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Red Bull TV app.
(I know, it's free and the content is generally exceptional.)
I don't think I navigated to a live event once in 2020 without using industrial language and shouting at the telly.
It's unfathomable.
Steam. I just want to play Descenders FFS, but no, I have to start ****ing Steam up and you want to update it Every Bastarding Time I start a game up which takes bastarding ages. **** that. ****ers.
Amazon apps. Not the main shipping one, that’s pretty slick. However Prime Video and Prime Music, particularly from a company that is meant to be good at this stuff, have the most awful UI’s I’ve seen in a long time.
Nothing where you expect it and no obvious way to carry out what should be pretty basic actions. Even just searching for stuff on Music when compared to Qobuz or Tidal is just a hateful experience.
Another vote for the western my cloud thing. I bought one after a psa on here a few years ago. The latest software for it on windows has no shutdown option but if you hunt the web for an older version there is. As it's so rubbish, I only power it on about twice a year. Wonder how many people just pull the power cable out which isn't a good idea on a mechanical drive.
Red Bull TV app.
Yes! I always go to Pinkbike for the event links, never direct to RBTV.
iPad.
Always end up using my phone (Samsung) or my computer (Apple) so nothing against Apple but I hate not being able to just plug in an external device and drag a file over. Everything about it is either "log in" or "sync".
Blaupunkt VW Factory Fit Sat Nav in T6 Transporter.
Modern cars I’d say. When something goes wrong you basically have bo chance of being able to fix it yourself as everything needs a sensor now and needs programmed
Sure, but they don’t stop on the side of the road if you drive through a puddle. Jesus, try driving some old 70s cars.
As the owner of one of each. A modern-ish French car and a 70s British one. Both are reliable as long as you pay them some TLC. The modern one throws up orange lights of doom every so often, 90% of which can be ignored. The British one (which is based on even older bits from the 40's) occasionally makes some noise or other indication it's about to stop and needs some TLC. Deal with that and it'll not stop unexpectedly. Last time it let me down was a sheared half shaft, not exactly something you can pre-empt (well, you can, but the upgraded ones are £1k+ for a set, easier to replace once in a blue moon).
The "Netflix" button on tv remotes. Don't know why but both my parents' last 2 tvs have it. No matter what you're doing, what you're watching, pressing the big red Netflix button instantly kicks you out and starts up Netflix, which takes about 20 non-skippable seconds, to get through to the menu that says "Oh, you don't have Netflix?" but you still have to go through several screens/options to get out. And then when you exit, it takes you back to the tv start menu as if you'd just turned it on, not to the thing you actually wanted to do.
I doubt even regular netflix users really need a big red Netflix button, but there it is anyway.
Don’t get me started on WD crap. I bought a 1TB external hard drive a few years ago
Just dismantle it, the drive will just be a standard SATA unit that you can plug into any computer.
Can I send it to you to do then? I'll pay.
usb c is a great standard if implemented properly. unfortunately many manufacturers only implement most standards as far as they feel inclined to.
google home, chromecast, and phillips hue. the 'smart home' bits i have. work together well enough to be genuinely useful. work together badly enough to be thoroughly infuriating to the point that self awareness only kicks in when your skin temperature is raised sufficiently to realise that you're shouting at a dumb collection of circuitry and plastic. or is it? it's a good thing i keep the hammers in the garage.
Just dismantle it, the drive will just be a standard SATA unit that you can plug into any computer.
That will work if the power supply or controller has died. Unfortunately if as you say it died after being switched off for a while then it's most likely the drive itself that's died. For a long life they much prefer being left switched on 24/7 in a server/NAS/JBOD, they absolutely don't like being left on a shelf for months.
Still worth trying the drive in a PC, but if that fails there are companies who will physically rebuild the platters into an identical drive, but then it's getting expensive ££££.
I doubt even regular netflix users really need a big red Netflix button, but there it is anyway.
We use it, it's great. I suspect that's down to it being a new TV, the Netflix app on the DVR is dog slow to boot up. The one on the new TV gets to the menu pretty much instantly (it also has an Amazon prime button that's equally quick).
but I hate not being able to just plug in an external device and drag a file over.
Can’t say that’s ever been an issue, but then I never have a need to do such a thing.
Having said that, I used to copy photos and occasional files onto an older iPad via the Camera Card reader and an appropriate app, but haven’t done it for ages.
Steam. I just want to play Descenders FFS, but no, I have to start * Steam up and you want to update it Every Bastarding Time I start a game up which takes bastarding ages. * that. ****.
Just copy the shortcut to the exe to your desktop.
It'll be in the steamapps common (whichever way round it is) Descenders folder.
TBH though if it's updating that often it's not steam at fault, blame the game.
And a +1 for Red Bull live events!
