We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

I have an app whose sole purpose is to launch another app. Obviously I am misusing it. You're supposed to set up the first app to trigger not just one but a whole host of app services in one go. At first, I had it launch all my apps. Over time I realized that I didn't need all those apps running at once so pruned the list down …

[Mr Dogshit]

I'm so glad I don't participate in this shitfest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said Mr. Dogshit!

[Headley_Grange]

You're holding it wrong!

The mistake you're making is to think that apps are there to adapt to your lifestyle requirements. It's the other way round and in the future those who won't adapt will be dealt with - unless they miss the appointment in their calendar.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: You're holding it wrong!

Those who don't adapt will miss their appointment in the calendar.

[tezboyes]

Re: You're holding it wrong!

Ad-app't ?

[F. Frederick Skitty]

"Each little app is a jack of one trade so you're obliged to hook them up into elaborate chains just to get a task completed."

That's the Unix command line way of doing stuff, where it works well. I guess the nearest equivalent for graphical applications would be OLE (Object Linking & Embedding), which was also the inspiration for the now deprecated Bonobo library in the GNOME world. I think Sun's ToolTalk was similar as well, although I never knowingly used that.

OLE and Bonobo seem to have failed, but Apple's scripting thingy seems to be reasonably popular for stringing applications together in macOS. Although in my limited experience of it, the examples on the web rarely work as Apple have an infuriating habit of rapidly changing or removing the functions that each application exposes.

[An_Old_Dog]

AppleScript

A decade or two ago, I discovered AppleScript and used it to automate a whole bunch of things. After an operating system upgrade, none of those scripts worked. Apple had radically changed AppleScript, and provided no script conversion program.

[chivo243]

Re: AppleScript

Now or at least, there was Automator. I never got the hang of it.

[Dan 55]

Re: AppleScript

Yeah, Automator is being bludgeoned to death in MacOS 12, it doesn't work with the new permissions. Also Python, Ruby, and Perl have gone. Wouldn't do to have anything generically programmable when you could search for ten new apps, install them, and sign up for each one.

Once upon a time OSes provided a bunch of dependable services that were useful, and all this were fields.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: AppleScript

I've got a bunch of scripts, automations and services that I wrote in the Mavericks/Yosemite era and they still work with 12.5 OK. When permissions came in a couple of revs ago some of them needed permissions granting but once given they've all worked OK. Perhaps it's because my apps are very simple - a bit of iTunes/Music firkling, Finder settings (e.g. toggle hidden) and some automation of Reminder and Calendar creation from other apps.

[Dan 55]

Re: AppleScript

Read about problems with saving to external disks (although might not be just Automator) and the PDF actions. And you're encouraged to convert Automator workflows to Shortcuts before they remove Automator, and the conversion process requires you to go over the workflow in Shortcuts to check it's converted properly.

[ttlanhil]

I'd say in the Unix command line philosophy, each app can be the master of one skill - not a mere jack (there are apps that do things badly, and there are apps that do a lot, but for most common tasks there's one tool that does that thing well).

And you control how they interact pretty easily, as opposed to having to set up linking requests/etc with modern apps

That makes a big difference!

I'm a KDE user rather than Gnome - there's a bit of it in the KDE world.

It's there in app composition (e.g. anything that needs text editing - from notes up to an IDE - can embed the text editor part and it uses same keyboard shortcuts, spellchequer, etc, in all apps)

It's there in places like I/O (text editors can open a file on a remote server over SSH if you want, since it's a set of io access plugins)

And of course in calling other apps. If the app doesn't have its own webview, then clicking a link can launch the system web browser. Or similar for downloads. But that much is common on most (all?) DEs

[doublelayer]

Not only is that common to most DEs for Linux/BSD, but for Windows and Mac OS as well. Using the system UI controls or path system so remote paths can be treated like local ones is pretty standard providing the application developers use them, which is the usual problem. When an application reimplements the edit control, it's not because they didn't have the system one to extend. They just chose to reinvent that wheel. Whether there was a point depends on the application and what they wanted to do with that control.

[unimaginative]

Using the system UI controls or path system so remote paths can be treated like local ones is pretty standard providing the application developers use them, which is the usual problem.

The *nix ways of doing this work even if the application developers do not use them.

KDE, in particular also provides a lot of components, and a lot of apps that use them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than OLE having failed, I think you might find its ubiquitous in integrating server based applications with MS OFFICE with literally 10's if not 100's millions of users worldwide

[Michael Wojcik]

Rather than OLE having failed, I think you might find its ubiquitous in integrating server based applications with MS OFFICE with literally 10's if not 100's millions of users worldwide

Sometimes failure looks like success.

[Anonymous Coward]

"where it works well."

Where people are so forced to use it they still think it works well...

It was necessary when memory was so little only small programs fit it, and it was necessary to chain applications to get a result.

It is no longer necessary but IT is walking backwards since some clueless people in universities started to believe UNIX was designed by some kind god and its design flawless and eternal.

So we are getting today IT which is made of useless complications, and nerds like them because they feel some kind of magicians uttering incomprehensible spells...

[Dan 55]

Re: "where it works well."

What do you propose instead of being able to use the output from one program as the input to another?

[doublelayer]

Re: "where it works well."

I'm not them, but I don't think they were suggesting that you prevent that. I think they only meant to suggest that individual tools that do one task may not always be the most efficient way to do something under modern resource limits. An application that uses more resources but can accomplish a task without repeatedly calling programs and writing temporary data to disk may have advantages in some workflows. It's less that you should be unable to chain programs, but that you choose not to write your new tools in a way that requires that approach.

