4 ms·

There's really nothing wrong with new features as long as you understand that there's a certain subset of users who don't want things to change. Maybe it's beca

There's really nothing wrong with new features as long as you understand that there's a certain subset of users who don't want things to change. Maybe it's because people are already trained on the current version, or they don't want to have to upgrade machines just to run the new feature set, or any of a thousand reasons you may not have thought of. And then there are the "upgrades" that try to force you to pay more. There was a dev tool that I purchased a couple years ago. Don't remember the name. It was reasonably priced and came with 1 year of support. A bit over a year later I got a notification that they had put out an update, so I downloaded it to take a look, only to find out that it had deleted the version I had bought and my license wouldn't transfer over. If I didn't now buy this new version, not only could I not use it past the trial period, but I'd lost the version I had before. Yeah, I was pissed. And the company really had trouble understanding why I was so pissed off by this behavior. I did finally find out where I could download the version I had before, but there went my entire workday. And the product that previously I would recommend became something I cautioned people to avoid!

philistine 3y ago
The subset of people who don't want things to change are running which OS exactly? User interface is just like any other artistic field: it has fashion trends. Look at something that's been around forever and is still developed: BBEdit. Yeah sure the app has not changed a *ton*, but its changed more than you think. Many fads in OS X design (like drawers) had to be implemented and later removed. Any successful piece of software cannot realistically just stay still. It has to keep evolving with the trends of user interface. The difficult part is doing it well. BBEdit has managed it.
- sophacles 3y ago
  >The subset of people who don't want things to change are running which OS exactly? All of them? Hell I hate it when things change in a way that forces me to give them attention now rather than when I have time. Nothing worse than doing an update and having to rework my flow, scripts, and code just to be productive again. Let me choose when I update my tools, don't force it on me just because your UI team found an even more complicated and torturous way to make simple things ugly and hard - I have my own work to do.
  - newaccount74 3y ago
    The problem is that you generally can't support yourself by just selling to existing customers; you need to keep selling to new customers. And the market keeps evolving, so you need to evolve with the market if you want to continue selling. If you do it slowly enough, and cautiously, then existing customers can adapt. But if you stop updating your app, it's eventually going to lose its appeal and will be forgotten.

philistine 3y ago

The subset of people who don't want things to change are running which OS exactly? User interface is just like any other artistic field: it has fashion trends. Look at something that's been around forever and is still developed: BBEdit. Yeah sure the app has not changed a *ton*, but its changed more than you think. Many fads in OS X design (like drawers) had to be implemented and later removed. Any successful piece of software cannot realistically just stay still. It has to keep evolving with the trends of user interface. The difficult part is doing it well. BBEdit has managed it.

sophacles 3y ago
>The subset of people who don't want things to change are running which OS exactly? All of them? Hell I hate it when things change in a way that forces me to give them attention now rather than when I have time. Nothing worse than doing an update and having to rework my flow, scripts, and code just to be productive again. Let me choose when I update my tools, don't force it on me just because your UI team found an even more complicated and torturous way to make simple things ugly and hard - I have my own work to do.
- newaccount74 3y ago
  The problem is that you generally can't support yourself by just selling to existing customers; you need to keep selling to new customers. And the market keeps evolving, so you need to evolve with the market if you want to continue selling. If you do it slowly enough, and cautiously, then existing customers can adapt. But if you stop updating your app, it's eventually going to lose its appeal and will be forgotten.