Register The Click

 Remember when computers acted like computers?

Remember when you could tell a computer, "when this condition exists, do these things, then report the outcome"?  ...if the computer hardware and firmware was nominally operational, it would just follow the instructions and do the things.

I have a pair of Raycon "everyday earbuds" which ... work ... mostly.  When they work... WHEN they work correctly, they sound decent and stay in my ear for a little while.  ...which... y'know...  is mediocre.

When I open the little case and put the earbuds in my ears... about 50% of the time one of them has not woken up.  I then have to futz around and fumble with the sleepy one for a couple minutes to wake it up.  That's great.  When I go to STOP using them, I'll manually pause whatever media, open the case, remove one bud and place it in the case, then the other.  Close the case.  Wait a few seconds.  Resume playback of the media.  It's playing in the little earbud case.  Pause media again, go into Bluetooth menu on phone and manually disengage the earbuds.  Bump media back 30 seconds and resume play.  I have not run these earbud through multiple laundry cycles (not even one).  I have sweated pretty vigorously on them, but... they're earbuds.  People supposedly use them while working out and stuff.  In the rain.  That seems unlikely to be the problem.

Some of the blame may rest with Android (the Operating System on my phone), some may rest with the firmware in the tiny computers in the earbuds and the case that manage pairing, charging, and ... I don't know... selling my ear canal dimensions to Chinese data brokers?

In any event, it seems to me that there has been a trend ongoing since at least the arrival of Java that has put so much abstraction between when I press a "button" someplace and what happens as a consequence that it's basically up to a dice roll whether or not anything actually happens... and if something DOES happen, whether or not it's what I intend... that computers have become essentially useless.  

My user experience is getting sensibly and quantifiably worse with every new UI "improvement".  

I blame "capacitive touch sensors".  Seriously.  The promise of multi-touch screens was huge, and, after a decade or so of beta testing in production... they're about 70-80% there.  In that time, one-page web applications and smart-phone apps have banked on these touch screens being viable and reliable.  They are not.  Is it humid?  Is it dry?  Are your hands sweaty?  Have they been sweaty?  What's the pH of your skin?  Are you near a source of RF energy?  Are you in a hurry?  Did you press hard enough?  Did you press too hard?  Does the size of the touch surface impact its effectiveness?  It kinda seems so...  Couple this ridiculousness with the fact that UI designers are steering away from things like feedback.  An animation or color change or "click" to acknowledge a "button push".  Not in five minutes.  FUCKING NOW.  ...and maybe an indication that the thing is actually working on something and hasn't just FROZEN.  A throbber, a progress bar... a CLI spinner or series of periods as the process moves forward.  I can do without proportionally-spaced anti-aliased vector fonts and window transparency if it means I can get what I need done, done... without all the anxiety of "did my button push register?!" and waiting in uncertainty for some indication that I will get the result I want.  

I want my computer experience to be as reliable, immediate, responsive, and free from anxiety as playing actual real live acoustic drums.  I hit drum with stick, drum does what it's supposed to do, immediately, and without any perceptible "consideration".  I want it to be entirely predictable.  If I hit the head dead center, I expect it to sound rich and full,  If I hit it off-center, I expect it to sound pinched and a little funny tonally.  If I hit the rim, I expect it to add a certain additional sound.  I don't have to watch my stick hit each drum and wait for it to make a sound.  I can not-look-at-the-drums while I'm playing and have a fair idea of whether I'm hitting them correctly.  Right away.  I have confidence in drums.  I have no confidence in modern computer user interfaces.

I don't hold out any hope that I'll see an eight-core, sixteen-thread personal computer running at four gigahertz with thirty-two gigabytes of RAM that can get out of its own goddamned way and and just register a fucking button push when I push the fucking button, rather than waiting until it takes another screenshot and "encrypts" it so Microsoft can... what? ...masturbate to it?  I don't need the window to be transparent.  I don't need fancy convolving animations and sound effects to know that I just minimized a window.  Register the click and do the thing.  NOW.

First of all, I need feedback.  Give me confidence that I have actually pressed a button. 

...and you thought MS Windows was inexcuably bad before....

 This article tells us that Microsoft will be including ads in the file browser of Windows 11.

So let's see if I have this straight.  Microsoft gets money from the computer OEM for the pre-installed version of Windows.  Microsoft collects "usage data" and possibly other personal data which it can use to tailor future versions of software to be more profitable, and also sell on to third parties making more revenue.  Microsoft gets to show you ads when you use their search platform which is defaulted in the pre-installed web browser ("Edge"), and now Microsoft is going to show you ads in your file browser.

I can't help but wonder how many steps there are between this and Microsoft just showing up at your house in a windowless van, pulling a black fabric bag over your head, dosing you with a paralytic, and take you off to some undisclosed site where they harvest all your black-market saleable organs and tissues, and dump what's left in the Berkeley Pit.

OK, maybe that's hyperbole.  Maybe.

The article says that this won't affect commercial users.  Goodie.

So-called "insiders" will get the ads in the "Beta Channel".  The article suggests that negative feedback from these "insiders" could influence Microsoft to not promote this "feature" to general release.  I have my doubts.  

If Microsoft was giving away (free as in beer) full-fat Windows Professional (or, better still, "Windows Server") with no restrictions, and wasn't doing the "telemetry" thing... maybe I wouldn't mind ads in the file browser.  ...maybe.  Windows is already generating revenue, and provides them an "in" to sell more products and services.  I suspect Microsoft could afford to distribute Windows for free as a "loss leader" and only charge for the add-ons (MS Office and so on) and it wouldn't really hurt their money position.  According to this, Windows 11 amounts to just over 10% of the company's revenue.  The overwhelming majority of their revenue comes from cloud services (Azure and Microsoft 365) -- more than five times what Windows 11 brings in.  That's also where most of their growth is.  Some Internet stats show MS Windows declining in market share to Mac and Linux, to as low as the mid 70% range.  

 Ironically, Linux is crushing it on Microsoft's cloud platform.