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Apps Getting Worse

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Re: Apps Getting Worse

#221

Post by reilly3000 »

pantulis wrote: post #54
egypturnash wrote: post #47

Evernote. Evernote used to be a crucial component of my life. Quietly synced my notes between my computer and my phone. Let me collaborate with my husband on a few things. Then they rewrote it from the ground up as a sluggish piece of Electron crap. Added a bunch of new stuff that sure looks pretty but gets in the way of the core function of “taking out your phone and scribbling down an idea before it vanishes”. I co…

On the other hand, evernote had painted itself in the corner with the plethora of native apps without a common codebase: new features (even the crappy “enterprise” ones) had stopped coming. Now Evernote is releasing new features every couple of months and while it still not feature complete when compared with the old iOS or Mac native apps at least it has chance to compete. I switched to DEVONthink earlier this year…

I think the downsides associated with having a common codebase are grossly underestimated. It inevitably leads to compromises for which a native UX would have been superior. Speed, layouts, native idioms, and continuity come to mind. Sure it’s a lot to ask for a truly native Android app to keep parity with a truly native Mac desktop app, but compared with a React Native codebase, the experience is sublime and the fussy platform shims aren’t needed.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#222

Post by trinovantes »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #52

> It’s obvious. Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted This mentality isn't unique to product managers. Mobile…

Resume driven development strikes again! Everyone just wants to use the latest shiny thing then switch jobs and leave the pile of burning mess to the next sucker.

Some of the best software I've used are mostly developed by solo developers or small teams (Sublime, YNAB4) because they actually care about their product instead of the underlying tech.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#223

Post by [deleted] »

mattmanser wrote: post #70
thaumasiotes wrote: post #36

I just started reading a Kindle ebook on my phone and on a Kindle device. The process of switching from one to the other used to be that you open the one, read your location number in the book, and jump to that location in the other. At some point Amazon introduced "real page numbers" for their ebooks. Those are supplemental numbers intended to synch up with the page numbering of physical books. You could display you…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#224

Post by hokumguru »

reaperducer wrote: post #131
kowlo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was wrong with VSCode?

For me, running more than one Electron app at a time for too long is a recipe for kernel panic. I only have two on my machine: VSCode, and Microsoft Azure Explorer. If I run them both at the same time, there's a 20% chance I'm going to have to reboot that day. Microsoft has enough money and resources to make a real program, but it chooses to be lazy and cheap.

I think the most infuriating thing is azure containers don’t really work with standard FTP clients like transmit

But as long as the product is “good enough “we will see this trend more as most consumers of apps care more about features than performance

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#225

Post by jagged-chisel »

blibble wrote: post #215
grishka wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banks and finance are like the number one employer of software developers outside of pure tech companies. Right now, with all the churn that only serves to update various financial numbers in databases and is generally useless for the society at large. As an end user, I view a bank as a box to keep my money so I don't have to deal with cash. That's really it. It already works for me as it is right now. A rather pop…

> As an end user, I view a bank as a box to keep my money so I don't have to deal with cash. That's really it. I personally like features such as savings accounts (which require a treasury department), a brokerage, lending, mortgages, wire transfers, detection of fraud, and so-on a bank does far more than provide a safe place for your cash to sit

I believe the point is that all those services have existed for Quite Some Time, don’t need consumer-facing changes, and any additional consumer-facing software changes are bunk.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#226

Post by Shorel »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #36

I just started reading a Kindle ebook on my phone and on a Kindle device. The process of switching from one to the other used to be that you open the one, read your location number in the book, and jump to that location in the other. At some point Amazon introduced "real page numbers" for their ebooks. Those are supplemental numbers intended to synch up with the page numbering of physical books. You could display you…

I have no problems at all letting my PocketBook connect to the network.

Then synchronization works flawlessly.

Why do you want to do everything in such a manual way is beyond me.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#228

Post by hutzlibu »

city41 wrote: post #202
RNCTX wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subplot: I doubt they care. Since spotify is designed to lose money it has little reason to care if customers cancel, it's only going to be concerned if investors lose interest.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I think bugginess just doesn't affect bottom lines of most companies these days, hence the state we're in. Also, anecdotally, I find people are very tolerant of bugs and just suffer in silence a lot of the time.

" I find people are very tolerant of bugs and just suffer in silence a lot of the time."

Most people probably blame themself of not getting it.

Or throw hands in the air of what to do about it.

And most don't know that you can make software that fits to the user needs and not the other way around.

OpenSource could have potential here, but most free software developers are not really into UX design either and seem to expect the same tech level of their audience as they have.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#229

Post by hugey010 »

uniqueid wrote: post #212
gherkinnn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't say this view has it entirely backwards because part of the phenomenon is due to the strengths of the web today and of Electron. But the 'backward' part of the argument is that native Apple software could , but no longer does, provide its own strengths to counter the web and Electron. I love (old) Mac software and I hate Electron software yet if I sat down to create a commercial app today, I'd use Electron. H…

Huge agreement to keeping up with the iOS and arbitrary app update requirements. My personal projects are in a place that releasing even minor updates is an endeavor I just don't have time for anymore.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#230

Post by bishoprook2 »

samb1729 wrote: post #24
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…

My Prime Video experience on Apple TV in the UK mirrors this. I knew exactly what I wanted to watch but I simply could not figure out how to get the app to show it to me. The search feature returned and endless feed of results, none of which matched. Let's take a live example tested while writing this comment. I searched for "Stand-up comedy", and I see 9 results on my TV right now: - The Grand Tour - The Grand Tour…

About as useful as Amazon search, Kindle giant list o' books interface, Amazon Prime Video on Android TV gizmos etc.
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