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The Trouble With Software Upgrades
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "When software makers urge upgrades, it isn't always in users' best interest, the Wall Street Journal reports. Many upgrades bring advertising or other unwanted features; some iTunes users felt this way about a recent upgrade. But for many programs, downgrading can be a headache--Yahoo generally doesn't link to old versions of software, and Apple says iTunes can't be downgraded. Some websites can help with the problem. OldVersion.com, for instance, offers more than 600 versions of about 65 different programs. The site's 16-year-old administrator says, 'Companies make a lot of new versions. They're not always better for the consumer.'"
First, the article is pointless. So yeah, so updates suck. Sometimes they remove features you liked/needed, sometimes the update is buggier than the older version. Welcome to computer software, this hasen't changed since the begining of time (relative to software that is). So what new insights did this have to offer, er, none.
Now, one to the more "interesting" aspect of this posting. I took a quick gander over at oldversion.com, I assume they have checked into the legality of carrying and distributing the commercial software that appears there?
I 100% agree. But yet recently I was forced to upgrade our accounting system through two versions in a weekend. Why? Well a new manager came along and said "We're using an unsupported version? We must upgrade now!".
We, like you, did not rush to upgrade because we didn't feel the need. Our users were happy and used to the system. We'd worked out some bugs over the years and everything was pretty stable, very routine. But our support contract (which we never used) stated that once a new version came out support for the old was very limited and eventually was per incedent, $mega/hour support only.
While I understand the nature of a support contract as insurance it is a bit frustrating that my company pays a huge annual amount for this, we hardly (actually never while I was here) use it and if we want to keep it we have to run our business on their schedule, not ours.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
There. I said it.
As of one year ago, my system is composed entirely of purchased software. However I must admit that it took me 24 years to get there. I first pirated software for the Vic-20, and then the Commodore 64. I've been pirating ever since.
As the financial hole I dug for myself got deeper, the amount of software I pirated grew. Over the past three years, though, my income has been great. And over that time I slowly purchased many of the products I had illictly obtained, and deinstalled the ones I had installed but never used.
Oldversion.com was the place I went to in order to locate versions of software for which cracks were available. Often the latest version was all that could be downloaded from the official website, and the cracks were usually one or two versions behind.
Now at age 35 I'm done with pirated software. But I was a frequent visitor to oldversion.com.
Unfortunately most non-technical users have "Upgradeitis", which means that all it takes to get them to upgrade a piece of software is to tell them in straight forward language "An upgrade to XYZ software is available" and make the upgrade process painless. The average user (in most cases I think) doesn't stop and ask themselves, do I really need this? Is the software I have now doing what I want it to do? What's in this upgrade that I really want/need? How will this upgrade affect my data and/or other applications?
Seems to me that they've become almost programmed to think of anything new as necessarily "better" and thus desirable without ever thinking of the old addage "If it ain't broke don't fix it", couple this with the propensity of many users to load up on drive by download software that they'll probably only ever use once and you end up with a pay per incident support providers wet dream.
There's a part of the movie when Elliot Carver is having a teleconference with his underlings, and one of the questions he asks is:
Elliot Carver: "How about our new software?"
Underling: "We are releasing on schedule. As requested, it is full of bugs, and users will be forced to keep upgrading for years."
I wonder how valid that statement actually is.
Considering how long I feel like I've been using Oldversions to stay with my favorite/most stable builds of programs... was this kid a fetus when he started it?
In all seriousness, that place saved my life when I was stuck with WinME for a year in college and the school mail program conflicted with everything. The no ad and non-resource hog (I'm looking at you, Winamp and iTunes) versions of programs are the way to go.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
If software wants to do something you don't want it to do, block it with your firewall.
What if the new version won't run until it phones home? Half-Life 2 retail anyone?
I have never updated Swat4 to 1.1 due to their patch adding in game advertising.
http://www.massiveincorporated.com/
"SWAT4 fans have been on the offensive, following news that the new 1.1 patch contains a feature adding advertising to the game and collecting players' data, including IP address and how long they play for. The new patch implements Massive streaming ad support, which changes some of the in-game textures to adverts for real products. It also gathers information about players, detailed in their privacy policy."
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Oh, that has happened.
One of the worst experiences I've ever been through was getting part of the way through an upgrade and realizing it wasn't going to work and having to go back to the prior version.
There are software vendors out that who Beta on their own users. I used to work in a shop that did US$1B payroll annually. The vendors, I kid you not, made a change to the code and installed it, just before a run. It broke. All manner of files, which WERE NOT BACKED UP because Data Entry for the run had finished AFTER LAST BACKUP and data was hosed.
Did we immediately terminate with these buffoons and sue for damages? No. We let them get away with it. The CIO who chose this company eventually would get a raise, retro in effect to the beginning of his hire. Dilbert stuff really happens.
We did find, at another place of employ, that an essential report was not there or a library it called wasn't there, right at the beginning of production. I called the vendor and asked what happened to this missing module and non-functional report. The apologised and said it would be fixed in the next point release, in about 4 months time. I went ballistic and my boss forbade me to talk to these people for a couple years. I ended up having to write the report as an overnighter. I didn't get any overtime or anything for it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Overall, I don't upgrade software, just because there happens to be a new version out. Unless there's a feature we need, we usually leave it alone if it isn't broke.
