Soft Stuff Rant

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By Susan Kirkland on May 21, 2010 4:34 PM
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Please buy our $1000 product for all the wonderful things it will do with your inspiration. It will make you feel like an artist. Yes, it will occasionally and unexpectedly quit, causing you to lose everything you created in a day, but we've remedied this with a cute saying, Save Often Stupid, which puts the blame elsewhere. The real irony is that when you want to quit, our software will sometimes crash, causing an additional waste of precious time.

We realize we are the only industry that can sell an expensive product without working out all the bugs; that's because you can't test-drive a car without tires, brush your teeth without bristles in your toothbrush, or use a nail without a point so it's understandable a sale would not result without working out those bugs. But, in fact, offering a free trial gives us the advantage; thirty days is just long enough to enjoy all the good things we've built into the stuff but not nearly long enough to locate all the bugs. The fact that we don't know where all the bugs are in our product in no way makes us liable. In fact, once you open that cellophane, you own it because there are no returns. Now, you may think this is unfair; and to this sentiment, we say with great empathy and complete and utter understanding, tough cookies.

In the interim, we have created another useful tool (at no extra charge) called a crash report. Each time our software suddenly quits in the middle of some minor command or simple execution, a window will pop up reassuring you that we know it has quit-don't give it a second thought (or in more famous Douglas Adams words, "Don't Panic"), because we knew this would happen. We know you are eager and willing to spend your time on our behalf, working to fill out this report so that we can remedy the problem and sell it to you the next time we release a new version. In some cultures, this would be considered pseudo internment or auto appropriation of labor; but we think it's for the good of the world, so pitch in and help us make a better product to enrich our wealth even more the next time you buy it, you poor wretched sap. "Thanks for all the fish."

Would you buy a presentation with missing words? Would you buy a car with an absent door? Would you knowingly buy a defective product? Probably not if you could see that it was defective prior to handing over your money. Yes, software is a wonderful thing. But it's one of the few products that cost hundreds of dollars and is released long before it is perfected to keep that cash flowing into the coffers of Silicon Valley . . . for the good of mankind, right, you cheeky monopoly monkeys. Thank you, I feel so much better.

Special thanks to Luc for the topic.

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