Proof that software as service/cloud based, will never work for long term ...

[VK3DRB]

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/apple-airpods-poor-design-hurts-our-wallets-and-the-environment-20191010-p52zj9.html

[SilverSolder]

I think he's talking about the airpods which are not a product I'm a fan of. The iPhones I've had generally good experience with however I won't buy one with a notch in the screen. I really don't understand the obsession with an edge to edge screen at all costs.

Planned obsolescence - make things as fragile as possible, hard to replace wear parts (batteries, USB connectors, etc.), glass back as well as front just to ensure something breaks if dropped...   and of course, goad the majority into feeling important by replacing their phones every couple of years at a "reassuringly expensive" price...   The only place to be is a shareholder in that game!

Hardly. The batteries last an incredibly long amount of time, are replaceable. There are no USB connectors. Glass back you need for wireless charging and it’s not fragile. And if it is, meh AppleCare lol. I expect to get 18 months of life out of something like that. Well it turns out our oldest iPhone is 5 years old and still works  .

People love to hate. Some of us love to just use the damn things and quit whining.

One thing that really gets me is a friend of mine who will never buy an iPhone because it’s too expensive but spends £700 a year on service for his Mercedes E class which is used to go to the supermarket and drop the kids off at school. Whiners. Whiners everywhere.

I do get what you are saying and I'm not really knocking Apple specifically for this -  and yes, their support is excellent in my experience.  Samsung et al have also made it harder to replace batteries and other wear items in their latest phones. 

Batteries have a finite number of cycles that they can tolerate being recharged, they are a wear item like brake pads on a car.  For me, they generally last 2-3 years before performance becomes unacceptable, with a daily recharge - irrespective of the type of device (laptop, phone, pad, whatever).  I have working devices here that are approaching 10 years old, LOL, would not be possible if batteries couldn't be replaced.  This is an environmental issue as much as anything else - why throw out a perfectly working item because you can't replace its battery??

The one thing that does irritate me about Apple specifically is the "barrier" to get data in and out of their products onto non-Apple devices, although Dropbox has done a lot to alleviate that.  With Android devices, just plug them in a USB port to get data off/on them, clean them up, or whatever you need to do.  Apple...  not so easy, and I haven't found a workaround, so I don't use them for anything serious.

[bd139]

I just pay Apple to replace them usually. I’ve done a few myself and they’re not hard. Did a 5s a couple of months back for £6 here. Still works as if it was new.

[SilverSolder]

Sadly, the repairability trend is down -  https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability

Apple doesn't score too terribly, but not great.

[Rick Law]

...
You I wouldn’t but AirPods. Stupid idea. Disposable status symbols
...

The disposable part is what made it a status symbol.  You see, to the buyer, it is to demonstrate to the world: I can afford to waste money, and up yours with the environment.  I will throw out as much electronic waste as I like because I work at (select: Google, FaceBook, Apple, etc...) and I have money to burn...

I think he's talking about the airpods which are not a product I'm a fan of. The iPhones I've had generally good experience with however I won't buy one with a notch in the screen. I really don't understand the obsession with an edge to edge screen at all costs.

Planned obsolescence - make things as fragile as possible, hard to replace wear parts (batteries, USB connectors, etc.), glass back as well as front just to ensure something breaks if dropped...   and of course, goad the majority into feeling important by replacing their phones every couple of years at a "reassuringly expensive" price...   The only place to be is a shareholder in that game!

Hardly. The batteries last an incredibly long amount of time, are replaceable. There are no USB connectors. Glass back you need for wireless charging and it’s not fragile. And if it is, meh AppleCare lol. I expect to get 18 months of life out of something like that. Well it turns out our oldest iPhone is 5 years old and still works  .

People love to hate. Some of us love to just use the damn things and quit whining.

One thing that really gets me is a friend of mine who will never buy an iPhone because it’s too expensive but spends £700 a year on service for his Mercedes E class which is used to go to the supermarket and drop the kids off at school. Whiners. Whiners everywhere.

I don't know about others but I personally don't hate glass-back and other silly things.  I just think they are stupid.  You don't need a glass back for wireless charging.  EM wave should go through plastic just fine.   Moto 6 doesn't do wireless charging but it uses a glass back.  I might have been interested in one but for the glass back.

