Piece of shit software - Crappy software/apps/programs that make you MATI

[Mario Incandenza]

Final Draft. Fuck this piece of shit. Fade In and hell Kit Scenarist are better screenwriting tools.

Also Sibelius, there's literally hundreds of notation programs that are better.

Fucking Sibelius. I use MuseScore 2. Apparently that's quite an old version and 3 is out, but it suits my needs so well that I never even bothered to upgrade.

I don't think it's crap, but Blender has (or had) a terrible UI that makes it really hard to do anything.

This sounds like something a seasoned 3D designer would say. I haven't used it for much besides modeling some animes, but it seemed okay.

 

[moocow]

Never used macOS, but at least Linux and macOS intertwine at least somewhat. Windows just doesn't work like those two at all and that's what makes it all a little more painful. It's just not worth it. I have no love for Windows anymore.

MacOS is dog shit. Non-standard paths for everything ("/Libraries" instead of "/usr/lib"), a shitty filesystem, a walled-garden mentality throughout, a UI that does everything it can to get in the way of getting real work done and provides minimal useful tools out-of-the-box. Installing homebrew is the only way to get reasonable functionality out of a Mac if you need to use it for anything besides running expensive photo or video editing software on it.

And don't let anyone fool you -- MacOS is nothing like Linux and Apple only begrudgingly pays lip service to interoperability with OSS because letting neckbeards install unsupported software on their machines and saying "lol you're on your own" is better than giving them a reason to buy cheaper, more capable hardware that runs actually-useful software from elsewhere else.

Apple continues to release updates for their computers to this day that literally brick even recently-released hardware. Their own fucking hardware that they literally control top-to-bottom from design to manufacturing. And if an update bricks your expensive flimsy laptop, you get to pay $99 to have an "Apple genius" patronize you for half an hour before they wave some magic wand at it to "reset" the security firmware that got vaporized by the update.

I started at a new job last year and the company spent a small fortune setting everybody up with fancy Macbook Pro's, dual displays, "magic keyboards" ... the works. The devs all fucking hate them. One of them is so flaky it won't even power on if anything is plugged into any port, including the power cable. Every time he plugs in his external monitors (via a mandatory Thunderbird adapter), they switch sides even though he plugged in the cable in exactly the same port. And if he tells it to shut down and power off, it'll do so initially but overnight it'll turn itself back on and drain its battery down to 0%. Then it won't power on again until the battery has charged to at least 10%. Mind you this was brand-new hardware (i.e. we took it out of the shrink wrap) that's still less than a year old.

This was my first experience with modern macs as well, and although I've tried hard to get used to it and just "make it work," I finally got fed up with the fucking thing two weeks ago and successfully made the case for having them just buy me an HP laptop I can slap Linux on in 20 minutes and be productive with within the hour. Better specs too, and at a third of the price.

Fuck Apple. Grrrr.

 

[stares at error messages]

The source trees of web browsers are intentionally disorganized nonsense bullshit to discourage casual developers from forking them. It's not just that Branden Ike, Trannies et al can't spell for shit. Chromium tree sucks too.

 

[Bongocat]

I was setting up a home media server and was recommended Ampache. After several hours of just trying to make it work on a basic level, I was astounded by just how alien and cumbersome the interface was. Even just getting it to recognize that you HAD videos you could play was a labyrinthian nightmare. On top of that, the half the buttons seemed to just not do anything. Play buttons would randomly fail for certain media types with no feedback at all as to why. Even when you knew how to play media, it wasn't easy. My goal was to use this on a mobile device and the webapp AND MOBILE APP just gives you the fucking desktop layout with microscopic buttons crammed right next to eachother and it wants you to copy out urls manually in an external media player client every time you want to play something. Ripped that shit out of my server and I warn you all to never touch it.

Normally I just give up on bad software and move on, but this shit gave me such a migraine that I am now MATI and have a headache and I'm going to bed.

Installed Jellyfin and it seems lovely though.

 

[Finder]

Linux, specifically as a desktop OS. Desktop Linux is an awful amalgamation of shitty, half finished software by people who don't understand the most fundamental design aspects. It's a fragile, frustrating experience, a waste of productive time, and I absolutely hate dealing with it.

Also JIRA, fuck JIRA, I don't think I have to even explain this one.

 

[DamnWolves!]

This might be too broad but ANY Microsoft program. Seriously, can they do anything besides fuck up?

