It Just Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.danielandrews.com/2015/08/05/it-just-works/ <comment><USER3> Major Apple applications have become inscrutable and frustrating.

\- iTunes, Music and the iTunes store are a mess. I understood the old iTunes organization. Navigation within my music collection has become highly non- intuitive. It seems that there are multiple paradigms (long list of tracks, and another sectioned off by album), and it isn't always clear why one or the other is used. I keep forgetting how to get to the store. Once there, the integration with the stuff I've bought is unclear (especially for video content). I once got extremely confused watching a series, not realizing that one particular view of the episodes were ordered by POPULARITY, not in chronological order. And ratings! I get the 0-5 star rating system. Then they added the heart icon for -- uhh -- something. Why not just use the existing rating system? Why do I have to rate things again for a different purpose?

\- Podcasts have become very confusing. I want to be able to control what is physically present on my devices, to control data usage on my phone, and space usage on all devices. They've intentionally made that difficult.

\- Photos is a disaster. There are many different organization paradigms, and it is unclear why some of my recent photos appear in some of them but not others. What are the differences among events and photo stream? Why do some pictures show up in the by-date organization but not photo stream? What's in the cloud? When does it sync with my phone? Why is it easy to sync with my phone by cable but not IP?

If current trends continue, my beautiful Mac hardware will be nothing but a boot loader for VMWare and Linux.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with you on Photos. Everything about it is overly complicated. It should be a simple as take photo, it's on my phone, automatically added to my computer and in the cloud. Edit/delete anywhere. At least they got rid of the Camera Roll.

If I do plug my iPhone into the computer, I should be able to drag and drop photos from my phone through Finder. No application needed. I miss the old iPod Classic and it's external hard drive functions.

<comment><USER5> "If I do plug my iPhone into the computer, I should be able to drag and drop..."

This may sound petty, but this is the biggest reason I don't use an iPhone. Smartphones are more than consumption devices. They are tiny computers and I want the flexibility of using a tiny computer.

<comment><USER6> Not at all petty. This and being forced to use iTunes are my primary reason for disliking iPhones.

Having said that, my Android phone is rooted, so there's probably an argument that I could have an iPhone and root it to achieve what I want.

<comment><USER7> Not disagreeing that it's horrible, but you don't actually need to use iTunes to use an iPhone. I can't remember the last time I opened iTunes.

iTunes Match worked great for me, but now Spotify has all but replaced any dependence I have on Apple for music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's really frustrating for me just how many bugs Apple software has. Let's look at a simple one - the icons on iOS safari for frequently visited websites. They "randomly" assign the wrong favicon e.g. I click the Facebook icon and it loads Hacker News. This has been present since iOS 8. Yesterday I pulled down the notification screen and it occupies only 50% of my screen. Cue another reboot of the iPhone.

My iMac. Upgrading to Yosemite was the worst mistake ever. Now I have to use a cheap mouse and keyboard, as Apple's Bluetooth versions no longer wake the sleeping iMac. I have tried every solution on the Internet to this and none fix it. The beachball is becoming ever more prominent on the iMac too. Very disappointing for a machine which isn't 3 years old.

My Macbook Air. It's better, but the power button no longer does anything when I press it.

Apple products have a huge premium and the quality of the software is not matching the price tag. I am not surprised to see the stock falling; usually when IBM buy your products en masse you know something is wrong :)

I don't know what the culture at Apple is. But I don't think their software developers can be anything other than the "norm" \- and I am extremely worried about their automated testing culture. Maybe someone can comment.

EDIT: I just remembered my Apple Cr*p folder home to Podcasts, Tips, Apple Watch, Calendar, Health, Apple Store, Apple Maps, Videos, Reminders and Newstand. Podcasts actually cost me money when it started downloaded podcasts over 3G despite me saying wifi only. I think that bug got fixed, but I'll never trust it again. I also forgot about the white elephant that is the Apple Time capsule I purchased. It's slow over wifi from the iMac and was one of the causes of my beachball, but the main issue was it kept saying it couldn't back up because the disk was locked. For a company like Apple who should supposedly simplify backup, the product is a shambles. Maybe this is better now, but I won't be upgrading.

<comment><USER9> > My Macbook Air. It's better, but the power button no longer does anything > when I press it.

Press and hold. It's this way to prevent accidental logouts which were frequent in my case when it was just a press.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. That's something that would have been really helpful to see a note on. It changed the behavior of a button that's been consistent for as long as I can remember.

<comment><USER11> It happened when the moved the button onto the keyboard. People kept hitting it by mistake and sleeping their machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing about saying "it just works" and attempting to hide everything from the user is that it is really, really frustrating when it doesn't "just work".

The amount of hardware and software bugs I've encountered in Apple products has been steadily increasing, to the point where I'm really only happy with my iPhone (and even that has some problems) -

\- Connecting a wired keyboard to a Thunderbolt display that is connected to my MBP rarely worked after disconnecting/reconnecting my MBP. I'd have to change which USB port the keyboard connected to - until discovering that this was a common problem that connecting a USB extender fixes. It just works?

\- We use Apple TVs in our conference rooms to connect our laptops to and project via a projector/tv. The Apple TVs routinely reboot, fail to connect, and drop connections. I've had my laptop lock up for several minutes trying to connect to one.

\- iMessage routinely gets into a state where it shows ghost notifications that I have to clear by deleting conversations one-by-one until I find out which one is causing it.

\- iMessage routinely reorders previous messages.

\- Safari randomly uses the wrong favicon for frequently visited websites.

And so many more. It is really disappointing that I'm not really that surprised when something doesn't work or feels clunky. At this point, I trust my Windows machine more than I do my Mac.

</comment><comment><USER13> "...In my opinion, Yosemite is the worst non-beta Mac OS release I've ever used – and I've used everything other than the public betas of 10.0 ..."

???

Personally I find Yosemite AND Windows 10 to be wanting in most every respect. But I think there is a bit of a tendency to view the past through rose colored glasses.

There is no way that Yosemite is worse than 10.0 or 10.1. I know I'm going to date myself a bit here... but 10.1 on that Titanium powerbook, that sagged like rubber if you held it from one end by the way, had to be the single worst computing experience of my life. That INCLUDES waiting for time on the mainframe, punchcards in hand, in the basement of the computer science building at the University of Wisconsin.

"... While I didn't run into any data loss issues or anything particularly catastrophic..."

That right there should tell you it's better than early OSX. Thank who- or whatever you deem divine for Perforce... because I once lost an entire Solaris build of the Photoshop engine to early OSX. And it waited until I had fixed quite a few bugs to make the engine work on BSD before it crapped on me too.

AWESOME times!!! No actually it SUCKED!!!

Maybe I'm just being harsh on 10.0 and 10.1, or maybe harsh on Titanium powerbooks??? I don't know. Maybe other people were not as annoyed as I was with the crashes and slowness. But it was BAD!!! HORRIBLE actually. I think Vista was a sack of crap... but even Vista gave a better experience than the early OSX versions. Though Vista and early OSX probably are neck and neck for worst desktop OS experiences to date.

I don't know... I could be wrong. I mean... I also think Windows XP has probably delivered mankind the BEST desktop OS experience to date. So what do I know ???

Anyway... Yosemite is bad... but for those too young to remember... BELIEVE me when I say... early OSX was FAR, far worse.

<comment><USER14> > early OSX was FAR, far worse.

Not all of them though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why the hacker scene these days is full of proud OSX users. What happened to the proud Linux hackers we've always had? They told me to use OSX at the job I recently started, and I only lasted a week before I told them I wanted to install Linux.

<comment><USER16> Part of the 'pride' behind being a Linux hacker came from heavily customizing, breaking, fixing, and generally maintaining your dev kit. I have a friend who's taken on a motorcycle rebuild project and I can see a lot of analogs there.

For me, personally, I realized that having a system which I can take from zero to 'dev ready' in less than an afternoon (which I did recently with a freshly shipped MacBook) is the main 'feature' I want from my dev software stack. I don't love all of OS X's defaults, but I customize very few things.

The bigger issue for me, though, is hardware. I know this varies dramatically from developer to developer, but weight, size, battery life, and display quality (in roughly that order) are my primary concerns with laptop hardware. I recently switched my work laptop from a Chromebook Pixel (first gen) to an 11" MacBook Air and I've been _thrilled_ with the change. That said, the leap in display quality and general machine 'feel' from the Air to the MacBook I use for personal developer is almost as big, for me, as the leap from the Pixel to the Air. Apple builds hardware that feels 'right' to me in a way that other manufacturers that I've encountered don't.

So, I can't speak for others, but there's why I'm a proud OS X user instead of a proud Linux user.

<comment><USER15> The hardware is very nice. I'm typing this into a Macbook running Arch Linux. However, I don't know if it's fair to say you can't get up and running in an afternoon these days, even if you have a heavily customized system like I do ([https://sr.ht/-77r.png](https://sr.ht/-77r.png)). I expect that the sort of people who invest heavily in making their Linux setup their own are people who have the hardest time with OS X - everything just felt wrong for me, and it was very difficult to use because of this.

<comment><USER16> Personal preferences will naturally remain personal. There were a bunch of things that felt unfamiliar to me on OS X, but few that felt 'wrong'. Then again, I made the switch back in 2005 or so to a PowerBook G4. Linux was a very different beast then, and just having it run on a laptop was a bit of an effort. Expecting decent battery life (or all of your hardware to be functional) was more or less out of the question.

