I haven’t had any big technical projects go wrong in a long time, so I’ve been MIA as a poster here. I’m thinking about changing that. Although I don’t have any weighty projects keeping me up nights, there are plenty of minor technical annoyances in my life.
I’ll talk about two today. They share a common theme, an incorrect assumption on the part of software developers that problems are of the users making.
The Amazon Fire TV is a nice little box with a pretty good human interface. However, if you’re watching a movie and the refresh buffer keeps emptying, the software throws a message up on the screen, saying that the Internet connection is too slow, and suggesting that you fix that.
Those of you with long memories will recollect that I have a 50 Mb/s full duplex ATT IPFlex fiber connection. This hookup has been dead reliable. Even so, the first couple of times I saw this message I fired up a laptop and did a speed test. The results were perfect. Then I checked a Roku box hooked ep up to the same Ethernet switch. No problem there.
So I power cycled the Fire TV. Problem solved.
Now, when I see the message, I just power cycle the Amazon box. 90% of the time that fixes the problem. The other 10% of the time I have to watch another show on the FireTV. In the first case, the problem is with the Fire TV firmware — I know it’s not the hardware because it happens on more than one Fire TV. In the second case, the problem is with the Amazon servers or their end of the network.
In no case is a problem with my ISP, firewall, switches, cables, or anything like that. And it ticks me off every time Amazon suggests that it is.
I have an Apple watch. It has the feel of a Rel 1 product, but I keep using it. I charge it at night on my bed stand, using the Apple puck. Every tenth of 20th morning, I wake up to see my watch displaying a message that I have connected it to an unsupported charger. Some mornings there is a stack of half a dozen of these messages that need to be individually acknowledged.
Needless to say, the charger is an Apple product, purchased directly from Apple, and intended solely to charge the watch. Unsupported, my posterior!
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