On why tech companies drop support for older software

[steven36]

A fellow Carina author has a blog post up today expressing her frustration over technology companies forcing people to upgrade even if they don’t want to–brought on in no small part by Microsoft dropping support for Windows XP. If you’re in tech, it’s worth a read, just as a reminder that a lot of end users of your product are NOT going to approach that product with the same mindset that you will.

But I did want to talk about one thing Janis has to say in that post, which is on the question of why Microsoft dropped support for XP.

Sure, software companies want to make money. They’re companies, after all. And in order to keep making money, they do have to keep developing new things. But any given team at any given software company has only so many people available to do that work. Developers have to write the code that actually creates the thing. The QA team has to test it. And this includes not only getting that thing finished and ready to sell, but also keeping track of any reported bugs, and releasing fixes for those as necessary.

The team I’m on at Big Fish, for example, is in charge of features on our web site. I’m a QA tester. What that means for my job is that if we change any given thing on the web site, I have to load up the appropriate page in web browsers and make sure that that change behaves the way we want it to. But it’s not as easy a question as “I just load it up in a browser and look at it once and say whether or not it works”.

Because there are a LOT of browsers in active use. Internet Explorer–MULTIPLE versions of IE, in fact. Firefox, on both the PC and Mac. Chrome, also both on the PC and Mac. Safari on the Mac. AND Safari on iPhones and iPads, multiple versions thereof (we’ve got iPads in our device locker that run iOS 6, iOS 7, AND iOS 8 . Chrome and Firefox on Android devices as well.

I have to look at changes in all of those browsers. And that’s just one change on one web page. My job gets progressively more complicated the more complicated a change I have to look at.

This is called a test matrix.

When I first started working at Big Fish, our test matrix involved IE 6, IE 7, and IE 8. But as I’ve continued my job there, the versions of IE we’ve needed to focus on have changed. IE’s most recent version is IE 11. And if I had to worry about every single version of IE that’s still in use out in the wild, that by itself would mean six different versions of IE I’d have to test on. And I STILL have to also care about Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, on the Mac and all those iDevices and Android devices too.

It’s not possible to test when your test matrix starts getting that big. I do still have to sleep and eat sometimes, you know. Not to mention write.

Now, imagine I have to test an operating system, not just one change on one web page. Then my job gets even MORE complicated–because there are a LOT of things that go into making an operating system. And it takes way, way more staff power to develop and test something that complex.

Nevertheless, the team that makes an operating system still has to also care about its test matrix. Only in their case, they have to think about things like “how many different types of computers do we have to load this operating system on?” That includes both desktop machines and laptops. And in the case of Windows 8, they had to think about making it work on tablets, too.

And if that operating system team is spending most of its time working on making the next version of that operating system, they’re going to have only so much time available to spend on supporting older versions of that operating system. Because again, those people have to also sleep and eat!

If Microsoft was to continue supporting XP, they would need to keep enough people around whose job it would be to focus on that. They’d also need to keep machines around that’d be old enough to run XP. Microsoft hires a LOT of people, and they occupy a whole heckuva lot of space in Redmond. But even their resources are finite, at the end of the day. It’s easy to dismiss their decision to drop XP support as a question of simple greed–and again, see previous commentary; yes, Microsoft wants to make money, just like any other company on the planet. Eventually, though, they’re going to have to decide that it’s just not worth it to keep that support active, when their available people and resources can be more effectively spent on something else.

But next time you want to rant about why any given software company is making you upgrade a thing you’re used to using a certain way, I ask that you also take a moment to remember that the team that actually made that thing aren’t out to personally make your life difficult. Promise! We just want to do our job just like anybody else, and have time at the end of the day to come home and have lives.

In closing, two final notes:

One, Bill Gates hasn’t worked for Microsoft for years. So if you want to rant about any current activities of theirs, they’re not Gates’ fault anymore.

