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Comment by vlunkr | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I'm seeing a trend here. An OS reaches a very stable point where users are happy. But the company needs to keep pushing updates to stay relevant and generally makes things worse. I think it's why people were stuck on Windows XP for so long, and now Windows 7 will be the one people hold onto as long as possible (if they weren't automatically upgraded). The most recent versions of iOS and macOS are in the same boat: the feature list is uninteresting to most people, but the update is pushed on them, and there's a good change it will break your install/slow things down/break some apps. I haven't bothered updating to High Sierra, since after installing Sierra I was left wondering what I had gained. I disabled Siri after the first week of never using it.

Side note, it's annoying that Apple ties app updates to OS updates. One of the big selling points this time seems to be the new photo app stuff, like you can't just release that for everyone?

/rant

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There's this other item currently on the front page, which is also relevant --- some users seem to want updates, regardless of whether it actually fixes thing for them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15727749

Personally, I abhor this continuous churn too; I'm a developer myself, but I'd rather spend the time to fix small things and in general drive towards that asymptotic stability than attempt huge breaking changes in the fashionistic sense.

I used to think this way. Like downloading updates was making my computer better in mystical ways. Maybe it's just fun to get new things, even if you don't really know what they are. Years of using and developing software has given me a more pragmatic (or grumpy) outlook. It's the most annoying when something new comes along and somehow disrupts a productive workflow, I think that's why devs are so annoyed at Apple right now.

This isn’t the first time on this merry-go-round. Snow leopard to lion was a downgrade in as many ways as it was an upgrade. I also remember reluctantly trading in NT4 for W2K. OS release quality isn’t a linear progression, it’s a sine wave.

And it is a flat wave :)

Every time something improves something else gets worse.

Except in Linux and maybe mobile OSes. Latest Android or iOS is objectively better, even with things that regressed.

Linux has had its share of regressions: KDE 3-> KDE 4 and the accompanying destructions of amazing apps like Amarok 1.4. Gnome 2 -> Gnome 3. The period where Ubuntu tried to replace everything with half-baked Mono apps, etc.

I guess it just depends. I never use any of that. i3wm hides whatever current mess there is in Linux GUI land for me quite nicely.

This is a reason I enjoy Ubuntu 16.04 so much. My drivers are stable. My programs work. My UI is i3wm and isn't going to change or improve much, it has reached a near maximum efficiency level and i3 aims to be very stable and do its job and not "innovate". The laptop hardware is supported and stable, the drivers aren't changing. All systems are go.

MacOS? Always innovating with new "features" like APFS. Are they truly making the OS easier to use in some novel way for non technical users? Are they improving things for technical users? I know technology changes and APFS is supposed to make SSDs better, but... the general sentiment is just what you stated.

My iPhone 4 used to work great with a given OS. All it needed was security updates for 3+ years, instead after about 2 the latest updated was unusable. iOS "improvements" were very hit and miss. Some were good, some were not. I do not mind mobile OS improving as much though.... that hardware has still been improving rapidly offering much better features so the more rapid OS updates kind of make sense there in terms of supporting the latest hardware.

But laptops? What has changed.....

The f* touch bar? The amazing keyboard? The Retina display?

Only one of those was a real innovation and it has been supported for a long time.

/extra_rant

I'd agree with your perceived trend. Ubuntu has the right idea with the LTS releases. Microsoft had the right idea with the LTSB, but ruined it by making it limited to enterprise customers.

I hope Apple and Microsoft will start to realize many of their customers see the OS as the layer for getting things done, and not as an end to itself. Annual, or semi-annual, feature updates are not fun, waste time with a slow install, and the features are frequently unwanted. And with the lack of QA in both companies, each major update brings a whole host of new bugs.

This does make Linux appealing to me at the moment. If a major distro changes something that bothers you, you can count on someone to fork and maintain the old way. There are trade-offs of course, but it's possible to keep you system just the way you like for a long time while still getting updates where they are important.

> the company needs to keep pushing updates to stay relevant and generally makes things worse

It isn't the company that feels the need to stay relevant, it's the UI designers & developers. They have to keep changing thins to justify their existence.

Well considering corporations aren't sentient beings and are made up of these employees it's the same thing.

No, it's the difference between the company being relevant to the market, and the employees being relevant to the company. That isn't the same thing.

but corporations are people.

It's still about people being relevant to people. Just internally instead of externally.

I can't wait for skeuomorphism to come back in style so we can all reflexively say "eww" to flat interfaces as being out of date.

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