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It took a while to find a comment that points out the cost of maintaining legacy UI.

It is highly likely that no customer is willing to pay for support of legacy anything, let alone UI.

"Jonny" sounds like the kind of person that wants to purchase software at a one-time cost, and then expect free lifetime upgrades (which include all the outrageous demands such as supporting legacy UI).

Make your own software Jonny, see how that works out for ya.

3 comments

I think Johnny sounds like the kind of person who wants to buy software once, then simply have it keep working the same way indefinitely unless he chooses to buy a newer version. The only updates Johnny wants for free are the ones that fix defects in the original product that should never have been there in the first place like security vulnerabilities.

I don't see how Johnny's position is unreasonable. If you bought a fridge or washing machine and it turned out after some years that a design flaw created a dangerous situation, you would expect (and in some places, the law would require) the original manufacturer and/or vendor to recall the product and make it right. Software developers have enjoyed a free ride on this issue for many years, which was OK when the culture was that they would issue free bug fix updates from time to time voluntarily. If that is no longer the case and they're not going to fix important problems without also forcing other changes that the user might not want, maybe it's time software developers stopped getting a free ride on shipping poor quality products in the first place.

^ This, exactly.

The legacy UI often works fine and the new UI's sole purpose is to justify the salaries of the design department. Ask any customer if they're willing to pay for a new UI and you'll likely find that they don't.

It depends on a question though. "Do you want a UI redesign?" will likely be a no. "Do you want to access the thing you're using 100 times a day in 1 click rather than 5 menus?" will always be a yes.

Unless the company is completely failing at its strategy (and that's not the same thing as many vocal people saying that on the internet forum), the redesign has goals and some reason behind it. Your "worse" may be solution to someone's ongoing problems.

> "Do you want to access the thing you're using 100 times a day in 1 click rather than 5 menus?"

Usually, that's an argument for the old version

We tend to underestimate the value that a decent UI/UX professional can bring to a software product. Users typically hate changes (change aversion is in the human nature) and will hardly notice any improvements. But try to install an older piece of software, say, Microsoft Word 97 and compare usability to the current version. Don't pick one feature, look at it from a daily usage perspective. I bet you'll find a ton of improvements and think "huh, I had no idea it was so painful to work with Word 97"...

Actually launched Word97 recently. Surprisingly good UX, at least for simple documents

And I'd bet I wouldn't. I'd bet a considerable amount. I'd bet I'd find that features I want to access are inexplicably hidden frequently.

> maintaining legacy UI.

Do you mean like the legacy UI for older MS office (2010 may be) replaced by ribbon. I recently read that next office versions are going back to non-ribbon interface.

> "Jonny" sounds like the kind of person that wants to purchase software at a one-time cost, and then expect free lifetime upgrades (which include all the outrageous demands such as supporting legacy UI).

Sure. Ideally everyone follows RHEL - the UI stays the same old GTK/GNOME. Only the kernel updates/security can be backported. Do not touch anything else.

(But I mean marketing departments do not have anything new to show then..)