[An_Old_Dog]

program efficiency / small, single-purpose tools

Re: "writing temporary data to a disk": we're no longer in the days of CP/M. Windows, OS X, and *nix implement pipes internally, without resorting to temporary disc files.

You seem to be expecting/hoping that MegaApp X will have all the specific functionality which you desire (start the coffee machine, turn on the aquarium lights, download the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and change every occurance of "git" to "idjit" in file Resignation.docx). Everyone has their own set of desired features, and they surely are not all going to make it into MegaApp X.

Further, MegaApp X likely will not be ported to non-mainstream operating systems. Likely it will be a Windows-only app, and even then, might not work on older OS versions.

Command-line programs are more-easily ported than GUI programs. They can be combined in ways never envisioned by their creators, and thus used to provide functionality which will never be provided in MegaApp X.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: program efficiency / small, single-purpose tools

"They can be combined in ways never envisioned by their creators"

I think the philosophy of text in/text out letting any such application connect to any other envisaged all ways without having to list them.

[doublelayer]

Re: program efficiency / small, single-purpose tools

I get the philosophy, and I've written lots of CLI programs myself that run in just this way. However, the problem in many cases is that those programs don't always work in the ideal way, making some of your comments optimistic.

"Re: "writing temporary data to a disk": we're no longer in the days of CP/M. Windows, OS X, and *nix implement pipes internally, without resorting to temporary disc files."

And some programs use them, with just one input file and one output file. Some programs have more than one of those, and since piping around directories requires standardization we don't have, they don't get used. Sure, we could write a program that opens several pipes and another program that expects to read from that many, but the point is that we'd have to write both programs to expect a situation that's not always applicable. Also, there are programs that don't follow that rule. I'm using one now: it takes a file and you have to give it a path, it writes a much larger file to a path, not including standard output, and in my case, I immediately take that file and throw away most of its contents. That program could be implemented so I could pipe data through, but it's not. I get around the inefficiencies by using a ramdisk to store the temporary file, which is fast but still not ideal.

"You seem to be expecting/hoping that MegaApp X will have all the specific functionality which you desire"

Well more suggesting it's possible than expecting them to do it automatically, but sort of. Having to export a file from one application to another, possibly multiple times, can be inefficient if the original application could add a feature to do the action. For example, printing a file probably should be done by the same program that displays it, rather than having a system-level print application and making that understand every file format you might use. That doesn't mean the application needs to connect directly to every printer, but it can collect information needed to convert the file to a printable version and call the system print handler which only has to know how to pass a standardized file to the hardware.

Or take another example: you could have an email program and a calendar program, and you do the connections yourself. For people who know how to script both, maybe you can get it to automatically do things based on emailed information related to meetings. However, not everyone will do that correctly if at all, and those actions are very likely to be connected. A program which does both of those and understands how to automatically consume responses to meetings, meeting request emails, and the other messages likely to be of use is likely to save more time than two very good programs that only do one of those things.

"Further, MegaApp X likely will not be ported to non-mainstream operating systems. Likely it will be a Windows-only app, and even then, might not work on older OS versions."

That's not really a problem with the size or structure of the application. You can have platform-independent massive GUIs and you can have OS-specific programs that are twenty lines long. Take the program I mentioned that writes a big temporary file. Why don't I just edit the code to fix it? Even assuming it would be that easy, I don't have the code. It's provided by a place which doesn't want to give me the code and hasn't made the format the code reads open, so I have little choice but to use their utility as it is. It's a pretty basic command line program, but if I want to run it on a non-AMD64 Linux or one that doesn't have a new enough glibc, I'm out of luck. Windows is right out with this thing. Anyone can have that problem, and anyone can avoid it.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: program efficiency / small, single-purpose tools

@doublelayer: "However, the problem in many cases is that those programs don't always work in the ideal way, making some of your comments optimistic." Yessss ... I currently am dealing with that very problem on something I'm doing.

"Some programs have more than one of those, and since piping around directories requires standardization we don't have, they don't get used." I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you meant here. "Piping around directories" -- meaning, lists of subdirectories and their files? (/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/fontA.pfc /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc/fontB.pfc ... ?) -- or meaning, "the contents of the files themselves"?

"Having to export a file from one application to another, possibly multiple times, can be inefficient." Yes, it can. "That doesn't mean the application needs to connect directly to every printer, but it can collect information needed to convert the file to a printable version and call the system print handler which only has to know how to pass a standardized file to the hardware." Yes, that sounds like a reasonable task partitioning.

"Or take another example: you could have an email program and a calendar program, and you do the connections yourself." This is where programmers who know how to do these things correctly can help the less-knowledgable end-users. I don't expect Ma and Pa Kettle to write command lines with I/O redirection, named pipes, and such. I hope that some helpful programmer(s) would create a menu/shell/GUI to shield the end-users from the bloody details, and present them with an integrated view.

For the programmers, doing something "internally" (say in a C program) vs. "externally" (say, invoking wc to do a word count) severely affects their productivity, because OS API calls vary far more between operating systems than do (admittedly-annoying) application-level differences.

[doublelayer]

Re: program efficiency / small, single-purpose tools

"Some programs have more than one of those, and since piping around directories requires standardization we don't have, they don't get used." I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you meant here. "Piping around directories" -- meaning, lists of subdirectories and their files?

What I was trying to say there is that, if a program reads more than one input stream, for example consuming a directory and all the files in it, you can't simply pipe in it's input because the structure of the files is almost certainly important to the task. If it was critical, you could do something like piping in a tarball, but that would require the program to untar everything which they virtually never do. Similarly, if a program produces more than one output file, you can't just pipe its output to another program because it too wouldn't know in advance how to extract the data it wants.