Another factor is that there a bunch of things people want/expect from a window manager that I never took advantage of, the biggest two being virtual desktops and focus-follows-mouse. I imagine if I had a strong dependency on either of those, the switch to a Mac would've been considerably more painful. On the other hand, features like Expose felt very natural to me (and at the time Linux equivalents were... poor).

These days my life consists almost entirely of running full-screen apps and trackpad swiping between them, which would probably drive most X11 users batty :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I dunno. I've never experienced any of the problems described in the post. Always kind of dangerous to extrapolate from n=1. It also feels somewhat myopic to claim that people don't like apps like Notes or Calendar because there's more featureful alternatives. The point of stock apps isn't to please the power user.

<comment><USER18> Dismissing bug reports because "it works on my machine" is also a kind of dangerous extrapolation, especially with the near-certainty that any large piece of software has bugs.

<comment><USER17> Not dismissing anything, just pointing out that the author's standard of evidence is somewhat lacking.

<comment><USER19> You don't have to look far for the evidence. For any issue you can normally find several huge forum posts on the apple support forums (with no helpful responses from Apple).

<comment><USER20> All software has bugs. Apple software has a giant audience and the Internet can magnify an issue that affects a small number of users to make it seem as though it's a giant problem.

If a problem affects 5,000 users it's easy for it to appear as if it's a huge issue when it in fact is affecting a tiny % of the user base. Not that bugs should be ignored, but an active forum posting is not evidence that there is a major issue.

<comment><USER21> Dude, there are Bluetooth mice that are incompatible with current versions of OS X.

Let that sink in.

Apple screwed up their Bluetooth stack _so_ badly that it is incompatible with a mouse. Something which has been in the Bluetooth standard _forever_. Something which is _solely_ dependent upon their software because they use the same chip as everybody else.

That is beyond a bug. That's _contempt_ for the end user.

<comment><USER20> Almost all Bluetooth mice are compatible with current versions of OS X. Apple does support the human interface device standards.

You have found a mouse that doesn't implement the Bluetooth spec properly. _That_ is contempt for the end user.

Let that sink in.

<comment><USER21> > You have found a mouse that doesn't implement the Bluetooth spec properly. > That is contempt for the end user.

The mice I have work _perfectly_ with all incarnations of Windows I have (XP, 7, and 8) and OS X version 10.6 (don't have access to 10.7 and 10.8 anymore).

So, which is more likely, those mice _all_ implemented the Bluetooth spec wrong yet still managed to work, or Apple screwed up their stack?

<comment><USER20> It's entirely possible that a mouse can have a noncompliant implementation and happen to work with a relaxed implementation of the host. Perhaps Apple made their stack more compliant.

If your logic were correct then all Bluetooth mice would have stopped working. They haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been watching apple's software quality decrease over the past few years with increasing disappointment . It still astounds me that their test suites haven't caught the multitude of issues i've seen before shipping.

It makes me wonder if Apple actually uses their own products. Don't even get me started on the Remote app...

</comment><comment><USER23> "It just works" is a tricky promise to make good on. Microsoft never made this promise and nor does Google.

As a Google fan I accept a certain amount of flakiness as part of the brand identity. It's always celebrated a quirky, rough feel. In some ways, Google is starting to get TOO slick.

People expect Apple to be innovative and reliable; too push the boundaries without ever falling over them. It's hard to do either consistently, successfully, at scale. It might be impossible to do both.

<comment><USER24> > As a Google fan I accept a certain amount of flakiness as part of the brand > identity

I agree with you however I feel like they've been trying to shrug that off and grow up and that's left me a little underwhelmed.

I got two thirds of the way through that article and realized that the way he felt about Apple was how I felt about Google. They keep thrusting crap upon us that no one asked for, remove stuff we do like, or neglect things until people abandon them.

Meanwhile Microsoft has been dramatically stepping up it's game but everyone still looks at them like the Catholic Priest that molested them as a child.

<comment><USER25> Thats a great Microsoft analogy there! Spot on

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's certainly the case that OSX, at least, has gotten flaky as heck, but at the same time: What's the competition?

While Apple was releasing Yosemite, Microsoft was going down the Windows 8 rabbit-hole, releasing the worst version of Windows since ME. And while desktop Linux has been getting better over time, I don't think anyone would say that it "Just Works" yet.

The only desktop/laptop OS that actually does "Just Work" is ChromeOS; and while that's a wonderful experience for its use cases, there are still plenty of situations that it's not great for.

<comment><USER27> I've suggested ChromeOS to family members that use facebook, email, and limited spreadsheets. Ultimately, I backtracked when they asked about printing. Telling them they have to buy a new printer that's Cloud Print compatible is a tough sell, especially if they've purchased one within the last year.

I have found that Chrome Boxes are excellent machines for demoing web products at tradeshows. Cheap, relatively hardened, fast enough, and sync bookmarks and settings.

<comment><USER28> You can actually setup any machine as a Cloud Print server (i.e. publishing its own printers as Cloud Print capable printers) so long as it can run Chrome or Chromium. Even a Raspberry Pi will do the trick: [http://www.howtogeek.com/169566/how-to-turn-a-raspberry- pi-i...](http://www.howtogeek.com/169566/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-a- google-cloud-print-server/)

<comment><USER27> You can run a bridge, but then it's another machine to set up and maintain. How are security and Chrome updates handled? A cron job? What if that fails? Suddenly the simple Chromebook is more complex.

I wouldn't mind running that hack myself, but there's no way I'd drop it on someone who couldn't debug if something went wrong.

<comment><USER28> > but there's no way I'd drop it on someone who couldn't debug if something > went wrong.

One approach I've done to make things more debuggable (not for this specific setup, but for Unix-running home servers in general) is to SSH in (I used to - with the user's permission, of course - setup forwarding of port 22 on the user's router/gateway/etc., but nowadays I usually setup a remote tunneling script that the user can kickoff somehow). I also tend to build systems that run for months - if not years - without any maintenance, so there's that, too :)

Still doesn't address the "another machine to set up and maintain" issue, but if I did my job right, it would be as inconspicuous as a wall clock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I got into Apple in 2006, loved the ride up to Snow Leopard. Then things got weird. UI choices that made little sense. Hardware bugs that were impossible to diagnose or fix. Like my parents Mac Mini that would show snow on the display after it went to sleep. Try troubleshooting that remotely. My work rMBP has some similar issues where my monitor just goes green. And then it also has a SystemUI freeze for upwards of 30 seconds that is completely impossible to fix. DiscoveryD, oh god why.

Apple just doesn't seem as focused on a main goal of shipping stable and perfect solutions. The "me too!" attitude shows it.

Oh and lets not forget when they ship iWork with missing features and then slowly add them back over time...

<comment><USER30> I am a HUGE Apple Hater so take this as it be.

I have always had issues with stability with Apple's OS. Everyone else always said I was crazy but I have dozens of people see me repeat the crash over and over again doing simple one or two step processes. Start with Apple OS 7 up to just yesterday when Adobe Photoshop crashed every time I switch the color palate to 2 color.

<comment><USER14> > Adobe Photoshop crashed every time I switch the color palate to 2 color.

You can probably blame Adobe for that. In their infinite wisdom they implemented their own window management system for their products on OS X.

<comment><USER30> Well you can blame 95% of Windows problems the same way.

Don't blame Microsoft vendor A implemented it their own way ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Excellent article.

I too find myself looking at ways I can reduce my reliance on Apple these days. For me it's getting burnt with Aperture, discoveryd causing all my Airplay speakers to constantly act up, $1000 Thunderbolt displays flickering on my $6000 Mac Pro as well as parts of my iTunes library getting spoilt by the new Apple Music stuff. List goes on, but Daniel is right, I just don't really have much (if any) faith in Apple when it comes to my data.

I think that this erosion of trust will take years to rebuild. The sad thing is that Apple in the mid 90s had a similar rep for flaky products and Tim Cook was widely credited for tightening ops to improve product manufacture, quality and reliability.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yes, I've also noticed an increasing number of software bugs on my Macs. FWIW, I wanted to try out the Dell XPS "Developer Edition," which appears to be about as close as you can get to a Macbook level build quality in a linux box (without having to jump though the hoops of installing linux on a macbook itself), and you simply can't order it from Dell's website. A chat with a rep suggested that it's out of stock.

So, I think Apple is creating market opportunity -- a high quality linux based laptop aimed at developers that, like the Mac, doesn't require constant fiddling or kernel rebuilds to get working.

<comment><USER33> Any knowledge or experience of System 76 laptop computers as Linux machines?

<comment><USER34> I purchased a system 76 Gazelle laptop, and it's a pretty reliable . Wifi, audio and dual monitors worked out of the box, but it has trouble with 3 monitors(includes laptop screen) My main complaint is the battery life.(This is probably a linux issue) At best I get 2.5 hours, which needs serious improvements.

However, so many things on linux lack polish, crash at random times, or have UI problems. Apple would have to screw up a lot more to get anywhere near the disaster of desktop linux,

<comment><USER35> >However, so many things on linux lack polish, crash at random times, or have UI problems. Apple would have to screw up a lot more to get anywhere near the disaster of desktop linux,

This is just not true at all. Apple is way more buggy in all those areas for me. I use fedora with GNOME and haven't had one single problem. My grandparents even use it. If I bought them a mac I'd have to fix it every time I come over, with Linux I don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A very interesting article. I'm not part of the Apple ecosystem so I have no way to judge its veracity, but in my experience this is a feeling common to quite a lot of users regardless of product or manufacturer.

Is this driven by competition? complacency? capriciousness? I've no idea.

