▲ 3 points

Has the software market for PC slowed down to a standstill?

by itvision·4y ago·4 comments·view on hn ↗

This is kind of a weird topic, maybe a gut feeling, maybe it's not even true. It looks to me that the PC, as a computer platform, has died and ceased to be interesting and exciting.

There is plenty of evidence for this fact:

* At https://fileforum.com (previously betanews) people used to write comments, the site was active - now ... no one comments on anything at all - a ton of apps don't have comments updated for over 10 years

* At http://www.majorgeeks.com all sorts of new software used to emerge for different tasks all the time - now the site is almost dead, rare updates of this and that

* New versions of Windows were indeed new, not some dull facelift of Windows 10 -> 11

* People have long stopped caring about software versions - if it works it's okay. There used to be some genuine excitement when this or that new version of software was released.

* With the appearance of a good built-in AV in Windows the issue of viruses has ceased to be important and barely anyone talks about the topic

* The activity on software forums has dropped dramatically, but the number of people in the world is not getting any smaller.

Is the PC and software market dead? Or the explosive growth of the industry has simply stopped and people are lazily waiting for new ... games, because all the current software fully satisfies them?

What do you think? What do you feel? Has the excitement faded?

Personal opinion: It isn't safe to run software downloaded from random strangers on the internet. It requires that you blindly trust said software to do the right thing, and to never become confused either.

No person should ever be required to blindly trust a piece of software. If your OS can't make it easy for you to pick a file, and hand ONLY that file to the software for use, you shouldn't use that OS.

Your OS shouldn't trust software, and neither should you. Unfortunately, every OS you can get does the wrong thing.

Given the unacceptable risk of trying out something from the internet, is it any wonder the market for programs is collapsing?

Proprietary software is a dead-end street. It will go the way of the Dodo.

Software for the desktop as such is still getting better. It's just nothing to get hyped-up or excited about.

There's a thing called 'The Law of Diminishing Returns'.

> It's just nothing to get hyped-up or excited about.

Exactly my sentiment which is kinda sad.

personal opinion. in the year 2022 i find it hard to trust software that is to be installed on the local machine. with saas applications the barrier to entry is everything is compromised, so my expectation of privacy is different