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Speaking as an engineer and a developer (although not the audio industry), I can point to a panoply of reasons why products often, if not always, seem to fall short of expectations:
- Potential users don't communicate their requirements effectively to the analysts (they don't always know them in advance and even if they do, often lack the vocabulary to express it);
- Analysts don't communicate the requirements effectively to the designers and product managers;
- Designers and product managers don't communicate the requirements effectively to the programmers;
- Time/budget constraints and the 80/20 rule may necessitate certain features being cut (often the initial timeline is totally unrealistic to begin with);
- Requirements/specifications change part-way through the product, leading to clumsy hacks and other trade-offs;
- Not enough budgeted for Human Interface Design, Quality Assurance, or various other "non-essential" areas;
- Project teams get larger as the projects themselves get larger, eventually leading to communication breakdowns (when you see massive inconsistencies between different parts of the same product, this is usually the reason why);
- Managers attempting to fix problems end up creating more problems (i.e. blindly adding more manpower)
And so on and so forth.
Software and/or engineering companies mess these products up for the same fundamental reasons that every other company messes up its products or services: they're managed and run by humans, and humans make mistakes and are sometimes completely incompetent.
It's the way it is. As a consumer you just have to try your best to pick the best option (for you) from a pool of lousy ones.
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My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here
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