Toblerone's Brexit trim should be applied to bloatware Toblerone's decision to keep its post-Brexit price stable by just selling less chocolate for the same price is a tactic the software industry should copy. I offer this suggestion because so much software is "bloatware" packed with features hardly anyone uses, but the inclusion of those features is used to justify the price. …
They're more likely to do something stupid like replace the programmers with inexperienced (cheaper) graduates, or outsource the development team.
You're sort of hoping that only the bad goes with a financial imposition. Perhaps possible, but not likely. If a team is going to make software with poor elements WITH a budget, I don't see the missing ingredient that will make this happen.
Nice philosophising but no.
Given Cadbury's owners... they'll be jumping on that bandwagon soon enough...
That said - they may already have done... wasn't there a kerfuffle about recipe changes a while back? Still, no reason not to go round the loop one more time to keep prices rises at bay (or profits up... take your pick)
Mondelez ARE the parent company of Cadburys, offloaded by Kraft or maybe this is just another financial instrument used but Kraft.. Just like Nestle, have a look at the back label of well known brands and be surprised. The bulk of the food industry appears to be back to 3 or 4 mega-corporations.
Kraft was split in two a few years back. Their snack food businesses (which mostly operated worldwide) became Mondelez, and the parts focused on the (mainly North American) groceries market became the "new" Kraft Foods. Or so Wikipedia says.
They're now completely separate, and Cadbury's is a part of Mondelez.
Technically, Kraft Foods (which later merged with Heinz) is the spin-off, whereas Mondelez is the original Kraft under a new name.
Which is ironic, but who cares, they're always changing corporation names.
Given it was reported the other day that they'd registered "Dark Milk" as a trademark, you could get it both ways (ooer missus).
"BREXIT-misers: You'll have to pries the bar of Dairy Milk from my cold, dead, chocolate-smeared hands."
Cadbury did it ages ago, around the time of the London Olympics.
And make sure it is not one of the Dairy milk with <insert brand item here> bars. They are made in Poland, not the UK.
I was going to make a joke about how Kraft- well, Mondelez now- seem determined to shove every brand somewhere under their corporate umbrella together with Dairy Milk.
Racking my brains, I remembered that Kraft made Philadelphia cheese... ho ho ho. Until I remembered that they *did* do that a few years back. (#)
Then again, to be fair, even before the takeover, Cadbury went through a phase of combining and leveraging the Dairy Milk brand so that it appeared on lots of existing bars (e.g. Cadbury's Caramel) and several were modified to be more "Dairy Milk"-like.
I remembered thinking at that time that if they'd still owned the Smash instant potato brand (##) they'd have tried combining the two in some ungodly way.
(#) Albeit it wasn't a Philadelphia-filled Dairy Milk bar, but Philadelphia with chocolate. And actually, I notice it's not "Dairy Milk", just "Philadelphia with Cadbury", like "Cadbury" itself is some ******* ingredient. Anyway, I tried it and it was... meh. Pretty much what you'd expect Philadelphia mixed with chocolate to taste like. Not great, not awful, didn't buy it again.
(##) Which oddly, *was* originally made by Cadbury's and sold under their name.
Yes, lets have a XP/Win7 style Windows, ditch the crippled "Home" version and all the "Cloud" stuff and all the Telemetry / spying and all the eye candy (but proper shadow effect icons like Win 3.1 to Windows 2003). Even MS admitted that Aero was a mistake. Bring back a proper native Forms API, but move/keep GDI out of Kernel.
However don't drop important but little used features. Unlike never wanted (ribbon) or never used features, little used features might be important.
Instead of gold plating and adding features, reduce bugs, inconstancies and vulnerabilities. Write NEW kinds of software instead of version 15 of Word or 12 of Windows.
"Instead of gold plating and adding features, reduce bugs, inconstancies and vulnerabilities. Write NEW kinds of software instead of version 15 of Word or 12 of Windows."
Like WHAT? Just what kinds of software do we need that people are willing to buy that doesn't exist yet? Ever thought that people buy Word and Office and the like because they actually USE it? As in everyday?
Problem is understanding what people want to use.
Latest release of Outlook has a new feature that gives you recently used files in a drop-down when attaching files to email. Utterly trivial, but saves me a load of time.
We may each only use a small percentage of features, but across all users, they probably all get used.
