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Apps Getting Worse

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Re: Apps Getting Worse

#81

Post by ZucchiniZe »

hiharryhere wrote: post #55
Negitivefrags wrote: post #29

The worst offender recently in my opinion is Spotify on desktop. It used to be that when you clicked on an artists page you would see all the music tracks listed. Now it's all buried deep in and you have to search through the individual albums. Even the list of albums itself is not shown on the main artist page, you have to click "See Discography" first. The "Home" page is even worse. Where is my discover weekly play…

They’ve also removed the persistent search bar and replaced it with a menu item called ‘Search’. I always fumble now because I wonder where the search box is, first I scroll up thinking it’s out of view then I remember it’s been moved behind a click.

Yeah that change annoyed me too, until I figured out that you can use ctrl/cmd+L to go to the search page and autofocus the search box.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#82

Post by thinkski »

I think it comes down to measuring the wrong things. Reminds me of the story where a flight was 30 minutes delayed. Instead of delaying all downstream flights affected by this by 30 minutes, the airline repurposed the plane for a flight that would qualify as on-time. So they had a few customers that were irate rather than a lot that were slightly annoyed. But it was because the metric the airline was evaluated on was percentage of on-time departures — once a flight was late, it didn’t matter how late.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#83

Post by z911empire »

api wrote: post #3

This isn’t wrong but it misses other factors like dark patterns. These show up when there is an incentive to maximize time on the app, spending, get people to opt into surveillance, or herd customers into a cloud option so they can be put into a subscription model later.

Bingo. Companies (and definitely, PMs) are focusing on engagement, retention, multi-channel, and recurring revenue - all part of modern business models.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#84

Post by gherkinnn »

j-pb wrote: post #9

The ecosystem has also lost its mojo, and Apple is the one that killed it. The good old days of really good, dedicated mac software studios are over. Made by Sofa, Delicious Monster, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, Panic Inc, Rogue Amoeba, Strange Flavour. These were really great software studios that really upheld a standard of excellence for Mac software. But how are you supposed to keep that up when apple forces you into a…

Electron has killed it. Fast browsers have killed it. Saas killed it.

There are many problems with Apple’s stores, but I don’t see how this is one.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#85

Post by wott »

masa331 wrote: post #40

Are PMs the only one to blame? What about developers "bored" with old and perfectly working stuff jumping to new shiny hype trains whenever possible?

> What about developers [...] ?

Considering that often people complain about the lack of Product Managers or similar roles in most of the FOSS projects, and that nevertheless the same kind of things happens there (it is just a bit slower thanks to the lack of resources), I guess PMs are not the only culprits indeed.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#86

Post by vlunkr »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #29

The worst offender recently in my opinion is Spotify on desktop. It used to be that when you clicked on an artists page you would see all the music tracks listed. Now it's all buried deep in and you have to search through the individual albums. Even the list of albums itself is not shown on the main artist page, you have to click "See Discography" first. The "Home" page is even worse. Where is my discover weekly play…

Yeah that new artist page is atrocious. They used to give you the option to show all tracks at least.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#87

Post by mattmanser »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #75
mattmanser wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no, the process for switching from one to the other is that they sync last page read automatically. You shouldn't be doing anything. It works auto-magically for me all the time. I read a lot of books, and I often switch between my Kindle and my phone several times a book. Maybe you don't have your Kindle connect to your network or whatever, but the reason you're struggling is because you're following the less tr…

> Maybe you don't have your Kindle connect to your network Correct. > the reason your struggling is because you're following the less trodden path. No. Did you read what I wrote? I'm following a path that existed and is being intentionally removed.

I'm glad they're getting rid of the location numbering, it's super confusing. I haven't looked into it but it sounds like they're making a genuine improvement to page numbering, but with growing pains.

You're going through a bit of pain while they transition because you use it in a weird way.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#88

Post by coldtea »

blowski wrote: post #19

This article sounds rather ‘truthy’. On HN, you’re always getting to get some upvotes for saying “technology used to be so much better, amirite?! Bloody product managers ruining everything!”. But it’s harder than that. Apps need to keep up to date with operating systems, technology changes, business changes. Take The Economist mentioned. Maybe they noticed an uptick in cancellations, so the change was designed to ste…

>Apps need to keep up to date with operating systems, technology changes, business changes. Take The Economist mentioned. Maybe they noticed an uptick in cancellations, so the change was designed to stem that. They have data you don’t.

All of the above are still examples of product managers runing everything.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#89

Post by amelius »

egypturnash wrote: post #48
eplanit wrote: post #4

One of the reasons I don't buy any online versions of movies from Amazon anymore is because of their UI (the other reason is that I just don't trust them). Their web UI for videos lets me scroll through cumbersome graphical tiles of my movies in A-Z, Z-A, or oldest-newest -- that's all. On the firestick, I can't search them except via Alexa, which tries to sell me a different copy of the same movie, or to sell me oth…

God this is every media app, try organizing your e-books in a pleasing fashion someday. You just can’t.

This is what you get when every App has to invent the File System all over again.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#90

Post by vmception »

Kill the A/B test.

Sure we can blame the Product Managers incentives, but lets look at what also guides their conclusions: "hey look at customer stared at this page for slightly longer and then accidentally clicked an ad!" not realizing the customer didn't want to do any of those things

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