Thanks to Leo
Comitale for this link.
“Slate argues that developers shouldn’t be faulted for bloated
software.”
“‘The problem with software today is not that it is bloated,’
writes Andrew Shuman, in an article in Tuesday’s edition of Slate
magazine, entitled ‘In Praise of Bloated Software.’ ‘The problem is
that it’s not bloated enough!'”
Now there’s a canny public relations move! Blame it on the
consumer! Sure, computers are always getting faster, and hard
drives are always getting bigger — but that just means developers
can get away with writing bloatware, not that they should be
getting away with it.
Shuman’s article is a classic display of a perennial Microsoft
blind spot — its utter failure to recognize that consumers aren’t
getting what they want, and are becoming increasingly irritated.
People do not really enjoy buying new computers just so they can
read a Word file that their boss sent them from his brand new
Windows 98/Office2000 box without bothering to save it in a
readable format. They find it hard to comprehend why new programs
won’t work well on computers that seemed state-of-the-art six
months ago.
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