Every dab radio I’ve owned has an unnecessarily complicated way of changing stations...
You twist the station dial and then ‘dink’, you press select to confirm station selection.
Problem is, every ‘dink’ moves the radio, or tips it over. I’ve had to wedge my radios in between larger/ heavier objects to ameliorate this ‘dink’.
In the olden days, finding a station was similar to gear-shifts before indexing. A bit hit and miss.
But nowadays the station dial locks on with complete accuracy. Twisting the dial should be sufficient without any extra ‘dink’.
You don’t have to confirm your indexed gear selection with a ‘dink’ or your tv channel selection with a ‘dink’. So why does it persist on dab radios?
And that’s assuming that you find a radio with its own discrete station dial and not some dial that performs a myriad other functions.
I’d love to buy a dab radio that lets me spin the dial to escape whatever I happen to find annoying, without having to clutch it in both hands.
I think it’s time for us to ‘ditch the dink‘.
The “Netflix” button on tv remotes
Superglue.
iPhones. I can't use them. People say android is complicated but to me it's the other way round.
Samsung tizen TV, the TV guide. Navigate to find said guide, no button just to open it. 5 clicks on my 2017 TV. Then it opens the guide on the current channel. If you need to scroll far then you literally have to scroll. No page skip button. Annoying. Don't watch too much live TV anyway.
DJI Mavic air 2 controller. Had a Mavic pro before. The controller was easy, quick and had good range.
Old one:
Pull legs open. Pull antenna up. Plug phone in. Fly your 2016 drone about nicely.
New one: pull massive controller out, find the sticks. Screw them in. Unloop the silly wire. Plug that in in a fiddly fashion. Find a way to mount phone where it doesn't touch power or volume buttons. Start controller. Fly your 2020 drone with supposed further range whilst enjoying constant signal drop out because the antenna appears to be inferior.
Printers. Any of them. Hate them.
Nintendo switch store. Why do I have to enter a password every single time? Why did I pick 14 characters for the password.
First world problems.
The Yamaha DX7 FM synth.
A game changer for sounds at the time.
A totally new way of thinking about sound creation and no knobs to program it! Just a data entry slider and a lot of parameters to work through. We used to sell them and they’d be traded in a year or two later with not a single new sound programmed in.
Thank god buttons and knobs are back.
Modern cars I’d say. When something goes wrong you basically have bo chance of being able to fix it yourself as everything needs a sensor now and needs programmed
I'd argue that modern cars are extremely user friendly for the purpose they've been designed for. A modern car will do pretty much everything for you and the bits it can't do by itself, it still provides vast amounts of aid. As a user friendly design, it's great; the whole point of user friendly is that you don't need to know what's going on with the electronics and mechanics.
The downside of course is that any idiot can drive one!
Modern cars: a friend of ours was in tears recently because she hated cars and they were awful. The problem? After 9 years of ownership without issue, requiring absolutely intervention other than the annual service, the battery finally failed. That's how good they are.
I’m still baffled by the fact you buy computer games (Switch in our case) and the games has zero instructions in the box.
I give up and just let my 9 year old play until he gets to a level where he’s figured out enough controls for his level of interest.
Would it be so hard to print a simple set of instructions saying which button does which action…
Came here to say this. All that money spent and they couldn't stretch to a 5 min intro level on a game to show you what to do?
Just copy the shortcut to the exe to your desktop.It’ll be in the steamapps common (whichever way round it is) Descenders folder.
TBH though if it’s updating that often it’s not steam at fault, blame the game.
Ah, cool, thanks. I shall give that a go later on.
Modern bikes, torque values everywhere if they were that accurate my bars wouldn’t have been loose before dropping in. Also just naming of products Dt swiss XRC, XMC, EXC, M, XM or the worst offenders Maxxis genuinely have to research before buying tyres 3C, DD, maxx terra. Just called it what it ****ing is.
Car manufacturer websites, trek bikes website, iPlayer app on tv, why is the thing you select on the left hand side of the screen not central. Could go on and on about UX design.
Still worth trying the drive in a PC, but if that fails there are companies who will physically rebuild the platters into an identical drive, but then it’s getting expensive ££££.
I reckon. When It 1st went I took it back to PC World where I'd bought it (Tossers that they are) & was told they might be able do do it but it would be about £100, My sons FIL is pretty nifty & he couldn't do anything with it, then I took it a local guy who seems to be able to fix anything. He had for a few days & basically said what you did, that he could faff around but It still might not work!
Just as well there was nowt REALLY important on the sodding thing!
No page skip button. [on Samsung TVs]
Use channel up and down while in the guide to skip pages.
The Guardian phone app. Its the most clunky non user friendly piece of software I've ever had the displeasure to use. Eventually when you navigate to a News screen then you get yesterday's news.
