Needy Software ⇥ tonsky.me

Nikita Prokopov made a list of the ways modern software demonstrates how desperate it is for users’ attention. Not social media clients, mind you — developer tools, design software, and utilities are just as guilty, like when they show onboarding tips:

The company needs to announce a new feature and makes a popup window about it.

Read this again: The company. Needs. It’s not even about the user. Never has been.

Adobe is so awful about this, it added an option called “Quiet Mode” in Photoshop “to reduce in-app pop-ups and non-essential notifications”. Not eliminate — that would be too kind — but reduce. And this preference is not in every Adobe app, so every time I update Illustrator or InDesign, I am treated like I have never used either one before. (Notably, I was not informed about this “Quiet Mode” preference with an in-app notification. I stumbled across it after desperately searching the web.)

So I agree with this sentiment, but I would like to present a steelmanned argument: a change introduced in an update may either benefit or confuse a user. In the old days, a software update was determined by the user — and in the old old days software came in a box with printed documentation — so someone knew they could expect differences. Updates are now largely automatic or even, in the case of many software-as-a-service apps, mandatory. This means changes will be introduced without any warning. So, I kind of get why this has become a standard, but it is rooted in something that also kind of stinks.

Thankfully, Prokopov also carves out time to note the neediness of software updates. Why are so many big developers shipping new versions every two weeks? What could possibly warrant that?