> We will have to get used to judging software based on the output not on the input.
This has been the case for far longer than AI has been a consideration. We all know that counting lines of code isn't a mark of quality, and yet we venerate those that put in all the hours to get something done.
I would say you need to go a step farther than that. The output needs to be impactful. Increased MAU (or GH stars, downloads, etc.), lowered support load, lower ops costs, whatever it might be.
We do still need it. Any time to need to scroll through any extremely long list in order to find a single particular item, the scroll wheel beats the manual binary search of scrollscrollscroll... too far... scrollscrollscroll back... too far... etc.
I would, unironically, use a device that had that iPod interface as a music device until my dying day. Make it only able to stream from Apple Music, make me load up songs through USB -- I'll do it.
I have a logitech mouse that allows you to unclick the scroll wheel so you can scroll at tremendous speed (the scroll wheel has a bearing). I highly recommend this both because it's surprisingly useful and because it's incredibly satisfying.
The only problem with this scroll wheel is that the clicked mode does not actually guarantee a scroll event per click. There is a disconnect between the mechanical click and the actual event sensor. This is usually a non issue but if you try to use the scroll up/down as a bind in a game (fps jump for instance) it becomes painfully obvious.
Oh and also scroll click isn’t a thing (but there is the middle button to bind)
For normal work I absolutely love the unlocked flywheel scroll and won’t go back
Another problem is that applications that try to implement smooth scroll for wheel events will actually drop events or screw up the animation, making the unlocked scroll useless or just as slow as normal.
There are tampermonkey/userscripts that can block websites from ever receiving the scroll events. They also exist for blocking overrides of native keyboard shortcuts. User CSS styles can block other methods of scroll fuckery.
It's not (most) websites that do this, but the browsers and applications themselves. Games are also notorious for it. It's possible to configure it in some cases (like in Firefox), but in others it's just built-in and there's no knob.
Smooth scrolling for wheel events works fine in Firefox on Linux, speed and all. I have such a momentum wheel Logitech mouse. (I almost always leave the clicks engaged, the wheel can still keep going for quite a distance if flicked hard enough.)
The one that uses a semi-permanent magnet for that mechanism? It's the only use I'm aware of a switchable permanent magnet (alnico and rare earth half-cylinders wrapped in a coil; pulsing the coil switches the alnico to be either parallel or anti-parallel with the neodymium, turning the whole assembly on or off) in a commercial product; I bought it just for that.
I’ve used G502 mice for a decade now and the scroll wheel is central to how good they are. The MX Master mouse also has this but instead of a mechanical clickclack it has a button that switches an electropermanent magnet or something to enable/disable the free spin mode. It’s witchcraft.
I use AHK to bind XB2 (the top side mouse button) + scroll to scroll fast, I agree that it is very useful. I got inspired by VS Code using alt+scroll for fast scroll and wanted that everywhere.
I’m still rocking my OG first gen MX Master today, 11+ years and counting of daily backpack tossing, having survived 3 MacBooks and at least 7 chargers. My only secret? I bought a $10 padded case for it on Amazon the very first day I had the mouse, and zip it in there every time before it goes in my backpack.
Everything works as new, the only thing that broke is the plastic covering the gesture button.
That's basically how Apple TV works and it drives me nuts.
And miss me with the "but you can use your iPhone", because that's exactly what is wrong with Apple products. I don't want an iPhone, and there is absolutely no technical reason to not have a better virtual keyboard or supporting non-Apple devices as remote controls.
Once your music library gets to hundreds of artists and albums, scrolling through all that with a scroll wheel is so much slower than an interface where one can just type in a few characters and get the desired artist/album/song.
Just before Covid I got nostalgic for the iPod and got a used one and put in bigger storage and Rockbox, but it was precisely the cumbersomeness of the scrollwheel that caused me to give it up and go back to my phone.
Yes, and I prefer to use a keyboard. (For television and something else where there isn't a full keyboard, you can use numbers. I intended to invent Movie Decimal for this purpose, and have implemented a subset of Movie Decimal (the subset involving titles, although the full Movie Decimal is supposed to allow many other search criteria as well such as year, genre, who assigned the ID (similar to OID), etc) and already found it useful. It can allow quick entry for someone who is used to Movie Decimal, and slow but understandable if you are not used to it (since the display will tell you what numbers to push next, making it easy to understand).)
The big difference is that when the web blew up, there were new players in every direction. Now, we get to hear from the same 3-4 companies over and over and over and over again.
It's not the same 3-4 companies. The 3-4 companies are Anthropic, OpenAI, X/Grok, and Meta/Muse.
But there's also DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM, Jev, and countless services built on top of frontier or open source models. Those 3-4 companies might have the most numerous announcements that hit the front page, but there's way more than that going on in all directions.
Given that it's an ad company, they want something to connect what you're doing to the rest of their data, and they couldn't possibly keep the old image search results there if they want people to use this.
This has been the case for far longer than AI has been a consideration. We all know that counting lines of code isn't a mark of quality, and yet we venerate those that put in all the hours to get something done.
I would say you need to go a step farther than that. The output needs to be impactful. Increased MAU (or GH stars, downloads, etc.), lowered support load, lower ops costs, whatever it might be.
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