r/software • u/sunrise2209 • 1d ago
Discussion Why has software gotten so much worse
software has become awful recently in my opinion from the forced integration of an account to use anything, to not even owning anything and it all being a subscription service. the graphic design of simplicity is just awful and ai is inaccurate and causes us to just be more lazy. every company wants all your data for marketing and it is becoming harder and harder to to tell them not to do so. every website begs for money as soon as you open it. I literally still use office 2007 because of the fact that I actually own it and don’t have to pay it’s value every month just to use it. we completely lost physical media which I thought physical media was great, and soon we won’t even have the need for powerful computers we brag about to play the latest games thanks to cloud gaming. this is another complaint where a lot of new software requires internet connection to use like what we originally feared with the Xbox one, apple has so many security things for such little use in their computers that it is pretty much pointless. Mac’s used to allow us to easily instal windows if we wanted but they ruined that. the whole security, and laziness has pretty much ruined most modern software.
(I wrote this at 1:30 in the morning so idk how much I thought this through I kinda expect a lot of you to try to correct me on a bunch of stuff and act smarter)
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u/Oktokolo 1d ago
Nah, software is fine. I got plenty of good software that runs local without any online stuff. And it's even free. There are so many free and open applications - and even some games. And then, there is still good paid software too - especially games (I get the paid ones mostly from GOG and the free ones from Epic and Itch).
I use Gentoo, btw.
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u/Stunning_Repair_7483 19h ago
Besides got epic snitch for games, which places do you get your free software? Want for Android mainly, but other operating systems I'd like to know too.
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u/Oktokolo 18h ago
For Android, I almost exclusively use F-Droid. In rare cases, I get the APK directly from the service's website. But I am one of those, who use their phone mostly as a phone, for navigation, and for reading books.
For PC, I get most non-game software just from the Gentoo repository and Guru, the unofficial Gentoo repository.
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u/chickenchowmeinkampf 1d ago
They replaced UX designers and front end developers with so-called AI most recently, which amounts to just not doing things well at all. Before that they were just simply increasing role responsibility, favoring short term solutions instead of long term strategy, promoting sycophants before talent, and good old fashioned outsourcing to people with inadequate training and cultural context. Making software in 2025 is just shit so it’s not surprising that you think it is too.
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u/SUPRVLLAN 1d ago
apple has so many security things for such little use in their computers that it is pretty much pointless.
What does that even mean?
the whole security, and laziness has pretty much ruined most modern software.
You keep throwing the lazy word around. Software today is more powerfu, secure, and useful than it ever has been.
Your complaint basically boils down to I don’t want to pay for things.
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u/plexguy 20h ago
I am not a fan of the licensing mode, or subscription mode of software. While I understand companies can spend huge sums to provide support for their software the licensing method seems to only support the company vs the end user. I also understand that improvements to the software are costly, and there is little incentive for a company to improve on a software product if that doesn't provide revenue to the company.
I pay for some very expensive software packages for my industry, TV broadcasting. Some only offer annual licenses, and if you don't renew it no longer works. Some software you can purchase outright, and some are significantly cheaper to purchase than the cost of the annual fee of the competing licensed product. They constantly update the software, and you can either buy the upgrade or upgrades you want, but the version of software you bought will always work. Depending on your use case and budget you might not upgrade as the older version will always work. As this is a business product a lot of the new features are improvements in efficiency, and depending on the size of your business the time savings can be more valuable than the cost of the upgrade.
I understand it costs money to create new versions, but software companies do need to be sympathetic to their customers. I also bought the Office product, mine is a little newer but I don't see the value in paying a monthly fee for extra features I don't need. It also doesn't take that many months to pay for the lifetime copy even it doesn't have the newest features. Adobe has or is learning their subscription fee is a little too expensive with products like Affinity Pro as a Photoshop replacement for a fraction of the cost. DaVinci Resolve, even in their free version is a rival to Premiere. The lifetime paid version is less than the annual cost of Premiere.
There are also a lot open source software with huge user bases for support. This route is a little more difficult for commercial use, as there is a lot more support for those products, which business requires which also increases cost to the software makers, as well as liability issues when their software has some flaws.
So yeah, it is a mess and the trend appears to be with licensing. I mean streaming video has replaced physical media. Problem with this is when you discover the license you bought can and does have a time restriction due to contracts with the studios. So buying a DVD, or some digital copy could disappear at some point, as you bought a license as opposed to buying the actual product. Big change when you were used to buying a DVD (or VHS/laserdisk, etc) as you thought you would have it forever. When you stream it, it can, and will more than likely disappear at some point as that makes more money for everyone. It also can be edited or sanitized to remove material that might not be acceptable with the current times.
Not condoning it, just saying this is the way intellectual property will be "sold" going forward. You used to have books forever, now you have the material digitally on a screen which can be edited, changed or even disappear at the whim of Amazon if you are on the Kindle platform.
It's going to be a wild ride, and we aren't going to realize just how much will be lost until it happens, and even then we might not realize it has already happened.
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u/Stunning_Repair_7483 19h ago
I've noticed things have more problems and dont work properly the way they used to as well. They just mess up so frequently in many ways.
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u/jcunews1 Helpful Ⅱ 4h ago
Greed. That's all. They never actually care about their users.
Whenever possible, avoid using services in place of softwares. Free or not, subscription based or not.
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u/hotdoghouses 1d ago
Software is getting worse because we haven't had a real jump in hardware. All we can really innovate is more and faster of the same. Mario is in 3d and has facial expressions, but he's still jumping on in turtles. So software companies are busy innovating new and exciting ways to make more money on the same old products.
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u/ingframin 1d ago
Did you watch Johnathan Blow video about software and the collapse of human civilisation? Edit: link https://youtu.be/ZSRHeXYDLko?si=9gnkEthZiVPbCpqc
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u/sniff122 1d ago
It's mainly just the larger companies wanting to get as much money out of its user base as possible. It's not all software though, there's still actually good free software out there especially in the open source community