"New and Improved". Two words that fill me with dread.

Don't get me wrong: I like change. Change can be good:  in underwear, toothbrushes and scenery, in loose coins in the bottom of my trouser pocket. Or as in Bowie's 1971 hit "Changes". Great stuff, all.

But more often, change is something else: a monster disguised as an "improvement".

For example: "new and improved" product features are just a new way to harvest even more of your data. Or a way to keep you trapped in an ecosystem (I'm looking at you, Apple and Microsoft).

I don't want "change" in stuff it took me years to learn. Show of hands: who was perfectly happy with the clumsy but functional Skype? Another show of hands: who has actually begged Microsoft to replace the trusty Skype with wonky Teams, with its inane subscription levels and mutually incompatible types of accounts? That's what I thought.

The terror of "New and Improved" is continuously forced upon us, and here is why: it is part of a process called "ensh*tification" - pardon my French. Great term, not mine, Google it.

In a nutshell, here is how ensh*tification disguises greed as an "improvement":

• You attract users with a free (or great value for little money) service.
• Next, you lock the users into an ecosystem that is hard to escape from (I'm looking at you again, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Meta)
• Now slowly start squeezing the locked-in users for profit by monetizing everything, down to the initial free service.  Don't forget to monetize the increased user data that your hapless users are now providing through these "New and Improved" products. Your users become milk cows locked in a barn.
• To justify the squeeze, you bloat your service/product with extra features that nobody asked for (Dropbox, anyone?). Sell these unwanted extras and bloatification as added value: "Look how much more you get!"

Yeah… but I never asked for more.

That alluring new-car smell of your upgraded package? That is the heady odor of your freedoms evaporating rapidly, plus the smell of your precious personal time burning away as you enter yet another steep learning curve to master the new bloatware. And on behalf of the developers: thank you for testing our Beta versions for free.

Fight back. Use more open source (and pay a donation to the authors!). Refuse new features. Fire your Copilot. Think before clicking that Upgrade button. And, if necessary, vote with your feet and leave the platform.

Sometimes, better is the enemy of good enough.