Re: Beware of Amazon.com

[Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>]

The rule is "Bad Software Drives Out Good," as I learned struggling to 
replace my simple, flexible, indeed superb $49 data base when a computer 
upgrade lost it. But IME every upgrade of anything since MS Word 5.1 & 
Pagemaker 6.5 replaced excellence with bloat.

This year I forked out --- I forget, probably $150 -- for a program that 
would word process on Mac System 10.  I think it probably does, but 
have never been able to access the finished file, accessible only in the 
bowels of the program... Can it be created freestanding?   Quien Sabe?

But if we go on like this, someone will say we're off topic. I suspect, 
meanwhile, it's like having the mother-in-law from hell.  After a while 
you get used to it. You live flinched, life goes on... and the CEOs still 
get their gazillion $ bonuses.

J.


On Sat, 8 Sep 2007, Pam Niedermayer wrote:

> Yeah, read that, and I wonder why Windows is dominant. (: My company were 
> Newton (Apple PDA of yore) developers until Apple/Jobs killed it. It worked 
> wonderfully. I could have really travelled with a cell phone and it alone if 
> I weren't a software developer. But did the hordes buy it? No.
>
> Anyhow, I always buy the simplest cell phone I can find, and it always amazes 
> me how lousy people program even them.
>
> Pam
>
> Judy Seigel wrote:
> > ...
> > Meanwhile, speaking of evil digitons, who else has read today (Saturday)'s 
> > column on the first page of the NY Times Business Section by Joe Nocera 
> > ("Talking Business")?  The headline was "They Just Call Them Smartphones," 
> > the blurb was "Feeling the urge to attack a Treo with a Swiss Army Knife," 
> > the story was of the hours and hours he spent with various levels of tech 
> > support to get his Treo running, then again and again and again as glitch 
> > after glitch appeared, evolved, resisted, continued, bloomed, metastisized 
> > and prevailed.  It was so painful (and familiar) I didn't have the heart to 
> > continue to the bitter end on page 4, except to read the blurb, which was 
> > "Asking too much of technology. Even a toaster oven doesn't multitask 
> > well."
> >
> > Now consider (and this I 1000% guarantee) how much more loving care a 
> > columnist for the NY Times gets than just Joe Consumer, and if you're a 
> > woman, fuggedaboudit... -- they practically tell you to go bake some 
> > cookies.
> >
> > Judy