Finished software or abandoned product?

Jose M. Gilgado, writing on his personal — and very fast-loading — blog (via Pixel Envy):

Once you get used to the software, once the software works for you, you don’t need to learn anything new; the interface will exactly be the same, and all your files will stay relevant. No migrations, no new payments, no new changes.

This kind of software can be created intentionally, with a compromise from the creators that they won’t bother you with things you don’t need, and only the absolutely necessary will change, like minor updates to make it compatible with new operating systems.

As I read this post, I kept nodding my head in agreement, realising that I was guilty of what Gilgado describes: “we usually have the ingrained expectations of perpetual updates. We believe that if software doesn’t evolve it’ll be boring, old and unusable.”

I also immediately thought of one of the writing apps I’ve used the most over the past 12 years or so: Byword. The app barely changed in the last couple of years (only one update in the last four years), before a surprising Sonoma-related update a few weeks ago.¹

The app was obviously part of my big “writing app journey” but I didn’t even bother to include it in my list because I was convinced that the app was just like nvALT, that it wasn’t a sustainable option for the future.

Byword remains very good, perhaps on the same level as iWriter Pro. Some of the options are a bit dated though (like the publishing tools panel, which has old logos of Medium and Tumblr, making you wonder if the APIs are up to date).

I suppose we prefer an app with recent updates because, all things considered, software is easy to update compared to a physical object. So when we see an old version of an app, we therefore immediately think that the development has stopped, that the product has been abandoned, and that it is not worth spending time learning how to use it if one day it stops working.

In fact, I think there is actually a much greater chance that an app is not getting updates because it is being abandoned than the same app is so “complete” or “finished” and bug-free that it no longer needs to be updated.

This makes me think: what are the apps I use that could be considered “finished” in this sense? I’m thinking TextEdit (could use a line height setting but otherwise it’s brilliant), maybe NetNewsWire, or Piezo?

I’m also thinking of apps that I wish were finished so that they stay in a good state of usability and performance for as long as possible. WhatsApp and Apple Mail come to mind.²

Finally, I think of apps that seem finished but could definitely use massive improvements in terms of performance and features. I’m looking at you, Apple Notes and Apple Calendar. Apple Notes doesn’t work very well on my Mac; tables are barely usable, and I see lots of little bugs and performance issues. For a few months last year, clicking on “quick notes” folder would make the app crash. Good times.

Although, as Gilgado points out, an update is not always the saviour we expect:

We also expect new versions of any software will be better than the previous ones. Once it’s released, most of our problems will be solved! What a deceiving lie.

Sometimes, a software upgrade is a step backward: less usable, less stable, with new bugs.

Maybe this is what Apple is doing with their decade-old and unchanged Reading List feature: they are afraid of introducing problems. They want to make sure everything is finished before making it somehow more useful than a bookmarks folder. A setting to open Reading List links in Reader mode by default, along with an estimated time indicator, surely could ruin the whole experience of this very sophisticated piece of software (!)