Android for dummies
Dec. 18th, 2010 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI finally received a notification from O2 that my Dell Streak was ready to be upgraded from Android 1.6 to 2.2. Since the upgrade is 130mb in size, I waited, as advised, until I was home with my wi-fi. Unfortunately, I have left my charger behind in Bletchley.
After what I thought was a successful installation, I tried to get it to work. And I couldn't.
All that appeared was thishome page.
I tried pressing the three buttons on the right. No response. I tried pressing the two buttons on the screen. There was a response (it was clear that the screen knew that it was being touched), but nothing happened.
I looked on the web for information about the upgrade. No mention of my problem.
SO WHAT THE FUCK WAS I MEANT TO DO?
Well, since I needed a new charger, I decided to find the O2 shop in Lewisham. I found the O2 shop, but they don't sell chargers. However, the kid did show me what I had to do to get it to work. But my point is here, a simple phrase in English would have told me what I needed to do, SO WHY AREN'T THERE SIMPLE PHRASES IN ENGLISH TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO? I'll tell you why, because (a) software coders are too lazy to do anything in a language when an icon can be used instead (one which I can be guaranteed not to understand) and (b), most of them don't speak English anyway.
Annyhoo, having mastered this, apparently simple task that required me to go into Lewisham to get an 18-year-old to show me what to do (his companion must have been a bit puzzled when I was talking about root directories and hacking into the code to change the presure sensitivity, but was unable to turn the machine on. When I explained that I was dyslexic when it came to icons and faces, he seemed a bit more sympathetic). I then found a guy at a market stall who did not have a Dell Streak charger, but did say that he would phone me back later today to see if he could get hold of one before the end of the day. Market stalls rock!
Android 2.2 is not an "upgrade". It's more than that. It basically rips the interface to pieces and then leaves you stranded without so much as a Help file. So, everything that I had slowly learnt to understand, had fucking disappeared.
I knew that I had to run the "Restore" app, but I had no idea how to find the Restore App. Sliding left and right along the home interface got me nowhere, with the most useful screen looking like this.
As you can see, it is telling me what the weather is like in St Johns, Newfoundland*. I can also access my music. But how do I get to my applications? Wouldn't a simple word "Applications" be useful?
No, far too simple. Apparently instead you have to press something else. Eventually, purely by trial and error, I got there. I found the "Restore" app. I pressed it, and everything was restored properly from the way it was before.
And is there a "Help"/ easy guide to the new version of Android? Is there fuck.
So, thanks O2 for making what should have been a half-hour job at most an extremely frustrating experience. Thanks also for making me re-log-in to everything, and re-set-up the standard interfaces that I want. Thanks for not providing an easy and comprehensive guide to what Android 2.2 can do and, more importantly, how it does it. Oh, and thanks to Dell for making the charger interface virtually impossible to obtain anywhere. We are not all adolescent male geeks who like playing with computers as if they were toys, exploring hidden pathways to find out what is or is not available in the new upgrade; some of us just want computers to do the job efficiently and unobtrusively.. But you are most definitely all cunts.
* Apparently this is not Saint John's, Newfoundland. It's St John's, the very small village about a mile north-west of here heading towards New Cross. Why Accuweather should think that I am there, rather than in Lewisham or Blackheath, I have no idea.
___________
After what I thought was a successful installation, I tried to get it to work. And I couldn't.
All that appeared was thishome page.
I tried pressing the three buttons on the right. No response. I tried pressing the two buttons on the screen. There was a response (it was clear that the screen knew that it was being touched), but nothing happened.
I looked on the web for information about the upgrade. No mention of my problem.
SO WHAT THE FUCK WAS I MEANT TO DO?
Well, since I needed a new charger, I decided to find the O2 shop in Lewisham. I found the O2 shop, but they don't sell chargers. However, the kid did show me what I had to do to get it to work. But my point is here, a simple phrase in English would have told me what I needed to do, SO WHY AREN'T THERE SIMPLE PHRASES IN ENGLISH TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO? I'll tell you why, because (a) software coders are too lazy to do anything in a language when an icon can be used instead (one which I can be guaranteed not to understand) and (b), most of them don't speak English anyway.
Annyhoo, having mastered this, apparently simple task that required me to go into Lewisham to get an 18-year-old to show me what to do (his companion must have been a bit puzzled when I was talking about root directories and hacking into the code to change the presure sensitivity, but was unable to turn the machine on. When I explained that I was dyslexic when it came to icons and faces, he seemed a bit more sympathetic). I then found a guy at a market stall who did not have a Dell Streak charger, but did say that he would phone me back later today to see if he could get hold of one before the end of the day. Market stalls rock!
