It's not evolving backwards. It's being carefully crafted to turn into exactly what corporations wanted from the beginning but couldn't do due to technical and legal limitations.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Add societal limitations as well. We used to relegate software to the dustbin when it sucked in the early days. Nowadays, people seem mostly fine being practically forced to use ever shittier products and services.
It's also devolving, having less features, being slower/less optimised and so on. Cramming "AI" into it isn't devolving, it's enshitification
You are mistaking the direction of evolution. Software started out with as much freedom as the hardware could afford.
In the 80s you ran your program in real mode (or whatever the equivalent mode was on your hardware). No kernel, no OS, nothing in the way. The software ran on bare metal with the ability to do literally anything the computer could.
In the 90s and early 2000s, safety features were introduced, but customizability was still king. Remember how you could accidentally remove some toolbar from Eclipse and never find the way to get it back? That kind of UI was considered normal back then.
You had stuff like the BlackBox system that allowed the user to customize the UI like a developer. The user could not only move buttons and other UI elements wherever they wanted, but they could also create their own and use scripting to make them do whatever they wanted.
Then came the iPhone and Windows 8, and from then on the target became simplification. The downside of the customizability of yesteryear was that things could get complicated and that most users didn't use or even want these systems. Getting back to the Eclipse example, it was incredibly common back then, that people accidentally closed part of the UI and never found a way to get it back. So that's when the minimalisation and "less is more" mentality came in. They moved everything that wasn't used all the time into submenus and to a certain extent, it kinda worked.
But of course, with MBAs being MBAs, stuff like adding AI buttons to force people to use the next big monetizable thing became more and more prevalent.
That sounds like devolving to me.
"Maybe if we manipulate people enough, it will make us money"
So is my edc to match it lmao.
Phones are locking down and getting harder to get rom and root support and a lot of projects are either giving up or dying.
Welp! Back to the laptop I go! Been carrying it with me everywhere just like I did before I got a smartphone. The only duties my phone needs to do is make calls, answer SMS and RCS and tether.
Could’ve said a version of this about every multi-function pocketable device ever made, but they’re still fun
Maybe we’ve been pushing way too hard, way too fast into the age of technology being integrated into our every waking moment, bros.
I’m ready to go back to like an iPhone 5 level of technology and Windows 7. Just wish it was realistic.
24/7 connectivity was a mistake. I miss that brief window when we had cheap supercomputers in our pockets, but data was still expensive.
I don’t want internet to be expensive but like..I wish we’d go back to dumb phones and computers maybe. Kinda like an early 2000s vibe.
Cause if you look at 2025 vs 2000 or even 2005, we’re honestly insanely different in terms of technology in such a short span. Just feels like too much too fast imo. Like maybe we DON’T need technology incorporated into every aspect of our lives.
The scariest thing is - we’re from a generation where we remember a life before this. Gen Alpha and whatever comes after will only ever know an internet connected life. How do you explain this to someone like that?
I don't miss the price haha, I miss its implications: If you were outside, you were outside; and there was no email which could hopefully find you well.
🤣🤣 okay true
what did they do to ma boi Clippy
Oh wow this is truly disgusting. It's rare to find a feature that is so badly designed that it disgusts you. Annoyed or frustrated? Sure. Enraged even. But I feel like I want to throw up after watching 20 seconds of this video.
It's clear to me from the very start of this video that Microsoft is incentivizing people to stuff this shit into their product any way they can. I also assume that they're tracking basically everything you do in their software using analytics of some kind, and people accidentally clicking those stupid icons counts as copilot usage to the other suits.
The word you're looking for is "devolving".
I prefer "enshitification"
Evolving backwards would be returning to ergonomic UIs with clear HIG being followed, having a scriptable variant for every class of applications, and any piece of software, OS UI included, not acting as an advert. Contrasts and colors and bright pictures are not what I need to see while working. It's as if your screwdriver was built in the form of an alien fish dildo, and had a chain of ringing bells. Why is this bullshit considered normal and usual with computer interfaces, I dunno.
And a company's website is its interface to the world, for the user. Not its advert. They've already seen the advert or don't need it if they are on that website! They want to actually use it.
an alien fish dildo
That sounds intriguing.
Don't forget the spikes.
I think you'll find that, sadly, nobody is worse for HIG than software engineers, especially Linux aficionados.
They like their design as unpalatable and shit-lookalike as possible.
I won't. I see what designers do that looks nice if you only look at it like at a nice pic. Software engineers at least intend to use what they make.
Yeah... That explains the user experience Windows offers versus Mac.
Anybody who's being honest will say Mac is nicer to use, especially non-tech people. Only nerds prefer the Windows design language over Windows.
Let's face it: if Macs could run game as well as windows, Microsoft would go bankrupt tomorrow.
My experience with Macs was that they are bloody unusable, so can't help you. They cause me anxiety, kill my eyes and irritate without end.
Can't say it's worse than Windows, of course.
I, too, am a Linux user.
That would make sense if evolution had a direction. But evolution can favor less complexity just as well as more: it depends on the selective pressures it's under. "Fittest" is not necessarily "best."
This applies metaphorically to marketed products as well as literally to biologiccal systems. It's not inevitable that the marketplace will deliver progress. You might never get that invisible handjob.
No devolving makes sense. The natural pressures are causing the user interface to be worse.
It's a reference to "it is evolving, just backwards"
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