The bar for basic service has dropped so far that you are no longer treated like a person if you don't pay for the extras. My wife and I saved up for a resort trip for our ten year anniversary only to find that our 4-hour flight included a seat without enough leg room for me to sit while the person in front of me reclined into my lap (I'm 6'2"). The passenger in front of me wanted to stay reclined and the flight attendant could only offer me a seat upgrade to sit by myself in a section with more leg room. Not my only bad experience with them but United was far worse than any other recent trip I've had.
We're pissed because they set the bar so low we have to trip on it. Those of us who don't fly often have no idea how bad it's gotten compared to how things used to be.
"Nor does United seem better for its employees, who used to own the airline, but are now stuck enforcing cruel and arbitrary rules, and assessing the punitive fees. They are cast as wardens, trying to keep unruly passengers in line."
That's an experience that isn't really unique to United though, the major carriers all have nearly the same legroom (+/- 1").
As a 6'1" passenger, I can tell you that your claim that you "couldn't sit" while the passenger in front of you was fully reclined is a gross exaggeration. Sure, I empathize with you that it was uncomfortable, and rest assured, you were paying an extremely bargained price for your airfare.
Basic economics also comes into play here: There are Economy Plus seats if you want a more luxurious amount of legroom.
As a 6'1" passenger myself, I can only assume you have short femurs. I've had that exact scenario happen to me on a flight - when the person in front of me reclines, my legs from my rear end to my kneecaps do not fit in the space provided in an economy seat.
I book seats that are Economy Comfort (I fly Delta) or exit-row seating, but when flying with my wife and children I sometimes need to choose comfort or sitting near them. (For the record, I choose to sit near them when I am forced to choose.)
I'm a little unhappy about being charged an extra $100 to fly Economy Comfort just because I happen to be in the 90th percentile for height, but I understand the engineering and social issues of providing seating in a fixed space for 200+ passengers.
I believe we're both slightly over one standard deviation above the mean for adult male height.
Regardless, I am a competitive distance runner (and have the right body type for the sport). My femurs are likely even larger than yours, and yes, my knees stick a little bit outside of my space into the adjacent seat, but I am still perfectly capable of sitting in my seat. I've had overweight seatmates that encroach more on others' personal space than my knees do.
Re: overweight passengers, if I ran an airline, there would be a seat with side panels to test your fit. The seat would have side pressure sensors. If you can sit in the boxed seat without touching either side, fine. If you can't do so without touching one side or the other, you'd have to pay more. We'd also charge for weight, something per-pound. It costs more in fuel to move each additional pound.
There would be a required training course for boarding and unboarding which all potential passengers would be required to pass. We'd also teach people how to put their carry-on in the bin in the correct orientation (with the widest side inserted depth-wise and the second widest dimension vertically such that 4 bags can fit into a normal bin instead of 3 or 2 + that one person's purse which should be under the seat). It'd be like a marching band, with timed choreography. We'd board using the front and rear doors. I bet I could reduce average boarding time to 20% of what it is today.
There would be no in-flight screens for entertainment, no drink or snack service, etc. There would be a double-walled [possibly plexiglass if no lighter alternatives exist] section for people traveling with children under about 12, with a bit of space reserved for anyone acting like they're under 12. This would contain the noise and smells. If this could not be made to work, simply restrict booking to passengers older than 12, then everyone else can appreciate baby-free flights.
The benefits of all of this would be reflected in ticket pricing and clearly-stated business practices + expectations. It would have limited appeal, but excellent customer service and I would expect a cult following of loyal frequent travelers who appreciate efficient travel.
>> There are Economy Plus seats if you want a more luxurious amount of legroom.
I always pay extra for the Economy Plus seats if the price difference is $100 or less. I find it pretty uncomfortable even when the person in front of me doesn't choose to recline, and I'm only 5'7" in height. I would hate to be 6' or taller in regular economy.
The really fun times are when your shoulders are wider than the seat is, and you're in an aisle seat. Every time the drink cart goes by or someone heads for the bathroom, you get trucked.
I'm just waiting for the natural evolution of this system, where everyone takes their seat, and knock-out gas is piped in.
A partially deflated capped water or soda bottle put between the seat and tray table let's the person recline recline without letting them discomfort you by over reclining
The trick is setting this up BEFORE the other passenger reclines. You're not supposed to recline your seat or have tray tables out during takeoff. All too often, the former rule is substantially easier to break than the latter without getting noticed by the flight attendants. So in practice, immediately after the flight attendants sit down while the plane is still taking off, said obnoxious passenger reclines their seat all the way back, even though they are technically not supposed to yet.
Agreed. I think there's a way to add in a few features like this and still make it simple and user-friendly. One request when you do MPAA ratings is to not make it a slider bar, but just use checkboxes like you do for genres. Netflix tends to categorize lots of things as Unrated when you wouldn't normally expect it.
* You risk that you won't be able to find developers at a salary that will help your company earn money
* There is a risk that you may have to do lots of the work yourself and may not be able to pass it on if you write programs for these industries
In my opinion, you need to decide why you want to use a "fringe" languages over something with more available talent. Are you using it because it's what you know? Because it will be fun? Or is there a benefit of that language that you wouldn't have otherwise?
It won't be impossible, but it's hard to replace commodity software with something that would end up being more expensive without adding any innovation or new benefits.
If I took all that time to customize my command ribbon, I'd certainly want it to look the same across every computer I use. Will there be a way to synchronize my preferences for settings like this anywhere?
