Lady Bumps and Data Dumps

Posted by 22111
Jul 10, 2022 at 07:20 AM

(Lady Bump: Gertrude Wirschinger-Silver Convention 1975…)

I sometimes wonder why, and especially HOW?, so many people can live with the Apple paradigm (= “Apple’s always right, so the customer is always wrong” - most, rare, exceptions to the rule then by court, class actions where they apply…),

and especially with those iPads, be it “Mini”, be it “Pro”, and the newest bad news about them’s here: https://www.heise.de/news/iPad-mini-6-Laden-stockt-nach-Update-auf-iPadOS-15-5-7166176.html - they refuse to load…

... and then vendors in stores, be them crooks, be them just helpless but fanboys-‘n’girls all the same, try to sell you a NEW one, as a replacement for your iThing just a year old…

Now they ain’t worth really much indeed, since the Swiss sometimes sell them - not the Minis, but the basic ones - new and down to under 260 Stützli (that’s what they call their Swissfranc), and that’s about 220 or 210 Euro = Dollar (US), incl. VAT that is… but of course, Swiss remaining being Swiss, they’d never deliver their paddies abroad… so you have to buy them in the European Union for almost double that price (was it 380 or 390, or even 399€, incl. VAT again?)... (It all goes into their life-long AppleCAR development, or then not?!!!)

Now, if you read the comments (!) in the link, you will find that the problem obviously is neither linked to 15.5, nor to “Mini”, but that it’s just there that it has become so common that the masses have become aware of it, but anyway, for dumping some data for it becoming available “on the road, for a pedestrian”, it’s just the “Mini” that may be acceptable, or then, the screen and virtual kb size factor almost being negligible between the two, you’ll use your iPhone anyway.

Now, I’m - not proud, but 300 % disenchanted - owner of two Nokia Communicators 9210i, together with all the “necessary” - expensive - software, database, ToDo app, etc. - only the best, and I had to buy them twice, everything, since in the time, phone software was bound to the phone; the speed was bad-bad-bad, and the data transfer was done by infrared or what was it called again, not “parallel”, the other one: slow-slow-slow; today, they are unusable, since nobody makes the necessary batteries anymore…

Now I understand that probably 90 p.c. of forum users have got data subscriptions, and have their (core) data safely (hahaha!) stored in the web, and thus, they live with the recurring problem that only SOME software makers have transposed their Mac(book) software to iPad (whatever size), and that in most cases, on iPhone, that iPad software either doesn’t run to begin with, or then, makes a somewhat really awful “user experience”...

And that respective, often quite doubtful, “transposition quality” will then make that you crimp-crimp-crimp, since you want to have an “optimized” user experience on BOTH devices, and thus, any, even minor, “development” of the tool, be it here or there, literally electrifies you, instead of your simply and finally realizing that you just need your cherished “Book”, and that your “Pad” is just good as a more or less “educational” toy for your deluxe 3-year-old!

Since, wherever you realistically could handle an iPad (in your car (there are cheap car tablets, to hang into your steering wheel, and to place your laptop, or meal, or whatever onto - if your car is big enough for you to slide your seat sufficiently to the back…) in your or your customer’s office / conference room, in your bed…), you could easily handle your cherished MacBook, but if you try to look something up in a (e.g. book) store (e.g. if you already own that damn book, CD, DVD or not, and believe me, if your collections at home get into the higher 5 digit numbers, that’ll become a REAL problem!), yes, then you will finally “need” an iPad…

and the other customers will promptly approach you with their then unavoidable “Good day, where will I find…?” - thus, here again, your cherished iPHONES will be the right instrument.

Now back to Android, bah!, but then it’s obvious that on those tiny phone screens, Apple or whatever maker, you realistically can just handle core data, e.g. look up lists or similar for whatever reason, and yes, I understand that you’d prefer even that core data to be up-to-date, i.e. coming from the “cloud”, so if you have a data subscription with your “provider”, and a cloud “account”, and live in some “civilized” country, that’s the way to go, just be aware that even with Apple Cloud, your data is NOT encrypted against Apple, it’s just encrypted against those third parties Apple doesn’t work together with, hahaha! (And that’s a proven fact, not paranoia, blatant info all over the web to back my assertion.)

