Seth's Blog: Hardware is Sexy, But It's Software that Matters (typepad.com)

American author and entrepreneur Seth Godin argues that though hardware is nice and dandy, it is the software that matters. And not just software that runs on a computer, "but the metaphorical idea of rules and algorithms designed to solve problems and connect people," he writes. Godin has used the piece to note how Apple has increasingly grown focused on hardware, and as a result, it's not putting much effort to fixing its software. He writes, "Automator, a buggy piece of software with no support, and because it's free, no competitors. Keynote, a presentation program that hasn't been improved in years. iOS 10, which replaces useful with pretty. iTunes, which is now years behind useful tools like Roon. No significant steps forward in word processing, spreadsheets, video editing, file sharing, internet tools, conferencing, etc. Apple contributed mightily to a software revolution a decade ago, but they've stopped. Think about how many leaps forward Slack, Dropbox, Zapier and others have made in popular software over the last few decades. But it requires a significant commitment to keep it moving forward. It means upending the status quo and creating something new." From the article: Software can change faster than hardware, which means that in changing markets, bet on software. It's tempting to treat the user interface as a piece of fashion, some bling, a sort of jewelry. It's not. It's the way your user controls the tool you build. Change it when it stops working, not when you're bored with it. Every time you change the interface, you better have a really good reason.John Gruber disagrees. He writes: Software, in general, is much better than it used to be. Unlike 1995, we don't lose data due to bugs very often. (For me personally, I can't even remember the last time I lost data.) But our hardware is so much better than our software, the contrast is jarring. An iPhone is a nearly perfect object. Sleek, attractive, simple. The hardware is completely knowable -- there are only five buttons, each of them easily understood. iOS, however, is effectively infinite. The deeper our software gets, the less we know and understand it. It's unsettling.

Comments

Dude does a bong hit...

[swb]

...ruminates on how it's not the bong that matters, but the weed that goes into it.

Stays up late writing blog post on same idea, but extrapolated to hardware & software.

O RLY?

[Gravis Zero]

The hardware is completely knowable -- there are only five buttons, each of them easily understood.

If he knew about the hardware, he would know the action of every button is software defined!

Neither of these fools understand hardware or software beyond a superficial measure.

Re:O RLY?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"If he knew about the hardware, he would know the action of every button is software defined!"

... and if he knew anything about the hardware he would also know it gets just us subtle, and in fact a lot of hardware has microcode, which is of course software, but encapsulated in a hardware interface.

Hardware is so much better?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

When I was a kid and turned on a BBC Micro, it was ready to use instantly. Same with the old TV I had. And I could watch anything I wanted to watch on that TV, whether it was from the aerial or the computer or the VCR. And on that VCR, I could just fast forward through any initial stuff on the tape I wanted to skip. And some of those devices worked for a decade.

Today's world of hardware that costs hundreds or thousands but fails within a few years, if it even gets that far, is not an improvement. Today's world where hardware can't be serviced or repaired is not an improvement. Today's world where it takes a minute for my PVR to show me a picture, and seconds to switch to the next TV channel, is not an improvement. Today's world where I can't watch content I've paid for on a device I've paid for, or can't run software I've paid for on a computer I've paid for, or can't listen to music from my iPhone because the headphones don't fit any more, because of artificial barriers to connectivity, is not an improvement.

Hardware got faster and bigger, but thinking that makes it better when all this other stuff is getting needlessly broken is spectacularly missing the point. And the user who buys these devices doesn't much care whether it's the hardware or the protocol on the wire between two devices or the firmware that is causing the problem. They just want the stuff they bought to do what they bought it for, and in many respects today's equipment is very much worse at that than the equipment we made a decade or two ago.

Re:Hardware is so much better?

[Dutch Gun]

I think you're suffering from a bit of rose-colored nostalgia.

I remember cars not starting on winter mornings because they were temperamental as hell, and breaking down much more often, requiring costly servicing or repairs. By contrast, today's cars run far more reliably than they used to. I've heard people complain about all the electronics packed into them, but it's all those electronics, among other factors, that keeps the car running in good condition and warns you when anything goes wrong. Many modern cars can last 250K miles if you take good care of them, which used to be almost unheard of several decades ago, when 100K miles was often pushing things.

I'm not quite as certain modern electronic hardware fails quite as frequently as you think either. Many of my current electronics (like my current computers) are five or six years old and running just fine - I'm betting they'll both last quite a few more years, easy. My last TV lasted a dozen years, and my microwave lasted over twenty years. I guess we'll have to see if my new ones do as well, but they're doing fine so far after several years.

You can greatly improve your chances finding quality hardware by doing a bit of due diligence beforehand to find which devices are the most reliable (and avoiding the temptation to rush out and buy the latest, greatest whatever). Of course, sometimes you're bound to get a lemon. For instance, I've had somewhat spotty luck with routers/wireless hubs until my current one. But overall, I'm not sure I buy the argument that everything of yesteryear was somehow better made - at least at equivalent prices.

