I like this question! People who build software/hardware in the past - before app stores - used to have to sell it in the shops or on a website. People looked for features, ticking boxes - the more it had the better it was. This often meant that some of the features were of poor quality - due to developers just wanting to create the bear minimum of features to say the product did something.
Updates were never as easy to do as they are now, due to internet not existing or because of slow internet connections and often it meant a CD in the post, or wait and buy the next version.
So why is it still there?
- People still expect to find it there - over time, when people bought packages of software, the calendar came with the email. If it did not nowadays, then not so advanced users might not know how to find a different one
- Once people use software and integrate their life in to it, become familiar with it they struggle to move on.
- I am sure large companies that buy software licenses just want to buy things that have it all and are tried and tested - I am thinking about things like Microsoft Office here which come with Outlook which has email and calendar built in.
- Offer additional integration/features through their different "apps"
Because they can, they are usually very large teams who work on different areas
I had a few more, but cant think right now.. will add to it later
I agree! I find it a bit frustrating.
This mentality is something that I feel is dying out slightly which is good. Remember when everyone used to have to make EVERYTHING and put it all in the features list. Here are some examples :
- Apple released iOS and it has a calendar, mail and all the rest. But
over time, apps like Sunrise Calendar (sadly now bought by Microsoft
to be butchered in to Outlook) Mailbox, Boxer mail came on to the
scene and were SO far ahead in terms of features and how nice they
were to use. I ended up using those instead of the ones built in to
iOS.
- Remember when we all bought phones and EVERY different company had their own OS which would rarely be updated or patched? Glad those days are over.
- I bought an amp made by Denon - one of the big selling points was
that is had Spotify integration. 2 years later Spotify released
Spotify Connect and neither Denon or Spotify continued to support
this thing that my amp used. Nowadays, Spotify just have to manage
one service, that is universal - WIN!
I always wished companies focused on 1 thing and made it REALLY good. Many companies nowadays have API's to hook in to their data, we have a few great operating systems - Android, iOS - which allow us to pick and choose what we want to use instead of having to bow down to some companies operating system.
