[HN Gopher] New software sells new hardware, but not forever
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New software sells new hardware, but not forever
Author : redbell
Score : 46 points
Date : 2023-01-11 13:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I think that anyone interested in HW<>SW product models should
| look to this amazing company as a case study that flies counter
| to current "wisdom:"
|
| https://www.fractalaudio.com/
|
| They make the highest end guitar audio processing unit and are
| constantly providing free SW updates that greatly enhance the
| unit. No subscription BS.
| sirjaz wrote:
| If you want to sell more hw actually sell software or more
| specifically allow software to be local to the device. We have
| plenty of space and we need to utilize that hw.
| bitwize wrote:
| And this is why you build checks for recent model CPUs into your
| software, to keep the treadmill going.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "If it is not already obvious, these are somewhat conflicting
| goals. The people paying for the bulk of the work are not the
| most numerous consumers of it, and the desires of the billions of
| end-users are to a degree opposed to those of the people paying
| developers to work on it."
|
| Having projects become dependent on commercial entities is not
| always a good thing for everyone.
|
| Those getting paid by corporations to work on FOSS might argue
| it's a good thing.
|
| The corporations paying them might argue it's a good thing.
|
| The vendors to those corporations might argue it's a good thing.
|
| Developers relying on FOSS for commercial purposes might argue
| it's a good thing.
|
| Tech journalists and bloggers might believe it's a good thing
| based on what they are told.
|
| But what about end users. What is their self-interest.
|
| It is possible that for some this may not be a good thing.
|
| Thus, for end users' benefit, some non-commercial projects are
| needed.
|
| When people online start arguing that FOSS projects need
| corporate support maybe not everyone reading thinks, "Yeah, that
| would be a good thing."
|
| "For a while, things like NetBSD will come to the rescue, but it
| can't do so forever."
|
| Forever is a long time.
| scotty79 wrote:
| This reads like incoherent rambling around one thought without
| ever finding any justification for this thought.
|
| There are exactly same dynamics between hardware and software in
| free as in proprietary. The only difference is that free software
| is not sold directly. But it still is created and still acquires
| new features that need better hardware.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >This reads like incoherent rambling around one thought without
| ever finding any justification for this thought.
|
| That is the house style of The Register, yes.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I think the overarching point, if there is one, is that with
| Moore's law and Dennard scaling running out of real-world
| impact between generations, the churn of new hardware is
| becoming more forced-consumption / deck chair rearrangement on
| the software side rather than delivering value / efficiency
| that utilizes new hardware capabilities.
|
| The software industry has been slowing down with worse and
| worse runtimes, It used to basically be compiles C/C++ type
| stuff in the 80s/90s, 2000-2010s was JVM/dotNET, and now it is
| Javascript, although with Typescript the industry can probably
| get VM performance back to the JVM days. (very coarse
| paintbrush there of course).
|
| At some point the industry will need to wring out optimization
| from the software stack to get closer to hardware again. The
| good news is that hopefully dependency churn will reduce,
| because interfaces may finally become more stable, as will
| implementations. Because ye gods is dependency churn a headache
| these days. As I get older it just gets more annoying.
| livrem wrote:
| I did not really understand what they were trying to say, but I
| think the dynamics for free (especially non-commercial,
| community-driven projects) vs non-free are different The former
| do not have the same strong need to keep adding stuff beyond
| what makes sense. I am increasingly happy to see small tools
| that does what they need to do and can almost immediately move
| to maintenance-mode forever and just provide important bug-
| fixes and every now and then add support for new platforms. But
| what about progress? A fork can do that. Or some competing free
| tool.
|
| Also the link to the article by Wirth at the end of the
| article, A Plea for Lean Software, was great and I never read
| that before, so I am happy that The Register linked to it
| (https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf).
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It's interesting that he notes the power of a core2duo being
| adequate. I ran a core2duo laptop for 10 years! When I first got
| the laptop I was running 3d compositing desktops with compiz. By
| the end of it's life I was running xfce to make it usable. Same
| hardware but the software changed to the point where the computer
| fell behind.
| pjmlp wrote:
| My Asus 1215B (from 2009) also seems to have reached its end,
| even with XFCE it requires quite some patience and being quite
| spartan in open windows.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I think this might have been seen as insightful a few decades
| ago.
| criddell wrote:
| It's still insightful today. Look at all the great applications
| out there that can't simply be "done" and go into maintenance
| mode. Instead, there's a need to continue to grow so features
| are added and it seems that it's almost inevitable that
| original fans leave and the software gets fatter and slower and
| less fun to use.
|
| Evernote is the classic example and I think Obsidian is headed
| down that same path starting with the addition of canvases.
| There are exceptions though. Photoshop is still pretty relevant
| and it's been growing for decades now.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I hate bloated software too, but I don't understand how this
| connects to this post.
| criddell wrote:
| The part about software being a gas and expanding to fill
| whatever container you put it in.
| ilyt wrote:
| The _software_ doesn 't, not for probably 70%+ of user base.
| The company needs to, because they need to have excuse for
| selling new versions.
|
| How you excuse selling new version if users are using same
| old features and their use case doesn't need the new niche
| gadget new version is adding ?
|
| (you don't and just sell app as SaaS or other subscription so
| everyone have to pay you monthly)
|
| That's why I think we see the occasional "redesigns for sake
| of redesigns", designers need to excuse their employment so
| they make "new" ui, don't even test whether current users
| area actually faster doing stuff the "new" way, copy some
| recent design trend and now you have app with "new" UI
| everyone actually using for longer periods needs to waste
| time to relearn only to get to same (or worse) efficiency.
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