Why Some Apps Are Intentionally Slow - Cheddar Explains 

This doesn't only exist in the tech industry. I've worked in administration, and I used to do this all the time. They'd ask me "Oh, and I can I get X?" - and I know we're out of X - we've been out of X since 10am, but if I just say "No" or even "No, there's none left", then it seems more rude. But, if I got off my chair, went to the supply room, said "g'day" to the storage room people, then head back out and say "Sorry, we're all out" - then the customer is happier, since even though they didn't get what they wanted, they feel like I attempted to help them, for spending 10 seconds making a pointless trip.

Allow tech literate people to disable this. Set an “advanced user” option in the settings menu that removes the artificial wait times.

Instead of giving me an artificial load time, I'd rather have the software brag of its speed next to the instantaneous results.

Hahahaha you got me there Blender, now let's remove that wait time for renders

These loading bar that goes so fast from 1% to 80% then stop for half hour and you start wonder if it's freeze or not and you put mouse cursor or finger on the line to check if it's moving slowly by nanometers

I thought they were just stupid, now I know they think I'm stupid.

I work at a chain restaurant and we “hold” the food in the computer because sometimes the food takes less than a minute to prepare. Customers get freaked when their food comes out so fast

Imagine how much time has been wasted thanks to this idea.

When I see obviously fake progress bars, my thought is instantly "this app/website is a scam".

I wish loading bars never reached "100%" It's really frustrating when they get stuck at 100, when they obviously shouldn't.

Driving to places: "It's all good." Getting instantly teleported to places: "This freaking sucks!"

Reminds me of the old story of a guy that just bought an expensive horse. He goes into a store and tells the clerk he wants a horse blanket. The clerk brings out a blanket for $20. The customer was unhappy with the cheap blanket for his expensive horse so he tells the clerk that he wants a nicer blanket. So the clerk brings out the same type of blanket but a different color and says it’s $40. The customer still wasn’t happy so the store clerk kept bringing out the same types of blanket but quoting a higher price for each one. When the clerk finally brings out a “hundred dollar” blanket, then the customer was satisfied. This is much like the story of the famous expensive guitars that only became popular after they were artificially marked way up on price. So it’s not what you’re buying that matters, it’s what you think you’re buying.

Perfect example of tech illiteracy slowing down progress.

This hits too close to home. As a programmer I was also required to put such fake waits into some of my more recent projects.

"Loading accompanied by animation telling what the algorithm is doing" Meanwhile the Sims algorithm = "Adding Hidden Agendas", "Charging Ozone Layer", "Graphing Whale Migration"

And then there are users that understand computers, who look at these delays and think, "Why is this taking so long? Is the program really this bad?"

It's called "managing expectations" (or in some cases "managing idiots", or "managing idiots' expectations"). It works in other fields too. Once, I completed a project in a couple of days, but I told my boss that I would wait before submitting it to his boss. He was surprised, and asked me why? "Because that guy has no understanding of what we are doing. Next time, he'll come with a much harder problem, expect us to complete it in a couple of days, then criticise us if we don't". My boss laughed, and let me artificially add a delay (he even covered us, saying we were all working really hard on it... I miss him as a boss). A couple of weeks later, guess who came with a really hard problem to solve and asked "it can be done in a week, just like last time?" :-/ There are times when I'd rather be proven wrong... -_-

back in one of the machintoshes, apple did something similar. The chess game was taking too little time to calculate and played the perfect moves, this frustrated some people and they added a delay to make it seem like the machine is thinking hard for that perfect move.

Comparing waiting for food vs waiting for tech is not the same. I expect to wait for food, I don't expect to wait for tech.

They always annoyed me because I'm a developer and I knew the moment I first ran into one that they were artificial, please don't waste my time. I affirmly avoid services/products that utilize this strategy.

I studied a MSc in media psychology in 2013, since then i hate these waits, i think eventually these will die off as generations change.

As a software engineer for over a quarter of a century, I recognize these fake delays instantly, and it ticks me off every time. I have a rough idea of the problem scope going in and I know how fast data center servers can be. There's simply no way it takes more than microseconds for TurboTax or Facebok to do what they're doing.

In other words, people are the problem. I’d rather have fast results, than a silly animation. It’s a computer, it’s not going to screw up basic equations!