<comment><USER37> Loss of focus and feature creep. They've became an engineering company (as opposed to an "appliances" company, I guess). This, of course, IMO.

<comment><USER36> > Loss of focus and feature creep

My point is though that I've heard this sentiment from Google customers, Microsoft customers etc. In fact to me it seems that I can only think of a few examples of software that seems to consistently improve in people's opinions.

Is there something fundamentally broken in how we develop and produce software as an industry? Is there a reporting bias? It's probably a combination of both with many other unseen factors IMO.

<comment><USER38> I think the difference is Google or Microsoft never promised "it just works". Apple on the other hand used to "just work", at least before Steve Jobs passed. Nowadays the contrast is too huge that people notice it more. As an analogy, people just shrug when McDonald's releases another unhealthy (but affordable) menu, but if a chef who used to get New York Times 5 star reviews starts cooking shitty food and screwing his customers and not care much because he still gets lots of customers based on his existing reputation, then people start hating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> _" Like every tech company nowadays, Apple wants to do it all."_

I'd say that Apple has _always_ wanted to do it all. They've always built the OS + the hardware + the software. Arguably, it's that "end to end design" that's helped them achieve their success.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've been increasingly feeling the same way, especially about OS X, but what's the alternative for a developer-friendly desktop operating system that looks and works beautifully (almost) out of the box?

<comment><USER41> Linux Mint is working for me pretty well for the past 1 year. Check it out.

<comment> at-fates-hands I would second Mint.

I made the switch a while back and am in the process of dumping Windows altogether so I can do all my development with Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As an Android, linux, and Windows user...I've been having the most outrageous time getting anything to work as expected with my girlfriend's iPhones. Issues, upon issues, upon issues of how services or software is expected to work...yet never having desired results.

A few days ago, I held her iPhone 6 for the first time since she got it a month or two ago. I felt like I was holding the greatest piece of mobile technology in existence, except I knew it ran iOS and only iOS.

</comment><comment><USER43> 1\. I'm still on 10.9. Still have not moved over to Yosemite. Mavericks runs smooth for me.

2\. It is 2015 and iTunes/iPhone syncing is still the absolute worst. I just want to add a couple of albums to my iPhone, why do I need to connect over a cable (wifi syncing almost never works for me) and why do I need to wait more than 5 minutes? I don't want to sync my entire phone again! (If you know how to not have iTunes do this, please tell me. It is the worst).

<comment><USER44> I too am on 10.9 and it feels great. I used to use 10.10 and it was crashing when I did VNC. Now it's stable as a rock. It was very difficult to downgrade, because Apple cut almost all the ways. Fortunately, my laptop originally shipped with 10.9 and I was allowed a web download of the OS from the boot loader.

On a tangent note, I am frustrated with the slowness of Chrome, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think Apple software is generally good but occasionally buggy, especially close to release. Apple's iOS-era policy of free updates every year has just subjected more people to these bugs more often.

</comment><comment><USER46> I dunno, I just don't use Apple produced software on my Mac for the most part and the experience is mostly fine. I use Windows at home and Mac for work, so I probably spend a bit more time on my work Mac.

I loath finder with a passion that would reduce stars to quarks, but that's just because its poorly designed, not particularly buggy. And outside of the OS, that's pretty much all the Apple software I tend to use on a day-to-day basis. I learned a long time ago to just stop trying to make their software work, and I don't know why people keep returning to it after years of dealing with increasingly bad software. Just avoid it.

My day pretty much consists of Chrome, iterm2, MS-Office and a handful of other apps, and things work mostly fine. I could probably have an absolutely equal day on a Windows laptop since most of what I use is cross-platform or has an equivalent.

My only real gripe is that I wish the screen animation and updating was more "snappy" like in windows. It always feels like it's just making the little graphics hamsters work a little extra hard to do things like scrolling quickly.

I think the larger point here is that the apps apple makes all have better replacements in their segment. I can kind of see that for a terminal application or whatever that's tossed in with the OS, but for other kinds of applications, ones you pay good money for, Apple really should be more neck- and-neck with the competition.

There's also really little excuse these days for the huge ecosystem of addons and patches that unfuck missing and broken core OS features. Bettertouchtool, for example, _shouldn 't_ actually need to exist. But there's something like half a dozen applications kind of like it, and zero support for what it does built in OS X. People don't really complain about it too much because once you install and set these little widgets up, you forget about them. But the user should _never_ have to install this stuff in the first place.

This seems to me like a combination of a lack of focus, lack of dedicated teams, lack of product ownership and vision, and lack of attention to detail in the _software development_ practice at Apple vs. the software design teams.

<comment><USER47> > My only real gripe is that I wish the screen animation and updating was more > "snappy" like in windows. It always feels like it's just making the little > graphics hamsters work a little extra hard to do things like scrolling > quickly.

on 10.8/9/10 You can change the mission-control animations speed with this tweak:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1

It's still kind of crap, doesn't perform well on 3+ displays, but faster.

The 10.11 beta noticeably improves animation speed / "feel" of animations around the whole OS, even on 3+ display systems with many windows open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> It never really "just worked". People have been complaining about, for example, iTunes, ever since it came out. Apple stuff always had a ton of annoyances. Perhaps the experience was more restricted before, or Jobs' pitch more convincing.

</comment><comment><USER49> Apple makes things that "do more" than their products of old, and we expect them to do more than devices past. The combination of features plus our expectation that all our devices be aware of what is happening on the others at all times is a recipe for a combinatorial explosion of unpredicted states, race conditions, you name it. I too miss the simplicity and "it just works" factor of past days. But it's a lot easier to pull that off with an iPod and a Mac, than iPhone + Mac + iPad + watch, etc.

They're the biggest company in the world and nobody needs to make excuses for them - I'm not saying "well, it's to be expected and it's not their fault." But I always think, who would be able to do this better than Apple? And I think the answer to that question reveals the depth of the situation we're in. As much as Apple screws up, could you imagine using a watch + phone + PC + tablet from some other vendor, and it being better? That's what _really_ sucks about now - Apple screws up _and_ they're the best we can hope for.

<comment><USER50> Yes, I use one of each of those from Google and they all work pretty well :).

<comment><USER49> Mm hmm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I got a Mac for my new job, and I gave it a few weeks, but ended up putting Parallels on it so I can use Ubuntu. I just don't like how Macs work, and don't like that I can't customize it (focus _follows_ the mouse, dammit!) like I can Linux.

There are a lot of things that 'just work' on Ubuntu (for me, at least), like git bash completion, that seem to require more fiddling on the Mac.

</comment><comment><USER52> Do you rely on Time Machine? Drop to the shell right now and try "tmutil compare -n" to see which files are not making it onto your backups. For me, Time Machine randomly ignores certain files, for no discernible reason. Files that have sat on my disk literally for years will never get backed up. It's happened to me on two different Macs, and I've lost data because of it.

<comment><USER53> I ran into the same issue. After a restore from my time machine backup, I discovered that some files where missing (with no apparent pattern). Fortunately, I had a non time machine backup, but pheew that was a close one...

<comment><USER52> I discovered it when visiting an old project after a whole OS wipe-and-restore from TM. A week later I found that 'git' wouldn't recognize a project dir due to some missing pieces. I had a 2nd TM drive, and was able to manually restore files.

For my other machine, no such luck. I had a 2nd backup offsite (Backblaze) but it was months before I noticed the damage, and so the old files were no longer available via the offsite. I think the worst part is not knowing what you've lost. I have thousands of music and photos on that machine, and every once in a while I come across something that's gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It seems clear Apple feels the same way given that El Capitan and iOS 9 are light on fancy new features. My hope is that both represent a "Snow Leopard" style polish release.

I know that dumping discoveryd has solved my WiFi/AirPlay/AirDrop issues so they seem to be listening.

</comment><comment><USER55> When it works, it is brilliant and seamless. On the other hand, there is not any redundancy, in the sense that if one piece of the equation (OS + the hardware + the software) is rubbish, it cannot be readily replaced by substitution (e.g. swapping Windows for Linux).

<comment><USER56> I dunno, Windows 7 runs brilliantly on my MacBook.

<comment><USER57> I have found that Windows tends to run faster than OSX itself does on the same Mac.

Hell, my 2008 Macbook can run the latest version of Windows 10 in 64 bit, but can't run the latest version of OSX. Win 10 runs snappy, while Lion (the last supported OS) is now a crufty pig on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> My first iPod had a scroll wheel. No matter what I was listening to, I could fast forward or reverse as much or little as I wanted. It was the first Apple- designed product I owned, and I learned why people loved Apple stuff.

My current iPod (Nano, a few generations old) has a touch screen with controls that vary based on what it thinks I'm doing. If I'm listening to a known podcast, I can swipe once and tap once to back up 30 seconds. I can't easily go forward. If I'm listening to a long track that it doesn't recognize as a podcast, the "back 30 seconds" isn't there.

I think the consistent, physical control was better than the inconsistent touchscreen control. But they don't sell it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER38> I switched to mac when when MS lost its mind and came up with Vista--it was unusable, so much so that switching cost to mac was lower than trying to get Windows to work. Nowadays the only reason I stay with Mac is because I make iOS apps and realize it will be annoying if I abandon Mac. Apple is no more in a "just works" business. It's in a lock-in business. I used to be delighted to download their new OS's, and I'm sure everyone used to too, but nowadays I NEVER download their new versions and try not to upgrade as much as possible, I've been burned too many times and lost so many hours of productivity because the upgrade fucked me up

<comment><USER59> > _Apple is no more in a "just works" business. It's in a lock-in business._

No such change has happened between 2007 (MS Vista time frame) and now. People familiar with Apple since 1980-something know very well that it's _always_ been about both of the above: just works for the end user, and a lock-in business.

