In a sidebar to Shellbot’s ‘Tumbleweeds’ discussion, TR member Darryl~ described Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer 2007 as “the most hateful application I’ve used”.
For me it was Scala InfoChannel, a video presentation package. We bought it around 2000 to create employee news displays for TV screens in our lobbies, cafeterias, etc. A vile app, it looked like a mid-80’s DOS file management GUI. Take a look at this screenshot from a 1999 independent review:
http://www.dvdcreation.com/Images/Features/1999/Paulo_Scala/Paulo_Scala4large.jpg
None of the buttons or toolbars behaved like I expected; the whole interface ran counter to everything I’d learned about using a Windows-based app. (The review above considered this an asset!) I consistently had problems accurately inserting new pages where I wanted them. I quickly came to hate requests to update the content. After six months I recreated the entire presentation in PowerPoint, augmented by a couple of free plug-ins to handle refreshing the weather and traffic slides. It took a couple of days but was much easier to maintain.
In it’s defense, it was way more tool than we needed, intended for presentations far more sophisticated than ours, a space shuttle when all we needed was Sputnik. It was selected by HR or PR without IT input, then handed to me without much training. Wikipedia says InfoChannel has been reborn as Scala5, but I hope to never encounter it. Once bitten…
What application causes you to cringe at the thought of having to use it?
