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| Author | Why Old Software Sometimes Feels Better (Read 202 times) | ||||||||||||||
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Bolkonskij
Administrator 2048 MB  Posts: 2101 
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on: September 01, 2026, 17:57
Quote There is a particular feeling some old software has that is hard to explain without sounding sentimental. You open it, it appears almost immediately, and it does the job it was built to do. The menus are where you expect them. The file is yours. The program is not asking you to sign in, sync, subscribe, accept a new policy, dismiss a promotion, or wait while it talks to six remote services before showing a blank document. Source: https://deadparrotbbs.com An interesting article I thought I'd pass on to y'all. I guess it's a well-known feeling for most of us. |
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Lichen Software
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128 MB  Posts: 254 
Reply #1 on: September 06, 2026, 19:38
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Old Mac software was built for the user by and large Modern software is built for the enterprise above it. The differences are not as obvious as they seem. The user based software does not have enterprise resources to support it externally, either in personelle or money. There is no percentage in producing something that requires $1500.00/day per person training. Make it easy and consistant to use. If you don't they will just drop your product or spend all your time in support for no great deal of money. People generally look after themselves and don't steal their own stuff. Security requirements are less. Enterprises have internal and external threats that must be dealt with. When your software goes to the user/owner, there is no filter between the software experience and the software purchaser. In an enterprise situation, the software can cludge along at a snails pace but if it keeps the enterprise security goals happy, the powers that be, who probably never use the software anyway, are happy and will make excuses for it but then criticize the productivity of the employees who are actually saddled with using the beast. They end up with a higher turnover cost than they otherwise woild have. Employees will revolt or quit. When I was actually doing this, I was always writing for individuals or small to medium companies. Many times I was replacing something that while it did a job, was eating them alive with training and employee dissatisfaction. This was especially true when the software was used by both power users and occasional users and the occasional users were getting lost and unable to return to a familiar part of the program. You have no idea how often you could become an instant software god just recreating the basic functions by adding a back button to every screen.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 710 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #2 on: September 13, 2026, 01:40
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Excellent points! This goes for many different domains. Food comes readily to mind (as it often does to my mind). When it is mass produced and the goals are almost solely commercial, it can be of horrifying quality. It "feels terrible". When the consumer base is smaller, and commercial concerns aren't don't seem to be the sole concern, the quality and "feel" is shockingly better. This is why, to pull a random example out, American snack food and candy is absolutely nasty, when you compare to just about anyone else's. I was eating a bag of Japanese potato chips the other day, and I was like, damn, these are EXCELLENT. There is zero comparison with American ones. It was like an entirely different food. Its hard to believe they came from the same vegetable. I can't eat American chocolate now that I've tasted others. It isn't even really chocolate, with all the replacements and emollients, and corn sugars, etc. So the same goes for modern software. Compared to older or hand crafted software, or those for smaller bases, it isn't even really software for people anymore.
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lauland
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512 MB Posts: 710 Symtes 7 Mewconer!
Reply #3 on: September 16, 2026, 18:56
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Now, here's something I always find a pleasure... Installing one of those "suite" products, that include multiple apps from the same company, on the hardware for which it was originally designed for. Back then, they would give you EVERYTHING. Things like MacroMedia studio, or Visual Studio back before it became a mutant web app, or the Adobe suites. It's such a joy to see so many lovely working apps, all for different purposes, suddenly appear on your system. Many of them including actual offline docs and examples/samples, right there, not "go to this website". If you do this on hardware and an os close to what it was meant for, everything "just works" and triggers a dopamine burst.
Last Edit: September 16, 2026, 20:32 by lauland
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