Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[PlainName]

My favourite one is moron Jobs who paid 100K in 1986 money for his "Next" logo.

Seems a reasonable price. He sure got his moneys worth from the deal, so the only dodgy part was paying up front and that
was surely mitigated by the designer he chose.

You can say a lot of things about Jobs, but he certainly knew the value of branding and appearance. A moron would be the one saving a few dollars on the wrong thing.

[free_electron]

I know someone who spent a lot of money an a Macbook last year and their's only came with two USB C ports on the left despite there being a good amount of room.

I had to get a couple of adapters to fit it just to plug a normal USB flash drives.

that too . cant use any of the gazillion flash drives i have anymore.

and some of the usb hubs are total crap. they have usb-c connector but only usb 3 ( old style) outputs. and they are only  port. why doesnt anyone make a 7 port hub ? like usb-c in , three usb-c out and four regular usb 3 (usb with extra pins )

not only that. you need ot carry a whole arsenal in converters.

bloody morons.

[mansaxel]

I know someone who spent a lot of money an a Macbook last year and their's only came with two USB C ports on the left despite there being a good amount of room.

I had to get a couple of adapters to fit it just to plug a normal USB flash drives.

I use USB drives mostly to boot install images, and even that, depending on hardware platform, is going out of fashion. Last two physical machines I installed were a pair of Dell servers, due to get FreeBSD 13, and there, I looked at the boot screen long enough to figure the iDRAC IP address out, then went back to my desk. Fired up browser UI and got a console, mapped the ISO file on my local drive on the wi-fi-connected Macbook that's only got USB-C jacks to the virtual CD in the iDRAC system, and off I went. Yes, an ISO over wi-fi is going to be a bit slower, but not slow enough that it is a problem for a run-once installer.  And it actually was impressively fast given the setup.

The USB-C was used only as power input.

There are USB-A connectors on my desktop dongle which makes the "plug laptop into ordinary desk position" operation faster. So, yes, adapters needed, but less frequently now, with a decline still.

[vk6zgo]

I don't mind changes too even if they don't add any benefit but when they start to disadvantage me in any way and cause me problems and inconvenience then yes I wouldn't like those changes.

If the "new" way is less efficient, as it often is, it is just "change for changes sake".

[PlainName]

Happened to remove my old Dell from temporary control duty in the garage (only thing I have at the moment with an actual serial port, and the target is old enough to really need the -V before accepting it's a 0). Latitude C810 and runs XP, but it sure isn't stuck for ports. Modem, USB, keyboard, AV, RJ45, serial, parallel, video, power, infrared, and then a pair of PCMCIA in case they forgot something. And a docking station port to boot so you don't have to dick with actually plugging stuff in if you don't want.

By gum, them were the days.

[IDEngineer]

Exactly why I looked for and found a new X260 ThinkPad when I needed a new laptop. Every port type right on the machine (well, except a DB9 serial or DB25 parallel) and a true docking station with all those same ports too. A true traveling Engineer's PC.

[tooki]

I was reminded of another peeve recently, entry forms that put every country on the planet in alphabetical order instead of guessing my location by my IP address and defaulting to where it thinks I am, or at least letting me type US in a search.

What’s much more annoying are the ones whose software displays the list by name, but sorts it by country code! 

So here in Switzerland, you scroll down to the late S’s, and it’s not there, it’s up near Canada because Switzerland’s country code is “CH”.

[tooki]

This may be US specific, but why do so many forms require entering city, state and ZIP code (mail code).  Once you enter mail code the other two are defined.

Incorrect assumption. There are zip codes with numerous city names within them. (Some are vanity, like when suburbs are allowed to use the city name, some aren’t, when zip code areas actually contain multiple towns.)

For example, my last zip code in USA, 21227, encompassed the unincorporated towns of Halethorpe, Lansdowne, and Arbutus, but also accepted Baltimore (though all three towns are decidedly outside the city limits).

[tooki]

Since AFAIK only the USA calls Postcodes "zipcodes", the easy way is to just prefix the US ones with a "Z".

Yep, because the codes were introduced under the Zoning Improvement Plan.

