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Swap all that with "big marketing budget" You can see how easy politicians can conquer minds, it's no surprise trillion dollar companies are able to sell anti

Swap all that with "big marketing budget" You can see how easy politicians can conquer minds, it's no surprise trillion dollar companies are able to sell anti consumer products at luxury pricing. "convenience" is just marketing.

api 5y ago
> "convenience" is just marketing. No, it isn't. This is intentional ignorance and if people keep believing it we will absolutely lose. This kind of thinking goes all the way back to the 1980s and 1990s when people said "GUIs are for wimps" and became increasingly irrelevant as everyone started using GUIs. When I am driving and need turn by turn directions, if I have to take extra steps to get my maps app to work I might have to pull over or might try to do it while driving and crash. My map app must "just work." If I'm about to give a talk and I plug in the projector's HDMI cable and my video driver crashes and I have to load up a config file, I look amateurish. My video subsystem must "just work." If I'm trying to close a deal and can't share a document, the deal may fail and revenue could be lost. People might even lose their jobs. My collaboration system must "just work." I could keep going. Convenience is extremely important in the real world. It saves time, money, and even lives.
- deleted 5y ago
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- simonh 5y ago
  I agree, things people don't value themselves is often dismissed as 'marketing'. No these are just things other people value more than you do, and convenience is massively important. Without a lot of effort put into convenience there are lots of technologies many, even most non-technical people would never be able to even use.
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Are you implying the heavily marketed alternative works better? Haha I missed more streets with their map program, their music store is more complicated, and their podcast app is more buggy. It's marketing.
deleted 5y ago
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Karrot_Kream 5y ago
This is the kind of thinking causing FOSS or other grassroots movements to fail. Convenience is extremely important. Much like you don't wake up every day taking pride in understanding every aspect of the electrical and water distribution to your house or how your car engine works, most people don't want to understand how their software works. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be easy for folks who _want to understand_, but unfortunately a lot of grassroots software just gatekeeps this way. The result is the slow death of GPC as users use the thing that's easy and there's no privacy or freedom-respecting alternatives that non-technical users can actually use.
- eyelovewe 5y ago
  FOSS failed? Chances are that it’s intimately involved in your client, my client, and the HN services Last I checked, both major mobile platforms have their OS roots in FOSS, Linux and BSD, respectively.

api 5y ago

> "convenience" is just marketing. No, it isn't. This is intentional ignorance and if people keep believing it we will absolutely lose. This kind of thinking goes all the way back to the 1980s and 1990s when people said "GUIs are for wimps" and became increasingly irrelevant as everyone started using GUIs. When I am driving and need turn by turn directions, if I have to take extra steps to get my maps app to work I might have to pull over or might try to do it while driving and crash. My map app must "just work." If I'm about to give a talk and I plug in the projector's HDMI cable and my video driver crashes and I have to load up a config file, I look amateurish. My video subsystem must "just work." If I'm trying to close a deal and can't share a document, the deal may fail and revenue could be lost. People might even lose their jobs. My collaboration system must "just work." I could keep going. Convenience is extremely important in the real world. It saves time, money, and even lives.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simonh 5y ago
I agree, things people don't value themselves is often dismissed as 'marketing'. No these are just things other people value more than you do, and convenience is massively important. Without a lot of effort put into convenience there are lots of technologies many, even most non-technical people would never be able to even use.
deregulateMed 5y ago
Are you implying the heavily marketed alternative works better? Haha I missed more streets with their map program, their music store is more complicated, and their podcast app is more buggy. It's marketing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

This is the kind of thinking causing FOSS or other grassroots movements to fail. Convenience is extremely important. Much like you don't wake up every day taking pride in understanding every aspect of the electrical and water distribution to your house or how your car engine works, most people don't want to understand how their software works. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be easy for folks who _want to understand_, but unfortunately a lot of grassroots software just gatekeeps this way. The result is the slow death of GPC as users use the thing that's easy and there's no privacy or freedom-respecting alternatives that non-technical users can actually use.

eyelovewe 5y ago
FOSS failed? Chances are that it’s intimately involved in your client, my client, and the HN services Last I checked, both major mobile platforms have their OS roots in FOSS, Linux and BSD, respectively.