5 ms·

It's very sad for me to see that software in consumer products isn't that reliable or performant anymore, just because vendors can "push updates", which seems t

by _def 6y ago

It's very sad for me to see that software in consumer products isn't that reliable or performant anymore, just because vendors can "push updates", which seems to result in crappier software overall.

crazygringo 6y ago
Why do you think consumer products at a similar price point used to be more reliable or performant in the past? I don't think that's true at all. In the 90's, software was riddled with bugs, you saved files every five minutes because your word processor regularly crashed, you had to restart your computer multiple times a day when the OS hanged, and starting Photoshop easily took a full minute. Also why do you think the ability to push updates results in crappier software? In the 90's, if your copy of CorelDraw or Windows had a bug, you lived with that bug for years. Today, if it's a common showstopper, it gets fixed quickly. To my eyes, everything's gotten far better.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  I don't think he's talking about the 90s. But the late 2000s were definitely better than now. Computers were powerful enough to do most things we do today, and yet both OSes and applications seemed to be much better. Compare the quality and stability of Windows 7 (or even Vista) and their macOS counterparts to their nowadays' versions.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I guess I'm not seeing that either. Compared to the late 2000's, today's computers have SSD's and retina displays and play 4K movies. They're vastly faster, with typography you can't see pixels in. And OS's and applications are basically the same. My macOS is no less stable than it was a decade ago. The main difference is that my Mac is far more secure, so I trust third-party software much more. I'm just not seeing how the quality of OS's or applications has gone down. I think what would be more accurate to say is that both OS's and applications have added more features, and that otherwise quality has remained basically the same. Sure, I still have finicky Bluetooth issues today. But I had finicky Bluetooth issues 10 years ago too. It's certainly no worse. But now Bluetooth gives me AirDrop too.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      > today's computers have SSD's and retina displays and play 4K movies And yet, something as basic as a Slack client now requires gigabytes of RAM, microblogging such as Twitter loads a monstrosity of a webapp that immediately makes the fans spin up to display 240 characters in the rare case it actually loads without errors which require to refresh the page. Modern entry-level laptops have the processing power of a decent machine from a decade ago, and yet they appear just as slow to do the same computing tasks we did 10 years ago. My 2017 Macbook lags and stutters when loading a YouTube video page. YouTube used to load fine and not stutter in 2009 on a laptop with a third of the RAM and CPU that I currently have, and yet the task at hand didn't change at all, it still just needs to display a video player and some text. Windows 10 broke start menu search. Come on, this problem was solved a decade ago. Every large website's login flow now involves dozens of redirects through various domains which can break in all kinds of interesting ways leaving the user stranded on a blank page in the middle of the flow. I know the reason behind them (oAuth, OpenID Connect, etc), but as a user I don't care; this is a major UX downgrade and the industry should've done better. We've replaced offline-first applications with cloud-first. Nowadays even something that should work fine offline will shit itself in all kinds of unexpected ways if the network connection drops or a request fails.
      - blackrock 6y ago
        It’s not the software. It’s all the ads that load up in the background, that tracks you, even when you’re browsing incognito.
        ric2b 6y ago
        Slack doesn't have ads.
- addicted 6y ago
  iPods from the early 2000s still work just fine. An android phone from 5 years ago is pretty much unusable on the other hand. One may argue phones are a platform and complex. Fair enough. So then compare to something like a Sonos player. I can pull up speaker setups from the 80s 90s and even earlier and have no issues with them working. But something like Sonos may not last 3 years. And talking about pure software, I am not sure what the definition of consumer is, but a lot of software from the 80s and 90s is going strong and is extremely usable.
  - ric2b 6y ago
    > An android phone from 5 years ago is pretty much unusable on the other hand. Not sure what you mean? It might not get updates anymore and you may not be able to install the latest versions of most apps but the same is true about iPods.
- c22 6y ago
  But because of that developers were under more pressure to be careful and avoid shipping software with problems in the first place. Now, as you say, the common showstoppers get fixed quickly, but they're probably a lot more common. Meanwhile the overall cohesion and well-thought-out feeling of a lot of older software is largely gone.
  - hnick 6y ago
    You can see this in console games now too. Day 1 multi-gigabyte patches are common now that it's assumed everyone has a sufficient connection.
blondin 6y ago
too many layers of abstraction. that's our problem.

