find with Safari.
I had to go elsewhere and excused myself.
Today, I despaired and went to Best Buy to buy another cable. i also bought a couple of thumb drives to replace those that I “crashed” by taking them out of the USB slot before closing them. Another story for another day maybe.
I plugged my new cable into my MacBook and into the printer. Nothing happened. I couldn’t print.
I didn’t keep track of the buttons I pushed on the printer and the computer, but the results varied widely as to what happened. Eventually my Mac and my Epson printer connected properly with one another. I really don’t want to be a scientist who keeps meticulous notes on every step and every observation. After all, the Mac is the computer for the rest of us. And after 58 years being involved with computers (from punched cards to rooms full of tape drives) I just want to be an ordinary user.
Then I exchanged the new cable for the old cable. Everything worked as it should.
As a senior wailed in the computer lab when I was a graduate assistant, “That isn’t what I meant!
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Corporate runaround
For the second time this month, my MacBook Air started emitting a lot of static. I pushed the on-off button on the keyboard and the screen went dark, but the static didn’t stop.
I restarted the computer, gave my log-in info, and shut down the computer from the Apple Menu. The static stopped.
I also went to Apple’s Support Communities to look at what others have said. Apparently this problem has been going on for three or more years. One user suggested resetting a VRPRAM or something like that. Even though I have a long computer background, I don’t like getting into the guts of a computer anymore.
I tried to post my observation, but Apple wanted me to sign-in first. I did sign in and when I came back to the page to respond, Apple asked me to sign in again. Other pages recognized that I had signed in, but this particular page wanted me to sign in again and again and again and...
Apple gives me two choices to contact support: telephone or chat. I don’t care for either. In this particular case, I don’t want to do more than report the problem of multiple signing-requests.
I know, I know, I probably spent more time writing this than I would have following through on Apple’s contact protocols. But I have found both methods unsatisfactory. I much prefer leaving a note and being notified of a response. I don’t have to think fast because the clock is ticking.
I think that Apple’s introductory slogan “Why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’” has fallen flat. Someday’s I feel like I am working with the PCs that the Macintosh would replace with simplicity.
I restarted the computer, gave my log-in info, and shut down the computer from the Apple Menu. The static stopped.
I also went to Apple’s Support Communities to look at what others have said. Apparently this problem has been going on for three or more years. One user suggested resetting a VRPRAM or something like that. Even though I have a long computer background, I don’t like getting into the guts of a computer anymore.
I tried to post my observation, but Apple wanted me to sign-in first. I did sign in and when I came back to the page to respond, Apple asked me to sign in again. Other pages recognized that I had signed in, but this particular page wanted me to sign in again and again and again and...
Apple gives me two choices to contact support: telephone or chat. I don’t care for either. In this particular case, I don’t want to do more than report the problem of multiple signing-requests.
I know, I know, I probably spent more time writing this than I would have following through on Apple’s contact protocols. But I have found both methods unsatisfactory. I much prefer leaving a note and being notified of a response. I don’t have to think fast because the clock is ticking.
I think that Apple’s introductory slogan “Why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’” has fallen flat. Someday’s I feel like I am working with the PCs that the Macintosh would replace with simplicity.
Monday, October 31, 2016
How many seconds in a minute and other corporate misdeeds
According to Apple, there are five seconds in a minute!
I just did a software update on my MacBook Air, and near the end, the screen said there were five seconds left. i watched and watched, but the number didn’t change. I did Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two and so on. I stopped at about Mississippi-thirty. A bit later, the counter disappeared. And a bit later, the system rebooted.
Yahoo! Finance redid their web page several weeks ago and took away drag and drop. I have a list of symbols in a TextEdit file that I would drag and drop in the symbol look-up list. I have been using this successfully and satisfactorily for years. Then poof! It didn’t work! I now had to copy and paste. Gosh! Drag and drop has been an Macintosh feature for over twenty years. Now Yahoo! decides its users don’t need drag and drop.
This week Yahoo! Finance flummoxed its users again by providing some very circuitous means of providing a list of quotes. Instead of a spreadsheet-like page, they have buried a text list on the side of the page. By some magical clicking, one can get the spreadsheet listing, but I haven’t memorized it yet.
Many users left comments complaining about this, but I doubt if there will be any change. Some threatened to go to Google Finance. I tried Google Finance and didn’t find it any easier to use.
My suspicion is that corporations put together focus groups and browbeat them into accepting what management wants to do. Then management browbeats long-time customers into accepting the changes by saying the changes were what focus groups wanted.
Of course, there are many fine corporations that bend over backward for customer satisfaction. Toyota has had some bad recalls, but many of their dealers bend over backward to provide customer satisfaction. My examples are Kari Toyota of Superior WI and Maplewood Toyota of Maplewood MN.
For the likes of the corporations that screw up the customer experience, I can only say that the U.S. Postal Service has historically provided far superior service, when Congress lets it. And believe it or not, the IRS too. I have had the IRS send me corrections on my returns, both for underpayment and overpayment.
I just did a software update on my MacBook Air, and near the end, the screen said there were five seconds left. i watched and watched, but the number didn’t change. I did Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two and so on. I stopped at about Mississippi-thirty. A bit later, the counter disappeared. And a bit later, the system rebooted.
Yahoo! Finance redid their web page several weeks ago and took away drag and drop. I have a list of symbols in a TextEdit file that I would drag and drop in the symbol look-up list. I have been using this successfully and satisfactorily for years. Then poof! It didn’t work! I now had to copy and paste. Gosh! Drag and drop has been an Macintosh feature for over twenty years. Now Yahoo! decides its users don’t need drag and drop.
This week Yahoo! Finance flummoxed its users again by providing some very circuitous means of providing a list of quotes. Instead of a spreadsheet-like page, they have buried a text list on the side of the page. By some magical clicking, one can get the spreadsheet listing, but I haven’t memorized it yet.