Much as though I support their journalism, and have every expectation that you should pay for what you use, I have no intention of renewing my subscription.
@yosemitepaul - really? I find the Guardian app brilliant. Been using it a couple of years and never had so much as a hiccup.
Well thanks to this thread I've just salvaged the 2TB hard drive out of the WD box while sitting here waiting for my lunch to warm up. I thought I was being thick and not able to find the proper settings to make it work how a normal person would expect it to.
Has anyone mentioned a certain web [url= https://singletrackmag.com/forum ]forum[/url] as yet?
49 seconds! You bastard.
Came here to say this. All that money spent and they couldn’t stretch to a 5 min intro level on a game to show you what to do?
Pretty much all games have the controls under options from the main menu. Some of you are like my grandad 😀
Nintendo switch store. Why do I have to enter a password every single time? Why did I pick 14 characters for the password.
Set up a separate profile from the kids and then you don’t have to. You can control which users can access the store.
Graphics card naming conventions - I tend to buy a new graphics card every 5 to 8 years, either as a part in a new pc build or and upgrade to an existing one.
BY which time both AMD and Nvidia are guarenteed to have completley changed the model number line up bearing no relation to older ones, requiring to read up on them all over again to see what compares to my old one etc.
I've come back to this thread after 15 minutes of wrestling with a vacuum cleaner bag. I mean, how can something so relatively simple be so utterly awful? It's like the people who design vacuum cleaners and the people who design the bags for them have never met!
And yes, I know you can get bagless designs but how have designers managed to create such bizarrely shaped and inaccessible spaces to put what should be a simple dust collection device but which is actually a similarly bizarrely shaped paper bag? And god forbid that you get the wrong shaped bag - oh no, each individual cleaner on the market requires its own completely unique design...
I can see where bike designers get their ideas on proprietary spec from.
I love my iPad, but certain things on it drive me nuts - mostly to do with editing text. Wherever you want to edit, touch the screen and without fail it selects the wrong thing, or the cursor goes in the wrong place. Try to move it and it selects something else you didn't want, part of a word, another line. Editing a URL in any browser has brought me close to smashing the thing with a hammer many times. I know I've got big fat xl fingers, but surely it's not all down to that??
Yep, copy >paste on any iOS device can **** right off. Exercise in frustration indeed
2 fingers on the keyboard and drag the cursor where you want it works on my iPad air
this. (needs to be on spacebar on newer phones I think rather than anywhere on keyboard). Double triple-tap to zoom in if you are really struggling (might need to activate that first under accessibility settings?)2 fingers on the keyboard and drag the cursor where you want it works on my iPad air
or hold on the spacebar for a sec
reluctantwrinkly
2 fingers on the keyboard and drag the cursor where you want it works on my iPad air
Oh my gawd. That's bloody amazing! So glad I posted now. Thanks! 😀
Cars work just fine these days but that screen thing in the middle that goes beep and tells you its connected to your smart phone when you get in - buy a paper Michelin atlas for wherever you are and turn the screen off along with your phone, your doctor will make approving noises the next time you get your blood pressure tested and you are 93.4618% less likely to crash your car due to distraction.
Pretty much all games have the controls under options from the main menu. Some of you are like my grandad
It's still crap though - fine on a game with like 4 different controls but on something with 10+ you need to refer to something move convenient than going into the game options (especially if it's online multiplayer). I end up just writing them out on a sheet of paper but was much more convenient when they provided a keyboard layout in the game box (although as most stuff I buy is digital download now I'll have the issue regardless).
Teams.
Ive worked in IT for over 20 years, i have seen plenty of software in that time. There is just something not quite right about it. Its seems overly complex when it should be simple. Ive even been using it for nearly a year and it still confuses the hell out of me.
I actually clicked into this thread thinking "itll be WD myCloud.".
Just backing ours up, though the backup tool does suggest that if it dies, i can only "restore" to a WD device, so looking at alternatives at the same time.
Something with a "RAID" mirror on two onboard disks, and another one for my Dad up country (he's on MyCloud, on my recommendation), and have them back each other up over the web.
i dont like that SSDs basically store the data as "static" electricity, so the will degrade over time, 10 years they reckon but i still dont trust it.
The “Netflix” button on tv remotes.
not specifically this but maybe someone knows the answer.... I barely watch it so don't know but the wife and kids all have it on devices as well as on the TV. And where it's all wireless enabled if I'm watching the TV when they (mainly t'wife tbh) starts a Netflix on her fancy ipad, then the TV automatically screen casts it.
1/ how can i turn that off without disabling it completely? When she does want to watch Netflix on the TV then using the ipad to select the program is way easier than the TV itself apparently
2/ why does it always happen at a critical moment.....'and Sterling's got a clear run on goal' or 'one ball left and England need 2 runs to win' .....and up pops chuffin' Netflix!!
