Vanguard feedback

Sent to Vanguard after email notice of tax documents:

1) Finding feedback is a bit of a chore.
2) The instructions in your emails do not match what is on the screen when a user signs in to his or her account.
3) I have had more debugging experience than I care to remember.  I really don't wish to spend my time debugging third party software.

Or better yet, I tried to send the above to Vanguard.  The window for feedback wouldn’t scroll down all the times, including “Submit” if that was an option.

I did discover that I could move to non-visible sections with the tab key.

Hm!  I noticed typos in the Notes copy.  I wondered if I sent uncorrected text.

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.

New, beautiful, design?

Companies keep changing their web sites in the interest of “improvements”, but they more often make them more complicated and user-unfriendly.

I’ve been using Yahoo! Finance for years to get daily quotes for a small list of stocks.  I made the request from a very obvious text block on the home page.  Then either Firefox or Yahoo! Finance stopped allowing drag and drop, a very long-standing feature of the Macintosh.  Then Yahoo! Finance moved the quote text block somewhere else.  All in the name of improved interface for the users.

Boy!  I never did make it through all the user complaints about the changes.  I gave up on Yahoo! Finance and used TD Ameritrade instead.

Even with Ameritrade and its constantly changing home page it took me awhile to figure out how to consistently get the quotes I wanted.

But Ameritrade’s news page is a humble-jumble of hidden information

Where are the numbers in

Net Investment Income
Net Realized ST Cap Gains
Net Realized LT Cap Gains
Return of Capital or Other Capital Source

They are off the screen and can only be gotten by copying the area and pasting into a text document.  Even then, the lines are all a humble-jumble.

Google’s Blogger has also been “re-designed” by making text alignment non-workable.  I think I’ve sent feedback twice on this, but I guess Google is too busy on more “beautiful improvements”.

Even that great promoter of user-friendliness gives great features and takes away great features.  Once upon a time Apple worked very hard on ease of use.  Now they seem more concerned with “beautiful” document and spreadsheets.  I’m sorry I don’t want charts with bubble points; I want a chart with connected dots.

TrackR comment to Best Buy

My wife lost her key to our RAV4 and after many inquiries has not found it yet.  Getting a new key is rather pricey.

To avoid a repeat I decided to buy some tracking devices.  Based on some reviews, I chose TrackR over Tile.

The results so far have been mixed.  My main question is why do so many manufacturers make their product hard to use.  There is a large amount of literature about human interface design.

After having one round-about success with one TrackR and a bust with a second, I wrote the following review on the Best Buy website.  I also left some comments on the TrackR website but have yet to hear back from them.

My comment is also posted at http://www.bestbuy.com/site/trackr-bravo-tracking-device-set-silver/5404500.p?skuId=5404500&cmp=RMX&reviewid=115333799&campaignid=rvwapp20161714#tabbed-customerreviews

I found the iPhone App somewhat unresponsive and confusing to use. For example, it was several minutes before the app would respond the first time I opened it.  Then buttons didn't seem to work until I had maneuvered over the screens a bit.

The main screen is not intuitive.  It is divided into three overlapping parts: A summary of four items, a display with a map for where the the device is located (or the iPhone), and a summary of devices.  The selection of the overlapping parts is a stack fo three lines to go between the first and second part and three vertical dots to go between the second and third parts.  Why not double arrows?

The second TrackR I installed worked OK, but it would not respond after it left the house and returned.  Bluetooth settings don't recognize it inches away.

Also, the iPhone settings give tkr as the name of all TrackR devices installed.

Back to the workbench to get this straightened out, hopefully in a day or two,

Awful Motors has introduced “new, improved” wheel design

Awful Motors has introduced square wheels, a cool new feature on all of its models.  Awful Motors stated in its introduction that round wheels were boring, they just went around and around.

This just in, after thousands of complaints of Awful Motors’ square wheels, the company has announced that by popular demand it will replace the square wheels with octagonal wheels, providing a significantly smoother ride.

Far-fetched?  This is not far from the abrupt changes that so many software designers put into their products.  A feature was working fine for millions of users, and then some designer has a “better idea”.

Some bothersome changes I’ve found recently are Yahoo! Finance’ rework of its pages and the Star Tribune’s changing relatively simple software to move between the print edition and an expanded article to cluttered software that never seems to work as one would wish.  I have no idea how other readers perceive the changes to the Star Tribune, but Yahoo had a page for comments.  These comments were almost all negative.

Google once had a simple way of moving from blog authoring to statistics without signing in again.  Now one has to log in over and over again and there are several clutter pages between authoring, feed analysis, and income review.

