What I think is a key contributing factor here is that we lost the ability to say "no" to updates. Before the modern era of appstores users could refuse to update the app and in doing so throw a wrench into company's plans to just ruin the user experience.
Apps Getting Worse
261–270 of 635 posts
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, but banks aren't a good example. Some people here mention feature plateaus and completeness of the app. Obvious question is, what should the employer then do? The software is complete, from now on there's only maintenance, which is relatively less work compared to building from scratch, so as a consequence I guess developers should be paid less then? Or like you said, fired? Obviously the manpower could be j…
What does a construction worker do when they complete a building?
Obviously they get started on redesigning the foundation.
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope people will use Spotify as a case study in how to fuck up a UI over time. The service itself is fine, I quite like some of the music it finds for me on discover, but the UI is on a slow death march towards complete uselessness, and some features have always been hopelessly broken (queuing). From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don'…
I'm familiar with how they operate and my opinion is that they screwed it up by hiring too many devs and setting up the teams based on software components. Very hard to get anything meaningful done.
Conway's law in action.
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#264Re: Apps Getting Worse
#265The 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…
I have to kind of disagree, my experience with Spotify desktop which I use daily (almost don't use the mobile app) was from awful to bad.
I still find it hard to navigate and find things, and the performance is bad, but before was really really bad, the last iterations come out well for me.
I will like more features.
For example I really want a feature to make playlists with albums, you can create playlists with all the songs of many albums, but is not possible to see it as a list of albums with the cover arts, like the Library. For example make a playlist of favorite albums of 2021, favorite albums of 90s rap, favorite albums of Bowie, etc.
Also improve the Library feature, I want to order/filter all my albums by year, decade, genre, artist.
A "listen later" feature on albums and songs will be great too, I want to have a place to "test" music, and later add it or not to my Library or Liked songs.
Lately the streaming platforms and the music industry is focusing on songs more than albums, and this is reflected on the features that their apps have. I find great the power that playlists give to consumers, but I find that the album experience give me a layer of artistic exploration that can't be captured with playlists, discovery weekly, top charts, etc.
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I canceled my Spotify subscription because it was so dang buggy. Getting it to play music for longer than an hour was simply impossible for a myriad of reasons. I switched to Amazon Music and at the time the webapp looked pretty much just like mainstream Amazon: drab, white/orange/blue, simple. But dang, it was rock solid . I couldn't get it to error if I wanted to. I could leave the tab open for weeks and it'd play…
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.
How do you even run a company like that? Sounds soulless af.
I mean, sure make money for your investors, but shouldn't you also try to fulfill your mission statement? Or is the mission statement only to make the share price go up?
So you just make it look good on financials?
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#267It is the dream of every PM to come up with a bold UX innovation that gets praise, and many believe the gospel that the software is better at figuring out what the customer wants than the customer is. And you get extra points these days for using ML.
The second points are valid, IMO, but the first... I think this is simplistic.
First, there aren't a ton of example of software products succeeding by staying still for long. Not none, but not a ton. Even fewer, if you define success commercially. In CD days, version upgrades were often an indispensable part of the business model.
These days, apps exist in multiple device world. Big chunks of it are server based. SAAS, which most everything is to some extent, has its own business imperatives. Iphoto deals with a mostly iphone world today. The Economist, like most magazines, is trying to figure app how a software based magazine business works.
It seems naive to blame the PM. Constant change isn't a thing because PMs have egos. There's a big hairy dynamic at play. Not changing doesn't seem to be an option, in recent years, maybe ever.
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#268The 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.
Apple seems to have driven the cost of all (mobile) software to 99c or free, roughly. How can anyone really make any money just making something solid and usable without turning it into a "service" or something at that price? And I as a user don't want any of that stuff because I don't want a service to lock me in, I want to pay up front for something good and leave it at that.
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#269There should be a new category of apps, where you can still get the contents offered by a given service (Spotify, Youtube, your favourite news service etc.) while at the same time not using the built in UI. For example, imagine a web app that embeds Youtube videos, that will show you every new video published by channels you choose. No home page suggestions, no "trending", no "you might be interested in". You could d…
In a perfect world, all of those would work in an RSS reader.
NewsBlur can do this for YouTube videos.
Re: Apps Getting Worse
#270Evernote. 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…
I think OneNote ticks all your requirement boxes.
Is there a way to get rid of that thing where you have to manually drag out text boxes to type in? I really hated that, if I want freeform page layout I’ll use an actual notebook or Illustrator.