Singing the Fat Software Blues
I have plenty of my own opinions, but I have more confidence in their veracity when you, the highly intelligent Redmond Report readers, agree.
When it comes to software, I'm like a shallow Hollywood man -- I like it lean and stylish. I'm not one of those pining for MS-DOS to come back, but I prefer early generations of GUI apps with fewer features and concomitant ease of use.
The problem is that simple software goes out of date. You can't run it because new OSes don't support it, and there are no security fixes.
Recently nearly three dozen Redmond Report readers came clean on what bugs them about technology -- and bloated software that makes the lean stuff out of date was one of your chief concerns.
There is an answer and many of you are finding it in simple smartphone and tablet apps.
Even Microsoft is gaining this religion with the Metro interface for Windows 8.
So now we are getting pulled in two directions. Apps like Office get larger all the time, server apps more and more demand 64-bit and multicore, and clients grow as predictably as Kevin Federline's belt size.
On the other hand, tablets are now doing real enterprise work with the exact opposite approach.
Here's what Redmond Report reader James had to add:
"There are some software products that should be a little bloated. However I should have control over how bloated they are. What I mean is have a base software package. Then sell additional features that will extend the software to do what I want/need. Take, for instance, Word. There should be a basic version with a small footprint. Now if I want to add some features so I can do things more efficiently then I can buy a feature pack that will accomplish this task."
Thanks James!
I have no idea how these two approaches will be reconciled, but if you have a clue, send it to me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/02/2012 at 1:19 PM