Whatever works for you
marco.org
marco.org
"No, I don't know why your new smartphone won't sync with all three of your business accounts as well as your personal email."
So far, this kind of answer has been far better received than spending hours troubleshooting frustrating corner cases from trying to shoehorn off-the-shelf gadgets into situations they probably weren't meant for anyway. At worst, that makes me lazy, but I'm okay with that as long as I'm not known as the ill-tempered son-in-law who won't just help out his aunt and uncle without coping an attitude.
When I meet a fanboy of something I don't tend to use or like, I make a point to talk to them as much as possible. It starts off rocky - after all, I'm coming from a completely different perspective, and to me, everything they're saying is obviously idiotic. But I persist. I try to get them to convince me however they can, that they are right. And very frequently, I learn a whole of new _something_, if I'm not introduced to an entire new way of doing and/or thinking about things. Worst case is I hone my debating skills. Best case, my life significantly improves.
Not that fanboyism is always, or even usually, a good thing. In most cases, it's politest (and easiest!) to stop the argument before it gets to the point of calling into question the other person's expectations (and I find myself doing that alot, especially with relatively nontechnical folk). But for me - I _want_ my expectations to be called into question. And nobody forces me to refine - and trash - my own ideas as well as the most hard-headed of fanboys.
Where the line is that a fan of a something can talk about its virtues and concede its limits, but a fanboy will gloss over any limitations as irrelevant / wrong "its not a bug its a feature"
That's one reason I prefer Apple kit -- I am no longer fascinated by twiddling with things to get them to work. Apple gear tends to work without twiddling more than the other crap (though not always). I'm not interested in trying to get stuff to work that doesn't.
There are tons of resources on the Web devoted to syncing Outlook with the iPhone. Maybe someone more tech savvy (like Marco) could have helped. Instead he said he "couldn't help him". He really meant "I don't want to try to help you".
If you let go of the idea that you can change (or that it's worth the effort to change) everyone's use patterns, then you have to accept that some use patterns simply don't have solutions that meet the user's expectations. And in those situations, it's best not to fight the user--let them work it out. Hopefully, in the end, they find something that works for them.
No, the real problem lies with the technology over-promising and under-delivering.
There is no reason why the problems the user was experiencing should exist, other than that software quality is appalling.
I've come to the same place as Marco: I just "admit" I can't help them. Yes, it's a white lie, but not one that keeps me awake at night.
And that is the point, your quick 10-minute fix will only cause more problems down the line. I've also reached the same conclusion even before 30.
Edit: I'm reminded of a friend that makes music. He always burns a CD to play in his stereo. His stereo also has a USB port and will play MP3s from there. So I suggested instead of burning CDs he could just copy it to a USB key. So he does that and he hates it. Why? When he's burning a CD he gets to arrange the tracks in the order he likes. The stereo plays MP3s in alphabetical order. The time saved from not having to burn CDs is now wasted on having to rename MP3s into the proper order.
Yeah, whatever works for you.
which seems like a really jerk-like perspective to take, and it is a little bit.
You learn a great deal about yourself and technology after you spend 15 minutes trying to explain the concept of scrollbars to an 80 year old.
We are all different. Human life is full of tradeoffs, and some of those tradeoffs lead to exclusions, and some of those exclusions may be untenable to some, etc.
I like and use Apple, Emacs, etc, but I can certainly see why others might choose not to use them. They aren't wrong. They're just different.
"The pedal to the left of the brake is the clutch. Push it all the way to the floor," I begin. She takes her left foot off the brake and pushes in the clutch...
Australia is pretty large...
78 countries (28% of the worlds traffic) drive on the left [1]. These include countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia with fairly significant populations.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic#Ju...
Thanks for data, I didn't realize how many left-driving countries were there; I thought it was only UK and Australia.
Still, they don't drive on the right side. :).
It gets very tiring.
I try to choose the technologies that best fit my requirements and workflow, but that does not necessarily mean it is best for anyone else.
E.g., easy file versioning and sync is fundamentally a solved problem, if you are willing to take the initial hit of workflow modification (git, sftp, etc).
So it's okay to teach people how to do it faster and better.
If and when they want to learn, sure. But the article is specifically about how you respond to people who don't want to contemplate change, let alone implement it.
Particularly, it's about the non-trivial cases where it would take hours to unravel the goals, features, problems and dependencies of their current 'system' to make an intelligent recommendation, to say nothing of breaking down time, capital and retraining costs to implement it.
This, however, would make the education system not agnostic, and drastically favor some companies.
Why? Perhaps you mean that there is versioning software, like git, that is so prevalent that it may be regarded as having dominated the ecosystem, so that that's what we have to teach; but that seems no different from teaching Java or, for an even more extreme example, the RSA cryptosystem.
(I know that there are objections to teaching Java, but I've never heard—which is not to say it doesn't exist!—the complaint that it favours Oracle.)
Easy file versioning and sync are only solved for a very specific use case that corresponds very poorly to most people's lives (photo library?) There's a priceless rant from John Siracusa about his sister ignoring Time Machine's warnings tha the backup device had failed for months because it didn't actually incapacitate her computer.