If anything, it's less locked in now than it used to be, because of the use of Intel processors (that was a big shocker in the Mac world). You can get a bootleg OS/X image to run under VirtualBox. I have such an image running over top of Windows 7; I use it to compile and test OS/X binaries of a FOSS program that I developed.

In the 1980's I had a clone of an Apple II+ computer. Apple did their best in their operating system software to detect clones and try not to run on them. Clones were the illegal work of the devil, according to Apple. By contrast, the IBM PC's spawned a thriving clone market.

<comment><USER28> Whether lock-in has bettered or worsened depends on perspective. While OS X can be shoehorned to run on Hackintoshes and VMs now, I can't remember any time when it was virtually impossible to install a custom operating system on Apple hardware until the iPhone came out (and, eventually, when the iPhone 3GS closed up the bugs that allowed the bootloader's security checks to be cirvumvented; said bugs were the only way to install a custom OS - <USER2> Android - on an iPhone). As far as I know, the software on Apple's desktops and laptops has always been unrestricted (as I know firsthand; literally all my PowerPC Mac hardware runs OpenBSD nowadays).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The discoveryd fiasco was the biggest let down for me. Every single Macbook in the office suffered connectivity issues and it took them too long to go back to the old, perfectly fine state.

It's almost 20 years of internet ferociously consuming and producing digital music and pictures and no one has been able to improve upon what Winamp and Foobar2000 or a minimally organized photo folder delivered - Picasa worked quite well, but I guess, as google reader, being stable and functional is not enough.

How can a 600B dollar company sustain a buggy software like iTunes for so many years? Dreadful experiences include podcasts, album art, and even simple music organization! Apple Music... what makes you, the biggest digital music store in the world, release a cloud based product that thinks that a live version of a song is the same one as the album version?

It seems Apple is trying to make its user base - that helped it become the most world's most valuable company - user their version of every digital service/product possible but at the cost of lacking in the areas that made it thrive in the first place. Heck, even my last MBP had hardware issue (staingate)...

</comment><comment><USER61> > People lose their minds when Google services go down because it happens once > a year. When Apple services go down, people just shrug or write a blog post > like this.

Well hang on a minute, I thought people lose their minds when Google services go down because Google is a software company and their core products are online services. When Apple services go down, it isn't as noteworthy since Apple is a hardware (dare I say fashion?) company. But when Apple sells a cellphone that can get faraday-caged by your hand, that's when people freak out.

Now is that any excuse for Apple services to be broken as often as they are? Not at all, it projects a shoddy brand image. And when it's a service that is required to make the hardware function, users won't care which part of the "experience" is breaking.

Anyway, good writeup.

</comment><comment><USER62> My thesis: part of this feeling comes from the fact that more eyes are on the OS and the apps, but many issues existed before.

\- I have some complaints about OS X: wifi, bluetooth, etc.

\- I like iTunes as it is today (not considering the synchronization process)

\- I struggle with the weakened "iWorks" applications

</comment><comment><USER63> I dislike photos - like for my life I can't figure out how to delete a photo.

Itunes is a huge mess. Creating a playlist with apple music is just difficult. I have to add it to my playlist then go to my my music and create a playlist there? weird.

Podcasts I giveup.

I understand this guys gripe. I have to say this though to me things aren't great anywhere. I've lost data on google drive, and messages on gmail. Adobe Cloud is so problematic to me I get extremely frustrated that i have to have 4 versions of illustrator installed to use the features and export to SVG like we all need. I think somewhere with everyone implementing AGILE the question of quality being important has been forgotten in the rush to push releases often.

</comment><comment><USER64> Consistently delivering high quality software features is impossible. Even great teams mess up every once in a while. The way apple used to get around that was to throw things away, or to send them back to the drawing board. There was someone at the top who detected when things weren't ready, and prevented them from getting released or dared teams to do better, even at great cost. In the jobs era there were many things which were rumored to ship and cut at the last moment. Apple has stopped not shipping things, and it's what will turn them into just another software company.

<comment><USER65> They've forgotten how to say "No."

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm frustrated with Apple when it comes to services. Don't misunderstand me: I love their hardware. I love OS X. It's the best computing experience since my C64 days.

But when it comes to services I tend to avoid them as much as I can. Latest example: Apple music.

I was a little annoyed by Spotify's continuously disappearing music tracks so I was eager to try out iTunes Music. But the problems started when I tried to get into the trial: You need a valid* credit card.

Now valid is a pretty interesting definition because I'm from Germany, currently living in Germany but my banking is done via a Dutch bank (back from when I lived there). So my credit card is dutch. And I live in Germany. But it's the EU so it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Right. And no one has ever raised an eyebrow when I used a credit card that has been issued by a Dutch bank with my German address (not even the online poker websites I frequent from time to time). Not even once I had any problems with that. I'm paying my taxes in Germany via my Dutch bank account. The German tax office accepts it (they even issue transfers to that account). So if the German tax office (which still hasn't completely switched to electronic tax filing) can deal with that case then everyone on this planet should be able to. Well, expect for Apple. I just can not use that credit card with anything iTunes related. I get always an "invalid country error".

Now I'm in Germany, I'm from Germany, my iTunes account is a German iTunes account. But the fact that my credit card has been issued by a bank in a country that's just 20km from my current residence makes it invalid for Apple. A country that is part of the EU. It's like I wouldn't be able to use a credit card from California when I were living in Washington.

So I have to buy those pre-paid iTunes cards to top up my account. And so I had to add three months of pre-paid money to my iTunes account just to start the 3 months free trial.

Everything OK? Nope! I was too bold and I opted for a "family account". Now the most funny thing: Even though I am in the free trial period for the "family account" and I have enough money in my iTunes account to pay for the service I can't use the family sharing feature because for that I would need a valid credit card. iTunes just aborts with an "add a valid credit card" error when I try to configure family sharing.

It's like Kafka has risen from his grave and started a music streaming service.

/rant

<comment><USER25> That's strange I'm Dutch, living in Germany and don't have these issues with my Dutch Visa card. You do know you can change your country/App Store country? I can even hop between country store and use different visas per store.

<comment><USER66> Is your iTunes account maybe registered to your old Dutch address? Because the iTunes error I get (and the people on the Apple support line) tells me that I need a credit card for the country my iTunes acc is registered in.

>You do know you can change your country/App Store country?

Not that easily. (I'm not talking about clicking the flag in the iTunes store front but changing the personal data associated with the account). For that I need to contact Apple support. And then there's the issue that there are enough stories where people who frequently used their iTunes account from foreign countries got their account suspended. (Add a fake address in the Netherlands I would have to use and this is a risk I don't want to take).

/edit: That's the message I get: [http://i.imgur.com/IWfI8np.png](http://i.imgur.com/IWfI8np.png)

<comment><USER25> Right yes, but you dont need to contact Apple support, you can just change countries, after being logged in on Apple.com. I changed my account frequently because sometimes I had to pay things with my Dutch visa and other times with the German one. Been doing this for years. Also, it makes no sense for Apple to ban an account that a) does nothing illegal b) they allow these country changes c) are legit Visa card transactions that they make their profit on.

So all you're issues, are basically void, because it is possible, without contacting support. And after switching countries, a few minutes later it's activated. Give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> There's an easy way to explain all these artifacts: Apple no longer does things "as if they themselves are the user", or if they do then they've significantly lowered their standards.

</comment><comment><USER68> 1000x this. I've turned to dtrace twice in the past several weeks to find fixes for serious issues on other people's computers. One was a segfault at startup in iTunes caused by a corrupted cookie cache. The other one was a corrupted plist that prevented adding new exchange accounts or calendars to mail (with no indicators at all -- the new account would just hang indefinitely).

</comment><comment><USER69> This trend has been very apparent to me, starting a couple years after Steve Jobs passed. I waited until July 2015 to upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite because of all the bugs I kept hearing about.

</comment><comment><USER70> Boot times for my Macbook Pro have gotten really long since a recent upgrade to Mavericks. Went from ~3 seconds to ~30 seconds.

<comment><USER71> El Capitan does a lot to rectify that (at least in the beta so far).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It keeps on being strange that Steve, just one man, had so much influence on quality control. I find it mind boggling.

<comment><USER65> alternatively: his successor is lacking in passion, focus, and integrity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Why don't Apple just make a laptop that runs iOS?

Call it... iBook!</comment>


LTR  - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1137/

<comment><AUTHOR> I entered the title by copying & paste from my iPad. It seems that the Unicode character was carried over. Interesting!

</comment><comment><USER2> Funny! And coool trick. Wonder how long does it take for others to start hacking titles with that trick :)

Just for content: It's remarkable how some things like these are not tested routinely, since it's hard to tell for non-native speakers to find issues!

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like there should have been a better solution to RTL/LTR annotation. Stuff like this makes me wish that there would be some well-defined subset of Unicode which would be less pita to handle.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you inspect the title of the comic with Firebug it shows up as:

        <div id="ctitle"><vid/>RTL

Fun stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5>
        <style> * { text-replace: "\202e" ""; } </style>

Well, I _think_ that would work, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice way to draw attention, I was like "wtf...". Nice!</comment>


Self-Driving Ubers Appear in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/09/04/self-driving-ubers-san-francisco/ <comment><USER2> I can't wait to see these in Pittsburgh. If they can merge into traffic going into the Liberty Tunnels after a Pens game they can handle anything.