That's litteraly how i became a "good" business, i never took an appointment for this week, always the next week. And called back the client a day or two later notifying them that i have a "suddenly free time slot". And they think i'm good because i'm busy and making them a favor. I'm just lazy and want to work at my own pace, and improving my image with 1 phone call.

I've noticed these artificial waits in scam websites claiming to offer rare movies that are difficult to find elsewhere. They have a fake buffering animation, but there is no network activity. They then have a popup that wants your CC, phone number, or email etc. Instant close.

When the progress bar is very consistent, and moves the same way every time, it's obviously a fake loading screen. I've always wondered "if they're trying to fake this convincingly, why don't they put some randomization in the progress bar, and make it different every time?"

The expectations of the lowest denominator customer is causing big tech services to essentially "bottleneck" efficiency and productivity for the rest of us.

Imagine the amazing advertisement you can make use of this. "Our app is literally 10000% faster, and we ain't lying. Guaranteed."

"Labor Illusion" I've been using that move for years at my job

Waiting is for boomers. But seriously, remove the wait time and brag about cloud-powered quantum computing searching for flights in a nanosecond.

I'm always suspicious of smooth, consistent progress bars. At least randomize it a little bit

I knew it was phony the first time I saw one of those, it's obvious servers are fast enough to send that info over instantly, I dislike apps that do that, I want what I searched for fast.

Here’s a crazy idea, be honest with people. Put a little disclaimer after the results and get rid of the waits

My Uncle is an accountant that does people's personal taxes. He, being good at his job and fast, can get an easy tax return done in about 10 or 15 minutes. When he does them on his time he does them fast but when he does a return in front of a client he intentionally does it slightly slower. He said if he does it really fast people will think that they are overpaying even though it is technically better for them if he does it faster.

I wrote Clipper systems for small business starting in the 80's. Loading the system always took a bit of time so I threw in a "quips" function at startup, randomly displaying one liner gags, famous quotes or bits of trivia. The users enjoyed the delay. Coding was fun.

Seriously get rid of it... I'm literally always in a rush, I don't have time for this stuff

Oh so internet explorer is slow just for the meme, yeah it has to be I mean no browser can be that slow lol

That's what my 4 year old android was doing all this time....now I got it

wait wait WAIT!!! what about when you try to opp out all cookies and trackers and personalized ads... If we accept that it is done in NO time.. but if we turn it off.. we have to wait like.. 30 sec.........

When computers work too well.

I don't like waiting, not for my food, not for my internet. If my food and internet has the same quality regardless of time, please do me a favor cutting the waiting BS.

Not just software, I experienced this in real world. Last year I'm going into 3rd party repair shop to replace my Samsung note 9 battery. The staff told me it'll take 30 min so I'm head out to waiting at cafe near by. 5 min later I realized that I urgently need some data in my phone, So I'm back at shop hope that they still didn't work on my phone yet. However, everything is finished, pack and clean. So I'm ask them. They told me that pro-staff only need 1-2 min to do the job but if it's too quick customer will think that the shop do a bad job.

Animations are also artificial wait times. In Android you can turn them off by enabling developer option by rapidly tapping build number in settings.

There's three thing you need to pay attention about technology 1. Software 2. Hardware 3. User/human And they said human is the most resistance to change, and this video explain a lot

I was surprised, back in the 1980s, to find that two of the guys working for me had previously been paid to write slowing code. One had worked on a major accounting system. When paid upgrades of the system were offered, they always included 'now runs even faster'. The other had worked on printer firmware. Higher pricepoint models just changed the delay. Lower pricepoint models also had some features turned off. All models used essentially the same hardware and code (with perhaps case changes).

Now that I know this information. I wish they had an option to remove this Artificial wait. But I wonder if Minecraft's loading screen is an Artificial Wait or it's really just loading chunks.

I love your channel, since I discovered it you have shown me the answer to questions that were in the back of my head but I did not know how to formulate. You do a lot of research about the topic and it shows, reality it's never black and white.

The worst one of these animations is when you enable power saving mode on Samsung phones. I HAVE 5% OF MY BATTERY LEFT, THERE IS NO TIME FOR YOUR "LABOR ILLUSION" GODDAMNIT

This is the computer equivalent of saying uhhhhh even though you know the answer perfectly well and are just stalling for time

We had an artificial wait program, if i remember correctly it was to ensure customers that something was being accomplished or trusted.

