Re:Why The New Gmail Sucks
by twistedpair on Monday September 23, 2013 @11:35AM
(#6431636)
Because it's a web application. In the old days, you could use that old version of said software until your motherboard gave out 15 years later. However, today there is only ONE version of Gmail. Everyone has to use that version. Hence one person's "New Feature" will be another person's reason to cry. The cost of keeping X versions of Gmail in production is just too prohibitive.
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If this is true, then to me it's a reason not to use web applications. (And I don't, for the most part; I still run KDE 3 on Linux, and use KMail to read email. The only web applications I use routinely are for things like paying bills, where I have no choice but to use the web UI for the bank or credit card company or whatever. And every so often those change and I have to re-learn things for no good reason.)
How much is the cost of updating the old interface once in a while when the backend API's change? They don't need to keep improving to versions in parallel, just keep the old one working is good enough.