That being said, with the bulk of the reliable automation being on largely uninteresting well-labeled stretches of flat highway, doesn't it make sense to test these on long road-trips before we subject them to the volatile nature of city driving? I'd be interested in any insight into how engineers are tailoring these vehicles to their -at least by my standards- comparatively challenging urban testing grounds. Even if they've been trialed on road trips, this will be a very public and thus very decisive debut.

<comment><USER3> Well crash on a highway has a much higher death chance vs a crash in a city. So not entirely sure it's "safer" to do highways first.</comment></comment>


Young people are turning to classical music to escape 'noise of modern life' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/27/young-turn-to-classical-music-to-escape-scala-radio-station <comment><USER2> Although they project the surprise as that of others (not the authors), this piece does seem to get very close to a patronising view of young people, of the "gosh, they're not that stupid after all" style.</comment>


MongoDB vs. Amazon DocumentDB: MongoDB CTO Breaks It Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/documents-are-everywhere <comment><USER2> After the horrendous time I've had with "modern" MongoDB losing my data repeatedly through 2018, I will never touch it again. Postgres handles loss of power, full disks, kill -9 and numerous other edge cases just fine, while MongoDB proceeds to corrupt its data and not fail gracefully.

Even the redheaded stepchild of databases that is MSSQL goes into read only mode when you have a full disk, there is no excuse for Mongo corrupting itself when a disk is full.

<comment><USER3> Not a formal criticism because we didn't investigate too much into this, but just last week our dev db instance run out of disk and postgres did some really suspicious things. We confirmed that on multiple occasions queries returned with success (because we have logs of success) but the db writes weren't persisted. So the software assumed data was written and continued on happy path, leaving the db in a bad state. Luckily this was only a dev machine and trivial to recover from, and granted out of disk is a fatal problem, but we were still upset.

<comment><USER2> We've seen Postgres continue to operate like this until you run out of ram, not ideal IMO, but better than corrupting the existing database. Ideally Postgres would lift that whole "on full disk go read only" feature from MSSQL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would anyone back themselves into a corner with Mongo? Postgres has all relevant features, doesn't corrupt your data, and has the RDBMS features to fall back on when you need it.

</comment><comment><USER5> MongoDB is completely appropriate for your production data. Not _my_ production data--that stuff's important! But it's fine for yours...

</comment><comment><USER6> Always see posts with titles such as "Why We Moved From MongoDB to PostgreSQL" and rarely "Why We Moved From PostgreSQL to MongoDB". MongoDB is simply unreliable with data and struggles to scale. A few companies that have moved away from MongoDB: shippable, dzone, theguardian, olery, urban airship, bump, etsy, viber, shareaholic, videoamp, digidoc

1\. [http://blog.shippable.com/why-we-moved-from-nosql-mongodb- to...](http://blog.shippable.com/why-we-moved-from-nosql-mongodb-to- postgressql)

2\. [https://dzone.com/articles/why-we-moved-from-nosql- mongodb-t...](https://dzone.com/articles/why-we-moved-from-nosql-mongodb-to- postgresql)

3\. [https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/nov/30/bye-bye- mongo-h...](https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/nov/30/bye-bye-mongo-hello- postgres)

4\. [https://developer.olery.com/blog/goodbye-mongodb-hello- postg...](https://developer.olery.com/blog/goodbye-mongodb-hello-postgresql/)

5\. [https://blog.schmichael.com/2011/11/05/failing-with- mongodb/](https://blog.schmichael.com/2011/11/05/failing-with-mongodb/)

6\. [http://devblog.bu.mp/post/40786226011/from-mongodb-to- riak-7...](http://devblog.bu.mp/post/40786226011/from-mongodb-to-riak-7138)

7\. [https://mcfunley.com/why-mongodb-never-worked-out-at- etsy](https://mcfunley.com/why-mongodb-never-worked-out-at-etsy)

8\. [https://diginomica.com/2014/04/07/viber-migrates-mongodb- cou...](https://diginomica.com/2014/04/07/viber-migrates-mongodb-couchbase- halves-number-aws-servers/)

9\. [https://www.shareaholic.com/blog/migrating-to-riak-at- sharea...](https://www.shareaholic.com/blog/migrating-to-riak-at-shareaholic/)

10\. [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-we-switched-from-mongo- po...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-we-switched-from-mongo-postgres- dave-gullo)

11\. [https://blog.svs.io/why-i-migrated-away-from- mongodb/](https://blog.svs.io/why-i-migrated-away-from-mongodb/)

12\. [https://pastebin.com/raw/FD3xe6Jt](https://pastebin.com/raw/FD3xe6Jt)</comment>


Startup Mistakes: Choice of Datastore - <AUTHOR> https://www.stavros.io/posts/startup-mistakes-datastore/ <comment><USER3> Just pick _something_ and build an MVP with it. Then get on with the hard part of finding paying customers. You can fix the bad tech decisions later. Without customers it won't matter which database you used before your startup failed.

<comment><USER4> BIG ERROR.

Like, MONUMENTAL.

That _something_ (if chose very wrong) will totally derail you progress and will cost a lot of fix it later.

Is incredible. Nobody remember that the most cost effective way to fix a problem is in the early stages?

And, yes, the best overall primary datastore, like 90% of the cases, is a RDBMS. Very few actually need to use something else.

<comment><USER5> Yes and no.

Yes, choose carefully at the beginning, and use relational. More specifically, use Postgres.

But choose the right things to worry about at the beginning. So worry about something that can accommodate changing requirements, i.e., a relational database. Don't worry about scalability. You will be very, very lucky to ever have that problem. Worry about it then.

<comment><USER6> >something that can accommodate changing requirements, i.e., a relational database

Wouldn't NoSQL be better suited for this scenario? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER4> Exist the myth RDBMS are not flexible (because it have schemas). To the contrary, the relational model is very flexible, and allow to model everything you could want. Even model a NoSql :)

And the Relational model is fairly simple. You could learn anything you need in minutes and just remember in add a few index here and there. For the small amount of things you need to do, is incredible how many features a RDBMS give you for free (like transactions, some basic axioms, and a query engine).

\----

I don't remember the original quote, but is alike:

"Novices worry for code, Experts focus on data structures".

Properly chose your data-structures, schemas and data-layout will have a huge net impact in your code. That is why a well modeled database will perform well and allow to easily code against it.

This is the hard part, and most novices like to "defer" it.

In my times, we start designing the app first _on the DB layer_ , including the queries, reports, etc. Now most start with the front-end or back-end... Imaging the are focusing in the abstract logic (because some can't imagine the datastore is part of it!) and ignore or reject the concept of learn what are the datastore capabilities.

That is like ignoring the documentation about arrays, building a layer on top of it, rejecting the idea of use arrays as full, and then wondering why his code performs bad and re-creating, badly, what it already have.

\---

For fast prototypes, sqlite (stored in RAM) could be good. In the early stages I erase the DB in each run of the code (after the initial DB design, tweaking it). I continue to do that as far as possible, and only worry about migrations and all that when start shipping to customers.

Also, not be afraid of build several copies of the tables - like experiments- (customerA, customerB, etc), use views and peek on your DB documentation.

<comment><USER7> > I don't remember the original quote, but is alike: "Novices worry for code, > Experts focus on data structures".

The origin is Linus Torvalds on the Git mailing list. Here is a copy from LWN: [https://lwn.net/Articles/193245/](https://lwn.net/Articles/193245/)

The quote is ironic considering that Git uses a bespoke and not particularly well-designed key/value database, which has resulted in notorious usability problems in Git.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reason MongoDB is simultaneously lauded and derided is because there is a bimodal distribution of people using it: those who build databases for a living, and those who query them.

There is something to be said for being able to rapidly prototype ideas, especially if your primary skillset is jockeying JSON in the context of web/app development. However, deciding whether or not NoSQL is the right fit for you or your project/business depends on how much of your time you will be spending getting down and dirty with the database.

<comment><USER9> yes, yes, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So he used a database 7 years ago that was about one year old at the time and had a bad experience with it and now continues to judge it to this day without tracking the evolution since, including schemas in the current release candidate.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, the article isn't about Mongo. Quite the opposite.

<comment><USER9> Well, this discussion here is now about Mongo

<comment><AUTHOR> Regrettably :(

<comment><USER9> Uhmm, the article actually contained the phrases "Don't use Mongo" and "pick PostgreSQL" so it's kinda asking for a duel between the two in the comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like MongoDB/NoSQL is a horse that's been beaten so much in the last few years that no one is actually making that choice nowadays. Hasn't everyone already learned to stick with Postgres?

<comment><USER9> MongoDB/NoSQL is deployed and used at large scale by companies like Facebook, Ebay and many others. That's quite far from "no one is actually making that choice nowadays".

<comment><USER12> > companies like Facebook, Ebay

They didn't chose NoSQL, they were forced to. I'm fairly convinced they started with relational stores. If a company or product grows to a point where relational data doesn't work, that's a problem you _want_ to have.

The mistake is either thinking you need to design for facebook scale from the beginning OR thinknig that you can cut time in a startup by not having to bother with those pesky schemas that just slow you down.

<comment><USER13> Facebook started with normalized tables, though they altered the schema really frequently. They added more MySQL servers as they grew to more schools. Then their users started graduating and moving around and things got complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, my personal anecdote: I chose Google App Engine for a large enterprise application almost a decade ago and it's been absolutely, undeniably one of the best choices we made.

The application is locked into Google, but that hasn't proven a problem yet and can be designed around if need be.

