>>In the latter case, you always need to be adding new features, enhancing the User Interface, changing things in an effort to get people to upgrade and continue driving revenue

This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. You don't "always need" to do anything.
Adding features to "continue driving revenue" instead of leaving something alone is a common management error.
Acknowledging that a product, a company or even an entire industry, has run its course seems to be difficult for people in that business.
I was close to the trucking industry when deregulation wiped out the entire industry in less than 5 years during the early 80's. The smart operators sold their assets for as much as they could immediately and got into entirely different businesses, while most operators tried to "continue driving revenue" and got nothing.

Technology does the same thing. I imagine that there are still some people who "continue driving revenue" while selling fax machines.







>It's very different when you work in a corporate IT group or if you're a consultant doing work for hire vs. a company selling software commercially. In the latter case, you always need to be adding new features, enhancing the UI, changing things in an effort to get people to upgrade and continue driving revenue. As we know, those features don't always work out (Metro). Other times the changes take a while to catch on (ribbon). Still other times, competition jumps on areas where you didn't do so good (I'm a Mac, I'm a PC). Sometimes you get it right too (Win 7).
>
>>In my personal software develpment I always attempt to upgrade to new helpful features, but I usually don't make it so different that it requires a lot of thinking on those who have used the software for years. Am I one of the few who think this way, or is the industry moving so fast we feel compelled to make something different just to make it seem more modern or just different - often times at the expense of productivity?
>>
>>Just wondering......