Basically, users cannot fathom how fast computers are. My mom now started adding artificial wait time in food preparation to make me value the food more.

This makes my spline reticulate.

I spent forever on a loading screen for a project so I intentionally made it take too long to load because it looked cool

Cheddar: it's like Vox, but more capitalist

Reminds me also of Windows' green progress bar that appears in the address bar of File Explorer while it's working to index the folder content, display thumbnails and such. Typically, there are two types of progress bars in software, "finite" and "infinite". Second one is where the program doesn't actually know how far along the action is so it can't meaningfully display any percentage indication, it only knows that the action is still being worked on, and it will know that it's done when it's done. On Windows it used to be displayed with that "sliding" bar that just loops over and over along the progress bar space. That wasn't really reassuring, so in File Explorer, even in those situations, the progress bar will appear as finite, it will start to fill up, but get slower and slower, hoping the action will complete in a reasonable amount of time, and then it will just jump to 100% when it finds out it is done. You can tell because it always moving at the same speed, no matter the folder size or computer speed, until it just jumps to the end. That one's also lying to you, trying to assure you that the action is "just about" to be completed, even if the application doesn't really know that. In some edge cases, even after slowing down, it can still actually very slowly reach the end and then it will just stay there indefinitely, breaking the illusion.

Now that everyone knows it, can the companys just stop please?

I am Not kidding. This video loaded _incredibly_ slowly. Spinning circle of death going a good 45 seconds, already... Edit: gave up after another minute and restarted. (sarcastically) _Ads loaded Just Fine, though!!_

Huh, so it's not my data that's slow, it's the website!🤔

The loading bars are fine, but I always wondered why the ads load much faster than the video itself here in RU-vid.

4:17 Why is he coding HTML, that's not used for writing algorithmic code.

during my days as a programing student.. loading bars was just there for estetics.. it is not really neccessary.. but it feels right to have a loading bar.. but there are process that requires loading bar due to ram and video processing..

This is where "ok boomer" actually belongs

Some of the first code I wrote as a kid was 30% unnecessary user prompts, 50% artificial waiting and 20% usable code. My programs were much cooler than anybody else's 🙃

If a site doesn’t load immediately I leave to find a faster one🤭

App: Please wait . . . Me: Waiting App: Loading Complete :) Me: :) App: *Crashes* Me: :/ . . .

And now make a video to find out why developers make apps that intensionally crash

I know some software companies that will claim they are searching for virus will 'find some' so that you will purchase their software. Years ago I tested this with a brand new computer. The scan said I had a dirty computer! lol

This reminds me of a market experiment some vacuum cleaner company did decades ago. They test-marketed a vac that had just as much suction as other vacs, but was much quieter. It didn't go over well, because people EXPECTED lots of noise; and when they didn't hear it, they got the impression that the vac "just wasn't doing its job" even though it was picking up dirt just as well as any much louder vacuum cleaner

One wait time reduction I’m happy about is airport check-in and security. I just walkthrough the security like the old days (before 9/11). It feels good because security is entirely theatrics.

Yea no. I feel like it may work for older generations but younger wants fast. If i have to wait for something on the internet i dont trust it or dont have time for it. Everyone now knows computers are super fast so there shouldn’t be a long wait time for something. Attention spans are getting shorter, and we can tel that when they do a long wait time its fake

So whenever chrome does the "not responding" thing, it was artificial.

Some ticketing apps add a delay to "validate" the ticket, for example public transport apps, so you can't buy one on the spot when an official comes to check if you've paid your fare.

01:52 Steven Hoober looks and sounds like Kane (Glen Jacobs)

Damm learned something interesting

As a tech savvy 32 year IT professional, I HATE THIS WITH EVERY ATOM OF MY BODY.

As a self proclaimed/ small time developer, I will say that I did notice this in FPS. I always wondered why respawn timers exist and if they could be removed all together. it turns out that an instant respawn is confusing and takes away from the game. respawn is a punishment for getting killed but it is also a way to say, that was the end of that and reset for the next one.

before watching this, have any of you realized this on your own? i've seen countless of these fake loading bars and i've always felt insulted that they think they could fool me into thinking their search times arent instantaneous.