Android 2.2 is not an "upgrade". It's more than that. It basically rips the interface to pieces and then leaves you stranded without so much as a Help file. So, everything that I had slowly learnt to understand, had fucking disappeared.
I knew that I had to run the "Restore" app, but I had no idea how to find the Restore App. Sliding left and right along the home interface got me nowhere, with the most useful screen looking like this.
As you can see, it is telling me what the weather is like in St Johns, Newfoundland*. I can also access my music. But how do I get to my applications? Wouldn't a simple word "Applications" be useful?
No, far too simple. Apparently instead you have to press something else. Eventually, purely by trial and error, I got there. I found the "Restore" app. I pressed it, and everything was restored properly from the way it was before.
And is there a "Help"/ easy guide to the new version of Android? Is there fuck.
So, thanks O2 for making what should have been a half-hour job at most an extremely frustrating experience. Thanks also for making me re-log-in to everything, and re-set-up the standard interfaces that I want. Thanks for not providing an easy and comprehensive guide to what Android 2.2 can do and, more importantly, how it does it. Oh, and thanks to Dell for making the charger interface virtually impossible to obtain anywhere. We are not all adolescent male geeks who like playing with computers as if they were toys, exploring hidden pathways to find out what is or is not available in the new upgrade; some of us just want computers to do the job efficiently and unobtrusively.. But you are most definitely all cunts.
* Apparently this is not Saint John's, Newfoundland. It's St John's, the very small village about a mile north-west of here heading towards New Cross. Why Accuweather should think that I am there, rather than in Lewisham or Blackheath, I have no idea.
___________
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 06:19 pm (UTC)The apps button is the little chequerboard at centre-bottom in your second pic. No, I don't think it is immediately intuitive either!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 08:26 pm (UTC)Yes, the "apps" button is the little set of nine square dots. I see no relation between the two. Once again, why just the icons? What is wrong with language?
However, I am glad that I am not alone in finding it counter-intuitive.
I'm convinced that most interface designers are close to autistic -- incapable of seeing something from someone else's "lack of knowledge" point of view. You know the classic question. You show an autistic kid a pencil that his hidden from another kid. You ask the autistic kid; "if I were to ask that boy over there what I am showing to you, what would he say?"
A non-autistic kid over the age of about five would say "He would say 'I don't know', because he can't see it", whereas an indication of autism would be the immediate response of "a pencil", and an incapability of understanding why he would not say 'a pencil', because it clearly IS a pencil.
Well, I kind of get that feeling with a lot of interface developers. They just can't make that leap of imaginiation into the new non-geek user's head.
PJ
So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-18 07:05 pm (UTC)I sense a general theme in your financial posts along the lines of "well, the buyers should have known what they were letting themselves in for, particularly with non-transparent untested esoterica like collateralised debt swaps." (I paraphrase inaccurately.) The same holds true for bleeding-edge tech nonsense.
Here's a hint from the marketplace. If you persist in buying cheap annoying broken crap that lacks architectural or design or implementation or testing or support or maintenance competence, then you are essentially subsidising the very thing that annoys you -- ie broken-out-of-the-box, unintelligible, consumer throwaways.
Buy something like an iPhone/iPad (I am not employed by them, I do not own shares, I do not own one and I hate the fucking things) and you will actually be contributing to society, if only for not sponsoring global shoddiness through technical purchasing decisions.
On the other hand, pointless and feeble-minded whining about "software coders [who] are too lazy to do anything in a language when an icon can be used instead (one which I can be guaranteed not to understand) and (b), most of them don't speak English anyway" almost certainly makes up for chucking money down the toilet in the first place.
Carry on. Incidentally, the phenomenon of breakage during upgrade that you experienced has a trademark: BiannualForcedDeathMarch(TM) (http://www.tmrepository.com/trademarks/biannualforceddeathmarch/).
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-18 08:31 pm (UTC)It's a bit like getting a really brilliant car, but with no instructions on how to drive it, and then, when you figure it out, they suddenly change the layout of all of the things required to drive it, and say "Wow, it's now so much better, and you'll have a great time figuring out how!"
FFS, just tell me, clearly and succinctly, and preferably without any fucking icons.