Many users left comments complaining about this, but I doubt if there will be any change. Some threatened to go to Google Finance. I tried Google Finance and didn’t find it any easier to use.
My suspicion is that corporations put together focus groups and browbeat them into accepting what management wants to do. Then management browbeats long-time customers into accepting the changes by saying the changes were what focus groups wanted.
Of course, there are many fine corporations that bend over backward for customer satisfaction. Toyota has had some bad recalls, but many of their dealers bend over backward to provide customer satisfaction. My examples are Kari Toyota of Superior WI and Maplewood Toyota of Maplewood MN.
For the likes of the corporations that screw up the customer experience, I can only say that the U.S. Postal Service has historically provided far superior service, when Congress lets it. And believe it or not, the IRS too. I have had the IRS send me corrections on my returns, both for underpayment and overpayment.
Thursday, April 07, 2016
The Blamer Games
Sometime last year I switched from Republic Bank to Pioneer National Bank. I could not access Republic Bank from my cell phone using cellular data. I could access my account if I went to a coffee shop and used wi-fi.
Republic Bank and Consumer Cellular (my cellular) provider each absolved themselves of any problem. Republic Bank said that Consumer Cellular was changing its IP address. Consumer Cellular said they were not.
I could access my wife’s accounts at Pioneer National Bank without a problem. So, I switched my account to Pioneer also.
Now this problem has raised its ugly head again. I tried making a estimated tax payment to the State of Minnesota. It would not open any page where I was to provide information, whether I wanted to pay online or just request a form to pay by mail. It said I had cookies turned off. This happened with both FireFox and Safari. With Safari it happened both with my MacBook Air and with my iPhone.
As far as I could see, in both FireFox and Safari I did not have cookies turned off. In fact, in one of these browsers I had a long list of cookies.
I went to Perk Place and bingo, everything worked. Same laptop. I have a receipt in my email.
Wanna bet that somebody will blame the problem on my Mac. As I gaze around the coffee shop, I see over a dozen Mac laptops and only on or two other laptops. I think these providers better get with the program.
I have heard this same thing from the Duluth News Tribune, a problem with Macs. I can’t even access the Olive edition of the DNT. Olive is the name of the software that provides a facsimile of the printed edition and allows expanding any article for easier reading. However, I access the Olive edition of the Star Tribune without problem. In fact, the Strib has even fixed the annoying problem of inconsistent expansion of the comics.
This whole mess would be comical if it weren’t so time-consuming and frustrating.
Republic Bank and Consumer Cellular (my cellular) provider each absolved themselves of any problem. Republic Bank said that Consumer Cellular was changing its IP address. Consumer Cellular said they were not.
I could access my wife’s accounts at Pioneer National Bank without a problem. So, I switched my account to Pioneer also.
Now this problem has raised its ugly head again. I tried making a estimated tax payment to the State of Minnesota. It would not open any page where I was to provide information, whether I wanted to pay online or just request a form to pay by mail. It said I had cookies turned off. This happened with both FireFox and Safari. With Safari it happened both with my MacBook Air and with my iPhone.
As far as I could see, in both FireFox and Safari I did not have cookies turned off. In fact, in one of these browsers I had a long list of cookies.
I went to Perk Place and bingo, everything worked. Same laptop. I have a receipt in my email.
Wanna bet that somebody will blame the problem on my Mac. As I gaze around the coffee shop, I see over a dozen Mac laptops and only on or two other laptops. I think these providers better get with the program.
I have heard this same thing from the Duluth News Tribune, a problem with Macs. I can’t even access the Olive edition of the DNT. Olive is the name of the software that provides a facsimile of the printed edition and allows expanding any article for easier reading. However, I access the Olive edition of the Star Tribune without problem. In fact, the Strib has even fixed the annoying problem of inconsistent expansion of the comics.
This whole mess would be comical if it weren’t so time-consuming and frustrating.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Why do we have to know more about computers than cars?
Just after I posted “Erratic cellular settings” I thought about cars and problem solving.
Long ago I learned a little story about car problems that may have been older than me.
A car dealer gave his wife a new car. She was delighted with it, but she complained that it ran erratically. A mechanic checked it out and could find nothing wrong. She brought it in again with the same result. Finally, the head mechanic went out with her.
She started the car, pulled out the choke, and hung her purse from the choke.
Sometimes, you have to just be there to solve a user’s problem. I found this out when a user couldn’t access a document because his computer terms didn’t the same meanings as others did. I had to go to his house to understand the problem. I found out the cause of an error in my own software when I saw a user print a document on his on printer. I had assumed a negative number for a printer line would not get printed. It worked fine on my Apple printer, but it didn’t work on his third party printer.
The problem with computers is that the designers expect their users to be expert car mechanics, masters of intricate analysis of problems. But all the average user wants to do is touch a few buttons or type a few words to get his or her work done. If their cars sputters when it should purr, they take it to a mechanic who often can diagnose the problem within an hour. But if their devices sputter when they should purr, they are expected to put in hours trying to get enough information to get somebody to finally make a correction to the software (or tell them not to hang their purses on the menu bar).
My plaint about all this complexity is whatever happened to the “Computer for the Rest of Us” (The 1984 Apple Macintosh)?
Long ago I learned a little story about car problems that may have been older than me.
A car dealer gave his wife a new car. She was delighted with it, but she complained that it ran erratically. A mechanic checked it out and could find nothing wrong. She brought it in again with the same result. Finally, the head mechanic went out with her.
She started the car, pulled out the choke, and hung her purse from the choke.
Sometimes, you have to just be there to solve a user’s problem. I found this out when a user couldn’t access a document because his computer terms didn’t the same meanings as others did. I had to go to his house to understand the problem. I found out the cause of an error in my own software when I saw a user print a document on his on printer. I had assumed a negative number for a printer line would not get printed. It worked fine on my Apple printer, but it didn’t work on his third party printer.
