Fixing Fixes Instead of Creating
That’s the trap of modern software...
One overnight update removes the export queue, the next update patch hides it behind an icon that doesn’t respond. Suddenly, you’re not an editor, designer, or storyteller; you’re a part-time IT department keeping your own tools alive, trying to figure out workarounds for an app that literally worked fine yesterday.
The irony? None of us asks for a smaller footprint or a faster workflow on paper. We ask for stability. For things to just work the same way they did yesterday, improve the features, but not at the expense of existing features that are necessary and in use. Instead, every other session seems to start with the same sort of ritual: drivers, reinstalls, toggles, resets, reboots. By the time it’s fixed, the creative spark has already flickered out.
The latest time vampire: Topaz Labs’ Video AI: a brilliant tool for upscaling and enhancing low-quality video, but their newest update flat-out removed the export queue. Why? No one seems to know. Topaz is already slow to render, and if you need to stop a process, you used to do it in the queue. Not anymore. Now, apparently, exports run blind; no control, no stop button. Meanwhile, my machine sits with all cores and RAM blazing away on a file destined for the trash. The only way I knew something was going on was that the fans in my laptop ramped up to 90rpm. No indicator. No progress bar. Just white noise that filled the room, that was my rendering indicator.
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So here I am, forced to leave the room while my system grinds pointlessly, literally at 90-to-nothing, on nothing.
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🚨 Developers, stop stripping away what works and start building software that empowers creativity instead of burying it with your “improvements.”
#endofrant
PS... I wrote this all the while my laptop cranked away in Topaz. When I finished the rant, I force-quit everything and shut down for the night. This morning, Topaz's export window is back! I'm not going to ask questions, just happy it's back. (But I'm not going to let all those words above go to waste, the struggle is real.)
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