Great shortcut key



  • I've been wondering why the iOS Simulator always turns on simulator slow-motion animations when I log into our iPad app while debugging in Xcode, specifically when I type my password in. It's annoying because it makes the app run intolerably slow when slow-motion animations are enabled, and of course it happens any time I log in which can be several times a minute depending on what I'm currently debugging. I also noticed it only enables slow-motion animations about 80 - 90% of the time.

    There is nothing special about my password, no crazy characters or anything so I really couldn't understand what was going on. I mean it's not like I have to enter alt-codes in or hit Ctrl-Alt-anything.

    I facepalmed pretty hard when I figured out the shortcut. It's the Shift key plus any letter, followed quickly by another letter. Basically just any capital letter followed by a lowercase letter. And the reason it doesn't always happen is it's dependent on the keypress duration. I average about 90 words per minute while typing and I can easily hit 110+ if I'm actually trying. But sometimes I type slow and the shortcut isn't triggered. Also, it only happens if the two letters you hit are on the same side of the keyboard as the Shift key you used. I think. I messed around a bit to narrow it down and the rules are pretty unintuitive, except that it does happen every time I type my password quickly.

    Seriously, who the crap would possibly think that this was a good idea? Aren't shortcut keys supposed to be difficult to accidentally hit? Just imagine if typing the word "And" caused a word processor to toggle between fullscreen and minimized! Even SSDS isn't this bad.

    I know Apple is (supposedly) known for high usability, but as a developer I have yet to see it. It's almost like Apple intentionally craps on us developers. End-users (supposedly, I'm not an end-user of any Apple device) get this smooth, magical, fluid easy-to-use interface that can fix world hunger and bring peace to the Middle East while we all sing and dance under the rainbows and sip on cocktails. But developers, on the other hand, must wade hip-deep through puddles of carniverous-worm-infested, AIDS-ridden, shark-infested sewage (with corn chunks floating on top) while having to stop every few yards to pay Apple to cross yet another toll bridge. And the guy running the toll bridge gets to laugh hysterically and chuck squishy moldy fruit at us as we walk by after paying.

    /rant



  • @mott555 said:

    I know Apple is (supposedly) known for high usability,

    They were a decade ago. And, to be fair, they're still pretty good on phones. But on PCs? Hah. OS X is no better than Windows, and in many ways worse.



  • How dare you call Macs a kind of PC?! Macs are the POLAR OPPOSITE of PCs! Good in all the ways that PCs are bad!

    Oh, sorry, I thought I actually liked apple for a moment!



  • @mott555 said:

    End-users (supposedly, I'm not an end-user of any Apple device) get this smooth, magical, fluid easy-to-use interface that can fix world hunger and bring peace to the Middle East while we all sing and dance under the rainbows and sip on cocktails. But developers, on the other hand, must wade hip-deep through puddles of carniverous-worm-infested, AIDS-ridden, shark-infested sewage (with corn chunks floating on top) while having to stop every few yards to pay Apple to cross yet another toll bridge. And the guy running the toll bridge gets to laugh hysterically and chuck squishy moldy fruit at us as we walk by after paying.

    Without disputing the WTF you posted, you're forgetting something critical with this part of your rant: it takes a lot of work to make something complex look simple. The same thing that people often complain about end-users not understanding, which is why the guy who reinserts the printer power cable gets more thanks than the girl who develops a world-beating supply chain management system.




  • OS X does this in most parts of the operating system. Holding down shift while triggering an animation will slow that animation to a crawl (e.g., hold down shift while pressing the dashboard, expose or spaces shortcuts). It seems like the world's most annoying and useless feature, it's almost like they forgot to turn off some debugging code. But the "feature" has existed for years and persists in Lion (10.7), so it's clearly intended...



  • @mdc said:

    OS X does this in most parts of the operating system. Holding down shift while triggering an animation will slow that animation to a crawl (e.g., hold down shift while pressing the dashboard, expose or spaces shortcuts). It seems like the world's most annoying and useless feature, it's almost like they forgot to turn off some debugging code. But the "feature" has existed for years and persists in Lion (10.7), so it's clearly intended...

    It's true. And in all these years that I'm using a mac (24, I think), I've never noticed it. It's a kinda weird feature, and should be taken out and shot.

    However, the OP goes out of his way to blow this make this the smoking gun on Apple's hostility against devs in general and him in particular. And his metaphors suck big time

    But developers, on the other hand, must wade hip-deep through puddles of carniverous-worm-infested, AIDS-ridden, shark-infested sewage (with corn chunks floating on top) while having to stop every few yards to pay Apple to cross yet another toll bridge.

    Who pays for a toll bridge when you have to wade through a puddle anyway? And the worms will probably feed on the sharks.



  • @mdc said:

    It seems like the world's most annoying and useless feature, it's almost like they forgot to turn off some debugging code. But the "feature" has existed for years and persists in Lion (10.7), so it's clearly intended...

    And on some older versions of OS X you can really annoy people by pressing Shift+F9 (or F10 or F11) on their keyboard a bunch of times in a row rapidly, because it will run a slow-motion Exposé as many times as you hit that, with no real way to interrupt it. On Lion at least if you hit the keys a second time while the slow-motion animation is running, it will change the direction immediately rather than wait until the animation has run its course.



  • @Gurth said:

    On Lion at least if you hit the keys a second time while the slow-motion animation is running, it will change the direction immediately rather than wait until the animation has run its course.
     

    Same as Snow Leopard. (I haven't got Lion yet: I'm planning on going to Mt Lion soon, but I still run one Rosetta-requiring POS that I haven't found a native Intel version for, time to reconfigure everything and "approval" to spend the $20.99 to buy it)



  • @Paddles said:

    ...which is why the guy who reinserts the printer power cable gets more thanks than...

    That the "guy" is a hero in offices the world over! Without him many a deadline could easily be missed!

    :(


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