_mghw

You had a desktop computer, which makes life much easier for you. As someone who was (and will soon be again) in the market for my one and only computer, the iPad is a non-starter. It's SO limited.

* Software development, with the best will in the world, isn't really possible on it.

* No quick ways to open up multiple windows, alt-tab between them, snap them side by side etc.

* No mouse support (Admittedly, I tried them a while back, but by all accounts, the mouse support until this update was still bolted on).

* Shitty af file system (Admittedly another thing that is moving in the right direction).

* Woeful stand. The previous folio was a joke, especially at it's price. It was unstable, lacked a trackpad, and personally, I hated the typing feel.

It was all rather disappointing, because I was so tempted by it. A sub-1 kg setup that one could pack in one's bag and forget, with a proper aspect ratio, with touch support, with great battery life, with the Apple quality etc.

Could've been great, but isn't there yet.

Even better, one of the guys involved with the code has a fantastic Youtube series on the Finite Element Method [1]

I used it in grad school, he's a great explainer, and he's addressing the talk to an audience of computer science students. It's long, of course, but it's spot on.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2mkx7va5LQ&list=PLh_UinHuMh...

Indeed, paper maps are alive and well in the field of hiking/camping. It is a terrible experience trying to navigate even on the biggest of phone screens. Even the stuff one can print at home is, maybe, on an A3 sheet of paper, hopefully in colour. A vast improvement over the phone, and still not unwieldy. But to me, nothing compares to those huge mapsheets that fold accordion style. You can take in SO much more of your terrain and locate yourself so much better in your surroundings.

One of my favourite things to do while out hiking is to sit with a compass and a map and try to identify peaks and glaciers. I could do it for hours.

ETA: Everything I've heard about CalTopo makes it sound like God's gift to us.

Do you like it?

One of the things that really gets in the way of comprehension for me are typefaces with too much personality. These cutesy italics etc. really seem to affect my ability to get on with the job at hand.

This is why, despite trying, I've yet to find something that can outdo Consolas on Windows. I tried Fira this and that, Source code pro and a bunch of others from Google Fonts. They all are inferior to Consolas in my eyes. They'll either be missing the slotted '0', or look crowded in small sizes etc.

What?! Hostels suck.

In principle, hostels have everything. A fridge, a kitchen and so on. In practice, though, you have to label all your food because there is one fridge for 50 people. You need to share the kitchen with everyone else too. Privacy is limited. Noise is biblical. Fucking party dickhead bros everywhere ruining everything. Creaky floorboards and noisy doors. I've done hostels all over Europe, and while there are exceptions, the exceptions tend to cost a bit more too.

Hostels are OK when you're young and broke and very adaptable. I used them a lot, and am grateful they exist. But they do NOT fulfill what the GP is asking about.

Consumers get perma-shafted.

Yep, like all the actions at the bottom of the screen where you could most easily reach them, unlike iOS which places the back button (gesture notwithstanding) at the top left!

One of the Windows Phone's designers had a really insightful article [1] about how they designed windows phone fundamentally for a technology native who doesn't need shitty metaphorical leather textures on his glass screen calendar. It is where the famous movement against skeumorphism started (and thank god for that!). WP was doing flat design before it was cool.

On an old MSDN post (maybe?) I remember reading that the inspiration for the Live Tiles was a user whose central interest was to use the phone as liitle as possible to do his task as quickly as he could before he rapidly replaced the phone back into his pocket to get on with real life. I remember creating a new calendar entry in WP7 took three taps from start to finish, not counting typing out the title. There weren't many other fields to fill besides the Title of the entry and the time/date, and it set a default reminder time of 15 minutes before start time. Perfection. Before facebook and the rest dragged the carpet out from under them, you could get your twitter and facebook feed within the contacts app so you could get it all in one place.

Edited to add: I'm on a bit of a love fest venting session so here's more. WP designers recognized that OLEDs were amazing, so they made the phone White Text on Black from the get go! Thus, great battery life. Further, all the icons were also uniformly coloured, making the whole experience so cohesive. All the apps also looked like all the others, so the learning curve was nonexistent. They recognized how little juice engineers of android could suck out of their bloated multi core processors, so they made their phones work phenomenally well on even shitty, single core processors.

I fucking loved windows phone's early verions. It's a shame they've gone away. But an even bigger shame that they had no confidence in their original designers, and ended up adapting the hideous, appalling, atrocious, fucking retarded hamburger menu before they went away.

[1] http://kruzeniski.com/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-inte...

Honestly, if iMessage were to ever come to Android, it might have the best shot. No one understands google's offerings anymore, whereas Apple has already a strong presence.

Typical HN pedantry forthcoming, but I fucking hate AMP, so here's the direct link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/25/at-least-12000...

Funny. I just finished watching his Bloomberg interview, where Emily Chang seemed to be at pains trying to ask him why he wanted no women in tech. His responses seemed vastly more nuanced than the transparent questioning tactics of the interviewer.

Yeah, my understanding leads me to believe that he used the company's official "Air your grievance here" forum for posting the memo. So, he acted exactly in the manner that the company required him to. Google's case will probably focus on the result of him voicing his opinion, rather than the fact that he did in the first place. Still can't say I agree with them firing him. His memo was considerate enough to have not lead to a kneejerk firing.

Yeah but in certain circles, those non-icing-heavy websites might actually signal greater authenticity. I LOVE college professor websites that are full of great technical info, but look like they've not been designed at all.

Completely agree with you. What I particularly despise is the absurd lack of discussion on the amount of packaging waste. Why doesn't that make these piece of shit things non-starters?

Excuse the vitriol, but it absolutely makes my blood boil, the fucking Keurigs, these idiot juicers, Blue Apron, and that one company that even delivers a box of clothes each month? WTF?! I buy clothes every two years, and even I could do better.

Also, even if they offered to collect the packaging, and recycle/reuse it, it's a needless complication to an issue that shouldn't exist to begin with.

Why isn't a low-tech, low-carbon footprint life celebrated more? A french press/moka pot coffee, a mixer to make your juice (because, you know, you take the time to peel the motherfucking fruit beforehand), and cooking your own god damned food on a frying pan.

Apologies. I'm not judging anyone here. My implication was more "different strokes for different folks". Some people like to take work home, others prefer to have a drink in the evenings. Some manage to combine both :-) I'm just suggesting that priorities differ.

But for the sake of argument, while I don't deny that India has some star developers, I think it's incorrect to suggest that there isn't a huge section in it for reasons _other_ than a pure love of computers. Many do it because they need the money, or need a stopgap before they go on to do other things etc. I stand by what I said.

Finally, I'm not sure why you're implying that maybe _I'm_ a feet dragger and that I need to work on improving the company I keep. I thought my comment was fairly mild and inoffensive.

Wouldn't be HN without someone taking something far too literally to the detriment of the original point.

How about if we modified the first comment to say "I need you to fix it ASAP"? I can't honestly believe that you'd much rather take someone shouting at you and making you feel bad about yourself, than a direct manager who ALSO speaks his mind, but can do so in a controlled, adult manner.