I am in the process of rebuilding my computer and software and updating my system. I did a clean format and am now installing software. After installing and using iTunes, Adobe’s line of products and Windows its self I have to ask why don’t software makers listen to their customer base? iTunes and Adobes products are bloated. Every website from PCWorld to The Straight Dope bitch about it. Adobe is famous for having to download 200MB update after update instead of just the current patch. Don’t big companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe have people on payroll who investigate what their users want? Do they not know of all the PCWorld and Lifehacker articles about how much people hate their software but have to use it because of X?
90% of customers are satisfied with 10% of the features. The other 90% of the features are there to satisfy the complaining 10% of users who ruin it for everyone.
This belongs in the BBQ pit, not GQ. All of the things you are complaining about are subjective and relative. Bloat for you is features for me.
As far as diff patches go, it adds a lot of work to get them right and companies prefer a straight up installer instead of a series of diffs like onefor 3.1 to 3.2 and another for 2.5 to 3.5 and another for 3.0 to 3.5, etc.
Not to mention a diff is useless for people who need the msi to do stuff like modify the install or deploy it.
Software companies do listen to their users, and what they quickly learn is:
- different users want different things;
- it is often impossible to please two users at once; one of them will hate you
- many users don’t like what they said they wanted when they actually get it
- users like to complain, but if they keep buying the stuff, who cares?
2 and 3 are particularly relevant here. The more features you add, the more bloat you get. So by pleasing people who want features, they displease people like you who don’t. Sometimes the ones most annoyed by the bloat are the ones who were most excited about the features that caused it.
Heh, that REALLY reminds me of gamers, particularly MMORPG players, and particularly WoW.
Good points, but missed one:
- Software companies are in business to make money not to make users happy. If the two coincide, that’s great. To the extent they can be profitable without expending additional effort they will (like all companies).
Let’s say you are ACME software, and you create the perfect software title, ACME Whooziebob. This makes you a lot of money, but then slowly your sales dwindle to almost nothing. If you don’t come out with Whooziebob 2.0 then your company will die. But, Whooziebob 1.0 already does everything that your customers need.
So, you add bloat. You shove anything you can into Whooziebob 2.0 so that you’ll have more features to list on your advertising. You tell all of your customers that you won’t be supporting Whooziebob 1.0 any more, that they have to upgrade. So, your customers upgrade, your company stays in business, and the bloat lives on.
Substitute “Microsoft” for “Whooziebob” and you nailed it!
It’s because users don’t know what they want.
I managed an EDA software project, and spend a good bit of time talking to customers, both on the road and at trade shows. A lot of what a good product manager does is to not listen to customers - or, more accurately, listen and then do not do what they say. A lot of the reasons have been given already. Some enhancement requests would be difficult to implement, probably break other features, and not give that much improvement. I learned to say “that’s an interesting idea” to someone making a stupid suggestion.
Another reason has been touched on a bit. Say you are working on product X. If there are no new features to add, there is no need for a software team for any reason but fixing bugs, and there is not a lot to say in a marketing presentation. You either figure out features to add or you die. If you’ve done your job right, you have most of the good features in already, so you either change the look and feel of your software to make it look new, or you add stuff hardly anyone really wants, especially if you can make an audience think it is cool at least for a few minutes.
Or, to put it in two words: Office 2007.
Hilarious! Microsoft SUCKS! HA HA HA!
I love GQ!
You installed all those things, didn’t you?
Ergo, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe are doing a better job of listening than anyone else - or are dominant enough in their niche that they don’t have to listen.
That’s “Microsoft Bob”. 
I LOVE when people bitch about Adobe software being too complicated/big/whatever. It proves they shouldn’t be installing the damned thing. Except for the obvious exception of Reader, most Adobe products are professional-grade. They are designed for users who are artists, graphic designers, and the like. These products are intended to produce high-level output and require sophisticated tools to do so. They are not meant for the average layperson who wants to noodle around and create a funny picture of their dog for their blogspot or facebook page, or create a flyer for their garage sale. If you don’t know how to use the tools in a piece of software, or if you know how to use them but don’t see the point, then most of the time you’ve got an application that you don’t need. It’s fine if you have it, mind you – Adobe is more than happy to sell it to you. But don’t turn around and bitch about it being expensive or bloated. After all, nothing is stopping you from buying a Hummer for your daily commute, but you don’t get to bitch about the low gas mileage and how it’s hard to fit into parking spaces.
Morbo has a point. Despite my personal feelings about some of the software companies mentioned, I don’t see how all of the jabs are relevant to a GQ. Any more than slamming a particular political party would be.
There are several open source pdf viewers that function nicely and don’t bring your entire computer grinding to a halt when asked to perform complex tasks like scrolling down to the second page of the document. Sumatra is a tiny little program. Foxit I think isn’t open source but is free with a little ‘buy the version with features’ advertising built in.
If we’re talking about Photoshop and the like, well, yeah they have features upon features upon features. That’s sort of the point. If all you want to do is crop and resize, you can always make do with Irfanview or whatever.
If you don’t like bloat, vote with your feet. Err…mouse. Whatever.
Yeah especially those that want developers to add “options” for their own pet playstyle, because they think more options always makes the game better.
I.e:
skill based real time combat and a turn-based combat system option!
first person perspective and a third person isometric view option!
And when the developers end up catering to their playerbase and all split up making nine different half-assed “options” instead of one really good one, everyone wonders what happened, and why the game turned out to be a watered-down P.O.S…
We have users who will complain in the same email that there are too many options and that we are also missing the option they want.
To be fair, it’s possible for both those complaints to be valid simultaneously. There can be too many options, and none of them are the right options.
I don’t think this “question” rises to the level of a Pit thread, so let’s move it to IMHO, where everyong can give their informed opinion, state facts, etc.
samclem Moderator, General Questions