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[Closed] Way OT: The most hateful piece of software you've used?

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I'd go with iTunes as well.
It's not that it isn't easy to use, it's just that what it does, it does in a VERY messy way.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:23 pm
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Siebel hurts me physically hurts me.
Beenusing office 2010 patiently for a few months now trekking myself the ui will be better and I just need to get used to it. Truth is office 2003 was great now they have broken it.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:24 pm
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Can't abide iTunes myself either. I think it's probably ok if you let it take over your media library and / or run it on a Mac, neither of which I'm prepared to do. So I just end up fighting it all the time, which on balance I still think is the lesser of two evils.

I think though, the worst commercial software I've ever had the misfortune to come across was the old AOL dial-up software. Evil, invasive stuff.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:26 pm
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LaTeX. Just irritating cause of stupid errors.

WTF! Are you mental? There is no substitute for making professional looking documents, especially if they contain equations. A bit of a learning curve to start with but not that bad.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:27 pm
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WTF! Are you mental? There is no substitute for making professional looking documents, especially if they contain equations. A bit of a learning curve to start with but not that bad.

I agree completely, but it's still super irritating when you are learning to use it. And one little typo somewhere and the whole thing refuses to run...

And you save a little bit of time on putting in equations, but then seem to waste your life fixing the margins or putting in new paragraphs or something stupid. If you're pro with it, it must be awesome, but if you're not, it's frustrating.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:30 pm
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Lotus Notes was/is OK in comparison to SAP, but must admit the ribbon interface in Office 2010 is starting to get annoying.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:33 pm
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Its called "SAM" and it cost "Animal Health" 200 mill! Yes that is our money ... taxpayers money. It is utterly dreadful for the user. Slows processes by 20 fold. Only any good for managers to run reports. Very depressing.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:35 pm
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OSX by far. Almost threw across the room the last Apple PC I used.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:35 pm
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Norton


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:38 pm
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Whenever I'm forced to use a new version of almost any software I spend the first couple of hours trying to make it look and behave as much like the old version as I can. If possible I disable or remove the new features or whatever the new USP is.

I've got almost everything looking pretty much like it did under NT4.

I'm not proud of myself.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:38 pm
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Did we find our what the OP's CMS was yet??

oh - and my most hated software? Has to be MS SharePoint, by a country mile. Vile.

Rachel


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:40 pm
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Most virus checkers get my vote. My previous company had Sophos and that was awful, worse than having a virus. We now have McAfee, which may be even worse. The one on my work computer regularly slows it to a crawl for minutes at a time taking up vast amounts of memory. Right now it's taking up over 400 megs, my first computer only had 64k, what can it possibly be doing with all that memory?!


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:45 pm
 emsz
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I want to know what everyone dislikes about itunes?

I shuffle through my music I click on it and it plays, I drag it to my phone if I want it there, and make playlists. what doesn't it do?


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:46 pm
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I want to know what everyone dislikes about itunes?

+1


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:51 pm
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Any of the Microsoft office packages. Can't understand the trouble with iTunes though - it's a doddle, surely there's nothing to get frustrated with?


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:52 pm
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autodesk inventor


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:55 pm
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SAP is fine if implemented well. The problem is most places can't get around how integrated it is and therefore complicated it is to spec, design and implement.

So SAP then...

Oh and Citrix over a pre 3G mobile data connection


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:57 pm
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ArcGIS - you need a huge memory to remember where everything is

Word - for anything longer than 8000 words

I'm wondering what people are trying to do with iTunes which frustrates them so much. Add music, play music.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:57 pm
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Not sure about hateful but Propellerheads Reason is pretty damn hard to use!


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:57 pm
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I've never understood the hate some people have for iTunes - it just play music, how hard can it be?

Rachel


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 10:57 pm
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ArcGIS 10, and I use it 8 hours a day!


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:02 pm
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iTunes - I had one revision that wouldn't recognise my ipods!!!
I've had to restore the ipods and reload all my music more times than I can remember due to iTunes not wanting to play.
Try using apple help pages when you have an issue. The not recognising ipods issue advice is to reload your operating system even though the PC recognised I'd plugged the in ipod and every other USB device you could care to think of.

