Asklemmy

Most tech sucks because it's closed source. Closed source products are typically made with "the least amount of work done to sell for the most amount of buck". So standards are only sloppily and partially implemented (or sometimes purposefully badly or differently to ensure incompatibility), and bugs after sale won't be fixed because why would they? They already have your money. Middle managers will work hard to ensure more money goes to advertising and marketing than to actual development.

Then there is the embrace, expand, extinguish mentality (hello Microsoft!) to force customers to stay around their shitty products. Microsoft 365 and teams shit are perfect examples. The company I work at currently uses it and it's beyond garbage shit that is expensive as hell. Not an hour goes by without me being confronted by bad design, bugs, bugs, bugs, so many bugs... And it's all designed to ensure you stay in their little walled garden. I can't change this today, but I'm planning to be rid of it in about a year from now, fingers crossed.

In my experience, open source software is fucking awesome because people built it to actually build something awesome. Standards are implemented to the letter, bugs are fixed, and it all works and looks awesome.

I think that manufacturers of tech products test their products only with a few standard configurations - but in reality there are too many possible combinations of different configurations:

Take a bluetooth mouse for example. Generally, it connects to a computer and it works. Now imagine that you have a different configuration - a logicboard in your laptop that has not been tested by the manucacturer of the mouse or an obscure model of the bluetooth reciever, that also hasn't been tested to work with that mouse. Your mouse works well in the beginning, but disconnects at random times. You can't pinpoint the issue, and when you are looking for help online, nobody seems to have the same problems with that mouse.

In this case, said mouse sucks, because it doesn't function reliably. A different person with a different configuration of their computer (different logicboard, different model of the bluetooth unit) might have no problems at all with the same mouse.

Sometimes it's a solution in search of a problem. Usually that'll be some startup that really wants Google (or somebody) to either buy them out or shovel millions of venture capital money at them. VC that would be better used for anything that housing homeless people, feeding the hungry, or hell just burning to stay warm.

Tge problem is money. The incentive if to make as much money as they can, not the company. Company loyalty has completely been blown up by companies, so now not even the ceo gives a fuck, he'll be running another company with a 10% raise this time next year.

This is a topic that could be a novel for how much there is to consider, but in the end it comes down to resources and companies trying to choose what it best for the company overall. For a company to do anything, they are giving up many other things they could be doing instead. Whether it is limited budgets, limited personnel, or company priorities every decision made is always a tradeoff that means you aren't doing something else.

Most companies prioritize releasing new product so they can start getting revenue from it as soon as possible. A new product has the largest potential market, and thus makes shareholders happy to see revenue coming in. The sales from a new product are the easiest ones in most product's lifecycle. Additionally. releasing new products helps keep you ahead of competitors. So ongoing maintenance work is de-prioritized over working on new things.

The goal of testing is to simulate potential use cases of a product and ensure that it will work as expected when the customer has the product in their hands. It is impossible to fully test a product in a finite amount of time, so tests are created that expose flaws within a reasonable search space of the expected uses. If an issue is found then it needs to be evaluated about whether it is worth fixing and when. There are many factors that affect this, for example:

• How much would it cost to fix?
• How much time would it take to fix?
• Does it need to be fixed for launch or can it be a running change?
• How many customers are actually going to see the issue? Is it just a small annoyance for them or will it cause returns/RMAs?
• Is it within the expected use case of the product?
• Can we mitigate it in software/firmware instead of changing hardware?
• Is it a compliance/regulatory issue?
• Would this bring in new customers for the product?
• Was this done a specific way for a reason?

Unfortunately, after considering all this the result is often that it isn't worth the effort to fix something, but it is considered.

enshitification is based on the ease of moving profits from users to creators then from creators to shareholders in a digital service economy all the while degrading the service for the users and then the creators as the profit fulcrum.

so enshitification might be a different thing than the reality around manufacturing items in an international environment which requires design decisions that later require revising because not all materials are available from everyone in the way a design is called for. and finding people that can assemble things while receiving a wage that they can live so that a company can make a profit requires compromises. and that is just two tiny points in not including shipping and workspaces and insurance et cetera

it is hard, yo. in a not a one part is inconceivable hard but in a it gets complicated pretty quickly type of hard.

The proliferation of competing mutually incompatible standards.

I feel that best tech comes out when the economy is doing great, lots of development and creativity.

We tend to forget that all of that is to support people. Tech shouldn’t be an end goal, merely one of the ways to achieve it. And not always the best one at that.

A bit like Motorola phones killing messenger e even if you tell them not to, or losing photos if you press home too soon after a night shot.

CEOs wanna cosplay Steve Jobs and unvail their crazy new features. They've already "trimmed the fat" to appease shareholders.

They just can't make fixing old issues sexy.

Leveraging technology is a lever of power. Whenever you use technology, you are acting in a submissive manner and that will be used to exploit you.