Offhand:

• MS Teams regularly breaks or freezes and it somehow uses more RAM than Chrome with 15 tabs open. Their phone app regularly drops calls before I've had a chance to answer them (it'll show up on screen for a split second) and I have to run to my laptop so I don't miss them. Sometimes, it will continue playing the ringtone after I've already answered the call.
• Outlook routinely tells me I don't have permission to attach a file I've just saved in my local 'Documents' folder. I have to close Outlook before it will work again.
• A recent update removed all of the individual O365 program entries from my start menu in favor of some shitty 'Office' app that you're supposed to launch first, then click on the office bloatware app you're supposed to launch.
• Excel is probably the best of the bunch, but for some reason it still has a million row limit instead of being able to scale with RAM. This means I have to break large datasets up into multiple CSV files, combine them with a query, and pivot them to work with them.
• Sometimes if I've had Office open for a while, it will just flat out refuse to open the options menu until I shut every Office program down.
• Macros are super powerful, but they're still written in VBA, an arcane language useless for any other purpose. For whatever reason, there is no JS or C# option, even though Microsoft built the latter and has pushed it for years.
• My favorite: every 5 days, everything unauthenticates itself and I have to go through the "confirm through texting me a code" thing 5 different times, even though it's all one account (once for Teams, once for Outlook, once for SharePoint, once for Office and once for OneDrive). I have to do this on both my laptop and my phone. I need to space them out, since asking for a code too often will lock me out. Sometimes it does this when I'm in the middle of using the application. If I don't notice this, there is no notification on my phone that it has signed itself out, meaning I won't get emails or messages or calls on my phone until I get suspicious and manually open one of those apps.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Also JIRA, fuck JIRA, I don't think I have to even explain this one.

Hey, new kid, welcome to the team. Can you go search for a jira for me?
*splutters with barely contained laughter* There he goes.

 

[Chocolate Wombat]

Offhand:

• MS Teams regularly breaks or freezes and it somehow uses more RAM than Chrome with 15 tabs open. Their phone app regularly drops calls before I've had a chance to answer them (it'll show up on screen for a split second) and I have to run to my laptop so I don't miss them. Sometimes, it will continue playing the ringtone after I've already answered the call.
• Outlook routinely tells me I don't have permission to attach a file I've just saved in my local 'Documents' folder. I have to close Outlook before it will work again.
• A recent update removed all of the individual O365 program entries from my start menu in favor of some shitty 'Office' app that you're supposed to launch first, then click on the office bloatware app you're supposed to launch.
• Excel is probably the best of the bunch, but for some reason it still has a million row limit instead of being able to scale with RAM. This means I have to break large datasets up into multiple CSV files, combine them with a query, and pivot them to work with them.
• Sometimes if I've had Office open for a while, it will just flat out refuse to open the options menu until I shut every Office program down.
• Macros are super powerful, but they're still written in VBA, an arcane language useless for any other purpose. For whatever reason, there is no JS or C# option, even though Microsoft built the latter and has pushed it for years.
• My favorite: every 5 days, everything unauthenticates itself and I have to go through the "confirm through texting me a code" thing 5 different times, even though it's all one account (once for Teams, once for Outlook, once for SharePoint, once for Office and once for OneDrive). I have to do this on both my laptop and my phone. I need to space them out, since asking for a code too often will lock me out. Sometimes it does this when I'm in the middle of using the application. If I don't notice this, there is no notification on my phone that it has signed itself out, meaning I won't get emails or messages or calls on my phone until I get suspicious and manually open one of those apps.

My work has switched to some idiotic Microsoft single sign on for all of the web-based apps we use. Some part of it goes down at least once a week rendering anything from a handful of apps to hundreds of them inoperable, during peak business hours no less. This is a large corporation, so it's hundreds of affected employees when this happens, if not thousands.

Christ only knows why they switched to this, it's been a disaster. Thankfully my department doesn't provide support for this tech issue, we just explain to users their apps are down and the department responsible is working on fixing the issue.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

MacOS is dog shit. Non-standard paths for everything ("/Libraries" instead of "/usr/lib"), a shitty filesystem, a walled-garden mentality throughout, a UI that does everything it can to get in the way of getting real work done and provides minimal useful tools out-of-the-box. Installing homebrew is the only way to get reasonable functionality out of a Mac if you need to use it for anything besides running expensive photo or video editing software on it.

And don't let anyone fool you -- MacOS is nothing like Linux and Apple only begrudgingly pays lip service to interoperability with OSS because letting neckbeards install unsupported software on their machines and saying "lol you're on your own" is better than giving them a reason to buy cheaper, more capable hardware that runs actually-useful software from elsewhere else.