And two, I AM a raving technophile and love me some shiny upgrades. But they’re going to pry Mac Word 2008 out of my cold dead fingers.

Source

[SPECTRUM]

Q: why tech companies drop support for older software

A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

[lurch234]

Q: why tech companies drop support for older software

A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Before anyone feels like adding his opinion on the good and the bad about the article steve has posted I would greatly encourage people to read what SPECTRUM has also added.

I took the time to read the whole thing and was greatly enlightened by it. Here's a small quote to whet your appetite:

Origins of planned obsolescence go back at least as far as 1932 with Bernard London's pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence.[6] The essence of London's plan would have the government impose a legal obsolescence on consumer articles, to stimulate and perpetuate consumption.

Hard to deny that its mostly just about money...

[smallhagrid]

I consider the following to be a fair & valid comparison:

As a species we have been using paved roads & rubber tired vehicles which must burn fuel for transportation for around 100 years.

This mode of movement has been made faster & more comfortable - but has not conceptually changed in any significant manner.

If/when it is EVER truly allowed to evolve, vehicles will need neither roads, nor tires, nor will they need to burn fuel.

It is the same with the computers that regular folks use - neither the h/w nor the s/w has changed in concept fundamentally since the beginnings of it.

All the supposed 'upgrading' merely brings incremental speed gains and changes in appearance.

The only REAL changes have been the proliferation of high-speed internet connections and the abilities to communicate with anyone, anyplace almost instantaneously.

In honest fairness then, I must say=>

My car still does just about what the very 1st cars did;

My PC does about the same things the very 1st PCs did;

The only truly huge changes in technology as I see it, which have been more then incremental are the arrivals of smartphones using VOIP as compared with plain old wired telephones which are now mostly passe'.

Aside of all that - the rest is simply about consumerism & ego - the 'NEED' to buy & have new stuff.

I agree wholeheartedly - it IS all about $$$ & perpetual consumption.

That's all, really.

[steven36]

My PC does about the same things the very 1st PCs did;

.

Mine don't the 1st one was ME and it would crash all the time .Not all O/S M$ made was great to upgrade to. Computers now days are better than ever and much cheaper for people who play games and watch high definition videos. I don't miss XP at all and I owned my 1st machine with it in 2001. I never did use vista I waited for windows7 to upgrade. Computers are like half price from what they use to be and much more powerful . I think now days people just don't have the money we had back then. Desktops and Laptops a lot people replaced with phones its not as poplar as it use to to set at your house tied down or carrying a laptop around with you . So the price dropped . A phone can do what and old computer could do almost nowadays.

[smallhagrid]

Win-me WAS a while ago, true...but it looks like I must reveal that I am a bit older than that !!

I was referring to the original PCs, as in the PCs I started with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Which then became PC-XT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

And then the 'clone' PCs arrived.

The ancient DOS PCs of ~30 years ago seldom crashed; usually problems causing reboots were due to operator error.

Now, fast forward to the present time===>>>>

Right now you can get a smartphone app that allows you to voice command the phone.

These apps come ready to use for a great many commands - no training period is really needed.

Here's a question for you:

Why hasn't such a simple solution EVER been made for PCs ??

The background behind my question=>

Around the time of the 80286 CPU a friend of mine was a PC programmer.

He had made his own programming language because none of the ones already made back then were good enough for him.

Specifically - he machine-coded something graphically oriented in the days of DOS (That guy was seriously talented.).

When he and I would talk I would ask him if he could make it so that a PC could be voice controlled.

I asked this because I knew many high level (mostly male back then...) execs were unable to spell, type or operate a PC.

In my thoughts this made a voice-controlled PC a great idea which could fetch a fortune easily if/when it was made.

He said sure, he could, but that he was just not interested in such a project.

Then came the gates gang with windows, etc...and put him right out of business in a hurry.

So - yes there are programs which allow dictation and such for PCs now - big, bulky, demanding things that don't work so well even after training them - but NOTHING that I know of that is as good at voice commands as a smartphone app.

