Corporations, and even some open source groups, hate highly visible customisation; they behave as if your computer shouldn’t look like your computer, it should look like their software’s computer.
Of course, this conflicts with what users want. So sometimes they’re forced to provide you at least some highly visible customisation. More at the start, as they advertise their software as “flexible”, “powerful”, “customisable”, whatever. Then they remove it later, when they believe the loss of the customisation won’t make users leave.
But then people ask why. And they can’t simply say “it damages our brand identity”, or “you computer is not yours; it’s our billboard for our software, that you paid for”. And sometimes they can’t ignore the question either, because that would make them look distant and uncommunicative and user-hostile.
The solution is bullshit galore. You disguise the removal as necessary, telling users things like:
“We had to redo it from the scratch, and we couldn’t readd the feature”
“The feature gets in the way of another feature we’re planning to add”
“The feature wasn’t popular, so it was bloating our code”
etc.
Sometimes they aren’t even lying that they redid it from the scratch, or that the feature wasn’t popular. The truth doesn’t matter here; that’s why it’s bullshit instead of a simple lie. The goal was always to get rid of that bit of customisation, and if you keep using their software without it, mission accomplished.
Brand identity.
Corporations, and even some open source groups, hate highly visible customisation; they behave as if your computer shouldn’t look like your computer, it should look like their software’s computer.
Of course, this conflicts with what users want. So sometimes they’re forced to provide you at least some highly visible customisation. More at the start, as they advertise their software as “flexible”, “powerful”, “customisable”, whatever. Then they remove it later, when they believe the loss of the customisation won’t make users leave.
But then people ask why. And they can’t simply say “it damages our brand identity”, or “you computer is not yours; it’s our billboard for our software, that you paid for”. And sometimes they can’t ignore the question either, because that would make them look distant and uncommunicative and user-hostile.
The solution is bullshit galore. You disguise the removal as necessary, telling users things like:
Sometimes they aren’t even lying that they redid it from the scratch, or that the feature wasn’t popular. The truth doesn’t matter here; that’s why it’s bullshit instead of a simple lie. The goal was always to get rid of that bit of customisation, and if you keep using their software without it, mission accomplished.