[dmm]

Is software just going to get worse from now on? Was the level of quality and feature improvement we've come to expect an artifact of high levels of investment based on expectations of growth that are no longer seen a valid?

[nixpulvis]

We've built stacks so high we're afraid to jump off.

Nobody is really competing because nobody can build a complete product. So there's less pressure to fix the little irritations. Users are mostly satisfied, and problems get worse slowly enough that for the average user they don't notice right away how bad it's getting. So they stay because it's too hard or completely impossible to leave.

[anonymars]

I think the bigger issue is the update model. In the past, if a new version sucked, people wouldn't upgrade. Now with subscriptions / continuous delivery, there's less ability to vote with one's wallet/feet

[kibwen]

Incentives Rule Everything Around Me. What incentive does Apple have not to be shit? People aren't going to switch to anything else, they'll just suck it up and shove it in their enormous sack of learned helplessness.

[seabird]

Yup, it's time to let go. The forces that eat away at quality software are running an indoctrination campaign with budgets in the billions of dollars to ensure that people don't remember what quality software is. You can do right in your own work and with your own people but most peoples' experiences are going to suck for the foreseeable future.

[brokencode]

There have been bugs and regressions since forever. It’s easy to look back with rose colored glasses, but I don’t think software has actually gotten worse.

Just look back at the Snow Leopard release of OS X. It was specifically marketed at having no new features and just being a fix and optimization release because Leopard was such a mess. And people were happy about this.

[hshdhdhj4444]

> Just look back at the Snow Leopard release of OS X. It was specifically marketed at having no new features and just being a fix and optimization release because Leopard was such a mess.

This is wrong. Leopard wasn’t “such a mess”. No one was saying Leopard was more buggy than Tiger.

Further Snow Leopard wasn’t a bug fixing release. It had a lot of new features. The difference is the features were not user facing but geared towards the underlying tech.

From Wikipedia:

> The goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint, unlike previous versions of Mac OS X which focused more on new features.

> Much of the software in Mac OS X was extensively rewritten for this release in order to take full advantage of modern Macintosh hardware and software technologies (64-bit, Cocoa, etc.). New programming frameworks, such as OpenCL, were created, allowing software developers to use graphics cards in their applications.

[lotsofpulp]

And I’d be happy with a couple more years of that.

[_ea1k]

I suspect that people not really paying for certain things has had an impact. Remember when there were a lot of high quality, paid keyboards for Android?

I doubt those were particularly profitable, but there was a lot of innovation back then.

[crote]

Why pay for a keyboard app when the default keyboard is already good enough?

Moreover, why risk installing a 3rd-party keyboard app when the App Store is filled with adware and malware? All those handy flashlight and camera apps are a Trojan's Horse, why should one assume that the various keyboard apps in the App Store aren't keyloggers trying to steal my login info?

In 2025 I can do mostly error-free blind typing on the Pixel 7 keyboard, with all autocorrect and predictive spelling intentionally turned off. Why would I need innovation?

[nottorp]

I fully expect Apple to "AI" correct your typing in the future without allowing you to change anything because they know better.

It will be designed by the same idiot who decided Safari should auto login you to everything without asking.

[marcosdumay]

As long as the monopolies are going strong, yes, software will get worse and worse.

[layer8]

Improving quality (or degrading, for that matter) of existing features doesn’t figure into career promotions anymore. Only new features count. Or changing the visual design.

[ryandrake]

> Is software just going to get worse from now on?

I mean, yes? I think, as a pretty universal rule, you can expect commercial software to (on average) get worse every time it is changed. Companies spend little or no time fixing bugs and spend most of their time cramming (wanted or unwanted) features. Of course software is just going to get worse and worse over time.

[codyb]

I mean look at Mac OS 26...

The features were the ugliest icons I've ever seen and notification summaries that may be wrong.

Great.