The problem with computers is that the designers expect their users to be expert car mechanics, masters of intricate analysis of problems. But all the average user wants to do is touch a few buttons or type a few words to get his or her work done. If their cars sputters when it should purr, they take it to a mechanic who often can diagnose the problem within an hour. But if their devices sputter when they should purr, they are expected to put in hours trying to get enough information to get somebody to finally make a correction to the software (or tell them not to hang their purses on the menu bar).
My plaint about all this complexity is whatever happened to the “Computer for the Rest of Us” (The 1984 Apple Macintosh)?
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Why do I know more than tech support?
Well, not in all cases. Probably more often tech support knows far more than I do about a given problem.
In too many cases, I get advice that is way off-base or misleading.
We are going to “cut the cord” soon and go completely wireless. Among other things, we have to change how we use our wireless printer. Rather than go through our modem/router, we will have to use a cable and switch the cable between computers.
I looked and looked at the manual for where the connections were. I found mention of using USB or Ethernet cables, but I could find no diagram showing where the connections were.
I sent email to tech support of the manufacturer and received a reply in less than 12 hours.
As usual, the flowery answer didn’t really answer the question. On first blush! The answer contained a diagram of the back of the printer. The diagram labeled the connections. Way in the middle of the side farthest from me were a USB port and a LAN port.
The USB port takes a connector different from the flat connector most of us are used to.
What’s a LAN port? I should know the answer but don’t. Look it up: Local Area Network! The cable for a LAN is an Ethernet cable! Smack me upside the head! I knew that! But, the directions never use the two terms together. What are poor non-techies to do with such a gap.
Before I got the answer from tech support, I tried printing with the modem’s phone line disconnected. It worked! Ah ha! The modem is the router, not the Apple Time Machine. So, we have to keep the modem when we “cut the cord”. However, if the modem conks out, then I know how to use the Ethernet cable.
What amazes me is that nobody would hire me in my 60s for this problem solving ability. Now in my 70s, I too often know more than tech support!
What amazes me even more is the people who complain about government inefficiency never consider the rampant inefficiency in too many corporations.
In too many cases, I get advice that is way off-base or misleading.
We are going to “cut the cord” soon and go completely wireless. Among other things, we have to change how we use our wireless printer. Rather than go through our modem/router, we will have to use a cable and switch the cable between computers.
I looked and looked at the manual for where the connections were. I found mention of using USB or Ethernet cables, but I could find no diagram showing where the connections were.
I sent email to tech support of the manufacturer and received a reply in less than 12 hours.
As usual, the flowery answer didn’t really answer the question. On first blush! The answer contained a diagram of the back of the printer. The diagram labeled the connections. Way in the middle of the side farthest from me were a USB port and a LAN port.
The USB port takes a connector different from the flat connector most of us are used to.
What’s a LAN port? I should know the answer but don’t. Look it up: Local Area Network! The cable for a LAN is an Ethernet cable! Smack me upside the head! I knew that! But, the directions never use the two terms together. What are poor non-techies to do with such a gap.
Before I got the answer from tech support, I tried printing with the modem’s phone line disconnected. It worked! Ah ha! The modem is the router, not the Apple Time Machine. So, we have to keep the modem when we “cut the cord”. However, if the modem conks out, then I know how to use the Ethernet cable.
What amazes me is that nobody would hire me in my 60s for this problem solving ability. Now in my 70s, I too often know more than tech support!
What amazes me even more is the people who complain about government inefficiency never consider the rampant inefficiency in too many corporations.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Technology is great! Technology grates!
Technology is great! Using my computer and the Internet, I can write and submit this column. I can pay bills online rather than write and mail a check. I can order a large assortment of goods online and sometimes even track their shipping.
Technology helps me research without buying lots of books and magazines or making many visits to the library. But unless you make to-do lists on paper or on a computer, it doesn’t help you remember all you plan. One web-site I forgot to include in last week’s column, “Hunter, know your ground”, was the 2014 Minnesota DNR Hunting regulations: http://dnr.state.mn.us/regulations/hunting/index.html.
Technology lets me carry in my shirt pocket symphonies, the Bible, the Constitution and commentaries, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, manuals for all kinds of tools and gadgets, hundreds of notes to myself, and many of my Party of One columns.
Technology grates! It seems the more things I can do on my computer and gadgets, the more things go wrong.
Rather than paying bills, reading books, or listening to music, I am spending an inordinate time trying to resolve computer and other gadget problems. In this month I have had a keyboard whose return key might not work, Bluetooth earbuds that wouldn’t charge, lots of software that doesn’t work (properly or at all) and a smoke alarm that went off when there was no smoke.
I wrote about some of these problems in “Programmer, heal thyself”; let me tell you about the resolution (or non-resolution) of some of these.
Whenever a smoke detector ceases to work properly, I try to buy the same model again. Because there is no standardization for mounting that I know of, I buy the same model again so I don’t have to drill more holes in the ceiling. The model of detector that we use in the cabin has a seven-year warranty.
Being frustrated with the smoke detector that gave false alarms, I contacted the online store that I bought it from. I thought it was the manufacturer because of the name similarity. Nope, I have to contact the manufacturer for the warranty. The manufacturer, First Alert, had no email address for U.S. residents. OK, forget the warranty because I’ll never get a replacement in time for our next stay in the cabin. I ordered another one from the online store with three-day delivery. Yay! It came the afternoon before we planned to go to our cabin.
I should take some of the blame as the directions do have a warranty procedure. The address isn’t even the same name as the manufacturer label. I still have the malfunctioning alarm on my desk. But why bother making a warranty claim? If the new one I had already bought works for its warrantied life, then the warranty on the replacement would have also expired.
