Apple's attention to detail - <AUTHOR> http://floodlite.tumblr.com/post/1011047822/apples-attention-to-detail
<comment><USER2> > It's interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to > get it right.

I think many companies see the features (windows flying around in Exposé, brightly colored window management buttons, pulsing status light, etc.) but don't understand that generally Apple doesn't just throw something in for looks and has thoroughly researched and iterated internally on a particular solution.

At the expense of sounding fanatic, generally an Apple feature looks the way it does as a result of its function. (What is the problem: make window management easy. how is that solved: make all open windows easy to see by spreading them out). When other companies attempt to copy, they look at what Apple's solution looks like, not realizing what it _does_. (e.g. Areo Flip 3D: what should it look like: windows flying all over the place. what problem does this solve: ???)

<comment><USER3> Canonical have really upped their game recently. These days a fresh Ubuntu installation looks pretty slick, compared to a just few releases ago. Maybe it's not quite up to OS X standards yet, but reading the design team and Mark Shuttleworth's blogs it's clear they're thinking things through, and not just throwing bling at the screen:

Ubuntu 8.04: <http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ubuntu-8-04/default.png>

Ubuntu 10.10 Preview: [http://design.canonical.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/08/ambia...](http://design.canonical.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/08/ambiance-maverick-preview_update.png)

<comment><USER4> I've used Ubuntu for a few years now, and I adore Gnome's simplicity. For someone who mostly lives in Emacs and Chrome, its a great Desktop: its simple, it (mostly) works, and it stays out of the way! They must do some incredible usability testing, since it usually doesn't frustrate me like Windows does. If it didn't have such a single-minded fixation on warning you about Non-Free Components (gasp!) it would be almost unbeatable.

<comment><USER5> Except you still have to manage your windows.

Since the whole point of a window manager is to manage my windows so I don't have to, I use xmonad. If you want simplicity, give that a try :)

<comment><USER6> xmonad is great and I used to miss it on OS X, but I've grown to appreciate SizeUp and Divvy for OS X. You get tiling functionality when you want it, and only when you want it. It's slightly more involved than xmonad but only slightly. And it's unobtrusive. They're certainly limited compared to xmonad but they get the job done for me. I only have a couple of configurations I use very often.

<comment><USER5> I looked into SizeUp, but it seemed to follow a different model than xmonad/awesome: it _only_ tiled (and then, only in halves or quarters). What I like about xmonad/awesome is that there's a master window and all other windows are automatically managed for me on the other side of the screen; if I want one of my windows bigger, I just rotate it into the master slot. I really _don't_ have to manage my windows, which I love.

I haven't looked into Divvy, I'll take a look.

<comment><USER7> Another one to try is Optimal Layout. It gives you tiling, hotkeys for resizing and moving windows, and a better Cmd-Tab (though you have to Alt-Tab instead, unfortunately), and the latest release supports rotating. I love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The moment I realized the LED was mimicking breathing (I first experienced it with a white iMac) was the moment I realized just how far Apple goes to make computers for _humans_. Truly personal computers. This is the kind of stuff that gets people lining up for new Apple products, not some silly brand whoring or desire to be hip and fashionable.

Admittedly, they made the LED way too bright on the earlier MBPs, such that it would distract you if you were trying to sleep in a dark room. The newer MBPs have gotten the brightness just right, however.

Also, none of this ignores the fact that Apple routinely privileges superficial aesthetics over ergonomics, utility, etc. (Magic Mouse, hard edges on MBP, glossy displays), but that rarely stops the whole package from being the best on the market.

<comment><USER9> Nothing pisses me off more than when people say "oh, that Apple, they're just good at marketing."

The truth is that they're good at making great things that are genuinely fun to use. That kind of stuff sells itself.

<comment><USER10> Back in the 1990s, Apple's products were junk, but the marketing was still excellent.

I think when engineering types hear the word "marketing", they immediately take it as dismissive. But Apple is an example of a company who owes their skin to phenomenal marketing over the long term.

<comment><USER11> That's not how I remember it at all.

Apple's marketing in the mid-to-late 90's was poor to nonexistent, frankly, while on a technical level Macs weren't any worse than PC's (both crashed a lot and came with fairly comparable hardware, but the Mac OS 7/8/9 UI was very arguably better than the Windows 95/98 UI). Apple's _user loyalty_ was fantastic (and fanatic) in the mid-to-late 90's, but the company itself didn't do anywhere near the kind of promotion they did once Jobs returned.

Yes, Mac OS 9 had technical disadvantages compared to Windows NT and Windows 2000, and Apple had a second-system effect of legendary proportions with Copland. 90's Apple wasn't that great at technology. But they were abysmal at marketing, while Microsoft were _fantastic_ at it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, Apple's 90's marketing was ass. But I loved every last Mac I owned during that decade.

Apple had overall high product quality but their focus was lacking and they weren't terribly ballsy. They had a distinct feeling of running on the fumes of the Mac's initial success. But it was (and is) a sufficiently great product that those fumes informed an OS that, from a user perspective, remained the best. Mac OS got long in the tooth, but I'd still take it over Win95/98/NT any day.

<comment><USER12> I don't know about you, but the things I do not miss are putting spaces in extension names to reorder them (at boot time, they were loaded alphabetically and there were often conflicts, if the order was "incorrect"), manually setting up, how much RAM can a specific app use, or rebooting with virtual memory on/off, depending on which app I wanted to run. I still remember, that reading websites with table-layouts on the only somewhat standards-compliant browser (IE for Mac) was exercise in frustration.

Both windows (95/98) and macs had their share of shortcomings, you just had to pick, which set you can tolerate.

<comment><USER11> Windows had the same problem, except instead of having conflicts between extensions (which everyone understood were extensions to the operating system), installing _applications_ could cause conflicts. Personally, I never reordered extension names to avoid conflicts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My wife can't stand having little LEDs on all over the place. We've hidden our wireless router, our battery charger and everything. One night my laptop was on the floor as we were going to sleep, and I said, "Oh! Let me put away my MacBook," and she said, "Don't worry about it, I find it soothing."

This is definitely a detail that is appreciated.

<comment><USER14> Totally agree with your wife, for the most part. I always cover the exposed LEDs on my various devices before going to bed. However when I'm not trying to sleep, my MBP's pulsing light is mesmerizing.

<comment><USER15> My tower has a blue power-LED. To cover it up, I stuck a dark post-it over it. Still too bright.

5 layers later, and it was about 1/2 the brightness of my MBP's snoozer. About right for a dark room. A couple months later, when I packed my tower up for xmas vacation... the post-its were _bleached white_ , all the way through, in front of the LED. _Way_ too much power.

My MBP? Still too bright for the night, IMO, but I tend to like dark. It's at least not annoying, like damn-near _every_ other light-emissive device in my house at night.

<comment><USER16> My router and desktop are both black with blue leds.

Best solution? Electrical tape. You can't even see it unless you look close and I really couldn't care less about the led. If the router isn't working I'll know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised that not everyone notices that. The first time I saw a Mac in sleep mode I immediately realized that it was breathing in a relaxed manner. (It seemed so obvious I never even mentioned it to anyone, so I don't know if anyone else noticed.)

 _The other day, I noticed that my friend's Dell laptop had a similar feature but with a shorter fade-in-fade-out period. Its rate was around 40 blinks per second, or the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise—not very indicative of something in sleep-mode._

As to why Dell didn't copy it exactly... perhaps they reviewed the patent and decided they would get in trouble?

Personally, I think we should not personify our computing hardware. It's a tool, not your friend. When my machine goes to sleep, its lights turn off. If I want to wake it from sleep, I press the power button. If it was off instead of asleep, I would press the same power button. No need for an LED to tell me what's going on.

<comment><USER2> But why did try to copy it at all? Why not go in another direction completely?

<comment><USER18> Just how many different ways can you make a light blink?

<comment><USER19> See, you're already limiting yourself. The object isn't to indicate sleep with a blinking light, it's to indicate sleep.

A sleeping computer could softly snore. Or the logo text on the lid could blur like tired vision. Neither of those is a blinking light.

<comment><USER20> It's not hard to imagine a PC laptop manufacturer designing a light that moves side to side like a Cylon. In fact, this might even be a good fit for an Alienware laptop.

<comment><USER11> That's not an indicator that your computer is sleeping. That's an indicator that your computer is going to try and annihilate the human race.

(I think Mozilla has an oscillating status bar they use, which is called a "Cylon".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember realizing that nothing on the iPhone ever, ever blinks into or out of existence. EVERYTHING transitions.

When you turn the orientation in the camera app, the little flash button and flip-camera buttons don't simple become horizontal...they fall down gently.

The damn thing never blinks.

<comment><USER22> You just reminded me of those folding cellphones that were popular when cellphones first became really popular. They had this useless blinking led that just bugged the hell out of me!

<comment><USER23> You just perfectly described a 2010 Blackberry.

