If 8 Was 9
Like most computer users, I have automatic updates for some programs. Still, I was surprised after a recent update to find I now had IE9 instead of IE8. Shouldn't they ask me first?
At least temporarily, I (and my computer) am flummoxed. And it's not just that I was used to IE8 (though that's enough). IE9 may be superior in the eyes of Microsoft, but there are certain feature of IE8 which I no longer have that meant a lot to me.
That's the thing. These systems have hundreds or thousands of features, but to most users, they regularly use and care about maybe ten or twenty and everything else is relatively unimportant.
Blogger.com has changed certain things along the way that effects this blog, but not long ago they offered a wholesale new system which I tried for a while and then went back to the old, after deciding it wasn't superior for my purposes. I wonder if I should (or can) do that for IE?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:10 AM
5 Comments:
For many years I silently accepted the massive "improvements" to all my programs -- Firefox, Thunderbird, uTorrent, and arguably MS Office -- that were almost always worse than before. It seems that as computer users become more and more sophisticated, the programmers continue to believe that their audience wants programs that are simpler and simpler. Back in Windows XP the "search" feature would find files on my computer based on their file name, their date, their size, or several other criteria. In Vista and Win7 they "simplified" the search feature and now I can never be sure what it considers a hit and what it doesn't.
Just last month I finally revolted. I rolled back to Firefox 3. From now on I will say "no" to any non-security upgrade unless the program has been giving me trouble.
It's harder than you'd think. I'm surprised they haven't just hidden all this crap and do it without your Chinese confession input. My favorite is "Genuine Advantage," which basically searches your computer and starts internally spamming you when it finds anything you shouldn't have, which is defined as anything their crappy program glitches on. Don't worry, though. They say they aren't reporting it back to the mothership; by implication, they won't send the local SWAT tank to your door, and by implication they won't expand the definition of non-compliance to insufficient response to their marketing campaign. Not until Genuine Advantage 2.0.
The switch to IE9 finally moved me to install Chrome. I had been using Firefox a little when IE8 proved glitchy with some sights. But Firefox was doing the same thing with unrequested updates, and so far I really like Chrome.
What is the marketing behind- lets move all the familiar buttons around and tick off the oldsters (me). You know the the boomers are going to be all retiring soon and we need young people doing productive jobs to keep us in health care and RVs, not doing doing tech support
The typewriter companies were never this dumb. They never released the Typewriter 2.0 with the 'e' and 'i'' keys switched and the spacebar at the top.
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