Software Updates

Listening to this weeks ATP on the bus, they speak about the latest Mach OS release SomthingCali. It reminded me how little I really care for software updates. Of course I want things to get faster, more secure and less buggy so I have to endure updates. Most updates don't just bring clear improvements instead they bring feature updates.

I write software for fun and for a living and for a while I even wrote products that people used. I even provided training for our users on product updates. I saw first hand how annoying changes can be.

Most of the changes we delivered were customer driven (in fact, they were all paid for by individual customers). When we trained a customers users on the new software there were normally a whole bunch of changes to off path functionality that someone else had asked for.

I can't remember anyone ever being happy with changes to their workflow .

They were happy that bugs had been fixed and UI had gotten a little cleaner, they loved that the software was better on the crappy machine IT or we supplied them. But they didn't want change for changes sake.

I have been using Puzzle Alarm Clock to make me get up. It is great it can make you solve puzzles, quizzes, or it can use the NFC reader or camera to scan a QR code to turn the alarm off. Puzzle Alarm Clock updated this week. The UI was improved or something, all I can tell is that it is white instead of black now. But they also removed features, making the app much worse.

Reading: TLE Files