Products · Broad category
Proprietary software
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 12 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
People raised many different problems with Proprietary software, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 12 complaints
- Inconsistent widgets and shortcuts, and many redundant forms to fill out2025-08-04
- Some sites unusable without a very specific client software configuration, almost certainly Windows2024-07-17
- Endless "please wait while we fix your issues" dialogs that rarely solve the problem and don't explain the fix2022-05-31
- Users can't get answers to problems; often told the thing cannot be done or get no response2021-04-02
- Testing software had poor documentation and was hard to use2021-03-28
- Re-registering licensed plugins after a Windows upgrade took over a week2020-07-01
- Crashes and unintuitive options force workarounds like closing and reopening windows2019-02-06
- Being made to download apps and register for each separate chat system2018-11-27
- Commenter couldn't figure out the proprietary tool in time during the interview2015-05-03
- Forced 1.5-second delay before commands reach external programs, making each command wait2012-01-16
- Frustrated by annoying issues in proprietary software that can't be fixed or diagnosed2010-01-08
- Tedious manual searching, source checking and installer clicking to get software2009-06-30