Examples of brain dead software design

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#3322169 19-Dec-2024 09:08

cddt:

I accidentally fat-fingered some adjacent keys and marked all my emails as "read" in Outlook. I use the read/unread functionality as an action list - if an email remains unread it requires me to do something. So now I don't know what items are outstanding.

It's best to use the flagging feature for this purpose - it exists in both Outlook and Apple Mail. It's much harder to accidentally unflag something than to accidentally mark it as read.

The only downside is that Outlook is badly designed in that the delete button is right next to the flag button, which occasionally has very bad consequences for people like me who have problems with fine motor skills.

ANglEAUT

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#3339402 5-Feb-2025 08:38

Microsoft, again. How can you give this type of an error message to the general public?

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jamesrt

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#3339409 5-Feb-2025 08:49

ANglEAUT:

Microsoft, again. How can you give this type of an error message to the general public?

Personally, I'd say that's 1000% better than "Whoops, something went wrong."; at least this way you've got something to tell your support people even if it is complete gibberish to an uninformed person.

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#3339598 5-Feb-2025 14:16

Yep better than Apple whose products often gives no indication at all what is wrong and just says something went wrong with no details whatsoever. Some years ago when I worked somewhere that used lots of iPads, we had a pair of iPads that would refuse to airdrop from iPad 1 to iPad 2. Both would airdrop fine in both directions to all other iPads. But if it was that specific pair the airdrop could only work in one direction and never in the other direction. Never could figure out why -- the error was simply "Airdrop Failed" or something obtuse like that. All the troubleshooting tips I could find was for total failures to airdrop to any other iPad -- but this case was a very specific pair in a specific direction for which it seemed like it was just a case of having to accept it's never gonna work!

Linux is a godsend when it comes to errors -- it generally tells you everything. :)

Behodar

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#3339599 5-Feb-2025 14:19

*twitch*

When I try to AirDrop something from my phone to my Mac... about 20% of the time it works immediately. About 20% of the time it works slowly. About 30% of the time it says "Waiting..." and hangs forever, and the other 30% of the time it doesn't even realise that the Mac exists.

Kookoo

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#3339616 5-Feb-2025 14:37

Microsoft Word is an endless source for this thread. I tried including digital signatures in a word doc that was sent to a business partner. You can include as many signature templates as you want, but once one of you signs the document, Word marks it as FINAL. This means that for someone to counter-sign it using the template you've already included in the document, they need to "Enable Editing" which automatically removes the first signature. Then they sign it, send it back to you, you sign it, which removes their signature, you send it back to them, ad infinitum.

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FineWine

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#3339733 5-Feb-2025 17:22

Behodar:

*twitch*

When I try to AirDrop something from my phone to my Mac... about 20% of the time it works immediately. About 20% of the time it works slowly. About 30% of the time it says "Waiting..." and hangs forever, and the other 30% of the time it doesn't even realise that the Mac exists.

Apple AirPrint can be a bit like that. When it works, which is most times, it works well. This generic one size fits all works as long as everybody else is on board.

This is why, imo, MS trying to satisfy everybody and their legacy and latest hardware has problem

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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#3340119 7-Feb-2025 13:11

FineWine:

Apple AirPrint can be a bit like that. When it works, which is most times, it works well. This generic one size fits all works as long as everybody else is on board.

This is why, imo, MS trying to satisfy everybody and their legacy and latest hardware has problem

All these "find devices on the lan" things are flakey over wifi. mDNS is the worst offender with things appearing and disappearing all the time. casting not far behind it for being crap at discoverability. This is why spotify connect is leagues ahead of the others where they discover once and then connect to a server on the internet reliably.

Richard rich.ms

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#3353225 12-Mar-2025 14:59

I'm not sure if this one amuses or confuses...

Putting Chinese tracking text into Google Translate, 到达寄达地处理中心 translated to "The Chinese people are the only ones who have ever lived in China." Other lines referred to Chinese medicine and swans. Turns out I was translating from 'French' to English, but given it translates at all, it must be a 'feature'.