But I almost always install Windows OS upgrades. The critical one, anyway. I don't have the time to check to make sure our particular company falls under a certain OS vulnerability. Trusting Microsoft makes me nervous. But the prospect of getting a call in the middle of the afternoon because some building's PCs are ate up with something, and having some smartass co-worker point out to a boss that "there was a fix out for this, I saw it on Slashdot" scares me even more.
VOTE!
The advantage of XP over 98, IMHO, is the stability. My XP machine almost never has any stability problems. In contrast, 98 had a lot of them. That alone is worth the upgrade for me.
I know, I know... try a BSD or Linux for stability. If the apps were equally available (games, especially) I'd be with you.
I find it interesting that even Microsoft doesn't have faith in their own "next version" (Windows ME). Ouch.
Why do you accept that? That'd be my question!
If I got a car that failed to start 5 mornings of the year, I'd be pretty pissed off. If I got a TV that wasn't compatible with channel three or seven, I'd be rather annoyed. If my car's doors unlocked randomly on the third Tuesday of the month, I'd be frustrated. If I got a VCR that couldn't timer record at 58 minutes after the hour, I'd be pretty pissed off too!
So why do we let our computer programs have these problems? Why do programs need to be killed or the computer restarted at random (freezing during startup isn't as common since win2k). Why do we accept a computer program that doesn't seem to handle the formats established at the time with ease (think Windows XP destroying exif information on jpgs)? Why do we accept holes in our software that lets crooks in along with their bots, spyware, and adware? Why Why why?!?
I've always been a fan of a certain car maker (and still am), but when I got a 2004 sport sedan and a few weeks later had my dash light up brighter than a christmas tree, the dealer tells me that their software/flash upgrade to the car should fix the issue. Sure enough, it did, and by the forums, it wasn't an uncommon problem with early production of the model. But this is stemming into other areas. An audio system I got in 2000 couldn't read any CD-Rs- obviously it didn't spend enough time in testing, as this should have come up. My car had bugs! The EPROM on my new furnace needed to be replaced. This is getting silly!
Sure bugs are bound to get through, but it is the programmer's responsibility to properly test their program. I'd rather Windows 2000 be released today and have it stable as anything and a solid performer. This isn't how things work. Microsoft spends more time making Spider Solitaire for Vista then they do testing the OS itself.
Updates aren't always better. Sometimes they add functionality, like additional CD Recorder capability, updated roster information for a sports game, security fixes, etc. Other times they add bloat and problems.
Anyone remember ICQ 99b and the 98's? Memory footprint of about 1MB, fast as anything, fixed the data corruption issues of previous versions. Good upgrade. Then recall late 99 versions and 2000+, where the memory footprint was about 80MB, the thing took a good minute to start up. It was buggy, and an ad-city. Then they wonder why it died a horrible death to the favour of MSN? Pack hundreds of features in there and make it slow as anything and nobody will go back. Wait... That's a good description of Windows.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Still using QB v5.0 purchased in 1996. Upon installation it asks if you want to install Netscape 2.0 to access its online services.
I'm totally blind to the three dialogs asking if I want to update the tax tables by calling an 800 number. Just reflexively click ok-ok-ok.
One of these days I'm going to call the phone number to see if it's still connected. At this point I'll probably get around to it in 2010 or so.
Great piece of software.
One major software title I used to use a lot had this problem. I hopped on board at about version 2. This company had a very active beta program, and it was not uncommon to see a new version once a week. Unfortunately, they spent such an unbalanced amount of time on new development as opposed to bug fixing, that the new builds were very often worse than the old ones. You might argue that this was beta and so I cannot expect a polished product, and I agree. However, there was essentially no difference between the betas and the releases. It was widely believed that the week of the next planned release or paid upgrade, they'd take the best beta of the last few weeks and call it a release. (I don't think they ever did a "feature freeze")
It was very common among the developers that used the betas, to keep ALL previous betas. Many users were stuck several versions back because a critical feature they required had been broken several builds ago and had not been fixed yet. It was a very aggrivating tradeoff, to be dealing with a month-old build because you needed feature ABC to work, but then to see them fix (or add) three other things you really had been waiting for but that you can only drool at because you simply cannot upgrade until they fix your issue.
Sometimes you'd upgrade and then a week later get flooded with bug reports. Track down the problem and find it's the compiler itself that is causing the problem, and back you go, to last month's build. I was running several months behind on several occasions, using versions that were betas published prior to the most current release, which was already in a new beta cycle. In that case there simply was no release that ran acceptably.
All in all a very frustrating experience. I made my last paid upgrade at v4.5, it's now around version 7 I think, I've stopped keeping track of it since about 5.5. There are a lot of others in my same situation, agreeing that 4.52 is the best version that was ever released, from a stability standpoint.
What's really going to bite is when more companies go to a subscription model, and require a periodic payment to keep the program you already have running. When those companies go out of business or stop supporting an older version, you're just plain screwed. You'l be foreced to upgrade and suffer the consequences, or go through the torture that is changing products after you're already established with one.
Somewhat on topic... what's the current legal interpretation of software made by a company that is out of business? Is it considered public domain at that point? Or does the (defunct) author have to release it into the public domain? Or does it expire after a certain timespan or after termination of support?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.