While I agree with the GP, I don't agree with the jab at Bloomberg terminal. There is nothing needless in Bloomberg terminal - it comes with a special keyboard and everything is keyboard driven. There are no animations such as the ones you see in macOS and Windows that take up 300ms. There are no distracting popups and notifications. It is probably the most incredible feat of UI/UX design...ever, perhaps airplane cockpits and nuclear power plant control rooms would rival.
Just because UI is dense does not mean it is not easy to learn. Dense UI provides more information than something with 5 levels of hierarchical layouts, each screen animating with 300ms of bullshit animations. Furthermore, learning curve should be acceptable for people that truly want to use a tool on a daily basis (for e.g. emacs or vim).
There is a reason why people who use Bloomberg terminal will never want anything else. Here is a video of the thought process that goes into designing just the keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_juj1MIRJVE
Have you used Bloomberg terminal or talked to a user? Regarding lock-in: I think its the opposite - when the users don't want to switch to anything else, that's the best a company can do. That's the kind of "lock-in" every company should aspire to.
I've used a Bloomberg terminal and most of my social circle has as well. I guess maybe difficult isn't the right word to describe it,
but definitely uninviting on purpose. And a lot of my friends get a kick out of how uninviting it looks and how much they feel like a wizard using it. Theres definitely an aspect to the way it looks unrefined that make people love it, and I guess a better way of saying it might be that trying to emulate that by making something actually inaccessible and unrefined is not going to be successful
I think you're attributing ugliness "on purpose" incorrectly. No one at Bloomberg exclaims "Oh gee, let's make this more ugly, people will get a kick out of it."
It's just that they haven't bloated this app with CSS styles and other unnecessary aesthetics. It works. That's all.
Just because UI is dense does not mean it is not easy to learn. Dense UI provides more information than something with 5 levels of hierarchical layouts, each screen animating with 300ms of bullshit animations. Furthermore, learning curve should be acceptable for people that truly want to use a tool on a daily basis (for e.g. emacs or vim).
There is a reason why people who use Bloomberg terminal will never want anything else. Here is a video of the thought process that goes into designing just the keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_juj1MIRJVE
Have you used Bloomberg terminal or talked to a user? Regarding lock-in: I think its the opposite - when the users don't want to switch to anything else, that's the best a company can do. That's the kind of "lock-in" every company should aspire to.