In either case, the program is going to end up using the filesystem for input and output, leading to a performance hit over having that program integrated with another function which can receive the data as a memory structure that doesn't need copying and probably in that case doesn't even need serialization. Doing one thing well could have a downside to doing two things in the same program, eliminating the need for temporary data on disk.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: program efficiency / small, single-purpose tools

You have heard of named pipes? Even though these exist on a filesystem, the data never really goes into a file on that filesystem. That allows you to use pipes like files.

Also, UNIX shells allow you to use file descriptors, and you can duplicate file descriptors fro one to another using exec, allowing you to actually read or write more than one in a single program.

POSIX shells (well, ksh88 so I presume POSIX compliant shells as well) also have the concept of co-processes, linked together with pipes. This works a little like internal input/output redirection in awk.

If you want anything more, you may have to resurrect REXX, which allowed such awesomeness as writing to a labelled internal pipe, and reading it elsewhere in the same script!

What UNIX pipes don't have, and something like OLE does, is any way of assigning a structure to data in a pipe. If you can't represent it as a series of lines (if you're working with a shell, other programs do not have to be line oriented) then you have serious problems.

I was once trying to use knotes to implement automatic post-it type notes for tracking issues, and one of the interfaces to kbus returned an array (which may have been referenced by a pointer), which was quite meaningless to a shell program, because there was no way of passing a pointer to structured array to a shell script.

[David Haworth 1]

A few minor corrections:

* in the Unix philosophy, each little "app" is a *master* of one trade, not a jack

* all of the little apps are at most an "apt install" or equivalent away - no subscription needed

Conclusion: iOs and Android need a command line and all the usual stuff (sort, uniq, grep, sed etc.)

If that were available, I might even consider investing in a so-called "smart" phone.

[Stoneshop]

There's one

Conclusion: iOs and Android need a command line and all the usual stuff (sort, uniq, grep, sed etc.)

Ubuntu Touch offers a fairly competent command line shell.

Which will make you long for a proper keyboard, which the Planet Communicator offers.

Unfortunately, the one I have here is fitted with a clavier Francais, which causes a mismatch between the clavier and the OS language that my fingers are accustomed to. And while in 99 out of 100 cases you can type as if it's a QWERTY keyboard, there's of course always one case where it sticks to AZERTY.

[unimaginative]

Android does have a command line. Just install a terminal app.

The problem is that unless you root your phone, what you can do is restricted.

You can also run a real Linux distro on top of Android with a full set of tools, and no restrictions with its directories. There are a few ways of doing this, but Termux is a good one.

Android also has the ecosystem around F-Droid which gives you a whole lot of repositories and clients using a common packaging system. Most of the software FOSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's the Unix command line way of doing stuff,"

Almost. The UNIX way is "do one thing and do it well".

Do one thing and do it halfassed is the newfangled app way.

[Chris Evans]

Cloud access?

Don't many (most?) of these apps rely on Cloud access?

Alistair can add that to his list, it certainly could add a significant amount of extra time.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Cloud access?

it certainly could add a significant amount of extra time.

Like the way that my car insists on looking up the driver profile on a server somewhere in the cloud every time I unlock it? If my wife unlocks it with her key it then has to download her profile and replace mine with it, so that it can move the seat & mirrors to the right place, and change the radio presets... This all takes 60-90 seconds, before I can actually do what I unlocked the car for, which was to drive somewhere.

12 years ago I had a car with similar functionality, but with the data stored locally. 3 seconds to swap profiles, it was done before I even got my seatbelt on. This is progress?

[druck]

Re: Cloud access?

So it downloads a profile from the internet, instead of storing a few KB of data in NVRAM? Name and shame so we can avoid this vehicular monstrosity.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Cloud access?

I have a nasty feeling the name is "All of them". If it isn't it soon will be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cloud access?

Sounds like the latest VW group MIB3 system, so VW, Audi, Skoda all have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 12 years ago I had a car with similar functionality,

In fact, even decades ago you could have the same functionality, ... except the profiles were stored in the driver's head, and there were miscellaneous levers and whatnot which were designed to interface directly with your hands :-)

[ThatOne]

Re: 12 years ago I had a car with similar functionality,

> were stored in the driver's head

Yes, but in this case you can't extort charge a subscription for being able to customize your seat and mirrors' position, with the threat that if you don't pay up, you'll be steering with your belly or need 8' platform shoes to reach the pedals...

[vtcodger]

Re: Cloud access?

"Like the way that my car insists on looking up the driver profile on a server somewhere in the cloud every time I unlock it?"

What kind of car? I ask because I want to make sure I never consider buying one.

[jo.bloggs]

Re: Cloud access?

It is progress in the context of UN Millenial Goals - genuinely conceived back then, but perverted into empoverishing the developed societies so the poor can treble their populations and get even poorer whilst complaining the British hegemony is at fault

[PerlyKing]

Re: Cloud access?

I wish. One of my current projects is to use my Nextcloud instance to host my todo list. Should be easy, right? The free Nextcloud Web UI on the desktop has a free "Tasks" app which is pretty spiffy, all I need is an Android app to access the same thing on my phone. But no, none of the *many* apps I've found so far seem to be able to do this on their own, they need a separate app to sync to the server! The one which I used standalone for free, Tasks.org, wants $30 *per* *year* to allow me to do this =8-O

[rfrazier]

Re: Cloud access?

Although it doesn't solve your problem of needing a separate app to sync, I've been using DAVx (for syncing) and OpenTasks for tasks. I also use DavX to sync my (Nextcloud) calendar and contacts. I've been using them for years without problems. I get them from f-droid (free).

Best wishes,

Bob

[PerlyKing]

Re: Cloud access?

Thanks Bob, that's pretty much where I've got to. Unfortunately while OpenTasks supports recurring tasks, the Nextcloud app doesn't, and it seems a bit hit and miss how long they recur for, as in "forget" that they should recur.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Cloud access?

