Supercard 4.8 public beta

[Kay C Lan]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 8:45 PM, Roger Eller
<roger.e.eller at sealedair.com> wrote:
> In regards to "recording" actions to script, my first experience was in Mac
> OS 6.  The finder had a menu item called "macro" that could record, save,
> and playback every click, drag, move, cut, copy, paste, and typed text that
> was performed in the GUI.  This was in 1991, btw.  But it wasn't revealed
> to the end user as a script, and could only be changed by re-recording the
> actions.  Still very powerful for its time!
>
Yes, and it also included the ability to hi-light something by using
the screen version of a hi-lighter to underline something important or
circle something important. The Help system used it and most software
that came out at the time also used it. If you did a Help search for
'turn off extensions' the Help system would come up with the text
explanation of how to do it, but at the bottom would be a hyperlink
'show me'. Clicking on it would result in a hi-lighter circle being
drawn around the Apple menu item, the mouse would then move up there
and click on it, the Control Panels menu option would then be
underlined to hi-light it and the mouse would move down to select
it... etc, etc. As you say, very powerful and the precursor to
AppleScript.

And for Richmond,

here's a not so entertaining or fun exercise to try: give a Linux box
and cheap android phone to a bunch of Octogenarians and see how long
they last before the 'support calls' start piling up. In my opinion
Linux is only suitable for those who are geeks; and any comments about
how 'easy and great Linux is' by anyone who's done any sort of
Computer studies at any sort of educational institution is completely
irrelevant - because they have little clue on how daunting and foreign
this stuff is to the elderly.

We (my wife and I) live 9hr flight time away from our parents. My in
laws use to have MS desktops and android mobile devices because my
brothers-in-law all follow the same 'too expensive' logic. They were
constantly over at their parents place fix things and showing them how
to do things. Mobile devices were a particular bane because my in-laws
travel a lot and they just never seemed to work when they needed too.
The went through multiple different 'set-ups' including several in the
popular EeePCs range. Every time we visit it's the same, can you have
look at this, can you fix that, how do you do this. We eventually got
sick and tired of it so we bought them some iPhones and iPads. No more
support calls - for the mobiles, they still have their Windows
desktops. It's chalk and cheese, we are now inundated with emails,
blogs, facebook posts, photos and movies of all the minutiae of their
travels, including the most irritating of all, food photos. The iPhone
4 and iPad 2 are still working for them nicely and have outlasted
anything they've owned before - not that the previous purchases broke,
they just never really functioned as required.

My parents are older, my Dad just cracked 90 and it's the same story
with my brothers following the same 'too expensive' philosophy. Both
my younger brothers are in the computer tech industry and are far more
computer savvy than my brothers-in-law, and they field all the support
calls for my parent's MS desktops and Android mobile devices.
Interestingly even my brother's acknowledge that Linux is 'too
difficult' to support for the parents. And yet EVERY time I come home
I have to deal with a support call that my brothers have already
addressed but the solution still isn't quite right.

As I type this I'm sitting in my mother's spare room, and only
yesterday was sorting out a problem of the simple need to install an
app on my mum's Aspera phone. When she tries to install apps it comes
up with a message that there isn't enough room. Seems simple enough, a
little house keeping to make space, except for the fact that my mother
has all of ONE (1) additional app installed on her phone over and
above the basic install. Further investigation reveals that this phone
comes with 128MB of internal storage. Yes you read that right MB not
GB, and there is only 24MB of spare space remaining on it. But, it
does have a mini SD card slot and in there is a 32GB card with 30GB of
spare space. So you'd think the system would be smart enough to
install new apps into the spare space. No, you have to do this
procedure:

http://www.howtogeek.com/114667/how-to-install-android-apps-to-the-sd-card-by-default-move-almost-any-app-to-the-sd-card/

which I can tell my youngest brother has already done; including the
bit about 'The Root Method'. Everything seems to be set up correctly
but as far as I can tell, the install process must cache part of the
app onto internal storage before it goes to the SD card because slim
apps can be installed no worries, but if it's an obese app of all of
20MB or larger, the 'not enough space' message comes up. If I and my
brothers can't figure out how to simply install an app my mum wants
the phone is not fit for purpose.

And this is not the first time, they've had a couple of Huawei phones,
one I know that could not have it's android system updated even though
it was only months old, because my folks got a new car and the phone
couldn't be connected via bluetooth. The Honda dealer spent a day
trying, my brothers spent days trying, I could only be bothered
wasting an hour.
The solution was apparently an upgrade to android but it was clear
from internet searches this particular really really really cheap
bargain of an android phone could not be OS updated.

My mum has had at least 3 phones since 2010 and although all up they
probably cost less than my iPhone 4, my iPhone 4 happily connects to
their bluetooth car and installs all the apps my mum wants using two
clicks. IMO her current phone, and some before, have been a complete
waste of money; what's expensive?

Time is money, and at the rate I get paid per hour I'm glad it's my
brothers (+ in-laws) who are wasting their time on all the support
calls. Life is way too short to waste time, and in the case of parents
(+ in-laws) it's extremely short - I've already lost one. What's
expensive, I'll tell you what's expensive, it appears to me my parents
(+ in-laws) are wasting their money on spending their life saving
dimes and nickels when they should be living their life spending their
money on 'things' that don't waste their time. They can't take $$ with
them.

Which of course lets me bring this all the way back to LiveCode and
why for me it's head an shoulders above anything else I've tried; it
allows me to create what I want, and get the results that I need much
much faster, without wasting time and with little or no support calls
:-)