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal anecdote is the exact opposite of yours. I picked GAE for one of my personal projects years ago and it has been terrible. You can't do certain kinds of lookups unless you build the indexes first, there are no delete cascades, no intra-table constraints, etc.

I suspect the difference between us is that you spent the time working around these problems, whereas I expected it to just work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article is a bit combative but I generally agree with the idea.

I use both MySQL and MongoDB in my daily work on a classifieds site that does a few hundred million pageviews a month. Both are pretty solid performers. The article is correct that with Mongo you just move the schema into the code (new versions not withstanding). I think it's nicer to have the schema on the database side but it's really just user preference. We typically end up creating a schema class and defining it up-front anyway. There is also a small subset of cases where not having a schema at all is actually a benefit.

Starting with a popular SQL engine is a really good tried and tested method though.

<comment><USER16> It's more than user preference in the long run; When your schema is encoded in the database (with triggers, constraints, foreign keys, the whole shebang), you can be sure that whichever way you access the database, it is still consistent.

When your schema is "in the code", even if you completely abstract it into a library, it means that the quick-one-off Ruby/Perl/C#/Python script will not have the integrity checks, and may corrupt your DB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> To the people saying "just do Postgres", what would you say to a startup that wants to create offline first apps? CouchDB, for example is way better at that than Postgres.

1) Use CouchDB and Postgres?

2) Somehow implement revisions and Postgres?

3) Use Postgres anyway and scrap the offline first?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to create offline-first apps, I would use Postgres as the main datastore and use Couch to sync data between client and server. You'd have to decide which of your data would live where (or if you wanted to use Couch as a way to transfer data from the server to the client).

Couch is a very good datastore for that use case, though, so I would definitely use it in some capacity for your purpose.

<comment><USER17> Can you expand on this? Do you mean you'd use Postgres as your main store and periodically "flush" data from CouchDB to Postgres (probably as JSON)?

I don't see how that would work reliably. On the client would you source CouchDB or Postgres? Presumably you'd access CouchDB directly, but then why even use Postgres (for that subset of data, anyway).

<comment><AUTHOR> It really depends on what your data looks like. If it's just game settings and state, put them in Couch and that's it, and keep user data like payments and activity there.

If it's data you're going to want to run analytics on and sync to the client, you're probably going to have to store it in both places, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the real mistake is one of: 1\. I'm gonna use NoSQL because I've heard its really cool. 2\. I'm not going to use SQL because its hard for me to write queries and change stuff on the fly.

If either of those are true (gotta be honest with yourself when deciding) then STOP. You have to think about the best tool for the job overall - <USER2> that will be NoSQL, sometimes it will be an RDBMS. If you can't decide which of the two, then Postgres with its JSON support is IMO the best starting point.

</comment><comment><USER19> OP forgot the biggest mistake for choice of datastore: Blockchain.

<comment><USER20> It isn't an awfully common anti-pattern for startups though. Or at least, not as common as picking Mongo<3.* instead of pq because things needs to be "webscale".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> @StavrosK: (aka the author) - what is the TLDR of the article? Ask since there appear to be a number of users including myself that appear to not get the intent of your article.

—

Meta-comment: Feel like if the poster is self-identifying as the author when posting the link, it's verified via say email/domain, an HN username has been ID'd in the past as the author, etc. — it should be automatically obvious in post, comments, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's what I explicitly call out as a TLDR in the article itself: "Think before you pick a database. If you insist on not thinking, pick PostgreSQL. Trust me."

Basically, "Postgres is a better default".

<comment><USER21> There is no TLDR, summary, etc. clearly marked as such; by one estimate it takes 140 seconds or 468 words to get to the start of the sentence you quoted above; which is strange given your point is to stick to best practices unless there's a strong reason not to do so. Strongly recommend moving that info to the top of your post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1) Read the image captions - they made my day. 2) Pick Postgres unless you have a compelling reason not to. 2b) Use the time gained by not over- engineering upfront, to focus on users and business logic. 3) Optimize/Evolve away from Postgres later as needed. 4) Profit.

</comment><comment><USER23> If your datastore has no schema your application must be the schema, you have to version your models and have those migrate when old data is accessed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow. This fell off the front page in the time it took for me to drive to work. Guess the NoSQL crowd ain't got time for that.

While I'm generally sympathetic to your post, there are some things that are red flags.

>If you have ten services accessing the same database and sharing data between themselves

Whoever access the database schema owns it. If you have ten systems accessing your database then ten teams own it. And if ten teams own it then nobody owns it. Nobody can change it. Seen this at a successful start-up that got big, but then couldn't rev order management, because every team had their finger in the pie, we couldn't do a schema update without breaking everyone, and of course one team was "under tremendous pressure to hit a major milestone and we just can't do that now" for over a year.

Now I would turn this around into a win for RDBMS by suggesting the use of functions or stored procedures: with an RDBMS we can construct an API, and then we can version those APIs. And then the team that owns the database can do what they like. That said, we can do the same with NoSQL databases by not allowing other teams to access them. The team that owns the NoSQL database is required to maintain an API for it.

I've only ever had nightmares with other teams coding against my schema. GraphQL worries me in that respect and I'd love to hear how people here have fared with long lasting GraphQL, in the real world.

>Django, for example, makes migrations trivial, as you just change your application-level classes and the database gets migrated automatically.

I've had automated migration systems grind to a halt and leave the DB fucked too.

>Priscilla used a graph database when her data was relational. Her husband, furious, filed for divorce.

There are no schema that are "relational" but not "a graph". However there are plenty of schema where a graph database is a natural fit but that require either one-table-per-node-type or building a graph model on top of your RDBMS (e.g. an Entity-Attribute schema). Oy.

There are also many schema where there is only one entity type, but every join is against itself, and we're looking to join all the way out to the clique. In this case would you suggest an RDBMS, and then put the iteration in the application? You suggested earlier that making up for the inadequacies of the datastore in the application is a bad idea.

I've got a graph application that uses NoSQL and it was the right call. An RDBMS would have allowed us to write something that worked for simple cases, but that would have brought the system to its knees based on some customer usage. The solution for the RDBMS would be the same as what we had to do for NoSQL. But up to that moment, the NoSQL allowed us to iterate far faster than an RDBMS.

>For example, if you later need to compile a list of all the brands of all the products on your store, an RDBMS can easily do that by reading the "brands" table

Only if you built a brands table. You can't argue that we can't predict the future, so use an RDBS because its easy to change, but then make arguments that require that the builder accurately predicted the future and built the schema with that foresight. Sure, we could go and pull a brands table out of the existing tables but thats work, and it might be work on a live database that brings it down.

A graph database would be just as likely to have 10 brand nodes since the overhead of creating the first such node is far lower than creating an entire table and updating the schema.

>Relational databases excel at easily providing answers to questions that weren't predicted at the time when the data model was designed.

Or a NoSQL database with spark. "But spark is something new to learn"

And this is the biggest flaw in your argument. You're pro RDBMS because you know SQL and how to run RDBMS, create the schema, and write the queries. It is incredibly easy to get started with MongoDB. That right there is why it is popular. Not because its good. But when you say "Just get something started and use an RDBMS", you're actually saying "I know you know javascript, but I need you to learn Modula-2 for this part of the system". Fundamentally different syntax and strict types (or "schema").

>For all its unparallelizability, ACID is pretty damn nice.

Until someone holds transactions open across network calls and kills throughput. I've seen that issue lose a company a multi-million dollar contract because of contention on a single row. Or until someone chooses the wrong isolation level ("But I used a transaction!") and two transactions happily decrement non-atomically. This shit be hard, and part of the "hard" is not knowing you're doing it wrong.

>You'll have plenty of time figuring out what to use when you know your exact usage patterns, if the business manages to not die until then.

So start with something quick and easy then. You've already managed to describe two scenarios where an RDBMS blew up in practice (multiple teams hitting a DB causing schema lock; its a network, not a flat hierarchy).

If you have an experienced SQL team, by all means go with RDBMS. But lets not pretend they are a panacea. Honestly, I'd use a graph database pretty much all the time - _if I could only trust them_. But its the quality, reliability and longevity that I have a problem with, not with the nature of how the database organizes data.

</comment><comment><USER25> TL;DR: "just use Postgres"

<comment><USER26> TL;DR: "just use an MySQL or Postgres or SQLite"

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't use SQLite for production, for all the love I have for it, the client libraries are usually locking accesses and don't work properly with concurrent reads/writes.

<comment><USER12> It's designed for single client, and works very well in production for single client. Mobile apps, desktop apps, and anywhere you can serialize access it works great.

Let's say "don't use it for production for a multiuser server app" then I agree. But that isn't really a supported scenario at all.

<comment><USER27> But in all those scenarios the downsides of just writing JSON to disk or something are smaller too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > startup mistakes

> .io domain

oh my.

<comment><USER29> What's the problem with a .io domain? Honest question.

<comment><USER15> There was a recent failure that affected everyone using the TLD and a popular blog post explaining it and suggesting that you use something more reliable. Some of the comments on the article pointed out that the same company runs .org and a handful of other reliable TLD's.