Battery "lasting a long time" is relative.  It depends on your usage profile and what you consider "working."  Some would consider it EOL (end of life) at 80% original capacity.  Personally, I consider it working as long as it suits my purpose be it 20% of original capacity or 10%.

[bd139]

To be fair the disposable nature of electronics is simply due to lack of Environmental legislation. US and China are worst at that

[bson]

Can't they use a VPN?

Adobe is prevented by law from doing business with the government of Venezuela or certain persons on a list maintained by the Secretary of the Treasury.  If those individuals or the government is suspected of using VPNs Adobe will blacklist all non-American VPN providers.  (American ones will be subject to the same laws.)  All non-American VPN providers will stop and think if the value of selling access to a bunch of criminals in Venezuela outweighs being blacklisted by just about every American business from Facebook and Google to Netflix is going to be worth it - because they will instantly lose 90% of their business if that happens.  If they run any sort of serious business they'll drop Venezuela like a hot potato as well.  Technically you can do business with individuals not on the sanctions list, but you know you're going to spend all your time shutting down shell fronts and there is a substantial risk that one day some media piece pops up pointing to you as facilitating crimes against humanity.

[Mr. Scram]

Adobe is prevented by law from doing business with the government of Venezuela or certain persons on a list maintained by the Secretary of the Treasury.  If those individuals or the government is suspected of using VPNs Adobe will blacklist all non-American VPN providers.  (American ones will be subject to the same laws.)  All non-American VPN providers will stop and think if the value of selling access to a bunch of criminals in Venezuela outweighs being blacklisted by just about every American business from Facebook and Google to Netflix is going to be worth it - because they will instantly lose 90% of their business if that happens.  If they run any sort of serious business they'll drop Venezuela like a hot potato as well.  Technically you can do business with individuals not on the sanctions list, but you know you're going to spend all your time shutting down shell fronts and there is a substantial risk that one day some media piece pops up pointing to you as facilitating crimes against humanity.

That's a whole lot of ifs and assumptions.

[VK3DRB]

To be fair the disposable nature of electronics is simply due to lack of Environmental legislation. US and China are worst at that

Per capita, the Australia produces more e-waste than any other country on earth. I can dump whatever electronics I want in the rubbish bin and no-one gives a hoot. China won't take back e-waste from foreigners anymore. But China and the USA (and some others) hoard nuclear weapons which is a bigger environmental hazard than common e-waste. Yep maybe the final destination of software/hardware/firmware and everything else will be in the cloud.... a mushroom cloud.

The Germans, with the exception of rogue company Volkswagen, have the right idea with being environmentally responsible. They are way ahead of the game on recycling and leave the rest of us to shame. They got rid of all their nuclear power stations and are big adopters of solar energy. The EU might be a pain in the arse with RoHS and RED compliance, but in the end it does make environmental sense.

[sokoloff]

[The Germans]got rid of all their nuclear power stations and are big adopters of solar energy. The EU might be a pain in the arse with RoHS and RED compliance, but in the end it does make environmental sense.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx suggests that they still run 7 reactors and get 12% of electricity from them. Do you have a citation that that information is inaccurate?

[Mr. Scram]

One issue with the Microsoft interpretation of the cloud thing is that performance took a huge step back. Browsing through web synced or web based folders and screens tends to woefully slow, something which was a solved problem just after the year 2000 when it was done locally. Office wants to call home while starting taking forever, browsing through a structure takes a few seconds for every click and things take the better part of an hour to sync in the backend. It's infuriating and causes endless few second delays in the workflow. Its 1998 all over again. That's not just a bad example either, it's the baseline standard.

[bd139]

Totally agree there. Exchange sync is awful. It drove me to FastMail in the end.

[SiliconWizard]

Yep. And for all that sucky slow stuff, you still need a 4GHz CPU with 32GB RAM and a fast SSD.

[SilverSolder]

It is a real awakening to try out some old 90's and 00's applications on a modern computer -  they work SOO fast.  Sadly, all the hardware goodness that we have today has been totally taken over and mostly wasted by a lot of modern software.

