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Users hate change

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Re: Users hate change

#291

Post by eecsninja »

WA wrote: post #288
Silhouette wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software bought for iOS should work on iOS. Forever. What you're glossing over here is that for literally decades, that was a pretty good baseline assumption, because we actually valued backward compatibility. The lengths that Microsoft went to in order to maintain that compatibility in the first several major releases of Windows are legendary. The lengths that Linux developers still go to are also remarkable. It's o…

Fair enough. There’s obviously software that goes back decades and we all benefit from the great backwards compatibility of MS or Linux. But: How useful is your copy of Windows 98 these days? Can you collaborate with others with your copy of Photoshop 5.0 or Office 2003? Can you easily install Quake I on a modern machine without hassle? > Ask yourself this... It depends. I see your point and you are right to a certai…

The problem with your example of Office 2003 is not that they added sharing in later versions.

It's that they replaced the old toolbar with the awful ribbon interface, instantly breaking years if user familiarity.

Re: Users hate change

#292

Post by xiphias2 »

gmueckl wrote: post #130
zzzcpan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> regardless of how much better it is. No, the simple truth is it's not better if users hate it. It means it failed to account for existing users and their use cases.

No, this is not true at all. In fact, the very first software project I was paid for was a perfect example: I had to replace an ancient DOS based database app with something more modern. The end result had a GUI that was completely different, barely retained the same workflow, had tons of new input validation that users had to cope with all of a sudden. End result? They had a knee jerk hate for it when they saw it. T…

The users didn’t hate the change, this change means that probably the user training sessions were inadequate.

If you show them all the things that make their lives easier during the training session, they will love you for it.

Re: Users hate change

#293

Post by Avamander »

GrumpyNl wrote: post #87
emilfihlman wrote: post #24

This resonates with me so damn well. I've witnessed multiple absolutely idiotic changes that completely disregard user experience because Change.

Like the new twitter layout in a browser.

I hate it, it breaks loading a lot of Tweets for me, it also wastes a lot of screen space for some stupid reason on my wide monitors. I just hate it.

Re: Users hate change

#294

Post by cloudego »

nofunsir wrote: post #168
yoz-y wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription model is actually way better if you don't want to end up with feature bloat. Because you actually get money from users even if you only ever fix bugs and improve performance. If you freeze your features you will soon arrive at a point where everybody who wanted your software bought it and then the revenue stops.

"everybody who wanted your software bought it and then the revenue stops." That's... how it should work. You don't get to hook into their wallets for time and all eternity. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. ... and then you go do something else! That is the prec…

> That’s... how it should work.

I think the absence of this theory in reality is proof that it is not a successful business practice for software development. If you believe that this model accurately translates to software then I challenge you to start your own software shop.

Re: Users hate change

#295

Post by Silhouette »

WA wrote: post #288
Silhouette wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software bought for iOS should work on iOS. Forever. What you're glossing over here is that for literally decades, that was a pretty good baseline assumption, because we actually valued backward compatibility. The lengths that Microsoft went to in order to maintain that compatibility in the first several major releases of Windows are legendary. The lengths that Linux developers still go to are also remarkable. It's o…

Fair enough. There’s obviously software that goes back decades and we all benefit from the great backwards compatibility of MS or Linux. But: How useful is your copy of Windows 98 these days? Can you collaborate with others with your copy of Photoshop 5.0 or Office 2003? Can you easily install Quake I on a modern machine without hassle? > Ask yourself this... It depends. I see your point and you are right to a certai…

Can you collaborate with others with your copy of Photoshop 5.0 or Office 2003?

I suppose that depends on what you're trying to do. I can still run those programs, and I can still access my data created in those programs. Obviously they don't support some features and formats that were added in later versions, but forward compatibility is a different issue. My point here isn't about new things being given to you free by magic, it's just about not losing things you already had.

But then I see lots of people asking for new features or are glad about new capabilities the app now offers. I’d say it depends a lot on the type of software.

Again, just to be clear, I'm not objecting to change in general. Of course in some cases we hope that our software will add useful new features or fix bugs or improve an interface.

What I'm objecting to is software that forces updates on users whether they want them or not, which Apple for example has a history of doing with iOS devices through a variety of mechanisms.