+1 for Inventor - when it works it's fantastic, but when it doesn't like something - oh boy!!
Also, Advitium.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:04 pm
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Most virus checkers get my vote.

To be fair,

Most AV products default to the most aggressive settings possible because for years they've solely been judged by stupid league tables in magazines. "Norton's crap, it only catches 98% of viruses..." It's like the camera megapixel thing.

Most AV solutions, when set up properly, aren't nearly as bad as they are out of the box. Sadly, most AV solutions aren't set up correctly.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:07 pm
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erm, MS Analysis Services is pretty evil - uber complicated, uber sensitive, minimal error messages

worst in my experience is Map Info - older GIS program, utterly mystifying - takes hours to do the most simple things (would help if I'd done the training i guess)

All the votes for itunes, office, windows etc must be from lucky folk who don't have to use "specialist" software - they're all really good in comparison!


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:10 pm
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worst in my experience is Map Info

MapInfo is very good, but its learning curve is near vertical.

All the votes for itunes, office, windows etc must be from lucky folk who don't have to use "specialist" software

+1. I've used far too many grim systems over the years that've clearly been developed without any discussion at all with the people who are actually going to use it. Largely proprietary stuff that no-one will have heard of (and hugely expensive).


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:14 pm
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I want to know what everyone dislikes about itunes?

Innit though? I've bin using it for ten years now and never ever had a problem with it. Used it on Macs and PCs, done wireless music streaming and sharing, synced devices, burned CDs and that, etc etc.

Maybe it's cos they don't know how to use computers. Not everyone does, you need to be quite clever.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:14 pm
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Anything BT decides to install on their engineers' laptops.

Well it's nice to know that BT makes its employees lives as miserable as those of its customers...

BT's website is very high up my list of godawful software whose source-code should be printed out, put in a leadlined coffin with a stake through the middle, buried, and then nuked from orbit. My heart sinks everytime I get the company phone bill (online for your "convenience").

Sage used to be pretty dreadful but they've cleaned their act up quite well recently. Word is a bit crap but I can forgive Microsoft quite a lot because Excel is actually really good - so long as you use it as it was intended to be used.

Incidentally I suspect that this is the problem most people have with iTunes. If you just use it for playing music and syncing your iPod, it's fine. But Apple seem to want you to use it to do everything under the sun, and as soon as you plug an iPhone into it there's a 50/50 chance that you'll accidentally open a portal to hell or something similarly inconvenient. To be honest, I reckon it's going to be a good twenty or thirty years before computers are powerful enough to be able to deal with talking to mobile phones without inadvertently tearing an interdimensional rift half the time. I mean, they've still not really got the hang of printers, have they?


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:15 pm
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Maybe it's cos they don't know how to use computers. Not everyone does, you need to be quite clever.

I'll remind you of that next time you start a "windoze" thread.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:17 pm
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Yes Notes is damn awkward to use and we'd all prefer the simplicity of Outlook, but it works and has most features, just everything is hard to find! We use Notes at work, but have some far, far more annoying software to struggle with.
From a person who deploys most of our applications in Citrix, some Autodesk products, HP Quality Centre, Oracle clients/middleware (every release has been awkward), IBM PComm as a problem management solution - Infoman (works very well, but is errr slightly ancient and extremely un userfriendly!), CCPulse (whatever happened to the days where restrictive hardware meant more efficiency).
Probably loads more, and I dont actually use any of those myself, just Notes.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:17 pm
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Itunes just sucks.

I've got music players free with petrol that are are easier to use than itunes; drag and drop, back and forth, no stupid DRM.

Hey Apple, I can manage my music ok thanks..

Itunes may well have changed recently, I wouldn't know because I would rather eat my own earwax than use it again.

A friend spent a week putting CDs on a computer to add to his iPod, then deleted the music, cos it was on his iPod, right? THen connected and synced and lost it all.

Suckier than a Professor of Suction at Suckingville University.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:22 pm
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Most of the software I write!

ditto


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:25 pm
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Crikey, nailed it in one...Aldo maybe I iz jus' not az cleva az sum 'ere init 🙄


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:29 pm
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agresso finance. it might be good if you run a finance system. i don't i want to buy stuff.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:33 pm
 DezB
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MS Word. Went from a company that used WordPerfect, which actually let you format a document how YOU wanted it, to Word which seems to format how some Yank nerd working for Microsoft wants it. Doesn't even let you select the letters you want! Hideous and got worse with each new version.

