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The year: 2003. Planet: Earth. The question on everyone’s mind: What DOES Web Speed Meter do?
In my attempt to answer that question, I made the decision to attempt to use it. After launching the application, I quickly became metagrobolized by the interface, which was seemingly created by an semi-intelligent blob of chlorophyll-containing organic matter. In desperation, I turned to the read-me. And I was in for a rough ride. We got off on a bad foot, the read-me and I. It wanted to open in Microsoft Word, I preferred to view it in TextEdit. The tension in the air was palpable, like a fine mist of pork falling on a popular beach. Eventually I overrode the read-me’s objections and fired up my text-viewer of choice. Lurking within the pathetically named “Nobody Ever Reads Me.…txt” was an equally pathetic lack of explanatory material, and a multitude of disgusting punctuation. There was nothing for me here, so I left.
I went back to the application, and narrowly avoided soiling my keyboard by a quick dodge to the side, regrettably chunking up the carpet. I would clean it up later. Right now I had an application to examine, and it was dropsied and reeking like an antelope left out on the counter for too many days. I forced myself to type something in one of the text fields. Then I clicked “Calculate!”. Nothing, both the text fields had reset to zero. Zero is a very negative number, and I realized it was bringing me down, as if there were a botfly-infested Lime iMac resting on my shoulders.
I knew I had to get out, had to get away from the depressing halo that surrounds Web Speed Meter and its little friends, those REALbasic created bile-geysers. It was time for me to give my rating. I chose to give AFSoft a grit-coated 11.0 for WSM, the highest rating possible. The software didn’t function at all, and it cost $5.00 (42.83 Wisconsin Koner), so I felt justified in my decision.
Posted by jan at March 6, 2003 01:08 PM | TrackBackThis app. is both impossible to use *and* $5. Bravo!
Posted by: Etan on March 6, 2003 03:52 PMQuick question. Can a steaming pile of software really get a coveted "11" if it doesn't overuse the brushed metal look? Certainly the non-functionality is of prime importance, but maybe you should also consider the aesthetics of the thing as well.
Posted by: zuhl on March 6, 2003 04:22 PMThe preponderance of exclamation marks in button titles has made up for the missing metal.
Posted by: Ladd on March 6, 2003 04:32 PMThe real amusing part is they don't appear to realize that windows can be resized in REALbasic. So, I don't think they'd even have the ability to use the 'brushed metal' feature, yet. :)
Posted by: oZ on March 6, 2003 08:17 PMIt turns out that you have to move a file into the "Web Speed Meter Demo(OS X)" folder, then you enter the file's name in the bottom text field and it tells you the file's size and how long it would take to download such a file at the selected speed. Incidentally, it tells you the wrong file size, because it counts a kilobyte as 1000 bytes rather than 1024.
Posted by: Charlie on March 6, 2003 09:10 PMAnd all that in a mere 1710k .sea (oh my sweet merciful buddha) inside a 605k sit archive.
When will the hurting stop?
I think the next RealBasic version will progress to the next circle of hell and provide "non-technical programmers" with a free version of their "IDE" which will only pop up a few ad banners every once in a while in all compiled apps you build with it.
That way, you get the functionality of the web offline!
Posted by: Thuros M. on March 7, 2003 07:38 AMI have seen it all. Now all they need is a slick advertising campaign to complete this Roman Farce of a program.
"Hey nonny nonny with a hot cha cha, buy this program for $5 and we'll guffaw."
And if you ask about the size of a Meg+ file in Bytes, it even resorts to scientific notation ("1.810319e+6"). Can you not specify large integers in RealBasic, or did they just forget?
Talking of which, how _did_ this program end up as 1.7MB? I could write a *shell* script which looked as good and worked better...
Posted by: The Bittern on March 11, 2003 11:21 AMThis is too funny. I can't stop laughing.
Posted by: Rixster on March 14, 2003 08:29 AMI think this application is too advanced for you, you don't start a 5-year old off with college texts, do you!?! DO YOU!?! do you?
Posted by: fixxxer on May 9, 2003 11:25 PMtest
Posted by: Klingeltöne on November 22, 2003 11:54 AMWhilst I have no doubt that being a supporter of REALbasic goes down like a lead balloon round here, I feel inexplicably drawn to answer your points:
1) REALbasic can display large integers in non-scientific notation, it just doesn't by default (and hence it is unlikely to be used by programmers who can't read manuals, or indeed read at all).
2) Well yes, 1.7Meg is big for an application that doesn't do anything (which this is a reasonable approximation to) but that overhead is for runtime libraries that have to work cross platform and therefore can't always use the OS calls. Bear in mind that for applications of a decent complexity this overhead gets lost.
There are good REALbasic programs and there are bad REALbasic programs, just like with any other language. Just be thankful this idiot didn't try and write this program in objective C otherwise you would probably have had a kernel panic to deal with instead of just a poor interface.
Posted by: Socrates on December 5, 2003 09:07 AMgood site
Posted by: roulette on December 17, 2003 11:17 PM