A couple of you asked for examples of un-losable battles I've lost. I can't believe one person is interested in this, let along a couple. But okay, here's one that's gnawed on your butt perpetually for decades.
This is called a modal message box. You can't do anything else in the program until you dismiss it. They are very handy for seizing the user's attention. Naturally, this led to annoying abuses. Remember wanting to strangle the people who inflicted this on you?
In the software industry, everyone argues that their bullshit performance-review bullet is of critical importance. By 2003, they were driving you insane with modal messages. Using your computer was like playing a relentless game of whack-a-mole. Users hated them. I hated them. All agreed: something had to be done. That something? Get rid of all modal dialog boxes because users hate them.
Me, 2003: "Uh...all of them? How about just the 90% that don't need to be modal?"
Yes, users hate their overuse. But sometimes, rarely, you still gotta seize the user's attention. My arguments fell on deaf ears, and that generation of sneering child-designers gave us innovations like the Internet Explorer Information bar. You don't like message boxes? Us neither. That's why we make messages invisible now. And thus was the era of "Why the fuck isn't this web page working?" born.
The Information bar was a failure, of course. A single usability test would have revealed the obvious: it wasn't discoverable. But the next generation of sneering child-designers had the magic fix! Cram it on the other edge of the screen, even more out of the user's eyeline! Whoot!
Then every 12 year old with a laptop started developing apps, and all pretense of usability has long since departed the Earth. Much as I stopped expecting people to write with some semblance of grammar, I have given up this war. Three stacked modal message boxes were the death blow.
Fighting this fight is like trying to bail out a vast reservoir of stupidity with a colander.