Why is software so rubbish?

[expat]

Paddy and AtW are right. I'd say:

1. Software seems bad because it runs on Windows. Actually Windows is bad because (a) it's trying to everything (b) it has loads of wrong defaults.
But Windows is ok if it has enough memory. Enough = what you can afford and your PC can accept, if you're lucky.

2. Some of it is bad. Real question is, why do people buy bad software? Since bad software produced quickly can be more profitable to the seller, you can expect that some people will produce that. As long as people buy it, those who produce better software more slowly at greater expense will be priced out of the market.

Solution: max your memory, and Do Your Own Research before buying software. Yes, that means even for a digital camera: if it comes with crap software it's a crap package even if the hardware looks good.

[Mordac]

I struggle with iTunes (it's the least intuitive software app I have ever come across) although I put that down to the crappy Mac-iness of it.
I suspect the reason for most software shortcomings is that developers don't look at their task from a user point of view, they look from a technical one. What may look like a terrific chunk of code in principle may just as easily be a pain in the arse when the users get their hands on it. 'Er indoors is a BA, and she moans constantly that the developers haven't done what she asked, they've done what they thought she asked.

[Ardesco]

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http://img50.photobucket.com/albums/...chang/sdlc.jpg
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*sigh* images allowed would be so useful now and then, completely work safe btw.

[Churchill]

We had a perfectly usable User Interface until the marketing twats got their grubby little paws on it!

[threaded]

We had a perfectly usable User Interface until the marketing twats got their grubby little paws on it!

Yeah, agree with that, and they always b4lls up the easter eggs too. Had a lovely couple in Autoroute, one was if you tried to get to Southampton from London, and another, my personal favourite, was any approach to Doncaster from the South.

[Nipple Clamp]

I struggle with iTunes (it's the least intuitive software app I have ever come across)

Yup, I second that. My large collection of downloaded (and a few bought) CDs are structured on my PC in separate folders, where in each the individual track names are numbered "01 - blah.mp3", "02 - blurgh.mp3", etc.

But with iTunes there seems absolutely no way to preserve that folder structure, and as a result all the 01s (from perhaps dozens of CDS) are interleaved, then all the 02s etc.

And, no, I'm not compromising by prefacing each track name by the CD name or something. I just ditched iTunes, the pile of junk.

[curtainrail]

Software is rubbish because people are stupid. For every one competent person involved in the creation of a software product there are a hundred stupid ones. The input of the stupid dilutes that of the competent. I have found this to be the case in every company I have ever seen in my life. This is true of all companies, producing software or anything else. Everything is rubbish, nothing is worth buying, no-one is paid what they earn. There is no point trying. Its all bollocks. The western world is doomed. HTH

[expat]

...my personal favourite, was any approach to Doncaster from the South.

can't say I've ever had cause to notice that one

[TheMonkey]

I will say to people that iTunes is total sh1t on windows. It works at least 10x better on MacOS X, mainly because the operating system natively supports the framework it's built on top of (Cocoa + Objective C) rather than having to emulate it. Not only that, the Mac has a hefty visual compositor for the UI (which is entirely drawn on the graphics card!) so it's going to be slow pixel-pushing GDI on windows.

Not wishing to sound like an Apple fanboy, but you need to chill out a bit think about things...

When you are using iTunes, you are knowingly relinquishing control over your music collection to a piece of software. It is working on the assumption that you have done this and you are entirely intent on letting it deal with the boring stuff like managing files. According to iTunes, you SHOULD be interested in looking for music, playing it and enjoying it, not what happens to the filesystem. If you want to use the filesystem, don't use iTunes - you have a playlist manager already so stop fecking whinging!

It's a screw and you're hitting it in with a hammer.

As for the issue of crap software. Several reasons things are crap:

1. Marketing drive.
2. Crap programmers.
3. Design by evolution
4. Developers not listening or understanding the HCI people becuase "they know better" - you bloody don't believe it or not!
5. Too many cooks.
6. Poor communications
7. Alpha techie dictatorships.

[DaveB]

Every other peice of music management software I've used, including Media Player, *shudder*, has taken the music files from wherever they are and given you the option to organise them by genre, artist, album, title etc in any combination. The issue with iTunes is that you dont get this, all it does is stuff all the tracks together in alphabetical order making it impossible to select a specific album or a specific artist quickly and easily when you want to.

Music Match is still the best music app I've used and one of the few I paid for.