As a quick test I entered a recurring event in Seamonkey which syncs to next cloud and that showed up as a recurring event in the Nextcloud calendar and would have synced on to the mobile calendar via DavX if I hadn't deleted it again.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Cloud access?

Strictly speaking, that's the LIghtbird calendar, also part of Thunderbird.

[David 132]

Re: Cloud access?

> Tasks.org, wants $30 *per* *year* to allow me to do this

And there's the annoyance. What in days past would have been a simple "I will pay you $30, you will give me a licensed copy of your software, we are both happy" has now - thanks to the MBAs and beancounters - become all about ongoing revenue, monetization, X-as-a-Service and similar shite.

My own personal nadir for this sort of thing was a Freecell game I run on my phone. It's fun, but honestly, it's Freecell - once you've drawn the cards and coded the rules, there's not a lot you can do beyond that. Anyway, the free version plays annoying adverts before every game (unless a PiHole gets in the way, nyuck nyuck...).

So I thought I'd do the decent thing and pay the developer. "Remove the ads for $6.99!" screamed the overlay banner. Nope. It turns out that the developer wants $6.99 per month to remove the ads. For a fucking freecell game. Nope, nope, nope-ity nope.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Cloud access?

I paid for a licensed copy of a decent ToDo app which had the option to synch with phones with WiFi. Then they added iCloud synch. Then they added their own otptional cloud synch with a monthly sub. I'll leave it to the reader to guess what happened next.

[Howard Sway]

We were promised integrated packages

The web services wars were really lost in the corporate world about a decade ago. Having everything being able to call services on everything else sounded great until it became apparent that authorisation and access control just became an administrative nightmare when you had to limit who could do what.

Just be thankful you never got the integration you described on your calendar app. If you had, every time you opened it, it would be full of entries reading "Play new fun game!", "Buy crypto at special rate!" and "0x34565321 error transferring contact list to target server".

Of course the web services people could have learnt from the COM nightmare on windows a decade before they discovered all the problems.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: We were promised integrated packages

Lotus Notes was probably peak integration for my working life. Email, Calendar, ToDo, Notes Contacts, all integrated. With a click you could turn an email into a ToDo, a ToDo into appointment, etc. and share it all with other people. It's been downhill ever since.

It was a very long time ago, and it's possible that I'm mis-remembering through rose-tinted nostalgia. As a calibration point, I also think that I liked Lotus Manuscript.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We were promised integrated packages

I used to have a Psion 5, and IIRC the apps were integrated. You could attach word processor files into the calender for example.

[ChoHag]

Re: We were promised integrated packages

Ah now I remember Notes! Thank you, I wish I didn't.

[AndrueC]

Re: We were promised integrated packages

Of course the web services people could have learnt from the COM nightmare on windowswhat other platforms did a decade before they discovered all the problems.

Fixed that for you. So much shite in the web world appears to be the result of bright young things throwing themselves into a new world without asking any of the old farts for advice.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: We were promised integrated packages

One of the lessons not learned is the one that could have been learned from all the lessons that could have been learned in the past not having been learned.

[jo.bloggs]

Re: We were promised integrated packages

Yes - had anyone in HR bothered to correlate contributor IQs with their maximum achievements reaaonable to expect.

Short of that, we have people who cannot think beyond a single command claiming they are busy creating end to end frameworks (that end up being junkyards of mismatching copy/pasted code)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

Ah!

Evony.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: "Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

...followed by my wife asking me who I'm yelling at to fuck off when I'm sat on the loo doing my Duolingo...

[chivo243]

Re: "Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

...followed by my wife asking me who I'm yelling at to fuck off when I'm sat on the loo doing my Duolingo...

I paid for Unlimited, I needed more Duo than 3 mistakes a day... I use it multiple times a day, I'm still not speaking French très bien...

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: "Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

They hide it away (because they want you to pay), but you can get "hearts" back by practising lessons you've already done, or by voluntarily watching an ad...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

Too much information.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: "Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

Believe me, that is not too much information. If I was giving you too much information, I'd probably be banned from using a computer...

[luminous]

Re: "Wait for the 30-second ad for some crappy game to finish playing"

Not sure if this is still the case but the duolingo app is littered with ads and blocks to usage. Just use the website on the phone and it's totally unrestricted.

[Warm Braw]

Lots of little single-task programs

Welcome to the world of microservices: programs that spend more time talking to each other than actually doing anything and whose security boundaries are a mystery to everyone.

Sorry, was that off-message?

[Sam not the Viking]

B...... Calendars

So true about the fecklessness of calendars; have one of these -->

I don't live a busy life (see below) but my calendars never seem to be as helpful as they ought. And of course every device has also to remind me of the event/occasion/meeting/task/forthcoming-date etc. Not helped by the easy-to-remember abbreviations whose meaning I forget when the time arises.

I am an inveterate 'Reject all cookies' person (don't get me started on why this can't be the default position), and I have never purposely clicked on a pop-up Ad. After many years of this doctrine, I seem to get far fewer interventions than the rest of my family. I would like to think this is due to my technical nous but my son points out that I lead a 'quiet life'.

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: B...... Calendars

my son points out that I lead a 'quiet life'.

[David 132]

Re: B...... Calendars

Any Ray Davies / Kinks fan gets an automatic upvote from me!

[Dan 55]

Re: B...... Calendars

I know two people in their early-mid 20s that have killed as many notifications as they can with extreme prejudice to the point that you have to send them a text message to tell them they've you've just sent them a message in WhatsApp. Maybe it's something that's going to be come widespread and there's hope for the future.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: B...... Calendars

Why don't you just send them a text message in the first place?