Re:Hardware is so much better?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm afraid we might just have to agree to disagree on some of this.

Certainly you're right that modern cars are more reliable, and the better built-in diagnostics are a part of that. But the flip side is that you used to be able to buy a repair manual for any major model of car and take care of it yourself, and if you did then many popular models could last almost forever. Today it's barely possible to change a light bulb or diagnose the cause of a simple warning light in many new models without going to see your dealer, a term for the official representatives of the car manufacturers with other connotations that also seem all too appropriate these days.

As for the modern electronics you speak of, I fear you're suffering from much the same perception bias you think I have. A lot of devices made the best part of a decade ago were pretty reliable, but standards have dropped sharply even as recently as the past 5 years. My previous washing machine also lasted about a decade with a couple of minor repairs along the way. Talking to a surprisingly honest salesman when buying the new one, he said only certain prestige brands would expect that sort of longevity today, and with most of the mid-range models you'd be doing well if it was still economic to maintain them beyond 5 years. I never had a PC fail on me before being retired after many years of use until about 2010. I haven't had a single PC, at home or work, of any spec, last beyond about 3-4 years without at least one serious hardware failure since then. My previous DVD player lasted many years. My current Blu-Ray player, a relatively expensive model at purchase, is already starting to fail after maybe three years. Printers. Phones and tablets. TVs. PVRs. Headphones. Networking gear. Almost no technology is built to last these days, except perhaps for some of the high-end prestige brands, and many of the electronic devices in my home and office come with some element of built-in obsolescence that is entirely artificial, often due to legal controls on replacement parts and interoperability, or to dependencies on software or online services that aren't supported for very long.

I'm certainly not saying that everything we made yesterday was better made in every way than what we produce today, but junk that fails after what used to be considered a very short lifetime, often for entirely deliberate and artificial reasons, and with limited or no prospect of servicing or repair to restore it to use, is mostly a very modern and very unwelcome trend.

Money drives innovation

[DidgetMaster]

Let's see...users are willing to fork out a few hundred dollars every few years for the latest tech trinket, yet they want all their software for free. They balk at even a modest charge of $10 or $20 for something really useful. Gee...I wonder why bugs go years without anyone looking at them or features remain on the backlog for decades? If we want innovation in software, we have to be willing to pay something for it.

Re:Money drives innovation

[drinkypoo]

If we want innovation in software, we have to be willing to pay something for it.

I couldn't give a toss for innovation. They can blow their innovation right out their arseholes. What I want is iteration. I want them to go back over their work and fix their mistakes. I am willing to pay far more for a bugfixed OS than I am for a new scheduling API for example. And I won't pay anything for the developer to add spyware to the system.

Re:Who is Gruber?

[Anonymous Coward]

That user interface is written in SOFTWARE.

The software, in this case, is an afterthought because the UI was designed by hardware guys. What mattered to the VCR designers was to keep the number of buttons low and therefore cutting costs.

Seth Godin is spot on with this one.

[Qbertino]

He is, IMHO, 100% correct with his analysis, including the critisism of the quality of what made Apple great. Apple abandoned their opinion leaders (us) about the time they started requireing a sign-up to get the devtools. Slowly but surely their Unix isn't quite that attractive as it used to be and the quality of their utility software has been in steady decline ever since. The last few versions of Preview can't even render PDFs correctly anymore.

Meanwhile the open web, pushed by Google, is taking over. Devices and web environments are steeply growing in power, and the line between website, service, VMed and native app is blurring faster than we can follow.

I've been seeing it ever since I finally understood ChromeOS.
Remember when it came out? Everyone, including me, was like "WTF?".

But now we understand. Chromebooks are the poor mans and the developing worlds (80% of all potential users globally) MacBook Air. They're dirt cheap, boot nigh instantly and run for a day on one charge. And Google takes care of you all along the way.

Today it's blatantly obvious that Google, of all megacorps, has the best long-term strategy and thus is pushing a standards based open web. It's the only plattform they can win with and it is more and more becoming the plattform with which people can develop safely and be guraranteed some sort of userbase, no matter the underlying OS or device. The Pixel comes as a premium phone - an unusual thing from Google - but everyone knows it's just an upgraded iPhone knock-off hardware wise. The real deal is with Google Assistant and the unlimited storage they offer.

As for the web being the plattform that is evolving the fastest - yes, of course it is. Updates are as close as refreshing a pageview and storage and AI are dropping in prices and power in huge leaps as we speak. I've been torn to and fro about wether I should leave the web for some 'real' programming and environment ever since I switched my career into it 16 years ago, but I have to say that it never has been as interesting as it is now to stick with it, sit back, and quietly watch as the toy language JavaScript takes over fields no one ever even dreamt of 10 years ago.

My 2 cents.