- Saturday, 28 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket - George Orwell
Hardware companies can’t write software
HARDWARE COMPANIES just can't write software. Let’s spend a few moments wondering why gazillion-dollar names such as Sony, HP, Samsung, Canon and Plextor still serve their customers ridiculously buggy software to go along with their shiny new purchases. For some inescapable reason, most of us content ourselves to accept this dross. We all look at the neat functionality provided by the hardware and we tend to ignore the annoying feeling we get every time we start programs written by these rich hardware manufacturers.
Plextor, APC
Actually, Plextor's PlexTools is quite decent. But, like most greedy companies,
Plextor has a paid-for “pro” version for PlexTools which does more stuff, but
really, that should come free with your storage device. After all, you bought
the hardware.
APC is another manufacturer going this way, but at least its free versions feature all the important functions, and they only ask for extra dosh when using their power management tools in large companies. Their stuff is written in Java and thus, is platform-independent. Granted, Java works like crap in some instances, but APC’s programs are quite bug-free and the functionality covers all required areas.
The reason why Plextor is a name which we should associate with disgracefulness is its treatment of competing open source software written by good-guy Alexander Noe. Just how pathetic can this particular outfit get? Well, first of all, it offers its Plextools only for machines running Voleware, snubbing users that happen to use Linux or any other alternative operating system.
Next, it tried to threaten the author of open source Pxscan and Pxview into stopping updates on the software. Since he didn’t stop, the outfit introduced hardware protection for its optical drives, successfully obligating any users to use Windows if they want to use the drives at full capacity. While PxScan and PxView did not initially support Linux, since they are open source, ports have been made.
If Plextor hadn't gone out of its way to suffocate the life out of this independent non-profit venture, people would have been free to use the hardware at full functionality on most operating systems by now. But no, it insists on forcing everybody into using its proprietary software. PlexTools is looking rather good right now, but that doesn’t mean Plextor shouldn’t be berated for what it does. But then again, we’ve seen oh-so-many bigger companies do this to clients.
Sony
The excruciatingly-annoying Sonicstage alone wins Sony a place in this article.
But the company's other exploits aren’t much brighter either. First of all, it
couldn’t even write a decent rootkit and then
sued
the company that did so on its behalf. That’s pathetic.
Another example is the Picture Package mess, which, initially, wouldn’t work unless you downgraded to a version of Flash Player which was popular back when the Earth’s crust was still hot. Unofficial updates exist, but Sony probably couldn’t care less about this, as those updates can be found anywhere but on its web site.
Sonicstage is probably the most awful pile of useless bytes ever to be conceived. But you need it to transfer music to Sony's excellent mp3 players. Really, Sony can spawn some great hardware, but when it comes to software, this is abysmal. Sonicstage messes with your ID3 tags, it randomly messes with your hard disk, it has enough bugs to keep Microsoft’s dev-team fixing at it for ten years and is sizzling with such extraordinary features like: DRM, ugly-looking skins and slow load times. Thanks God for those hacks who write alternative software. Because if you keep using Sonicstage, you’ll end up gnashing your teeth when some mp3 file you want to import to your device will cause the software to unceremoniously die. And there are plenty of these “magic mp3s” which always cause Sonicstage to succumb, even after the e-hog is restarted.
Asus, Leadtek, Gigabyte
Asus is Taiwan-based firm which is involved in way too many products to keep
track of. Unfortunately, most of the time, it can only make one thing right:
motherboards (and only the hardware). Buy some Asus motherboard and try to use
its Q-Fan program to individually set the speed for your fans. On some
motherboards (such as the P5B-Deluxe) you will observe than only one in three
fans listens to you. The free Speedfan makes Asus’ Q-Fan look like a retarded
student’s homework. But then again, its entire “AI” suite is dressed in silly,
ugly-looking skins, boasting such fantastic functionally as: change your FSB
speed and then restart to apply. Ok, so what’s the difference if you use
good-ol’ BIOS for this? That’s right, none. In fact, you would be much better
off without the junk installed. Asus’ router firmware also has a miserable
reputation.