[Dan 55]

Re: B...... Calendars

You might have something more than a simple short text message to send or it could be part of a group chat.

[Jan 0]

Re: B...... Calendars

Have yo not noticed, that"text messages" are as near as dammit free nowadays? That you can send texts to multiple addresses? That texts aren't just limited to short messages?

Whatsapp is great if you live in the third world and have to pay handsomely for SMS and calls and love Zuckerberg riflling your data..

[Dan 55]

Re: B...... Calendars

International and roaming users say hi (at say 30p a message, multiplied by the number of people in the group).

People sending compressed postage-stamp sized photos via MMS will get back to you as soon as they take out a loan for it, that's if they actually work.

[ThatOne]

Re: B...... Calendars

MMS is a heresy. I have simply deactivated it on my phone (deleted the server settings). I can think of no situation where somebody would absolutely need to send me a picture (of his lunch...) using SMS.

If he really needs to send me a picture, email will do just fine, even if it takes a minute or two longer.

[An_Old_Dog]

Photos via MMS

Those of us who send pics via phone do so because (a) it's convenient (most modern phones have built-in cameras) and/or because (b) sending/receiving/having email from/on one's phone is freaking insecure. And, no, you won't find me sending or receiving pics of an intimate or compromising nature, nor selfies, nor SMSes with personal details (addresses, phone numbers, or texts as, "I'll be at location X at time Y.").

[ThatOne]

Re: Photos via MMS

> Those of us who send pics via phone do so because

The only thing you didn't explain is why on earth would you need to send a picture from your phone... What could be so urgent it can't wait for you to get home/to work and do it a more conventional way?

Besides, the email security thing is a non-issue, just have a separate email account for your phone. It's not like it costs anything, it's just the 5 minutes setting it up and creating some server-side forward rules to make sure you collect all emails received in your official inbox for archiving. I've been using it for years, yes I have several email addresses (like thatone@ and thatone2@), and that didn't seem to bother anybody so far. Just saying.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Photos via MMS

...they also didn't explain why they thought MMS is the "right" way to do it, when WhatsApp exists, and is (theoretically) more secure, not less, (allegedly) having end-to-end encryption, and is free, rather than 50p a message (or more), sometimes to both sender and recipient.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Photos via MMS

How secure Whatsapp is depends on one's definitions. I don't use Whatsapp but my contact details have probably been uploaded to it hundreds of times by other users who have allowed Whatsapp unfetterred access to their contacts.

I also wonder what it is about other peoples' dinners that means they think email isn't secure enough to send pictures of them to their friends.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Photos via MMS

The "why from your phone" vs email from home is purely an impulse-factor. One sees a neat thing, takes a handy snap with the camera, and wants to share it with friend X (and possibly friends Y and Z). Not everyone has those impulses (and no, I don't take/send dinner pics).

As to the "best" (smartphone-based) way to send pics, my wireless provider has ALREADY stolen my contact list. Why would I spread it to any additional companies? (WhatsApp is owned by Facebook/Meta. I particularly distrust them.)

[TSM]

Re: Photos via MMS

> The only thing you didn't explain is why on earth would you need to send a picture from your phone... What could be so urgent it can't wait for you to get home/to work and do it a more conventional way?

Well, in my case yesterday, I wanted to send my daughter pictures of the various multi-colour yarns they had at the shop I was in, so she could tell me which ones she wanted me to buy for her. Taking the pictures, walking home with them, showing them to her, and walking back to the shop to buy the selected ones would have been rather inefficient. (Especially when the response after the first round of pictures was "can you take close-ups of all the ones of this type?")

Mind you, our phones refuse to send photos to each other via MMS or Bluetooth, even though both phones can send and receive photos via MMS with other correspondents; our current working theory is that our phones simply hate each other. So we had to email photos to each other instead.

[GlenP]

Re: B...... Calendars

That reminds me of a cartoon many, many years ago of a chap on the phone, "I'm just calling to see if you received my email, the one telling you I'd sent you a fax!"

I suspect it really happened as well, I certainly had users chasing emails a few moments after they were sent.

[Evil Scot]

You are doing it wrong.

I can turn off 6 smart bulbs buy pushing a rocker.

They are wired to the 32A circuit.

The rocker on the 5A.

The wireless remote above my bed does this also.

[Alistair Dabbs]

Re: You are doing it wrong.

This does sound a bit like that magic wand, you know.

[cosymart]

Re: You are doing it wrong.

Changed "The Wizard Smart Knob"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You are doing it wrong.

A wizard's staff has a knob on the end ?

[Will Godfrey]

Re: You are doing it wrong.

Yes, but which end?

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: You are doing it wrong.

Bell.

Invisible Paris icon -->

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: You are doing it wrong.

...and the hedgehog can never be buggered at all...

RIP Pterry

[TheProf]

Ah, Grasshopper

"I can turn off 6 smart bulbs buy pushing a rocker.

They are wired to the 32A circuit.

The rocker on the 5A.

The wireless remote above my bed does this also."

Worst Haiku Ever

[rfrazier]

One program to edit/format/print?

Never. I like a bit of friction in my life. So, I too like the idea of stringing specialised tools together.

For documents: vi/vim -> LaTeX -> view .dvi/.pdf -> print

I've been doing it this way (or pretty close) since the late 1980s . Of course, much of it has become scripted using the faculties of vim latex-suite or gnuit (gnu interactive tools).

One nice thing about it is that the individual elements can change, but the overall pattern stays the same. For example, the viewer has changed many times (console -> X11), and I now usually print from the viewer instead of using lpr. Qpdfview is nice because it automatically displays the new document when I make changes and reformat.