Apple continues to release updates for their computers to this day that literally brick even recently-released hardware. Their own fucking hardware that they literally control top-to-bottom from design to manufacturing. And if an update bricks your expensive flimsy laptop, you get to pay $99 to have an "Apple genius" patronize you for half an hour before they wave some magic wand at it to "reset" the security firmware that got vaporized by the update.

I started at a new job last year and the company spent a small fortune setting everybody up with fancy Macbook Pro's, dual displays, "magic keyboards" ... the works. The devs all fucking hate them. One of them is so flaky it won't even power on if anything is plugged into any port, including the power cable. Every time he plugs in his external monitors (via a mandatory Thunderbird adapter), they switch sides even though he plugged in the cable in exactly the same port. And if he tells it to shut down and power off, it'll do so initially but overnight it'll turn itself back on and drain its battery down to 0%. Then it won't power on again until the battery has charged to at least 10%. Mind you this was brand-new hardware (i.e. we took it out of the shrink wrap) that's still less than a year old.

This was my first experience with modern macs as well, and although I've tried hard to get used to it and just "make it work," I finally got fed up with the fucking thing two weeks ago and successfully made the case for having them just buy me an HP laptop I can slap Linux on in 20 minutes and be productive with within the hour. Better specs too, and at a third of the price.

Fuck Apple. Grrrr.

Hardware isn't better either.

The keyboard is super flimsy and little, and the trackpad is the same basic one they sold 10 years ago.

 

[DamnWolves!]

My work has switched to some idiotic Microsoft single sign on for all of the web-based apps we use. Some part of it goes down at least once a week rendering anything from a handful of apps to hundreds of them inoperable, during peak business hours no less. This is a large corporation, so it's hundreds of affected employees when this happens, if not thousands.

Christ only knows why they switched to this, it's been a disaster. Thankfully my department doesn't provide support for this tech issue, we just explain to users their apps are down and the department responsible is working on fixing the issue.

It's either Azure AD or just the regular Microsoft SSO. Frankly, Microsoft has a huge problem with bloat in its catalogue, such that there's:

1. Lots of different programs called the same thing--Azure is different from Azure DevOps, which is different from Azure AD, which is different from Azure Cloud Compute. I get that they want it to be a brand, but it's like if Adobe called everything "Photoshop". Look at this shit; these are all the different Azure products the person you're talking to might be referring to.
2. or, a bunch of programs that used to be different, but now serve the exact same purpose. There's like 15 different products your company could have bought that include SSO, and they all work slightly differently.

A lot can be mitigated in the settings, but they turn shit on or lock people out of settings without thinking about how that will affect everyone's day. Why can't I use a PIN instead of the password they force me to reset every 90 days? Do they know how many people write it on sticky notes because people can only keep so many 8-10 random character strings in their heads?

I think part of the problem is that the "tech employees" all have their computers set to administrator mode and they don't realize how fuckin' painful it is for everyone else, or it's that all the tech employees are running Linux. I wish I could tell you stories about some of the incredibly dumb things they've done to everyone's computer without PLing. I am a not-insignificant person at a mid-cap public company and they still fuck my shit up. The other thing they like to keep hush-hush is how many tools the Microsoft environment gives managers to spy on their people. I try not to look at the reports, because it undermines the whole point of having employees you trust.

'Member when MS Office was just a suite of programs you'd install on your computer and it didn't pretend to be a SaaS product? I 'member.

 

[mikaylatoads]

Fuck foobar2000 (until I can figure out how to rice it).

 

[Chocolate Wombat]

It's either Azure AD or just the regular Microsoft SSO. Frankly, Microsoft has a huge problem with bloat in its catalogue, such that there's:

1. Lots of different programs called the same thing--Azure is different from Azure DevOps, which is different from Azure AD, which is different from Azure Cloud Compute. I get that they want it to be a brand, but it's like if Adobe called everything "Photoshop". Look at this shit; these are all the different Azure products the person you're talking to might be referring to.
2. or, a bunch of programs that used to be different, but now serve the exact same purpose. There's like 15 different products your company could have bought that include SSO, and they all work slightly differently.

View attachment 2714879

This actually explains a LOT. Our company's developers started using Azure about a year or two ago (they may have done some work with it earlier but I hadn't seen it), using it for a couple of specific things, and about a year ago they started using the Microsoft single sign on. We've only very recently started using NFCs for PIN login, they're phasing out using a Windows password for whatever reason. Personally I think someone at corporate read a Wired article on Yubikey, thought it was neato, and now we get to mess with that.

