Can software get any better or is it stuck?
Notice anything different about new versions of software these days? Is it just us - or does it seem like there are fewer and fewer reasons to upgrade?
22 August 2007
Anyone with a reasonably long memory can point to some pretty innovative advances in software over the last few years. WYSIWYG editing in word processors, multiple undo as standard, layers in PhotoShop – and so on. While these might not seem exactly earth-shattering features today, at the time they were innovations that really raised the bar.
Let’s face it, most software companies have been doing a pretty good job and the applications that we have at our disposal today are immensely powerful. In fact, they may well be getting a little too powerful for their own good, for two reasons. First, the more feature-complete an application is, the harder it is to innovate and add in features (try as people might, no one’s really been able to ‘build a better mousetrap’). Second, the better an application is, the less reason people have to upgrade anyway – because what they have is ‘good enough’. In some cases, what they have is already far more sophisticated than they actually need.
Here are a couple of examples. Good though Adobe’s new Creative Suite is, it doesn’t really move the plot on that much further than the previous version. In each one of the applications there are a few tweaks and perhaps one really useful feature. Of course, for Intel Mac users, Adobe CS3 is the first version to be a Universal Binary, so upgrading is pretty much mandatory. For Windows users, the advantages of Adobe CS3 are far less clear – it’s not going to raise productivity by 50% for instance, and, in a commercial environment, new software has to provide some kind of payback. Second, let’s look at Windows Vista. OK, it’s selling reasonably well, but not as well as it should be. In fact, Dell has bowed to pressure to provide Windows XP as an alternative. Why? Is it because Vista is rubbish? Not at all, Vista is an excellent upgrade – especially from a security perspective. No, it’s because Windows XP is itself excellent, and once you remove the visual gloss, for most people who aren’t concerned with what goes on under the bonnet, it doesn’t really do much that you can’t do with XP – although perhaps with some additional add-ins, such as a desktop search programme. To such users, Vista simply looks over-egged, not feature-rich.
Some software development seems to be caught in something of a trap, where new versions are incrementally better, but only in an evolutionary sort of a way.
A good example of software that’s had a head-to-toe rethink is Office 2007. Setting aside whether you like the new interface, at least Office 2007 represents a bold rethink as to how software applications should be used. In fact, Office is a good example of how, when you’re not adding in that much in the way of really new features, a lot of innovation can change the way that almost everything is done.
But is this enough? And if it is, where does the Office team take the product next? Is the main reason for upgrading simply to have the ‘latest and greatest’ software – this year’s model?
Why, after more than two decade of computing, do users have to ‘save’ files, when it’s well known that many people lose hours’ of work when the PC crashes and they forget to save? Why don’t applications auto-save? Why can’t all of your undos/versions remain in the file, even after you close it and re-open it? Why do PC disk drives still have drive letters? Why do Windows, the Mac and Linux still use file systems that, at their core, are more than a decade old – instead of a real object-orientated database?
There are some examples of software making these kind of leaps – take Adobe’s Lightroom for example. You use Lightroom to store, sort, edit and print digital photos. But the really neat thing is that all of your edits are performed non-destructively – that is to say, not on the actual files themselves. The edits are kept in a separate database, which means that the original files are unaffected – in fact, you can step back through all the versions at any time, regardless of how long it was since you made the edit. And, best of all, you don’t have to remember to press the save key – it does it for you. Another example is Apple’s forthcoming backup application, Time Machine. Although the world is awash with backup applications, they all require the user to do one thing – perform a backup. Yes, you can automate things, but the backup is still an ‘event’ which takes place at a specific time. And, you have to generally say what you do and don’t want to have backed up. Apple’s logic is that users never remember to back things up, and never know what is and is not important to back up. So, it performs backups of everything, all the time. You can go back and get an entire file, or, better still, see inside files for changes and then restore specific changes. Yes, you can do something ‘similar’ with Vista, using shadow copies, but this is turned off by default, is limited to files only, and makes a backup only once a day. It’s far less powerful, far less flexible – and, at the end of the day, far less likely to be used. Apple’s approach is innovative, using common sense to address a common problem, despite there being no shortage of alternative backup applications.
Another route for innovation is the field of on-line applications, which will use a pay-as-you-go model, for browser-based tools. Both Google and Microsoft are building up Web-based office suites and even Apple is planning to deliver an on-line PhotoShop. The bottom line, though, is that these applications, good are they are, fall far short of the feature set of traditional applications – so you’re getting a perverse kind of innovation which actually delivers less functionality than you get now. Both Adobe’s Apollo and Google’s Gears provide a different kind of innovation: Web browsers which can be used off-line as well as on-line.
Microsoft is even producing a new version of Works, which is expected to be free – because it carries in-line advertising. This may well earn Microsoft more than just selling it, and will provide a good free application suite for many people.
Microsoft’s ‘Surface’ does look interesting, providing a whole new way of using a computer – without having to use a tool such as a mouse, and, for many things, a keyboard. If the technology is robust, simple to use and well-designed, it could provide a more natural way of working with a computer – though of course the demonstrations feature graphically obvious examples such as sorting and printing photographs, rather than adding-in cells on a spreadsheet. But, for a company which is not renowned for creating ‘cool’ products, ‘cool’ is exactly what Surface is.
The current state of play is something of a mixed bag. The more mature applications and operating systems are definitely moving forward more sluggishly now that they are feature-rich and scope for innovation is as much in how things are done as it is in what is done. But there is always room for innovation and a fresh approach – but it does take bold thinking. Perhaps if Microsoft decided to turn the ‘how we use computers’ idea upside down – as it did with Office – we might see a radically different version of Windows.