<comment><USER24> Though on BBs, the blinking is a feature: it's your blackberry craving for your attention, like a cat pawing into your sides or your dealer calling your phone.

I hear most BB users like it a lot.

<comment><USER25> We do, and like most things on Blackberry's, it can be turned off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In looking at my ThinkPad it got me thinking as to why IBM didn't blink at all. And I'm not sure, but I have a theory. I have other devices that blink to indicate that something is happening to them, and I always seem to catch them at the state when they're not illuminated. And, while this state only lasts for a second or less, I often get brief anxiety that something isn't charging or whatever.

IBM went with the constantly illuminated moon. I've never laid down to sleep to it, but its worked as a great, at a glance, indicator that the computer is sleeping, and not off or on.

<comment><USER27> The thing is: the sleep indicator doesn't go _all the way off_ when pulsing. It goes to very low, and back up, but never _off_ until you wake the machine.

<comment><USER28> Also if machine is on, but display is off, it just glows constantly to let you know it's awake :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another nice thing about that LED is that it's white (as opposed to bright green in a lot of laptops) and it's softened (meaning that you can't really point out the exact point where the LED is hiding, making the whole shape homogeneous).

</comment><comment><USER30> The fact that they _patented_ light-pretends-to-breathe annoys me to the point of not really being able to bask in the genius of the idea.

<comment><USER31> Probably more out of defense than attack

<comment><USER32> Umm defensive, just like these ones?

[http://i.engadget.com/2010/03/02/apple-vs-htc-a-patent- break...](http://i.engadget.com/2010/03/02/apple-vs-htc-a-patent-breakdown/)

Unless you meant out of defence of the right to make more profit, in which case yes I totally agree, completely defensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's a great idea, but no one else can use it. I don't like the fact of patenting even the frequency of a blinking led. It keeps adding constraints for competition, which is nice for Apple but I wouldn't celebrate it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well now I know why I spent a half hour just staring at that stupid light when I got my new MBP. There was something about the radiance pattern -- now I know.

Seriously though, that's a brilliant feature. Most companies wouldn't give the time or money for developers to come up with that.

</comment><comment><USER35> The big place where I notice this is in the "flick" scrolling on Android vs iPhone. Android just has this very tiny jerkiness, a just slightly less natural motion. I can't even define what it is about the motion, I just know it is perfect on the iPhone and almost but not quite on Android.

(And for the record, I love Android and would gladly cast every iDevice I own into a fire if I didn't need them for work).

<comment><USER36> Somewhat related, Android does not bounce back at the end of lists. The list simply stops scrolling...which is rather ambiguous considering if the phone lags, it looks like you're at the end of the list...and then suddenly it starts scrolling again

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's a great scene in Objectified about the indicator light on a MBP (or, in that case, perhaps an Air) and how it appears and disappears when needed. Viz.:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU#t=04m40s>

<comment><USER38> +1, Didn't knew about this documentary, definitely going to order it.

<comment><USER37> The guy who made it, Gary Hustwit, also made one called Helvetica, which is very very good, and is making a third (and final in the "series") called Urbanized, about urban design:

<http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/blog/the-next-film-urbanized/>

Also, Objectified is on Netflix streaming now, I believe.

<comment><USER39> As is Helvetica.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is interesting, but I hardly think it is unique. I would expect Microsoft to have done lots of work with their mice and keyboards. I expect IBM likely did simliar work when coming up with the ThinkPad (a 15 year old form-factor, which is still the best laptop form factor money can buy). Even car manufacturers have very similar types of research.

It's cool to see the patent, but from what I know of various people who work in usability, this sort of thing is not at all unusual.

<comment><USER40> lenovo has a site where (mostly) david hill posts about the design of their products, including the thinkpad. hill worked on the thinkpad while at ibm and continues to at lenovo.

<http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Speaking of attention to detail...

"12-20 breathes per minute" should be "12-20 breaths per minute"

"40 blinks per second" should be "40 blinks per minute"

</comment><comment><USER42> Lenovo went to a lot of effort on the battery/charging indicator, but they just managed to make it as complicated as possible. <http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=79>

<comment><USER43> <looks over at MBP charge indicator>

Well, it's plugged in... I can tell because I see the plug in the computer. And it's charged because the light is green. Blinking light? Seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Funny, that pulsing light drives me nuts. If I'm in a darkened room with my MBP, I have to cover it or turn it to face the other way.

<comment><USER45> What model (silver or black screen frame/keys)? I have older one (silver), and the thing is like a lighthouse in a dark bedroom. However, they supposedly fixed it in the newer models.

<comment><USER46> They did. It's visible, but toned down just enough that I can fall asleep without having to cover it.

<comment><USER47> Yeah, now it uses the ambient light sensor.

<comment><USER46> I dont think so. The ambient light sensor is next to the iSight camera. I'd wager the indicator light is most oft on when the lid is closed and the sensor unexposed to ambient light. It's just dimmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I smell a bit of fanboyism in the article.

Yes, Apple have an eye on detail (but they aren't the only one on the earth, for sure), yes, they patent they findings so they can be the only kids on the block with that particular cool look.

</comment><comment><USER48> The Dell blinks faster not because Dell doesn't pay attention to detail, but because they don't want to deal with patent nonsense.

<comment><USER49> Why didn't they think of other way to represent a sleeping state but resembling Apple's blinking light?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> My MBP is asleep whenever I am, and the light is actually kind of soothing right before dozing off.

<comment><USER51> Was going to say the same thing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course Dell's blinking light timing was different. They didn't want to violate Apple's patent.

</comment><comment><USER52> iTunes needs some of this attention

</comment><comment><USER53> my g5 imac won't go to sleep because the capacitors in it have leaked, periodically in its life cds have been trapped in it which wouldn't eject from the command line, i've had two old style keyboards that have broken completely because of small spillages on them, the mouse that came with the g5 was a worse at detecting movement than an older ms mouse.. i could go on. I bought it expecting engineering attention to detail, what i got was cosmetic attention to detail.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've always been curious: does anyone else dart their eyes back and forth to determine if a light is blinking or not?I feel like it might be my superpower. I can spot 60hz no problem.

When I first saw the MacBook indicator, it was a lot of fun to finally see my talent put to use in an additional dimension. I remember seeing the modulation and thinking: oh cool, the entire duty cycle remains constant as they increase the on while decreasing the off.

<comment><USER55> I wouldn't really call it a superpower, I have it too and it's more of a curse.

Also, the worst are cheap projectors that seem to alternate between red, green, and blue, so you see a rainbow every time you move your eyes between the projector image or your own notes.

It's so frustrating to me, but no one ever believed me about it, so I guess not everyone has this curse.

<comment><USER56> > cheap projectors that seem to alternate between red, green, and blue

If you were curious, those would be single-chip DLP projectors: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Light_Processing>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Perhaps this exact patent of Apple is the reason why Dells are blinking faster. And not because they failed to copy Apple properly as the blogpost implies.

<comment><USER58> It probably is why, and it indicates that they failed to copy Apple properly: Apple chose the rate to correspond to a restful breathing rate. As I can attest from a quick test, 40/min is more like someone exercising, hardly a soothing assurance that the Dell is happily sleeping. Furthermore, blinking is not very smooth, either. Dell apparently saw the idea "visually indicate sleep mode". So what Dell has is a blinking indicator light that happen to mean "in sleep mode". What Apple has is a light that intuitively means "I'm happily resting and saving power. When you want me again, open me up and I'll be right where you left me." The first time I saw Apple's light, I immediately knew what the computer was doing. If I saw a Dell blinking a lot, I would have no idea if it meant "sleep mode", "charging", "charging in sleep mode". The blink rate might even be how quickly it's charging or how much it needs to be charged. So yes, Dell did a bad copy.

<comment><USER59> His point was that the patent, rather than some incompetence on Dell's part, may be what is preventing them from using a slower blink rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The first time I really noticed that Apple just has a different level of attention to detail than I, an electronics customer, am used to seeing was with my iPad.

I listen to foreign language lessons on part of my commute and have for several years. After I got my iPad I transferred everything there and started listening as normal. For some reason (don't remember why) I needed to stop listening. So I pulled the headphones out, dig the iPad out of my bag to pause the player since I don't want to miss anything. As I take the iPad out I'm expecting to hear someone speaking but they're not. I pause for a second but nothing. I open the case to make sure I didn't accidentally pause it somehow and check the volume. Volume is fine and some other app was in the foreground. I switch to the Ipod app and sure enough, it was paused. Seems so obvious but no other device I've owned did this (I've never owned an iPod or iPhone).

<comment><USER61> Tons of media players pause when you pull out the headphones. I think some portable cd player I had in the late 90's did that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Another error I've seen: I had a Dell that had a pulsing indicator, and it had an acceptable frequency, but the LED behind it only had 8 levels, linearly powered. You could very clearly see the transition from levels 0-1, 1-2, and 2-3, after which (due to the linear driving) the transitions became very unclear, simultaneously making the transition annoyingly sharp and "pulling back the curtain" and letting you too-easily see the implementation details. Apple (and my current Sony VAIO) gets this right; I can't perceive the transition points between levels, and somebody properly accounted for the way we see brightness nonlinearly.