Aaron2222

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#3353270 12-Mar-2025 18:17

SirHumphreyAppleby:

I'm not sure if this one amuses or confuses...

Putting Chinese tracking text into Google Translate, 到达寄达地处理中心 translated to "The Chinese people are the only ones who have ever lived in China." Other lines referred to Chinese medicine and swans. Turns out I was translating from 'French' to English, but given it translates at all, it must be a 'feature'.

Sounds like LLM hallucination. I guess the French to English translation AI wasn't trained to handle Chinese? Interesting that they pass through Latin alphabet gibberish untouched but hallucinate on Chinese text.

TwoSeven

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#3353288 12-Mar-2025 19:39

alasta:

cddt:

I accidentally fat-fingered some adjacent keys and marked all my emails as "read" in Outlook. I use the read/unread functionality as an action list - if an email remains unread it requires me to do something. So now I don't know what items are outstanding.

It's best to use the flagging feature for this purpose - it exists in both Outlook and Apple Mail. It's much harder to accidentally unflag something than to accidentally mark it as read.

The only downside is that Outlook is badly designed in that the delete button is right next to the flag button, which occasionally has very bad consequences for people like me who have problems with fine motor skills.

+1 for flagging (or even better, create a task).

Flagging or creating a task means one has read the email, acknowledged there is an action item and then planned a time to complete the tasks (it is kind of what ToDo items are for) - it is the basic process of time management.

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Geektastic

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#3366059 20-Apr-2025 20:05

Can I nominate the software that McDonalds have on the ordering screens?

It seems to have at least one too many screens to work through.

Rikkitic

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#3366060 20-Apr-2025 20:15

I am just learning about Windows 11 on my new laptop. So far it seems pretty brain dead to me. How Microsoft can keep releasing such poorly thought out rubbish after all these years astounds me. So full of bloat but they can't even get basic functions to work correctly. Keyboard navigation is a nightmare. It was much better with windows 10. It is like they are going backwards.

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TwoSeven

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#3366281 21-Apr-2025 16:34

Rikkitic:

I am just learning about Windows 11 on my new laptop. So far it seems pretty brain dead to me. How Microsoft can keep releasing such poorly thought out rubbish after all these years astounds me. So full of bloat but they can't even get basic functions to work correctly. Keyboard navigation is a nightmare. It was much better with windows 10. It is like they are going backwards.

I would be interested in knowing what you consider bloat in the s/w? Also, I don't have a problem with keyboard navigation (although I did recently hit the gaming key on my keyboard which turns off the win key and then spent an hour wondering why I could not switch between virtual desktops).

Apart from doing multi-platform development (I have a Mac Mini plugged into it), watching TV (Netflix etc.), listening to music, running Davinci Resolve (I have a Focusrite audio interface, 4k web camera and multiple microphones and speakers), using half a dozen VMs with Hyper-V, using Office 365, working with cloud platforms and running a few games, I use it with 4 monitors (and have 4 virtual desktops for a total of 16 screens). For me, I think it runs quite well

I don't think there were many differences between windows 10 and 11 shortcuts. I use Win+H (opens voice typing) and Win+Shift+S (snipping tool). I don't have screen snapping enabled so don't use that. Probably one I should remember is Win+S (search) to run programs, find documents and the like.

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Rikkitic

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#3366305 21-Apr-2025 18:31

Glad it works for you. Screaming commercials that jump out at me uninvited I consider bloat. Along with all the widgets or gidgets or whatever that I don't want or need. Newsfeeds from places I have never heard of. Birds chirping in Patagonia. Whatever. All the busy busy crap assaulting my senses. Sure, I can turn it all off and I am doing just that. I just wonder why anyone assumes I would want it all on.

To the point: I use keyboard navigation a lot. For some unfathomable reason apps that used to work fine now don't. Copilot is one. Thunderbird is another. The miniscule scrollbar is a nightmare to work with. Windows apps may (or may not) work ok. Some seem to. But things I use a lot as mentioned above give me problems they didn't used to. I have other examples but am not interested in having a drawn out discussion about it. I was reasonably happy with Win 10 and the only reason I am going to 11 is because Microsoft is forcing me to.

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