I have a Logitech Solar Keyboard Folio for my iPad. It functions as a keyboard, stand, and cover. I finally set aside some time to research the non-functioning return key.
The Logitech web site would not take email address and password, and I never received email to reset password. I sent email to the address I used for same problem in February/March, and I received a form that I should go to the website. I eventually called the non-800 number, and reached a non-native speaker of English. It was more corporate bureaucracy; she was a level one filter. We just went around in circles with no technical help
I went back to the friendlier email I had earlier in the year for the same problem that had a set of steps that would supposedly resolve the problem. I followed them, but the return key didn’t work! But as I had done before, I repeatedly pressed the return key and it eventually worked. Was that all I needed to do in the first place? The return key didn’t work again a few days later! I pressed it less than a dozen times and it worked again. To be a computer user, you really have to believe in magic:)
I had a much friendlier set of email exchange with Jaybird. I bought a set of their wireless earbuds the same time as I bought the iPad keyboard. Just after the warranty period expired my earbuds couldn’t be recharged. Jaybird offered me 50% credit for a new set. I did need to send the device back before getting credit. Once they had the tracking number for my package, they told me I could place my order.
I worked on balancing my wife’s checkbook this week. To help me, I printed out a bank statement. I couldn’t find a transaction that she had in her register. I finally found it lost between pages on the bank statement copy I printed. The bank statement saved as a PDF was OK. Adobe or Apple lost the item in printing!
I printed out a website form for a mail order, and the result had two pictures that were not on my screen. Both pictures on the printout covered text! At least it wasn’t on the part with my information.
I still believe we ain’t seen nothin’ yet on the benefits of technology, but whatever happened to WYSIWYG? What you see is what you get!
Even with over fifty years of computer experience, Mel feels he is falling farther and farther behind.
Technology helps me research without buying lots of books and magazines or making many visits to the library. But unless you make to-do lists on paper or on a computer, it doesn’t help you remember all you plan. One web-site I forgot to include in last week’s column, “Hunter, know your ground”, was the 2014 Minnesota DNR Hunting regulations: http://dnr.state.mn.us/regulations/hunting/index.html.
Technology lets me carry in my shirt pocket symphonies, the Bible, the Constitution and commentaries, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, manuals for all kinds of tools and gadgets, hundreds of notes to myself, and many of my Party of One columns.
Technology grates! It seems the more things I can do on my computer and gadgets, the more things go wrong.
Rather than paying bills, reading books, or listening to music, I am spending an inordinate time trying to resolve computer and other gadget problems. In this month I have had a keyboard whose return key might not work, Bluetooth earbuds that wouldn’t charge, lots of software that doesn’t work (properly or at all) and a smoke alarm that went off when there was no smoke.
I wrote about some of these problems in “Programmer, heal thyself”; let me tell you about the resolution (or non-resolution) of some of these.
Whenever a smoke detector ceases to work properly, I try to buy the same model again. Because there is no standardization for mounting that I know of, I buy the same model again so I don’t have to drill more holes in the ceiling. The model of detector that we use in the cabin has a seven-year warranty.
Being frustrated with the smoke detector that gave false alarms, I contacted the online store that I bought it from. I thought it was the manufacturer because of the name similarity. Nope, I have to contact the manufacturer for the warranty. The manufacturer, First Alert, had no email address for U.S. residents. OK, forget the warranty because I’ll never get a replacement in time for our next stay in the cabin. I ordered another one from the online store with three-day delivery. Yay! It came the afternoon before we planned to go to our cabin.
I should take some of the blame as the directions do have a warranty procedure. The address isn’t even the same name as the manufacturer label. I still have the malfunctioning alarm on my desk. But why bother making a warranty claim? If the new one I had already bought works for its warrantied life, then the warranty on the replacement would have also expired.
I have a Logitech Solar Keyboard Folio for my iPad. It functions as a keyboard, stand, and cover. I finally set aside some time to research the non-functioning return key.
The Logitech web site would not take email address and password, and I never received email to reset password. I sent email to the address I used for same problem in February/March, and I received a form that I should go to the website. I eventually called the non-800 number, and reached a non-native speaker of English. It was more corporate bureaucracy; she was a level one filter. We just went around in circles with no technical help
I went back to the friendlier email I had earlier in the year for the same problem that had a set of steps that would supposedly resolve the problem. I followed them, but the return key didn’t work! But as I had done before, I repeatedly pressed the return key and it eventually worked. Was that all I needed to do in the first place? The return key didn’t work again a few days later! I pressed it less than a dozen times and it worked again. To be a computer user, you really have to believe in magic:)
I had a much friendlier set of email exchange with Jaybird. I bought a set of their wireless earbuds the same time as I bought the iPad keyboard. Just after the warranty period expired my earbuds couldn’t be recharged. Jaybird offered me 50% credit for a new set. I did need to send the device back before getting credit. Once they had the tracking number for my package, they told me I could place my order.
I worked on balancing my wife’s checkbook this week. To help me, I printed out a bank statement. I couldn’t find a transaction that she had in her register. I finally found it lost between pages on the bank statement copy I printed. The bank statement saved as a PDF was OK. Adobe or Apple lost the item in printing!
I printed out a website form for a mail order, and the result had two pictures that were not on my screen. Both pictures on the printout covered text! At least it wasn’t on the part with my information.
I still believe we ain’t seen nothin’ yet on the benefits of technology, but whatever happened to WYSIWYG? What you see is what you get!
Even with over fifty years of computer experience, Mel feels he is falling farther and farther behind.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Programmer, heal thyself
The New York Times recently had a link to the Wired story, “Why the New Obamacare Website is Going to Work This Time” by Steven Levy, originally published in the June issue of Wired. Levy almost gushes how the Ad Hoc team, a small group of young programmers from Silicon Valley and President Obama’s election campaign, greatly simplified the Website. “[T]hey worked 80-hour weeks to salvage the botched creation of thousands of technocrats employed by 55 different contractors,”
Duh! A small team can make breakthroughs that a large group cannot. Think of the original Macintosh team, much smaller and squirreled away in a small building away from all those working on Apple II software.
