I remember when computers used to actually work. Now, like everything else it seems things are getting worse. Adobe flash used to just work. Now it crashes several times a day. When it first started I thought it was a temporary thing and Adobe will fix it. But months later it’s not getting any better.
It seems like dysfunctional is the new functional and standards are dropping. I remember back when Yahoo Messenger used to work. It was a little app that just did chat and no problems. Now it’s bloatware and barely works.
It’s not just limited to the Windows world. the Linux KDE interface has yet to catch up to where it was 10 years ago. In some ways when it comes to text mode editors Linux has yet to catch up with where DOS was 25 years ago and Linux file permission are way behind where Netware was 20 years ago.
We all love Google but I just bought one of their “Google TV” operating systems built into my new Sony TV and to say it sucks is implying that it works at all and comes up to the level of sucks. When they said it was Android 3.1 I had an expectation is was as good or better than my Android 2.3 cell phone. It’s like it’s not even the same operating system. It’s totally incompatible with every other Android app I run. It’s like it’s a completely different operating system. Nothing I’m used to works. Shame on you Google!
I don’t know what others think but I’m getting really tired of things going down hill and that becoming the new standard. It’s like technology is reflecting the deteriorating state of society. Everything is going to hell.
My 2 cents …
My take on it is that we actually have everything we needed since the pentium 4. 99% of what average users need can be done on a pentium 4. I.e. web, music, pictures, movies, documents. So people need to complicate things to make people keep buying. Suddenly movies need to be hd. Documents need cloud integration and incompatible formats, music needs itunes and streaming, the web need “web apps”.
Now that everything is so complicated it crashes all the time. You need to upgrade! Upgrade to faster and LIGHTER laptops or tablets! With app stores!
What’s worse is that consumers actually buy this crap so they have to keep selling this crap.
Remember when you could actually navigate a website because they were developed in html and css? Not anymore! Now you need javascript, flash and php in every website you log into.
The P4 sucked. I avoided that entire generation. But you have a point. We do have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to horsepower. Even the cheapest computer is quite capable.
I was amazed at SimCity for my phone the other day. I remember when my *computer* had trouble rendering it.
I fully agree with you.
On top of that, the mac sheep are pushing us all into a very dark direction thanks to adhering to that behavior.
Soon, you won’t be able to get any software unless you register yourself (and be allowed to buy or download) to one of those infamous “app stores”
Thanks mac idiots!
Micrsoft, Adobe etc. should spend time making their products work better rather than adding new features. Stability doesn’t get the “oohs” and “aahs” at a trade show or press demo but consumers and IT people would be thrilled.
They won’t. They’re too busy copying mac’s fly-paper strategy.
The dumb is king.
I own a company and work in the software development industry.
I can tell you in fact that most software quality has been decreasing continually for the past two decades.
The tools and development environments have becomes better, but the quality level of programmers has decreased overall.
I am a regular visitor to a large number of developer forums, and I have a view into the back rooms of a number of smaller and larger software corporations. I regularly see programmers with stupid ideas doing stupid things: no code commenting (many believe this ensures their employment); no team code or function sharing; unfamiliarity or abuse of APIs; attempts to circumvent APIs because they don’t personally like consistency between apps; moronic design ideas (installing unnecessary services to gain app functionality, etc.); lack of programming language understanding; etc.
Many years ago when I was an i86 assembler programmer the apps were more solid because a programmer had to know what they were doing. Now any idiot can get into Java, Basic, etc. and think they are a programmer because they can get a “Hello World” app to compile.
The second problem is the suits at the top. They want the product out as soon as possible with the minimal product viability, including bugs, to get the profit rolling in. Then they typically direct the programmers onto new and useless features for the next version(s) without fixing the majority of the pre-existing bugs. I use a variety of major software applications here from major developers, some that top $3500 per version, with bugs that go back a decade with no future plans to ever fix them.
It is extremely frustrating.
I have a similar experience as yours. Quite frustrating indeed.
The part that you didn’t address is that the suits are behaving like that partly because “that’s what the customer wants” & sadly, they’re right.
The dumb populace doesn’t care about a good, lasting product (you just have to read morons like Dallas here in this blog to see)
Customers that not only like to be abused, they demand the abuse.
I am a developer and I can create amazing thing with any technology including Flash. I’ve herd enough whining about the flaws of technology from people that have trouble turning their monitor on; and yet these people write news articles on the subject. You don’t like computers, pick up a book instead.
Do you mean to say that HP will save the day?!
Is that why Mrs. Meg decided to release WebOS?
…Or are the “powers that be” just trying to push cloud computing on the public so that they can more easily peruse our data?
I don’t know. All I know is that I haven’t really trusted Adobe for a very long time. (Sort of makes you wonder just how well their PDF reader works or even any of their other apps too, don’t it?!)
For me, 99% of the time Firefox crashes Flash, then complains. This started happening when they introduced the feature that runs plugins in a separate process. Try setting dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to false in about:config.
Flash is not a very good example of technology getting worse. It is progressing faster than any other platform I know in terms of security, stability and features.
In addition, there’s an excellent public bugbase for Flash. Any crash bugs you report are very likely to get fixed in the next release.
I agree about Google TV though. The experience is inferior in every single way to normal TV.