It said that researchers tried for ages, and at great expense, to find ‘the perfect’ pasta sauce and couldn’t do it. No-one would ever all agree. It turned out you needed to make 3 or 4 versions and different people would find each perfect according to their whims.
This never seems to happen with software though. When Facebook does a massive redesign they (eventually) force it on everyone. Likewise the new iOS or any software update as mentioned in article. It’s always in this quest to find one perfect version, rather than accepting that there is no perfect version for everyone and you have to give different users choices, or at least options!
They can actually afford building several versions: one for revular joe user, and one highly customisable power users. They can even allow (gasp) plugins!
I mean, Winamp had skins and plugins more than 20 years ago. Surely it isn't some hopelessly lost skill, like making the roman concrete or the greek fire?!
And it is ridiculous that it doesn't happen in software, because software is one of the most mailable things on the planet. In the 90s you could make your desktop look like a hot dog stand with a few mouse clicks. Or, you know, choose more tasteful colors and fonts. Nowadays we need bespoke "dark modes" just to have 2 choices. Our industry is pathetic.
I can't believe that I never realized having multiple parallel versions is even an option. Perhaps four sounds like a lot to maintain, especially multiplied by a number of OSes or if it's a complex software with many features, but more than one is definitely not a crazy proposal.
>It turned out you needed to make 3 or 4 versions and different people would find each perfect according to their whims.
I would fine tune that conclusion a bit: it's not that everybody each had their own different individual preference particular to them. It's that there really were specific, objective answers and that it wasn't specific to the individuality of each and every person. But the "right" answer wasn't one but three or four different right answers. But importantly, there weren't Zero right answers, and there weren't infinity. There were three or four.
Yup, a company doesn't want to develop more products than it needs to, so they instead try to stuff all the market needs into a singular product, which results in a compromised product for every customer. I'm constantly complaining to my product management at work about this fact, it isn't that they don't know it, it is just that company management would never approve the resources for the 2-4 products that actually need to get made.
Telegram does this. They have many clients written by independent teams focusing on slightly different parts. All apps are fast and pleasing to use. But you may like some one app better than others and you can just use that one.
It said that researchers tried for ages, and at great expense, to find ‘the perfect’ pasta sauce and couldn’t do it. No-one would ever all agree. It turned out you needed to make 3 or 4 versions and different people would find each perfect according to their whims.
This never seems to happen with software though. When Facebook does a massive redesign they (eventually) force it on everyone. Likewise the new iOS or any software update as mentioned in article. It’s always in this quest to find one perfect version, rather than accepting that there is no perfect version for everyone and you have to give different users choices, or at least options!