[TimFox]

A small shipment from Germany to my address in Chicago, USA ended up in Swiss Customs in Zurich because someone saw "CH" in the address.
The French abbreviation for the US is ÉU, which can be misread.
In the US, the full 9-digit ZIP^TM Code, written 55555-5555, will locate the address almost to the single house (not quite).

[tooki]

Reminds me of another pet peeve, calling desktop software "apps". Microsoft did this starting with Win8 and continued right on into Win10 and it really makes me cringe. I don't even know why it bothers me so much but it drives me nuts. In my mind an "app" is a stripped down single function "mini-program" for a mobile device. It would even be reasonable to call something like Calculator or Notepad an "app" on a PC, but calling a full fledged desktop program like Office, Photoshop, CAD, etc "apps" is just stupid. It feels like some old guy trying to talk hip and cool and fit in with a bunch of teenagers.

In the Mac world, where executables have always officially been called “applications”, it’s been common use for decades to call them “apps”. Microsoft Office and Photoshop were both born on the Mac, so they’ve been “apps” since day 1, back in the 80s.

So in reality, “app” to mean “mini-program” is actually the neologism.

(Pre-OS X Mac OS, by the way, had a special name for mini-programs: “desk accessories”.)

[tooki]

Back to a more "technical" peeve.

On several occasions in a row, my iPad has not connected to the WiFi signal from my modem, but to one of several airconditioners in adjacent houses.

Unfortunately, that doesn't allow me to mess with their A/Cs, but it does mean I have to re-select the correct signal.

Interestingly, the Aircond WiFi doesn't have a password, so there doesn't seem to be any way to stop this happening from time to time, as Apple have set things up so the iPad can use "free Wifi" where available.

"Internet of things", my furry backside!

Categorically untrue.

If it’s auto-connecting to a network, it’s because you’ve previously connected to a network with that name. To stop it from happening, go into the WiFi settings, tap the circled “i” of the offending network, and either disable auto-join (useful for networks you do occasionally want to connect to, just not automatically) or tap “forget this network” to make it as though you’d never used it before.

[tooki]

Ooooh I have one!:

Back in the days when Apple first released aluminium iMac models, which had ANODISED aluminium bodies, the entire "tech press" (cringe!) parroted that they were "brushed aluminium"🤦

It happened again and again, and again, and again. Had any single one of them stopped to consider what BRUSHING does to a surface, that would maybe have been corrected.

And this despite Apple clearly stating in their keynote presentations that it is bead-blasted aluminum.

[tooki]

there is always 25mm of unmarked tape at each end

To be fair, there's  not a lot they can do about that because the cutter has to go after the transfer tape off-feed, and that has to go after the printhead (so the cartridge needs to be quite robust there). They all suffer from it to some extent. I  have a few of their models, and the most recent I have has the cartridge redesigned to minimise the unused part of the tape by making the cartridge really thin at that point (like a couple of mm). Still wastes some, though.

Mine printer is the one with dual tapes and the peel-off labels are unwasted. Expensive, yes, but you can use every label.

Additionally, the most common type (Brother TZ and TZe) is laminated thermal transfer labels, so the printed label is actually three layers, and two of those need backing in the cartridge. This means it’s literally impossible to have the print head right at the edge of the tape. The layers must be pressed together before cutting.

[tooki]

That by and large seems to be the case for DSLR lenses - seems you can get kit lenses or pro grade, but little or nothing in between.

When is the last time you bought a kit lens? While they won’t be the fastest lenses (which is not so bad since modern cameras are great at high ISO), the sharpness and chromatic aberration of modern kit lenses is far, FAR better than just 15-20 years ago. Modern computer-aided optical engineering and manufacturing makes it possible for inexpensive zoom lenses to produce far sharper images than in ages past.

[tooki]

I guess that digital clocks are now so common that most kids probably don't learn to use an analog one, so it never becomes second nature to them?

People said the same thing back when I was a little kid in the 1980s. Yet every school classroom still has analog clocks, and analog watches remain as common as ever (perhaps more so than in the 80s, when “digital” was novel). Smartwatches still all default to analog faces.