Leadtek should be mentioned for its excellent linguists, who contributed to the fame of the first Eurasian language, Chinglish. Leadtek’s rather well-performing TV-Tuners come with a decently-functional software package dressed in the usual multicoloured skins with weird-looking buttons and frames. While running, the installer gloriously states: “Now Installing Software For You . . .”. Really?! Gee, thank you, you’re so kind. Oh, one more thing. Reading the user’s manual can leave you with a severe case of dizziness, it’s a good replacement for alcohol. We can’t forget Gigabyte either. Its software is painted in colours that would make a royal parrot jealous. Of course there are plenty of bugs in it too. Advice: b-movie science fiction artists can learn ex cellent alien designs from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte.
HP, Canon, Panasonic
More examples of non-thinking come from the photo, audio and video industry,
which also has its formidable champions of the ridiculous. Enter HP and Canon,
which load the computers of their users with tons of bloatware. Want to print a
page, scan a photo or download those pictures you took of that UFO landing in
your back yard? No problem. All you have to do is install a few hundred
megabytes of junk you’ll never use in order to get to the 200 kilobytes of
executable which handles what you really need it to do. These guys didn’t yet
comprehend the concept of “custom install”. They are trying to, by sometimes
providing the option. But it's a fake, really, because it’s almost impossible to
get rid of most of the useless annoying programs they shove down your S-ATA
cables. They say they’re giving you fantastic tools to edit your marvelous
creations. In fact, they’re just as fantastic as Paintbrush from the age of
Windows 3. Luckily, in most cases, it is possible to only install the driver and
be done with it.
Panasonic found a much “smarter” approach. Its video cameras record files in mpeg format, but on their internal disk drive, they change the extension of the files to “mod”. When you use the super-duper file transfer tool, it renames the mod to mpeg and puts it somewhere on your hard drive. Smart! Well, that is, because most innocent users are easily trapped by such cheap tricks. This is really a pity, because Panasonic’s software is full of bugs and, of course, it features “nice looking skins” - sigh. It can’t even remember a default folder where it should always dump video files.
More junk
More foul smelling bytes come from Realtek (aye, another “tek” firm). Its
Windows hasta la Vista sound driver is a pain in the Aristotle, but at least it
gets people to buy real sound cards. Of course, we should also be thankful to
the Vole for that. Should we also mention Apple? Slowtime and Itunes are quite
stable in general, but the problem with The Fruit is how it always finds a
reason to install ten other programs when you only need one. And let’s not
forget its stubbornness to keep that Mac wannabe aspect. But is Apple a
hardware company? Isn’t it more of a software company? Actually, it’s neither.
Apple is a marketing company.
We almost forgot Samsung. These guys have the same typical mentality as most Asian hardware companies: the more the software looks like a spaceship from 2581, the more awed will be the average Joe user. However, the awe part ends at that, since the functionality is quite poor and more often than not, can be totally ignored. Olympus offers acceptable programs, but in many cases, you realise that you can’t find what you previously thought is the most obvious functionality for a program. Its voice recorders, for example, lack explicit export functions, leaving you exploring the depths of your hard disk in search for the lost treasure of Olympus.
Hope
There are a few hardware manufacturers that don’t drive their users to the brink
of hysteria. In the vast and dense crowd of painfully irritating programs, there
are some companies that do a good job with their software. Even the above
examples have sometimes shown glimpses of hope for a better future. Maybe in
time, such companies will realise that they actually lose money by attaching
gruesome software to their products. And maybe they will change... or not.
The sad truth is that most hardware companies can’t give a flying rat’s Aris about the programs which they provide for their products. Luckily, there’s a whole bunch of free and open source stuff out there, which compensates for most of the garbage we’re facing from the big companies mentioned above (and others that escaped unmentioned).
Still, you would think that these big guns have enough money to keep them from being humiliated by rogue developers. Of course they do. To do decent software just isn’t on their task list. Their priority is to get you grabbing their hardware, because you don’t know the headaches you’ll go through after plugging in that shiny new piece of equipment.
It’s next to impossible to go through the entire crowd of crappy programs written by hardware manufacturers out there, but let’s face it: hardware companies can’t write software. They only dabble. And most of them, miserably fail. The ghastly flow of rubbish software which hits us from all directions can be stopped only if we take action against the earth-shattering egos of companies who think their users are woolly sheep. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Bluetooth was killed this way. Broadcom can't write software for their own bluetooth hardware and neither can competition. Result: Buetooth failed wide acceptance.
Don't forget Logitech (sry if this was mentioned). I have 3 products of theirs now that i actively use: G5, G15 and the Harmony remote control. 