I notice that ‘GoPro’ has been mentioned a couple of times already (and probly deserves a thread of its own), but has anyone managed to properly sync theirs up to the iOS app?
I’m still trying to download update 1.5 from my iPad to my hero9.
My gopro’s been set to connect only with the iPad and not bother with automatic uploads to the cloud.
The Bluetooth connection works fine. (I can control the cameras settings from my iPad).
The WiFi seems fine. (Though quite why it needs to pair up with the iPad over WiFi as well as Bluetooth is beyond me).
I had a look on gopros help page, but they seem to recommend deleting any ‘Mac’ address.
Every other Bluetooth device pairs up lickety spit.
I get the impression that the hero9 wants to be plugged into a good old-fashioned pc.
I can still upload stuff into the iPad with the pukka camera connection kit, but this latest system upgrade still eludes me.
Have we had earphones/buds yet?
Either I'm in a minority of one with unusually large ears... certainly don't thinks so, nobody has ever called me wingnut/dumbo/jug-eared freak for example. But I'm old enough that I remember the cassette walkman with those springy headphones with the orange foam covers. Now those, and all traditional headphones work fine. But I've never been able to understand the little bud things which replaced them. They just don't stay in. I've never been into listening to music when out running so it isn't even that. I'm talking about just sat still. Move your facial muscles a fraction of a millimetre and one will drop out while the other anchors in your lower ear and causes the phone/device to fly across the room. Sometimes it's nice to fall asleep to a podcast. so you put one in and trap it between the pillow whilst balancing the other in your skyward ear. Turn over and they both fall out. It's maddening! Am I doing it wrong? Are you supposed to twist them horizontally deep into your ear canal or something?
Cars work just fine these days but that screen thing in the middle that goes beep and tells you its connected to your smart phone when you get in – buy a paper Michelin atlas for wherever you are and turn the screen off along with your phone, your doctor will make approving noises the next time you get your blood pressure tested and you are 93.4618% less likely to crash your car due to distraction.
Trying to drive and navigate solo using a paper map is both dangerous and dangerously frustrating - having tried to do it many times in the past. My new car has CarPlay, which instantly syncs with my phone, picking up a song that had been playing previously from where it left off, if my phone is selected as source instead of the radio, and if I’m using the satnav I sort out the route on TomTom before I get in the car, select the TomTom app on the car’s screen, and the navigation starts straight away, it’s absolutely ****ing brilliant! No fannying around trying to tap postcodes or addresses onto a silly little keyboard on the car’s screen. I can even locate somewhere without a postcode in what3words, select TomTom for the navigation option, and set off.
The only thing that could be better is the location of the reversing camera - it picks up a lot of spray where it’s positioned above the number plate, it would have been better up by the high-level brake light, but that’s a minor niggle.
Compared to the many, many things in current cars that have me grinding my teeth in frustration.
We have over 3000 vehicles at work, from most current manufacturers, and their choices of how their cars are designed and their ergonomics just make me weep with frustration at times; when you move seventy-odd cars during a working day, those little things really add up. 🤬
But I’ve never been able to understand the little bud things which replaced them. They just don’t stay in.
There are many many designs and they usually come with many fittings and widgets to suit different ears. The basic toss you get with your phone is usually rubbish. I could never use earbuds for years, always too painful, but recently I have had a lot of good experiences. Particularly the ones with a silicone mushroom that blocks your ear canal like an earplug. They stay in well, and then there's the kind with a silicone arm that secures it further, like Anker Soundbuds. And they're only £25 or so.
buy a paper Michelin atlas
Satnavs may be annoying but they are about 500 times better than stopping all the time to read an atlas - especially when you get to a town and you need to follow someone's directions dictated from memory over the phone and hastily scribbled onto an envelope.. hah, some people have short memories!
Amazon search bar. Just returns whatever it wants.
[s]Amazon[/s] Singletrackworld search bar. Just returns whatever it wants.
I’ve also got one of those xiaomi ’fitbits’.
I think it’s pretty good tbh.
But the sleep tracking part of the app is quite perplexing.
Despite being one of the usp’s of the device, you have to be connected to the app via Bluetooth and faff about with sub-menus to access the sleep-tracking feature.
You’d think that the constant communication (via Bluetooth) with the Fitbit whilst sleep tracking would allow the app to obtain the sleep data in real-time whilst you’re asleep?
Nope.
Only when you’ve woken up and ended the sleep-tracking (via the app, of course), does it upload the data from the Fitbit.
If the app can only upload the data from the Fitbit at the end of your sleep session, then what’s the point of having it establish a constant connection with the app whilst you’re asleep?
How very peculiar!
Can’t I just activate the sleep-tracking, independent of the app, and upload the data at my leisure?