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Users hate change

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Re: Users hate change

#151

Post by agumonkey »

_nalply wrote: post #17

My wife has handicaps (deaf and cerebral palsy). She gets nervous and mistrustful if something has changed. She hates updates and asked me why the companies can't let the software alone. She has a point. Updates and nagging dialogs have a cost which is higher for non-IT people. Imagine your old neighbor being confused if he should allow that update or not and being stressed about because these update requests don't s…

Non IT people are on the verge to be able to claim fees for emotional damage. So many of them are struggling.

Re: Users hate change

#152

Post by Haga »

grincho wrote: post #135
holy_city wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? Because no software is free from bugs and there will always be a need for support. The difference between single sale and subscription can be life or death for a company, its products, and its support. But if you don't feel that a subscription to a service adds value, please don't buy it and voice your concern to the developers. Especially if they're a small shop. That said, subscriptions can be canceled. F…

Then charge for bug fixes. Charge for updates that make the application run on a new version of the OS. If those things provide sufficient value, users will pay for them. I've been paying for that for decades for my commercial text editor. And can subscriptions be canceled in practice? If you cancel your Photoshop subscription, your documents suddenly become unopenable. In this way, software subscriptions—at least fo…

Every system is gambled, if you pay for Bugfixes, company's will create synthetic bugs.

Software is crystallized behavior, which rots when not in symbiosis with a developer.

Software developer holds the software ecosystem hostage, trying to extract the maximum amount of value.

Re: Users hate change

#153

Post by mehrdadn »

la_barba wrote: post #147
dataflow wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference between single sale and subscription can be life or death for a company, its products, and its support. Oh come on. Companies have been in business selling stuff for the longest time. It wasn't exactly wrecking capitalism before subscriptions became the normality in the last decade.

A lot of small companies that were selling shrink-wrapped software have shuttered down - for various reasons no doubt, but the effect of a steady revenue stream on any business cannot be dismissed. Most of the software I use is either free, under some kind of subscription, or has a large corporate brand/vendor behind it. What about you?

What's so special about software here?

> the effect of a steady revenue stream on any business cannot be dismissed

Really? The effect of a steady revenue stream on any consumers can't be dismissed either, so how about we have those businesses pay us first? Then we can pay them back for their software. Is this how logic works? An effect can't be dismissed, therefore everyone else must dance to produce that effect?

Re: Users hate change

#154

Post by gurkendoktor »

collyw wrote: post #44
flohofwoe wrote: post #5

My pet theory is that every software product has a "peak version". Before that peak version, the product is not yet in a complete state, and it is fairly obvious, both for the developer and user, what features are missing. Once the peak version is reached, new features are not added because they improve the product, but to justify selling the product again to existing customers, and to 'keep the team busy'. Instead o…

Thank god Linux gives you multiple desktop options. I am happily using "Windows 98 style" XFCE. To be fair there probably hundreds of subtle improvements over Windows 98, but no horrendous game changers like when Ubuntu went from Gnome to Unity.

Not only Linux. Many people praise Apple for its radical "game changers", but I mostly use macOS because they haven't broken my workflows or muscle memory in the last thirteen years. It's a miracle in the world of commercial software, and it probably won't last as long as XFCE.

Re: Users hate change

#155

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

lkrubner wrote: post #117
flohofwoe wrote: post #5

My pet theory is that every software product has a "peak version". Before that peak version, the product is not yet in a complete state, and it is fairly obvious, both for the developer and user, what features are missing. Once the peak version is reached, new features are not added because they improve the product, but to justify selling the product again to existing customers, and to 'keep the team busy'. Instead o…

Microsoft Word 5.1 on the Macintosh was published in 1992 and was generally seen as the best word processor ever invented. It's UI was perfect. It won a lot of praise in the press, all of it deserved. Sadly, after version 5.1, Microsoft began to focus on the integration of the Office Suite, which meant re-doing all the apps so that they'd be open to programming. And more features got added, and the UI became cluttere…

MacWrite Pro was also released in 1992 and its UI was streets ahead of Word 5.1’s. Unfortunately its performance was laggy and, even by then, Word was so much the incumbent that it was hard to compete. But I loved MWP.

Re: Users hate change

#156

Post by kazinator »

No change is just one change; it's a set of changes.

No set of changes is strictly better for strictly every user.

"For the better" is often just better for that user who happens to be the developer.

Re: Users hate change

#157

Post by rabidrat »

grincho wrote: post #135
holy_city wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? Because no software is free from bugs and there will always be a need for support. The difference between single sale and subscription can be life or death for a company, its products, and its support. But if you don't feel that a subscription to a service adds value, please don't buy it and voice your concern to the developers. Especially if they're a small shop. That said, subscriptions can be canceled. F…

Then charge for bug fixes. Charge for updates that make the application run on a new version of the OS. If those things provide sufficient value, users will pay for them. I've been paying for that for decades for my commercial text editor. And can subscriptions be canceled in practice? If you cancel your Photoshop subscription, your documents suddenly become unopenable. In this way, software subscriptions—at least fo…

> ...we don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?" You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis. -- Bill Gates (1995)

Re: Users hate change

#158

Post by noir_lord »

agumonkey wrote: post #148
noir_lord wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cinnamon feels like XFCE's conceptual descendant, it doesnt break the desktop metaphor at all from win98/XFCE while having enough of the newer stuff if you want it. It was what I used until recently and would go back to in a heartbeat.

And it makes you want to double your ram just like the first time you got win95

I don't care, my laptop has 32GB my desktops more.

So in a relative sense Cinnamon is vastly more efficient as percentage of system memory used.

Re: Users hate change

#159

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

vbezhenar wrote: post #46
flohofwoe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between offering "end-of-life" versions for download, even if they are no longer supported, and forcing users on new versions even if they don't want to (which is fairly common for mobile/web apps and generally subscription-models like Adobe and Autodesk switched to).

That's because the world decided to adopt software as a service model, where your device is just a thin client and real work is happening on a server. And that model is incompatible with letting customers to run old versions.

That’s not at all true of the Adobe stuff. The real work in Photoshop or Illustrator still happens on the Mac.

Re: Users hate change

#160

Post by ch_sm »

la_barba wrote: post #141
ryandrake wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I’m totally against subscription software because I resent having to pay again and again for the same product just to be able to use it a month later. What ever happened to making a product, selling it once to the customer, who then gets to use it as they wish for as long as it works? Why does everything have to be a recurring revenue stream? Because you have software engineers who need something t…

>What ever happened to making a product, selling it once to the customer, who then gets to use it as they wish for as long as it works? That was the old business model. It worked well for a while. Then most small software companies that sold general purpose software went out of business doing just that. And with App Stores basically stealing 30% of all your sales, its become even more harder to do that. A lot of majo…

> It worked well for a while. […] And with App Stores basically stealing 30% of all your sales …

I’ve never understood that argument. Physical media production, packaging and shelf space was way more expensive than 30%. Not trying to justify the Apple’s Premium here, just pointing out that it’s a lot cheaper than physical retail used to be.

> I kept using Photoshop because its just a better software...

In some ways it is, in others it is not.

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