So absent actual data, I call complete bunk on this claim.

[tooki]

company's not having enough stock to meet the minimum order quantity,why if the minimum order quantity is 25,do you only have 23 in stock.

Uhhhh… not that hard. MOQ is 25 for whatever reason they like. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that one has to order in lots of 25. So suppose they originally had 1000, and sold 25 here, 67 there, 93 there, etc. and happened to end up with 73 pieces left. Then someone buys 50.

[tooki]

My favourite one is moron Jobs who paid 100K in 1986 money for his "Next" logo.

$100K for a Paul Rand logo (which, remember, also means all the documentation, guidelines, etc) is hardly moronic.

[Bud]

Maybe, but can you tell when was the last time you saw a product with that logo, or even just the logo itself ?

[PlainName]

I suspect that if Jobs hadn't returned to Apple, Next would be where Apple is and Apple would be toast. Or mush.

[tooki]

Maybe, but can you tell when was the last time you saw a product with that logo, or even just the logo itself ?

Well they managed to get paid to buy Apple, so one could argue they won big time.

(As in, Apple paid money to buy NeXT, but NeXT’s technology and management almost completely replaced Apple’s.)

Regardless, what on earth is your point? $100K is peanuts when launching a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. Branding is important, something Jobs understood extremely well.

[coppice]

I suspect that if Jobs hadn't returned to Apple, Next would be where Apple is and Apple would be toast. Or mush.

Next was basically out of business when Jobs returned to Apple. Probably both companies would now be toast if he had not returned.

[Cubdriver]

That by and large seems to be the case for DSLR lenses - seems you can get kit lenses or pro grade, but little or nothing in between.

When is the last time you bought a kit lens? While they won’t be the fastest lenses (which is not so bad since modern cameras are great at high ISO), the sharpness and chromatic aberration of modern kit lenses is far, FAR better than just 15-20 years ago. Modern computer-aided optical engineering and manufacturing makes it possible for inexpensive zoom lenses to produce far sharper images than in ages past.

I haven't (unless you count the EF 24-105 f/4L IS, which was kitted with some 5D series cameras).  I'm not complaining of their sharpness or lack thereof and am well aware that their optical qualities are much better than in the past, but of their limited and often variable maximum apertures.  A quick glance at B&H shows the Canon EF-S 18-55 kit lens has a maximum aperture that goes from f/3.5 on the wide end to f/5.6 at the long end.  The EF-S 75-300 goes from f/4 to f/5.6.I like to shoot with available light, and often at wide apertures.  And these are the short back focus lenses made for the cameras with the smaller APS-C format sensor, so they don't even have to cover a 35mm frame.  f/5.6 in my book is not a wide aperture.  When I first got seriously involved in photography as a senior in HS in the early 80s, the first lens I bought to use in addition to the 50 f/1.8 that came with the camera was a Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f/3.5 zoom.  While only 1/3 of a stop wider at max than the 75-300 is at 75, it's 1-1/3 stops wider when zoomed in fully - that's more than a doubling of the shutter speed in a given situation, and at the long end of the focal length where you most need it.

-Pat

[jonovid]

failing to properly laser etch or label small components. its not the size of a label that matters, most of us have microscopes. but having a legible label in the first place.
or the removing integrated circuit labels when the component is off the shelf or non property.

[james_s]

Maybe, but can you tell when was the last time you saw a product with that logo, or even just the logo itself ?

Well they managed to get paid to buy Apple, so one could argue they won big time.

(As in, Apple paid money to buy NeXT, but NeXT’s technology and management almost completely replaced Apple’s.)

Regardless, what on earth is your point? $100K is peanuts when launching a company with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. Branding is important, something Jobs understood extremely well.

The NeXT logo is also one of the more aesthetically pleasing logos I can think of too, up there with Sun Microsystems. The reason NeXT wasn't more successful is because the products were incredibly expensive, and being far ahead of their time was not enough to overcome the fact that they were incompatible with the vast libaries of PC and Mac software already dominating the market. They were *really* slick workstations, there's a reason that today they are highly sought after collectibles.