Office 2007 and 2010 have had the ability to export your settings with the Export-ui extension. I would guess that you can do the same with Windows Explorer too
It definitely seems like a jump. Did they interview users? If so, why not reference that data? If not, why not? And what user data prompted them to create 203 buttons if some of the (far less than 200) commands they have now don't get used in more than 1% of user sessions?
I'd guess most Microsoft apps have hundreds of buttons as well. 99% of them are not shown by default but you can customise it to your own taste, that's why there are so many of them.
I think they've learned from the Office 2007 metrics and feedback. Also they have listed the reasons for choosing the ribbon over other approaches. I don't see a 'jump'.
>And what user data prompted them to create 203 buttons if some of the (far less than 200) commands they have now don't get used in more than 1% of user sessions?
You say that as if the 200 buttons were on one screen. They are spread out over different contexts and tabs. I believe they were trying to make the commands more discoverable from the previous versions.
I was only referencing the parent post about the 200 buttons, it's certainly true that they're available in ribbon form.
If the commands are things that were previously available and less discoverable, then that's one thing. However, I felt like it was a jump to go from having so few commands available menu to having around 200. Do they expect the new commands to be used frequently? Were they actually needed? That's what I was trying to ask.
Personally, I can't stand Finder. I used a Mac for several years every day before I felt like I really figured it out, and even then I didn't feel like it was user-friendly - it just felt incapable of doing many advanced things (for example, how would you "copy path" in Finder?).
Not only can you hide the buttons in the ribbon (which is nice if you typically use keyboard shortcuts), but the experience is consistent with other recent Microsoft applications. I'm not sure a computer novice or even 50% or more of non-power users would have any idea what the buttons on Finder do (does anyone know what that eye button does before they click on it?), and I think that's the target demographic here. Power users know how to hide unwanted buttons or the text that goes with the buttons.
You can get the a file’s path by dragging it into any text field. But what do you need that for? Besides the terminal (where dragging works, too) the only use case I can think of is troubleshooting.
I'm glad I'm not alone. That weird columnar view mode (don't know the term for it) shown in the screenshot from the GP has to be the worst aspect of the Finder. I've been seriously considering getting a Mac laptop and now someone goes and reminds me about the Finder. But presumably there are 3rd party tools that fix the problem, right?
Some people swear by Miller columns for efficiency and are lost at sea without them. It's entirely a personal preference - if you don't like it, click on one of the other available layouts in the finder.
I don't like it because it's very wasteful of screen real-estate. I do want to see directory hierarchy, but I don't want my files list to be squeezed into smaller and smaller space so I can see lists of every sibling folder of every folder in the path down to the folder that I'm viewing. This view isn't useful in proportion with how much space it takes up. IMO, access to directory structure works better as a treeview, separate from the 'current folder' view, rather than as a new column for each step down into the hierarchy. The latter doesn't scale well.
If so, that view has been available in Finder since at least the first version of OS X I've used which would be 10.3 Panther. These days there are 4 different view you could browse files with in Finder: regular icons, cover flow (does anybody use this ever, by the way? it's the most long-winded, annoying and imprecise to browse anything including photos), column view and hierarchical view.
I was responding to the fact that someone put forward the column view as an example of how Finder was prettier than the Windows 8 Explorer, so yes, I do know that Finder has multiple modes. I would prefer a mode that doesn't conflate the folder navigation UI with the current folder view like that mode that you just mentioned. That'd be a better balance in terms of emphasis on the two aspects of working with a file system.
Huh, column view is one of the things I missed most from Finder. I loved how you could click and hold a file, and navigate through a directory tree just by hovering over each folder in the path.
What a ridiculous question. There are lots of reasons I might want to do that. Storing file paths in a text file for later bookkeeping and copying file paths to a Google search box while trying to debug something are two I can immediately think of.
But how often do you really need to do that? For me, it's once every few months. It's okay for rarely-needed features to be less accessible or a bit harder to use. I understand that getting at the textual path of an object is generally a bit easier in Windows Explorer than in the Finder, but I don't know of any common workflow in OS X that requires it, so I don't understand why it's getting decried as a notable problem with the Finder.
The feature does exist, it just isn't as accessible as some people would prefer. There's an opportunity cost to almost any UI change, so it is perfectly valid to ask whether a feature is useful, important, and popular enough to justify making it easier to use at the expense of making something else harder to use.
I thought it was great that they discussed what user's actually do within Windows Explorer before they decided what to change with it. Too often I feel like changes are forced for change's sake, and, despite my own opinions on the design, it's great that they're open about their reasoning.
I thought it was great that they discussed what user's actually do within Windows Explorer before they decided what to change with it. Too often I feel like changes are forced for change's sake, and it's great that they're open about their reasoning.
1) I just tried a query (weezer "buddy holly") that had worked a couple of days ago but didn't now (it didn't work with quotes, either).
2) I miss the back button and, as others have said, the ability to bookmark anything
3) It would be nice to see the song title on the lyrics page. I know it's sometimes still in the search box, but I do miss it if I've changed my search (or if I just searched by artist).
Awesome that you guys are still following along here. I don't see a back button anywhere, but maybe with 2 you were referring to the ability to copy a link, which works great.
It seems really speedy tonight. I'm pretty sure part of this is because the user interface just makes it seem speedy, but maybe it's because it's not at the top of the front page anymore?
I don't have any Macs at my house, so I hadn't experienced Plex before a few weeks ago when I installed the media server on my Windows Box to serve to our Roku. It was already the best local media app for the Roku, and this just makes it even better since I can run it on my Unraid box and only keep one machine running 24/7.
We're pissed because they set the bar so low we have to trip on it. Those of us who don't fly often have no idea how bad it's gotten compared to how things used to be.