Best wishes,

Bob

[Andy Non]

I've given up on my phone for reminders

I set one up to remind me every Monday afternoon to take the dustbin out for collection. It is supposed to beep or make some other sound and alert me. I rarely notice and if I look on my phone later the reminder must have come and gone without getting my attention in any way. Now I set up reminders on Thunderbird on my desktop, at least I can't miss them with a sodding big pop-up window in my face that won't go away until dismissed.

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: I've given up on my phone for reminders

Because I got moaned at for missing texts I set my beep to a blast of guitar from an Alice Cooper track. I don't miss beeps any more. My ring tone startles a few people too.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I've given up on my phone for reminders

"My ring tone startles a few people too"

How about the Great Gate of Kiev (orch. Ravel version, of course)?

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: I've given up on my phone for reminders

Whereas mine is instantly recognisable as being my phone, and always raises a chuckle or two...

[Barry Rueger]

Re: I've given up on my phone for reminders

Large yellow date book. Write things on the paper pages for a date. Look at it each morning.

If it's REALLY important: big fat yellow highlighter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumor has it that they subsequently ran a reader's macro designed to control the blinking of your Christmas tree lights

Not quite the same, but do a search for excel spreadsheet art. Japanese artist does some amazing pictures. Excel has more options than Paint and Word was too limited with page sizes

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Word was too limited with page sizes

Don't worry, it still is.

[b0llchit]

Heaven? ... Hell!

I trust Dad has updated his Zoom client in Heaven and accepted the T&Cs

Since when does heaven accept calls from hell. And, since when does hell bother calling heaven?

_{[cannot assign two icons; they are mutually excusive]}

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Heaven? ... Hell!

... and as make believe as narnia

[b0llchit]

Re: Heaven? ... Hell!

Not quite...

I'd argue that I am Hell and everything associated with that (I am an Operator and a Bastard too). Would you like to test one of my grill parties? Sign here: ___

[Irony Deficient]

And, since when does hell bother calling heaven?

Since Satan decided that calling would be easier than hoofing it to be in the presence of the Lord to chew the fat with the Almighty? (See Job 1:6–7 for an example of the arrangement before telephones.)

[b0llchit]

Re: And, since when does hell bother calling heaven?

See Job...

Well, there is your problem. I do not have a job. Being bastard, operator and hell all in one is a calling, not a job.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Rocker switch and finger

Sure, easy enough. Now try turning your light on at home when you are in a hotel room, on the other side of the world or in-flight to populate Mars. Not so smug now, huh?

I would add a Joke Icon but that apparently is a USP.

I went semi-tech; have touch-sensitive and IR controlled light switches so I don't need to move my lazy arse to gain illumination, don't have to risk straining my finger when the remote goes walkabout.

Like going beyond power-assisted steering to full self-drive; it seems society is compelled to over-reach peak usefulness.

Don't buy useless tech; save the money to help pay the ransom to get Paris back -->

[doublelayer]

Re: Rocker switch and finger

The examples aren't the same though. Sure, maybe there is someone who has a reason for turning their light on or off from elsewhere, but nobody's even tried explaining why while I'm in earshot and everyone I've talked with doesn't see a benefit in it. I think that's a pretty common view. Self-driving cars, on the other hand, would have benefits for many if we could get it done.

If you could safely sit in a car while it gets you to your destination, you could do things that are now unavailable to drivers because it would impair or prevent their concentration on driving. People could even sleep on their commute. You could also send your car somewhere without you, for example having it pick you up at a convenient location without having to park it there beforehand or go get someone else without having to go with it. The existence of those benefits doesn't mean it will be feasible to make the product, but if you drive, I can almost guarantee you've had occasions where you didn't want to be driving and could have used the features as I described them. The concept still has problems, but it's not as laughably useless as the smart light bulbs.

[An_Old_Dog]

Full Self-Driving

"If you could safely sit in a car..." The larger issue is all the people who would not be safe outside the car.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Full Self-Driving

To be more-specific: don't confuse the desirabilty of a thing with the likelihood of achieving it; and do not ignore negative consequences arising from its implementation.

[Stoneshop]

Re: Rocker switch and finger

Now try turning your light on at home when you are in a hotel room, on the other side of the world

To make it appear there's someone home? And you then having to take the time offset into account? That's what a RasPi is for. Runs on local (to your house) time, and with a handful of sensors can detect conditions like overcast skies and rain, adjusting the switching moments accordingly.

or in-flight to populate Mars.

And you haven't had to sell your house and consequently making turning the lights on and off SEP, to be able to buy a ticket? In that case you are likely able to pay someone to live there while you're away, not only to turn the lights on and off but also to water the plants, weed the garden and dust the rooms.

[ThatOne]

Re: Rocker switch and finger

> with a handful of sensors can detect conditions like overcast skies and rain, adjusting the switching moments accordingly.

Or you daisy-chain a cheap 24h timer and a cheap dusk switch: Timer switches on late afternoon, and if it's cloudy the dusk switch triggers. If it's sunny it will wait till sundown. Some time in the evening the timer switches everything off, till the next day. Can't get cheaper, simpler or more robust.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: Rocker switch and finger

I'd suggest that something like a R-Pi pico, with soldered-in sensors, having no moving parts, is more robust than a timer switch, especially if it's a "clock" type one with the little pins that go in and out.

The failure mode will probably be the relays, eventually, in any case.

[Stoneshop]

Re: Rocker switch and finger

I don't think you'll want to use the Pico itself as a rain sensor, but just measuring outside brightness will probably be sufficient already.

The mechanical timer switches I have here, some from more than half a century ago, still work fine. There's even one that has its own gang reserve, using a motor only to wind the clockwork spring when it's unwound sufficiently to close a microswitch. The more recent mechanical ones, made from cheap Plasticum Chinesium, not so much, but they've been disposed of.