<comment><USER43> I'd imagine Apple's uses a capacitor, so the intensity of the light is indeed continuous.

<comment><USER63> Doubtful, look at the profile in the patent. They need to hit a tightly specified current vs time profile. And a cap would be a separate component, and they are failure prone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Perhaps this exact patent of Apple is _the_ reason why Dells are blinking faster.

</comment><comment><USER64> I plugged my iPhone headphones into my MBP. The volume control works. The play/pause button loads, plays and pauses iTunes music.

The Apple Bluetooth keyboard has an option in OS X to show the battery life. It does not when connected to Vista.

</comment><comment><USER65> Apple is the best exmaple of a company that is lead by design. Their products aren't a confusing maze of options and complexity where anything goes, but instead holistic human-friendly devices that are a perfect balance between form and function. Not everyone will be happy with the compromise of "configurability" in favor of "usability" - but the incredible success of Apple products can not be argued with, society at large agrees with simple humanized technology, and will increasingly demand products and services that display good design traits.

</comment><comment><USER66> At risk of getting massively downvoted (since almost everybody else in this thread who refuses to participate in the Apple lovefest is down -4 right now)...

I really dislike this community conflation of attention to aesthetic detail with "detail". Apple does fantastic work on aesthetics. Wonderful little details like the pulsing sleep led. Their hardware is generally pleasant to look at, their OS...though starting to show its 9 year old age still holds its own.

While important, and often imitated, aesthetic detail is a superficial kind of detail. And it's not wholesale "attention to detail" not matter how many breathless fan posts in blogs on threads there are. Apple products in general have a great many areas where they have piss poor attention to actual detail, and let it slide for years without attention and instead build a marketing campaign around the font they use on their keyboards.

They substitute shiny too often for substance and the vast majority of Apple fans fall for it, "ooh shiny!". There isn't even a single post here in this thread (and there are 171 right now) that says something to effect of "This LED thing is cool, but Apple drops the ball on <insert xyz widely known problem>". And that list of problems is long and ranges in everything from technical issues to hardware reliability to usability problems to yes...aesthetics. Instead we get north of 170 posts, all breathlessly agreeing that they wish Apple could have their child.

Aesthetic detail is "nice to have" but not a "must have". Detail in other areas are probably more important. And sadly, Apple often falls down in those areas. It doesn't really matter if my MBP is cut from a single piece of aluminum and the leds pulse at some certain rhythm when its asleep. It's far more impressive to me that when I open it up, it resumes in under 10 seconds (which BTW is thankfully one of those areas that Apple _did_ turn the attention to detail gun on, Macs sleep and resume fantastically better than any Windows machine I've ever used). But it also matters to me if I have to send it back for repair due to manufacturing defect more often than my dell -- particularly if I've paid a huge price premium to have a pulsing sleep led, the damn thing better be more reliable than a $12 toaster...and sadly it isn't.

I'm certainly not claiming the opposite, that other vendors and software makers are _better_ than Apple in the detail department. Just that Apple has many failures as well, but the community of Apple users religiously ignores those little problems without a peep -- a massive display of this phenomenon is on display here. They stop recognizing that their stuff is just stuff, and Apple makes stuff that's pretty nice to use, but in the end it's just stuff and it's full of flaws.

 _just trying to provide the voice of reason here_

<comment><USER67> I welcome your position, but could your provide examples where Apple has failed in the "attention to detail" department?

<comment><USER68> I'm primarily a Linux user, and (perhaps) thus not too concerned with appearance. But I'm very concerned with functionality, and I think Apple consistently fails to apply obvious little touches. I use my girlfriend's Mac quite often, and almost always leave angry at the interface.

Here's two:

Why does Cmd-W close some dialog windows but not others? I frequently hit Cmd-O, realize I'm in the wrong application, then hit Cmd-W to make it go away. Occasionally this works. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1052118/how-to-make-a- key...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1052118/how-to-make-a-keyboard- shortcut-to-close-dialog-with-xcode-interface-builder)

Why do some clicks on background windows cause actions, and others are ignored? I don't want autoraise, I just want explicit clicks, say, on links or buttons in web pages, to be obeyed. [http://steve- yegge.blogspot.com/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-f...](http://steve- yegge.blogspot.com/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-follows-mouse-debate.html)

Some of my hating goes towards applications (why does Acrobat insist on popping up windows off the screen? why does printing work from Preview but not from Illustrator?) but a lot of it goes toward the basic interface. In my opinion, it's very well polished, but not very consistent or well designed.

<comment><USER47> Press escape to close dialogs, and command-click to activate background UI elements without bringing the window to the foreground.

<comment><USER68> I appreciate the response. Yes, I tend to press "Cmd-W" about three times before I realize that I'm dealing with a dialog and not a window. Then I'll either reach for the mouse or press Escape.

Similarly, if I know that a window is in the background, I might manage to remember to Command-click (only needed on the links, not the icons in the title bar?). Occasionally when the stars align I can even copy text from a window without bringing it (and all other windows belonging to that application?) forward.

But my real question is why I should have to distinguish a small 'window' from a large 'dialog'? Shouldn't Cmd-W work in both?

And why should I have to distinguish between a foreground and a background app? Especially in the multi-monitor situation she has set up, it seems like it would be more 'polished' to have all the apps act the same.

This is ignoring the non-standard applications, and the absurdity that clicking on one window often brings many of them to the foreground. My point is not that there aren't workarounds that one can warp one's behaviour to, but that I don't think the mental model itself is that coherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Ah, yes. The anthropomorphic elements of Apple's HCI design.

I think this is just Apple applying those same software HCI principles to their hardware design. It's merely one more tool in Apple's arsenal that their hardware competitors lack.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's amusing watching the author use purple prose over a single blinking LED. I bet if Steve Jobs gave him a turd he would describe it as "that which makes the flowers grow, with a heady aroma".

</comment><comment><USER71> I prefer David Thorne's take on the Macbook Pro.

</comment><comment><USER72> The author misspelled MacBook :(

</comment><comment><USER73> <Cool story, bro>

A few years ago, a friend got one of the first of the x86 iMacs with integrated displays. Initially I thought it was a neat design but still didn't "get" what the big deal was about them and Apple's design ethos in general.

I picked up the small handheld remote that came with it, and frowned. "Hmm, OK, it comes with a remote media control. That's neat, but it's just one more rarely-used gadget that's going to get lost in the clutter on peoples' desks. What they should have done was, oh, I dunno, put a magnet in the side of the monitor frame to keep the remote out of the way when it's not needed, you know, like this..."

 _snap_

"Oh."

I bought 100 shares of AAPL that night.

</Cool story, bro>

<comment><USER74> Was the cool story bro really necessary? This isn't 4chan...

<comment><USER73> It's a self-deprecating device, used to indicate that the post was intended purely as a topical anecdote which should be taken or left at face value, and not as a general recommendation to buy stock based on individual product features. :-P

<comment><USER75> Surely you understand the backlash from using internet memes at HN where they are not necessary?

<comment><USER76> Apparently he does.

<comment><USER77> I like that on HN, people use memes intelligently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Apple's UX quality and attention to detail definitely helped make me a convert. Or a re-convert: I started with Apple II+, then got into IBM/Microsoft PC's, then came back to Apple a few years ago.

This is why I'm frustrated by the UX of iOS 4.0 running on my iPhone 3G. It is plagued with these unpredictable freezes, especially in Safari, which makes it unusable sometimes. We're talking total UI non-responsiveness for anywhere from 15-120 seconds, right smack in the middle of you're doing something. Very let down by them in this area. I've already learned of an unofficial way to downgrade back to 3.x, however, I've been reluctant to do it because I have some legacy contract projects who want me to support 4.0, so I need to keep something running it.

Other than this issue, though, Apple provides an awesome UX and has been a no- brainer choice over Microsoft -- a company I had also noticed many times in the past was copying the surface aspect of what a competitor did, often Apple, but not getting the fundamentals right, and making themselves look like idiots.

<comment><USER79> Off-topic, but have you tried the 'disable everything you don't search for in spotlight' workaround? I've heard it works wonders, and the more you can disable the better. Not entirely sure why. You can google for the details (if there are any more than what I've listed already).

<comment><USER78> yes i did that. and have restarted and restored a few times. i still get the mysterious temporary freezes. i've read the Apple forums discussions, my impression is that all of the "fixes" reported by endusers (except rolling back to 3.3) are just lucky happenstance and/or the person in question didn't test it long enough afterward so was still in honeymoon period. thanks for suggestion though! (we should def not continue this thread since off-topic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> if their attention to detail is so good, then why are the edges of their laptops sharp as hell?