Apple, once the computer for the rest of us, has morphed into guess how this cool new feature works.  In the first few years of the Macintosh I was eager for a new version when real advances were made - hard drives, color, drag and drop, and on and on.  Now, I update to a major new release only when I buy a new device.

Often I think these changes are not for the benefit of the uses but the employment prospects of the designers.

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)?

Magree's Law on technology

Magree's Law: the occurrence of user problems is proportional to the square of the "improvements".

I came up with this contemplating how as computers get more powerful and "user friendly" they seem to have more and more head-banging user problems.  See Apple Support Community for verification.

Actually, this applies to all sorts of technology.  Just think of all the great stuff there is our cars and how much harder it is to find the right buttons.

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:

Select Podcasts on iPhone.
Select a podcast
Select "Settings"
Turn off "Subscriptions"
Set "Refresh Podcasts" to "Manually"
Repeat for each podcast group

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.

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?"

"Bank failure" explained

See "My bank is a failure?"


Today I went to my bank with my checkbook.  As I walked from my car I saw that the ATM was open for business.  I went inside anyway to chat with the staff.  The manager explained that they put the ATM offline about four o'clock everyday for balancing or something.  I hope I remember that time frame the next time I want cash.

This also shows the wisdom of buying local.  Personal attention without a bureaucracy.

Why do corporations keep proving their inefficiency?

After the stellar, personal service I received from Mike at the Duluth AT&T store, AT&T customer support gave incomplete and insufficient service.

I received a bill in the mail today for $88.93.  As I had cancelled the service within the 14-day return window, I wanted to check if I could get a revised quote or if I would get a refund in the next billing cycle.

I called the 800 number on the bill and after the usual automated rigamarole, I reached a tired sounding human being.  After asking for the last four digits of my Social Security number (already entered as part of the rigamarole) she heard me out.

She then transferred me to another department.  More rigamarole including the cell-phone number I already entered and the last four digits of my Social Security number!!!  Then I heard, "This number is no longer in service."  So much for AT&T service!

On top of that, in the first rigamarole, an automated voice gave a dollar or so less balance due and a one day earlier due date!

I tried going to att.com but didn't have any better luck.  It wouldn't let me login or register.  After all the combinations I could think of for userID and password I tried with the phone number to retrieve them.  It wouldn't give them to me.  It gave me a few other paths to try, but it wouldn't let me complete any of them.

I think I'll just post this and then print out a copy for Mike as well as a copy of the other blog entry.

Maybe I should also send copies to my members of Congress as a comparison to complaints about the Affordable Care Act.

My bank is a failure?

This afternoon I drove up to my bank's ATM to get some cash before some other errands.  "Lane closed" and the machine had all of its panels closed.

If I go by the criticism of the computer problems of the Affordable Care Act, I'd say my bank is a failure.  Can't it keep its computers running all the time without error?

Also sent to Rep. Rick Nolan, Sen. Al Franken, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

The company with the computer for the rest of us forgot the rest of us

When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, they dubbed it "The Computer for the Rest of Us".  With its WIMP interface (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pictures) it was certainly a step up from the alphabetic command interface of all the other microcomputers of the time.  Even an experienced assembly-language programmer like me found the interface superior to remembering a whole bunch of commands that had to be spelled correctly with the correct syntax.

Over the decades, Apple has introduced hundreds of ideas that make Macintoshes, iPhones, and iPad even easier to use, mostly.  But sometimes they are devilishly difficult to use.  A case in point is trying to do a simple thing like buy an eBook.

My wife wanted an eBook for a book group that meets this week because she was unable to get it at the library in time.  She has never bought an eBook for her iPad mini, and even though she taught computer classes for years, she would rather have me do it.

She gave me the title, her AppleID, and her password.  I found the book in a few minutes.  I pressed on the price which turned into a "Buy Book" button.  Why not have a separate "Buy Book" button?  I pressed the "Buy Book" button and the price appeared again.  Sometimes the button changed to downloading, but the gear icon for internet use never appeared.  Eventually, for some reason the iPad eventually asked for my wife's password.  I entered that.  The iPad asked if she wanted to select security questions.  I clicked "Not now".  Now we saw the price button again.  Repeat and repeat.

Finally, I clicked that we would select security questions.  I had to enter her password again.  Remember that poking a small screen is more cumbersome than a full-size keyboard.  We selected the questions and gave the answers.

Now, as expected, we had to give payment method details.  I don't remember if we had to enter her password before we could proceed.  It certainly seemed as if we did.  I gave the payment details, and I was asked again for her password.

Now I could click on the price, click on the resulting "Buy Book", and once again enter her password.  Finally we see the "downloading" button stay on and the gear go round and round.  In a few minutes she had her book and her acknowledgment of activity in her email.

