But my questions are pretty straightforward: Does the software crash during "normal" workflows? Is the software slugish when compared to other similar software, on a similar platform? Is the memory consumption of the software unacceptably high when compared to other similar software on a similar platform?
If the answer to any of those questions is "yes", then I think you have a serious problem on your hands. Those are questions I ask myself when I am building software. I don't see why that decision making process should be controversial - those are fundamental indicators of quality in a software project.
Well, the people who down-voted my post disagree with you. Apparently it is controversial. But I'm glad you don't have an issue with disagreement as without it there is no debate.
Does the software crash during "normal" workflows? Without defining normal, I would say yes. But then again, I have various software packages crash during my workflow. Does that mean all of them are "bad"?
Is the software sluggish when compared to other similar software/platform? Define sluggish. What if on my machine Firefox is sluggish in loading new tabs but Chrome is sluggish in closing old tabs? Can I call them both "bad software"?
Is the memory consumption unacceptably high? What's unacceptably high? My work machine has 10 gigs of RAM while my home machine has two. Which one should I judge the high memory usage on? What was I doing at the time that might have added to the level? Does the high memory usage cause sluggishness on my machine? Is it because of a memory leak in the browser, a memory leak in a third-party plugin or maybe because I just felt like leaving thirty tabs open for more than 24 hours?
My point being that there are way too many factors involved for someone to just label software "bad" when so many people do not report the same problems. People act as if their experience and opinion is common knowledge when most likely it is not. What if the problems, whether real or perceived, are due to new features in the software? Should we all just roll back to Firefox 3.6?
Now, is it possible that Chrome is just a better browser than Firefox? Of course, I'm not disputing that at all and I would tend to agree. I just have an issue with labels that don't necessarily apply.
Now show me Firefox having these problems for, say, a substantial number of people then I would have to agree that there's an issue. But I'm talking something significant, such as 60 to 70% failure rate and then you have me. Even then it's possible the problem can be fixed so that it is no longer "bad software", but I'm sure no one will listen at that point. Because it seems that in these debates the negative ("bad experience") far outweighs the positive ("good experience") to the point that my positive opinion of Firefox means nothing.
If that's the criteria to label a product as "bad software", then I say that all of it is "bad software".
Or should I just say; "Chrome good, Firefox bad!" to avoid down votes?
But my questions are pretty straightforward: Does the software crash during "normal" workflows? Is the software slugish when compared to other similar software, on a similar platform? Is the memory consumption of the software unacceptably high when compared to other similar software on a similar platform?
If the answer to any of those questions is "yes", then I think you have a serious problem on your hands. Those are questions I ask myself when I am building software. I don't see why that decision making process should be controversial - those are fundamental indicators of quality in a software project.