[lp0_on_fire]

Let's hope not, thank you.

It's one thing to force an update that just makes background improvements. It's another thing entirely to force a UI update that breaks your workflow.

Most of us just got the people we support used to the new design now they're going to up and change it completely again.

My Grandmother has basically given up using the computer because she doesn't have the mental energy to relearn a UI every time some MBA comes along wanting to "disrupt" the status quo.

It's basically akin to the company that manufactures your car showing up at your house while you're sleeping, moving the steering wheel to the center of the car, re-arranging buttons on the console, blacking out two of the windows because it looks cool, then leaving a nice little note on your front porch: "We upgraded your car, it's so much better!"

[JoshTriplett]

Software developers around the world don't have to build software compatible with your old car, and get blamed for any incompatibility.

There have already been posts showing that there's an option to put the start menu back on the left if you want that. Hopefully there will be options to deal with other inconveniences. As it stands, this already looks like it fixes many of the complaints people had about Windows 10; in that regard, parts of it are exactly what many people asked for.

I don't want people to deal with a UI they dislike. I also don't want developers having to deal with a no-longer-evergreen OS. Windows was the last OS to move to the evergreen model; when Windows 10 came out, it was a great relief to many developers, who saw a point on the horizon where there was only one version of Windows they would have to support, and it would always be up to date.

Remember, the alternative isn't just "oh well, I guess we'll support Windows 10 and Windows 11". One alternative is "guess we'll build a web app instead", or "guess we'll drop support for Windows 10" (in which case people still need to upgrade, but they blame app developers instead of Windows).

I'm sure the option will exist to not upgrade, at least for a while. But if the default is to upgrade, app developers get much less of the blame if they expect and depend on that upgrade.

[lp0_on_fire]

> Software developers around the world don't have to build software compatible with your old car, and get blamed for any incompatibility.

That sounds like a problem for software developers, not my grandmother. Now she can't use _any_ software because she has to relearn the OS every few years. She doesn't have that much time left on this earth and I don't blame her for not wanting to expend the mental energy on learning something that's just gonna change for no apparent reason a few years down the road.

[cjaybo]

As an audio application developer who still supports users on OSX 10.6.8, I have to ask, what is this about "Windows was the last OS to move to the evergreen model"? Do the breaking changes in MacOS version updates somehow not count anymore?

If developers don't want to support multiple versions of an OS, there are plenty of domains where that isn't an issue. The desktop seems like a weird place to complain about this issue, though, since this is a challenge inherent in the fact that users have choices and freedoms.

Completely disagree with your attitude here.

[JoshTriplett]

I'm not suggesting that apps should drop such support instantaneously or gratuitously. Rather, I'm just suggesting that in the normal course of development, as an OS version becomes sufficiently old and has genuine issues that make support non-trivial, and if the upgrade to a newer version is free and automatic (so it's reasonable to expect people to upgrade), an app developer may at some point say "we expect at least this OS version; if you're using an older version, you're welcome to try, but we don't test on those OS versions so we can't offer any support or respond to bug reports from those OS versions".

I absolutely believe that the "you're welcome to try" part of that is important, assuming there's no known issue (which there may sometimes be). Developers also have an upper bound on available support bandwidth. I don't think apps (or websites) should prevent users from even trying, unless there's some specific technical reason (e.g. a known incompatibility that's producing substantial support burden just to triage, or a library or API that simply doesn't exist on the older version). I do think it's reasonable to say "please upgrade and try again, and if you're still experiencing the issue we'll take a look".

Along the same lines, if a user reports an issue to a website where it doesn't function properly in Chrome 12, or Firefox 9, it's entirely reasonable for the site to respond with "please upgrade, we don't support outdated browsers". It's a little more questionable for a site to say that about a version released the previous month, unless the site is a tech demo for bleeding-edge technology. But at no point do I think a site should actually block users attempting to use older browsers; at most, it's reasonable to show a "not supported or tested, might not work" message.

[stonogo]

Cars have standards for user interfaces to prevent exactly this problem.

[rurp]

I agree with this 100% and it blows my mind that so many in tech take the opposite stance. For the people who just see a computer as a tool, which is probably the vast majority of users, they just want it to work and then get out of their way. Very few are interested in spending a bunch of time relearning a new UI just to keep up with the latest design fad.

All of this bias towards churn is probably great for my career options so I guess that's something. But stories like this make me really feel for the millions of less tech-interested users who get frustrated by big changes like this. Within the tech bubble it's easy to forget how many things we take for granted as simple are actually quite hard for many people.