It has total control of the only major source of software on its platform, and it seems to have no problem with mandating that any software supplied through that store complies with its latest guidelines. As a developer, that might mean issuing a new version of an otherwise working app for essentially cosmetic reasons. Don't comply, lose your whole market.

Crucially, Apple also pushes new versions of its OS that bundle essential security updates with functional and cosmetic changes. You can't keep an Apple device secure without accepting everything else as well, even if the everything else makes your experience worse than when you chose to buy the device. This, to me, is the really nasty shift in recent times, and it's one that Microsoft is guilty of as well now.

You still get to buy some software or use your iPhone 3GS. It’s just a security thing. Or did you expect free updates to your OS?

Yes, if my product does not work as it should because of a defect, it is reasonable to expect that the supplier of that product should remedy the defect, or otherwise compensate me in some reasonable way for the loss caused by its failure. This is how consumer sales normally work, and indeed the principles are enshrined in law in many countries.

Software companies have had a very easy time on this score, despite the large number of bugs in what they ship, and I think that is in large part because of the informal arrangement that essential bug fixes and security updates would be issued free of charge for a reasonable period after someone made a purchase.

If software companies no longer want to uphold their side of that unspoken bargain, then I don't see why we shouldn't get stricter with them about consumer protection and their liability for failures. Obviously we don't know how to write perfect software and it's unrealistic to expect a developer to ship a flawless product, but let's not kid ourselves that huge numbers of corners aren't being cut in order to push things out the door more quickly, nor that those compromises don't sometimes have damaging results that were entirely avoidable.

Re: Users hate change

#296

Post by jorvi »

ken wrote: post #193
nofunsir wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"everybody who wanted your software bought it and then the revenue stops." That's... how it should work. You don't get to hook into their wallets for time and all eternity. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. ... and then you go do something else! That is the prec…

Except that revenue stream ends before the "fix bugs and improve performance" step. People buy based on screenshots/demos/trials/reviews, and those don't expose the deep bugs you run into 3 months later when doing real work. Shovels break, light bulbs burn out. Then you go buy another one, and there's a good chance it's better than the earlier one. The manufacturer keeps working to improve the quality, and people kee…

> The manufacturer keeps working to improve the quality, and people keep paying them for this. "Buy a software license once for all time" is not analogous to this.

I agree, why I feel ye olde numbered software releases worked fine. I even think subscription based software is fine if the yearly subscription price is at or below what the old numbered version costs.

What happens these days is software converts to a subscription model and the developer decides to jack up the yearly subscription price to 2-3x the old yearly price.

Re: Users hate change

#297

Post by hyperman1 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #243
ken wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that revenue stream ends before the "fix bugs and improve performance" step. People buy based on screenshots/demos/trials/reviews, and those don't expose the deep bugs you run into 3 months later when doing real work. Shovels break, light bulbs burn out. Then you go buy another one, and there's a good chance it's better than the earlier one. The manufacturer keeps working to improve the quality, and people kee…

> The manufacturer keeps working to improve the quality Call me cynical, but I think it's naive to make this claim. Manufacturers don't optimize quality, they optimize profits. Even if there's sufficient competition, manufacturers don't race upwards to improve quality, they race downwards to reduce the cost and undercut the competition. You can see this in kitchen appliances. People complain about how they don't last…

At the start of our living together, me and my wife bought cheap kitchen appliances. Two years later, straight after the warranty expired, most of them died. One of them actually gave a very close call to a nasty accident. So now we learned. We buy the good stuff, based on brand experience and word of mouth from friends. If we havent the money, a second hand good one is in general both cheaper and better than the bad ones. It takes some time to find them sometimes. I know lots of people doing the same.

So you are right in the short term, but consumers learn. This will bite cheaper brands in the long term.

Re: Users hate change

#298

Post by a1369209993 »

Silhouette wrote: post #253
a1369209993 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> assuming the company [...] stops charging you This is what disputing charges is for. Once you have told them, even once, that you are canceling your subscription, any further charges are fraud and you should respond accordingly.

