fritterware meaning
[Computer]
An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see macdink); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway. See also window shopping.
An excess of capability that serves no productive end. The canonical example is font-diddling software on the Mac (see macdink); the term describes anything that eats huge amounts of time for quite marginal gains in function but seduces people into using it anyway. See also window shopping.
Examples
- At the dawn of the personal computer age, the writer Stephen Manes introduced the term " fritterware " to describe programs and systems that let you feel very busy-- adjusting fonts and settings, tweaking color schemes or screen-saver graphics-- without being productive in any normal sense.