IBM trumpeted it had a thousand programmers in seven cities on OS 360. We in Univac smirked that we had less than 40 programmers working in one city on EXEC I. Even then a contractor built a leaner OS (EXEC II) to build and test the FORTRAN and COBOL compilers they had contracted to build. EXEC II was much more popular among customers than EXEC I and even its successor EXEC 8.
Making deadlines? Hah! We were always shifting ship dates later.
What I wonder is if these same programmers from private industry are so great, why are software “user community” boards so filled with questions, often unanswered? If these programmers are so great, why are reviews often mixed, some love the program, others hate it.
Way back in the 80s when the Macintosh was the latest “hot thing”, I was eager to get the latest version of the software and found the enhancements great. Thirty years later, I am reluctant to move up to a major new release. To often things that worked fine are changed to something that is more difficult to use or doesn’t even work anymore.
With each generation it seems that programs run slower and slower. Maybe it’s because I’m using a three-year-old Mac with one-year-old software. I have found suggestions for “cleaning up the system”, but they involve a whole day of backing up data and then another day of creating a “clean install” disc and actually running it.
Consistency of design often seems to be lacking. If my iPhone is asleep and I get a call, the screen only gives me the option of swiping to accept the call. However, if my iPhone is active, the screen gives me the choice of accepting or rejecting the call. Buried in the instruction manual, or was it in the “user community”, in the first case I can reject the call by holding the sleep button and the home button at the same time. Only a bureaucracy would allow different actions for the same result.
In one of the recent releases, certain buttons may or may not appear for starting and stopping a podcast. The intent is to have a right-pointing triangle to start or resume a podcast and a double bar to momentarily stop it. When these symbols suddenly started disappearing, I was glad that I knew where they were supposed to be. And I have no idea why these buttons sometime appear and sometime don’t.
I have a new problem to research: why does the return button no longer work on my Logitech Solar Keyboard folio for my iPad? I’ll have to set aside some time to check out the Logitech community about this.
I love all this technology because of all it does for me. I can write this column on my laptop and email it to the Reader. I can keep notes and to-do lists on my laptop, phone, and iPad and keep them synched. I can call my wife from the grocery store to remind me what it was she wanted. I can use my iPhone as a hot spot at our cabin to write and email this column.
BTW, I’m not writing this at our cabin as planned because another simple technology became an irritation. Our smoke alarm started going off randomly. Sometimes it would beep and beep, sometimes it would only give off one set of beeps. I had a lousy night Saturday night! Could it be too much moisture in the small tight cabin? Well, I brought the alarm home, closed the battery compartment, and put it on the bed. Within twenty minutes it gave off a single set of beeps. We bought the seven-year warranty alarm in March!
Much is made about about government bureaucracy and corporate efficiency, but corporate bureaucracy in GM led to many deaths because of faulty ignition switches.
To err is human, but to really screw up it takes a computer. Humans and computers are both in corporations and governments.
Mel considers himself perfect; he never makes mistakes. Oops, the computer won’t let him misspell mistakes as “misteaks!
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-10-09 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/10/09/4191_programmer_heal_thyself
Duh! A small team can make breakthroughs that a large group cannot. Think of the original Macintosh team, much smaller and squirreled away in a small building away from all those working on Apple II software.
IBM trumpeted it had a thousand programmers in seven cities on OS 360. We in Univac smirked that we had less than 40 programmers working in one city on EXEC I. Even then a contractor built a leaner OS (EXEC II) to build and test the FORTRAN and COBOL compilers they had contracted to build. EXEC II was much more popular among customers than EXEC I and even its successor EXEC 8.
Making deadlines? Hah! We were always shifting ship dates later.
What I wonder is if these same programmers from private industry are so great, why are software “user community” boards so filled with questions, often unanswered? If these programmers are so great, why are reviews often mixed, some love the program, others hate it.
Way back in the 80s when the Macintosh was the latest “hot thing”, I was eager to get the latest version of the software and found the enhancements great. Thirty years later, I am reluctant to move up to a major new release. To often things that worked fine are changed to something that is more difficult to use or doesn’t even work anymore.
With each generation it seems that programs run slower and slower. Maybe it’s because I’m using a three-year-old Mac with one-year-old software. I have found suggestions for “cleaning up the system”, but they involve a whole day of backing up data and then another day of creating a “clean install” disc and actually running it.
Consistency of design often seems to be lacking. If my iPhone is asleep and I get a call, the screen only gives me the option of swiping to accept the call. However, if my iPhone is active, the screen gives me the choice of accepting or rejecting the call. Buried in the instruction manual, or was it in the “user community”, in the first case I can reject the call by holding the sleep button and the home button at the same time. Only a bureaucracy would allow different actions for the same result.
In one of the recent releases, certain buttons may or may not appear for starting and stopping a podcast. The intent is to have a right-pointing triangle to start or resume a podcast and a double bar to momentarily stop it. When these symbols suddenly started disappearing, I was glad that I knew where they were supposed to be. And I have no idea why these buttons sometime appear and sometime don’t.
I have a new problem to research: why does the return button no longer work on my Logitech Solar Keyboard folio for my iPad? I’ll have to set aside some time to check out the Logitech community about this.
I love all this technology because of all it does for me. I can write this column on my laptop and email it to the Reader. I can keep notes and to-do lists on my laptop, phone, and iPad and keep them synched. I can call my wife from the grocery store to remind me what it was she wanted. I can use my iPhone as a hot spot at our cabin to write and email this column.
