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Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

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Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#101

Post by Daneel_ »

chrisseaton wrote: post #33
taneq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may explain why you don't see the harm in making workflow-breaking interface changes. More experienced operators who use expert interfaces (such as keyboard shortcuts) are much more badly inconvenienced by interface changes than operators who search the menus for each operation anyway.

> More experienced operators Lol I manage to operate my computer to do advanced things just fine and still cope with update.

I feel you’re missing the point here. Many power users opt to use the keyboard as the primary way of interfacing with the computer, and any change to that interface is highly disruptive and causes huge losses in workflow efficiency. This is the real complaint about UI changes - they ruin efficiency.

Using the keyboard is much more efficient that using the mouse, as the mouse is an imprecise input device - it requires a feedback loop to operate (you move the mouse, see where it is, continue to move it, observe again, etc, until you move it over the item you want). A keyboard is on or off - :wq does exactly two things extremely quickly - three keystrokes and you’ve saved and exited from a text editor. You can do this faster than the time it takes to move your hand to the mouse, let alone begin to move it.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#102

Post by tomc1985 »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #86
tomc1985 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will never happen as long as shareholders are the only people that companies are legally beholden to That will never happen as long as software continues to be regarded as a "cost center" That will never happen as long as developers insist that their happiness is more immportant than that of their users That will never happen as long as evangelists keep pushing this doctrine that more updates, more features, mor…

"shareholders are the only people that companies are legally beholden to" I don't think that's actual true. As far as I know the only legal obligation a company has is to conduct lawful business.

Shareholders can sue if they do not think their interests are being properly represented/manifested. They can also arbitrarily shuffle senior management as they see fit

Neither customers nor employees can do that

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#103

Post by dblohm7 »

mook wrote: post #62
userbinator wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Mozilla doesn't want to maintain security patches for X different products. Are they really different products (versions), or are they just branches off a common tree and share so much code in common that it would be close to trivial to apply the fix to them all? My experience with security-related patches is that they're almost all extremely localised --- a missing check, an off-by-one, etc. It seems like far le…

Fennec (the old Firefox for Android) was, as far as I'm aware, a different codebase compared to Fenix (the new one). As in, Fennec was hosted on hg.mozilla.org using the same source tree as desktop Firefox, and Fenix is hosted on GitHub, if I understand things correctly.

Fenix embeds Gecko via GeckoView, which resides in mozilla-central.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#104

Post by beckingz »

chrisseaton wrote: post #25
FpUser wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because for the most cases it is just a friggin' tool and routine the user had accustomed to. I do not want to hunt for the same item in a different place. Think of it as if your screwdriver used daily will have suddenly started to change shape every once in a while.

Most people aren’t really complaining the new UIs are worse - they just don’t like any change at all. It’s silly stubbornness.

If the UI is just different and not substantially better, that is bad.

Learning a new interface takes effort.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#105

Post by mianos »

One of the most incredible examples of this I have experienced was the update to the Android 'Pocket Casts' app. It worked great, had useful functionality and was easy to use and navigate. I had a paid version I thought was great value

Then, out of the blue, they replaced it with a re-write. The new app was slow, missing most of the functionality in the previous app (not esoteric stuff, but things like play lists). The new UI was incomprehensible (even to me, a developer) and the had a massive number of serious bugs, like deleting your podcasts, missing episodes, never downloading episode and marking things you never listened to as played. Over the last year or so they have been continually fixing things so now it's almost as good as the application it replaced.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#106

Post by orev »

I had been using a great app that’s been around since before the iPhone came out (PocketMoney on Palm). They rewrote it for IOS, and it was able to import the database from the Palm version. Really great.

Then sadly the author died, and it languished for a while until it was sold to someone else. The new owner seemed to try to keep it going, but then finally gave up last year and crammed an absolutely awful “update” that was actually a totally different software via the automatic update process. Everyone’s financial data got locked up in this new version that is almost useless. ~20 years of financial tracking just gone. To make it worse, they did it in December, just before people would need to pull reports for tax season.

I like to swing by it on the App Store every once in a while just to drop a one star rating. That’s about the only recourse you have.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#108

Post by wwweston »

viraptor wrote: post #54

I like the main idea here, but the points listed are a bit extreme. Specifically this one: > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default Are you ready to pay for the ongoing support of all legacy interfaces, including the ones you're not using and which are possibly not used by anyone in the world (no telemetry)? Are you ready for all the bugs and security issues t…

> Are you ready to pay for the ongoing support of all legacy interfaces

Part of the problem here is that software companies don't seem to ever ask this question in good faith (and of course, don't even realize that at an institutional level they don't actually care because common incentives for product and UX people are towards changes they can take credit for).

Try setting up a system where people can in fact pay for earlier UIs. See what happens.

(Term "earlier" used deliberately over "legacy", because it's only "legacy" if it's abandoned by either users or owners.)

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#109

Post by FridgeSeal »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #86
tomc1985 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will never happen as long as shareholders are the only people that companies are legally beholden to That will never happen as long as software continues to be regarded as a "cost center" That will never happen as long as developers insist that their happiness is more immportant than that of their users That will never happen as long as evangelists keep pushing this doctrine that more updates, more features, mor…

"shareholders are the only people that companies are legally beholden to" I don't think that's actual true. As far as I know the only legal obligation a company has is to conduct lawful business.

Whilst it may not be technically true, most companies behave as if it is.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#110

Post by gwbas1c »

> should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default

Careful: Many UI changes are just branding refreshes. (How frequently do Coke cans change?)

But, moving around the buttons because someone felt like it is just dumb.

> should never change the format of data already stored on the system

Careful: Internal databases change schemas. It's impossible to keep a database schema through upgrades when new functionality requires an updated schema.

This particular request really depends on what the application is doing. For example, if an upgrade decided to automatically convert .doc files to .docx, that's a problem. But applications that maintain internal state need to be able to fix bugs or make general improvements to that internal state.

> must allow a revert to the previous situation

Software doesn't know the future; it can't handle schemas that didn't exist when written. More specifically, if an upgrade alters an application's internal state to match what's needed for a new version, there's no easy way to go back to the old internal state.

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