The web is where it’s at. I no longer look forward to installing a box of shrink-wrapped software on my computer no matter how cool it may be. I remember driving to Software Etc and purchasing a game called Police Detective which came on 22 floppy disks. That was 1993 and it took over an hour to install the game on my 486DX. Even the first version of Windows 95 I purchased came on a dozen or so floppies. Slowly, games and programs were released on CD. Now, some of the larger ones are released on DVD although not as quickly as many thought.
We now arrive at the Google Age of software where applications are released online at a rapid pace. Thousands of users test the apps, Google listens, and changes are made quickly. The patches and updates are seamless to the user. The thought of having to go to a website like Windows Update, install the correct Active X controls and then have it search your machine and finally download updates and reboot is so 1999. And that’s after all the time I spent installing the software in the first place!
I look forward to the day when packaged software is history. At the very least, offer your software for download. Better yet, put it on the web where I can reach it from any machine and improve, tweak and patch it while I’m busy getting work done. It’s not my job to baby-sit the program.
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