BTW, I’m not writing this at our cabin as planned because another simple technology became an irritation. Our smoke alarm started going off randomly. Sometimes it would beep and beep, sometimes it would only give off one set of beeps. I had a lousy night Saturday night! Could it be too much moisture in the small tight cabin? Well, I brought the alarm home, closed the battery compartment, and put it on the bed. Within twenty minutes it gave off a single set of beeps. We bought the seven-year warranty alarm in March!
Much is made about about government bureaucracy and corporate efficiency, but corporate bureaucracy in GM led to many deaths because of faulty ignition switches.
To err is human, but to really screw up it takes a computer. Humans and computers are both in corporations and governments.
Mel considers himself perfect; he never makes mistakes. Oops, the computer won’t let him misspell mistakes as “misteaks!
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-10-09 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/10/09/4191_programmer_heal_thyself
Thursday, August 21, 2014
What did I learn outside school?
Last week I asked what did I learn in school, with an emphasis on how much I had forgotten of what I supposedly learned. What I really learned in school was to learn. I had teachers who excited me about a subject, and I had subjects that excited me even if the teacher didn’t.
I also had many other people outside school who enticed me to learn, something too many kids don’t have. The high point of this seems to me to have been when we lived with my mother’s aunt and uncle, especially between the ages of 9 and 14. My environment was rich with printed publications.
They subscribed to the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer and the afternoon Cleveland Press. They subscribed to Saturday Evening Post or one or two of its competitors. They may have even subscribed to National Geographic. I loved comic books and subscribed to Walt Disney Comics and bought Looney Tunes from time to time. But we also had books. I remember having a set of “East Wind Stories”, a set of stories about fictional animals. I borrowed books from the school library and the downtown public library.
We also listened to the radio. I remember that Aunt Gertrude had to have the station changed five minutes before Walter Winchell came on: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press.” We also had 78 rpm records and listened sometimes to the station that played some classical music. Was that WDOK? I remember preferring piano music to violin music because the pitch was often lower. And of course, lots of pop music.
We had no TV then. I remember a when TV cameraman came to the sledding hill I often went to. He filmed me going down the hill with hands and feet in the air. To see the newscast, we stood outside a TV store. We also went to the TV studio where they graciously showed it to us.
I had many more outside school learning experiences before I graduated from high school, but in interest of space, I’ll skip forward to the summer before my senior year of college. I wanted to learn about computers and found a summer job at Ohio Oil Company (Marathon). Because I was put in a clerical job rather than a computer job, I borrowed Elliott Organick’s “Programming the IBM 650” from the company library. With that knowledge, I wrote a program to calculate the square root of any number. I gave it to my supervisor who passed it on to others. Within days I was transferred to a group more closely involved in computers. Eventually I was given the task of writing a program to process quotas for gas stations and others. I had lots of help from others on details of how the IBM 650 worked. On my last day, I handed in the manual for how to use the program. I think it was used by Ohio Oil for a year or two.
When I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, Case took me back for a masters program in mathematics. Not only that, but I was given a graduate assistantship in the Computer Center that covered tuition and paid $75 a week too!
One of the jobs of Computer Center assistants was to provide help to sophomores who were taking the mandatory numerical analysis course. We started in July, were given the ALGOL manual for Burroughs 220 and let loose. In the fall, we were answering all kinds of questions for the undergraduates.
We also learned the assembler called SAVE written by a PhD candidate. As a project for the only computer class I took, I wrote a simpler assembler called HELP, of which SAVE was the answer. Darned if there wasn’t somebody using HELP long after I left Case.
Case had ordered a Univac 1107 and I learned its assembler and instruction set from a manual. When I completed my master’s work I applied for work with Univac and was hired. I was first set to some mathematical project that I had no idea of how to proceed. Luckily for me that group was dissolved and I was moved into the FORTRAN compiler support group. My boss never learned to write FORTRAN but he was a crackerjack at solving problems with the compiler. I wound up solving problems with the FORTRAN library, pieces of code called on by users that did things not part of FORTRAN itself, like mathematical functions. I never took a class in the compiler or the assembler it was written in. We just jumped in and started solving problems.
Because I did have experience (or was it interest) in ALGOL, I was given the responsibility for fixing problems in the compiler, written by somebody else. A Norwegian customer wrote an extension for simulation, called, surprise, SIMULA. Without any training except the manual and trial and error, I fixed problems in SIMULA and its library.
I spent nearly twenty years at UNIVAC and kept learning things on the fly and even giving classes in what I learned! I’ve lost track of the software I learned.
Then I went off on my own and learned more and more computers and software. Even now with thirty years experience with the Macintosh, I learn something new with every release. I’ve lost track of the number of software programs I’ve learned.
With these I’ve learned three things: software can be easy, software can be obtuse, and we ain’t seen nothing yet!
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-08-14 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/21/3928_what_did_i_learn_outside_school.
I also had many other people outside school who enticed me to learn, something too many kids don’t have. The high point of this seems to me to have been when we lived with my mother’s aunt and uncle, especially between the ages of 9 and 14. My environment was rich with printed publications.
They subscribed to the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer and the afternoon Cleveland Press. They subscribed to Saturday Evening Post or one or two of its competitors. They may have even subscribed to National Geographic. I loved comic books and subscribed to Walt Disney Comics and bought Looney Tunes from time to time. But we also had books. I remember having a set of “East Wind Stories”, a set of stories about fictional animals. I borrowed books from the school library and the downtown public library.
We also listened to the radio. I remember that Aunt Gertrude had to have the station changed five minutes before Walter Winchell came on: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press.” We also had 78 rpm records and listened sometimes to the station that played some classical music. Was that WDOK? I remember preferring piano music to violin music because the pitch was often lower. And of course, lots of pop music.