She is now in her favorite chair with her iPad mini, engrossed in her book.  Once I post this diatribe I hope I will be engrossed in the latest hardcover John Lescroart murder mystery.

Apple's stock may go up

A few days ago I attributed the drop in the price of Apple stock to a problem that many iPhone and iPad users are having.  See "Why Apple's stock price went down".

Thanks to Candy in Apple Support I have the solution.

Candy listened patiently to my tale of woe about not being able to access some feature because of password problems.  She then walked me through the steps to resolve it.  What she pointed out was not in any of the published Apple solutions and was not even visible on my screen without scrolling down.  In 15 minutes or so, I had the problem fixed on my iPad and iPhone.

I thought I could fix the problem the same way on my Mac, but the applications and screens were not anywhere near the same as on the iPad and iPhone screens.  Fortunately, there was another discussion on the Apple forum that had the solution for the Mac.

If you need these solutions, see https://discussions.apple.com/message/21108977#21108977.

Support people like Candy are probably worth twice as much they are paid.  Too many companies have support people who use flowery language ("my pleasure to serve you") and too often have no real solution other than pointing you to a document that doesn't have the solution either.  People like Candy make a customer very glad they chose a particular company's product, and it is very difficult to measure their value.  I know her value to me was saving me more hours of frustration.

So if you are an Apple shareholder, I hope the news of Candy's help and the resolution of many people's problem makes the value of your stock go up.

Why Apple's stock price went down

Many attribute the big drop in the price of Apple's stock to iPhone 5 sales not being higher.  Could it be that it really is that Apple is not paying attention to the problems of its existing customers.  With the introduction of iOS 6 for the iPad and iPhone, many people are having trouble using passwords that had been working fine.  This has been going on since at least September, 2012, and nobody from Apple seems to respond to the problems addressed in the "Apple Community" forums.

As I said in "Why Facebook's stock price went down", "it's software is too buggy."

I posted the following today at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4316010?start=30&tstart=0.

I think that this Apple ID/password mess is just too much bother.  I don't know how many hours I've spent researching the problem and trying some of the solutions.

Like many of you, I've wound up with multiple Apple IDs; let's call them A, B, and C.  If I remember correctly, I got into this because I forgot a password.  At the time, I remember that the only solution seemed to be to create another Apple ID.  So now I can get into iTunes with ID A, but almost everything on my iPhone, iPod, and iCloud are for ID B.  I know that a month ago ID B had a password in a short list.

With the upgrade to iOS 6.1 and maybe before, none of the recent passwords for ID B are acceptable.  If I ask to change the password for ID B, it will not accept my birthdate as the first security question and it will not always send me email.

Even though ID B is in the list of email addresses for ID A, there is no way I can use the ID A change page to change the password for ID B.

I think this whole situation violates the Human Interface Principles for iOS of consistency and user control.  See http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Principles/Principles.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH5-SW1.

I've resigned myself to living without access to iCloud, with consistently clicking "ignore" or whatever when iCal and others ask for my ID B password, and a host of other annoyances.  I've already sent feedback to Apple.  I suggest you do the same at http://www.apple.com/feedback/, selecting iPad, iPhone, or iPod.  Maybe if a few hundred of us do this, Apple will come up with a better solution than the varied advice here that works in some situations and not others.

UPDATE: See "Apple's stock may go up" for the resolution of this problem.

Unsafe safety features

Sometimes in the name of safety, designers can create unsafe conditions.

I was reminded of this again in dealing with one of my pet peeves, gas cans that are not easy to use. 

I've written about this issue before in "Misguided safety measures" and "Tired of pouring gas on your shoes?"

I thought that I had found a better solution with No-Spill gas cans from Denny's Lawn and Garden.  Instead of a stopper within the cap, they had a push-button to control the flow out the spout.

In general, the No-Spill cans work as advertised.  Apparently earlier models still dripped through the seal between the spout and the can.  I don't recall having that problem.

However, like all the "safety" cans, they can be very frustrating when filling them.

First, it is a real pain to get the spout off, especially in cold weather while wearing gloves.  The ratchet lock is very difficult to release and can take both thumbs to release.  Last weekend I used a tack puller to get enough leverage to push the lock in.

Second, once the can is full, it takes many efforts to get the spout back on.  It goes on crooked more easily than it goes on straight.  I find this disconcerting and curious.  The threads are rather coarse and one would think the spout should go on with the first attempt.

Frustrations like this lead to carelessness.  Carelessness can lead to improper use.  Improper use can lead to unsafe conditions, creating conditions that "safety" designs were supposed to eliminate.

