Bloatware

Woebot

Well-known member
Are software companies implicitly in cahoots with hardware manufacturers in the creation of Bloatware?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat

I suppose it's just your standard feedback loop, newer machines come with more agile resources but...

For instance, the latest version of Illustrator I'm using is SUCH a dog.
 

bassnation

the abyss
Are software companies implicitly in cahoots with hardware manufacturers in the creation of Bloatware?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat

I suppose it's just your standard feedback loop, newer machines come with more agile resources but...

For instance, the latest version of Illustrator I'm using is SUCH a dog.

same with windows vista. they've essentially ripped off the UI from OSX.

of course in vista you need a high-end graphics card to approximate badly something the mac does very well with limited resources. i think its outrageous to expect users to upgrade their hardware simply for some whizzy effects. ms appear to be running out of ideas when faced with the net-as-services model that the web 2.0 companies do so well.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Are software companies implicitly in cahoots with hardware manufacturers in the creation of Bloatware?
Of course... bloatware and software upgrades (esp. gaming) have kept the PC industry ticking along for the past couple of decades.

Why did you upgrade to the latest version of Illustrator? For specific features, compatibility, or just because?

I've been running Photoshop 6 for years (it's fine for what I do), and the problem of file compatibility is now too great, finally necessitating an upgrade. Not something I relish!
 

bassnation

the abyss
marc that's really interesting what you say about vista

check this out from the maya foum:
http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=596303

the guy at the bottom WHITTMANHART (whos obv a heavy kind of user) seriously suggesting Maya users run maya on a mac, with w2k and a pc emulator! how fucked up is that!

i run parallels, but only through sheer necessity rather than choice. the software i use for work (websphere etc) isn't available for mac, although as osx is really bsd / unix, i can run open source software no problem. the other thing i love, which is not really catered for on osx is soulseek - i've tried all the various mac soulseek projects but they are all buggy and a bit crap.

if i could run everything natively i would, in a flash. i guess the next option is to get a powermac with enough memory to run multiple virtual machines, what a pain in the neck. i could just buy a pc, but once you've gone osx, its hard to go back.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Why did you upgrade to the latest version of Illustrator? For specific features, compatibility, or just because?!

not my copy just installed on the mac i'm working on here! i have plain ol cs and before that (on os9) v8.

photoshop 5.5 was my trusty workhorse for years.

did you ever try photoshop 1.0? i found a copy and downloaded it once, it was under 500K in size and ran perfectly under os9. a dream really!
 

Woebot

Well-known member
the other thing i love, which is not really catered for on osx is soulseek - i've tried all the various mac soulseek projects but they are all buggy and a bit crap.

i don't use it terribly often (in all truth! i have too much music to listen to usually) but my version of slsk on the mac is pretty ok....
 

wonk_vitesse

radio eros
My version of SoulseeX v 1.0b6 works a treat, agree about bloatware, apple is no less guilty of this on the OS front, each new OS X version requires a hardware upgrade really. What really annoys me about the bloatware thing is the latest anti-virus softwares e.g. McAfee & Norton you need a superPC just to keep on.
 

turtles

in the sea
What really annoys me about the bloatware thing is the latest anti-virus softwares e.g. McAfee & Norton you need a superPC just to keep on.
agreed! god i hate those antivirus programs, just slow everything down sooo much. or norton "utilities" program...what a waste of resources.

I think one of the big things with bloatware is the continued marketing observation that generally people tend to buy the program with the most features, regardless of actual quality of said features, so marketing-driven companies (like microsoft) tend to focus on that above everything else. You can bet the people developing these programs hate sluggish software as much as anyone else, but when the marketing people are always pushing for "more! more! more!" developers don't have time to make the few features people really need work well, instead you get lots of crappy slow features and fancy useless effects. There was a nice little article in the new yorker a while back about this.
 

mind_philip

saw the light
I was recently at a conference where one of the speakers commented that he'd recently done an experiment comparing a 2007 Vista PC and a 1985 Apple (would that be the II?) and found that in terms of things like disc access, file opening etc the 1985 machine was actually faster. Now how the fuck does a thing like that happen? The self-satisfied soothsaying of Moore's law looks a little pointless when you consider that at basic functions, bloat undoes it all.
 
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