The same effect is true with monitors...   today's GUI designers are not able to get more information on a 4K, 48 inch monitor than what was common on a VGA monitor in the 80's (i.e. 25 lines of text.   Try looking at an eBay search today, you get 3 or 4 search results per page...  compared to the 25 you would have seen in the 80's (if eBay had existed!) ).

[SiliconWizard]

Agreed. And it's a complete illustration of Wirth's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

It's almost inevitable though. (Note that I said "almost", hinting that there may still be some hope )
Not a technical problem. Just an economic one. The need for constant growth implies that. It has two consequences here: the constant need for newer/better hardware obviously contributes to economic growth; and then this apparent "lazyness" of software developers, all linked to the cost reduction of development, also contributes to economic growth. And both are feeding one another. Even better.

An interesting thing is that it actually lowers the users' expectations, while getting them used to buying new hardware on a regular basis. A marvel for marketers: lowered expectations, and lowered defense against frenetic consumption.

So I don't think this tendency will ever change, unless our whole economic model changes as well.

[bd139]

Ugh yes. Saw a 500 level deep Java stack trace today 

[Rick Law]

It is a real awakening to try out some old 90's and 00's applications on a modern computer -  they work SOO fast.  Sadly, all the hardware goodness that we have today has been totally taken over and mostly wasted by a lot of modern software.

The same effect is true with monitors...   today's GUI designers are not able to get more information on a 4K, 48 inch monitor than what was common on a VGA monitor in the 80's (i.e. 25 lines of text.   Try looking at an eBay search today, you get 3 or 4 search results per page...  compared to the 25 you would have seen in the 80's (if eBay had existed!) ).

Agreed. And it's a complete illustration of Wirth's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
...
...
An interesting thing is that it actually lowers the users' expectations, while getting them used to buying new hardware on a regular basis. A marvel for marketers: lowered expectations, and lowered defense against frenetic consumption.

So I don't think this tendency will ever change, unless our whole economic model changes as well.

And, you probably could have displayed that 25 lines faster with a 300 baud modem then, as compare to today's 1gb broadband modem fully laden with HD resolution advertisements.  And of course each of those little ads would also need all sorts of micro-services application just to that little thing they needed done.

Pretty soon, programmers will be calling hosted micro service agents to do things like calculate the sales tax because the idea of having to look up tax rates and do fractional arithmetic are tasks too complex for mere college graduates.  These are tasks best done by specialist in a server-farm far far away.

So, now we are back to the future.  A computational world where we buy CPU cycles from CompuServe or IBM or whoever, and connect to it for service using terminals running software we don't own on CPU we don't own.

Well, at least we own our terminals, a nice shinny glass back smart phone... and, we no longer need an acoustic coupler to use the phone line for data.

[bd139]

Reminds me of this:



Marketards run the world. Businesses control them. That's where the problem is.

[SilverSolder]

Well, at least we own our terminals, a nice shinny glass back smart phone... and, we no longer need an acoustic coupler to use the phone line for data.

How many of us actually own even that...   how many are on some kind of monthly paid plan?

[bd139]

Most people.

And regular cash flow is what subscriptions and monthly payments are all about.

Most software is basically “done” now. So it’s the only way of creating a reliable income. No one wants to buy office 2019.

[PlainName]

So it’s the only way of creating a reliable income.

One could keep improving the product (either features or fixes, or maybe both) and if people want thos they'll keep buying. Or one could create a new product and have income from that as well.

Subscription is basically having your cake and then eating it continuously because the plate never empties. Where is the imperitive to Do Something to earn your dosh? The only thing you have to worry about is that your product doesn't become so bad that people are willing to break out of your walled garden to choose a competitor, which is very bad indeed usually.

For the end user, subscription is spawn of the devil. It is fair enough where you pay for an ongoing service (say, hosting) providing that service isn't there only to lock you in (no names, but it ends in 'soft'). Otherwise the end user is literally a slave to the vendor's whims and desires.

[sokoloff]

There is an amount of money for which a consumer should be indifferent between buying software up-front and subscribing to it for a monthly fee.

If there a package that sells for $1000, most people should be quite happy to subscribe to it for $1/mo instead. (The primary reason you wouldn't is for long-term support and availability reasons or because you think the price will jump significantly.)

