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Get Thee Hence!

Entry 2242, on 2022-10-08 at 10:42:58 (Rating 2, Computers)

There's a classic phrase, often used in horror movies, which goes something like his: "get thee hence, foul creature, you have no place here!" or maybe "be gone I say!" or "get ye gone!"

It's usually uttered by the hero as a way to reject the attack of a supernatural villain of some sort, such as a vampire. In fact, an early use is in that ultimate source of supernatural stories, the Bible: such as "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God" from Matthew 4:10, and similar phrases are also common in Shakespeare.

Maybe you have guessed by now that this is an amusing introduction to a subject which is really totally irrelevant to what I have said so far: bad technology.

When I am helping people using poor technology, especially software, I often take a look at the program they are using an utter something such as "be gone, foul creature", for example when I see Microsoft Word or something similar.

So now that I have got my fanciful introduction out of the way, I should settle down to the subject at hand and discuss software choice. Specifically I want to offer alternatives to many of the programs people use, which might not be providing as positive an experience as they might wish.

First, I have to say that all software has good and bad points, and often pursuing one benefit will inevitably lead to a whole pile of problems, so every decision in producing a product has potential negative side effects, and this is often not given sufficient attention. But praising a positive point about a product should not be done without looking at the negatives as well, and vice versa.

And, in many cases, this comes down to the philosophy the company involved follows, rather than anything specifically technical.

So, to Microsoft. Their clear strategy is to produce programs which "do everything", which seems like a noble aim. Microsoft Word, for example, has an impressive list of features, but as a direct result of pursuing that goal a lot of compromises have been made. In this specific case it has resulted in a program which is really big, sometimes slow, awkward, somewhat buggy, and unintuitive to use.

It may be that, for many people, those problems are worth enduring to use a program which does so much, and is so widely used. But for others, a better experience might be a higher priority. And guess which camp I am in? Yes, I prefer smaller, more focussed programs, which do their core functions well, and I am prepared to do without all those extra functions - which I probably wouldn't use anyway - to get that.

When I talk about Word I often say something like "sure it does a lot, but does it really do word processing any more?" Of course, I am engaging in a bit of rhetoric there, because I know it still does do word processing, but I would say, thanks to all the other functions, it doesn't do that very well.

Here's a couple of anecdotes (so be aware this is limited as a source of evidence) of what caused me to switch from Word to alternatives, such as Apple's word processor, Pages...

I was asked to create a worksheet for a teacher which involved a central graphic with blocks of text around it and with arrows from the text to parts of the graphic. I did manage to produce the document in Word OK.

But when I went to print it, the arrows got moved around so that they didn't point to the correct part of the graphic, or the correct text block, any more. Nothing I tried helped, so I gave up and switched to Pages instead.

It took me about half the time to create the document in Pages (although I already had a practice run, so don't read too much into that) and it printed perfectly. And not only did the printed version match the screen version, but the text even looked better, thanks to Pages deeper access to the Mac's advanced typography services (kerning, leading, ligatures, etc).

Here's another example, admittedly from many years ago now...

I had to create a large user manual for a program I had written. It was hundreds of pages long, had a large index, and had multiple graphics on most pages.

After about 10 or 20 pages trying to do it in Word, it had got so slow (probably because of the graphics) that scrolling was intolerable and I gave up and used Word Perfect instead (I did say this was a few years ago!)

Even after creating hundreds of pages it scrolled so fast that the content was barely visible. I completed the manual in WP and it turned out looking good, although this was before the Mac had such advanced type management, so it probably didn't look any better than it would have if I had used Word.

Then there are programs which are quite functional, but which have unfortunate licensing arrangements.

I have been seriously into photography for many years, and used Photoshop since the earliest version (I remember using version 1.07 for a while).

I bought various versions, but then Adobe decided to go to a subscription model. In other words, you have to keep paying to keep using it. Stop paying and Photoshop stops working meaning you can't open your documents any more. Who wants that?

Well, some people do, because there are two big benefits: first, you get new versions of the program for "free" because that is built into the subscription; and second, you can use Adobe cloud services for storing and sharing your documents.

But in my experience, most people don't want these "advantages", and there is little doubt that Adobe do it primarily because it is better for them, from an accounting perspective, to have a continued source of income rather than just a single payment. But that's their problem, and I don't like the new payment model either.

So I started using Affinity Photo and PixelMator Pro, which I bought for a one-time payment and have free upgrades for ever since.

Photoshop isn't a bad program, although the way it works beneath the surface is too complicated and that leads to some problems, and it feels rather big and cumbersome, although not to the same extent as Word. But that licensing was a good reason to avoid it, at least for me.

So it seems to me that there are good alternatives out there, and anyone who finds themselves becoming frustrated with a bad computer experience should consider what programs they are using, and maybe think about trying something else. There are good programs out there, which don't come from the big software companies like Microsoft and Adobe.

There is some pain in converting, but I think it is worth it in the long term. It's time to say this to Microsoft: "get ye hence, foul creature!"

Comment 1 (7323) by Anonymous on 2022-10-19 at 09:16:58:

Everyone in the world likes using Microsoft programs except for OJB. You are in the minority aren't you? Why would we listen to you instead of all the rest.

Comment 2 (7325) by OJB on 2022-10-19 at 11:22:54:

That's a good question. One answer would be because I have spent a lot of time using both Microsoft apps and the major alternatives. I have found a large majority of Microsoft product users have never used anything else, or don't even know there are options. Also, it is common for companies and organisations to require their employees to use Microsoft stuff. Why? Because that's the easy solution. They used to say no one ever got fired for buying from IBM; a similar thing now might apply to Microsoft. That doesn't imply quality though, just blind acceptance!

Comment 3 (7326) by Ken Spall on 2022-10-20 at 20:57:19:

Everyone does not “like” using Microsoft, I suspect it is more a case of Microsoft, through marketing, has become so dominant that many people don’t know any better.

Comment 4 (7327) by OJB on 2022-10-21 at 08:40:59:

It's more insidious than simple marketing. After all, I see more ads for Apple, Samsung, and Google on TV than I do Microsoft. Many people genuinely don't see an alternative. If I say I'm using a word processor they immediately think it must be Word. Well, it isn't.

Microsoft are successful, and their products work OK, so I'm not complaining (well, maybe a little bit). Apple are quite dominant in several areas too, so it's just something I accept. But it would be great if we had regulated interoperability in file formats so that people could use whatever software they wanted and still get complete compatibility.

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