Good GUI design is not skeuomorphism.

Many of us wanted Apple to reverse its embarrassing slide into amateurish, cartoonish interfaces; the much-derided "skeuomorphism."  Unfortunately Apple has also abandoned proper GUI design. Getting rid of tacky, asinine, and incorrect crap like controls disguised as the paint on a blackjack table is good. Getting rid of CONTROLS is stupid, and that is what Apple and Microsoft have done in a great many cases. Disguising controls as static text (or hiding them altogether or relying on secret "gestures") represents total ignorance of what made GUIs "revolutionary" to begin with. If you don't demarcate controls, they might as well not be there. Are users supposed to tap on every letter and glyph on the screen, looking for hidden goodies? Or swipe in every possible direction and every item on every screen? That's sheer stupidity.

"Flat" design suffers from other regressions. If a button is "flat", how do we know what state it's in? If it is rendered as something resembling a real button, it can be "up", depressed, or greyed out. One of its three possible states is clearly and instantly conveyed to the user. But if it's just a colored rectangle, what state is it in?

The question is where all of the decent designers have gone at these companies. Did they just get bored and quit altogether? The regressions at Microsoft and Apple in basic user interfaces just make you wonder how these bad ideas are percolating to the top. There are plenty of things to fix in both companies' products, without this desperate flailing to do something "different." Desperate and defective.

Capital One: We're too stupid to let you know that we didn't get your payment.

UPDATE: After years of customer complaints, Capital One has finally added a notification if your payment hasn't been received two days after its due date.  The bad news is that... it doesn't work.  You can set the notification up, but it isn't sent.  The crack team of IT professionals over there has supposedly been working on this for months, and still hasn't been able to figure out why all the notifications work except for this one.

So, STILL: If Capital One doesn't receive your monthly payment, you won't hear anything about it.  At some point in the future (it appears to be about two and a half weeks), you'll go to use your card and it'll be declined.  The repercussions can range from embarrassing and annoying to disastrous.

The baffling and inexcusable fact here is that Capital One does not (and will not) send you any notification (not even an E-mail) the day after your payment was due, saying "we didn't get it."  The sheer stupidity of this boggles the mind.  They've already applied their late fee, so they've ripped you off there.  They're already charging you interest on the outstanding balance, so they're making money off of you there.  But by simply canceling your card without telling you, they make it impossible for you to use it and make them more money.  You end up using another card (if you're lucky enough to have one on hand), and they lose the sale.

It's essentially FREE to send an E-mail.  It's automated.  They continually send marketing E-mails to customers.  But they absolutely refuse to inform customers of a critical problem with their account.  UNBELIEVABLE.  Oh, wait: Maybe this is just normal Capital One behavior.

Yet another streaming lie from NBC

So this time NBC claimed to be streaming the hockey finals.  I went to their site to check it out.

There wasn't even a way to attempt to get the stream.  No viewer, no link to "watch now", nothing.  Worse yet, the NBC banner at the top indicates that you have to sign up for a free trial.  Look at this disgraceful scam:

For the "free trial" rip-off, NBC has teamed up with some lowlives called "BombGame."  Not surprisingly, your "free" trial will cost you $40 a month after five days.  But the best part is that if you attempt to cancel your membership, BombGame threatens to charge you a $1 "convenience fee" TO CANCEL.  Look at these scumbags:

NBC and BombGame: teaming up to lie and rip you off.  Why should we be surprised, after the Olympic streaming sham?

Time-Warner cable: "We're stupid and we don't have any reasons for it."

I got fed up with not being able to access Time-Warner hotspots, which we're supposed to have access to as part of being a Time-Warner cable Internet customer.  I wind up dealing with this when there's a hotspot where I happen to be, and it breaks the iPhone's Internet connectivity.  The iPhone will automatically connect to an "open" Wi-Fi network, and then sit there stupidly even though you can't get data through it; it's supposed to fall back to cellular, but it doesn't.  Longstanding iPhone bug.

So instead of manually deactivating Wi-Fi all the time, I figured I'd enter my credentials on the TWC log-in page and be done with it.  But this page demands that you log in with an E-mail address (we all know by now how stupid that is).  Even worse is that the E-mail address it wants is the auto-generated one that's associated with your account internally at Time-Warner, in the form of "thomson9063@socal.rr.com".  How the hell would I know what that is?  And of course there's no way to find out what it is AT THE HOTSPOT, because you inexplicably can't gain access to your account.

