[NA] Over engineered "improvements"

[Bob Noel]

I was just reminded of this thread today.... Apple made changes to the mail app on their iOS devices. It now sorts and filters your email based on AI determined categories. So now I'm fumbling with the thing having to tap different icons to get emails that I know exist in my inbox to appear and wondering what I'm now missing.

I get it, we get lots of email and most of it's junk and we want some way of sorting it... but I had a solution to this decades ago before we had smartphones. Most email software had the ability to set up folders and rules for filtering email. There was some initial work to set up your filters but once that was done it worked great and it was easy to find things. Now, like most people I don't really use a local email client on my PC and most of the time I'm checking it on my phone... so that no longer works for me. I've tried multiple email apps but none of them will allow me to set up my own filters- they only do their automated categorization which doesn't work for my needs at all.

*sigh*

And yeah I do have mozilla thunderbird installed on my main desktop PC and it will still do this but since I'm usually checking mail on my phone now and the folders don't sync to that device it doesn't really help.

You can change that idiotic default setting by clicking on the ellipse icon in the upper right corner of the mbox and select "list view" instead of that idiotic/useless/crap "Categories"

 

[cowman]

You can change that idiotic default setting by clicking on the ellipse icon in the upper right corner of the mbox and select "list view" instead of that idiotic/useless/crap "Categories"

Yeah I saw that... my larger complaint is all the engineering that went into making this "solution" that doesn't work while not implementing a perfectly good solution that we had all the way back in the earliest days of email.

 

[ArrowFlyer86]

Yeah I saw that... my larger complaint is all the engineering that went into making this "solution" that doesn't work while not implementing a perfectly good solution that we had all the way back in the earliest days of email.

I learned in the earliest days of my career that it's hard to justify a pay raise as a product manager if you tell your boss that you kept everything the same for another year because it works well and customers are content.

So our team worked hard in being innovative and overhauling our trading product, making it ****tier for everyone along the way. All the new unrequested (or barely requested) bells and whistles we added unquestionably made the product harder to use, buggier and less reliable. But it made for much better compensation conversations at the end of the year as a dev or a manager.

EDIT: I imagine your email feature that got retired, or phased out in favor of a new way of doing things was probably for the same reason.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Yeah I saw that... my larger complaint is all the engineering that went into making this "solution" that doesn't work while not implementing a perfectly good solution that we had all the way back in the earliest days of email.

Well, yeah, except it only worked back then. These days I've been inundated with so much email, and I have so little time to deal with it, that I don't have time to manually set up rules any more, and haven't for a long time. Clicking on "Junk" was supposed to be the solution, but wasn't particularly "smart" and wouldn't catch junk from the same company if they rotated addresses or subjects, for example.

Although I'm not (at least, not yet) a fan of redoing the interface, a bit more intelligence behind the filtering rules would be most welcome.

The other thing I do is, for the filters I do have set up on my computer, I leave the computer running 24/7 with the mail app open, and I use IMAP instead of POP, so the computer still filters everything when it comes in, and thus it is also filtered on my phone.

 

[Bob Noel]

Yeah I saw that... my larger complaint is all the engineering that went into making this "solution" that doesn't work while not implementing a perfectly good solution that we had all the way back in the earliest days of email.

understood. I'm not defending the apple crap. I hate installing later versions of any OS (notice I didn't say "upgrading") because I have to waste time figuring out what crap changes were made and disable them or figure out workarounds. I especially dispise it when the newer version doesn't honor existing preferences (e.g., I have bluetooth off for a reason you stupid programmers)

 

[CJones]

I haven't read through all of the thread, so maybe it's already here, but what's the deal with windshield wipers!? Used to be, $10 for the 'top of the line' replacements and they usually lasted a year+. Now it's $30 for ONE, and they last MAYBE 6 months. And the 'universal adapters' are a friggin joke. What engineering department sat around said "You know.. Our margins are really tight on cars these days, we should definitely invest a crap-ton of money redesigning the way windshield wipers mount onto a vehicle."!?

I got so fed up with the replacement on my truck because the 'universal mount' in the new wiper would fit the passenger side but not the driver side, I ended up figuring out how to pull just the rubber strip out of the new and old wipers and putting the new one in the old frame. Good grief.

 

[aterry1067]

I learned in the earliest days of my career that it's hard to justify a pay raise as a product manager if you tell your boss that you kept everything the same for another year because it works well and customers are content.

So our team worked hard in being innovative and overhauling our trading product, making it ****tier for everyone along the way. All the new unrequested (or barely requested) bells and whistles we added unquestionably made the product harder to use, buggier and less reliable. But it made for much better compensation conversations at the end of the year as a dev or a manager.

EDIT: I imagine your email feature that got retired, or phased out in favor of a new way of doing things was probably for the same reason.

Product idea for you. Design something great that automates 100 things. Every year for the next 10 years, allow the user to turn off/disable/control 10 things. Charge more for it, and call it the improved version. Repeat for the next 9 years. End up with a great product.

 

[Bob Noel]

Product idea for you. Design something great that automates 100 things. Every year for the next 10 years, allow the user to turn off/disable/control 10 things. Charge more for it, and call it the improved version. Repeat for the next 9 years. End up with a great product.

"great product"? I don't think so Tim.

 

[Racerx]

Apple pay/tap to pay scam going on in the Chicago area...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/03/07/credit-card-scam/

"Rodriguez is not alone — he is one of dozens who have recently lost thousands of dollars to a scam going around Chicago where con artists will use a sad story to lure victims into paying them thousands of dollars when the victim thinks they are only paying a small amount of money.

The Tribune spoke with multiple people victimized by this scam, and while some say that the con is nothing new, the rise in popularity of Apple Pay, PayPal and tap-to-pay credit card transactions has allowed scammers to take off with thousands of dollars from people on the street."