#fail

<comment><USER80> Maybe they could mimick the sharp edges on my wrists with some sort of blinking device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> is breathing light really a requirement? I would prefer faster and cheaper computers. IMHO I find Apple computers to be equivalent of SUV's. You can get a descent laptop at nearly 20-30% cheaper from Dell/HP/ASUS.

Maybe only Americans can afford such frivolity. The difference in price between a good Dell laptop and Apple one is same as wage for 1-2 months for a middle class person in most parts of the worlds.

<comment><USER82> I own a MacBook. I'm an a limited budget, and yet I paid more for it than I could have for similar spec non Apple hardware. You know why? Because I like it.

My life is full of crappy cheap gadgets and things. Nearly everything I deal with on a day to day basis has been designed to be manufactured as cheaply and as quickly as possible, and it's evident. I _like_ using my little MacBook; it's slim, it's light, it's beautifully built, it's aesthetically pleasing, it has a great keyboard, there's nothing else out there that comes close to the trackpad, it's full of nice touches and it feels like someone has put a lot of thought into it's design.

About the same time, my sister bought herself a Toshiba laptop that, on paper, was equivalent to my macbook, but it cost her about 25% less. The toshiba is almost twice as fat, has a horrid keyboard, an even worse touch pad, a battery life of about two hours and flexes like you wouldn't believe.

I guess it's similar to buying expensive clothes or paying more for a nice car (I have neither)

<comment><USER83> After a few years, my macbook has basically fallen apart, gotten stains that wont come out from book covers, the top case still cracking even after replacing it several times over. The build quality is pretty irritating. My girlfriends netbook of 2 years although works just fine and is of identical thickness. I would like a sony vaio Z series with it's 13" 1080p screen, dual SSDs and 3 pounds of weight vs. a macbook, but have to use it because of iPhone development.

<comment><USER82> Mine's one of the early unibody Al ones, back before everything except the white ones were badged 'Pro'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why the F*** Would Anyone Get a Coach? Written by a Former Startup Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.zachluz.com/why.html <comment><USER2> I couldn't get past the light gray text, the lack of contrast made it very hard to read. This guy needs a readability-coach.</comment>


Amazon seller's account suspended after changing profile name on Kindle Fire - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5gvgdl/using_a_amazon_kindle_fire_destroyed_my/ <comment><USER2> Something similar happened to my wife as an Amazon affiliate. It took quite a while to piece together, but after about 4 or 5 back and forths, we figured out what happened.

Someone had clicked on her affiliate link, then copy and pasted it onto reddit to share the Amazon product with some people (without knowing it had the affiliate link as ?tag=....). Because reddit is a site you are not allowed to share affiliate links, Amazon suspended the account.

The person who had shared the link was obviously even a legitimate reddit user, and the post was pretty minor only getting a few upvotes (we only found it via a search). But because of this, Amazon suspended over $500 of earnings, and killed a site that took many months to build and establish. And now my wife is now on a "refuse to respond" to list for trying to contact them multiple times to get someone who can apply a little bit of reason to the situation.

I think in hindsight we made the mistake of not trying to publicize the issue and Amazon could just ignore it. So here's an upvote for the OP

<comment><USER3> So... sharing affiliate links on reddit will ruin the sellers account?

<comment><USER4> Devil's advocate says that this is the most effective way to target this bad policy. Use it to ruin the accounts of a few very big sellers, and have them do the publicity work for you.

<comment><USER5> I would like to see what happen when someone like The Wirecutter, owned by The New York Times, has one of its affiliate links shared on Reddit and then has its affiliate account shut down. They are certainly responsible for millions of dollars of Amazon revenue.

<comment><USER6> The really big affiliates almost definitely in a separate bucket that requires a higher bar or human review to disable the account.

<comment><USER7> Bless your heart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have run into this kind of automated bureaucracy several times in the last decade. It is both infuriating and frightening.

My mortgage was sold to a new company that had a weird computer-directed policy that rejected my home owner's insurance. They then flagged me as not having insurance and charged me over $1,000 for providing insurance. I spent hours on the phone speaking with people in India who absolutely would not send my proof of insurance up the chain of command. It wasn't until I was able to find the CEO of the mortgage company and contact her directly to explain my situation that it was finally resolved... for six months when the automated system rejected my home owners insurance again. I eventually had to refinance the home to get out from under this soulless company's grip.

Institutions like the Better Business Bureau used to protect consumers from this kind of abuse, but the complaints I have registered with them have achieved nothing. If I was poor, this situation would have financially ruined me. I would have missed mortgage payments, my home would have been foreclosed on, and my credit would have been ruined for years.

I highly recommend the science fiction film "Brazil" to anyone who wants to see the dystopia this kind of automated rules-enforcement could create. "Brazil" is the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" but the totalitarian government rules with a system of overwhelming bureaucracy. The problem here is that it is the Capitalists who are the oppressors.

<comment><USER9> Sorry to hear that. I want to add a side note on this for people considering a mortgage. We never think about the fact that your mortgage could be sold to another company when going for a mortgage. So unless you get the mortgage from one of the big guns like wells fargo etc, there is a good chance that the "smaller" mortgage firm that gave you a great rate will repackage your mortgage and wash their hands off it. This can throw things off for you as you are left to deal with a new company who can impose their shitty policies on you and you didn't even choose them.

<comment><USER10> That's not necessarily accurate. The smaller mortgage BROKERS will likely sell your loan to the highest bidder. If you go with a small town bank, they're often self-funding the loans and won't ever sell them off (which is exactly why I went with a small-town bank). Every small bank I've ever dealt with was extremely easy to work with and up-front about whether or not they'll sell the loan.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't count on this. My wife and I got a mortgage through our local bank which has two branches, both in towns under 40,000 people, and the loan was sold to Fanny Mae and their ilk before the ink had dried on the closing papers.

They were up front about it, which I appreciated, but it goes to show that using a small town bank does not guarantee your loan will stay local.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel really bad for the guy and I hope this gets enough media attention for Amazon to actually care about helping him.

But this is the world we are headed toward with people continuing to stake their entire livelihoods on services with almost non-existent customer service. Companies like Amazon, Google, Paypal, you name it.

If they won't give you a phone number that rings through to an actual human being promptly, you shouldn't allow yourself to become dependent upon said service continuing to work. Let alone base your entire income and the incomes of employees under you on it. That's just incredibly irresponsible.

<comment><USER13> Why is a phone the gold standard for support? If I have to talk to someone on the phone, it means I have exhausted every other possible method to resolve my problem, and I am furious with the company for making me talk to an idiot in real time.

What I want is an issue tracker that has responsive, accountable, people on the other end. That's my ideal support experience. Phones are the worst case scenario.

<comment><USER14> Because you're pretty much guaranteed an instant answer for every question you ask. It's live 1 to 1 and instant. They can't patch you or put you in some backlog.

<comment><USER13> I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner. That's entirely doable in a ticket system. Not so much with phone support...at least, not in my experience. Phone support generally has a script. When your problem diverges from the script, the person on the phone is of negative value. I want my problem triaged to someone who can solve it, not hear how very sorry they are and how much they appreciate my patience.

If I sound bitter...well, I really hate phones. My favorite support experiences have never been on the phone. Chat maybe, email maybe, phone never.

<comment><USER15> > I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner.

THIS. TIMES. A. MILLION.

Call centers put pressure on employees, especially good ones to wrap up calls quickly to keep their numbers high (because shitty policies result in a ton of people calling) meaning that even if you get a rep who legitimately _wants to help you_ , they are punished in their job if they try too hard to do that (or take too long.)

Sidebar; Maybe this is a generational thing, I hate the phone. I hate being on the phone, I hate using the phone. If I have to talk to sales reps I'd much rather do it over email/in person, but not over the phone.

<comment><USER16> Email support makes it too easy to cut-n-paste replies. I've had too many interactions where I spell out a problem - along with resolutions I've tried - and then receive an obvious generic response (Evernote support - looking at you). It can take multiple rounds to resolve the issue, and it's infuriating.

<comment><USER15> That's very true, but email comes with a written record of everything that's happened so far which makes dealing with that sort of issue a lot simpler. I mean the phone alternative is where you get transferred from dept. to dept., having to re-explain the issue over and over again. I'll take a copy-paste reply over that any day of the week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I recently had a bout or two with Amazon over a relatively trivial issue. Simply that sold me a USB stick (Corsair Survivor) that fell to bits. Asked for a replacement to be sent out. They wanted me to send the old one back. I refused unless I can destroy the ICs on the board first for obvious reasons. Took 45 minutes of explaining to someone who didn't really care. Eventually they agreed to replace it and told me to dispose of the original.

Then about two weeks later I got an email saying that I was going to be charged £31 for the replacement. Contacted Amazon again and was told that it was policy to take a payment for it and they wouldn't budge. They also had no record of agreement before either.