<comment><USER29> Thanks very much</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Use Creative Clustering to Optimize Mobile Ad Performance - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/how-to-use-creative-clustering-to-optimize-your-ad-creatives-7d849a5d1db9#.igioa88xq <comment><AUTHOR> At Singular we aim to be the best at what we do — utilizing every bit of your mobile marketing data to provide meaningful analytics. In this blog post, we'll explain what creative clustering is, we'll demonstrate several clustering methods and we'll show you how clustering techniques can be used to improve ad performance.</comment>


Show HN: Every Wikipedia article leads to Philsophy, I made a JavaScript library for it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BenjaminBini/getting-to-philosophy <comment><AUTHOR> Nothing fancy, just an application of this : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosoph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy)</comment>


Joel is giving away his software to Y Combinator startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/YCombinator.html

<comment><USER2> We've been giving away our software to YC startups for nearly two years now. I never thought to make a website about it, though. I guess that's what sets the folks like Joel apart from the rest of us. That's a guy who knows how to give away software with style.

Seriously, though, it's cool and really good marketing. I've only seen Fogbugz in passing (it was trialed at a Python shop I worked in a few years back, but wasn't adopted), but I've heard good things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Solid of them to do that, but FogBugz is terrible. Our dev team found it to be tedious (4 developers).

We've switched to Pivotal Tracker (also in free beta) and find it much more suited to rapid development and "agile" practices. In particular, we find the predictive tools actually useful.

<comment><USER4> Can anyone compare FogBugz with Jira (my current fav)?

<comment><USER5> If you like Jira you might not like the simplicity and clean UI of FogBugz. We switched from FogBugz to Jira at my last job and I personally didn't like it very much. But management liked the flexible reporting and complicated workflows they could invent.

Personally I think Jira looks like it was written 10 years ago and can get quite slow at times, which together with the fact that there's no AJAX and every click reloads an entire page means it can be a very unpleasant experience.

<comment><USER4> I haven't gotten to use FogBugz so I can't compare the use of the UIs. AJAX would be really nice, although I haven't had any performance issues. We replaced Mantis and Bugzilla with Jira at one place I was at, and it was significantly faster than either of them.

I'm in love with the ability to very easily create different issue types with different attributes, states, and work flows. That lets us use the same system as a project management tool with release schedules, features, sub-tasks, reporting on hours breakdown by resource etc..., and a customer facing issue reporting/tracking system, and an internal bug tracker, etc...

edit--- Also love the great integrations with Confluence, Eclipse, SVN, Hudson, etc....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's also a new student and startup version that is free to use for up to two people (the YC version is the same deal, but unlimited people).

</comment><comment><USER7> This differential pricing helps satisfy demand (like student movie tickets). Most of the poor students/startups could not afford to buy anyway, so you lose little by giving it away.

But you gain potential customers, like MacDonalds targetting children: "get 'em while they're young [and poor]". Lock-in is stronger with software: UI familiarity (e.g. vi vs. emacs); data on their server.

If you had a dominant market position, this differential pricing can help a scorched-earth policy: by denying no-one, you don't start the seeds of copy- cat competitors - they have no fuel to burn (i.e. no customers, no interest). The danger with copy-cat competitors is that as they grow, they often differentiate into genuine alternatives in their own right. Better to nip 'em in the bud (or not enable the bud to grow in the first place).

Joel isn't in that position (there are several bug-trackers): here, it's just an earlier arena for the fight for customers (like employers interviewing earlier and earlier at university). For example, the Jira people offer free products for open source projects.

The above is a business interpretation, based on cynical self-interest, but I think the result is healthy: customers get high-quality yet affordable products; you get customers - to each according to his need; from each according to his ability (to pay). Meeting needs is a good thing.

But for customers, it's just as important to evaluate what they are getting, even though it's free. Otherwise, you watch free TV, browse free websites, and buy supermarket "specials" without making a decision about what you're really buying. You might have chosen to buy it anyway; you might not.

There are vulnerabilities with hosted data; e.g. if Joel had to change his policy, how would customers get their data out? These are questions common to all vendors, and it's not just because it's free - it's just then when it's free, it's easier to not consider these questions properly. It's up to customers to do their due diligence. All Joel can do is work hard to create something useful, and let you know about it. He can't tell if it's right for you and your specific needs or not.

Note: I think it's great Joel is doing this, and it's beneficial all round.

<comment><USER8> To the point about getting your data out. FogBugz On Demand lets you download a snapshot of your database, at any time, in three different formats: MS SQL Server, Access, and MySQL. The FogBugz database schema is open and fully documented here: [http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.htm...](http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.html)

<comment><USER7> That's fantastic! Thanks. <vader>impressive</vader> My esteem for Joel just went up a notch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bummer. Not a YCombinator company, but in a startup and attempting to contribute to this community.

Hey Joel, any chance of a HN-karma-based lifting of the 2-person limit?

Say >1000 Karma and you can use more people?

<comment><USER10> That would actually be an interesting idea for a social news site, partnering with companies to give away schwag to users who hit certain karma thresholds. I wonder what would happen.

<comment><USER11> More "Make Karma Fast" schemes?

<comment><USER12> Or "buy my karma" offers on ebay...

<comment><USER13> Seriously though, you could probably do it without karma farmers if you announced a free X for all users currently over a karma threshold. Could be a cool tool for building social news sites & there are all sorts of companies that want to give away their stuff - magazines.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that kinda what Calacanis did at Netscape? ie - Free Money for the top contributers at Digg / Reddit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We've been using <http://Acunote.com> for agile issue tracking and it's been performing well. But going forward we're looking at Mantis (<http://www.mantisbt.org/>) and Jira. Jira's very expensive and Mantis is GPL and does most of what Jira does.

Could someone, in a sentence or two, explain how FogBugz compares to Mantis or Bugzilla?

<comment><USER16> Glad you are happy with Acunote. You probably won't have a reason to switch away from it, not in Mantis/Jira direction anyway :-) That's functionality- wise, the open-source angle is always valid of course.

<comment><USER15> Cool :) And yes, Acunote is great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've never used FogBugz. Why would a hacker choose it over the usual open source stuff (Trac, bugzilla)?

<comment><USER5> I would choose an open source product, but trac and bugzilla are both terrible. hopefully some better options emerge (or I become aware of them).

<comment><USER18> How about Mantis? <http://www.mantisbt.org/>

Demo: <http://demo.mantisbt.org/my_view_page.php>

<comment><USER19> Mantis is okay - we used it for a (school) project last year, but for what we needed it for it was overkill.

<comment><USER18> I use a plain text file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> God damn it - we already paid for it.

Seriously though, FogBugz has been awesome and well worth the one time charge.

<comment><USER21> This is for the "On-Demand" version, which is hosted and costs $25/user/month, not the standalone version.

<comment><USER22> So, really what your saying is that Joel is giving away his software so he can keep tabs on what YC Startups are doing? Suddenly, the idea seems more evil. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is astounding. Another reason I respect this guy so much.

<comment><USER24> Yes, it's really an ingenious marketing scheme on Joel's part.

<comment><USER14> it worked. We're all talking about it on here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow text book example of win-win.

</comment><comment><USER25> Score!...now to get accepted by Y Combinator...:-\

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks, Joel!

</comment><comment><USER27> Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER28> _FogBugz integrates with VSS, SVN, Mercurial, CVS, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Perforce, Vault and SnagIt._

No Git support makes it unusable for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git- Integration.as...](http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git- Integration.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Screw it, use Redmine.

</comment><comment><USER30> Give us something casual. Bug tracking need not be painful.</comment>


The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee (1830) - <AUTHOR> http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive/act2080.0035.002/10 <comment><USER2> "This coffee falls into your stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin, is a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of suckers and papillae. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous linings; it acts like a food and demands digestive juices; it wrings and twists the stomach for these juices, appealing as a pythoness appeals to her god; it brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain."

That is some damn fine writing there.

<comment><USER3> You left off the better part of the story!

On the drink [finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous, consumed on an empty stomach] mentioned above.

"I recommended this way of drinking coffee to a friend of mine, who absolutely wanted to finish a job promised for the next day: he thoughthe'd been poisoned and took to his bed, which he guarded like a married man. He was tall, blond, slender and had thinning hair; he apparently had a stomach of papier-mache."

<comment><USER4> The translation is apparently inaccurate, it would be better as "and took to his bed, which he guarded like a bride".

<comment><USER5> both ways, i completely miss the meaning.

<comment><USER6> A married man's wife resides in a married man's bed

<comment><USER7> However, they may be different married men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Balzac's galley proofs seem like a testament to a life of dedicated heavy coffee drinking:

[http://www.themorgan.org/collections/collections.asp?id=365](http://www.themorgan.org/collections/collections.asp?id=365)

</comment><comment><USER9> I recommend starting at the top and working your way down piece by piece, over coffee of course. Lots and lots of coffee. [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31565/31565-h/31565-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31565/31565-h/31565-h.htm)

And if you like the translations, I should add that most were completed by four women. In particular, Ellen Marriage who published under the name James Waring.

[http://balzacbooks.wordpress.com/translations/](http://balzacbooks.wordpress.com/translations/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Balzac was on to something. :-) I like how he quotes Brillat-Savarin. Others are here. [0] My favorite is the one that kicks off Iron Chef, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are."

[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jean_anthelme_br...](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jean_anthelme_brillatsav.html)

<comment><USER11> Allez cuisine!

<comment><USER12> Allez caffeine!

<comment><USER13> An entire carafe of 500mg of dark roast in 1L of water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In French: [http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_des_excitants_mode...](http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_des_excitants_modernes)

<comment><USER15> Thanks. Also worth noting that it contains essays on wine and tobacco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It was curious to see the reference to cold-brew coffee. I didn't even know it was a thing until a couple of days ago when I saw this article in a freebie newspaper:

How to Make cold brew coffee at home [http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/foodanddrink/how-to- make...](http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/foodanddrink/how-to-make- coldbrew-coffee-at-home-9545505.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Ah! I think this was recently reprinted in the "Intoxication" issue of Lapham's. Very interesting essay in a very interesting magazine. That one also turned me on to the "Coffee Cantata" of Bach:

[http://coldewey.cc/post/49474192760/bach-ei-wie-schmeckt- der...](http://coldewey.cc/post/49474192760/bach-ei-wie-schmeckt-der-coffee- susse-bwv-211)

<comment><USER18> Lapham's is second to none at what they do. I wish it were more available online. Some of their web productions are beautiful, but it's so hit and miss what you can find on their site that I eventually gave up.

