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Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

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Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#131

Post by tonyedgecombe »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #116
TimTheTinker wrote: post #52

The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products. At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag i…

2) Right click - print 2) Double click setup 3) open setup again - remove option or the more opaque way, uninstall through configuration - software Your points wouldn't convince me actually.

2) You could (maybe still can I haven't tried it for a while) drag documents onto printers in Windows. There was a printto verb for the shell that enabled this. The problem was not many developers supported it.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#132

Post by LoSboccacc »

machello13 wrote: post #85
wayneftw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're serious, but > Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; this is just the most obtuse way of doing things. > usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag it to the trash; So does this, and unreliable as you noted - i.e. usually . But, ugggh... dragging things to other things to do things though? There's a reason why certain l…

Dragging things around is not required on macOS. There are always ways to do things without it. It's just that it's a generally pretty intuitive way to accomplish a task, and it's something that macOS embraced in a way that Windows never did. Want to trash an app? Drag it to the trash. Want to print a PDF? Drag it onto a printer. You can do it other ways, of course — right click and "move to trash", or right-click an…

want to remove a device? drag it to the trash where the icon suddenly changes to eject

"intuitive"

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#133

Post by FourthProtocol »

jdnenej wrote: post #125
partiallypro wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still to this day people view Windows through the lense of XP experiences. I always wonder how much damage that era did. People claimed to "love" XP, but they are all rose tinted in memory. Everyone hated XP until SP2 and SP3. The Security Center was something everyone hated too. But yeah, some things it did really well, but others not so much. 10 is so much better than people give it credit for, and yes there are st…

It's not the bugs that are an issue with 10. It's the mountains of nagware, spyware and advertisements built in to it.

I use 10 daily and see no ads. Where does windows 10 show ads?

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#134

Post by LoSboccacc »

pishpash wrote: post #115
TimTheTinker wrote: post #52

The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products. At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag i…

After OS X, has anybody ever switched back to Windows from a Mac OS for daily use (i.e. not for a specific application that is only available on Windows)? I don't even want to look at Windows now. It's so unsightly in a way that you don't notice until you switch away.

me. the Java ecosystem used to update too slow and unreliably. After spending many hours wrestling the default jdk and ways to make different programs use a different install I just gave up. I still use my Mac for media production because it's still a power house after this many years but for everything else I'm back in Windows. it's ugly and not ergonomic when you go to the insides, but it sits in the background and let me do my things instead of pretending to know better at every step.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#135

Post by andrewf »

asveikau wrote: post #109
tinus_hn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget Windows ME which was truly a turd in a class of its own.

I still don't completely understand why they didn't make Win2k into a "consumer" product. A lot of techies here who installed Windows themselves in that era probably skipped ME and went to that. But all the consumer PCs shipped with 98 or ME. I remembering hearing at the time that this was about hardware support and/or app compatibility. But my cynical side just thinks they wanted to justify charging more for a works…

I think Win2K had higher memory requirements, which meant a more expensive machine for the same performance. (This was always an issue for WinNT and OS/2 versus the DOS/Win9x line)

I think software compat was also lacking. DOS games were still in people's libraries (eg Quake from June '96), and I remember needing an extra 4MB to run those inside Win9x versus booting to DOS mode. That stuff didn't Just Work (tm) on Win2K. For example, http://sandmann.dotster.com/djgpp/DJGPP_W2K.htm is a list of issues with the most popular GCC port to DOS. (The Quake DOS binary was actually built with an earlier version of that compiler)

I remember the WinXP DOS emulation was supposed to be much improved over Win2K, but don't recall specifics.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#136

Post by mixmastamyk »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #133
jdnenej wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the bugs that are an issue with 10. It's the mountains of nagware, spyware and advertisements built in to it.

I use 10 daily and see no ads. Where does windows 10 show ads?

IIRC, start tiles, explorer bar, stub shortcuts.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#137

Post by robocat »

babypuncher wrote: post #33
stephenr wrote: post #20

I very rarely use Windows now (at the time this happened I was working with it M-F doing support) - I’m not convinced it’s any better now is it? I downloaded an “IETester” image from Microsoft to confirm behaviour of a clients site from a Windows PC - it literally spent more time installing updates and rebooting than I did either downloading the entire vm image file or actually testing the thing I wanted to test. How…

This isn't the typical user experience if you power on your computer more than once every few months.

No, but it is a typical experience for many developers that need to test our versions of IE.

Why do Microsoft think it is OK to waste our time when we are validating against their software?

Why is MS making the work developers and testers need to do so hard and wasteful?

At the time I was using Windows, and downloaded these VMs, and I swore black and blue at Microsoft for the very same thing GP noticed.

And the VMs expire after six months, so you have to go through the whole process again if you are not careful - arrgh.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#138

Post by [deleted] »

cdolan wrote: post #28
post_break wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love for him to use a Mac with two monitors and wrestle with his dock constantly switching from one to the other with no way to lock the dock and keep sane window setups.

I use a rMBP 2015 with two monitors (in addition to the laptop monitor) daily. One over HDMI and the second via Thunderbolt/DisplayPort to HDMI (so two cables into the rMBP). I’ve never had this issue? What is your setup? I always thought it was funny that in a Mac you can’t set your default monitor, but I’ve never run into the issue you are describing.

[deleted]

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#139

Post by mixmastamyk »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #52

The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products. At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag i…

The windows classic shell is still the best, the kernel is great as well. The layers between, well plenty of garbage mixed in.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#140

Post by gattilorenz »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #116
TimTheTinker wrote: post #52

The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products. At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag i…

2) Right click - print 2) Double click setup 3) open setup again - remove option or the more opaque way, uninstall through configuration - software Your points wouldn't convince me actually.

> 2) Double click setup

Press next. Click "I agree" radio button. Press next. Press next. Press install. Press finish.

Ops, you forgot to uncheck the "create link on desktop", and now you have one (if you're lucky, could be more - Register now!) more desktop icon. You can delete it, but if you are running XP I think it would complain that you are not actually deleting the program, just the link. Click yes.

The exercise of installing a pre-xp program with a limited user account is left to the reader.

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