We had no TV then. I remember a when TV cameraman came to the sledding hill I often went to. He filmed me going down the hill with hands and feet in the air. To see the newscast, we stood outside a TV store. We also went to the TV studio where they graciously showed it to us.
I had many more outside school learning experiences before I graduated from high school, but in interest of space, I’ll skip forward to the summer before my senior year of college. I wanted to learn about computers and found a summer job at Ohio Oil Company (Marathon). Because I was put in a clerical job rather than a computer job, I borrowed Elliott Organick’s “Programming the IBM 650” from the company library. With that knowledge, I wrote a program to calculate the square root of any number. I gave it to my supervisor who passed it on to others. Within days I was transferred to a group more closely involved in computers. Eventually I was given the task of writing a program to process quotas for gas stations and others. I had lots of help from others on details of how the IBM 650 worked. On my last day, I handed in the manual for how to use the program. I think it was used by Ohio Oil for a year or two.
When I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, Case took me back for a masters program in mathematics. Not only that, but I was given a graduate assistantship in the Computer Center that covered tuition and paid $75 a week too!
One of the jobs of Computer Center assistants was to provide help to sophomores who were taking the mandatory numerical analysis course. We started in July, were given the ALGOL manual for Burroughs 220 and let loose. In the fall, we were answering all kinds of questions for the undergraduates.
We also learned the assembler called SAVE written by a PhD candidate. As a project for the only computer class I took, I wrote a simpler assembler called HELP, of which SAVE was the answer. Darned if there wasn’t somebody using HELP long after I left Case.
Case had ordered a Univac 1107 and I learned its assembler and instruction set from a manual. When I completed my master’s work I applied for work with Univac and was hired. I was first set to some mathematical project that I had no idea of how to proceed. Luckily for me that group was dissolved and I was moved into the FORTRAN compiler support group. My boss never learned to write FORTRAN but he was a crackerjack at solving problems with the compiler. I wound up solving problems with the FORTRAN library, pieces of code called on by users that did things not part of FORTRAN itself, like mathematical functions. I never took a class in the compiler or the assembler it was written in. We just jumped in and started solving problems.
Because I did have experience (or was it interest) in ALGOL, I was given the responsibility for fixing problems in the compiler, written by somebody else. A Norwegian customer wrote an extension for simulation, called, surprise, SIMULA. Without any training except the manual and trial and error, I fixed problems in SIMULA and its library.
I spent nearly twenty years at UNIVAC and kept learning things on the fly and even giving classes in what I learned! I’ve lost track of the software I learned.
Then I went off on my own and learned more and more computers and software. Even now with thirty years experience with the Macintosh, I learn something new with every release. I’ve lost track of the number of software programs I’ve learned.
With these I’ve learned three things: software can be easy, software can be obtuse, and we ain’t seen nothing yet!
Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-08-14 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/21/3928_what_did_i_learn_outside_school.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Has ’1984’ come to Apple’s Macintosh?
The first Macintosh ad was for the 1984 SuperBowl. You can find many copies on YouTube such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZV7PDt8Lw. The final line was “why 1984 won’t be like ’1984’.
The whole idea of the original Macintosh was that you didn’t need to type in complex instructions to get anything done. You selected your choices from a menu and you got a window. In the window you got pictures to look at and icons for any warnings. Whether disparagingly by PC users or lovingly by Mac users, it was called WIMP.
Several years later, Apple produced the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads. These stressed the multitude of fun things that could be done on a Mac right out of the box and implied it was difficult to do these things on a PC without add-ons. You can see some of these at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs.
To me, as an almost 30 year user of Macs (September 1984), the Mac was a delight to use and program for. Then the new whiz kids decided that it should be programmed in C rather than Pascal. To me, C stood for complex, and I had programmed mainframes with line-at-a-time assemblers.
It is mind-boggling how much more I can do now than thirty years ago, but with OS X things seem to have gone downhill. Or rather it is an uphill job to figure out what is going wrong. The response time seems to get worse with every new operating system.
I’m not alone with this judgment. Apple’s “Community” seems filled with complaints about things that don’t work correctly.
Advice to correct the problem includes:
Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR..; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_; sudo chmod -R
In the 1980s it was said that Mac users didn’t read manuals. I often found that the only reason I needed a manual was for how to type letters with diacritical marks, such as å, é, î, and ö. Now I find I am going to the “Community” at least once a month for some problem.
These kind of problems may be happening to users with two or more year-old computers; Apple’s programmers are likely to be using computers that are less than a year old, and they probably don’t have the time to test the new software on older computers than those on their desks.
I may be on to something here. My wife’s iMac is a year newer than my MacBook Pro. Other than updates within a major level, she is still using the same operating system that came with her computer. Meanwhile, I’ve updated two levels since I bought mine, skipped one level because of the problem I mentioned in the last paragraph, and then fell for the enticements to move to the latest OS, Mavericks. This had many benefits, but I keep wondering if they do outweigh the problems.
The whole idea of the original Macintosh was that you didn’t need to type in complex instructions to get anything done. You selected your choices from a menu and you got a window. In the window you got pictures to look at and icons for any warnings. Whether disparagingly by PC users or lovingly by Mac users, it was called WIMP.
Several years later, Apple produced the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads. These stressed the multitude of fun things that could be done on a Mac right out of the box and implied it was difficult to do these things on a PC without add-ons. You can see some of these at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs.
To me, as an almost 30 year user of Macs (September 1984), the Mac was a delight to use and program for. Then the new whiz kids decided that it should be programmed in C rather than Pascal. To me, C stood for complex, and I had programmed mainframes with line-at-a-time assemblers.
It is mind-boggling how much more I can do now than thirty years ago, but with OS X things seem to have gone downhill. Or rather it is an uphill job to figure out what is going wrong. The response time seems to get worse with every new operating system.
I’m not alone with this judgment. Apple’s “Community” seems filled with complaints about things that don’t work correctly.