Update Word 5.1 for Mac with just unicode, no other feature, no macros. That was a great program, though I had to use another WP for Japanese. I bet this will run smoothly even on the most basic Pi, even in some kind of emulation. For me Excel 4 was also the best, again wishing it would now use unicode.
Mine's the one with Daystar 68040 kit in the big pocket.
That's what someone else mentioned. There may be a lot of features, and the average user may use only a few of them, but those specific features differ from user to user, to the point that cutting ANY feature results in complaints from those users who actually use it.
Many apps try to be the jack of all trades in order to get the widest audience. Who cares if it's master of none, as long as they get the customers' money.
Yeah, there may be obvious things to eliminate, but not for everyone (Microsoft are quite good at confounding me with removing useful features).
Also as I said above, less money probably doesn't mean squat for actual quality control.
It comes down to, as ever, talent, and more importantly, the freedom that talent is given. Even the best coders can and do mess up with stupid requests for feature creep, late in life cycle big changes, and other stuff that non technical people only half dream about with any accuracy.
Brexit did not "cause" the pound to drop; this was caused by a bunch of brain-dead currency speculators panicking afterwards.
I'll say it again: I quite see why, for practical reasons, we must pay attention to the level of the pound; what I don't see is why this is supposed to tell us something about the state of the world, as opposed to just the state of fear in a group of individuals with the intellectual reach of a stoned slug.
The mid to long term value of the pound is primarily derived from two things:
1. People with other currencies wanting to buy things priced in pounds
2. People with pounds wanting to buy things priced in other currencies
This is the vast majority of the market for exchange in currencies. Yes people play that market, but usually just for short term day/week gains/losses. Attributing a more structural fall in value to speculators is ludicrous.
Based on the above analysis (and I am a crap economist so stand to be corrected) we can conclude that following the Brexit vote:
1. Things priced in pound are less desirable to people (less demand for pounds with which to buy them)
2. Things priced in other currencies are more desirable (greater supply of pounds with which to buy them)
As an economic indicator this has lots of complex impacts depending on what the 'things' are that are causing the changes in demand/supply of the currency. For the average Joe like me what it means in the short term is nearly everything will be more expensive. Long term effects could be good but that remains to be seen.
"Attributing a more structural fall in value to speculators is ludicrous."
But Brexit is so wonderful for the UK economy that it can't possibly, under any imaginable circumstances, cause the pound to fall. So, as Mr Holmes says, when you've eliminated the impossible - it must be speculators.
"Brexit did not "cause" the pound to drop; this was caused by a bunch of brain-dead currency speculators panicking afterwards."
That's partly true. The Pound, according many economists, has been over valued for along time and was going to drop anyway at some stage. Maybe not quite so suddenly, and not by quite so much, but it had to happen at some point.
"what I don't see is why this is supposed to tell us something about the state of the world".
As a scout (sea) from long ago, I will try to help you out. Take poor Cameron, when he went to Brussels to beg for special advantages (he would never allowed anybody else) he had the psychological disadvantage of knowing he represented the second richest kid on the block.
But now when Mrs May goes to Brussels next year she will find it slightly less embarrassing as she can point to France as being the second richest kid on the block.
There are an amazing amount of things, good and not so good, I have learned as a scout (on land). When I started my carrier as a helper, helping old women across the street, I eventually, as a teen, got a bit fed up, as we do. But then getting older my heart expanded and I stated to help ever younger women across the street, any street. To my great surprise I also found out that it takes women a surprising amount of years for them to learn how to say "Thank You" properly.
I hope this was of help, and read my icon.
"what I don't see is why this is supposed to tell us something about the state of the world"
Well, it tells us that the future prospect for the economi has been downgraded, and hence the pound devalued.
Not difficult to understand.
Do you think you know more about economy than the world collective of economists and investors?
You can choose what you install in the latest MS Office, as I discovered when I had to install it on my work laptop. It's a difficult, convoluted process though, about what is expected of MS nowadays. So much for making things simple.
@AC - "You can choose what you install in the latest MS Office, as I discovered when I had to install it on my work laptop."
Please tell me how, had to do a similar thing on my home machine. I've got Skype for Business (which I keep confusing with Skype) and a whole load of stuff I don't need/want.
Would be very grateful for a pointer in the right direction.