<comment><USER17> Agree. I just subscribed, damn the expense. A wonderful publication like that is well worth a bill a year if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How much of this is pseudo science?

<comment><USER20> Surprisingly, much of it appears to be accurate. Tannins can cause irritation, though more notably of the bladder (interstitial cystitis) than the stomach, and brewing finer coffee at lower temperature does indeed result in a lower tannin content. Ingesting coffee beans does in fact cause some indigestion via increased production of stomach acid, as well, and in addition to all of this caffeine works by the following two neural mechanisms:

* it blocks the adenosine receptor type 1, whose primary function is to decrease blood pressure and heart rate in preparation for sleeping

* it blocks the glycine receptor, whose primary purpose is to slow muscle contraction (strychnine also blocks this receptor, albeit far more strongly...)

So the claims about the effects of coffee are, well, surprisingly accurate, though finding most of this information was hard and I wish I had peer- reviewed sources:

[http://www.ic-network.com/patient-resources/diet/diet- introd...](http://www.ic-network.com/patient-resources/diet/diet- introduction/)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2014/02/11/espresso_why_is_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2014/02/11/espresso_why_is_this_coffee_drink_so_popular.html)

[http://www.livestrong.com/article/476658-the-effects-of- eati...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/476658-the-effects-of-eating- coffee-beans/)

Google Scholar seems to be getting slowly less useful; repeated searches for information on brewing methods turned up mostly information about roasting methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "I'm not an addict, I'm a connoisseur!"

"Last night a meth connoisseur took my wallet and my mobile phone!"

</comment><comment><USER22> Funny, this is the same year the Mormon church was founded. They abstain from the consumption of coffee.

</comment><comment><USER23> For French speakers out there, here's the original version: [http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_des_excitants_mode...](http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_des_excitants_modernes)

</comment><comment><USER24> Balzac's story makes me wonder if I'll make it to 50. I'm not quite at his level, but I'm not far behind.

<comment><USER25> Do you have thick black hair and an impregnable constitution? Notably though, he was pretty focused on the toxic qualities of tannins, but most recent investigations seem to go the other way (mild antioxidant, mild anticancer effects). Maybe your zealous drinking will take you well past 50?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> He refers to a french "cafiot" coffee ?? I googled it but couldn't find anything. Anyone knows what it is ?

<comment><USER26> The text described that term not as a type of French coffee, but as the term the French used to describe Turkish-style coffee.

[http://www.languefrancaise.net/bob/detail.php?id=5998](http://www.languefrancaise.net/bob/detail.php?id=5998)

First part means: "Bad coffee made with chicory." Turkish coffee is made with chicory

<comment><USER27> Turkish coffee is a method of preparation, but I have never known it to be made with chicory. Perhaps you meant cardamom?

I've only ever had coffee made with chicory in New Orleans. Somewhat ironically, supposedly we have the French to thank for that - [http://www.cafedumonde.com/coffee](http://www.cafedumonde.com/coffee) :-)

<comment><USER28> ... and coffee made with chicory (mix the ground coffee with ground roast chicory and brew normally) has a very interesting flavor... I find roast chicory much closer in taste to coffee than other roast grains used as coffee substitutes—it has a fairly coffee-like bitterness, for example—but it has its own unique flavor as well, with a nice vegetal/grassy sweetness to offset the bitterness.

You can mix it in any proportion that suits you; I like straight roast chicory too...

It's something not everybody likes, but well-worth trying.

[One warning though: I've found that if you let too much chicory go through a coffee-grinder (e.g. if you mix the beans with the chicory before grinding), it can gum up the grinding burrs...]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have a plain text transcription? I'm having trouble reading that scan.

<comment><USER30> There's a 'format' option in the top left, you can select text/image/pdf. Here's it in text form[0]

[0]-[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive/act2080.0035.002/10?v...](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive/act2080.0035.002/10?view=text&size=100)

<comment><USER31> Since even their "text" view is a pain, here is the document in full plaintext and readability formats (all credit due to Monsieur Balzac):

[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=RjDr7g8Z](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=RjDr7g8Z)

[https://www.readability.com/articles/mxgfhgbh](https://www.readability.com/articles/mxgfhgbh)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do check out the "CAFFEINATED" documentary as well while you're at it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OecTZBjFvw#t=259](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OecTZBjFvw#t=259)</comment>


Show HN: Virtual Reality DOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sonictruth/vr-dos <comment><USER2> I know how to flesh this out into a game: Have the setting be a high school computer lab, and have the player see how much Commander Keen or Prince of Persia they can play without the teacher catching them.

<comment><USER3> Funny. At my HS there was also a game where you'd hang out in the drafting lab during lunch, and try to eat your lunch food while playing Wolfenstein 3D, without the teacher noticing the food part.

Crumbs on the digitizer board were especially dangerous to your wellbeing.

<comment><USER4> Our "hidden" game was one called Conflict where you were Israel.

I managed to load it on the shared hardrive (20 Meg, I think).

<comment><USER3> Is that this one?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict:_Middle_East_Politica...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict:_Middle_East_Political_Simulator)

Looks pretty intriguing!

<comment><USER4> Yep, that was it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you liked this, don't miss: [http://assets.metacade.com/emulators/win311vr.html](http://assets.metacade.com/emulators/win311vr.html)

<comment><USER6> Oh damn, Janus VR is still ongoing - Once I tried to make an coding environment with it, using browser based IDEs, but could not make anything happen properly :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it's possible to exploit a bug to modify the simulation code from the in-game terminal.

<comment><USER8> I'm actually working on VR environment that is fully self-modifying. Currently building code editor and hot-swapping environment. It uses Lua and LOVR engine as a host.

It is a step away from a classic concept of engine/lib/framework, the stable blackbox with API you call into. It's more like code environment you can examine, extend and reload instantaneously, with some built-in safeguards for reverting code errors. I'll make a ShowHN when I get to something substantial.

<comment><USER9> Getting strong Smalltalk vibes :-)

<comment><USER8> I just ran into actual Smalltalk-in-VR project called PharoVRIDE. I wish I had time and skills to recreate Smalltalk's VM images. I still haven't thought out how persistence would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tried running "format c:". It didn't work. So much for reality part.

<comment><USER11> That's because it is running DOSBox not real DOS.

One could modify this to use a PC emulator like PCjs [1] and then run real DOS under it, and then really format your virtual C drive. (FreeDOS or MS-DOS 2.x could be run entirely legally; running newer versions of MS-DOS might not technically be legal but I doubt Microsoft would do anything about it.)

[1] [https://www.pcjs.org/](https://www.pcjs.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Simple concept, but it hits me right in the nostalgia, presumably as intended. Very well done.

</comment><comment><USER13> My first thought is to package up the game hardware in a Compaq 386 style case, complete with diskette drives that the VR-DOS emulator reads. Get a time machine, take it back and have someone put on the headset and insert their favourite software into the physical/virtual PC.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by: [https://www.emuvr.net/](https://www.emuvr.net/)

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/465780/New_Retro_Arcade_N...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/465780/New_Retro_Arcade_Neon/)

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178140/Pixel_Ripped_1995...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178140/Pixel_Ripped_1995/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I never actually got to the VR part because there has been no real interest/participation with what I made so far, but as far as the 3D environment (plus scripting) I made VSIM (vintagesimulator.com) which is a little along these lines and the aim was to do VR eventually. But hardly anyone ever used it so I moved on.

</comment><comment><USER15> If they can get this running windows, we can have World of World of Warcraft, as promoted by The Onion: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw8gE3lnpLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw8gE3lnpLQ)

</comment><comment><USER16> Now here's a Dosbox I can use my iPad keyboard with!

(iDOS 2 doesn't support the smart keyboard folio.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Norton Commander brings back memories. Started using it in DOS days and still use two-column file managers to this day.

<comment><USER18> Ah, Orthodox File Manager you mean surely.

<comment><USER19> Total Commander ftw.

<comment><USER17> It's the only software I miss on Mac :) Using "Commander One" on Mac, but it's simply not on the same level.

While we're at it, what are people using as alternatives on Mac and Linux?

<comment><USER19> You can make Double Commander on Mac. it's open source and you can compile it for Mac. Double Commander is 99% same as Total Commander.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pretty cool! The room has no door though :)

<comment><USER21> The Sims player is trying to kill you. Count your blessings they didn't put you in the pool and remove the ladders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ha! Soon games will have computers inside where you can program games in those, that will have computers inside where you can program games in those...ad infinitum.

I wonder if our Universe is not such a game actually.

<comment><USER22> Soon?

[http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/forum/35-ga...](http://www.computercraft.info/forums2/index.php?/forum/35-games/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, VR Commander Keen!

</comment><comment><USER24> See also EmuVR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqUos4MYmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqUos4MYmc)

</comment><comment><USER25> What's next, 3D LOGO?

</comment><comment><USER26> Oh my god. I never imagined this even in my dreams that something like this can be made. I am a VR developer and I am really astounded by the effort you would've put in this. Amazing job.</comment>