1. The mouse s/w is ok, but hey, how many settings is needed for a mouse to function?

2. The keyboard's software has been given an interface overhaul recently, but is still buggy. "Logitech GamePanel connection lost... No wait, Logitech GamePanel was found again!" etc...

3. The configuration "software" for the Harmony remote takes the cake. Actually, isn´t it some kind of home-brewn webbrowser? Buggy as hell, and once i update the remote with new profiles (the few times it works), i usually uninstall the software. Or reinstall Windows, whichever is needed... Sigh.

I agree on the comments on Gigabyte Easy Tune as well... actually I agree on all of the above comments. Sometimes I wish they could just write some sort of code that ports the information to Windows, and then let Windows display the information in some comprehensive and easy2use way. 

//epatnor, Sweden
Spot on!

n1
Just spent the past week trying to get ATI to fess up on just why their TV Wonder PRO no longer functions. Seems the website points poor punters to the wrong pages of downloads. Repeatedly.

See, at ATI they are fully aware their software stinks. To get around having to write software that actually functions, they create very short product cycle times, and just discontinue the product as opposed to fixing the myriad of software problems.

Too bad for those that bought product that was still in the channel months after its discontinuance. Too bad further if you actually find a comprehensible human in tech support, who told me at least half a dozen times about my "old" TV tuner, and how I needed to upgrade.

Geez, I just bought the darn thing just last August.

ATI, clear the channel out or clear your software engineers out.
IMO, the very WORST human interfaces are the ones provided by motherboard makers in software that supports their hardware. For some reason, they try to make the interfaces look "cool", usually to the great detriment of usability. 

As an example, I offer Gigabyte's Easy Tune 5, which has a GUI that tries to look like a game controller. It has got to be the goofiest looking hunk of crap I have ever seen, and it takes a huge amount of display space to present a few bits of information and a few controls in an unobvious and difficult-to-use manner.
And on the Flip-side of this article... it seems that software companies can't make reliable hardware. :)
Creative labs and their wonderful 'lose your original driver CD' and your up S*** creek without a paddle policy. 
At least the programs bundled are somewhat useful in case you ever find your driver CD, same CD which aren't mutually compatible between minor revisions of cards(deliberately so).

Most Hardware monitoring utilities bundled with motherboards.

And finally but not least, Broadcom/Widcomm and their "Drivers, DRIVERS? you dun' need no stinkin' drivers!!" complex
Updating their Bluetooth stack can be an excrutiatingly tiresome way to spend a weekend :(
DLink drivers - OHGOD
So if you pad windows with all this new-fangled bad looking bitmap skinning of blue and grey, then use custom fonts and reduce the usablity and interface usage(protecting people that know.. from... themselves?) so that it looks like you're using someone's myspace profile encrusted with javascript/crap... ohh you just made the DLink Wireless Config util.

nVidia CP/DAMMIT CCC -
nVidia's attempt at making funky custom controls and pretty graphics so that you can change your refresh rate and hide other options under nice marketing names really doesnt please me, as does its lack of a CP free installer. Also loves to throw on extra services for... well we'll never care. CCC, 'nuf said.

There is one thing that really does make my day, the 14mb AMD graphics driver. No CP, No CCC... just drivery goodness, throw on some ATi Tray Tools (http://radeon2.ru/ , its in russian but the installer etc is multi ling, easier than navigating the english mirror on guru3D.)
I found a Plextor cd writer at flea market. Tried to download firmware update -- only available to registered-warranty users. 

Have these people no concept of recycling ?
The latest sound technology, X-Fi, is still waiting for an actual working driver for Linux... not that piece of code that was released in September of last year; and still the only thing available.
Thankfully, they've realised their mistake and finally made the specifications available to the Open Source community last month
Fair enough - they can't write software and now we know what not to buy.

Let's hear about the other side. Which hardware makers have reasonably good software? We'll go buy from them.

ScottJ
Hardware companies can't write software.
Software companies can't write software.

So who can?

;-)
1. Motorola for the buggy software on the Razor. Examples being if you've got an alarm set to wake you each weekday and are silly enough to set your ringer to vibrate, the bits get crossed and you get an audible alarm on Saturday morning. That sort of nonsense. Too many user interface glitches to catalog/catalogue here. Ad nauseam. Serves one right for buying the one they were pushing the most to the consumers. 

and 

Verizon Wireless for taking the already buggy software and disabling some of the most important connectivity functions out of sheer greed. 

The word is boycott people...
Dlink produces some god awful software. In particular some of the firmware is simply terrible, shouldn't be used, buggy crap.

