Community

May 18, 2010 -- 12:21PM, AlexaM wrote:

Thanks Qmark, I think that rather simply explains why the Apple thing so annoyed me.

I think I get why Maro loves Apple products so much. But I don't think Maro gets why some people are viscerally put off by it. He's thinking "Simple, clean, useful" and I'm thinking "Wait, with only two buttons, how difficult is that going to be to create the experience I want when I'm listening to my music?"

As much as I've enjoyed my Nano, this kind of thing constantly annoys me too. And it's not just Apple/Mac that's guilty of it. I've been annoyed for years by things like clock radios and digital kitchen timers that feel like they only need one more button to pass that threshold from "annoying" to "well, okay, that works fine, I guess". 

I've always tried to defend most of Maro's articles like this, but then he can usually make the connection between Magic and whatever non-Magic thing he's talking about. In this particular case the design principles he's talking about here just don't seem to have anything to do with Magic. 

May 19, 2010 -- 1:52AM, Bezman wrote:

May 18, 2010 -- 8:40AM, milo_bloom wrote:

May 18, 2010 -- 3:55AM, Bezman wrote:

May 17, 2010 -- 12:17PM, milo_bloom wrote:

And Maro, your pediatrician should be shot (or at least soundly thrashed with a wet noodle).

I've never understood this phrase. Do you mean we should cook a spaghetti-like piece of food, then start whipping him? The noodle would probably break apart on the first strike! Or is this practise meant to be humiliating and silly rather than painful?

Yeah, mainly the latter. I stole it years ago from Ann Landers. 

The advice columnist? (Had to wikipedia her.)

I'm sure I've heard the same phrase coming from Americans in the past so at least I know where it comes from. Thanks!

I was hoping Wikipedia would have more info on such an interesting phrase, though. Wikipedia always misses out on the cool stuff.

That's her, I used to get a thrill out of reading about people worse off than me, but I realized it was kind of a toxic thing, and I wasn't really learning from their mistakes or anything (and pretty much every other response from Ann or her sister Dear Abby was "you should see a therapist". )

May 21, 2010 -- 1:18PM, JustTerrorIt wrote:

May 21, 2010 -- 9:04AM, milo_bloom wrote:

I've been annoyed for years by things like clock radios and digital kitchen timers that feel like they only need one more button to pass that threshold from "annoying" to "well, okay, that works fine, I guess". 

Care to elaborate a bit on this? I use these devices, but I haven't experienced needing another button, but I could be missing something.

I have experienced this at work with the phone on my desk. It will tell me that I have X amount of missed calls, but there is no way to know who it was that called unless they left a message, unlike my cellular phone that will tell me the number from which the missed call came.

For things like iPod's, switching between using the wheel to change the volume and then fast forwarding or rewinding a song/video with the same wheel has always thrown me off. And then changing the settings using the down click or the center click can get confusing also. Things like clock radios have always annoyed me when you have a button that you can press for one thing, but then hold down and press another button for something else, or hold both those buttons and then press a third for something else...these kinds of things. They just always feel like "one more button" would fix the problem. And I know somebody is going to say "where does 'one more button' end? You keep adding buttons and you can overdo it." True, but I have encountered products where the engineers have taken that one additional step, and it crossed that threshold I mentioned. So I know it can be done. 

May 21, 2010 -- 1:18PM, JustTerrorIt wrote:

I have experienced this at work with the phone on my desk. It will tell me that I have X amount of missed calls, but there is no way to know who it was that called unless they left a message, unlike my cellular phone that will tell me the number from which the missed call came.

I'm still amazed my company dumped so much money into our phones some years back and they are just so horrible. The caller ID doesn't work most of the time (it just shows ISDN or something) and there's no caller ID log. I could have gone to Walmart at the same time the company bought this big phone system, and bought a cheap POS phone with a caller ID log. And the VM software is horrible. If you don't logout after checking your messages, the next time you call your VM you get a "did you forget to logout" message. But any other VM software I've used (home phone or wireless), when you hang up, it's smart enough to know that means you want to end the session.


So many of these things feel like the engineers just took products and cut and cut and cut them down to their barest essentials (or in the case of our phones, added a bunch of "neat" sounding features, that we never, ever use to this day), without really considering if that's what the consumer wants. I think this hits Magic too, which is sad considering how many of them come from the audience (the return of Intro packs to 60 cards is a step in the right direction though).