Don't back down now! :)

Sorry, I said it was a pet peeve. I realize it's not the end of the world.

I have a JVC car stereo with bluetooth and I have to reach over, press and hold the phone button on the radio unit for 2-3 (or more?) seconds before the JVC unit will beep, and then siri will beep.

I know it's minor to most people, but I do have to take my attention away from driving, and I would prefer a dedicated siri button (along with a separate dedicated phone answer button and a separate dedicated phone hangup button). It's the difference between "works for me" and "truly well designed".

"To activate Siri voice control, just press and hold the voice control button on the steering wheel."

My pet peeve. For Siri, why can't we just press it without the holding part? Come on, I'm driving here.

I disagree.

"the competition can move faster" - the auto manufacturers move on 4 or more year cycles. Most aftermarket units are ridiculous -- who uses CDs anymore? But they still ship with CDs and DVDs.

"and produce better results" - I see zero car systems, from manufacturers or aftermarket, that I would enjoy owning. I actually like the controls from manufacturers, but the systems themselves suck and are obsolete before they ship. The aftermarket gives you the ability to upgrade your car to keep up with the times, at the expense of of a crappy user interface and low-margin-hardware-manufacturer-software.

Seriously, the answer is to integrate with your phone, which actually does move fast and produce better products.

...buying what google recommends.

I think a better analogy is that an IDE to a developer is more like a CNC machine to a carpenter.

It's possible that a CNC machine can allow an experienced carpenter to do his work fast and efficiently.

But for an unskilled carpenter, I see two possibilities:
- the carpenter may limit his designs to what the CNC machine can make (no curved wood objects for one example)
- the fundamentals of carpentry might be ignored (like the properties of natural wood, growth, shrinkage)

In the context of an IDE maybe like:
- only build on one platform
- only create products the IDE way (maybe creating "apps" instead of minimal command line tools or OS internal things)
- allow the developer to ignore corner cases that are abstracted away with IDEs (memory management? interrupts?)

I like this one best. It's kind of anti-preachy and isn't a direct confrontation of your boss.

har, har!

How about allowing opt-in for changes?

I've been here a long time too (not as long as you!) I've calculated it as probably 1999.

I've also sent them money, and I still have credit! I'm slowly using it, but beta seems to throw away the credit.

It would be nice to have a rational discussion about the Beta somewhere.

This is pretty heartfelt to me as I've been here since the beginning (and a user since 1999
as far as I can tell).

Also, I paid for slashdot... and my credit isn't used up.