3 ms·

I call this "technoshit", which is the general downhill trend of UX as technology and software becomes more complicated. I suppose there's Doctorow's "enshittif

I call this "technoshit", which is the general downhill trend of UX as technology and software becomes more complicated. I suppose there's Doctorow's "enshittification", however that lends more to intentional anti-patterns whereas I try to describe the feeling of "why couldn't they just try harder to make this not shit". Stuff like your experience with Amazon, mine even just last night having to: find where I can buy something I want to stream (already a nightmare), buying it on the "new" Google TV app only to cast to the TV before playing it and getting "this content cannot be played on your TV", before starting it playing on my phone first and _then_ casting, after which it worked.

VincentEvans 3y ago
Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?” Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses. So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”. But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality? All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.

VincentEvans 3y ago

Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?” Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses. So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”. But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality? All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.