5 ms·

There should be an award of shame for this and I nominate Visio 2003.

by dade_ 7y ago

Finnucane 7y ago
Word for Dos 5.0. If you are old like me, you may remember thinking this was a pretty good word processor, and when Word 6.0 came out, it seemed a bloated mess in comparison. It's been downhill ever since. Mac OS X 10.6.8. It was good, and stable, and nothing that has come after has really added value to the product.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  iOS 6. I'm using latest iOS and the only useful feature for me is fingerprint recognition and that is more about hardware. They added tons of new features but I wouldn't miss any of those features.
  - overcast 7y ago
    Password manager integration is a pretty monumental feature I couldn't live without.
  - UIZealot 7y ago
    Agree on iOS 6. For me it's not that the later versions don't offer good and useful features. It's just that I'm disgusted everytime I have to look at that god aweful UI. Jonny Ive truly has no taste.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    They've also added a whole load of negative features, or needless complexity, and taken away the helpful in the name of fashion. Maybe I liked coverflow. Or an analogue clock on the lock screen. Maybe I liked big album art on the lockscreen when playing music instead of the absurdly tiny thumbnail of now. Snow Leopard, iOS 6, Word 6 (or 2003 if we have to take the modern era), all seem easy choices, yet the companies doing it never seem to notice they jumped the shark. Dropbox 10x the size with built in messaging anyone? Thought not. :)
  - gurkendoktor 7y ago
    Swipe to go back is one of the unexpected improvements in iOS 7 that I think many people would immediately miss when going back.
  - asark 7y ago
    They've added new features I like, but that was the sweet spot of discoverability and aesthetic. It's been downhill since. I'm also not loving making it a more general-purpose OS—the iPad/iPhone as a slab of metal & glass that could become any of several tools, with a no-BS operating system keeping it all coordinated, was what really made it special.
- UIZealot 7y ago
  Agree on Snow Leopard. I don't even mind later versions not adding value. What's sad is, they added negative value. It got slower, buggier, and uglier with every update.
- yoz-y 7y ago
  > and nothing that has come after has really added value to the product For you. Personally to me things like cross device copy-paste, airdrop, notes and reminders integrations are indispensable now. Metal has brought a huge improvement to rendering speed and of course security between now and then is incomparable.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Funny because Word 6 is often praised as perfect balance. Or maybe I read wrong
  - Finnucane 7y ago
    Users were unhappy when it came out.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      That's because they couldn't think how worse it would be
Crinus 7y ago
Since we're playing that game, i nominate Paint Shop Pro 7 :-) There are very few (and minor) things i'd change about that software and apparently its developers thought the same because the biggest change they did after that was to change the program's theme (in general i think when a commercial program has ran out of important stuff to add the next thing they do is to change the program's theme :-P). Also Delphi 2 and C++ Builder 1. I refer to the IDE there (they're essentially the same IDE except one uses Object Pascal and the other uses C++), not the language (as a language the ideal would be Delphi 7 with some functionality from Free Pascal like dynamic arrays and generics). The only thing i like from later versions is the inclusion of auto-completion, but beyond that (and especially after Delphi 7) there is way more bloat than good. And MS Paint up until the Vista version. The only thing it needed was a tool to draw arrows. I curse the Win7+ MS Paint every time i want to draw overlapping rectangles or a rectangle and then something else. Also WinHelp, whatever was the last version was fine. This didn't "fall from grace" as much as it was outright killed. CHM/HtmlHelp is nice (everything else that Microsoft has produced on the help front sucks) but the ability to add CSS and JavaScript on it means that many programs do add CSS and JavaScript (though TBF authoring WinHelp shows that it is a hacky hack of great hackiness, but i'm referring to the overall UX as a user, not author). And of course WinAmp 2.95, i do not think this needs explanation :-P Finally i think Visual C++ 6 (with the addon to add tabs) is the best VC++ version - again about the IDE, not the language. Though overall i prefer Borland's C++ (C++ Builder, Borland C++) mainly because the compilers are much faster (and i do not use C++ much to care about any missing features). On the Linux side the last version of Xpdf to use Motif was the best Xpdf, GNOME2 is the best GNOME and Gtk2 is the best Gtk. Though Gtk itself is lousy, the only reason to use it is for GNOME.

