I agree. I've always seen 'users' as simply a term for 'people who use my software'.

It's a bit like when a local airline here once spent millions in branding research, and started calling their passengers 'customers'. It was really odd to be sitting at the airport and hear the call "XYZ Airline would like to advise all customers on flight 123 that their aircraft is ready for boarding through gate 6"...

I always think of the term 'passenger' in more romantic terms, whereas 'customer' seems more mundane. FWIW, the airline seems to have dropped that branding now, and have reverted to calling their, ahem, passengers as 'passengers'.

In Sydney, the public transport trains refer to all of their passengers as "customers" as well.

Every single time I am referred to by that name over the PA it weirds me out. Maybe if this was a private system, but for public transport? Customer is just the wrong word.

When I was in jail they referred to me as a "client" which I thought was rather odd.

If you paid money for your trip, you're a customer.

Don’t they use that in the UK everywhere?

Totally agree. Besides, if we're talking semantics, shouldn't it be "people, not humans."

Yes, these users are human beings but outside of academic settings, who ever calls someone a "human?"

Robots

A friend of mine once pointed out that "Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers users." I don't think he was attempting to disparage the practice and I don't sit on one side or the other with the term. I do think it's interesting though. Drugs and software and their usage are kind of similar in their human interaction. It's very personal with a short hop from the provider to consumer's brain.