Skype... horrid, bloody thing keeps telling me there is an upgrade and wanting me to update. I DO NOT WANT TO DOWNLOAD AN EVEN CRAPPER VERSION, the last 4 times I gave in and the experience was WORSE afterwards. I will NOT repeat it.
you know that the purpose of bloatware is altogether different. You know it, we know it, they (the bloatware-developers know it). Yet, it bloats, because... marketing department don't know it?! Wrong! They know it too, they just don't f... care!
Generate additional revenue streams, that's the mantra. What business owner would refuse additional revenue streams, as demonstrated so skillfully by the head of our marketing & strategic planning group in the aboveseen 3D (so cool like!) presentation?
Problem: To move contacts from old Nokia 3310 to a Nokia 6210
Install Nokia Smart Suite on XP, installation size ~5GB.
The utility fails to work.
Solution: Install gammu on Ubuntu, installation size 569kB.
It's a one line command to backup and restore contacts.
Bonus Solution: I've stopped using Windows for anything!
~ Amen to that! I don't buy tech anymore, its better spent on travel etc.
~ But tied to bloatware: How about paying less for spyware too? Who wants to pay for hardware with software that constantly slurps & spies? (Win10 / IoT / Smart TV etc..)
~ Lawless big tech had an easy ride for 8 years. Isn't it time the plebs fought back?
~ Wouldn't that be a thing, watching Facebook, Google, Microsoft eat humble pie.
~ Windows 10 & Android surveillance capitalism is an abomination. People who accept this... What will do if your children ask one day: "How did you let this happen"?
"Spyware" generally has a negative price. The question is, "who's willing to pay extra for this stuff without the spyware?"
And the answer to that is generally such a vanishingly small segment of the (consumer) market that they just don't get serviced.
""Spyware" generally has a negative price. The question is, "who's willing to pay extra for this stuff without the spyware?""
Really?
I have never been asked that question. Never, ever.
I have quite a few Apple products though, and they cost a bit extra. But there is no spyware version of them to compare with as Apple doesn't do that.
If it wasn't for Apple dropping support in macOS updates for perfectly fine hardware I would give them 5 out of 5 stars. Now, only 4 stars.
Oh, and I have Linux boxen, and Windows 7 and Win 10 boxes too. Even XP.
Lest anyone think I'm one of those annoying fanbois.
By removing features in software what saving does the company actually make?
Potentially support cost savings but then you would need the support anyway for the people that do have those features other than that the software has been written and you are now selling for profit once your costs have been covered. It's actually going to cost more to create versions without the features.
The currency issue is a nice excuse to up prices or reduce products, when it balances, which it will, will these prices come down? Will toblerone go back to the original design? No because they can make more money. I for one will be boycotting walkers and birds eye from now on because their excuse is utter corporate rubbish. Prices go up not because it costs them more to make but because they get less back when they convert profits to dollars.
~ Tied to bloatware: How about paying less for spyware too? Who wants to pay for hardware with software that constantly slurps & spies? (Win10 / IoT / Smart TV etc..)
~ Lawless big tech had an easy ride for 8 years. Isn't it time the plebs fought back?
~ Wouldn't that be a thing, watching Facebook, Google, Microsoft eat humble pie.
~ Windows 10 & Android surveillance capitalism is an abomination. People who accept this... What will do if your children ask one day: "How did you let this happen"?
Need to play the trick Mars used to do a10+ years ago with the Mars bar. They would slowly reduce the size while keeping the price the same in such small increments (~1g at a time) that it was difficult to spot until they would then stick the price up while returning to the original size, or slightly larger, along with an advertising campaign of "best value Mars bar ever" ... which in terms of pence per gram would be true ... or would be until a couple of months later the slow shrinking process restarted.
At least they still MAKE them. The nickel Hershey bar disappeared nearly 50 years ago. They're not really to blame as inflation raises ALL prices: including the costs of the raw goods needed to make your Mars bar. The same for less or more for the same, you lose either way, and there's little to be done to prevent this.
The only people who eat the aforesaid vile substance are Americans... their tastebuds have been trained to expect that kind of "flavour" since childhood and hence they actually believe it's something nice. Of course, there are a lot of Americans hence the continued existence of the unmentionable product... you won't find many people outside of the US who can tolerate it.