I lost my shit. Another 45 minutes later, eventually I have a resolution, I think. I'll only know when they take or do not take the money.

Three lessons from the above and the original post:

1\. Get everything in writing. Use Amazon's chat facility when you contact them and make sure you get a transcript emailed to you.

2\. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. I wouldn't trust them to solely run my infrastructure or my business fulfillment. You don't really matter in the scale of things so they can afford to do a shitty job sometimes.

3\. Cheap isn't necessarily a good deal. I'd genuinely rather pay more these days for something and get it from Argos here in the UK. Or bytemark etc.

<comment><USER18> Is the obvious reason securely erasing data from a flash drive?

I did not know that that is not possible.

<comment><USER19> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdx bs=1024 count=(size of drive in K)

Do it for as many times as you want.

<comment><USER20> As flash drives do automatic wear levelling and remapping of bad sectors, some people worry that their data might remain on the flash, in sectors they can't read or write because of those features.

<comment><USER21> If someone is that concerned perhaps they should have been using an encrypted volume on the flash drive in the first place.

<comment><USER17> This is true. However you have to trade off the risk of an entire volume failing due to a partial cell failure which would mean only the loss of a single file if it wasn't encrypted.

This device was stored securely in a fire safe at home, not used as a portable device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, poor guy.

As a side note, it's frustrating how email email@example.com is fast becoming the only way to get real customer service. I'm a T-Mobile customer and recently had a billing issue that required me to interact with their customer support who were thoroughly unhelpful and just added to the frustration. I had heard about the tactic of emailing John Legere so I did, and sure enough the issue was sorted out promptly by a US-based exec response rep. I was happy to get everything sorted, but the fact that customer service reps apparently didn't have the power to fix a relatively straight-forward issue still frustrates me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My own story time: I found an item selling on amazon.co.uk and amazon.de for much less than the going rate on amazon.com. I ordered a bunch from co.uk. Then I was testing out the amazon.de site, I added a gift credit of 10 Euro. Somehow this flagged the .de account for verification, and that account got locked out. Then, that lockout spilled over to the uk account, and eventually to the US account, where I had dozens of pending orders.

I sent an email to firstname.lastname@example.com with a summary of the issue. It took a day or two for my US account to be fixed, and about a week for the other accounts to start working. I don't know whether the email helped or whether it would have been verified eventually anyway.

The process is definitely broken, though. Even one day lockout could be catastrophic for a larger seller.

</comment><comment><USER23> These larger tech firms are consolidating and often have market monopoly. They often don't care when your account is suspended due to their own erroneous fraud detection systems. They would rather have 2 innocent people lose their livelihood than check on 500 fraud cases.

I imagine these destroy a livelihood around the globe every 60 seconds:

"I lost my Adsense account because someone in India clicked on my ad?"

"I lost my Amazon merchant account because of my 'suspicious' credit card?"

"Uber suspended me after someone threw up in my car?"

"Why am I suspended? I sent the package?"

</comment><comment><USER24> I've had terrible experiences with Amazon this year (though nowhere near as bad as this poor guy) and it took me an entire day of repeatedly phoning their support lines and forcing my way through to a manager until I found someone who would actually use a bit of initiative.

In my case, I had something like a 50% failure rate of Prime delivery orders. It was at the point that every time I'd buy something with a delivery date of tomorrow, I'd get it 3 days later after it was dispatched from Germany instead. The drivers who did turn up have now been banned from delivering to our apartment block, as they would ditch all the parcels outside or with security instead of delivering them. Standard customer support wouldn't refund my Prime subscription because I had apparently used it 66 times in 3 months, which must mean that they must count MP3 plays as uses, as I only ordered 12 parcels in that time. Thankfully I did eventually get hold of someone who took the time to check and see that I've been buying from Amazon since they launched in the UK, and had been a Prime member since that launched too, and she promptly refunded me the membership. It took far, far too many managers to get to that point, however.

The general customer service seems to have deteriorated in the past year. Prior to that I always had great customer service from Amazon. I've now largely switched away to ordering from elsewhere. eBuyer gets me my parcels within a day on free shipping, and they're pretty competitive on price. I always ordered from Amazon because the CS was good, but they've lost me as a customer for now.

<comment><USER25> _The general customer service seems to have deteriorated in the past year._

Must be a cost-saving initiative in their support org. I've never seen a retailer that could even properly bucket losses into "our fuckup", "possibly our fuckup" and "satiating customer." And forget about always fixing things when they are recognized as a fuckup. There is too much incentive to not to do anything for the customer. Even when its the "right thing to do." Metrics often prioritize short term savings over burning a large-but-not-VIP customer.

I once worked with a retailer where even their Point of Sale voids were bucketed wrong. If a CSR were to accidentally scan the same $X item twice, they would void one on the POS. The stock control logic would keep the product in inventory counts, but the end-of-day financial tallies would look the same as if they manually applied a $X discount on an order.

I don't mean to imply Amazon is _that_ bad. But just because they're a big software employer, and AWS is a decent product, it doesn't mean that the support staff, internal software, etc... aren't shite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recently tried to change my password on my Amazon account (something I do a couple of times per year) and was presented with a multi-factor auth prompt for a long-forgotten and inactive AWS account that I trialled years ago. It turns out the phone number on the AWS account is out of date and the authenticator app was on the same phone that I no longer have, so I can't remove or reset the MFA. All my details on my Amazon account are up to date but these can't be used for resetting the MFA, only the details I entered when I signed up to AWS. I've hit an impasse with support, they'll only accept a notarized identity verification form and affidavit to proceed, which isn't that easy or cheap to do outside of the USA.

At this point I'm snookered - I feel like if my password is ever compromised I'm screwed, but it's not like I can just start a new account because all my digital purchases, my Kindle, my Echo, etc are tied to my old account.

Basically: do yourself a favour and sign up to distinct services with distinct accounts and don't have one global account for everything.

<comment><USER27> I don't think you should blame Amazon for enforcing the MFA that you set up. Allowing you someone to trivially reset the password on an MFA-enabled account would completely defeat the security purpose of MFA. If you've been reading HN for long, I'm sure you've seen stories of how attackers have used famous peoples' personal information to compromise their accounts at various services by requesting password resets. Respecting MFA and requiring a higher bar for password resets is necessary for defending against these attacks. And of course, if you're using both Amazon.com and AWS under one Amazon account (which it sounds like youare), then it would also defeat the security purpose of MFA if you could reset your account password through Amazon.com after setting up an MFA to protect your AWS usage.

I think your conclusion and advice is good. Separate your accounts for different services.

> I've hit an impasse with support, they'll only accept a notarized identity > verification form and affidavit to proceed, which isn't that easy or cheap > to do outside of the USA.

This should in fact be very cheap most places in the world. Do they not have notaries public in your country?

Generally you just need to sign a legally binding form asserting under penalty of perjury that you are so-and-so, and this is your account. You do this in front of the notary, and they inspect your government ID to confirm it's really you. Then the notary stamps the document to indicate that they've witnessed you signing it, and have inspected your id. Now you're done.

A number of online businesses require this in certain circumstances, and it's something that you can do in about 10 minutes at a store. In the USA, stores like the UPS Store, Kinko's Copies, etc. often have notary services. If you work for a medium-sized company or larger, your company will typically have a notary in its business center who may be willing to notarize personal documents for free. It should be a pretty simple process to complete, if inconvenient.

<comment><USER26> The problem is that it isn't really a shared account - the login email and password are the same, but they won't accept any current mobile number/etc entered anywhere but AWS.

I used AWS for a bit and then stopped, and then forgot about it. I've kept my Amazon account up to date, but not my AWS details. For years I continued to use my Amazon account without ever needing to use the MFA, so forgot I ever activated it. This year they've suddenly decided to enforce the MFA globally. I blame myself for not removing the MFA when I closed the account, but you can hopefully see why it's a frustrating user experience also. And like I say, the net result is a less secure Amazon account for everything but AWS until I can remove the MFA requirement.

Re notarizing, my understanding is that I need to use a US notary service for it to be valid for a US document (eg available via the US embassy).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been saying this a lot, and hopefully I don't get downvoted because this is too "political", but...

Essentially, Amazon is no longer a business. It is infrastructure. Every citizen should have the right to complain if something goes wrong. There could be a little office in every bigger city where you pull a number and get to talk to a real human. And if the dispute isn't settled, you should be able to take your case to a real court.

Note I don't want to expropriate anybody. Congratulations Jeff, you won capitalism! Give the man a billion and make him Secretary of Shipment or something. But the whole structure he created has become so important, that it should be subject to the same scrutiny that a wing of government would be (should be)... parliamental control, transparence and accountability, separation of powers, etc..

<comment><USER29> I'm curious what your thoughts are on other page businesses? Walmart, FedEx, Ebay?

<comment><USER28> Good question. It's indeed hard to tell where to draw the line.

