I truly believe (or at least hope) that 2013 will be seen as the year that software companies forgot about quality. Here are just a few examples I noticed last night and this morning:
Twitter: Today I was notified that people “favorited” some of my posts. Cool. Oh, wait, they were favorited eight days ago, but just showed up today.
Facebook: I went to tap “Like” on a friend’s Facebook post using their iPad app. Wait, there is no Like link. As I look around and posts and comments, I can’t make sense of it, but some have Like links, and others don’t.
Facebook: The iPad app is hard-coded to start in portrait mode. I noticed this several times before, but didn’t think much of it, until today. I restarted my iPad, and placed my iPad in a stand in landscape mode. I opened a few apps and they all opened properly, but when I started the Facebook app it started in portrait mode, while the iPad was sitting in landscape mode, and all other apps opened fine.
Yahoo Mail: The Yahoo Mail web app is a travesty. I fully expect to log in one day and find all of my old emails gone. There are so many things wrong with it, I’d need a few blog posts to cover it. I’m not sure if this is a result of Marissa Mayer pushing for more speed at Yahoo, or emphasizing “mobile” over “web”, but Yahoo Mail scares the crap out of me.
Netflix: The Netflix iPad app can no longer remember where I left off when watching a video, unless I take care to leave the app in the proper steps. Also, the inability to control the viewing quality (download rate) causes videos to constantly stop and restart, especially at night.
These are just the obvious quality issues I can remember off the top of my head.
For some reason these companies think it’s okay to ship products like this. With Facebook, it’s clear that they believe that they believe that “change” is more important than quality; this isn’t a new issue for them. With these other companies, I don’t know what’s going on, but it's pretty darned annoying.
books by alvin
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