Unshittification: 3 tech companies that recently made my life… better

This may sound like a complaint, but here’s the thing: When I made my case to Native Instruments over email, they got back to me in a day or two and agreed to put a free though “not for resale” copy of Noire on my account as a goodwill gesture. This was all conducted politely, in impeccable English, and without undue delay. It felt fair to me, and I’m likely to continue purchasing their excellent sample libraries.

Customer service can feel like a lesser priority to most companies, but done right, it actually ensures future sales.

Better money-taking

Finally, an almost trivial example, but one that worked so smoothly I still remember my feeling of shock. “Where’s the catch?” pretty much summed it up.

I’m talking, of course, about March Madness, the annual NCAA college basketball tournament. It’s a terrific spectacle if you can ignore all the economic questions about overpaid coaches, no-longer-amateur players, recruiting violations, and academic distortions that the big sports programs generate. And my University of North Carolina Tar Heels had juuuust squeaked in this year.

Ordinarily, watching the tournament is a nightmare if you don’t have a pay-TV package. For years, streaming options were terrible, forcing you to log in with your “TV provider” (i.e., an expensive cable or satellite company) account or otherwise jump through hoops to watch the games, which are generally shown across three or four different TV channels.

All I wanted was a simple way to give someone my money. No gimmicks, no intro offers, no “TV provider” BS—just a pure streaming play that puts all the games in one place, for a reasonable fee. When I looked into the situation this year, I was surprised to find that this did now exist, it was easy, and it was cheap.

The Max streaming service had all the games, except for those shown on CBS. (You can’t have everything, I guess, but I get CBS in HD using an over-the-air antenna.) It was $10 for a month of service. There were no “intro offers,” no lock-ins, no “before you go!” pleas, no nothing. Indeed, I didn’t even have to create a new account or share a credit card with some new vendor. I just added Max as a “subscription” within Amazon’s video app and boom—tournament time. It took about four seconds, and it has worked flawlessly.