If you are going for a "social market economy" kind of society - e.g. a free market but elements of what would be called "socialist" in the US - then there is a place for huge businesses that are run privately (i.e. not state controlled). E.g. Wallmart, Ford, Microsoft...

I would say the government should step in, that is the public should gain control, if the enterprise becomes utility-like. If you "need" their services to participate in society at a reasonable level. Or if many people build their businesses on them. This feature of "being essential" is not neccessarily the same question as whether a company is a monopoly or not. The end 1990s Microsoft was maybe a monopoly, but it was not a utility or infrastructure.

OTOH, I'm not sure you could classify Google or Amazon legally as Monopolies, but they have created awesome (in both senses of the word) infrastructure. I don't think this infrastructure should be entirely in the hands of a company or a few people. We also don't let owners of toll roads make the rules of the road.

So I wouldn't neccessarily nationalize Walmart, FedEx, Ebay. But I would regulate large Telcos for example. The model here in Germany seems to work quite OK. The market is deregulated, most of the infrastructure is still owned by the former state companies (Deutsche Bahn, Telekom, ...), and these rent the resources to other companies. But there are regulatory bodies that ensure that e.g. the prices are fair. It's not perfect, but it seems the resulting situation is preferable for customers (having lived in the US and Germany, I'd say both public transport and telecommunication is on average cheaper and better in Germany, and I think it is a result of this model.)

Twitter is a possible target. It doesn't seem profitable as a business anyway. But if someone decided that we as a society needed "a twitter" (I don't know if we do...), then maybe it could continue in this way.

<comment><USER30> > _If you "need" their services to participate in society at a reasonable > level._

Except by your own reasoning you don't "need" Amazon.

> _Twitter is a possible target._

Please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I learned a while back a form of this lesson, which I would state as "never rely on Amazon as a single source of revenue."

My experience was starting a website that showcased interesting/humorous products in the vein of thisiswhyimbroke. After getting a great deal of traffic and getting a fairly substantial number of purchases occurring through my affiliate links, Amazon informed me that they could not approve my account and that I would not be credited for the sales that I referred to them.

I asked for a clear explanation and was not given one, only told to reapply for the program.

I was pissed off but learned a valuable lesson- that Amazon customer service is shit and at any point they can cut the power off to your business if they don't like any minute part of it.

So while I might use affiliate links as a source of revenue again, I'd never rely on Amazon as more than a small percentage of that.

</comment><comment><USER32> I never do anything business related with our personal Amazon account. I have an LLC with its own bank account and Amazon account for anything business related, and this kind of stuff is why.

</comment><comment><USER33> In the end all we are is an account number and money provider to Amazon. If they piss off 1000 small vendors or customers it is 0.000001% of their business and thus makes no sense to care. I work for a business where the customer is treated well (not your usual technology company at all, but everyone knows who we are) and it does cost a lot of money and effort to treat each one as important. But we do charge a lot for this and have an enormous count of employees and that makes it much easier to be customer centric. Companies built pure on leveraging technology to make things happen and only profit as a business by ignoring the human element can't or won't or don't (care). We support this type of company because we save money or gain convenience and even to us customers we are willing support them anyway, which tells them what matters.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's amazing these companies don't have a "buy your way out of trouble" service. I'm sure this guy would be willing to pay a few hundred $ to have a human resolve it.

Perhaps that option would create a new set of complaint about people being extorted out of support fees for problems that weren't their fault.

<comment><USER35> > It's amazing these companies don't have a "buy your way out of trouble" > service. I'm sure this guy would be willing to pay a few hundred $ to have a > human resolve it.

A few hundred dollars to pay for what effectively is a bribe?

<comment><USER36> It's not a bribe, because it only gets you in contact with a human and doesn't guarantee a solution. In addition, paying a few hundred $ is far less than losing your business.

<comment><USER29> That looks like a bribe to me. They initiated the problem and want cash to make it go away.

"we're going to close your business down immediately"

"what? Who can I talk to to explain the situation?"

"everyone is busy, but you can pay us $200 and we might be able to fix your problem"

<comment><USER36> You've set up quite a straw man here to take down. Amazon isn't actually offering this premium support.

<comment><USER29> Never said they were. I was commenting on how it would be a poor idea to implement such a support plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Let the record show this has 481 points after 5 hours, and it's #36. Meanwhile there are at least three stories on the front page that have far fewer points that were posted further in the past.

I wonder why, I truly do. Admin manipulation? A messed up algorithm?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13120872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13120872) 256 after 10h

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13120794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13120794) 167 after 10h

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13120301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13120301) 143 after 13h

<comment><USER38> Front page weight is also determined by commenting. Lots of comments tends to weigh it down I believe. Those linked posts have similar comment counts but they are probably over a longer period of time. I recommend hckrnews.com over the frontpage fyi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Stop for a moment, and think what happens when our increasingly-advocated "cashless society" ends up being owned by a few "too big to fail" institutions.

Run afoul of some policy, or mistakenly triggered monitoring, and suddenly you are penniless. Maybe your phone and Internet bills go unpaid, and you are connectionless.

Right now, Google can kill your email (et al.) and Amazon can take away your books. Paypal can freeze online payments and balance.

Who you gonna call, when they take away it all?

Given that this is alread de facto business practice and not about to go away, it's sorely in need of regulation.

"Regulation?! Abomination!!"

Well, how do you think we got regulation in the first place? People getting screwed over by circumstances too big to effectively fight, as individuals.

Yeah, some of it went bad. But baby, bathwater. And with changing technology, we are back to individuals getting screwed by circumstances very difficult or impossible to fight and remedy, as an individual.

The long-term effect of crap customer support.

<comment><USER40> Every company that handles monetary accounts should be subject to the same regulations as a bank.

And: too many complaints about those monetary accounts not resolved in time? ⇒ suspend their license to operate a "bank".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This same thing happened to me -- a compliance review and e-mails about closing my account. I hadn't even changed my name, but got requests for my mother's information. Thankfully I wasn't a seller, but it took me over 3 months of constant calling before I could get it resolved. I was constantly handed off in between customer and seller support before I decided to e-mail email@example.com. In the end, I was able to suss out that this is some back department of Amazon that does compliance reviews, has a limited grasp of English, will not take direct phone or chat correspondence, and is only good at constantly asking for government ID and offering no other help.

An executive support representative reached out after I e-mailed Jeff and was able to figure out what was going on since all of the previous reps had no idea and kept passing the buck. I was in fear that I was going to lose my buyer's account, and hadn't sold more than $100 on my seller's account.

A tip for anyone else going through this: no one reachable through regular CS channels knows anything about this issue and everyone will tell you conflicting things. The only way to resolve it is to reach out through executive support. I tried escalating multiple times and people would tell me to not worry about it, then I would get e-mails asking for the info again or saying that my account was closed (it was not).

<comment><USER42> Thanks for the advice, I have reached out to all the executive teams that I could think of but I have not yet received a response

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It is worrying how more and more people are reliant on running a small business tied to a tech giant. It could be selling on Amazon or eBay, driving for Uber, selling apps through Apple or running a website with Google AdSense. All these companies treat their sellers as entirely disposable, and if their algorithms look at you the wrong way you're out.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not trying to hijack this, but this entire ordeal reminds me of this Hacker News comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360482)

If your livelihood is solely invested in a singular vendor, then you absolutely need to find a contact on the inside :/.

I hope he gets it resolved.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am afraid this is more common than it looks like: software glitches (or faulty logic) locks out people who are small fry for amazons and paypals and thus get no customer support -- it is almost certainly not profitable for amazon to spend time to resolve this except to fix bad PR. If an affected person cannot generate enough media attention they are SOL.

Maybe the problem is big enough so a new mechanism makes sense -- something like a well curated (and thus respected) resource that can select and publish "top 10/100" of the most egregious glitches which could shame companies into better behavior.

That, and having a "Plan B" in place -- local backups of cloud content, pre- selected secondary payment option, etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> And on the other hand there was a recent thread were people banned by amazon were labelled as "not trustworthy".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045022)

<comment><USER47> I had a former coworker who was banned due to large number of returns. He was treating it like a try-and-buy service, returning anything he didn't like and they eventually cut him off...of everything. Paid amazon movies, gone. Paid kindle content, gone. His wife's account with the same billing address, gone. They annihilated his families Amazon world with one action.

<comment><USER48> It sounds like the coworker was abusing the system, but can anyone think of any legitimate reason to cut somebody off from their digital purchases like this? At the very most they should make the account "Read Only" so the customer can access anything they've already paid for, but they're just not allowed to buy anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This kind of thing is why I know someone who has five Google accounts for different purposes. It's something they make deliberately inconvenient but is the only way to avoid catastrophic spillover.

(Work 1 & G+, Work 2, personal email 1, email 2, Youtube)

<comment><USER50> I do this to keep my internet histories separated by hobbies/business/personal. I have seven different Chrome "Users" open right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Indeed. Think about situations like this and that article last night of 6 days to change a line of code. Inflexible processes have consequences. They are setup to prevent fraud, but some sort of appeal or review would make a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER52> Wow. Amazon has some seriously screwed up software running somewhere. Sure hope the right people see this guy's post.