Those who hate iTunes obviously never had to use Sonic Stage. Now that was shit. iTunes would be fine if it actually kept the bloody album artwork instead of "forgetting" it. Grr.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:45 pm
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drag and drop, back and forth, no stupid DRM.

Funny, that's exactly how I've always used my iTunes. Never had a problem in ten years.

A friend spent a week putting CDs on a computer to add to his iPod, then deleted the music, cos it was on his iPod, right? THen connected and synced and lost it all.

Oh of course; it's the [i]computer's[/i] fault. Right. Ok. Yeah....


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:47 pm
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I'll remind you of that next time you start a "windoze" thread.

If it pleases you. 😐

[img] [/img]


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:50 pm
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re. GIS software, why can't Adobe get involved and make a UI that is more user friendly. Too many dialogue boxes, tabs, drop down menu, sub menu, another dialogue tab, another drop down menu, and then you can change the font... but wait, it isn't even wysiwyg!!!


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:51 pm
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Rivendell. Such a horrible radio playout "solution".


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:52 pm
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Ah yes, good point Elfin. Office Assistant. File under "what [i]were[/i] they thinking."


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:55 pm
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Sage, why can't you just let me do a search by customer name?!!


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:57 pm
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[img] [/img]


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:58 pm
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Why iTunes? Because every time I have to open the hateful thing up just fills me with dread.

It's not that figuring out how to do what I want is hard. The UI gets better (and less prescriptive) with every new version. It's the actual function of the thing.

It may or may not choose to recognise my iPhone or iPod according to its whim. If for whatever reason I have to disconnect my device while iTunes is open (even if I "eject" it properly) it is a certainty that I will have to restart iTunes to get it to recognise it again. Often I will have to restart the computer.

It is a colossal resource-hog and hence runs incredibly slowly.

It crashes regularly (only software that crashes my PC). If it does this in the middle of synching to my device, it f*cks the device, requiring a hugely long and frustrating process (see above 2 points) to re-instate it.

It made an utter ar$e of importing the pre-iTunes music in my collection. Even though it was all already organised in one collection (flawlessly, by Windows Media Player). I'm still not sure I've got all my old tunes in there.

It will not allow me to access content from any location other than France (no, I do not want to download sh*te French TV, thanks). Even with a card from a UK bank!

I could go on and on but I'm getting frustrated just thinking about it. The worst thing is that all the other aspects of using my iPhone and iPod are so slick.


 
Posted : 02/11/2011 11:59 pm
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Minitab


 
Posted : 03/11/2011 12:01 am
 mboy
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Lotus Notes is one piece of software that makes Microsoft look especially good at writing software. It's just awful, and has hardly changed in more than a decade. Yet it's still so widely used!

iTunes? What's the issue? It's just the front end to a database. I know it gets updated more regularly than night follows day, but quite frankly for what it's designed to do, it's great. And in 4 years of iPhone use, not once have I had a sync issue, or lost all my music, contacts or whatever.

SAP is clunky, and not the easiest to use compared to most home consumer software, but for commercial software it's actually pretty good. As someone with quite a bit of experience of implementing Warehouse Management Software Systems, you need look no further than many commercially available WMS software. Most of it is bloody awful, designed by geeks for use by geeks. Oh, and they ALWAYS have quickly anomalies that have to be worked round. My first serious role post uni, I had to investigate where £250k worth of mobile phones were disappearing each year inside the Vodafone distribution centre. Short answer... They weren't disappearing, the shite software was creating ghost stock when certain stock movements were performed. Took me a while to find that one, but when I did it was totally obvious and regular as clockwork... Shite software "costing" them £250k a year and I managed to find it and fix it inside a few months!

As someone above has said, I can't get on with Propellheads Reason either. But that's probably cos it tries to be too clever, emulating a real hardware studio, including all the old school cable patching and midi sync etc. Not for me ta, makes Logic seem like child's play. That said, I'm no Ableton fan either.


 
Posted : 03/11/2011 12:02 am
 rs
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has to be the Oracle timesheet system I have to use!


 
Posted : 03/11/2011 12:02 am
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