Also, ‘people are resistant to change’ and ‘Microsoft is approaching peak enshittification’ are not mutually exclusive truths.
As Deep Thought said: IF I MIGHT MAKE AN OBSERVATION.
My beef with Microsoft Office is: the updates don’t add any benefits. Office 2008 did exactly what I needed it to. The only reason for upgrading is that I’m being forced to by lack of support for newer OSes. I find that the ancient version of Excel works far better for my needs than the newer one. I suppose that if I was working in an office that was all Excel-based, I might find some features in the new Excel useful, but mostly, they just make it harder to use.
Also - I use some very obscure software that isn’t 64bit. That means that I need to either keep an old machine that is frozen in time, or run a virtual machine to access files created with the old software. In one case, I have a machine that will never be upgraded, because the software (Solar Eclipse Maestro) has no modern equivalent and won’t run on a 64bit OS. So, I have to carry around a computer dedicated to this software for photographing Solar Eclipses.
I have a lot of old games. Most of them I acquired through legal means. The DOS games can be run with the help of DosBox or a similar program. Games requiring an old version of Windows cannot be run. I gather that I could set up a partition on the hard drive to run a very old version of Windows. I am not sure how to do that or how things would work using an old version of Windows on this laptop. On the hunt for abandonware, I have found a few sites that provide not only the game, but a program that does some complicated things and gets it to run. It also gives me the option of creating an icon on the start menu and desktop. I love those sites.
I’m not talking about the Windows install process, but about the relatively short customization dialog that Windows runs through when you first turn on a new computer with Windows pre-installed. I don’t know if it’s possible to restart that dialog once it completes, but you really wouldn’t need to. Everything it sets up can always be changed.
absolutely this. And not only an app, but you then need to create an account on that app. That is exactly what I need, yet another stupid ass account that can get hacked.
I was at the auto show recently. I just wanted to pay $10 cash at the window and go see some cars. But no, you needed to download an app, create an account, buy electronic tickets (with added processing fee), add the tickets to your phone wallet, and then (finally!) show the fucking electronic ticket to the person letting people inside.
You appear to be suffering from a rather severe comprehension deficit disorder. I was clearly articulating the fact that there can be compelling functional reasons for migrating to a new OS, and citing Windows XP as a prime example of such an advancement. The fact that it was 25 years ago is only proof of how little useful functionality Microsoft has added in all that time. Windows 7 did offer a few useful benefits, though it wasn’t nearly as dramatic a leap forward as XP had been.
In my view, no OS since then has offered any significant benefits, and in the view of many, has actually degraded the user experience. That’s why I voluntarily and quite happily migrated to both Windows XP and later to Windows 7, and why I’m now resistant to the new enshittified crap except when absolutely necessary, hence my new Windows 11 laptop for which I have no interest or enthusiasm – it’s just a boring necessity.
Exactly my point. The only reasons to migrate to a newer OS in the present circumstances are that Microsoft is forcing it by dropping support for older versions, and also by changing application dependencies like NET Framework so that updated apps no longer work on older operating systems. Both of those factors are artificial and at best offer no benefit to the user, and at worst provide an enshittified experience. Which in turn promotes increased resistance to change even to those who, like me, would happily embrace compelling new technology.
Thanks again!
For many years, I did not have a cell phone because I could not afford one. When I got a free phone through the government Safelink program, I gave the number to everybody close to me. I took it with me whenever I left the house. I kept it charged at all times. I did not get rid of my landline due to the conditions of the program and the fact internet was still dial up at the time. The phone was tiny. The screen existed only to show a row of digits. It had no capabilities other than making and receiving phone calls.
Then, Safelink sent me a new phone. It was a flip phone. It had a bigger screen and could do a few other things. It was definitely an upgrade and I was happy.
My sister gave me her used, but in great condition, iPhone when she upgraded to a new model. I bought (I don’t remember it was an SD card, a SIM card or something else) at Target for $1.99, went to the Safelink website for five minutes and my number switched to the iPhone. It was profoundly an upgrade.
I have heard from all my tech savvy friends the same thing that has been posted in this thread repeatedly. Rather than adding new features of any kind, several versions of Windows would have been skipped by consumers except that Microsoft required you to buy them. An upgrade is supposed to better in some way that benefits the consumer. If I think some new software, hardware or other thing is an actual upgrade over what I own and I can reasonably afford it, I will pay for it.