Now I understand why my Pentium II PC loads Windows XP so slowly Oh, wait a minute...

With social media companies it makes sense, the illusion of "please wait" and "we're working on it" when it comes to privacy settings is important when such features are literally *placebos* for users too apathetic to dig much deeper, they don't actually do anything, even with the load screen. But to break it down, you're never actually "logged out" you have no real ownership of your personal information, photos, videos, or data, everything you've ever "liked" subscribed to, searched for, said out loud in the vicinity of a mobile device and even clicked on by accident is collected and stored somewhere, the only way to not paint a truly embarrassing picture of one's life is to never pick up the brush.

There are many other reasons for waits. Sometimes it’s to give the user time to click the back button for an accidental click so the server doesn’t need to waste time calculating a result that’s unwanted. Another reason is to make a DoS attack harder to accomplish by only letting the user make the server run a task every so often.

Was this really a surprise to anyone? I've known about these for years, and they're pretty obvious when they pop up.

There is only one thing that I hate loading and waiting: Windows Updates

Urban Legends when I was a kid: Don't flash your headlights at night or gangs will run you off the road. Urban Legends in 2020: The loading bar is a lie.

Did this for the first time today on an introductory programming course. It was a simple Double Or Nothing game, and as such had to generate a random number. This is a trivial task -- but the game somehow felt hollow, so I added a small delay when you place your bet but before it told you whether you won, and it became much more engaging.

„why some apps are intentionally slow“ - iTunes for Windows - Apple wants you to get a Mac for a better experience with their software than with Windows. That’s why iTunes sucks on Windows and works (worked) perfectly on macOS.

This isn't about computers, this is about us!

not to mention the stats boost of user interaction time. and the time the user stays on the app or site and doesn't leave. possibly clicking on some ads in the mean time.

This reminds me of two things: How car salesmen say, "I have to go and talk to my manager," and leave you sitting there for 20 minutes. You know they have the answer right away, but want to make it seem like they're really deliberating over the numbers. The other thing is car gas tanks. Back in the 1960s (I think) they made gas gauges that were very accurate and showed the exact level of gas in the tank. This meant that one saw the needle moving down right away after driving away from the pump. This had car owners upset, because they thought the car was using too much fuel. So they changed the gas gauges so that for the first few gallons used, the needle stays on full, and the owners think that they're getting better mileage. It's funny how we actually like getting fooled.

But what about the "fake" sites that make things artificially slow so you think it is actually doing something and trust them? There is no stopping bad actors from doing the same and us trusting them

Huh, never knew that 🤔

I'm a developer and I often include artificial waits for giving feedback to the user. An example: You click log out on an app, and the app shows a spinning icon for 0.5/1 seconds then logs you out. You get that the action you requested was performed correctly without errors. Now picture the same scenario but as soon as you touch the button the app shows you the login screen. You think "did it really log me out? Have I done something wrong?" That 0.5s doesn't make the difference for you. Sometimes a fast loading bar is even satisfying. Of course I don't insert 5+ seconds wait times because that's annoying.

Waiting duration and animations might be something way back in the time because people were not familiar with the potential of the computers. But now, load bars or simulating circles just tell people that "software did/is doing something and the results are not just a bug". Duration must just be enough long so people can comprehend it and must not be more than 2-3 seconds. I think.

a deception is still a deception. Fraud on the user.

So I have to stare at annoying progress bars because of idiots who don't understand that computers process data faster than you can blink your eye?

The power saving on samsung phones is also a good example for this. Where with previous device it was just on or off, there is now full screen progress displayed.

during my freshmen days in software engineering, we are tasked to build a program for a project and each of us added fake loading screens and animations for a few sec because we thought it looks cool and "professional", and our prof scolded us because he said delays have negative impact in the user experience. and I agree as to now. I just find it amusing that the wait is really part of the user experience.

they purposely slowing their service so people will have to stay in their apps more longer and thats important for advertisers

Humans are so weird.

honestly I appreciate artificial wait times when I’m purchasing things online because it helps me feel more thoughtful and sure about my purchase. And if I have second thoughts, it gives me more time to decide to cancel the checkout process

You just need a bigger and slower system to avoid artificial wait times. Legacy code and communications between different datacenters are a plus.