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People expect technology to suck because it sucks

tonsky.me

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Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#431

Post by fsflover »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #313
thewebcount wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn’t reality suck the same ? No. A hardware product like a car has predictable wear and tear governed mainly by the laws of physics. The fact that I can no longer use my smart speaker because the manufacturer decided to stop supporting it, went out of business, or got bought is not at all the same. My car will still work through all of those things in the exact same way. It also doesn't throw up random dialogs (…

John Deere has entered the chat. Also, car companies have been tinkering with "electronic repossession" - remote kill switches due to nonpayment. So ... get ready for other things to suck as we attach technology to them.

> John Deere has entered the chat.

Thank you for bringing this point. The actual problem is not the software itself, but its proprietary nature and infinite hunt for profit without any limits. Consider free software instead and you will see that it is improving year by year, despite very slowly (which is logical, in the absence of infinite resources).

My Linux machine never forces me to reboot, shows any ads or suddenly changes its interface.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#432

Post by SilasX »

Waterluvian wrote: post #352
titzer wrote: post #343

For most people, technology is a haunted house riddled with unpleasant surprises. With no agency, they are at the mercy of other people's bad ideas that keep changing. Everything needs to be updated because everything else needs to be updated, because everything needs to be updated. Duh! Software updates! Guess what! Here's a new UI for ya. We moved all the stuff! It's like someone threw you a surprise birthday party…

Hot damn is this the most concise description of how I feel. I’ve always described it as “the design team justifying their own existence after the job is done.” Let software get stable and boring.

(Late to the party but) Yes, this, absolutely this. It's almost a rule now that, above some very low threshold, the more expertise and hours you throw at UX, the worse the UX is.

Some of the most annoying UX I've had is on Quora, Facebook, and the reddit redesign, which all spend a veritable fortune on it, while the best ones I've seen are something a non-specialist slapped together with bootstrap.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#433

Post by scubbo »

salawat wrote: post #359
scubbo wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your underlying point, but it's also important to point out that computers are also singularly wonderful in that it's usually much faster and easier to reverse failures, and then to diagnose and debug in a non-impactful manner. To take your second example - if I could then flip the light switch back, and the pool reappeared, then I'd be miffed but not particularly annoyed (assuming I was able to fix that…

Tell that to the 346 people who perished because of negligent and (in my opinion, malicious in terms of regulatory deception) undocumented, uncommunicated programming of the speed trim system of the 737 MAX. Or the folks who perished because of badly programmed software interlocks on the THERAC-25 radiotherapy machine. Just knowing or figuring out to flip that switch may be an insurmountable barrier depending on the…

Completely agree - hence why I said _usually_. Another example of irrevocable harm is when ML algorithms dictate some medical treatment or social program.

But, _usually_, it's easier to reverse some changed-data somewhere than it is to reverse an actual change-of-state in the physical world. At least, the inherent effort required to do so is less - but policies or obfuscation may make it harder.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#434

Post by Apofis »

efitz wrote: post #83

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically softw…

Software is indeed downright hostile sometimes... it's gotten better with autosave... but your IDE, MS Word, or Photoshop crashing would sometimes cost you half a day of work if not more. It was infuriating and even discouraging sometimes until you learned the subconscious behavior of pressing ctrl-s all the time.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#435

Post by pdimitar »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #152
n0on3 wrote: post #130

Advancement in tech are nowadays driven only by profit, which in turn is driven by sales, which prioritise what people are likely to pay for. People expect technology to be affordable and they really don't care what the effect of this is. Put competition in the mix and you get a lot of stuff that sucks because the field of battle is not the quality, is pricing and marketing. And then stuff dies after a short time. An…

Expecting that billions of people will simultaneously act against their incentives is madness. You can't assign collective fault to "we" who did this by making bad choices individually. It's a system that has optimized itself to this end goal. I feel pretty good about my choices in comparison. I use an older, sock Android device, with simple wired headphones, so that particular issue with AirPods has never occurred t…

> When an iPhone or AirPods device uses up all the recharges available in it's battery, that shows up as profit in the numbers Apple uses to make decisions.

You make it sound like only the batteries in Apple devices have finite charging cycles, which is obviously not true.

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#436

Post by pitdicker »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #8

As Douglas Adams famously said, "Technology is stuff that doesn’t work yet".

That is a quote I'll have to remember. Appearently it was Bran Ferren who said it, and was quoted by Douglas Adams (source with broken https: https://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html)

Re: People expect technology to suck because it sucks

#437

Post by ghostpepper »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #310
ghostpepper wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a product that can do more damage with an accidental backspace: the iMessage app for MacOS (Messages). If you're any sort of power user, you likely know that you can backspace by the word instead of the by the character, using Ctrl + BS on Linux or Cmd + BS on Mac. In the Messages app, the shorcut to delete your _entire chat history_ is also Cmd + BS, and it works even if your caret is in the text box. So if y…

This always annoyed me but it looks like this behavior is gone in Big Sur. You can ⌘⌫ to your heart's content.

It's funny how small a feature can make you want to upgrade.
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