Advice to correct the problem includes:
Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR..; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_; sudo chmod -R
In the 1980s it was said that Mac users didn’t read manuals. I often found that the only reason I needed a manual was for how to type letters with diacritical marks, such as å, é, î, and ö. Now I find I am going to the “Community” at least once a month for some problem.
These kind of problems may be happening to users with two or more year-old computers; Apple’s programmers are likely to be using computers that are less than a year old, and they probably don’t have the time to test the new software on older computers than those on their desks.
I may be on to something here. My wife’s iMac is a year newer than my MacBook Pro. Other than updates within a major level, she is still using the same operating system that came with her computer. Meanwhile, I’ve updated two levels since I bought mine, skipped one level because of the problem I mentioned in the last paragraph, and then fell for the enticements to move to the latest OS, Mavericks. This had many benefits, but I keep wondering if they do outweigh the problems.
Monday, April 21, 2014
The computer for the rest of us?
Remember that Apple slogan from the Macintosh’s early years. Sure, the Macintosh is a powerful took as well as is iPhone and iPad cousins. But as the features improve, the user experience seems to get worse when it comes to trying to figure out why the obvious steps don’t seem to work.
I posted the following in one of the discussions in Apple Support Communities.
I've noticed the iCloud sign on podcast episodes, but I was really upset when I was asked if I wanted an episode from iCloud. No, not really. My iPhone plan has limited download and I don't want to exceed it. This happened at the fitness center, and I clicked OK this time. When I checked with my provider later, I had almost doubled my usage in a couple of days.
Here is a summary of steps for later readers to ensure that your podcasts come from, and only from, your computer:
These are intended for developers, but I wonder how much Apple follows these for Mavericks and iOS 7.1. For example, from "OS X Human Interface Guidelines: User Experience Guidelines":
"It’s worth emphasizing an obvious fact: Users view your app differently than you do. Nowhere is this difference more striking than in the performance of common app-management tasks, such as finding and opening documents, opening and closing windows, and managing document state. Although there are many ways that apps can make such tasks easier for users to perform, a more important question is, Why should users have to perform them at all?"
I posted the following in one of the discussions in Apple Support Communities.
I've noticed the iCloud sign on podcast episodes, but I was really upset when I was asked if I wanted an episode from iCloud. No, not really. My iPhone plan has limited download and I don't want to exceed it. This happened at the fitness center, and I clicked OK this time. When I checked with my provider later, I had almost doubled my usage in a couple of days.
Here is a summary of steps for later readers to ensure that your podcasts come from, and only from, your computer:
Select Podcasts on iPhone.I wonder what Joy Mountford, the founder of the Apple Human Interface Group, thinks of the human interfaces of iOS 7 and Mavericks. There is still an Apple Human Interface Group and you can find links to Apple's OS X and iOS Human Interface Guidelines at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interface_guidelines.
Select a podcast
Select "Settings"
Turn off "Subscriptions"
Set "Refresh Podcasts" to "Manually"
Repeat for each podcast group
These are intended for developers, but I wonder how much Apple follows these for Mavericks and iOS 7.1. For example, from "OS X Human Interface Guidelines: User Experience Guidelines":
"It’s worth emphasizing an obvious fact: Users view your app differently than you do. Nowhere is this difference more striking than in the performance of common app-management tasks, such as finding and opening documents, opening and closing windows, and managing document state. Although there are many ways that apps can make such tasks easier for users to perform, a more important question is, Why should users have to perform them at all?"
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Too much time spent solving computer glitches? Invoice the CEO!
When I installed Apple’s iOS 7.0.4 on my iPad suddenly the return key on my Logitech Solar Keyboard Folio didn’t work. I looked and looked for a solution with little success. I went back and forth with Logitech until they sent me a set of steps to reset the iPad. The steps worked.
In the past few days I installed iOS 7.0.6. I don’t know what happened to iOS 7.0.5. After the installation of iOS 7.0.6, the return key on my Logitech KB didn’t work again. Sunday or whenever I went through all of Logitech’s reset steps again. After a bit of hit and miss banging the keys on the keyboard, the return key worked again. A minor downside was that my wallpaper settings were reset to the default settings.
Then this morning the return key didn’t work again!!! Was it because I had turned my iPad off and on. I only needed to do the reset on iOS 7.0.4 once. After a couple of tries I got the return key working again. Again, it took awhile before pressing the return key had any effect.
Maybe tonight I’ll leave my iPad on and hope the return key works in the morning.
I am so tired of being an unpaid beta tester for software. I think I’ll start sending invoices to CEOs for my time. I wonder who has more problems – people signing up for health care exchanges or people who use a lot of computer software? I do know that the support sites of many computer-related companies are filled with problems that never seem to get an answer.
Enough for the day! I am going to spend the rest of the evening reading a paper book!
In the past few days I installed iOS 7.0.6. I don’t know what happened to iOS 7.0.5. After the installation of iOS 7.0.6, the return key on my Logitech KB didn’t work again. Sunday or whenever I went through all of Logitech’s reset steps again. After a bit of hit and miss banging the keys on the keyboard, the return key worked again. A minor downside was that my wallpaper settings were reset to the default settings.
Then this morning the return key didn’t work again!!! Was it because I had turned my iPad off and on. I only needed to do the reset on iOS 7.0.4 once. After a couple of tries I got the return key working again. Again, it took awhile before pressing the return key had any effect.
Maybe tonight I’ll leave my iPad on and hope the return key works in the morning.
I am so tired of being an unpaid beta tester for software. I think I’ll start sending invoices to CEOs for my time. I wonder who has more problems – people signing up for health care exchanges or people who use a lot of computer software? I do know that the support sites of many computer-related companies are filled with problems that never seem to get an answer.
Enough for the day! I am going to spend the rest of the evening reading a paper book!
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