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Perfect Software?
justice:
Perfect is boring and that clock is a good example of it.
Armando:
Perfect is boring-justice (November 08, 2007, 04:54 AM)
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MS understood that a long time ago. :)
Beth UK:
Perfect is boring-justice (November 08, 2007, 04:54 AM)
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MS understood that a long time ago. :)
-Armando (November 08, 2007, 09:41 AM)
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Yes! The thrill of a system crash adds variety and flair to the computing experience! :D
Ralf Maximus:
Perfect is boring-justice (November 08, 2007, 04:54 AM)
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MS understood that a long time ago. :)
-Armando (November 08, 2007, 09:41 AM)
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God, yes. And we have companies like MS to thank for the current state of things.
The sad part is, I believe they could still make their recurring revenue from improving their existing stuff rather than the wholesale replacement strategy they pursue now. Vista is a total departure from XP; Office 2007 is a complete rewrite. And when the dust settles, after all the millions have been spent, the end result is only marginally superior to what was replaced, if at all. Sometimes it's just *different*.
The world would embrace something like XP 2008, where the core product remains the same but additional drivers are included, the Aero interface is an option, and loads of cute new themes (shudder) are thrown in for fun. Charge $99 for the upgrade and people will pay. MS could even make more money with such a product, since support calls will be fewer and (one would assume) the development team much smaller than what Vista required.
This breaks away from the original "perfect software" question I posed, but compliments the underlying "when is enough is enough" theme quite nicely.
CWuestefeld:
The sad part is, I believe they could still make their recurring revenue from improving their existing stuff ...
The world would embrace something like XP 2008, where the core product remains the same but additional drivers are included, the Aero interface is an option, and loads of cute new themes (shudder) are thrown in for fun. Charge $99 for the upgrade and people will pay.
-Ralf Maximus (November 08, 2007, 10:21 AM)
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I dunno about that. People have come to believe (probably correctly) that the additional drivers are theirs by right, that they shouldn't be charged for it. Likewise, you can find cute new themes for free out on the Intertubes.
It's funny, though, that when referring to software versions we still generally use the nomenclature "version 3.0" -- but how often is there anything other than a "0" to the right of the decimal -- particularly in major products. Think, for example, of recent discussions around these parts concerning Paint Shop Pro versions X1 and X2 -- there's no thought of revision numbers in there.
The exception to that rule, of course, is open source software, and this is a pet peeve of mine. One way that you can tell something is open source is that it perpetually has a "0" in front: "0.8.7.1". The authors never have the confidence to say "I think this is a good baseline; let's bless that and work from there." Years ago I mentioned this to the guy responsible for POPFile (one of the best spam filters out there), and he assured me that he had a clear roadmap to get to v 1.0. Years later, they're still stuck in the 0.9's. And of course, this leads to either the software languishing, or feature creep as they asymptotically approach their v1.
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