It's been a day of crappy user experience with software. The only known remedy
for such state of affairs remains unchanged over the decades: ranting about it
on the Internet. Rant mode on.
Hey Skype, your shitty code brings my relatively decent Android almost to a
crawl. When I quit your app, I want you OFF, dead and buried! You don't have
permission to continue running in the background, sucking the cycles out of my
processor and making everything else slow to a crawl, too. Microsoft, quit
means quit!
Hey Tapatalk, if your software doesn't install easily and cleanly on my forum,
I won't install it at all. Imagine the privileges of access I am granting you
to a server I'd like to remain unhacked. Those are privileges I don't give up
lightly, and when your stupid plugin fails to install correctly the first time,
I get suspicious and reach for /dev/null. Oh, and if your forum keeps
forgetting my login? Fuck you. I'll forget you in a heartbeat. Stop being
clever and fix your code.
Hey Firefox: your "Well, this is embarrassing" is embarrassing. Quit being
snarky and fix your browser. I don't need cutsie apologies, I need working
code. It's been a while since the Mozilla Foundation seemed capable of
producing any; I only keep you around because Chrome and Opera are even worse
at this point.
Hey Apple: your artificial limitations are annoying. FrontRow should be
perfectly capable of reading videos off of networked drives and refuses to only
because your geniuses decided to prohibit it. Sadly the trend of your software
in this area is worsening, which casts a real shadow over my impression of your
stuff.
Hey Android: Jellybean seemed like a good idea until it basically made my Nexus
7 unusable. It's perfectly good hardware now running and obligatory update
that makes it junk. Kitkat was lovely on this device. How about giving users
the option to NOT update, mmmm? Oh, and Material Design is an exercise in
masturbation. Quit the wanking and fix your OS.
Hey Plex: Oh, your app can't seem to find my NAS sitting at the static IP
address it's used for at least two years, on a network uncongested by any other
traffic? That's your problem, not mine. I didn't buy Plex because I wanted
access to your shitty, ersatz television channels, I want to stream videos I
ripped myself and stored on a personal network. Do a better job of searching
for my server, and do it without requiring me to register at your stupid
fucking website, or I'll replace you in a heartbeat. If I can ping it, you're
not looking hard enough. Oh, and take your social/sharing circle jerk and
shit-can it. All I want is to watch a fucking video.
Hey Kontact, Kmail, KPIM, Akonadi, and Nepomuk: Jesus Christ, I don't even know
where to start. Every time you update I install, hoping this is the time you
have gotten it right. And every time this whole abortion of a software suite
overwhelms me with the stink of amateurishness and fail. We've been doing
email for decades, people. It shouldn't be this hard to get a working email
client going without the stench of burning rice in the background.
Hey KDE Plasma Desktop: you crash more often than a 5 year old driving a race
car. Your "Activities" are useless, and the one feature that would make them
actually useful - customizable panels per activity - are a feature request that
has gone unanswered for over three years, despite lots of folks asking for it
or recognizing it as a useful feature. And take your not-useful widgets (web
browser widget? red bouncy ball? What the FUCK?) and choke on them, along with
a bag of dicks.
Hey Google: Got news for you, guys - you're being evil. And your continual
interface rewrites to things like Gmail mean my mom and dad can't use you.
Finding my desktop webbrowser knows where I am on earth because my cellphone
ratted me out makes me want to trash my Android phone and get a Blackberry. At
least that device knew how to keep a secret.
Hey Evernote: I swear to God, the next time you ask me to confirm the email
address I seem to have to confirm every 7 days, I will uninstall you. And no,
for Chrissakes, I do not want to fucking go Premium. At this rate, and I don't
want anything at all from the likes of you.
OK, who made me happy? Simple things that have focused on their technical
merits instead of social wankery, Search Engine Optimzation, or Web 2.0: the
mutt email client, the ChromeOS shell app, the emacs text editor, and the
NTTPReader Usenet app. Aquamail held its own admirably, and WhatsApp sparkled
with competence and unobtrusive functionality. But the rest of you sadsacks,
GET IT TOGETHER!
