Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Does anyone actually test their product any more?

The subject here could easily be Apple again, but what triggered my tech anger most recently was imdb this time (er... and WordPress' piece of shit iOS app). Has anyone at imdb ever bothered to try writing a review on their own website, via Safari on iOS? I'm pretty sure they haven't. Wouldn't it be nice if they had some kind of feedback system that didn't require users to create yet another internet account on yet another 3rd-party website just to make a comment (that will be ignored by imdb) on a user forum about site problems?

I keep seeing shit like that... utterly broken websites and software features (and countless mistakes and typos in "news" articles) that just beg the question "did anyone actually check this before publishing it??"

Then there are the walls that these entities build between themselves and the outside world. The walls of callous disregard and arrogant isolation between themselves and the human beings actually using their broken products, ensuring as little interaction with said users as possible.

Go ahead, try contacting a human being at Google, or imdb, of Facebook, or a dozen dozen other tech entities...

Expertise is dead, and QA has been murdered as a way to avoid it being pointed out.

Taking one step further: customer service is nonexistent, especially on "free services". These companies hate interacting with their product (that's you). Even the users of paid products are treated like non-entities by most of these companies.

Congratulations tech industry. You've made an art out of antisocial behavior and successfully convinced most of the world (and all of the USA) that you should be excused from the most basic of expectations about your product. The tech business is the ultimate demonstration of unregulated, unaccountable business. No wonder there are so many libertarians in tech news comment forums...