Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

jacquesmattheij.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 588 posts

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#201

Post by [deleted] »

a_imho wrote: post #169
stubish wrote: post #141

Taring everything with the same brush. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was impossible to install Windows over the Internet because so many other machines were compromised and your machine would, with certainty, also end up compromised before it had gotten as far as applying the latest service pack. Then we got automatic updates, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because things got better . We had empiri…

Once upon a time I shared an office with sysadmins. Patch Tuesday was not something to be taken lightly. On the serious side, imo the fundamental problem is control. Opinions align along the lines how strong one feels about their computing freedom.

[deleted]

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#202

Post by shawnz »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #197
ekianjo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 g…

Is there an open format for bookkeeping data? I suppose you have ledger-cli but that's hardly useful for normal people.

There is OFX format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#203

Post by blub »

dt3ft wrote: post #184
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…

It took a while to find a comment that points out the cost of maintaining legacy UI. It is highly likely that no customer is willing to pay for support of legacy anything, let alone UI. "Jonny" sounds like the kind of person that wants to purchase software at a one-time cost, and then expect free lifetime upgrades (which include all the outrageous demands such as supporting legacy UI). Make your own software Jonny, s…

The legacy UI often works fine and the new UI's sole purpose is to justify the salaries of the design department. Ask any customer if they're willing to pay for a new UI and you'll likely find that they don't.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#204

Post by pjc50 »

wvenable wrote: post #4

Some automatic updates should really just be different products. The most obvious one at the moment is Android Firefox is getting a big automatic update that, for a lot of people, will be a very big downgrade and an unfriendly UI change. But Mozilla doesn't want to maintain security patches for X different products. And that's true of most vendors. This model of computing where all users are always on the latest vers…

Yeah, add me to the list of people who are very unhappy with the forced downgrade of Firefox. There was no reason to move the URL bar to the bottom, it makes tab switching more fiddly, previews of tabs seem worse, and I didn't ask for, want, or agree to any of this.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#205

Post by shawnz »

fiblye wrote: post #194
stubish wrote: post #141

Taring everything with the same brush. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was impossible to install Windows over the Internet because so many other machines were compromised and your machine would, with certainty, also end up compromised before it had gotten as far as applying the latest service pack. Then we got automatic updates, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because things got better . We had empiri…

10 years ago, I found some software updates annoying. 5 years ago, I found most of them aggravating. Now, I find them to be outright harmful except for rare cases. It's very common for (particularly mobile software) to just break the product entirely. Features I regularly used and depended on--sometimes even the main features--are just deleted. Gone, with zero chance of using it again. Sometimes ads are thrown in, ad…

Can you give me an example of the last time you faced a harmful, work-destroying update? Because that hasn't occurred to me in any product for years, and I always install manufacturer updates the day they are released.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#206

Post by spirobel »

blackoil wrote: post #165
tomc1985 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last time I checked there was many competitors to Adobe in almost all the products they offered. You aren't forced to use their software at all. Dude, if you're a professional graphic designer, you're using an Adobe workflow. The amount of friction that you would encounter in your daily work for any other choice is simply too high.

In other words, Adobe products are providing high enough value that people don't find it feasible to move away from it. If it is pure network effect, we should be seeing a regular but increasing decline in their market share. You can't have the cake and eat it too.

in other words: adobe has a monopoly. they can extract and do whatever they want to their users and nobody can do anything about it. same with apple. same with google. same with many other sv robber barons.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#207

Post by shawnz »

mmphosis wrote: post #177
naavis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there are some differences between Windows 10 versions (like Home, Professional etc) there. I have never had that happen. I have Windows 10 Pro.

I have Windows 10 Pro. It is horrible. And, I have no choice in any of it. Advertisements pop up at random times. I am constantly turning things off, and they get turned back on again. I am diligent about checking for updates at the end of my work day, and then turning off scheduled updates. I cannot afford to wait for a "Do not turn off your computer" screen.

I assure you, being diligent about checking for updates is more than enough to solve that issue and there is no need to disable updates in addition. If you install them regularly, then you will not be interrupted. You will only be interrupted if you don't do that for weeks.

If you don't believe me, then just try it. Don't base your decisions on FUD from tech bloggers about how terrible the update process is.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#208

Post by kiwijamo »

mmphosis wrote: post #177
naavis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there are some differences between Windows 10 versions (like Home, Professional etc) there. I have never had that happen. I have Windows 10 Pro.

I have Windows 10 Pro. It is horrible. And, I have no choice in any of it. Advertisements pop up at random times. I am constantly turning things off, and they get turned back on again. I am diligent about checking for updates at the end of my work day, and then turning off scheduled updates. I cannot afford to wait for a "Do not turn off your computer" screen.

I have Windows 10 Pro and I do not see any advertisements? Are you sure it's not coming from an app you have installed?

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#209

Post by tomc1985 »

blackoil wrote: post #165
tomc1985 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last time I checked there was many competitors to Adobe in almost all the products they offered. You aren't forced to use their software at all. Dude, if you're a professional graphic designer, you're using an Adobe workflow. The amount of friction that you would encounter in your daily work for any other choice is simply too high.

In other words, Adobe products are providing high enough value that people don't find it feasible to move away from it. If it is pure network effect, we should be seeing a regular but increasing decline in their market share. You can't have the cake and eat it too.

That's only part of it. There are plenty of Photoshop users who would prefer to switch but can't because of project constraints, or because it is a required format for some future step in the chain, or whatever. When you need no-hassle first-class support for PSD, or PDF, or that InDesign project that Mary from marketing sent you... who else can you turn to but Adobe?

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#210

Post by Legogris »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #123
AnonHP wrote: post #98

This is an area where iOS sucks. Having faced some undesirable consequences in the past from greedy and/or downright malicious developers, I don’t have automatic updates turned on for apps. But what makes things worse is that iOS doesn’t provide a way for a user to downgrade an app to a previous version. Since syncing app binaries to computers was also long removed (from iOS 9), the only special version of iTunes (12…

Downgrading as a well-managed process is not a popular concept on any platform. Even fairly open ones will generally require you to fully remove the version you have, find an older download file, and install it. And unless you have backups, good luck downgrading your data files back to the older schema. I imagine a well-managed downgrading system would discourage malicious use of auto updates, developers would need t…

Both apt/apt-get (Debian, Ubuntu) and pacman (Arch Linux) will save all previously installed packages unless you manually clear your package caches.
Post reply on HN