<comment><USER53> The systems I've seen and worked on, I can easily believe see this happening. My view is that this level of 'wtf' is pretty common for our profession, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I had a problem with ebay once and they suspended my seller account because I didn't get them documents on time and they said they weren't going to suspend my account. So, I got so angry I canceled my entire account and wrote a huge rant in there comment section of the cancel about know wonder they lose users left and right and pretty soon they won't have any left. and explained how there process was wrong. and it worked. they reinstated my seller account.

</comment><comment><USER55> Advice to live by:

1\. Don't login to non-primary devices

2\. If you are required to login, use a completely new/isolated account

</comment><comment><USER42> Hey everyone, I am the OP of the reddit thread, thank you all for your advice, and I will be taking some of these steps

</comment><comment><USER56> Oh gee. Just email firstname.lastname@example.com and his team will get this straightened out.

Side note: I've also found it effective when working with the recalcitrant Amazonian, to ask them if they want to receive a ? email from Jeff Bezos.

</comment><comment><USER57> If it's about such a large amount of money, I don't understand why this guy isn't lawyering up.

<comment><USER42> Lawyering up would be my last option, I am not trying to get into a legal battle with Amazon , I just want my life back. Because there are other people have to consider before burning all my bridges with them

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I will send an email, as a humane customer, to their customer service email asking a clarification about their policy in this regard. I urge all people on HN also to bombard them with queries regarding such shitty practices they follow.

A thing to learn: Never, ever base anything big on a big player, be it Amazon, Google, or anyone else. They can screw you at any time with or without a valid reason.

Another lesson: All (especially not very big) companies relying on cloud must remember that AWS, GCE, Azure may sound very good, but they can screw your businesses at any time with or without a valid reason. VPS or on-prem should not be discarded without due deliberation.

Edit: removed a bit of a rant.

<comment><USER59> > Never, ever base anything big on a big player, be it Amazon, Google, or > anyone else.

It's certainly great advice - but for many this isn't really a reality. Even in this case, you could argue that OP could sell on other platforms (and maybe they could), but that will depend on the product and whether they need fulfillment and such.

I think more practical advice is:

a) If you rely on any given service for a substantial or majority of your income, try your damndest to build contact(s) at that platform so you have a human with a relationship to turn to when something goes sideways. At Amazon this is much easier if you're their direct customer (AWS) than a seller, though.

b) Have a contingency plan or put a focus on building savings (if it's a case like this) to fall back on while determining next steps. That could mean money for getting legal help, starting new business, etc.

<comment><USER42> Thank you for the advice.</comment></comment></comment>


Deconstructing the base Mac Pro: Why is it so expensive? - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/deconstructing-the-base-mac-pro-why-is-it-so-expensive <comment><USER2> It is prejudice, pure and simple. You can get an equivalent machine from Dell for half the price. Trouble is that many people seem to think using Windows is like putting their hand in a toilet.

It is a strange thing. In terms of ordinary people, Windows rules supreme. But in a certain kind of company you only see macs. It is a good thing that my current laptop has a mini displayport cable because when I go to a startup accelerator they never have hdmi, full size displayport or anything other than Apple cables.</comment>


Show HN: Huxley 2 – .NET Core cross-platform GB rail live SOAP to JSON proxy - <AUTHOR> https://unop.uk/huxley-2-release/ <comment><AUTHOR> Huxley 2 is a CORS enabled cross-platform JSON ReST proxy for the GB NRE LDB WCF SOAP XML API (called Darwin). It supports both the Public Version (PV) and the Staff Version (SV). It's built with ASP.NET Core LTS, C# 8.0 and lots of abbreviations!

V2 is a reimplementation on ASP.NET Core, allowing Huxley to run on Windows, macOS and Linux. You can now use Huxley on any platform (pun intended)!

Demo server: [https://huxley2.azurewebsites.net/](https://huxley2.azurewebsites.net/)

No token needed e.g.: [https://huxley2.azurewebsites.net/all/old/1](https://huxley2.azurewebsites.net/all/old/1)

Source code (EUPL 1.2): [https://github.com/jpsingleton/Huxley2](https://github.com/jpsingleton/Huxley2)

Guide to set up an instance on Azure with Azure DevOps YAML pipelines: [https://unop.uk/huxley-2-release/](https://unop.uk/huxley-2-release/)</comment>


Personalized news aggregator. Useful to anyone? Solved my pain points - <AUTHOR> http://rang.la/

<comment><USER2> Using FB to personalize news for me is probably going to yield some pretty bad results.</comment>


Websocketd - <AUTHOR> http://websocketd.com/ <comment><USER2> This is the second or third "it's CGI again" thing I've seen in the past year. While these things are cool and definitely have their place, it's still worth noting that process per connection scales fairly poorly, simply because processes and forking are relatively expensive, and therefore it's _probably_ unwise to deploy something like this in production anymore. It is what it is, I suppose.

<comment><USER3> The myth that fork is expensive is pervasive, and speaking to the ways that it is true†, well: performance is relative.

fork() only takes around 8ms on my Linux machine and I can get 100,000 posix_spawn() per second there with 100MB RSS.

That's "fast enough" for a large number of applications.

†: fork() is a lot slower (over 20x) on Windows

<comment><USER4> 8ms per fork means you can only accept 125 connections per second. (per core)

That means it's only viable for connections where the connection is very long lived and messages are very sparse (because context switches).

<comment><USER5> If you use websocket for short lived connections, you are doing something wrong.

\--

Meta observation:

Maybe this is the bane of smartphone era and small screens, but the context of the discussion seems to disappear instantly.

Subject: websockets > forking processes > .. aaand the websocket context is lost and we are talking generally about forks in web applications with growing thread.

<comment><USER6> > If you use websocket for short lived connections, you are doing something > wrong.

Pretty-much true, but I remember a funny story from Dropbox where their websocket service couldn't come back up after a crash because their normal users trying to re-open super long lived connections all at once was well- beyond the capacity of the system

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't this have an impedance mismatch? Stdin/out are stream based. Websocket is message based. There is no guarantee you can transmit the content of a single WebSocket message inside a single os read or write call. Unless you expect that on both sides messages might be fragmented across multiple calls and callbacks. But I don't see the docs mentioning that.

<comment><USER8> Newlines. Each line written to STDOUT is sent as one frame, and each frame received is read from STDIN followed by a synthetic newline. The FAQ explains how to escape multiline messages (or binary data, presumably).

[https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd/wiki/FAQ#how-can- i-s...](https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd/wiki/FAQ#how-can-i-send- multiple-line-messages)

<comment><USER7> Ah thanks that makes sense. I didn't see it when I glimpsed over the site.

That should provides reliable framing on both sides. But as shown in the linked it page it also comes with the downside of not being able to send raw websocket messages which contain a new line - so it's not possible to port existing applications from other websocket servers to this one without having to change communication.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand why the daemon needs to client to escape newlines in the message. Can't it handle that before feeding the message to STDIN?

For example, my browser sends:

        This is line one...
        ...and this is line two

as a string ("This is line one...\n...and this is line two") and the websocketd receives that, and passes along

        This is line one...\\n...andthis is line two\n

to the STDIN.

It knows that the message is one thing, so the newlines aren't the same as the end of message, right?

It'd also be nice to use EOF as the indicator to flush STDOUT to the client, so the program can also emit newlines without needing to escape them first.

All that being said, this is nifty. I think I can use this for some low-volume ideas I have on an internal app. The newline handling isn't a problem because I'm not replacing anything that already exists.

<comment><USER10> > It'd also be nice to use EOF as the indicator to flush STDOUT to the client, > so the program can also emit newlines without needing to escape them first.

EOF is not an actual control code though (and is implementation dependent). However there are control codes for message framing e.g. ETB, ETX, EOT (often used as terminal EOF), FF (form feed / page break), RS/GS/FS

<comment><USER9> > EOF is not an actual control code though

You're right. I think I have to relearn that periodically :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good time to plug this utility, swiss army knife for websockets: [https://github.com/vi/websocat](https://github.com/vi/websocat)

Author is extremely nice as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> Websocketd is neat. It inspired me to make the websocket directive in Caddy: [https://caddyserver.com/docs/websocket](https://caddyserver.com/docs/websocket)

<comment><USER13> Aha! My first thought was "Why use this instead of Caddy's websocket support?"

Answer: Websocketd came first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looked simple enough, but I was curious about the threading example on [https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd/wiki/CPP-Input- Outpu...](https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd/wiki/CPP-Input-Output- Example)

The variable `count` appears to be incremented non-atomically from two different threads. Is that safe in C++?

<comment><USER15> It is unsafe. But it would be safe if these two lines were swapped:

        count++;
        pthread_mutex_lock(&m);

since the reader already holds the mutex while reading `count`.

