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Beyond enshittification, why does tech oftentimes suck? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Sometimes I’ll run into a baffling issue with a tech product — be it headphones, Google apps like maps or its search features, Apple products, Spotify, other apps, and so on — and when I look for solutions online I sometimes discover this has been an issue for years. Sometimes for many many years.

These tech companies are sometimes ENORMOUS. How is it that these issues persist? Why do some things end up being so inefficient, unintuitive, or clunky? Why do I catch myself saying “oh my dear fucking lord” under my breath so often when I use tech?

Are there no employees who check forums? Does the architecture become so huge and messy that something seemingly simple is actually super hard to fix? Do these companies not have teams that test this stuff?

Why is it so pervasive? And why does some of it seem to be ignored for literal years? Sometimes even a decade!

Is it all due to enshittification? Do they trap us in as users and then stop giving a shit? Or is there more to it than that?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Apple is a strange beast. I was at their space ship HQ getting interviewed, and the guy kept pointing random facts about it. Like, this particular wood was harvested in the winter so that made it better, or that entire segments can be siloed off, or that the full height glass walls of the cafeteria can be opened on pivots, and there was just so much effort in making sure things worked just right.

Meanwhile [this team] had to test software fixes for their product by provisioning ancient Mac mini's in a closet lab because they wanted to test the "full experience" and so every patch and update they had to do was painful and horribly tested. They all hated each other (which was obvious to me just from my time in their interviews, so it must have gotten really bad during the workday I imagine). Everyone seemed on edge all the time. Even the people in the hallways. But they were all super excited that they could order lattes from the iPads tethered to the break room countertops. And they had an apple orchard I guess. The idea of changing how they do what they do was completely unentertainable.

The whole experience felt surreal, like I had stepped into the world according to The Onion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)