You say it as if Americans are fatally flawed in some way. The perspective can be reversed just like with beer, with Americans wondering why Europeans go to such lengths when it's just a sweet snack. It's not like it's going to make you live forever or something. Heck, if you want to see a completely different take on chocolate, try Mexico.
Windows and other SW has nothing on Droid apps. The Facebook app has gone from 50Mb to well over 200Mb in just over 2 years. At that rate in just 5 years you will need a phone with 32Gb RAM and 500Gb of storage.
Not that anything really matters any more as LeTrump will soon be converting everyone to irradiated roadkill.
No, he Equation Editor in MSWord has probably never *sold* the product, but it has made unnecessary the acquisition of a separate tool just to do that job for those who need to make documents with equations in them.
I'm seriously not seeing the point of removing features to "make menus smaller", no matter who makes the product in question. The product won't be any cheaper when it has been trimmed (unlike the chocolate bar).
In fact this article has highlighted the need for a metaphor for describing comparisons so out-of-left-field "Apples and Oranges" is not emphatic enough.
I propose we use "You are comparing chocolate bars to software features" to cover those eventualities.
Actually, roundabout 1999 Microsoft did try to "make menus smaller". Thus we got the infamous "menus with disappearing options", which made it basically impossible to document how-to anydamnthing with Word or Excel at that time.
Anyone remember the key combo, I think it was something like <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<_>, which turned your cursor into an underscore character and meant (although this was far from obvious) that the next thing you clicked on a menu would be removed from the menu? Now there was sheer genius.
Assuming the object was to generate more support calls, obviously.
The equation editor is (or at least, was) actually a separate application - MathType. From distant memory, the MS Word equation editor is/was a cut down version of that application - I remember people buying MathType for more complex work (in my academic days.)
I preferred using LyX... far less prone to random page numbering / formatting resets midway through documents, or crashing and fatally corrupting large documents.
A Toblerone is a Toblerone for more reasons than just the chocolate. And they've gone and taken away one of the main reasons that it is what it is: its appearance. They've also done it in what appears to be the crudest and cheapest way imaginable - by simply blanking off every other pocket in the mould used to form the bars.
Apply a similar tactic to the IT industry - remove every other perceived spare part in a regular pattern, regardless of the final appearance - and I'm sure you'd end up with a brilliant finished product. Or not, as the case may be.
"A Toblerone is a Toblerone for more reasons than just the chocolate. And they've gone and taken away one of the main reasons that it is what it is: its appearance."
Absolutely. Made from triangular almonds from triangular trees and triangular honey from triangular trees. Sold in triangular boxes too, but that couldn't be made to fit the song.
Take Skype for example. This software used to be very useful and no one else in the market stood a chance against them because it was that good.
What was the first thing Microsoft did with it after acquisition? Dumbed it down and stripped out features. It's now a crash-prone pile of rubbish with half the amount of utility it had previously. If I wasn't forced to use it for business, I'd have ditched it right after Microsoft released their first windows build.
The only reason Skype would run on any of my computers would be if didn't manage to stop if from starting automatically. MS, in their infinite wisdom, made it an annoyance nag app that won't die if you try to kill it the normal way! How stupid can a company be? Alienate people instantly.
The Mrs, who is computer-illiterate, bless her, but is street-savvy enough not to upgrade to Win 10, uses a Hotmail/MSN email account thingy (she Googles "msn" to access the login page, bless her, but before you get the pitchforks out we have procreated and the offspring is mentally and physically A-grade material), and today she got an email from my father mentioning a Dr's appointment next week (suspected case of acute hypochondria), anyway the Microsoft system in its infinite wisdom decided to suggest this as a potential calendar entry for *her* and she was all "WTF is this stupid Microsoft cr*p"?
The BBC has a story. Apparently heinz were doing an advert with people using old tin cans for beating out songs....
Any yes, you guessed it.. .the advertising standards have banned it for 'health and safety reasons' because someone might copy and cut their hands on a tin..... bloody hell, never mind about brexit, software bloat or cheating chocolate people lets take the idiot that decided this and use them as fuel in a power station. Time to cut the stupidity
"Any yes, you guessed it.. .the advertising standards have banned it for 'health and safety reasons' "
OMG!
That's REALLY worth getting the blood pressure up about! I really must see that advert! I must! On the telly no less.
Oh, my! What is the world coming to? Sadly Brexit won't fix that problem.
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