Well, they say that…
Paul Mazur, a partner at Lehman Brothers writing in the 1920s had a more accurate take:
“We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
Only thus could profits and expansion, indeed capitalism itself, continue, given the amazing productive capacity it had created.
Or if that fails, artificially create the “need” through planned obsolescence.
Where’s Dal Tigmar when you need him? He would go on about planned obsolescence before it was cool.
Indeed!
I don’t agree with that part - these factors are just part of the normal lifecycle of any kind of software (or indeed technology products in general) produced by commercial organisations that stay in business for any length of time - technologies change and are replaced, updated etc. I suppose you’re right that it’s artificial, in the sense that Windows doesn’t grow on trees, but they are not just doing it to spite you; they’re doing it because that’s the way to stay in business, especially in a competitive world, and in some cases, they are obsoleting older technologies just because they can become very difficult to support when the rest of the world has moved on to newer and better methods, frameworks, authentication protocols, etc.
The people griping about AI image generation’s flaws are assuming it will stay that way and never improve. I’m a graphic designer, and Adobe has integrated AI image generation into its apps, and maintain Firefly on the web as well. It HAS improved, and gets more and more usable.
My company’s branding department certain doesn’t want us to resort to generating AI images out of the blue, because they can appear fake and staged, which we avoid when choosing stock images anyway. However, generative AI is useful for editing images by extending their boundaries and using generative fill in the empty areas. There are times we have to do so when fitting an image to a different format, from Google and online ads to all the different sizes of Social media, web banners, and flipbook ads. Adobe’s online tools also enable objects to be removed from images and backgrounds to be changed without having to go through lengthy cloning and cut&paste procedures. They already had the tools for advanced editing. AI makes the process faster.
Except that the primary driver for technology lifecycles should be tangible benefits for the customer in terms of factors like improved functionality, performance, reliabity, or in some other way a better user experience. Othetwise it’s just change for the sake of change and profit.
A good example of beneficial evolution is cars, which today are safer, more comfortable, better made, and above all more reliable and durable than ever before. Whereas Microsoft has failed to deliver meaningful innovation for decades now, not only in their operating systems, but also their Office products.
Microsoft would always have an ongoing source of revenue from computer manufacturers that have to license their operating systems, but they don’t have to be useless and often regressive new versions that introduce learning curves and application incompatibilities for no real benefit.
This is a good point. I think it’s fair to call this sort of behavior “rent seeking” in the sense that no value is added.
Of course, it’s a matter of opinion to some degree. And some would make the valid point that security has undergone continual improvements, but in my mind that’s separate from the overall regression of the user experience, introduction of the subscription model, etc.
This is true, but let’s not forget these are the people who brought us tail fins, Dagmars, and other annual cosmetic changes aimed solely at fuelling consumerism and profits.
None? In decades? So nothing of interest has happened since at least Windows XP? OK. I mean, I don’t particularly want to try to defend Microsoft, but your argument seems way out there.
Windows XP was the biggie, but I also acknowledged that there were important improvements in Vista and Windows 7. Vista was a bit of a mess, but Win 7 cleaned it up quite nicely. Win 7 was released in 2009.
And I didn’t say “none”, I said Microsoft has failed to deliver meaningful innovation for decades, meaning since Win 7 (OK, 16 years). I’d be hard-pressed to name anything really important and innovative in Windows 8.x, 10, or 11. Maybe you can, but there’s nothing there that I want or need and plenty of crap that I don’t. Sure, there have been security improvements, but this is largely Microsoft fixing problems of its own making, and it’s not something that truly improves the user experience. There’s also been regression in the UI itself, in the opinion of many. Apparently Windows 10 thinks every computer is a tablet.
Most of that hasn’t been true in well over 50 years, though crappy build quality arguably continued longer. The culture at domestic car companies changed a lot, not because the carmakers got smarter but because consumers got smarter. Instead of tail fins and enormous chrome bumpers, consumers wanted quality and reliability. It took a while to get there, but they’ve been getting it for at least 20 years, and in many cases much longer.
If your security gets compromised, all your further user experiences mean jack shit anymore. So I’m quite happy with a relatively secure and regularly patched Win 11 than browsing the web with a Win 7 machine that has all doors open and whose user experience really wasn’t much different or better.
I’m not disagreeing, just noting it was not always this way in the auto industry and so is not a new feature of capitalism when we see it in tech stuff.