Posted on 10/20/2014 10:27:20 PM PDT by Swordmaker
As a stockholder I’m glad to see Apple finally pick up on the MS model of using the end-user as a beta tester.
You use Pay through the Passbook App. It can either use the credit/debit card filed with Apple or you can easily add additional credit/debit cards for it to use. In any case, none of the numbers will be kept on the iPhone.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Didn't you know? Apple x.0 releases have always been a little flakey. ;^)
LOL!
Don't you fan boyz have some special Apple website you go hump for this stuff instead of spamming a political forum where no one cares?
Not unlike Scientology I suppose. You must proselytize, cannot help it.
The 600 conservative members of the FreeRepublic Apple Ping list out number you 600 to one. You are not forced to click on this thread. . . so don't.
I deeply appreciate Sword’s pings on all things Mac. I make my living from said computers and am very thankful for him and his posts.
You can, of course, sod off and leave us alone...if we bother you.
Ed
Bump.
The truth of the matter is, there is no possible way to test ALL programs and all possible program interactions. It is impossible.
I say this as someone who, as one part of my job, writes end user test scripts for medical software upgrades on focused systems used by a hospital system.
The real wild card is human beings.
I can wring my mind to think of every way a user might use the software, in what order tasks are performed, and how those tasks are performed, but no matter how much I try, I find that human beings have an infinite capacity for finding unusual and obscure ways to do things, and often, software simply doesn’t take that into account.
It is often funny and frustrating, teeth numbingly boring and professionally exhilarating, all at the same time.
I have spent weeks or months writing a plan and executing it, only to find out after approving workflow changes, usage instructions, and training regimens, that the application reacts in unexpected ways when installed and trained users begin using it. Often, you don’t see the problems (which are often extremely subtle) until weeks or even months after users begin using the software. (I had one time where a few months after installation, we began having certain problems, and it turned out that one woman had been out on medical leave and came back to work, and began doing a task in a way nobody else had thought of doing...which caused the application to behave in unexpected ways.
Then the sometimes excruciating process of figuring out the “why” takes place, and when you have the “eureka” moment, the process begins to have a vendor patch software, rewrite workflows for end users, retrain and write policy and procedure changes.
It boggles my mind to think about how vendors like Microsoft or Apple must have to test their products, which are far, FAR more complex, subjected to hundreds of thousands of times more users, workflows, and aberrant human innovation.
I suppose that is why they write EULAs that are as long as Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, and force you to sign off on them.
About 37 minutes to post that, doorgunner69?
You must be slipping. Well, I guess you have to go to the bathroom, eat, and sleep sometime!
You must proselytize, cannot help it.
You must troll, cannot help it.
Back in the mid-80s, I designed and wrote a relational database for the Food Bank I founded to handle client intake and tracking, as well as financial donations, and reports. . . and I designed it so that someone unfamiliar with computers could handle the interview process, close out a day, generate daily, weekly reports, etc.. I thought I was quite thorough in figuring out the ways it could be screwed up by people. How wrong I was!
It took me TWO YEARS of actual contact with users to really idiot proof it. But, after those two years, it ran for over twenty years with minimal error correction required. The secret was to limit the ways the idiots could enter data. But it was absolutely amazing the ways they found to screw things up.
Anytime you fool proof something you end up building a better more ingenious fool.
/Can’tRememberWhoElseSaidThat
Idiots (and that includes me on occasion) far outnumber the people and methods to idiot-proof things!
Yep. I am continually amazed at the scope of human ingenuity!
We have our faults, but thinking of new and different ways to approach things is generally not one of the, although Darwinism plays a large role in determining whether or not some approaches are better than others!
Nope. You're right. I was a hardware tester for Microsoft during the Win95 beta. I had a blast.
I'll never forget a few days before release we had our last "bug" meeting. The Product Manager said we were shipping with over 40,000 open bugs.
But, that was part of the process. You hope to go out the door with a manageable number of bugs that nobody will hit. No software is ever released with ZERO bugs. Well, unless someone is lying - LOL!
I can attest to that. I have a guy who would make the greatest software tester ever! I keep telling him to quit his job and work in a lab. He’d be worth millions of regular users...
Hahahahahaha! I have often heard that engineering is the study of the art of compromise...the same is true of computer systems.
Thanks for the update. I am not so sure I like this Yosemite thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.