- Family member has 720p webcam
- Family member buys shiny new 1080p webcam
- Family member plugs in shiny new webcam and gives me a videocall to test it
- New camera works flawlessly. I get to keep the old 720p cam. Yippee!!
…BUT THEN
- Family member goes to the website listed on camera’s packaging and clicks the big blue download button
- download button installs custom usb driver and companion app
- companion app has twenty quadrillion toggles and dials spread across fifty billion tabs and sub menus. Family member spends all evening twiddling with it.
- No matter what, the image looks like crap. Too bright, but not enough contrast. Worse than it did originally.
- next day family member asks for his old 720p webcam back, I get to keep the 1080p webcam
I’m happy with my new webcam so I’m not complaining, but why do people do this?? Why do manufacturers make these shitty custom driver? The whole point of USB is to be plug-and-play without any custom software.
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Only manufacturer driver I install is Logitech’s software for their solar keyboard, though it’s not needed. Only driver you really have to install is Logitech’s “shared dongle” tech, forget what it’s called.
You can usually get yer good ol’ fashioned generic driver back with https://zadig.akeo.ie/
Not mentioned:
- The manufacturer-provided “companion app” also installs spyware and adware.
And that’s the real reason they do it. They lure unsuspecting users in with promises of enhanced functionality, but it’s all a ploy to get their data.
Comes with an EULA longer than Ron Jeremy and twice as invasive
At this point, making the longest EULA is a competition. Realistically, no one sane would try to read a EULA from such companies.
Most of it likely isn’t even legally binding. But who has the time, energy, and capitol to hire a lawyer to challenge it?
Oh god, I set up a print server at work, it’s been a minute since I managed printers, and somehow I became convinced that HP’s Smart Universal Driver would work for all the HP printers.
Well, first off, if you set up a print server, Microsoft automatically implements the setting, “don’t download drivers from server, use Microsoft generic Point & Print drivers,” which don’t work at ALL.
So I undeploy all the printers and redeploy them with the correct setting - well that Microsoft drivers is still installed on all PCs and they want to use it by default. So lots of individual workstation fixing.
And then the HP driver fails, directing every HP printer to use Tray 1 (bypass) by default, not the drawer full of paper like it would normally.
So I’m 3 months into this job at this point, and everyone thinks I’m a moron.
Good times.
It fucks me off to no end that 30+ years after the boom in personal computing, there’s been effectively ZERO progress on the usability/stability of printers.
Recently became the “printer guy” at work as well. Endless, daily tomfuckery. There is no fucking reason for there to be a “printer guy” in 2025.
I’m kind of in charge of printers at work. There’s this annoying bug in M$ Office where sometimes their dumb apps override default printer choice and there doesn’t seem to be any sane fix out there. I keep getting a few annoyed admin people complain about this, and I’m like wtf am I supposedtl to do here??, I’m not an M$ dev. God, I hate working with M$ products.
At this point I have completely given up on printer drivers. I just put files on a usb stick and plug it into the printer to print. Printer doesn’t have that functionality? Oh well, it’s as good as broken to me. Biking to the local library will take less time and kill less nerve cells than troubleshooting that piece of crap. I can only pray for people like you who have to work with this mess on the daily.
For manufacturers: some other people have other needs e.g. one of the twenty quadrillion toggles. Not that hard to understand.
USB isn’t plug’n’play for a huge range of devices especially on windows and it never was.
It literally did work as plug and play the way op described it. The app screwing everything up and adding tons of options for people who need simple is the problem.
It still worked in the end and yes UVC cameras often ‘work’ without any additional configuration. Not everyone requires simple.
Is this Green Text in the wild?
