Unless you’re talking about a piece of clothing, people normally do label their buttons with words or symbols to indicate what they do.
In this case, it might well be deliberate obfuscation so that people don’t realize something’s up when they don’t get some alerts. It may only work properly if one of them breaks it and then tries to fix it. Or that may make it sentient and evil.
Eh, if they make the system more fool proof, they’ll only encounter better fools. Put some unlabeled doomsday functions there, kill two birds with one stone.
The LCARs system was reconfigurable touch screens, so each user could be able to customise their own layout – labelled or unlabelled buttons as preferred.
As highlighted in one episode of TNG where Worf ends up in a parallel universe and can’t get the his doppleganger’s Security console to work.
Welcome to the real world. Practically no piece of machinery electric or otherwise comes with instructions these days. Except for motor vehicles. They come with a thick manual. Manufacturers make the assumption that everyone has online access thus they post a pdf of their manuals to an online website. I recently purchased a Maytag washer and all it had was a “quick start guide” which is essentially one sheet of 8×11″ paper telling you to connect the hoses and plug it in. A “footnote” tells you to get the complete set of instructions from their website. Most computers now will walk you thru set up and describe their functions when you first plug them in but generally require an online connection. One would expect there to be a qwerty keyboard and touch pad that GG could use to go thru the setup routine. Or she could call a professional like me to come and set it up for a small (potentially large) fee. As one of my instructors said to us, “Every minute spent is billable.”.
There are still plenty of devices that come with printed manuals included, it just depends on the company and/or device in question. The television, disc-player, and pressure cooker thing I recently bought all came with printed manuals.
It’s rare tho’. I recently bought an HP monitor to pair up with this HP laptop and it had nothing other than a double sided piece of paper showing where the power cord and signal were. One side in English; the other in Spanish. The laptop had virtually no documentation but you could download a pdf describing its features. When it comes down to it I’m not against the practice since back in the Dark Ages before WinXp PCs came with 2 to 3 books on how to set up the machine. I don’t think I ever even took them out of the cellophane wrap.
The monitor doesn’t have it because there’s almost nothing to say. The laptop doesn’t because there’s too much to reasonably cover without including a chunky manual, which the maker has to compile and find space for when shipping.
But for devices of middling complexity, it’s not at all rare to still have a manual consisting of paper and two staples that fits into spare space in the same box as the product. It doesn’t even require additional work to design, since it’s generally identical to the electronic copy.
On the software end, when you can even get hard copy media it’s almost always an unfinished product, typically a glorified beta that prompts to check for updates (meaning the rest of the product) upon installation. When you buy a digital download (especially for a game) it does the same thing automatically, first installing the bare framework then “updating” the meat of the actual data. on one hand, online connectivity has become very commonplace and generally accessible but on the other it can be a bit disturbing to rely so heavily on one aspect of something that may not even be necessary for the actual product.
It’s also possibly I’m just crotchety and cantankerous, pining for the “simpler times” of the late 90s when 56K connections being the norm meant that publishers had to actually put a complete program on the CD in the box. And the sounds of those modems were soothing. I’d better quit now before I start typing in l3375p34k…
“This one says ‘photon torpedoes’.”
“And this one says ‘Charging port – Hologrammatic Lifeforms Only'”
“Are these just props from the sets of various Sci-Fi series?”
Hard light or soft light?
Diamond Light!
Just click them all and see what they do.
Especially the big red one…
Unless you’re talking about a piece of clothing, people normally do label their buttons with words or symbols to indicate what they do.
In this case, it might well be deliberate obfuscation so that people don’t realize something’s up when they don’t get some alerts. It may only work properly if one of them breaks it and then tries to fix it. Or that may make it sentient and evil.
On clothes, there are labels what you (should) do
But no one understand those, though…
Yes, but the labels on clothing do not describe the function of its buttons.
They describe the function of the human trying to wash it
At first I thought I was just playing that new Christian game staring Bibleman, Doom Eternal, but then it turns out I……. wasn’t.
Eh, if they make the system more fool proof, they’ll only encounter better fools. Put some unlabeled doomsday functions there, kill two birds with one stone.
Button function: Meteor.
Kill all the birds.
In fact, it killed all the dinosaurs except for the birds.
The birds are the descendants of the dinosaurs that learned to fly to get away from the meteor impact. That’s how evolution works, right?
In Shitropolis, it does.
I am sure there is a manual included. You just need to hit the right button to bring it up….
A long time ago, there was a VCR which came with setup instructions on a VHS cassette…
…… I don’t know what to say about that….
Eh, I don’t think they ever labelled buttons in later versions of Star Trek – so just get Chief O’Brien to work it…
The LCARs system was reconfigurable touch screens, so each user could be able to customise their own layout – labelled or unlabelled buttons as preferred.
As highlighted in one episode of TNG where Worf ends up in a parallel universe and can’t get the his doppleganger’s Security console to work.
They just need to talk to the computer through the mouse, just like Scotty did.
Scotty used the keyboard. Because Scotty doesn’t let a “quaint” UI prevent him from being awesome.
Welcome to the real world. Practically no piece of machinery electric or otherwise comes with instructions these days. Except for motor vehicles. They come with a thick manual. Manufacturers make the assumption that everyone has online access thus they post a pdf of their manuals to an online website. I recently purchased a Maytag washer and all it had was a “quick start guide” which is essentially one sheet of 8×11″ paper telling you to connect the hoses and plug it in. A “footnote” tells you to get the complete set of instructions from their website. Most computers now will walk you thru set up and describe their functions when you first plug them in but generally require an online connection. One would expect there to be a qwerty keyboard and touch pad that GG could use to go thru the setup routine. Or she could call a professional like me to come and set it up for a small (potentially large) fee. As one of my instructors said to us, “Every minute spent is billable.”.
There are still plenty of devices that come with printed manuals included, it just depends on the company and/or device in question. The television, disc-player, and pressure cooker thing I recently bought all came with printed manuals.
It’s rare tho’. I recently bought an HP monitor to pair up with this HP laptop and it had nothing other than a double sided piece of paper showing where the power cord and signal were. One side in English; the other in Spanish. The laptop had virtually no documentation but you could download a pdf describing its features. When it comes down to it I’m not against the practice since back in the Dark Ages before WinXp PCs came with 2 to 3 books on how to set up the machine. I don’t think I ever even took them out of the cellophane wrap.
For plug-and-play devices like the monitor, that’s OK.
The monitor doesn’t have it because there’s almost nothing to say. The laptop doesn’t because there’s too much to reasonably cover without including a chunky manual, which the maker has to compile and find space for when shipping.
But for devices of middling complexity, it’s not at all rare to still have a manual consisting of paper and two staples that fits into spare space in the same box as the product. It doesn’t even require additional work to design, since it’s generally identical to the electronic copy.
On the software end, when you can even get hard copy media it’s almost always an unfinished product, typically a glorified beta that prompts to check for updates (meaning the rest of the product) upon installation. When you buy a digital download (especially for a game) it does the same thing automatically, first installing the bare framework then “updating” the meat of the actual data. on one hand, online connectivity has become very commonplace and generally accessible but on the other it can be a bit disturbing to rely so heavily on one aspect of something that may not even be necessary for the actual product.
It’s also possibly I’m just crotchety and cantankerous, pining for the “simpler times” of the late 90s when 56K connections being the norm meant that publishers had to actually put a complete program on the CD in the box. And the sounds of those modems were soothing. I’d better quit now before I start typing in l3375p34k…
It looks like your 1000th strip will be published October. Maybe you can celebrate by dropping the “NEW LOOK” message from 2015?