Anything that reduces the "don't know what I don't know" bucket is a good thing.
The Linux desktop experience really isn't that much better than it was in the Helix Gnome days and as I get older I want to fiddle less with my OS, and just work on some ideas I have brewing.
I should point out that back then I was a kernel hacker type, and my ideas were kernel based (for work and play). But now they are userland based, and Mac provides an awesome platform for that without getting in the way.
...just stop it.
Syncing the calendar is even easier...
It seems like he's more interested in working with his preferred tool set than the best tool set for the job.
The point (or at least, one of them) of the post is that sometimes user has constrains coming from his job, personality, or preferred mode of operations, that will make it impossible to use your particular preferred solution in that context. It takes some humility to notice that and not evangelize your particular working habits too much. Also, our technology is broken on that angle; things simply are not expected to work well with each other from the start.
Interoperativity among syncing systems, even following the myriad of 'standards' for this seems to be hopeless.
> Also, our technology is broken on that angle; things simply are not expected to work well with each other from the start.
I think this is the core root of the problem, which it seems everyone in this discussion is ignoring. If Syncing was not so badly broken we wouldn't have this discussion to begin with (and same goes for most other common problems of this kind, this is simple stuff that should have worked without a hitch for ages).
Maybe it's just me, but I receive very high utility knowing that I help solve someone's problem which maximizes their utility as opposed to throwing my hands in the air because said solution may not agree with my own tastes.
People sometimes have strange syncing needs. Example: I spent some time (and failed, ultimately, due to broken Google Calendar) trying to sync Emacs Org Mode with Android phone. No, I won't switch from Org Mode to anything web-based, Emacs is just too convenient for me. No, I won't switch from SlideScreen to a homescreen with widgets - I love the former and hate the latter. So I need to accept that, right now, I don't have any working solution to sync my phone calendar with Org Mode.
Recently, I had an argument with my father about uploading photos efficiently: He got an iPhone4s and took pictures with it. Now my father uses Windows and does not know much about transferring pictures the right way, instead he does what he knows–email the picture to yourself. My mother who uses a mac, but still computer illiterate, wanted to get pictures off his iPhone so she can post it to her Facebook album. So he goes to his iPhone, selects the picture and emails it to her gmail account, and does this same process per picture. After that mom, logs in to her email, clicks on the new message, clicks on view, then drags the picture from the browser to the desktop. She does this same process to the rest of the messages.
Now I was there, watching in agony (–_–") (I was called up earlier to find out how to transfer photos from her cellphone using bluetooth to the Mac. But unfortunately the cellphone did not allow file transfer using internal memory unless using a microSD card.)
So back to mom, she noticed that the pics were too small to edit (about 30kb 200x200px). So my dad was about to do the same process again on his iPhone. Me=Facepalm
To my reaction I said "You are using iCloud are you? Then why don't you just use Photostream? Whatever pictures you taken automatically syncs with the computer, no fussing with files/transfers, just select the picture in iPhoto, edit exposure, then upload to Facebook." I'm not sure if my father was listening, as he was still selecting and emailing the photos.
I proceeded with setting up with iCloud syncing on the Mac to activate Photostream, asked for the password, (he didn't say anything, but mom knew what it was). I then launched iPhoto, clicked on Photostream and pictures started to come in. "See, isn't that easy. Now mom, pick what picture you want. You can drag the picture out to the desktop like you always do, or just use the upload to Facebook button in iPhoto.
Then the internet just halted for a bit, and the 19 of 72 some photos were only downloaded. My dad said: "I don't like this, you are overcomplicating this simple task." I was like "WHAT! How on earth am I complicating this, I am making this simple for you, its less repetitive and more time efficient than what you are both doing!"
Then I go on about the benefits of Photostream to talking about analogies regarding data capture/logging pool, Film/Photographer's DSLR workflow, to data pool auditing workflow.
He said: "What you find simple, is complicated for us. We can work in a linear fashion however long it can take, and you can work autonomously. Anyway, this is only a one time thing, I don't need to use Photostream. If I need to use this everyday, maybe I might but today its not necessary."
~~~
So lesson learned. You can't just force anyone using your methods. It may or may not work for them even if it sounds stupid to you.
Whatever works for you indeed.
although it was written in entertaining fashion, i am still somewhat puzzled.
He's become an important tech blogger, too, with several recent front page HN posts (recently, his review of the Kindle Fire). Given his general support for Apple products, this post represents an important shift in his perspective. Maybe its not front-page HN worthy, but you should probably know him.
This recognition is called empathy, and it's a useful trait for people involved in product design, online discussions &c.
From another perspective, people paid money to his show to hear his opinions. If he said something you didn't like, I'd hope you decided to stop listening (or take his opinions into account when choosing technology).
Why else did people pay his show?
(I hate those podcasts, by the way, not defending them, just this one point)
I also believe the best summary for the post is its title: "Whatever works for you", and a slightly longer version might be "Use whatever works for you, my advice is meaningless because we're different people". This was more about people than it is about a specific brand.