I agree with this, provided that you did notify them in a reasonable way. A random email from an unverified address to the first point of contact you can find with Google is not a reasonable way, for the purposes of this discussion. Nor is a casual ambiguous statement during a long phone call whose meaning clearly wasn't understood, if you don't clarify it at the time but then quote it out of context later. Personall…

I wouldn't consider the second example telling them, and I wouldn't consider the first you, but I can see how it might be interpreted that way, so fair point.

Ultimately, though, they're periodically asking you for money; if you decide to stop giving them money, then things need to work out such they don't get any more of your money.

Re: Users hate change

#299

Post by rjf72 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52
rjf72 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One might argue that the current system is making things much more terrible than any alternative. Software as a service makes sense for some things. But for the majority of things its now being used for, its only purpose is rent seeking. Cryptocurrencies offer an interesting balance between rent seeking and consumer friendliness. You use a piece of software, it mines for coins which are transferred to the company. Th…

> Cryptocurrencies offer an interesting balance between rent seeking and consumer friendliness. Not when you include performance in the "consumer friendliness" side. Existing software is already way too bloated and keeps assuming it's the only thing users run; cryptomining would only exacerbate that effect. Especially that to earn a measurable amount of money over the lifetime of the product, your typical chat app us…

Everything you're stating is driven by wild assumptions that seem to be based on nothing except for trying to paint a pessimistic picture as possible. Everything would be contingent on a huge variety of variables - the algorithm, the usage, whether we think of a unified crypto or software specific coins, and much more. The idea is not to go for another VC hype bubble aiming for 80 billion percent growth or bust, but simply to create a stable source of revenue that companies can use to sustain themselves without resorting to the increasingly broken 'ecosystem' we have in digital rent seeking/advertising today.

This is really quite a perfect application for cryptoes where everybody could win, but there are a number of not yet solved problems that need to be overcome. One issue with this idea, and as with all good decentralized ideas, is that the person who does ultimately create it would likely receive little reward for it. It's not about making money, but about improving the state of software as a whole. There are only so many Tim Berners-Lees.

Re: Users hate change

#300

Post by Silhouette »

a1369209993 wrote: post #298
Silhouette wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, provided that you did notify them in a reasonable way. A random email from an unverified address to the first point of contact you can find with Google is not a reasonable way, for the purposes of this discussion. Nor is a casual ambiguous statement during a long phone call whose meaning clearly wasn't understood, if you don't clarify it at the time but then quote it out of context later. Personall…

I wouldn't consider the second example telling them, and I wouldn't consider the first you, but I can see how it might be interpreted that way, so fair point. Ultimately, though, they're periodically asking you for money; if you decide to stop giving them money, then things need to work out such they don't get any more of your money.

Ultimately, though, they're periodically asking you for money; if you decide to stop giving them money, then things need to work out such they don't get any more of your money.

Agreed, that is the important thing (though it implicitly assumes that you don't have some contractual obligation to continue making payments for whatever reason).

I'm not in any way advocating making legitimate cancellation artificially difficult here. I dislike shady businesses that do that as much as anyone else. I'm just also seeing it from the other side, as someone who has run subscription-based services, because sometimes customers will give ambiguous or conflicting signals and then assume you magically know how to interpret them correctly.

A particularly common one in my experience is a subscriber sending an email to ask how to cancel, receiving a prompt reply from you answering their question, but then not actually doing it. Contractually speaking, there seems to be no doubt at that point that their subscription continues and further charges are legitimate. However, if they just forgot to act on the response, and then they come back six months later claiming that they're still being charged after "they asked to cancel", that's always an awkward situation. It gets more awkward if they really haven't been using your product/service since that time, or if they haven't actively been using it but they do have some sort of data stored in it that would be deleted if their subscription ended. It can get much more awkward if they really did literally ask to cancel, but in an insecure/unverifiable way such as an ad-hoc email, and if you did reply advising them of that and explaining the correct procedure, which they didn't then follow.

Within reason, we tend to refund as a good will gesture in this sort of situation as long as we believe it was an honest mistake by a customer, but I don't think either the law or whatever payment service was used should be imposing any sort of obligation in that case. Insisting on a clearly defined cancellation process does have the advantage of being unambiguous and therefore reducing the risk of that sort of confusion.

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