The Complexity of Good Software
Over the years I've progressed from MS-DOS, Paint, and Visicalc on an Apple II in 1980 to Adobe CS3/4, Office 2003 and a multiple of other apps, some costly and some freeware on a 32 bit Vista Quad CPU desktop today. So what has been the result of this tremendous increase in capability?
Back in the 80's you had to learn to program in Basic or Assembler. I didn't have a printer, so I copied Basic source listings by hand in notebooks. Fortunately, Epson came out with a seven pin dot matrix printer. Seven pins means that there are no decenders for the lower case p, j, y, and q's. The Apple II came with 32 bits of RAM and no other storage other than audio tape. You lost everything with a power dip unless you saved your data or your program back to tape. Programs too had to be loaded for each time from tape. Things improved as I updated the II with two 5 1/4 external floopy diskdrives. All of this took all of my free hobby time. At the local computer club (HAAUGs) thundreds of floppies containing tens of programs on any subject written by everyone sold for $1 a copy.
So how have things changed today? Everone should understand that the blessed Inernet consumes an unacceptable amount of time. Your e-mail contains SPAM so one has to have SPAM eliminators. The Web contains more than everything you wanted to know plus dangerous applets that opens your computer to usage by others unless caught by other antivirus software you add. Your financial info can be lost to keystroke loggers. Ads surround us, whether in search results, popups, or web page banners. Some nasty applets are triggered by accidental clicking on innocent looking areas of the page. Social networks let you reveal information about yourself that you would never offer in real people contact. Would I stop accessing it? No way! I'm addicted.
Suites like Microsoft Office and Adobe CS start out as useful programs and by midlife, add features to meet the need of 99.9999% of all users. But these companies, and others like them, need to continue to make profits, so every so often they have to ever bloat the software by adding a few new features and capabilities to sell an update at high prices.As a retiree and amateur still/video photographer, I hoping I've bought all of the updates I ever needed and then some. Note that I stopped updating the MS Office Suite in 2003. After that issue, Office's growth probably helps commercial offices in conductivity and specail features required in today's world. But not for me.
I've owned Adobe's Photoshop Elements from version 1 through 6, skipping only 4. Likewise dkipping through Photoshop v.6 through CS4. Each step had some killer applet that enticed me to upgrade. Entering video I needed Premiere Elements 3 though 7 (Adobe did the jumping here). Joining a video club motivated me into Premiere Pro CS3 and After Effects CS4. While Adobe has attempted to increase the commonality of useage between applications they have a ways to go yet. Neither Photoshop, Premiere Pro, or After Effects is easy to learn or to use. The latter has levels below levels below levels that allow one to make low level effects that most people will miss during public viewing.
This difficulty is not for the general public, who needs the simpler setup of the Elements series of Adobe applications. I used both Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements in an attempt to attract more interest in the SIG sub-groups. However, Adobe has recently carried the simplification of these apps too far, to compete with a mutitude of other offerings available for a song. PS Elements main drive is towards alblums and t-shirts. Premiere Elements pushes an auto-movie option which cranks out a random garbage video without one doing more than selecting the clips to use.
Enough! I look back at the simpler times of the Apple II and sometime wish the clock now ran backwards. But other times..........