There should be an award of shame for this and I nominate Visio 2003.

by dade_ 7y ago

There should be an award of shame for this and I nominate Visio 2003.

Word for Dos 5.0. If you are old like me, you may remember thinking this was a pretty good word processor, and when Word 6.0 came out, it seemed a bloated mess in comparison. It's been downhill ever since. Mac OS X 10.6.8. It was good, and stable, and nothing that has come after has really added value to the product.

vbezhenar 7y ago
iOS 6. I'm using latest iOS and the only useful feature for me is fingerprint recognition and that is more about hardware. They added tons of new features but I wouldn't miss any of those features.
- overcast 7y ago
  Password manager integration is a pretty monumental feature I couldn't live without.
- UIZealot 7y ago
  Agree on iOS 6. For me it's not that the later versions don't offer good and useful features. It's just that I'm disgusted everytime I have to look at that god aweful UI. Jonny Ive truly has no taste.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  They've also added a whole load of negative features, or needless complexity, and taken away the helpful in the name of fashion. Maybe I liked coverflow. Or an analogue clock on the lock screen. Maybe I liked big album art on the lockscreen when playing music instead of the absurdly tiny thumbnail of now. Snow Leopard, iOS 6, Word 6 (or 2003 if we have to take the modern era), all seem easy choices, yet the companies doing it never seem to notice they jumped the shark. Dropbox 10x the size with built in messaging anyone? Thought not. :)
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  Swipe to go back is one of the unexpected improvements in iOS 7 that I think many people would immediately miss when going back.
- asark 7y ago
  They've added new features I like, but that was the sweet spot of discoverability and aesthetic. It's been downhill since. I'm also not loving making it a more general-purpose OS—the iPad/iPhone as a slab of metal & glass that could become any of several tools, with a no-BS operating system keeping it all coordinated, was what really made it special.
UIZealot 7y ago
Agree on Snow Leopard. I don't even mind later versions not adding value. What's sad is, they added negative value. It got slower, buggier, and uglier with every update.
yoz-y 7y ago
> and nothing that has come after has really added value to the product For you. Personally to me things like cross device copy-paste, airdrop, notes and reminders integrations are indispensable now. Metal has brought a huge improvement to rendering speed and of course security between now and then is incomparable.
agumonkey 7y ago
Funny because Word 6 is often praised as perfect balance. Or maybe I read wrong
- Finnucane 7y ago
  Users were unhappy when it came out.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    That's because they couldn't think how worse it would be

Crinus 7y ago

Since we're playing that game, i nominate Paint Shop Pro 7 :-) There are very few (and minor) things i'd change about that software and apparently its developers thought the same because the biggest change they did after that was to change the program's theme (in general i think when a commercial program has ran out of important stuff to add the next thing they do is to change the program's theme :-P). Also Delphi 2 and C++ Builder 1. I refer to the IDE there (they're essentially the same IDE except one uses Object Pascal and the other uses C++), not the language (as a language the ideal would be Delphi 7 with some functionality from Free Pascal like dynamic arrays and generics). The only thing i like from later versions is the inclusion of auto-completion, but beyond that (and especially after Delphi 7) there is way more bloat than good. And MS Paint up until the Vista version. The only thing it needed was a tool to draw arrows. I curse the Win7+ MS Paint every time i want to draw overlapping rectangles or a rectangle and then something else. Also WinHelp, whatever was the last version was fine. This didn't "fall from grace" as much as it was outright killed. CHM/HtmlHelp is nice (everything else that Microsoft has produced on the help front sucks) but the ability to add CSS and JavaScript on it means that many programs do add CSS and JavaScript (though TBF authoring WinHelp shows that it is a hacky hack of great hackiness, but i'm referring to the overall UX as a user, not author). And of course WinAmp 2.95, i do not think this needs explanation :-P Finally i think Visual C++ 6 (with the addon to add tabs) is the best VC++ version - again about the IDE, not the language. Though overall i prefer Borland's C++ (C++ Builder, Borland C++) mainly because the compilers are much faster (and i do not use C++ much to care about any missing features). On the Linux side the last version of Xpdf to use Motif was the best Xpdf, GNOME2 is the best GNOME and Gtk2 is the best Gtk. Though Gtk itself is lousy, the only reason to use it is for GNOME.