For example the Dlink VWR (yep V as in Vonage). This steaming pile of nastiness can't hold a configuration if you bounce the power. It barely performs the function it's supposed to. And you have to keep a router config file on hand just in case it decides to reset to factory defaults. But it's OK because D-link says the firmware is Vonage's responsibility. Despite the fact that the firmware is quite definitely written by D-Link.

That said Dlink make some good and inexpensive network hardware, it's just let down by terrible soft and firm ware.
Why do I feel like I'm reading a transcript of a game review read at high speed accompanied by animated blobs of ms paint?

Must be some of that crosspolination they've been talking about for all these years.
I think you listed just about every hardware manufacturer out there.

Nvidia @#%$ 
and @$# realtek are my biggest complaints.
btw I'm using Vista early on because of @#$$Nvidia it was Me II kept getting blue screens pointing to my Nvidia driver, lovely.

Switched to Ati, yes bloaty CCC but fine good running driver, They do offer it without CCC you know.

Gigabyte, Good bios sucky program
Couldnt do squat with thier Gui in windows, made like an 8% overclock. 1.9 to 2.1
Bios took it from 1.9 to 3.0 that was fun. 
dunno whats so hard about writing for windows, maybe some of these guys should try doing some good in linux. Or just give the method of communication to linux devs thats the best way. 


let soft ppl write software... and hardware ppl make hardware. 

Jack of all trades, Master of none
What about those Intel drivers for motherboards and other peripherals? Even my friends at Intel complain how bad they are. But at least they will le you download them w/o charge.
i must admit, this article made me laugh... but it's all true! i really hate that bunch of crap that usually comes onto the hardware's installation cds

the crap award however goes to Tv-Tuner cards, which are usually supplied with TERRIBLE softwares, and sadly there really arent' that much good alternatives
I'm having a rough go lately with a bluetooth dongle & the Motorola HT820 headphones, it seems there is a disagreement with my computer, which has Vista on it. That Motorola & Vista combo unfortunately relegates the hardware into the trash. Despite running BCM2035 chip inside the dongle does not guarantee Broadcom support, and they have all ceased responding to inquiries. Said Broadcom, to wit, 'it should have worked so if it didn't then there is probably some good reason why'.

And speaking of Vista, does not Microsoft count as a hardware manufacturer, at least in some abstract sense? And they have amongst the crappiest software in the land!

IN FACT: this whole episode of trying to get A2DP and AVRCP working in Vista makes me horribly suspicious of everything bluetooth. It seems that most dongles have to get thrown out because there is no software whatever to support them. You'd think the Motorola PC850 class 1 adapter is among the best you could buy, and yet, because none of the Widcomm / Broadcom / Bluesoleil / Toshiba stacks recognize it, it is utterly worthless (at least on any modern Vista computer). And yet it is a good, working radio! And yet it has absolutely no support so it is worthless!
I really agree with the comments about Sonic Stage, I had to put up with it for my Minidisc recorder.com That was bad enough, but now I run Linux I can't record in anything other than realtime. Now I just use a cheapo MP3 player which does the job fine.

Netgear are just as bad, having to download a 20MB driver on XP to run a wireless card (the driver itself is about 150kb!)

Rob
I would have to give the award to Symantec/Norton for it's anti virus. Not only is the worst I have seen in my 15 years of PC work, as far as being like a tumor entangled in your pc, it is NOT setup for a novice to use, which is its intended market...... the average home owner. Then on top of that, I cannot COUNT the number of times I went to remove it from a client's system, and couldnt. The installer for the program itself will NOT remove the program. When you write software that people can NOT remove with your own installer, and the individual has to download a custom "uninstaller" that was designed specifically to remove this software because the company had so MANY people complain because they couldnt remove it from their systems.... well, thats the most inept and pathetic thing Ive ever seen. Ive also seen people running Symantec/Norton who, when their license was out, went to download something like Avast, or AVG, and couldnt. Symnatec/Norton would block downloads from those websites. Isnt THAT convenient? This meant you had to uninstall Symantec/Norton and THEN get back on the internet unprotected to download a new antivi......... oh wait, thats right, you cant uninstall Symantec/Norton.......... remember?
You hit the nail on the head there. 