That same product for $10/mo is probably still an economic bargain for most.

If the product used to sell for $100 and now someone's trying to peddle it for $10/mo, the vast majority of prospective customers will obviously balk.

I don't see anything wrong with subscription business models inherently. The brain damage comes in when a company can't sell $500 software packages because that's in the no-man's land of "needs budget approval", but they can sell it for $49/mo, because $49 doesn't require any budget signoff and now you get software that didn't sell well at $500/forever selling well at $49/mo, driving more stupidity into the overall subscription pricing market.

[PlainName]

I don't see anything wrong with subscription business models inherently.

Nothing wrong at all if there is a choice. For businessses, it can make sense to rent rather than buy outright (as already detailed earlier in the thread). Personally, I've been stung by not having access to data from a decade ago only because the relevant app no long works (sometimes through lack of foresight (mea culpa) but also through a subscription expiring for maintenance on a lifetime license - that one hurt).

A subscription pretty much makes a mockery of any data archives you have, because at some point that subscription will stop for any number of reasons (some beyond the user's control).

or because you think the price will jump significantly

I think what is going to happen is that subscription software will be on a par with buying outright for a while. That is, the subscription price over three years being around the same as the outright price. Hard to argue with that (although I have offered a vendor five years subscription as a one-off price for a non-subscription license, and got turned down). Once most software is rented like this (and it will happen - as vendors see the turnover of the subscription-only vendors, they'll want a slice) then any relation to an outright price will be lost, because there won't be an outright price to compare against. And then $10/mnth will seem peanuts so it will creep up and creep up, and pretty soon we're paying far more in real terms than we'd ever have pain off-subscription.

The brain damage comes in when...

Undoubtedly that, yes. But also when one quibbles about a subscription and gets told "Well, it's only $1/mnth - not even half a cup of decent coffee". Sure, that might be, but add on on the other 'only $x/mnth' subscriptions and you can be spending half your salary like that. It's one way that people get into serious debt, and in this case you can't stop the subscription because then it's bye-bye to your data or livelihood or whatever.

I have strong feelings about this, in case you hadn't noticed 

[james_s]

It is a real awakening to try out some old 90's and 00's applications on a modern computer -  they work SOO fast.  Sadly, all the hardware goodness that we have today has been totally taken over and mostly wasted by a lot of modern software.

The same effect is true with monitors...   today's GUI designers are not able to get more information on a 4K, 48 inch monitor than what was common on a VGA monitor in the 80's (i.e. 25 lines of text.   Try looking at an eBay search today, you get 3 or 4 search results per page...  compared to the 25 you would have seen in the 80's (if eBay had existed!) ).

So much this!!

It is a huge pet peeve of mine the way there is this arms race where monitor resolutions increase so UI designers just make everything bigger and add tons of white space and separation. I don't recall offhand what resolution the screen is on my employer issued Macbook Pro but we use Slack and with it shrunk as small as it will go it takes up a whopping 1/4 or so of the total screen real estate, it's absurd! I remember 15 years ago I could fit Windows Messenger in a little window down in the corner of a 1280x1024 display and it was completely usable. Low information density drives me nuts! The whole point of having a high resolution display is to fit lots of stuff on it.

The old software thing too, I still have Office 2003 which I still have installed on one machine, I find it much nicer than the more recent versions with that stupid ribbon interface, after years of being stuck with that on work computers I still have never grown to like it. I don't recall ever finding a feature I use that is not present in the 2003 version. It's no wonder they had to try to make Office subscription, there is less reason to upgrade software than ever, especially basic productivity tools.

[SilverSolder]

[...]  It's no wonder they had to try to make Office subscription, there is less reason to upgrade software than ever, especially basic productivity tools.

Now they've resorted to trying to scare people into upgrading for "Security" reasons...

IT is becoming / has become a commodity product.  The "IT fan boys" that experiment and learn lots of applications, graphic arts, programming, etc., are now a tiny minority. 

The mass adoption of IT by everyone and their grandmother means they just want to be able to  to do their everyday shopping and other errands online with as little confusion and hassle as possible.   So, we end up with massive whiteout on the whole monitor, with a single checkbox in the middle:  "Would you like fries with that?"