3 ms·

There's a big difference between not caring and making a tradeoff. You can care about A and B but decide B is more important than A. But if you don't care about

by _qulr 6y ago

There's a big difference between not caring and making a tradeoff. You can care about A and B but decide B is more important than A. But if you don't care about A, then there's no tradeoff, you just choose B no matter what. The question is, why do we make consumers make that tradeoff? Why are we shipping junk at all? There shouldn't be a reliability tradeoff. All products should be reliable. It ought to be a bare minimum standard.

leetcrew 6y ago
> There's a big difference between not caring and making a tradeoff. You can care about A and B but decide B is more important than A. But if you don't care about A, then there's no tradeoff, you just choose B no matter what. fair enough, I probably overstated my point with some of the wording. > The question is, why do we make consumers make that tradeoff? Why are we shipping junk at all? There shouldn't be a reliability tradeoff. All products should be reliable. It ought to be a bare minimum standard. everything in life is a tradeoff. we could make software more reliable, but then we would have to spend less time adding new features, or we would have to hire more/better engineers and charge more. maybe we even get to pay down tech debt and gain the ability to add features faster in the long run. doesn't really matter if someone else dumps a bunch of buggy new features in the meantime, converts our customers, and forces us out of business. in the absence of some industry-wide gentleman's agreement or regulation, we have to observe the behavior of customers and do what their behavior (not words!) indicates they want.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > doesn't really matter if someone else dumps a bunch of buggy new features in the meantime, converts our customers, and forces us out of business This is always presented as the doomsday scenario, but how often does it actually happen? The story of Apple in the Tim Cook era is unrelenting annual releases, more and more "subscriptions", massive return of cash to AAPL shareholders, but decreasing product quality. Did Apple make that tradeoff because they were scared of going out of business? No, they were doing very well before Cook took over. Cook simply has lower standards than Jobs, there's no other reason. He's been great for investors, not so great for customers.

by _qulr 6y ago

leetcrew 6y ago

> There's a big difference between not caring and making a tradeoff. You can care about A and B but decide B is more important than A. But if you don't care about A, then there's no tradeoff, you just choose B no matter what. fair enough, I probably overstated my point with some of the wording. > The question is, why do we make consumers make that tradeoff? Why are we shipping junk at all? There shouldn't be a reliability tradeoff. All products should be reliable. It ought to be a bare minimum standard. everything in life is a tradeoff. we could make software more reliable, but then we would have to spend less time adding new features, or we would have to hire more/better engineers and charge more. maybe we even get to pay down tech debt and gain the ability to add features faster in the long run. doesn't really matter if someone else dumps a bunch of buggy new features in the meantime, converts our customers, and forces us out of business. in the absence of some industry-wide gentleman's agreement or regulation, we have to observe the behavior of customers and do what their behavior (not words!) indicates they want.

_qulr 6y ago
> doesn't really matter if someone else dumps a bunch of buggy new features in the meantime, converts our customers, and forces us out of business This is always presented as the doomsday scenario, but how often does it actually happen? The story of Apple in the Tim Cook era is unrelenting annual releases, more and more "subscriptions", massive return of cash to AAPL shareholders, but decreasing product quality. Did Apple make that tradeoff because they were scared of going out of business? No, they were doing very well before Cook took over. Cook simply has lower standards than Jobs, there's no other reason. He's been great for investors, not so great for customers.