You can't even use the password-reset option, because...

If only we could follow that instruction.

And when you come home, you can't use the hotspot help because you're not accessing it through a hotspot.  RETARDED.  So I tried to contact TWC about this, but their "contact us" link goes to a 404. This is an Internet access provider:

So I had to resort to the online chat.  Here's the illuminating transcript of my chat with a Time-Warner rep (this was my third chat session after being escalated, after two phone calls and three E-mails and probably an hour and a half).

Rodney:    Hello! Thank you for choosing Road Runner Internet Technical Chat Support. My name is Rodney, I will help you.

Rodney:    How are you doing today?

ME:    I am a bit tired of dealing with TWC.

Rodney:    I am sorry to know that.

Rodney:    We really apologize for the inconvenience.

ME:    Well, let's get it resolved.

ME:    First off, your "contact us" link is broken, and has been broken for some time.  How does this go unaddressed?

Rodney:    We are aware of it and our engineers are working on it to fix this issue.

ME:    Second, I have repeatedly tried to use TWC wi-fi hotspots, and I m asked for credentials that I had no way of knowing.

ME:    The log-in page demands the auto-generated E-mail address that is associated with my account, but gives you no way to find out what it is.

What you see when you try to use a Time-Warner hotspot.

Rodney:    I will provide you with the necessary information.

Rodney:    In order to access TWC Wi-FI you need to use Primary Road Runner email address and the password.

ME:    I have the information now.  Not yesterday when I was in a seminar and needed Web access.

ME:    I have never seen this E-mail address before, and I do not use it to access my account.  Why on earth do I need to use it at a hotspot?

Rodney:    I understand your concern, in order to access TWC Hotspot you need to use Road Runner email address and the passwords. This is for TWC customers only.

ME:    Why can't I use the same credentials I use to access my account at home?

Rodney:    Here is the reason:  you need to use Primary Email address and the Password to access TWC Hotspots.

ME:    You're simply repeating the problem.  WHY?  I NEVER use (or even knew) that E-mail address, and yet every month I can log into TWC and pay my bill, change services, and see my personal info.

ME:    I have a log-in ID with Time-Warner cable, and yet I can't use this to log into its hotspots.  WHY?

Rodney:    We can't use it. We can't use My-Servics account login information to access TWC Hotspots. It won't work. Only Road Runner email address and the password works with TWC Hotspot.

ME:    WHY?

Rodney:    We do not have any reasons for it. TWC Hotspots are designed in such a way that, users can only login with there Road Runner email address and the password. It is a default thing. We can't change it.

ME:    But users have no way of knowing WHAT that E-mail address is.  It's auto-generated by Time-Warner.  The hotspot page gives you no way to find out what it is.  This is asinine.

Rodney:    I will provide you with the Road Runner email address and the password

ME:    That doesn't help people AFTER THE FACT, now does it?  I'm not at the hotspot anymore.  I couldn't access it.

ME:    And then when you come home, the TWC hotspot page says you can't access it from home.

Rodney:    We can only access TWC Hotspots when you are outside the home and near to the TWC Hotspot. We can't access it from home.

Rodney:    I will report your feedback to our higher levels and make sure they will look into it.

ME:    OK. Thanks.

And this was after an even dumber E-mail exchange.  Here was my initial support inquiry and TW's follow-up:

Question: I have repeatedly set up a TWC Wi-Fi user ID. It doesn't work.

Your online help chat DOESN'T WORK. Your "support" link on the TWCWiFi log-in page goes BACK TO THE LOG-IN PAGE.

And if I go home to try to get support from my Time-Warner cable connection, I'm told I can't get support for TWCWiFi through my regular connection. So how am I supposed to use TWC hotspots? I'm tired of this month after month.

Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable, Road Runner email Support.

I will assist you with the information.
...
To login to wifi hot spot, follow the steps:-

1. Use your device's wireless connection finder to locate TWCWiFi (SSID) hotspots nearby. Consult our Coverage Map if the TWCWiFi does not appear.
2. Connect to TWCWifi and a sign-in page will appear.
3. Enter your Road Runner email address and password.
4. Agree to the terms of service.
5. Click on Sign In.

Yep: When I told Time-Warner I couldn't log into a hotspot, they told me to log into a hotspot.

NBC's Olympic lie

It's bad enough that the Olympics are spoiled for United States viewers by NBC's abysmal coverage.  Unless you choose not to read the news for two weeks, you don't have any reason to watch the Olympics by the time NBC finally gets around to broadcasting them eight or 10 hours late.

