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

231–240 of 588 posts

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#231

Post by arexxbifs »

zxcmx wrote: post #121
grugagag wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't force updates on people. For the ones who want to update asap they should be able to do so. I prefer to make sure a major update is not going to fuck my system then I will update as well, it's happened to me before multiple times and I am forever hesitant about this. It's also happened to me to get featured removed when updating so if something is working allright I will hesitate updating for a while.

Context matters. So 3d sculpting software or CAD do not deeply need automatic updates, although it can greatly reduce support requests (e.g. something in the OS changed, software is now crashing, need to install update). The state of play in 2020 however is that operating systems and browsers 100% need automatic updates for security issues. The reason we have them is because of all the bad things that happened when w…

The article specifically states

> should be incremental and security or bug fixes only

There's a big difference between that and, for example, constantly pushing UI changes that nobody asked for and for no other reason than that some designer somewhere decided that "A/B testing" would look good on their resumé.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#232

Post by Legogris »

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…

Maybe if the "move fast and break things" attitude coupled with CD wasn't as widespread, breaking UI flows wouldn't be seen as part of the weekly routine.

There are absolutely situations when changes are warranted but I really think it's a mistake to see Google Cloud and FB as sources for inspiration wrt this.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#233

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

monadic2 wrote: post #227
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #224

My wife is a photographer; an excellent one. She has thousands of digital images that have been manipulated by a certain unique, proprietary software package. There are no modern equivalent applications, and the original one stopped being updated almost a decade ago. Miraculously, it still works, but she is terrified at every upgrade prompt. There aren’t really any acceptable substitutions for the original app. She c…

VMs might work. It's hard (impossible?) for most versions of osx.

...which is her operating system. It sucks. I’m not looking forward to the crash.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#234

Post by boring_twenties »

rlayton2 wrote: post #211
badsectoracula wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People use computers to do things. When automated updates make it harder for them to do the things they want to do, especially out of no action on their own, they are going to dislike the automatic updates. And when trying to avoid the automated updates - which is what they see as the source of making it harder to do the things they want to do - is met with automated updates being forced even harder on them, they're…

Your first sentence hits the nail on the spot. For instance, I open up the Prusa slicer software (for 3d printing) and it says there is an update. I didn't open the software to update it, so I always click no - I opened this because I need to 3D print something, and I don't know what the time commitment of updating the software is. I'll go update it now that I am thinking about it, but this is a general pattern.

It's the same thing with those godawful "hey, check out this new feature" popups that are all the rage these days. Or better yet, "check out this old feature that you probably forgot about."

That's not useless information, but somehow they picked the worst possible time to present it: when I'm trying to do something else. Usually, I don't even remember an hour later what it was trying to offer me. All I remember is being aggravated by something annoying that was in my way.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#235

Post by cringepirate »

tomc1985 wrote: post #186
cringepirate wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it will go on longer if people are encouraged by those that are capable to stay ignorant. Also Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Keep arguing that. You will eventually give up. Stupid does not see reason and you know what they say about the people who fight it. Remember that "above average" intelligence excludes 50% of the population. So unless you're scheming on ways to raise the tide for all boats, give up. There are plenty of enablers out there, but there are also plenty of jaded souls who do not see this as a war that they can win.

Disgusting attitudes like yours is all too common these days. It is anti-freedom, full of snobbery and it is nihilistic.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#236

Post by cringepirate »

tomc1985 wrote: post #192
denkmoon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a social life without facebook, and I have a job without linkedin. You don't need them, you choose to use them.

No, you don't need them, but have fun filling in those blanks on your own time for 10x-100x the effort. Hope none of those missed connections are important, and I hope nobody gives you a pregnant pause after you insist, "no, I don't use Linkedin" at your next networking event. Network effects are strong. Too strong.

I literally setup almost everything I personally need in about a day on a VPS. As for services like LinkedIn I almost never got anything of value from it, it is worse than most job board it is filled with slimey recruiters these days and not a lot else.

I bought a NAS for backups with freenas and moving my email to a domain with a provider literally took me a few minutes (plugging DNS entries into my domain provider). It not that hard.

People should be making tools for helping people move away from platforms. I am personally going to write it all up and identify pain points.

I get plenty of business through (gasp) word of mouth and ex-colleagues. So I am fine.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#237

Post by shifto »

mschuster91 wrote: post #217
EvanAnderson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should not use features like "e-fuses" to make irreversible modifications to my hardware I am very reticent to update some embedded devices because not only to I risk losing functionality, losing my preferred UI, etc, but the update may also make irreversible changes to my hardware. Even if I am able to wrest control away from the manufacturer (e.g. "jailbreak" the device) I may not be able to revert to a prior ver…

> Even if I am able to wrest control away from the manufacturer (e.g. "jailbreak" the device) I may not be able to revert to a prior version because the hardware identifies itself as being physically unable to run the old software. coughs in Nintendo Switch

It seems the Switch has 64 burnable fuses. What will they do after the 64th update?

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#238

Post by enriquto »

There are many different reasons for not upgrading a program.

Mine is a bit ridiculous. I never upgrade the Firefox browser, as a matter of principle. The reason is that last time I did, Firefox would refuse to open new tabs unless it was restarted. I did not want to restart it, since i'm running a few windows in private mode, using different 2FA logins, and that would entail to fill-in a lot of passwords and type a lot of numbers received from several SMS. That was very annoying, and I vowed to never upgrade Firefox again. Does anybody know a workaround for this stupid problem of mine?

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#239

Post by nottorp »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #175
bilegeek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal != breach of contract. They control the activation servers, they can just refuse activation if they felt you've violated the contract.

"Europe's highest court ruled on Tuesday that the trading of 'used' software licenses is legal and that the author of such software cannot oppose any resale ." [1] [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2505356/eu-court-rules...

Tuesday, July 3, 2012. Did that ruling change anything in practice? I don't see ads for used Windows licenses anywhere.

Re: Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

#240

Post by ninjanomnom »

tomc1985 wrote: post #192
denkmoon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a social life without facebook, and I have a job without linkedin. You don't need them, you choose to use them.

No, you don't need them, but have fun filling in those blanks on your own time for 10x-100x the effort. Hope none of those missed connections are important, and I hope nobody gives you a pregnant pause after you insist, "no, I don't use Linkedin" at your next networking event. Network effects are strong. Too strong.

I've personally never used facebook actively and deleted my account soon after I made it. LinkedIn I have an account but I honestly never find a use for it even though I wouldn't be super against it.

A lack of both of these would not inconvenience me in any way personally and I find the claim that going without them being a lot of work questionable. Maybe I've just been lucky in who I work for/with?

Post reply on HN