Based on what you've said it looks like a combination of the single sign on and Azure issues. We've also had some ongoing server problems due to everyone working from home, I'm sure that's not helping. I am so glad none of that crap is my responsibility.

A lot can be mitigated in the settings, but they turn shit on or lock people out of settings without thinking about how that will affect everyone's day. Why can't I use a PIN instead of the password they force me to reset every 90 days? Do they know how many people write it on sticky notes because people can only keep so many 8-10 random character strings in their heads?

I think part of the problem is that the "tech employees" all have their computers set to administrator mode and they don't realize how fuckin' painful it is for everyone else, or it's that all the tech employees are running Linux. I wish I could tell you stories about some of the incredibly dumb things they've done to everyone's computer without PLing. I am a not-insignificant person at a mid-cap public company and they still fuck my shit up. The other thing they like to keep hush-hush is how many tools the Microsoft environment gives managers to spy on their people. I try not to look at the reports, because it undermines the whole point of having employees you trust.

I can almost guarantee playing with shit is also a problem. My company outsources way too much of the development and upper level support work, and of course management is obsessed with Agile, so they deliver half finished shit and expect everyone to pat them on the head and tell them how special they are. My position is an interesting one: I hear from the end users about the problems they have and report them to the developers and analysts who are responsible for the software, but getting them to take user issues seriously is like pulling teeth. I've personally predicted several major outages, sometimes months in advance, but the people who can prevent the issue just won't listen.

The outsourced ones are the worst. I'm dealing with one now who keeps asking people on my team to do basic stuff he should be able to do himself, but can't because he doesn't understand how to use the service ticket tracking program my company uses. Christ only knows how he stays employed; along with not knowing how to use very basic software he keeps trying to contact users at 2 or 3 am (user's time) then marking the issue as resolved when they don't reply.

'Member when MS Office was just a suite of programs you'd install on your computer and it didn't pretend to be a SaaS product? I 'member.

Pepperidge Farm remembers

 

[Bongocat]

this is very much picking on the retarded kid, but I looked up "what is MS Paint for linux" got recommended "Pinta". This is, hands down, the worst program I have ever used on any operating system. I would go into detail, but I think it can be summed up by a review left on the app catalog:

"Not a single feature of this program works correctly"

that is accurate.

 

[mikaylatoads]

this is very much picking on the exceptional kid, but I looked up "what is MS Paint for linux" got recommended "Pinta". This is, hands down, the worst program I have ever used on any operating system. I would go into detail, but I think it can be summed up by a review left on the app catalog:

"Not a single feature of this program works correctly"

that is accurate.

Wouldn't GIMP be 'MS Paint for Linux'?

 

[Bongocat]

Wouldn't GIMP be 'MS Paint for Linux'?

Nah. I want something that loads in a quarter of a second and just lets me drag the edges of an image to crop stuff. Gimp has a lot of setup involved and isn't good for quick and dirty edits like Paint is.

 

[mikaylatoads]

Nah. I want something that loads in a quarter of a second and just lets me drag the edges of an image to crop stuff. Gimp has a lot of setup involved and isn't good for quick and dirty edits like Paint is.

You could look for some sharex clone.

 

[Bongocat]

You could look for some sharex clone.

flameshot is okay but doesn't seem entirely reliable. The interface is also pretty wonky. Still need to look around more.

 

[Toolbox]

I guess I could just list any of the "EPIC GAYMEEERRR" proprietary software included with prebuilts/laptops, but specifically I'll single out what I've had experience with.

Alienwares stuff, surprise surprise, is absolute ass. I got a prebuilt of theirs cheap to add parts to a while back, and when I swapped the stock cpu cooler out I've been stuck with it on full blast all the time until the OS boots. The only thing that fixes it is the asinine "Alienware Control Panel" software that is somehow necessary to run fans properly/disable RGB lighting nonsense/etc. It crashes 6/10 times I launch the PC and I have to spend time getting it to work again. It also, despite being set up to run on boot, has never launched when the OS launches (Windows 10, of course). I have to imagine it's bloated as all hell.

Second winner of the worst system config award is ASUS's software, whatever it's called. While it doesn't run nearly as poorly, it's stuffed to the brim with useless garbage to the point the laptop that came with this installed has something called a "keystone" essentially a nfc chip that can lock files if it's inserted, but the rest of what is can do is practically useless. It can store your lighting configurations/profile for fan settings but it doesn't actually function half the time. The software also forgets how my lighting is set sometimes which is silly.