I still haven't found a gas can design that is better than the 5-liter steel "Jerry can" I bought in Sweden over thirty years ago.  I only stopped using it because I couldn't replace the cork seal.  I still have it in a shed at our cabin.  I can't remember all the details of the design, but the spout was held on with a lever that locked on each side.  Pull up and you could take the spout off.  Push down and you locked the spout in place.

Why facebook's stock price went down after the IPO

Simply put, facebook's software is too buggy!

Yesterday, I used my iPod and Safari to access facebook.  I could not log off!  There was no button to do so, and no button gave a drop down menu with log off in the list.  When I tried using my MacBook Pro to access facebook, I could log on, but then my news feed was blank.  Sometimes I would get a blank area and sometimes I would get a blank area with a spinning ball next to an arrow.

Then today I had three symbols at the top of the iPod window in addition to the three bars, which had done nothing before.  One of the symbols had a red number one.  It was that I had a message or a like.  The three bars now had a drop down menu.  Way, way at the bottom of the more than screen-length list was log out (or log off).  Dumbly, I didn't click on log out but clicked on the button with the number.  I found out that two people liked an entry.  Now the three bar menu had no drop down menu!!!

I used my wife's computer to like an item on my facebook page.  After several attempts of turning my iPod off and on and other screen changing actions, the three additional buttons were shown on my iPod.  I didn't click on them but went straight to the three bar button, scrolled down to log off, and clicked it.

Poof! I was now back to the facebook log on page.  Close that window and be rid of it!

I went back to my laptop and logged in to facebook.  I now had news feeds, but only a handful from today or last night.  I could find no button to look at older items.  That means I can't go back to an item that I only glanced at yesterday or that I want to check for additional comments.  Up to yesterday, I could look at a week or more of news items.

This is corporate efficiency?

Of course, buggy software does not really correlate to stock price.  Look at the way Apple stock has risen since the release of its latest operating system, OS X Lion.  Apple announced Lion with great fanfare and the claim that it had 250 exciting new features.  What they didn't say there were 300 features that no longer worked or didn't work as well as before.  OK, 300 features is poetic license, but I run into annoyances every day.  Clicks that don't work on the first try, watching the beach ball spin more than I have in previous versions, resets that later revert to an older setting, and on and on.

Whatever happened to "the computer for the rest of us"?  Gosh, and I was once a programmer, have been using Macs since 1984, and I have a hard time!

The next time somebody gives a favorable comparison of private enterprise to government; ask them if their computer does everything they want as easily as they want as fast as they want.

See also "Why Apple's stock price went down".

Publish or perish in the eBook world

Apple has recently updated iBook Author, software to create books to be read on iPads.  Being in the greedy screechers union, I'm always looking for a way to make a buck (or even a few cents) from all my rantings and ravings.  I thought I'd take a look at iBook Author.

Carrying on its tradition of making things more obtuse for the rest of us, Apple did make me jump through a lot of hoops before I was able to figure out how to download iBook Author.  Among other things was a popup box that appeared twice asking me for an App to download descriptive material and then at least once again to download the actual application.

Finally I had iBook Author up and running and was given six templates to select from.  I chose the "Basic Template", but basic it was not.  Boxes jumped around when I was just a wee bit off from where I thought I should click.  The template has two pages per view; is that a comfortable way to view a book on an iPad?  I don't know, I'm not ready to buy one.  I still haven't figured out how to remove frames that I don't want and add frames that I do.  The table of contents is not organized the way I would like.

I did manage to get a cover organized and the text of one of my Reader Weekly columns in as the first story.  The first story is "Bear Stories", originally published in the Northland Reader in September 1999.  The cover is below:

Advanced orders welcome!

One of the little glitches is that I couldn't figure out how to get my name in upper and lower case.  I guess I'm not supposed to according to this template.

My next project with iBook Author is just how to organize the template to my liking.  Maybe I'll have to create my own.

My proposed content will be animal encounters, adventures in the fire dept., adventures in various projects, and other musings about life in the woods and on the water from my Reader Weekly (fka Northland Reader) and my blog.

I wonder how many months this will take me and what the price point should be on it - 99 cents or $3.49.

On the other hand, it might be simpler to do this project in Google Books or whatever first.  iBook is limited only to iPad users.  Google Books and other formats might have a greater number of potential readers.  I certainly hope more than the 30 or so people that read this blog regularly.   Thank you very much to those 30 people.

Magree's software laws

Magree's first law of software is that the complexity of software rises to meet or exceed the capacity of the fastest systems available to run it.  Don't believe me?  Try accessing almost any web page on a 24kb dialup:)

From this discussion and others I've come up with Magree's second law of software: the number of problems rises exponentially with the complexity of software.  It's kind of hard to believe if you consider the bad old days of mainframes having a good day without a crash.  But on the other hand, I've had more problems this year with software than the previous three years.