4 ms·

I'm curious as to whether you really believe more testing is the issue? Half the problems on that list are directly related to political/business decisions. Chr

I'm curious as to whether you really believe more testing is the issue? Half the problems on that list are directly related to political/business decisions. Chrome's installer sucks because Google wants to make sure you can install it with non-admin rights. It breaks basic Windows guideilnes because.. fuck you that's why. Ask google. Their war to get Chrome on limited users desktops is a business decision. When you're asked to build a broken thing, more testing isn't going to fix it. The other issues are easily addressed by stopping to cater to lazy users so much. Do we need yet another bloaty app to do basic things? Look at itunes. Its a monster. I'm not even sure how to get a CSV of contacts off an iphone. In the past this was trivial with any contact manager because the feature was baked in. Now that's a feature for "enterprise admins." The remaining things on his list are the 'appification of everything.' Everything is now a shitty touch app that's incredibly dumbed down and buggy. Why try hard, especially when you userbase is locked down by 2 year carrier contracts? Or when all their music is trapped in an itunes database that can't be moved anywhere or given to anyone. Apple won. This is "easy" and "just works." Big buggy apps with dumbed downed features designed to lock user data as deeply as possible. We've entered a new era of vendor lock-in. It the 1980s all over again. We need open protocols to work just enough for web and email. Everything else is up for grabs. Get used to it, this is what the market has chosen. Meanwhile, I have to somehow train my users on how to use Windows 8's new tablet-based GUI on their standard PCs. This ain't progress. This is fashion.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Wow, congratulations. I think that one post just about summed up everything I hate about modern software. It's actually gotten so bad now that I've found myself increasingly hacking together my own small apps and scripts to do some simple things that I want because it's often actually easier to build than figuring out how to use some of the software out there. It's actually an even better investment because I know my own stuff will never magically become shittier because of some update that gets pushed out automatically.
- mlvljr 14y ago
  This philosophy could actually bring people together: imagine a "no sh*t utilities" software movement :)
parasubvert 14y ago
I'm not quite sure I agree with you. User data is always accessible - I can get pretty much every aspect of my iTunes library in XML and there are plenty of 3rd party programs that can interpret it. Contacts on your phone usually sync with your PC contacts app (Outlook on Windows, Contacts on Mac OS X) or via iCloud. You could use those apps to export. On Mac, it can be exported as an "archive" which is a bunch of plist XML which is parseable. You don't bulk export directly from your phone because, I don't think too many people have ever asked for such a feature (beyond vCard, which does work easily). Basically it seems to be sour grapes that consumers are finally getting what they want after 20 years of geek rule... It's not quite the 80s again.
ghshephard 14y ago
" Big buggy apps with dumbed downed features designed to lock user data as deeply as possible." Apple uses a lot of sqllite and xml for your user data. I'd be curious as to what part of your data you are unable to get access to?
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  If there's no way to export it, its locked down.
  - Flow 14y ago
    Just open the database file and do a select...
    - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
      ...and then? Fit it in an email or something? What about images, binaries etc?

jiggy2011 14y ago

Wow, congratulations. I think that one post just about summed up everything I hate about modern software. It's actually gotten so bad now that I've found myself increasingly hacking together my own small apps and scripts to do some simple things that I want because it's often actually easier to build than figuring out how to use some of the software out there. It's actually an even better investment because I know my own stuff will never magically become shittier because of some update that gets pushed out automatically.

mlvljr 14y ago
This philosophy could actually bring people together: imagine a "no sh*t utilities" software movement :)

parasubvert 14y ago

I'm not quite sure I agree with you. User data is always accessible - I can get pretty much every aspect of my iTunes library in XML and there are plenty of 3rd party programs that can interpret it. Contacts on your phone usually sync with your PC contacts app (Outlook on Windows, Contacts on Mac OS X) or via iCloud. You could use those apps to export. On Mac, it can be exported as an "archive" which is a bunch of plist XML which is parseable. You don't bulk export directly from your phone because, I don't think too many people have ever asked for such a feature (beyond vCard, which does work easily). Basically it seems to be sour grapes that consumers are finally getting what they want after 20 years of geek rule... It's not quite the 80s again.

ghshephard 14y ago

" Big buggy apps with dumbed downed features designed to lock user data as deeply as possible." Apple uses a lot of sqllite and xml for your user data. I'd be curious as to what part of your data you are unable to get access to?

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
If there's no way to export it, its locked down.
- Flow 14y ago
  Just open the database file and do a select...
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    ...and then? Fit it in an email or something? What about images, binaries etc?