Now, for those among us which are not happy with cloud storage, all the less so with the phone operator, we need data dumps, and things get even more complicated, and we end up searching for “(best) iPhone/Android csv viewer”... and then, I very much hope for the iPhone users they have got something decent, but for Android (phones or tablets), there is no such thing:

They all recommend you “CSV File Viewer” (by The AppGuru) as being the very best one on there, and some even say it’s “awsome”, while in fact it’s a piece of crap:

There is a reason why you MUST use your phone in “landscape” position for it, see below; then: While it’s free, you can read just 2 lines and a half (which makes it 2 lines) without scrolling, while above those, incredibly intrusive advertisements BLINK all the time, so even for trialing, you buy that crap (3€).

Then, those BLINKING ads go away, but instead, you see a black stripe now, the size of the former ads, so again, you are at 2 1/2 lines visible, or then, at every “session”, you again “buy” (without paying) now, and after getting “You already bought” or something (I cite from memory), you press “Cancel”, and then, the black bar goes away, making room for some more data - as said, that’s necessary every single use…

Then - there are multiple reasons for the “just 2 lines and a half”, mind you! -, there is some “functional” bar on top you can’t do away with, and even worse, there’s an ever much thicker “functional” bar on the bottom you could hide in theory only, since the “filter” button is only there (or then also in a drop-down menu from the “top bar” but which would make every single “filtering” two precise clicks, before even getting to the input field, instead of just one, much more approximate, in the enormous bottom bar).

Since in the top bar, there’s just a button for “Find” (or “Search”, whatever), and that just gives you the results one-by-one, and obviously, you want - need! for some authors, I have got 15 books, but not all of them! - a result LIST, not to have (in some cases) to press “next find” 15 times in a row…

Then, of course, the very first line, even in “Filter”, is wasted by the very first line of your data, whatever that is, so even when you don’t need columns (but text lines), it just and always displays your very first text line there, but anyway, it will create total HAVOC for your text lines if you don’t create at least 2 or 3 tabs within your very first line (record), AND (!) replace ALL commata by “;” (or by something else, but “;” are least disruptive).

And now for one of the craziest things you will have heard in your life: Either for every single (! not session, as before, but) “Filter” (i.e. for every single look-up) this piece of crap goes back to its “text” default, i.e. to “center”, and you either “live with it” (hence the need to use your phone in landscape mode then, or you will “see nothing”, since it will systematically hide your core data, since it will only show the very first part of the author’s name, no works’ names anymore if your data e.g. is in the form
author’s family name; (!)their first name (year) work title (some other metadata),
or you set, in some menu (several precise clicks), the alignment to “left” for every single look-up - so much for “crazy defaults”, let alone settings persistence…

And, remind yourself, the “web” is unanimous: this piece of crap is considered “the very best” - good heavens!

Now, fortunately, I have found an almost perfect alternative, and which displays the records in full, in “portrait mode”, very much readable, about 10 or 12 at the same time without scrolling (for my record lengths), and with just a tiny bar for the filter input and trigger, and I’m quite happy with it (here again, you can’t “filter” for “and”, but in practice, the need for that rarely arises).

Both ain’t available for iThings, so I hope you’ve got some iPhone app, at least as good as my Android alternative, for such filtered list display, and will share? So that yes, you could say that beyond Mac(Book)s, and whilst iPads may be hygienic articles in the end indeed, iPhones have their justification, just as Android “smartphones” then have, IF you spend hours, days, searching for solutions, instead of following CRAP recommendations that is.

But then, yes, if your are a timid, single man, an’into book-worms, 260 Stützli or even 400€ might be a very sly investment!