NBC further insults Americans by claiming that they're streaming events live.

Nope.  Take a look at where this lie breaks down.

Now why should I log in with some "TV provider's" credentials, when NBC is a publicly viewable network funded by ADVERTISING?  Yep, aside from making us wonder what a "form video" is, this screen is a harbinger of bullshit to come.  And it comes quickly:

So much for Net Neutrality and NBC's fraud.  NBC not only rips off American viewers, but it rips off its own sponsors by inexplicably denying them millions of additional viewers.  Hell, NBC is ripping off itself by reducing its measurable audience and the value of its content along with it.

Sponsors should boycott NBC as long as NBC intentionally reduces its audience and insults American viewers with this sham.

Oh, and as a final stroke of incompetence, that "Learn more/FAQ" link on the initial screen takes you to a video that you can't watch.  It goes right back to the "We're Sorry" screen above.  What it should say is "We're too stupid to understand our own business model."

Jim Bell, the executive producer of NBC's so-called Olympics coverage, smugly comments to Hollywood Reporter:

"We can understand and appreciate that people are passionate about things," says Jim Bell. "I think the numbers speak for themselves."

Um, no.  No they don't.  Maybe you can tell us what other options you think viewers had, Mr. Bell.  Against what competing Olympics coverage did NBC earn these numbers?  We'll be holding our breath for your answer, genius.

UPDATE: NBC pulled this same scam again, but even worse.

UPDATE 2016: NBC is ripping off the public and screwing Team USA again.

Capital One: We don't care about your security, identity, or business.

For the third time in eight months or so, Capital One suddenly started declining my purchases, for the same reason: A merchant's security was compromised and my card number was exposed.

Not once did Capital One even bother to send me an E-mail, let alone call me.  They knew my card number was compromised, and that quite possibly other aspects of my identity were open to theft as a result.  But they didn't even have their automated system send me an E-mail about this security breach.

It's hard to overstate how irresponsible and offensive this is.  But that's not all; Capital One, every time, capped off the offense by proposing to send my replacement card through the regular mail in five to seven days.

A great many people, millions I'm sure, make thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for credit-card companies every year.  I make Capital One plenty of money, and yet after I'm inconvenienced and prevented from making them money, they're not going to FedEx my new card.  They're going to lazily plop it in the old U.S. mail along with some marketing fliers and maybe some utility payments or magazine cards from people working at the processing center.

And if you complain about this insult (which you should), you'll still be told that the best they can do is an "expedited" delivery in two to three days.  Yes, it's as if they have no idea exactly when this goddamned thing is going to arrive, in 2012.  Are they attaching it to a flying burro?  A capricious cherub?  If you can't figure out how to get a document to a customer in exactly two days, go out of business.  NOW.

And while Capital One is dicking around, I have to wait to go through every service I use and every bill I pay and change the credit card I have on file.  And inevitably I'm going to miss one or two and have payments declined.

Can we continue to hand money to assholes like this and retain any self respect?

Will Apple ever fix the iPhone's biggest defect?

Let's say your iPhone is on its charger in your bedroom.  You're taking a shower and somebody calls; you don't hear it.  Or you're down the hall doing laundry and somebody calls; you don't hear it.  Or the phone is in your purse.  Or... you can see where this is going, right?

You come back and spend a few minutes getting dressed, or putting clothes away.  Your iPhone is three feet away, but it sits there silent, not making so much as a chirp to let you know that you missed a call.  You might stroll out to the kitchen to make dinner, or whatever... The hours go by, and you never knew that your friend called to see if you wanted to meet up for happy hour.

The sheer stupidity of this design was inexcusable in version 1 of the iPhone, but here we are 20 years later and it still hasn't been fixed.  But what did Apple do instead?  Add repeating notifications (albeit limited to 10) for TEXT MESSAGES.  WTF?

Dear Apple: When something major happens in my family, my parents aren't going to TEXT me.  If someone called me, I want to know about it.

The 1990s Motorola StarTAC offered periodic audible notifications of missed calls until you acknowledged them.  Microwave ovens beep periodically if you forget to take the food out after cooking it.  Old-school answering machines beeped periodically to let you know you had new messages.  But Apple's handheld Unix computer/phone sits mute after you've missed a call.

Do we have to spell this out?  A phone should offer the option to periodically notify you with an audible and palpable alert that you've missed a call.

Baffling:

Pathetic, and still not fixed in iOS 16.