by _def 6y ago

It's very sad for me to see that software in consumer products isn't that reliable or performant anymore, just because vendors can "push updates", which seems to result in crappier software overall.

crazygringo 6y ago

Why do you think consumer products at a similar price point used to be more reliable or performant in the past? I don't think that's true at all. In the 90's, software was riddled with bugs, you saved files every five minutes because your word processor regularly crashed, you had to restart your computer multiple times a day when the OS hanged, and starting Photoshop easily took a full minute. Also why do you think the ability to push updates results in crappier software? In the 90's, if your copy of CorelDraw or Windows had a bug, you lived with that bug for years. Today, if it's a common showstopper, it gets fixed quickly. To my eyes, everything's gotten far better.

Nextgrid 6y ago
I don't think he's talking about the 90s. But the late 2000s were definitely better than now. Computers were powerful enough to do most things we do today, and yet both OSes and applications seemed to be much better. Compare the quality and stability of Windows 7 (or even Vista) and their macOS counterparts to their nowadays' versions.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  I guess I'm not seeing that either. Compared to the late 2000's, today's computers have SSD's and retina displays and play 4K movies. They're vastly faster, with typography you can't see pixels in. And OS's and applications are basically the same. My macOS is no less stable than it was a decade ago. The main difference is that my Mac is far more secure, so I trust third-party software much more. I'm just not seeing how the quality of OS's or applications has gone down. I think what would be more accurate to say is that both OS's and applications have added more features, and that otherwise quality has remained basically the same. Sure, I still have finicky Bluetooth issues today. But I had finicky Bluetooth issues 10 years ago too. It's certainly no worse. But now Bluetooth gives me AirDrop too.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    > today's computers have SSD's and retina displays and play 4K movies And yet, something as basic as a Slack client now requires gigabytes of RAM, microblogging such as Twitter loads a monstrosity of a webapp that immediately makes the fans spin up to display 240 characters in the rare case it actually loads without errors which require to refresh the page. Modern entry-level laptops have the processing power of a decent machine from a decade ago, and yet they appear just as slow to do the same computing tasks we did 10 years ago. My 2017 Macbook lags and stutters when loading a YouTube video page. YouTube used to load fine and not stutter in 2009 on a laptop with a third of the RAM and CPU that I currently have, and yet the task at hand didn't change at all, it still just needs to display a video player and some text. Windows 10 broke start menu search. Come on, this problem was solved a decade ago. Every large website's login flow now involves dozens of redirects through various domains which can break in all kinds of interesting ways leaving the user stranded on a blank page in the middle of the flow. I know the reason behind them (oAuth, OpenID Connect, etc), but as a user I don't care; this is a major UX downgrade and the industry should've done better. We've replaced offline-first applications with cloud-first. Nowadays even something that should work fine offline will shit itself in all kinds of unexpected ways if the network connection drops or a request fails.
    - blackrock 6y ago
      It’s not the software. It’s all the ads that load up in the background, that tracks you, even when you’re browsing incognito.
      - ric2b 6y ago
        Slack doesn't have ads.
addicted 6y ago
iPods from the early 2000s still work just fine. An android phone from 5 years ago is pretty much unusable on the other hand. One may argue phones are a platform and complex. Fair enough. So then compare to something like a Sonos player. I can pull up speaker setups from the 80s 90s and even earlier and have no issues with them working. But something like Sonos may not last 3 years. And talking about pure software, I am not sure what the definition of consumer is, but a lot of software from the 80s and 90s is going strong and is extremely usable.
- ric2b 6y ago
  > An android phone from 5 years ago is pretty much unusable on the other hand. Not sure what you mean? It might not get updates anymore and you may not be able to install the latest versions of most apps but the same is true about iPods.
c22 6y ago
But because of that developers were under more pressure to be careful and avoid shipping software with problems in the first place. Now, as you say, the common showstoppers get fixed quickly, but they're probably a lot more common. Meanwhile the overall cohesion and well-thought-out feeling of a lot of older software is largely gone.
- hnick 6y ago
  You can see this in console games now too. Day 1 multi-gigabyte patches are common now that it's assumed everyone has a sufficient connection.

blondin 6y ago

too many layers of abstraction. that's our problem.