> The market theory is that if a device doesn't work very well, everybody
> will buy a competing product instead. Except that, as far as I can tell,
> almost all of these devices tend to be equally inept.

Maybe it wasn't possible to make a better one for that price and still 
make a profit?

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On 04/04/2011 01:43 PM, scott wrote:
>> The market theory is that if a device doesn't work very well, everybody
>> will buy a competing product instead. Except that, as far as I can tell,
>> almost all of these devices tend to be equally inept.
>
> Maybe it wasn't possible to make a better one for that price and still
> make a profit?

How hard would it be to add 3 lines of code to display the number of 
files still to be copied? I mean, maybe it would actually be difficult 
to add a second progress bar, I don't know, but I can't imagine adding a 
little bit of text could be that hard.

There's already an option to reformat the internal HD. So why isn't 
there one to format an external one? The necessary code obviously exists 
already, so...?

Alternatively, if you actually need a PC, why not document this fact 
correctly? If the drive has to have at least one empty folder on it, 
document that too! (Weirdly, you can create and delete folders from the 
device. You just can't until at least one empty folder exists, WTF?)

We're talking about tiny little changes that would have made a big 
difference to how easy to use the product would have been. OK, making it 
so that you can still change channel while a file copy is in progress 
*might* actually be difficult. Most of the other stuff would have been 
trivial.

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On 4/4/2011 7:25, Invisible wrote:
> We're talking about tiny little changes that would have made a big
> difference to how easy to use the product would have been.

It's all about priorities and deadlines.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/4/2011 2:34 AM, Invisible wrote:
> 3. You cannot copy folders, only files. To copy a folder, you must
> manually create the destination folder, open the source folder and
> destination folder, select-all and copy. If a folder contains folders,
> you must select-all and manually unselect any folders.
>
Sounds like Yahoo Small Business' "file manager". Stupid thing lets you 
move/copy files up/down a level in the tree, but not "across", to 
entirely other locations. And, you can't do shit with folders.

I seriously wonder, at times, what people are thinking when they do 
stupid shit like this, then claim it "helps" you do anything. Luckily, 
in my case, I was able to activate FTP, then make changes on my own 
system. Maybe, in your case, you just boot a completely different OS, 
make the changes/copies, then... lol

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On 04/04/2011 05:06 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/4/2011 7:25, Invisible wrote:
>> We're talking about tiny little changes that would have made a big
>> difference to how easy to use the product would have been.
>
> It's all about priorities and deadlines.

Indeed. And as usual, customer satisfaction is not a priority.

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> How hard would it be to add 3 lines of code to display the number of
> files still to be copied? I mean, maybe it would actually be difficult
> to add a second progress bar, I don't know, but I can't imagine adding a
> little bit of text could be that hard.
>
> There's already an option to reformat the internal HD. So why isn't
> there one to format an external one? The necessary code obviously exists
> already, so...?
>
> We're talking about tiny little changes that would have made a big
> difference to how easy to use the product would have been. OK, making it
> so that you can still change channel while a file copy is in progress
> *might* actually be difficult. Most of the other stuff would have been
> trivial.

You'll probably find a lot of the code is just copied from an earlier 
generation product (where HDs were much smaller), and the external drive 
thing was a last minute add-on.  To go through a thorough a test, code 
and test cycle would probably end up way more expensive than any 
additional profits they could make over just shipping it "as-is" with 
minimum modifications ("how can we make huge external drives work as 
quickly as possible").

Don't forget these type of products sell for 12 months or so until the 
next better one comes along, in a lot of cases it's much more profitable 
to sell your product NOW with a few bugs rather than wait some time to 
iron them out.  And in the end a company that makes amazing products but 
no profit will not last very long.

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> You'll probably find a lot of the code is just copied from an earlier
> generation product (where HDs were much smaller), and the external drive
> thing was a last minute add-on.

It still bemuses me that they could go to all the trouble of writing a 
huge, complex USB driver, and yet not bother to add 3 lines of code to 
display a file count.

> Don't forget these type of products sell for 12 months or so until the
> next better one comes along

As the manufacturer, this is probably true. As the consumer, we've 
bought this thing and we're probably going to use it for at least 10 
years, if not longer. So the minor glitches that the manufacturer didn't 
bother to iron out in their rush to market are extremely annoying, and 
they're going to annoy us for the next 10 years.

> in a lot of cases it's much more profitable
> to sell your product NOW with a few bugs rather than wait some time to
> iron them out.

Reminds me of my PC motherboard. Splashed across the [very shiny] box is 
something about RAID support and dual-BIOS support. You know what? The 
product in the box doesn't actually possess either of these features. 
(!!) But about a year later, Gigabyte released a BIOS update that makes 
these features work as advertised.

(I especially love that you have to bypass the dual-BIOS in order to 
make the dual-BIOS work...)

> And in the end a company that makes amazing products but
> no profit will not last very long.

I would pay serious money to obtain hardware and software which isn't 
infuriatingly awkward to use. But unfortunately, that doesn't appear to 
be an option. Nobody makes it.

What, fundamentally, can we do about this? How can we make it 
unprofitable to produce poor quality products?

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> It still bemuses me that they could go to all the trouble of writing a
> huge, complex USB driver,

I doubt they wrote their own USB driver from scratch.

> As the manufacturer, this is probably true. As the consumer, we've
> bought this thing and we're probably going to use it for at least 10
> years, if not longer. So the minor glitches that the manufacturer didn't
> bother to iron out in their rush to market are extremely annoying, and
> they're going to annoy us for the next 10 years.

They've already got your $$$s though :-)

> What, fundamentally, can we do about this? How can we make it
> unprofitable to produce poor quality products?

You need to stop the demand for cheap consumer goods - good luck with 
that ;-)

Alternatively you could make it illegal to sell anything that hasn't 
scored a certain amount in some unbiased consumer testing, but you're 
likely to be pretty unpopular when the price of everything goes up.

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>> It still bemuses me that they could go to all the trouble of writing a
>> huge, complex USB driver,
>
> I doubt they wrote their own USB driver from scratch.

I doubt integrating whatever 3rd party code they bought into their own 
codebase was a five minute job.

>> the minor glitches that the manufacturer didn't
>> bother to iron out in their rush to market are extremely annoying, and
>> they're going to annoy us for the next 10 years.
>
> They've already got your $$$s though :-)

Indeed. And that seems to be all they care about.

(E.g., the user guide has a "go to this URL for support" printed in it. 
The URL is 404, and when you check out their support section, the model 
we bought isn't even listed. Not bad for a 4 month old product...)

>> What, fundamentally, can we do about this? How can we make it
>> unprofitable to produce poor quality products?
>
> You need to stop the demand for cheap consumer goods - good luck with
> that ;-)

If we paid £20 for this thing, I wouldn't mind it being a bit naff. But 
we didn't. It cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds. For that price, you 
damned well *expect* it to be good quality!

> Alternatively you could make it illegal to sell anything that hasn't
> scored a certain amount in some unbiased consumer testing, but you're
> likely to be pretty unpopular when the price of everything goes up.

Yeah, I'm guessing that's not going to work too well...

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> I doubt integrating whatever 3rd party code they bought into their own
> codebase was a five minute job.

I wonder what OS is it using?  Also they probably have some 3rd party to 
write the software anyway, so have no direct control over exactly how 
things are implemented internally, so long as it works.

> If we paid £20 for this thing, I wouldn't mind it being a bit naff. But
> we didn't. It cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds. For that price, you
> damned well *expect* it to be good quality!

Just change your expectations, then your problems are solved :-)

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