Comments on: No Updates, Thank You http://technovangelism.com/blog/2009/07/27/no-updates-thank-you/ Technova for short Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:32:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: erik http://technovangelism.com/blog/2009/07/27/no-updates-thank-you/comment-page-1/#comment-68 erik Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:56:04 +0000 http://technovangelism.com/blog/?p=242#comment-68 <p>@jason, that really shows how Ubuntu has failed in its release. Producing an operating system is no doubt one of the most difficult software projects, but releasing an update that people don't want to use makes all of their work pointless.</p> <p>@kevin, it doesn't make a difference if users get an upgrade notice or not. The upgrade still went through and now they are going to live with it. If the Facebook changes tell us anything, it's that people hate change for the first week, then after that, they will forget there was ever an old interface.</p> @jason, that really shows how Ubuntu has failed in its release. Producing an operating system is no doubt one of the most difficult software projects, but releasing an update that people don’t want to use makes all of their work pointless.

@kevin, it doesn’t make a difference if users get an upgrade notice or not. The upgrade still went through and now they are going to live with it. If the Facebook changes tell us anything, it’s that people hate change for the first week, then after that, they will forget there was ever an old interface.

]]> By: Kevin http://technovangelism.com/blog/2009/07/27/no-updates-thank-you/comment-page-1/#comment-67 Kevin Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:31:50 +0000 http://technovangelism.com/blog/?p=242#comment-67 <p>I agree with most of your points, but I think a decent number of users <em>do</em> want to know if they are being upgraded. They'd rather see an upgrade notice than wake up the next morning to a different layout or new/obsolete feature. Also back in the day a lot of people still used and swore by Winamp 2.x even though versions 3 and 4 had come out.</p> <p>Seamless upgrading is awesome, but you shouldn't take away the ability of the users to deny it and/or roll back to a different version (in a desktop environment at least). Wordpress, actually, does a decent job of handling both concerns I think.</p> <p>Your contrast/compare of the web vs desktop is interesting though. Remember when people were "allowed" for a while to use the old Facebook layout after they rolled out the new one? A rare occurrence of upgrade choice being allowed on the web.</p> I agree with most of your points, but I think a decent number of users do want to know if they are being upgraded. They’d rather see an upgrade notice than wake up the next morning to a different layout or new/obsolete feature. Also back in the day a lot of people still used and swore by Winamp 2.x even though versions 3 and 4 had come out.

Seamless upgrading is awesome, but you shouldn’t take away the ability of the users to deny it and/or roll back to a different version (in a desktop environment at least). WordPress, actually, does a decent job of handling both concerns I think.

Your contrast/compare of the web vs desktop is interesting though. Remember when people were “allowed” for a while to use the old Facebook layout after they rolled out the new one? A rare occurrence of upgrade choice being allowed on the web.

]]> By: Jason Wagner http://technovangelism.com/blog/2009/07/27/no-updates-thank-you/comment-page-1/#comment-66 Jason Wagner Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:01:33 +0000 http://technovangelism.com/blog/?p=242#comment-66 <p>Interesting topic! I would typically describe myself as somebody who is ready and willing to accept all updates as soon as they are available. However, there is definitely a big crowd of people who follow the "if it's not broken, don't fix it" mentality. They have some very valid points, too. In fact, I'm currently using this mentality with my Ubuntu 8.10 install. I was so excited to get 9.04 installed but then I heard about the problems with the ATI drivers. I freaked out and decided that I couldn't afford to have any more problems with my environment. For me, the benefits of 9.04 have yet to outweigh the possibility of big upgrade problems. I can't afford to spend hours trying to fix issues. So, I think people definitely have their reasons... and some of them (probably a lot of them) stem from bad experiences in the past.</p> Interesting topic! I would typically describe myself as somebody who is ready and willing to accept all updates as soon as they are available. However, there is definitely a big crowd of people who follow the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mentality. They have some very valid points, too. In fact, I’m currently using this mentality with my Ubuntu 8.10 install. I was so excited to get 9.04 installed but then I heard about the problems with the ATI drivers. I freaked out and decided that I couldn’t afford to have any more problems with my environment. For me, the benefits of 9.04 have yet to outweigh the possibility of big upgrade problems. I can’t afford to spend hours trying to fix issues. So, I think people definitely have their reasons… and some of them (probably a lot of them) stem from bad experiences in the past.

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