What I refer to here and in my other reply is simply this:

Stagnation.

Things DO change - but only little bits of change - and folks are so used to these little bits that they make them seem HUGE when they are really only teeny-tiny bits of incremental changes on already existing stuff.

Finally, I ask - what do we, as a species have to show for all our sillinesses ?!?

I'll answer with this, and don't doubt that there are MANY others just like it:
//www.nsaneforums.com/topic/242926-the-dystopian-lake-filled-by-the-worlds-tech-lust/

No amount of money or 'economic progress' will matter when the land itself that we need for growing food - and the world-ocean which feeds countless millions daily are all dead & deadly to living things (like that lake now is).

Meh, I say; 'progress' be damned.

[steven36]

Win-me WAS a while ago, true...but it looks like I must reveal that I am a bit older than that !!

I was referring to the original PCs, as in the PCs I started with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Which then became:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

And then the 'clone' PCs arrived.

The ancient DOS PCs of ~30 years ago seldom crashed; usually problems causing reboots were due to operator error.

Here's a question for you:

Right now you can get a smartphone app that allows you to voice command the phone.

These apps come ready to use for a great many commands - no training period is really needed.

Why hasn't such a simple solution EVER been made for PCs ??

Background=>

Around the time of the 80286 CPU a friend of mine was a programmer who had made his own programming language because none of the ones already made back then were good enough for him.

Specifically - he machine-coded something graphically oriented in the days of DOS (That guy was seriously talented.).

When he and I would talk I would ask him if he could make it so that a PC could be voice controlled.

I asked this because I knew many high level (mostly male back then...) execs were unable to spell, type or operate a PC.

In my thoughts this made a voice-controlled PC a great idea which could fetch a fortune easily if/when it was made.

He said sure, he could, but that he was just not interested in such a project.

Then came the gates gang with windows, etc...and put him right out of business in a hurry.

So - yes there are programs which allow dictation and such for PCs now - big, bulky, demanding things that don't work so well even after training them - but NOTHING that I know of that is as good at voice commands as a smartphone app.

What I refer to here and in my other reply is simply this:

Stagnation.

Things DO change - but only little bits of change - and folks are so used to these little bits that they make them seem HUGE when they are really only teeny-tiny bits of change.

Finally - what do we, as a species have to show for all our sillinesses ?!?

This, and others like it:

//www.nsaneforums.com/topic/242926-the-dystopian-lake-filled-by-the-worlds-tech-lust/

Meh, I say - 'progress' be damned.

LOL I was still in school then in the 80s and in the 90s I didn't care about computers I just wanted to chase women and party .I used computers in the 80s but only in school .

For example, using a typical 1980s home computer as a home automation appliance would require the computer to be kept powered on at all times and dedicated to this task. Personal finance and database use required tedious data entry.

By contrast, advertisements in the specialty computer press often simply listed specifications.^[6][7] If no packaged software was available for a particular application, the home computer user was required to learn computer programming; a significant time commitment many new computer owners weren't willing to make. Still, for others the home computer offered the first opportunity to learn to program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer

It was not tell around tell the early 2000s tell the internet started to grow . When windows 95 came out there only there was 16 million pepole with the internet , by the time xp came out there were 513 million . No one much cared about it back then in the 80s .

As of 2014 there were only 3,035 million meaning still over half the world don't have internet at all . Its not like a car were if you live in a rural area you have to have :lol:

Source

http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm

[smallhagrid]

Yep, all true enough.

I -do- live in a very rural area and yes - MUST have a car - true also.

There is exactly nothing but houses closer than 5 miles from here and the nearest grocery is almost 10 miles.

(I also MUST have internet because it is the ONLY means of communication that I have.)

BTW:

I've owned a car or truck or bike of some sort for over 40 years - this is how I can say that the things of importance have not changed very much in all that time - I've been here long enough & seen it for myself.