Comments on: Implicit Requirements are Still Requirements

By: Roger L. Cauvin

Roger L. Cauvin — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:25:02 +0000

I see this problem as stemming more from a fundamental misunderstanding of requirements than from a mere neglect of certain requirements.

By: Asher Sterkin

Asher Sterkin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:36:51 +0000

As an employee of a company making its money from providing security for the entertainment market let me clarify you some very basic fact: the only real success factor for the home computing market is USABLITY (put as many exclamation marks as you want). All these so called productivity tools: laptops, handhelds, mobiles, etc, are in fact just time wasters (donÂt ask how much it took me to launch my laptop on the Frankfurt-Bangalore flight right now. Why?! ItÂs all the commodity technology!). These tools providers all do not take into account the very simple fact: human time is the most precious resource and they must respect it. What is happens today is caused by the fact that Microsoft monopolized the office automation market when people waste their time on playing with install shield gargets for salary rather than at their own expense. The MAC world has being “shielded” from this attitude for years; now, sadly, it is not. My only hope is - it will change sooner or later thanks to independent workers, like you, who are very conscious about how much time they are willing to waste on simple technical stuff. I also want to hope that agile ÂmentalityÂ will make usability to be the king.
Best regards,
Asher

By: Chuck Anastasia

Chuck Anastasia — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:05:13 +0000

At the Nov. ‘06 Boston-SPIN meeting, Steve Rakitin, on the topic, ÂAll Software is Defective,Â made a point that requirements writers and testers need domain expertise. He opined that the trend to agile and other lean methods is in large part a reaction to not getting good requirements. In my opinion, another issue affecting the installation experience is not having resources to implement known requirements. If from a business perspective, managers think that buyers don’t base purchase decisions primarily on installation, then priorities will direct resources to new and sexy features rather than optimizing the installation experience.

By: Michael Chermside

Michael Chermside — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 01:59:30 +0000

Answer to one question: No, Windows users don’t actually have to exit all other applications, except for a few badly broken installers like the one you describe. But they DO have to click through a stupid dialog that warns them to close down all other applications. And sometimes the virus protection software interferes with the installation.

By: Jered Floyd

Jered Floyd — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:35:59 +0000

I see the other commenters had the same thought as me … you must have an HP All-in-One!
For what it’s worth, while the Mac drivers are wretched for anything but printing, the Windows drivers often fail at doing even that.

By: Nobody

Nobody — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:42:17 +0000

Frank - That’s funny! The first thing that came to my mind was: “I wonder if this is an HP device?”

By: Frank Patrick

Frank Patrick — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:35:07 +0000

Sounds just like my hP OfficeJet G85 All-in-One. Frustrating, ain’t it?
The other thing that I’ve suffered with is that the drivers aren’t usually available for a few months after upgrades of OS X. Not too helpful with the almost annual upgrades.