They also thought that people would actually want to carry one of those nfcs around with them.

 

[Bongocat]

I guess I could just list any of the "EPIC GAYMEEERRR" proprietary software included with prebuilts/laptops, but specifically I'll single out what I've had experience with.

Alienwares stuff, surprise surprise, is absolute ass. I got a prebuilt of theirs cheap to add parts to a while back, and when I swapped the stock cpu cooler out I've been stuck with it on full blast all the time until the OS boots. The only thing that fixes it is the asinine "Alienware Control Panel" software that is somehow necessary to run fans properly/disable RGB lighting nonsense/etc. It crashes 6/10 times I launch the PC and I have to spend time getting it to work again. It also, despite being set up to run on boot, has never launched when the OS launches (Windows 10, of course). I have to imagine it's bloated as all hell.

Second winner of the worst system config award is ASUS's software, whatever it's called. While it doesn't run nearly as poorly, it's stuffed to the brim with useless garbage to the point the laptop that came with this installed has something called a "keystone" essentially a nfc chip that can lock files if it's inserted, but the rest of what is can do is practically useless. It can store your lighting configurations/profile for fan settings but it doesn't actually function half the time. The software also forgets how my lighting is set sometimes which is silly.

They also thought that people would actually want to carry one of those nfcs around with them.

My Asus light sync stuff would actually grab onto usbs and would NEVER let them go until you shut down the computer. How would you even have a bug like that

 

[Super Dilator Duel 3D]

I’ve got quite a lot of bitching to do, so I’ll condense it into one post for the sake of my fellow readers.

Razer/Gaming hardware management softwares - If you’re unaware of what I mean, this would refer to any software you have to use to configure the settings on a piece of equipment from that brand, whether it be mice, headset, keyboards, etc. these fucking things never fail to run like total ass and hog about 70% of my systems resources while doing so. All I want to do is tweak a macro button on my keyboard, there is zero logical reason why my computer needs to have a fucking stroke running this glorified spyware every time I do it. Give me the option to change shit on the hardware itself and cut out this annoying middle-man.

Microsoft Proprietary System Utility Programs - Especially bad on Windows 10, Microsoft has been doing their best to shove their minimalistic modern-era shit software on you for even the most simple tasks. If you use Windows 10, opening an .mp4 or .avi file opens the “Videos” application instead of Windows Media Player, and somehow despite the latter being over a decade old it still manages to boot faster, use less resources, and contain more features than Microsoft’s ass-tier bloatware replacements. Same story with the “Images” app, especially as it seems to attempt integrating online functionality. I’m not making an account to look at a .jpg for 5 seconds you niggers, let me use Windows Photo Viewer in peace.

Paint 3D takes the cake here though. Whereas MS Paint knew what it was and didn’t try to be anything more (a simple, easy-to-use graphic editing program that runs out of the box on any Windows installation at the cost of sacrificing some functionality) Paint 3D attempts to be a poor man’s version of an autistic love child between Blender and Photoshop, and fails miserably. It tries to be a professional tier editing software but runs like shit and is incredibly clunky in design, likely due to being plagued by the modern tech world’s hard-on for minimalist garbage and tablet bullshittery. Stop trying to phase out legacy software that worked x10 better for the sake of your “aesthetics”, you fucking cunts.

Last but not least, Game Launchers - possibly the most cancerous invention since nuclear reactors, game launchers are a blight on the earth and share the same problem as there being 20 different movie streaming services (but infinitely worse because of the inherent interactivity and configuration requirements) Steam is tolerable enough to where I don’t complain much about it. Valve seems to know what their user base wants and 90% of games I give a shit about are there so it works fine in that respect. It can run a little poorly but that’s par for the course for modern software. But then, for certain games that have been held hostage by their studios looking to milk the properties for all they’re worth, you have to download fucking 7 other launchers just to access these games. Any EA game? Origin. Any Blizzard game? Battle.net. Fortnite and whatever the fuck else Epic leeched onto their atrocious software? Epic Games Launcher. All of these things require separate accounts, tend to lack key features in different aspects, run fucking abysmally, take up way too much space for what they are, and are ugly as pig shit. Stop fucking taking your games from Steam and putting them onto your proprietary spyware shit that’ll be dead in 3 years, and if you’re gonna do that than at LEAST hire some more competent pajeets to make sure these things don’t give my computer a fucking artery clogging every time I even look at their icon on my desktop.

I’ve got other minor complaints about some software but this shit takes the cake.

Text wall over, top hats expected.