On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 11:10 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Right. It's the "we don't know" part that makes it unacceptable. If
> we've done a good job at picking defaults, then we're going to assume
> the users are actually using them. If they aren't we have no way of
> telling so it's not safe to just remove the application.
Considering that removing an application does not affect any user data
or configuration associated with said application, I don't agree that
this is unacceptable or unsafe - users that don't like the new default
can easily revert to the old one. When they use search to launch the
application, it's actually little more than an extra click - instead
of the application, they get its details page in Software which allows
them to install it. There's obviously some disruption and
inconvenience in the (one time) extra step, but it hardly classifies
as breakage in my opinion - in particular as I would expect many
(most?) users to follow the new default (after all there's a reason
for changing the default - it is supposed to better than the old one,
at least for most users).
I also think we should not ignore the impact that piling up stuff the
user never asked for over time has. Technically removing an unwanted
applications is not any more effort than installing a wanted one, but
there's a huge difference between cleaning up other people's mess and
adding something you are looking forward to using.
Picking the default email client as example, assume we change it from
Evolution to Thunderbird at some point, and to Geary some releases
later. Following Owen's proposal,
(1) users who are happy with the default (or don't use any email
client) end up with one client
(2) users who prefer one of the old defaults (either Evo or
Thunderbird) end up with two clients
(3) users who prefer some other email client (say KMail) end up with
two clients as well
(4) users who prefer to stick with Evo when we change the default to
Thunderbird, but then
adopt Thunderbird by the time we switch to Geary end up with
three clients
I only see a somewhat reasonable justification for installing three
email clients in case (4), I'd put all the other cases somewhere
between "a bit dodgy" and "extremely messy" - in particular installing
four clients for users that only ever used a single one (case (3)) is
pretty crazy. If this was done to prevent irreparable damage to case
(2) users, that'd be an unfortunate but necessary drawback. But to
save some users a couple of minutes on updates?
> And if we switch applications for a particular task, it
> should be done with great care and planning to minimize any impact on
> a user's workflow.
Very much agreed. Ideally the new default would pick up the most
important configuration from the old one to make the transition as
painless as possible (to stick with the email example: import existing
accounts so users don't have to spend time repeating a boring setup
they already did in the past). At the very least the change should be
well documented, including how to get back to the old default if we
end up removing it.
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