20230417-ivory_tower_syndrome.txt
WARNING: Language
Maybe this term exists. I just kind of thought of it. I'm sure there
are synonyms for it out there that I'm too dumb to realize. I was
watching videos on operating systems and Windows 10 came up. It
reminded me just how slow 10 was on my hard drive. It was so slow that
I wondered if they had ever bothered to test it on an HDD. My guess
would be no. They're MS. They can afford SSDs on their work and dev
computers. They probably never bothered to test how rancid their OS is
when you try to run it off of spinning platters.
And that reminded me of all sorts of other faux pas that tech
companies have done in terms of misunderstanding their consumer base.
Big G closes down great products all the time. I've ranted about it
before. They require quite a bit of online uptime. For me, it's not a
problem as a US suburbanite. For others, it is hard. Would any of the
Big G fucktard managers shut down Hangouts if they actually used it?
Probably not. It's a peasant problem.
I will never forget the moment I became totally disillusioned with
video games: the dickhead in charge of Xbox, Don Mattrick, said in his
massively misguided arrogance, "Fortunately we have a product for
people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called
Xbox 360," when talking about the online-only restrictions of the new
Xbox One console. The name of the console itself just epitomizes the
Ivory Tower Syndrome: we don't care if this will cause confusion or
make things worse; we like it. And you'll have to deal with it. I
actually took his advice to heart and while I could easily use an Xbox
One without much hassle, I chose not to. I chose not to buy from a
company that cared more about DRM and profits than their fans and
customers. Also there was very little that interested me in the new
console. The closest I ever came to buying it was the release of the
Master Chief collection. IMO, Halo 2 was the best multiplayer game of
all time. Superjumps and fun glitches made it that way. But it still
wasn't enough.
Rotten Core with their iDiot fans are possibly the worst. I worked
setting up replacement Iphones and it took me 3 hours once just to get
an iphone restored. It always took longer because of the way they
required any account migration to take place BEFORE you could even
enter the phone. Never once did they consider that tons of places
don't have reliable and fast Wifi. "It's easy for me. Why wouldn't it
be easy for them?" That's Ivory Tower Syndrome. The worst wasn't even
the longest, IIRC. The worst was someone had bought the minimum
storage and it was stuck for-ev-er trying to download updates. It
wasn't the Wifi. It was just IOS whatever being too bloated to
download on a 32GB phone. Either that or the refurbishers didn't do a
good job clearing out space. IDK. What's worse is the poor fuckers had
didn't have a proper home but still had an Iphone. Any illusions of
Rotten Core users being "rich" were quickly shattered on that job. I
mean I had been a middle class Rotten Core user before, though not by
choice; kids rarely had a say in computer purchases in the 1990s and
earlier.
But yeah, the account migration/restore on Rotten Core phones were
undoubtedly the most time-consuming and frustrating parts of the job.
I even had to let people down because there would be no way to restore
their accounts sometimes. They had some security thing where they'd
send a 2FA code to another Rotten Core device tied to the account. If
you haven't guessed it yet, that means if your only device is a Rotten
Core phone, you have to wait for days for some intern at Rotten Core
to investigate your claim and restore access to your account. GREAT
JOB, ROTTEN CORE! AWESOME IDEA! WHO DOESN'T OWN MORE THAN ONE OF YOUR
SHITTY PRODUCTS?! Again, CEOs in their ivory towers or even the Rotten
Core devs don't understand how people could possibly have that happen.
It's a peasant problem.
Small tech is going to get a boost, if they haven't already, because
Big Tech is just totally out of touch with their customers' wants and
needs, and I think that boost is a good thing.