Asus: contrast the quality of the (e.g.) M2N-SLi with its bundled software. Need I say more?
You forgot Nokia. Their installer has the nerve to play music at you (and play videos whilst installing) whilst simultaneously managing to lack the one feature that would be actually useful - compatibility with backups from earlier versions (or earlier phones - I'd accept either).
They took out a customer server with buggy code for half a day. Who expects the ups software to crash on boot up with no error message? Nice.
I have to agree with you here.
Logitech I'd probably have to let off actually. Their software does the job, it doesn't look too stupid either and it doesn't waste countless resources.
Creative on the other hand...
They know how to make a decent soundcard. I love my X-Fi but their software department staff need to be fired or shot. The appalling Vista support for the X-Fi is actually the only thing that's really stopped me moving to Vista. Due to my reluctance to buy new hardware, I was forced back onto XP where everything worked happily again. The fact it can't decode Dolby/DTS signals under Vista shocked me. It's the feature I use most as it's how my 2nd PC (it has Dolby Live Encoding onboard (god bless the N-force2 era)) gets sound! There is a work-around which involves ripping apart the Dell X-FI driver (which raises the question of why Dell get the support and all the other consumers get nout) but that's just far too much hassle for me. Creative. I hate you. As soon as Auzentech get their drivers finished, I'm moving over. That's a company who knows how to write software.
I have this whole left-brain right-brain alpha beta multi-cultured thing going on too.
Creative Labs.
"Olympus offers acceptable programs, but in many cases, you realise that you can’t find what you previously thought is the most obvious functionality for a program." <- LOL.

My company had just purchased a few Olympus Voice Recorders about two weeks ago... and we spent almost three hours before finally being able to export some bloddy .wav file recorded in some meeting after first using it.

Seems that they didn't make it obvious how to export files, and not only that, the function totally didn't work until we rebooted our system after install, which it didn't prompt us to.
I can't stand Logitech's Setpoint and it 50+MB driver package which doesn't even save the settings you give it when you hit "Ok". Hell, if it did what it was supposed to do, I wouldn't even care about the file size.
Logitech & ATI get my vote as the worst software. Not so much for _inability_ to write decent software, but their refusal to bother. Creative might actually be worse but I figure I can just avoid their hardware from now on.

Please publish a companion article on some hardware companies that _do_ support their own product in software. I'd dearly love to vote my pocketbook on someone that want's to keep their customers.
Let me just point to the interface customization that Asus did to Xandros Linux on their Eee. I think that actually works quite well.

Of course, it helps that they weren't developing much actual software from scratch, mainly building on what somebody else had done...
Utterly ghastly looking fan/overclocking utilities. 

Odly enough the fan monitoring software on my old Athlon XP board, would lower the cpu idle temp by over 10 degrees. But the program makes no mention that it can do this, and it should have been integrated into a system driver anyway.

And their update utility uses the browser, and launches in the default browser despite the fact that it ONLY works in internet explorer.
Guys, I know Creative has been mentioned before, but have they ever released proper updates to their drivers? They never seem to update anything, unless it's catastrophic - and the auto-update feature is a joke! What updates!!!
One of my bugbears has been the software supplied with scanners and printers. My HP printer software is continuously crashing my XP system and requiring a reboot. Scanner software is also notoriously bad, not starting when it should.

Of course, you didn't mention IBM. My experience is that IBM software is pretty poor too--mostly cobbled together for its potential to sell big iron (db2 to sell lots of database servers and gigantic disk arrays that weigh tons). 

I have no answer to this, although only installing the drivers (when the software allows you to) might be it.
Funny thing about Creative's Auto-Update system on their site.

1. For the last 3 years they've said Firefox support is on the way.

2. While their site got revamped recently, the Auto-Update system did not.

3. Why have an Auto-Update system if it doesn't work and the only way to actually update is via the drivers page?
Well... It's a truth that hardware's companies softwares are junk... but...

there is someone in this world that can do a reasonable software?!?!?!

Let's start with Microsoft... what is that stuff Microsoft does? A crap operational system... And office? How it is possible a software used to write text to be so heavy and slow??? And the reverse is also true... Microsoft should never try to make hardwares... 

Corel... no coments... more junk. Ok, Corel Painter is pretty pretty...

Adobe makes something more reasonable, like Porcshop, we can use it and not have headaches if we don´t try to make something big... Aftereffects is also fine, but Premiere is a mistake.

Linux... no coments... Operational systems for old-style nerds who don't have a girlfriends for decades so they have time to install that thing.

Norton? what??? That stuff are softwares? I thought that was undocumented viruses...

Mozilla... Well, just using Firefox because we hate IE even more...

and the list goes and goes...

(I, at this point, diagree with the autor of the text - I think Apple software are very better than the above, or less junk... Mac OSX is crap, but near Windows, is a wonderful system... The same with Finalcut x any other video edition software, and Safari x IE...)