And for relays I'd use SSRs, although your average mechanical relay rated at 50.000 closures, would at a couple of switch events per day still last at least a decade. SSRs also have the advantage that they can be driven directly from any output that can drive a LED.

[Grunchy]

Re: Rocker switch and finger

Just tell the butler to attend to it. Sheesh.

[Franco]

I moved house during the pandemic (had bought the house and got the entry date just before the first lockdown started). New house had Hive central heating. Previous owners took the hub with them. I soon discovered that whilst the heating could be made to work various features such as setting up schedules required the app, which required a new hub to be purchased. It is occasionally useful to be able to turn the heating on before I get home (or was before this winter, when heating will be unaffordable), but still fairly ridiculous that I have to connect to the internet to change the schedule of my heating.

Similar problem with my gym. During the pandemic they installed QR scanners at the entry pods and updated thier app to generate the codes. In principle a good idea to limit hand contact on keypads during the pandemic. However, despite the fact that the phone is locked with a PIN, the app logs the user out after every use. It takes 90 seconds or so to launch, and around the same again once details are entered to login, so even if I start this process when I leave my car by the time I cross the car park and climb the stairs it still isn't ready for me to use, and it's quicker to use the keypad.

[Dr_N]

Psion 5

The last time a set of software/apps worked together seamlessly was on the Psion5.

It's been downhill ever since then.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Ironically . . .

. . . the program that integrates a bunch of things such as tasks, calendar entries, etc. and does it well is Outlook. I know it's the program that people love to hate, but there's nothing else that offers such seamless integration of basic scheduling and communication functions. I know someone will pop in with, "What about Evolution?" And it's true, Evolution is a pretty decent Outlook copycat, which merely reinforces my point insofar as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Go on, downvote away!

[ThatOne]

Re: Ironically . . .

> the program that integrates a bunch of things such as tasks, calendar entries, etc. and does it well is Outlook

I do admit that while as an email client it was pretty bad/dangerous, as a PIM it was excellent (at least the version I used to use, Office 2003). I really miss the PIM parts of it, even more since it synchronized directly with my smartphone, without needing to send everything to Google (or Microsoft) in the process.

Still looking for a replacement...

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Ironically . . .

Same here. I used Outlook on a Mac for a while (ten+ years ago) and it was OK standalone, but Synching to iphone was a pain and I gave up when I needed to pay to upgrade for one of the MacOS rolls and I went native Mac for mail, calendar and contacts. I used Apigo ToDo for ages until they they moved to a subscription only for synching. This prompted me to try a lot of ToDo apps without finding one I'd pay for before just putting up with the limitations of Mac Reminders. I did try Thunderbird for a bit, but found it annoying; this might have been my workflow or impatience, given it gets decent reviews.

The upside of native Mac is that synching is painless, but that's all I can think of. There are many downsides. CalDav is behind an Apple "security" system that regularly changes password to ensue that non-Apple devices are disconnected every few weeks. There's a total lack of integration between mail, Reminders and Calendar (unless you enjoy scripting your own) and some clients can't process my invitations - and vice versa. Basic functionality and management, particularly of desktop reminders, is fucking awful and just reminds (!) you that it's really only good for shopping lists. All in all they appear to be another set of programmes that aren't used in anger by the people who designed and coded them.

[Zebo-the-Fat]

When?

When did programs turn into apps?

[Headley_Grange]

Re: When?

I upvoted you even though you spelt it wrong ;)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: When?

Back in the DOS days, we standardised our directory structures so anyone could sit fown at any computer and find the stuff they needed.

c:\apps was where you found WordStar, SuperCalc, DBase etc

c:\tools was where you find stuff people might need less frequently, like file conversion tools and the like.

c:\utils would have more esoteric stuff for doing thing the average user would only do rarely or never such as Norton Utilities and the like and things like TSRs loaded by AUTEXEC.BAT

[David 132]

Re: When?

> c:\apps was where you found WordStar, SuperCalc, DBase etc

Speak for yourself. Way too informal. For me it was C:\applic~1.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: When?

You must be young. That style of long filename shortened for DOS came much, much later :-)

[doublelayer]

Re: When?

Pretty early in the personal computing era. Programs have been called "applications" for quite a while. They even got called that in the days of the Apple II, so the late 1970s works. Shortening that may have taken a few years more, but come on, if you're posting here you're probably in either IT or programming, and you already know how much we like to abbreviate things. We talk about comms, OSes, docs, VMs, configs, and apps. It's a normal term and it's existed for decades. It's just a good thing we're not calling them progs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone?

I have given up on trying to do anything clever on my phone. Probably about the time when some genius thought I needed auto-correct on the SSH terminal.

Give me big screens, a full keyboard a mouse and somewhere to put my beer.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: Phone?

you are falling prey to the same mistake Dabbsy was railing against.

You dont need some third-party "somewhere to put my beer"

Because YOU are where you put your beer.

taken as a philosophical statement, that should be making Descartes worried..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Phone?

Worried ? Doubtful. ... I drink therefore I am

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh, Symphony!

The mention of Lotus Symphony takes me back to my days using it as a database running a multi-million $ vendor surveillance scheme on a Dec Rainbow desktop. Forms to feed in order details, the word processor to format and print inspection instructions, and all the code to run it (and the menu system) within the overall spreadsheet. It worked well for over five years (and still working when I left the company…

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Ahhh, Symphony!

I never really got on with Symphony. We ended up with Smart (Later SmartWare), an integrated suite of word processor, spreadsheet, database, calender, graphing tool and comms package, all intergraded and interoperable via a scripting language which could also call external programmes too. It took some learning, but it did everything would ever need and then some more.

