Re: Obsolete and awkward software

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4771

Posted by sub
2005-12-19 17:11:31

Neville,

This is an excellent thread in terms of the opinions expressed by the two “sides”, i.e. a caring developer and a highly conscious, albeit idiosynchratic, consumer group.

So, first, I’d like to thank you for the considerable time you’ve already invested in this discussion; in the time I’ve been participating in this forum I am quite certain that you are the only developer who has lasted this long :-)

I do sense a hint of frustration in some of the communication, but rest assured that everyone here wants to be constructive in their contributions; we all want to see better software being developed, even if our definitions of “better” vary significantly. I personally believe that there are a lot of powerful ideas in the archive of Outliners.com posts (which makes it even more important to find a way of securing them).

Now, for my comments to a selection of points you’ve made:

> Programs that seem dated and/or clumsy to me are…

I think these are two completely different issues; Zoot may look dated but judging from what its users say it can do it comes nowhere close to clumsy; unless you’d consider Jacky Chan clumsy (dated he is, admittedly).

> If you can’t keep up with what the industry is doing and with what your potential customers and users expect, then you will have a very difficult time maintaining a profitable business.

I wholeheartedly agree; nevertheless these too are separate issues. I think that this here consumer group is _not_ satisfied with what current industry trends seem to provide. For example, the industry seems to be moving towards more and more interface standardisation, i.e. providing more of the same. What if one doesn’t find that same good enough?

> you might do better to put some effort into focusing on newer programs with fresh ideas, that are actively being developed, are well supported and come from companies who care about what they are doing and what their customers want

I agree; actually, I believe that Zoot, Brainstorm and UltraRecall are probably the most discussed programs here; they are all actively being developed, are well supported and by all accounts their developers have an excellent record of responding to their customers’—often insatiable- suggestions.

They also “stand out from the crowd”; obviously, there is still ample room for pioneering.

> The more complex a product the more critical it is to have a very, very good user interface.

I drink to that :-)

> A better looking interface is hopefully also better to use.

I have trouble finding a statistical correlation between those two characteristics; as far as looks are concerned, beauty is in the eye of the beholder; usability on the other hand is something that can be measured, in terms of its impact on productivity. For example, after all these years of working on MS Word, I still find that I write faster and better in the uncluttered interface of a program like Brainstorm or even a plain-text editor, especially with bright text over a dark background; yet I can’t seriously defend this approach on aesthetic grounds.

I am often amazed at how many errors are missed by MS Word users; errors they would unlikely do when writing by hand; I seriously believe that the “good looks” of a WYSIWYG word processor document negatively influence our ability to question that document’s actual content.

> First impressions are big thing when evaluating any product. Serious users will move beyond this if they can see potential in the underlying product, but most will just move on.

Please see my previous post
http://www.outliners.com/discuss/msgReader$4769?mode=day
for my experience on this.

alx

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