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-18 08:32 pm (UTC)PJ
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-18 08:52 pm (UTC)PJ
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-18 08:59 pm (UTC)" I’m happy with some of the new features in Froyo, but I’m still unhappy for not having official documentation about browser features. Android team, it’s time to work on it!"
So, clearly, this is a known feature. Create a brilliant (oh, ok, better than Windows) operating system, and then don't tell people what it can do or how to drive it! Can someone tell me what kind of mindset exists at Google to allow this to happen?
PJ
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-19 12:08 am (UTC)Most of the rest, you have to figure out their approach - their way of thinking - then it all makes perfect sense. That's where the Android lot fit in, I reckon. Windows might also fit in this category.
And then there's the ones who really do not have a clue, which is most of the mobile phone developers in this world - and pretty much everyone who develops software such as client manaqement systems for use within companies.
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-19 05:35 pm (UTC)Joel also has a post on why internal company software UIs suck, but I can't be bothered to look it up. His (fairly obvious) conclusion is that, once your internal software is "almost good enough," it will stay that way forever, because there is no money and no interest in improving it in any way.
I don't know about Apple (perhaps the Wrath of God makes a difference there), but I can certainly testify that Microsoft, who otherwise spend an ungodly amount of time, effort and money in getting the user experience right, are just as uninterested as any other large corporation in getting their internal stuff to interface to human beings. Some of it, weirdly enough, has no GUI at all, and in fact still depends on a DOS Box. (It's actually worse than that: it's some sort of hideous .NET thing that's derived from a DOS Box but which leaves useful features like extending the number of history buffers out.)
Birks is probably correct in the first place. Don't blame the programmers. Don't even blame the designers. If a company like Dell can sell this shit, then they will, and they're the ones to blame.
Of course, buying an Android in the first place is an exceptionally unwise decision, as I made plain in my earlier post.
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-25 01:55 pm (UTC)Have just worked out that the solution is the same as for the locked screen at the start. You have to touch AND drag down. Not instinctive at all. Or perhaps it is. perhaps it's just me.
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-19 06:26 pm (UTC)You really like it. It's a bit like getting a really brilliant car.
There are no instructions worth a damn. It has an interface that, to you, is utterly unusable. Learning how to use it is like playing an adventure game, though not in a good way unless you are a geek. And six months (or whatever) later, it breaks. And when it breaks, it assumes that a bunch of tiny wizened little graphical sprites will give you enough information to fix it yourself.
Yup, that sounds like the sort of consumer purchase I've always dreamed of. Roll on nuclear reactors that work like that.
Oh, I forgot ... nuclear reactors aren't built by engineers, are they? It's only unusable consumer software products that are built by engineers.
Shame none of us can speak English or design usable products worth a damn.
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-19 06:53 pm (UTC)The problem with the consumer-related products is that this is not cost-efficient, so the "idea" is to create something which users can solve for themselves, via Help files. Since these are universally useless (nearly all Microsoft- and other software-related solutions to problems that I encounter are usually gleaned from amatuer users on the web, rather than from the employees related to putting the thing together -- probably because the amateur user has more in common with my "user experience" than the designers, and so he will be more likley to come up with the solution to the problem that I face, rather than a solution to a problem that I am not facing and am never likely to face) it doesn't really make much difference that they aren't available (although the "assumptions" of knowledge in the first place remain irritating). Where I HAVE gone wrong is being a bit too early-adopterish, which means that the library of amateur guides and solutions has yet to appear on the web. I hope, in a small way, that this post might one day help someone solve the "unlocking" problem!
Anyhoo, as I said, since the interfaces are nearly universally useless (I think that Google Picasa is a rare exception here in that I have never needed to try to work out how something is done) I thought that I might as well go with an OS that, when you finally figure it out, works faster than the others.
Finally, here's an interesting pic from the new Android market.
Note that here, they do have the word abbreviations! So I assume that the decision was made either to remove them from the HOME page, or to insert them here because it was plain that just having the icons was insufficently clear. Either way, the interface designers seem to be contradicting themselves about whether the word Apps (I think it's fair enough to call it a word) is needed or it isn't. In one place they think that it's needed, but in another, they don't.
PJ
Re: So Shall Ye Reap
Date: 2010-12-19 07:03 pm (UTC)WorksForMe(TM) (http://www.tmrepository.com/trademarks/worksforme/)
"It Works For Me",
which I must have hear and read a million times (although not as often as the standard, "you probably have a virus, uninstall everythingon yourt computer. Buy a new computer. Reload everything." Thenn, when it's still doesn't work, yo get the "It works for me" message.
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