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On a somewhat related note I am also getting annoyed with the latest software for the stand alone units. It runs unbearably slow and they messed up how the suggestions work.

The latest software update (a month or so ago) is such an enormous disaster in so many varied ways! It actually adversely impacts my "TiVo experience."

I haven't whined too much because my "lifetime membership" has paid itself off years ago and I am (was) a die-hard TiVo fan.

But if they were charging me $20/month (instead of $0/month) for this latest piece of crap, I would have kicked the TiVo to the curb.

I just assumed that the original software guys with the "vision" must have left and handed it off to a bunch of new college grads who don't actually use all the features of the Tivo or have any clue how to do quality control.

Here are a (small) number of the problems that I can name right off the top of my head.
Note, NONE of these problems existed in the previous software release. They're all new.

• Lockups. In my years of TiVo ownership it had NEVER locked up. Now if I move between menus too fast, it jams and I have to pull the plug out of the wall to reset it. This happens about once a month now.
  
• PAINFULLY slow interface when you are diving in and out of folders or moving between the "Now Playing" and "Main Menu"
  
• Also a big time lag when coming from LiveTV or a recorded program back to any menu.
  
• No "type ahead" for these painfully slow gaps. I.e., if you hit "right, right, right" it will do the first "right" and then make two bonking noises while it slowly redraws the menu and then eventually decides to let you input the next "right"
  
• "Pick Programs to Record" became "Find Programs" WHAT?! Doesn't "Find Progams" imply "Find programs I already have recorded" instead of "choose what to record later"? This is just an unnecessary cognitive dissonance that shows they aren't putting much thought into the user experience any more.
  
• In the "To Do List" or "View Recording History" or "Now Playing" menus if you delete something or add something, it puts you back in the order at time==now even if you were editing stuff for next week. So to cancel three back-to-back upcoming shows for next Tuesday (as I often do before I go on vacation) you have to cancel one, scroll back through pages of stuff, cancel the next one, scroll back again, cancel, scroll-scroll-scroll, cancel, etc.)
  Just because these pinheads stopped tracking your "current position in list" for no apparent reason
  
• If you have "KidZone" enabled and you put your TiVo into "Standby" and then go away for a few hours, when you "un-standby" your TiVo it comes up in KidZone (as it is supposed to) but the entire KidZone menu is completely blank and every button you push either makes a bonking noise, or asks for you to enter your "exit KidZone" code.
  

OK, there are plenty more failures than this. These are just the ones that became immediately obvious to me within minutes of using the TiVo and annoy me incessantly.

How could a machine that "got it right" the first time have gotten it so wrong this time?

(In retrospect, this is probably not too uncommon and is a bit like Brooks' "second system effect." I remember that Macs back in the System 6 or maybe early 7 days worked nicely, cleanly, and quickly. And then got more and more crufted up, unintelligible, buggy, and slow with every software release for 5+ years, until Apple basically did a total reset and now once again has something that is more or less a joy to use once more. (I know a few of you will disagree with me on the "Macs are good again" thing, but I hope you acknowledge that they were getting nastier and nastier through the 90's and earlier '00's.))

Anyway, I want TiVo to succeed, but I think that between the new pricing and the frighteningly disastrous software release they may have just dug their own grave.


[Begin Random_Partially_Relevant_Anecdotes]

I remember one day back in '97 or '98 when I went to AltaVista just like I did every day for searching the web. But they had re-formated their front page! The search box was hard to find or required you to click through to another page or something like that.

Normally, I'm just too lazy to try anything different. But now they changed the way things worked, and broke my rhythm. "OK," I thought, "If this is going to be a pain in the butt, I'll just go check out this new Google thing" (or maybe it was Yahoo! at that point).
Well, I never came back.

I've always suspected that AltaVista lost half their users in just that one day after they gratuitously changed their interface for the worse. They were an also-ran within a few more short months.

When I go to the store to buy some standard household product on my "always buy" list and they have changed the packaging, it freaks me out and takes me a few extra moments to find it. Then at that point I usually decide to check out competitive products and usually switch to another brand just out of spite. Then I mindlessly stick with that other brand until THEY change their packaging and confuse me.

I guess I'm a very simple man....

But it surprises me that a company will work so hard to build up brand loyalty and repeat business and then do something small and foolish causing them to "accidentally" lose consumers like me.

As a counterpoint, Arm&Hammer baking soda has had more or less the same old yellow box for over 50 years... making it easy for me to find when I'm blowing through the grocery store... and thus they've never tempted me to save three cents and buy the generic baking soda instead....

...Although, I have thrown caution completely to the wind a few times and bought some of those "put me in the fridge" versions with the cardboard cut out of the sides -- because they're still yellow boxes and therefore don't confuse and frighten my little mind.

[End RPRA]