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Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by ryandrake on Monday August 26, 2019 @07:25PM (#20804737)
Most of these are similar manifestations of the same root evil (not specific to Microsoft): Users don’t want Feature X but Company wants users to want Feature X. They release Feature X to the world. It’s a failure—nobody uses it. The PM or developers who invested in that feature need to justify the investment. So they make Feature X enabled by default. Users disable it. So they remove the disable option. Users ignore it. They add flashing notifications begging users to use it. They’re ignored too. They give Feature X a prominent, always on button right on the main screen. They add more keyboard and mouse shortcuts so there are more ways to invoke Feature X. They add dedicate hardware keys/buttons to invoke Feature X. They add full-screen reminders to remind users Feature X is so cool! They even make it so it’s easy to invoke Feature X by accident. While these things may slightly juice Feature X’s usage metrics, it just never takes off because users fundamentally don’t want it and nobody wants to admit failure.

Look at the software your company makes and I bet you can quickly find an example of this. It’s everywhere and it’s shameful.

Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by paxys on Monday August 26, 2019 @11:20PM (#20806057)
This is painfully accurate, and in my experience working at large companies it will always be a "pet feature" of some executive, who is pushing it through ignoring all the data, user research or any other process that the company has in place. And all the rank-and-file employees have no choice but to roll their eyes and spend time and energy working on it while ignoring actual bugs and highly-requested features because it couldn't get prioritized high enough.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by aksss on Monday August 26, 2019 @10:06PM (#20805711)
Are you talking about Cortana right now? Cuz it sounds like you’re talking about Cortana.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by 59nadir on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @02:45AM (#20806882)
I actually wanted to like Cortana and really tried, but between the service actually being down, somehow not being available just from my device other times and the phone assistant app straight up not being available in my region it was just never good enough to like.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by crooked-v on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @05:20PM (#20814488)
Also the general 'search the web from the start menu' weird ess.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by arunpuri on Monday August 26, 2019 @08:36PM (#20805168)
Well said! Reminded me of Bixby!
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by dreamcompiler on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @01:38AM (#20806627)
And that's the story of Google+.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by Mauricio_ on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @07:19AM (#20808324)
>They add dedicate hardware keys/buttons to invoke Feature X

Okay now you're exaggerating... oh wait, that's literally the Bixby button on my phone.

Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by cannonedhamster on Monday August 26, 2019 @09:26PM (#20805475)
My company makes no software people don't want. I'm actually sort of surprised because my company is exactly the type of company that one would expect to do such a thing. I suspect it's more likely that we're not mature enough yet to have someone justify stupid options rather than benevolence.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by saagarjha on Monday August 26, 2019 @11:39PM (#20806138)
What company is this?
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by ilaksh on Monday August 26, 2019 @09:42PM (#20805580)
I think the solution is to have competition but everyone has given up on that because they like compatibility or something.
Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by pjc50 on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @05:23AM (#20807668)
Compatibility is absolutely essential; that's why there's only room for about two and a bit mobile OSs.

Competition can only work for things that are componentised and un-bundled. Since both profitability and security work against this, we end up with competing monoliths where you have to take the entire bundle of features and anti-features.

Re:Useless Windows 10 Features by NikkiA on Tuesday August 27, 2019 @03:52AM (#20807218)
Competition doesn't necessarily imply that it bypasses sunk cost fallacy, or even that the competition won't do the same nonsense in a belief that feature X must be wanted.

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