From the Editor’s Desk: Problems, Fixes, and Workarounds (Premium)

My wife makes dinner most nights, which works out nicely because she’s a terrific cook, good enough that there are certain meals we’ll never order in a restaurant. Why pay for something that’s better—and less expensive—to eat at home? My contribution is less creative but still essential: I clean up the mess. After each meal, I gather the plates, head over to the sink, and get to work. And each night, before we go to bed, I turn on the dishwasher.

Me being me, I try to make this work as efficient as possible. And me being me, I struggle with certain blockers to that efficiency. My ADDled brain, as I think of it, doesn’t turn off just because I’m engaged in some rote domestic activity. One of those blockers is the dishwashing liquid I use to hand clean the items that are too delicate or too big to go in the dishwasher. It drives me crazy.

It hardly bears describing, but the dishwashing liquid container is designed such that it’s difficult to get anything out of it when the liquid runs low. This bothers me for all the obvious reasons, but also because the world has already solved this problem: Many similar items, like ketchup and mayonnaise, now come in shorter, squatter containers, with the opening on the bottom. They’re designed so that the liquid they contain gathers at that opening, and when you need to use them, their contents are readily available.

But the dishwashing liquid is not designed like that. This plastic bottle is tall, thin, and tapered, and it can’t be left upside down without assistance. And so I place it upside down in a metal sponge holder so that the liquid inside gathers at its opening. And because it would topple over otherwise, I place the sponge next to it, on top of its holder.

This is ridiculous, I know. And writing about it feels even more ridiculous.

But the design of the dishwashing liquid container is obviously purposeful. Its makers are a business like any other business, and they are walking a fine line between solving a problem for customers and milking those customers as much as possible. They are counting on people giving up, tossing the dishwashing liquid before it’s fully used, and buying another one sooner than should be necessary.

This item is, in other words, enshittified. Which, again, is such a perfect term and the type of thing you see everywhere once you’re made aware of it. Literally everywhere, not just in personal technology products and services. Part of this awareness is the realization that it’s all around us. And this silly dishwashing liquid, while perhaps one of the more minor examples, is just one of probably hundreds or more items in our everyday lives that are designed similarly, mocking us with their purposefully bad designs. They are small blockers, irritants, and issues that we all put up with, each and every day, to different levels of frustration.

I can be as obstinate with the dishwashing liquid as I am with Windows and OneDrive. That says as much about me as it does about the product in question, I guess. I balance that bottle upside down like a Cirque du Soleil performer on a high wire for weeks, and also slowly fill the container with small amounts of water, so I can wring every last drop of cleaning liquid out of it before I throw it away. It’s ridiculous, in some ways, but I can’t let go. How much does dishwashing liquid even cost? I have no idea: My wife does the shopping. Next to nothing, I would think.

Obviously, there are bigger issues in my life. And the bigger the enshittification, the bigger the obsession.

To that end, I spent almost every waking hour this past weekend working with Windows 11 Enterprise, in the futile hope that perhaps it held some answer to the enshittification issues with Microsoft’s desktop platform, issues that have escalated with time, as have their irritations. Ultimately, it did not solve the problem. This didn’t surprise me: As I wrote at the time, I went into this understanding that Windows 11 Enterprise was not the answer, as I think of it.

But it was still time well spent. Even these defeats, if that’s how you want to think of them, can inform. And in this case, specifically, I needed that experience. I can add it to my knowledge base and move forward. But I’m still seeking, if not the answer, then at least an answer. Or, since the enshittification of Windows spans multiple issues, some set of answers.

Ideally, we can address enshittification with a fix, something that literally solves the problem. But we are often forced to employ a workaround instead, something that doesn’t literally solve the problem but gets us to a point where we can live with the enshittification and move on.

My solution to the dishwashing liquid is a workaround, not a fix. To really solve this problem, I would have to find a product with a more consumer-friendly and squat design, with the opening on the bottom. Does it exist? Probably, but I don’t know, and I haven’t even looked. In this case, the effort I undertake with my workaround is commensurate to the level of frustration caused by the enshittification. Washing dishes isn’t exactly central to my life.

But Windows is. And that’s why the enshittification I see in Windows, and in the apps and services that run within it, is even more problematic. The frustration I feel from them is visceral because the biggest issues prevent me from working efficiently or at all. As product quality spirals downward and gets worse over time, it feels purposefully malicious, almost personal. It’s difficult to take.

And so the quest for the answer continues. As it must.