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I seem to be seeing more and more people complaining in the last few years. Different people have different points at which they seem to feel that they've just Had Enough.
At the moment, Gmail users are being forced into the new interface. I ran it for months but in the end I went back to the old look. I had to do some fairly serious munging of my contacts list after a couple of forced rapid switches to new mobile phones, and the old interface made it easier. Last week, the choice was removed; now we all have the new look, like it or lump it.
A large and vocal portion of Ubuntu Linux users hate the new, Mac OS X-like Unity desktop and have been complaining about it, loudly, since it became an option in version 11.04 - a year ago - and mandatory in 11.10, last October. That's probably about to get a lot louder this week as the new Long Term Support release comes out on Thursday and millions of users of the two-year-old Ubuntu 10.04 upgrade to 12.04 and get the new desktop.
I'm fine with Unity. I actually prefer it. But then, I've been an occasional Mac OS X user for a decade and a Mac user since 1988. I'm used to switching between desktops and the Launcher is just another Dock. However, I know many people - smart, skilled, competent people - who just cannot adapt. They're deserting to GNOME 3, or its Fallback Mode, or to Xfce or LXDE or to Linux Mint's Cinnamon. Ubuntu might be fragmenting. I think this might just accelerate with the new release.
And of course every time Facebook changes its interface, it's as if a million voices cried out in terror... then gradually fell silent as, in most cases, they just got on with it, with occasional grumbling.
I've weathered all these. Some are OK, some have good bits, most -- no, all have crap bits. But I can use them. I'm not above mocking those who can't adapt sometimes, which is bad and wrong of me.
But then recently I realised that I too have met an upgrade that I cannot stomach and which is going to cause me significant problems soon: the "Fluent interface" of Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. I find it completely unusable; it doesn't lessen my productivity, it destroys it - I can't navigate the new UI at all. It's taken me about five years to learn how to find where they moved "Help | About" to, a critically-important function for a support worker such as myself.
I literally can't use it. I habitually turn off all the toolbars in my own copies of Office and navigate it solely by menus, controlled from the keyboard. (It's probably worth noting that I pretty much exclusively use Word; the other components of MS Office are pointless freebies to me. I used to use Excel maybe once every two or three months; now I tend to use Google Docs for that, or occasionally LibreOffice Calc.)
I've spent decades learning my way around Office inside-out. I can talk nervous users through it blind, over the phone; I know what keys to press to get what pane of what dialog box to twiddle what obscure option that will solve their problem.
And it's all gone. In Office 2007 et seq, none of the UI I know backwards is left. Nothing works any more.
The third-party OpenOffice and LibreOffice are vastly more usable than the new version of the same product from the same company; at least in them, alt-T, W or alt-E, S still do what I need every few lines.
And now, Ubuntu is considering getting rid of menus, replacing them with "the HUD", an interface centred around typing command words. It feels like a huge step backwards to me.
But is it just me? Is it, as a friend put it recently, a case of "jaded old hack fails to master new technology"? Am I getting too old to adapt? Or is there a spirit of pervasive change here, notably in the last 10 years or so, where working products are being changed for no visible reason to things that just work much less well?
Obviously, I'd like to think it wasn't me getting past it. If I have to work with Office '10 every day, I guess I will adapt, slowly and painfully and hatefully and resentfully.
But I'd like to know. Is this a general feeling?
At the moment, Gmail users are being forced into the new interface. I ran it for months but in the end I went back to the old look. I had to do some fairly serious munging of my contacts list after a couple of forced rapid switches to new mobile phones, and the old interface made it easier. Last week, the choice was removed; now we all have the new look, like it or lump it.
A large and vocal portion of Ubuntu Linux users hate the new, Mac OS X-like Unity desktop and have been complaining about it, loudly, since it became an option in version 11.04 - a year ago - and mandatory in 11.10, last October. That's probably about to get a lot louder this week as the new Long Term Support release comes out on Thursday and millions of users of the two-year-old Ubuntu 10.04 upgrade to 12.04 and get the new desktop.
I'm fine with Unity. I actually prefer it. But then, I've been an occasional Mac OS X user for a decade and a Mac user since 1988. I'm used to switching between desktops and the Launcher is just another Dock. However, I know many people - smart, skilled, competent people - who just cannot adapt. They're deserting to GNOME 3, or its Fallback Mode, or to Xfce or LXDE or to Linux Mint's Cinnamon. Ubuntu might be fragmenting. I think this might just accelerate with the new release.
And of course every time Facebook changes its interface, it's as if a million voices cried out in terror... then gradually fell silent as, in most cases, they just got on with it, with occasional grumbling.
I've weathered all these. Some are OK, some have good bits, most -- no, all have crap bits. But I can use them. I'm not above mocking those who can't adapt sometimes, which is bad and wrong of me.
But then recently I realised that I too have met an upgrade that I cannot stomach and which is going to cause me significant problems soon: the "Fluent interface" of Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. I find it completely unusable; it doesn't lessen my productivity, it destroys it - I can't navigate the new UI at all. It's taken me about five years to learn how to find where they moved "Help | About" to, a critically-important function for a support worker such as myself.
I literally can't use it. I habitually turn off all the toolbars in my own copies of Office and navigate it solely by menus, controlled from the keyboard. (It's probably worth noting that I pretty much exclusively use Word; the other components of MS Office are pointless freebies to me. I used to use Excel maybe once every two or three months; now I tend to use Google Docs for that, or occasionally LibreOffice Calc.)
I've spent decades learning my way around Office inside-out. I can talk nervous users through it blind, over the phone; I know what keys to press to get what pane of what dialog box to twiddle what obscure option that will solve their problem.
And it's all gone. In Office 2007 et seq, none of the UI I know backwards is left. Nothing works any more.
The third-party OpenOffice and LibreOffice are vastly more usable than the new version of the same product from the same company; at least in them, alt-T, W or alt-E, S still do what I need every few lines.
And now, Ubuntu is considering getting rid of menus, replacing them with "the HUD", an interface centred around typing command words. It feels like a huge step backwards to me.
But is it just me? Is it, as a friend put it recently, a case of "jaded old hack fails to master new technology"? Am I getting too old to adapt? Or is there a spirit of pervasive change here, notably in the last 10 years or so, where working products are being changed for no visible reason to things that just work much less well?
Obviously, I'd like to think it wasn't me getting past it. If I have to work with Office '10 every day, I guess I will adapt, slowly and painfully and hatefully and resentfully.
But I'd like to know. Is this a general feeling?
