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Software version control by users is going the way of ham radio and people who repair their own cars. Not completely extinct, but such a small set of technical

Software version control by users is going the way of ham radio and people who repair their own cars. Not completely extinct, but such a small set of technically capable people that in practice it doesn't matter. Real users don't know and don't care about software versions. They want computing experiences that "just work". They don't care or know about where the software runs, if there is telemetry, what the underlying format of the data is, etc. The article starts off with nice goals around automatic updates being user centric. But the list of requirements becomes absurd and only important to 1% of tech savvy users (formats, reverts, plugins, commercial messages, other software, telemetry, and multiple versions of UI are great if your users are software developers or IT, otherwise they are a waste of time & effort).

a_imho 6y ago
Disagree that people don't care. Maybe not all the time, but sooner or later everybody experiences a bad update (bad timing, crashing app, consuming a mobile plan costing $$$). Agree that most are powerless to fight it but the worst offenders are working hard to keep the status quo.
- jpadkins 6y ago
  I didn't say people don't care. Issues like crashing app is exactly what people care about and where you should focus your time (or the data plan example). My point was people don't know or care about underlying data formats, so don't worry about that unless it affects the real user workflow.
badsectoracula 6y ago
> Real users don't know and don't care about software versions. I read the same stuff about performance (e.g. when Electron is brought up) or using native UIs or even using native apps in the first place. But i wonder, is it really that "real users" do not care about these or that they are not in a position to understand their impact and communicate their dislike? After all, my aunt for example constantly complains about how her laptop is slow, but she certainly cannot tell me what she means with that - is it the browser she's using, is it some software she's using, is it her internet connection making stuff in Facebook come slower, is the computer thrashing the disk (though with 8GB of RAM and an SSD that shouldn't be noticeable... yet somehow it is), etc. I can barely understand myself when she explains it to me over the phone, how can some developer who doesn't even really care about understanding my aunt is going to get any feedback about her experience and what she'd value? (and honestly IMO all of these sound like excuses for developers putting their own experience above their users')

a_imho 6y ago

Disagree that people don't care. Maybe not all the time, but sooner or later everybody experiences a bad update (bad timing, crashing app, consuming a mobile plan costing $$$). Agree that most are powerless to fight it but the worst offenders are working hard to keep the status quo.

jpadkins 6y ago
I didn't say people don't care. Issues like crashing app is exactly what people care about and where you should focus your time (or the data plan example). My point was people don't know or care about underlying data formats, so don't worry about that unless it affects the real user workflow.

badsectoracula 6y ago

> Real users don't know and don't care about software versions. I read the same stuff about performance (e.g. when Electron is brought up) or using native UIs or even using native apps in the first place. But i wonder, is it really that "real users" do not care about these or that they are not in a position to understand their impact and communicate their dislike? After all, my aunt for example constantly complains about how her laptop is slow, but she certainly cannot tell me what she means with that - is it the browser she's using, is it some software she's using, is it her internet connection making stuff in Facebook come slower, is the computer thrashing the disk (though with 8GB of RAM and an SSD that shouldn't be noticeable... yet somehow it is), etc. I can barely understand myself when she explains it to me over the phone, how can some developer who doesn't even really care about understanding my aunt is going to get any feedback about her experience and what she'd value? (and honestly IMO all of these sound like excuses for developers putting their own experience above their users')