[T. F. M. Reader]

set up the first app to trigger not just one but a whole host of app services in one go

systemd?

applications in the future would be a collection of plug-ins

microservices?

"Subscribe to us because we have huge gaping holes in our functionality which can only be filled by subscribing to other apps!"

Which will enrich AMZN, GOOG, and MSFT by sending lots of data between various clouds, regions, and zones, while collecting and storing all sorts or private data in various elastic buckets for later abuse and reselling.

Cynical? Moi?

[Will Godfrey]

This all long predates apps 'n stuff

It goes right back to when audio separates were all stuffed into the ghetto blasters of the early 70's, and the solid designs were replaced with overpriced crappy and bendy plastic... which got even more bendy if left out in the sun. If (sorry, when) the monstrosity failed, silence reigned, which at least made the parents and neighbours happy.

[John Brown (no body)]

I have a magic wand I'd like to sell you.

Harry walked into the dungeon in search of clues about his nemesis.

It's dark. There are exits to the North, East and West.

"Illuminati" shouts Harry as he waves his wand in front to light the way.

Unfortunately, Harry wasn't quite as good at spells as he thought and two lizard overlords appeared and spirited him away, sucking the life from all his apps

Game Over.

[Stoneshop]

The actual course of events

It's dark.

Harry is eaten by a Grue.

Game over.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

A Technology Tart's lot

is not an Appy one.

_{With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan}

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A Technology Tart's lot

The same tune and repeat scheme used by the Two Ronnies

"What the Navy needs is more efficient ships"

[Blackjack]

I do not use paid Apps anymore, not since the "Pay once, use forever" model is gone.

F-Droid is my main source of Apps for my phone.

On my Desktop I use Linux Mint and other Linux distros.

On my laptop I have a Windows 7 pro that I use offline for games.

Yes I still buy videogames but not those that only work online and or use a subscription model.

I have found that 90% of Apps will steal your data no matter what you do, so why also give them money?

Heck I don't even have Cable TV anymore, so the only subscriptions I have left are Internet, Water, Power, Gas and taxes.

Unfortunately I do need to pay those while I still live. Yeah maybe I could keep going without Internet but the Radio (That around here is free and not a paid service because it is full of ads) just isn't the same.

[herman]

“Internet, Water, Power, Gas and taxes.” : I am busy drilling a well, there are solar panels on the roof already and I will get another truckload of firewood next week. The internet and taxman problems still need some thought…

[An_Old_Dog]

App-based data theft - dirty trick # 17

My Samsung Android-based phone gives some assuring-looking per-app permission options. One is, "Allow only while using the app".

The trick many apps use is, when you close them, they continue to run in the background, even though their GUI is gone and is no longer switchable-to.

Thus, the factory-provided camera app, which REQUIRES microphone access when it's running -- without microphone access, the app refuses to run -- is, after you've once invoked it, still listening when it's "closed". You have to "force stop" it.

[aldolo]

trend in business software

the trend is "small apps for a single task". but it is only an excuse to hide the reality: complex software built with javascript is a nightmare. and javasctipt is hot right now.

[wjake]

Little apps...

Great apps have little apps upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little apps have lesser apps, and so ad infinitum.

[Rich 11]

Dead good gifts

My to-do app created a reminder task for it, although I'm not sure what present I should buy a dead parent.

Depends on how much money you have to spare. I'd suggest the following, in order of rising cost:

i) Daily monastical prayers for the soul in Purgatory.

ii) A funeral games in the Colosseum.

iii) Twenty extra minutes worth of electricity to keep the head safe in cryonic storage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dead good gifts

Option (iii) -- my deceased mother-in-law -- good gods, no!

She didn't want the expense of a burial, and opted for cremation. I mentally agreed that burning her corpse with fire was best. It was the only way to be sure.

[herman]

Orifice 360

My solution to an Orifice 360 subscription on my Mac is a WinXP virtual machine with Orifice 2007 and local host networking only to keep malware at bay.

[MatthewSt]

WinFS

Sadly (or fortunately) it never took off, but WinFS was going to do this for the desktop. You'd have your calendar data store locally that any app you'd authorised could read/write to.

Not too dissimilar to what they're doing with the Graph API

[rfrazier]

I was thinking a bit more about this. There is one area, PIM, where I prefer an integrated app: Thunderbird, with email, calendar, tasks and contacts.

A few years ago, I tried going back to mutt, my favourite email program, but it didn't work out. Operator error, no doubt.

Best wishes,

Bob

[Potemkine!]

But...

WIth a rocker, it would be much harder to ask us to pay a monthly subscription to be able to turn on or off the bulbs in our house. They call that "the progress".

Add to this it would be harder for miscreants to turn your lightbulb in a zombie to attack other devices...

In the future, our whole could be ransomwared. You don't pay, you can't enter it, neither warm it nor light it. What a dream.

[EricB123]

I Decline to Participate, But...

This reminded me of an old El Reg article about a GE smart bulb that, among other things, allowed one to turn off the bulb while carrying your dog.

I do believe that fatigue is setting in. Goodnight all.

[mr.K]

"Editor's note: After a great, long run, this will be our last Something For The Weekend column. Check out the links above for the SFTW archives"

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[logicalextreme]

Indeed.

https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com/

[Fruit and Nutcase]

You only write twice

He's gone and come back once already, so, may be this is really the end of SFTW.

One last opportunity to dust off this picture...

https://regmedia.co.uk/2013/06/28/bonds.jpg

Monsieur Dabbs gets his coat -->

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Paris and Dabbsy

Have they run away together?

[Grunchy]

Ha ha Dabbs goes to hairdresser

For permanent curls, I can only imagine?