<comment><USER16> Do a PR or equivalent?

<comment><USER17> Friendly reminder that not everyone is in a position where they can create pull requests against random projects: they might not have time, or clearance from their company's legal department, or…

<comment><USER16> ???

Note it was a question. As you mention, not everyone can do so (etc).

<comment><USER17> The question looked like "why are aren't you making a PR for this".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Unpopular opinion: AWS lambda is basically equivalent to CGI. The web has come full circle.

<comment><USER19> It's closer to FCGI, since Lambda processes aren't restarted for each new request.

<comment><USER18> Question: why doesn't Amazon just use the standard FCGI interface, then?

<comment><USER19> Maybe they are; as far as I know, the protocol they use to communicate with the worker isn't specified, all they say is "implement a function with this signature, then import our SDK, and it will call your function". This gives them the flexibility to switch protocols at will, at the cost of having to implement these SDKs.

That said, building a FCGI "bridge" isn't hard, it's just that nobody cared enough to do it.

<comment><USER20> They have specified the lambda runtime. [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes- api.ht...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes-api.html)

Basically: your instance POSTS to an endpoint to get/reply to requests, one at a time.

I can't wait until you can specify that a lambda instance can handle a certain # of requests in parallel. Ex: things just blocked on IO/DB. That would make better use of your RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> i've been using this in production to stream logs to a web console (~2,000 sets of logs distributed across 4 server with about 350 active connections at a time) and have never had any issues

<comment><USER22> How do you know that you haven't had any issues?

<comment><USER23> Usually you notice issues by the server locking up, the clients reporting problems, or messages being missing from the log (which you tend to notice when you search for specific things in the logs).

<comment><USER22> So how do you know that you're not just getting 80% of "log entry X" just because you get hits for them every now and then?

<comment><USER23> Logging is usually pretty deterministic.

A request might generate log entries a, b1, c or a, b2, c, depending on some conditions. The exact contents vary by request (otherwise there would be no need to log them), but the type is always the same.

If you find logs for c without either b1/b2 or a, you know log entries went missing.

If you have a 20% miss rate with recording your log entries, and you analyze just 20 log entries, the chance that one of them is missing is already around 98.8%.

If you actually use your logs for anything, it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly when they are incomplete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you really wanted to follow UNIX philosophy, why not build atop xinetd?

for example... simply accept stdin and stdout as I/O streams by default, but don't provide a network mechanism.

<comment><USER10> You can put websocketd behind xinetd. xinetd doesn't talk websocket, so you still need to "provide a network mechanism" to bridge the incoming connection and the client's streams.

<comment><USER25> > xinetd doesn't talk websocket

Why not extend xinetd so that it can interact with websockets?

<comment><USER10> Because the point of xinetd is to spawn other daemons on socket activations. xinetd handling stuff itself is the exception not the rule (5 service are internally provided, none of which you want to run: RFC 862 "echo", RFC 863 "Discard", RFC 864 "CHARGEN", RFC 867 "daytime" and RFC 868 "time").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, all of the same sorts of scaling problems as inetd?

<comment><USER27> Well, unless it's doing something exceedingly clever, it looks like it will be launching one process per connection.

For communication servers, this could prove a challenge – you'll probably want to use some kind of pub-sub architecture. By the time you've gone down that road, you could've gone down one of the more robust paths.

Still, this looks great for smaller apps. And, it seems a great way to prototype – especially if your favourite language doesn't have great websocket support.

<comment><USER26> > Still, this looks great for smaller apps. And, it seems a great way to > prototype – especially if your favourite language doesn't have great > websocket support.

Totally agree. inetd is a pretty good model, it just falls down in the face of thousands of slow, low-computational effort connections tying up gigabytes of RAM. That and most schedulers seem to struggle with that number of threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wondering if it would be more "unixy" to use sock files [1] ? I think some WSGI servers such as Gunicorn [2] support said functionality. I do think there is a place for websocketd provided you do not use tools like WSGI servers already.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_domain_socket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_domain_socket)

2: [http://docs.gunicorn.org/en/stable/deploy.html?highlight=soc...](http://docs.gunicorn.org/en/stable/deploy.html?highlight=sock)

</comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of a little project I did a while back, but instead reading from stdin like netcat

[https://github.com/bwasti/webpipe](https://github.com/bwasti/webpipe)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is really useful for building one of utility websites. I used this in one of my previous companies to tail the logs on our little QA server and push them via websocktd to an internal web page.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd be interested to know if anybody has used this in production. I've used Websocketd for quick and dirty prototyping and making things like in-browser monitoring tools and it was very fast to setup, but a full-fledged library like Gorilla or uWebsockets seems more practical for real-world applications with thousands or more simultaneous users.

</comment><comment><USER32> Could this then be used to replace node and this type of mess? [https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg/blob/master/websocket- re...](https://github.com/phoboslab/jsmpeg/blob/master/websocket-relay.js)

<comment><USER33> Code looks reasonable.....

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've built similar tool, but for HTTP at [https://github.com/ostrolucky/stdinho](https://github.com/ostrolucky/stdinho)

</comment><comment><USER35> FYI, the page needs a viewport tag in the head to display properly on mobile: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/>

</comment><comment><USER36> The unix philosophy is massively overrated because processes are unwieldy in practice, and support only weak notions of composition even in theory.

</comment><comment><USER37> is it me, or does the site look really similar to letsencrypt.org? I looked on both sites and neither say they're using a template.

<comment><USER38> FWIW the css template is just some bootstrap stuff, and this for the syntax highlighter in the code snippets: /* [http://prismjs.com/download.html?themes=prism- twilight&langu...](http://prismjs.com/download.html?themes=prism- twilight&languages=clike+javascript+bash+c+csharp+go+java+php+python+ruby+swift) _/ /_* * prism.js Twilight theme * Based (more or less) on the Twilight theme originally of Textmate fame. * @author Remy Bach */

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Seems useful! Remind me of pushpin.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does anyone have any experience using websockets in a serverless architecture?

</comment><comment><USER41> >Avoid threading headaches

>Each inbound WebSocket connection runs your program in a dedicated process.

Not the best design decision

<comment><USER19> The quality of the design depends on the goals. For simplicity, seems like a great decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> what if you need two clients to connect to the same process

</comment><comment><USER43> Or just use cowboy which is written is in erlang and will scale better.

<comment><USER44> Is there any other benefit than scaling better? Because I'm pretty sure 99.9% of projects never hit the "need to scale more" part, and if they did it doesn't seem like this would be too difficult to move off of

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> How do posts like this end up at #2 on the front page with just one comment? Websocketd doesn't strike me as an particularly popular or well known tool.

<comment><USER46> Well if it was popular or well known why would it be news-worthy?

<comment><USER47> Indeed. Discovering interesting new things is one of the main purposes of HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> CGI 20 years later? can somebody explain what they mean by this

edit: okay this is pretty cool, what use cases is there?

</comment><comment><USER49> So kind of like CGI. Okay.

<comment><USER50> That's what they say on their site: "It's like CGI, twenty years later, for WebSockets"

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ok I know the software-today-is-so-bloated trope is overplayed but... "the UNIX way"?

The compiled Linux x86_64 binary is 7 megabytes. All of System V combined was not that big.

<comment><USER27> > Written in Go

I have a fairly simple web-app written in go – no websockets, just net/http. I just checked and the binary size is 6.8 megabytes.

There's a lot in there. For starters, there's the go runtime. Then there's the HTTP server.

I suspect there may be ways to improve on the binary size if it mattered so much. xz gets it down to 2.1MB, suggesting there's some redundancy in there.

<comment><USER52> You can cut your binary size almost in half on Linux by removing debug information and symbols with:

`go build -ldflags="-s -w"`

<comment><USER53> I thought it was dangerous to use `strip` on any go binaries, because it would result in an incorrect program. LDFlags might cause something else but isn't it the same concept?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > Each inbound WebSocket connection runs your program in a dedicated process. > Connections are isolated by process.

I see you and 10,900 other "software developers" get the point of WebSocket. It's especially "impressive" when you written the whole thing in Go and could have used goroutines and channels, which could easily handle hundreds of thousand of connections (maybe millions). Terrible design!

For a long time I thought every software developer must be smart, but a lot of them don't see the big picture very often.

Why this bothers me so much? You created something that a lot of developers think is good enough, so less innovation will happen and more and more slow websites will appear because of tech like this...

<comment><USER55> There are definitely use cases for this, for instance you might have some command line application that uses standard io. Sure it might be adapted to have support for web sockets natively, but this of course takes time. And as the old adage goes time is money.

And sure you might be upset by "slow" websites, but for the small consultancy productising their scripts, it might make them - dare I say it, a quick buck. In the end the invisible hand of the market decides how much money is invested making websites fast and that is what guides the design of the technology being developed.

Perhaps it is you who fail to see the big picture.</comment></comment>