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Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

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Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an Ubuntu dedicated server. I reboot it every Sunday, yet there is rarely a week where on Friday I don't see this when SSHing in due to auto-updates: 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. *** System restart required *** Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS Linux ubuntu 4.15.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Aug 27 15:21:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

You reboot your server every week? Whatever for?

To make sure the process works?

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When he sent the email. Who was CEO when the sprawling mess he was complaining about was planned and implemented?

Wiki says: "Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000".

Moviemaker initial release: 2000

Who was CEO during the planning and build out phase when they originally decided to make a mess?

It’s not as if MS suddenly turned into a disorganized mess. Windows ME released 2000.

The culture he’s complaining about was already deeply embedded in the DNA.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#203
post #162

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked…

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

I’d be curious to see some of that research. Some technical tools I use have migrated to ribbon UIs. Matlab is one example and it’s utterly broken. Tiling the main IDE window beside a text editor (a standard way of using matlab) on a 15” MBP results in many of the ribbon sections turning into big empty gray spaces requiring yet another click into a cascading shitshow. Fortunately I rarely need to use anything in there as the wasn’t enough there to warrant a ribbon in the first place.

Another example is CAD software like Solidworks, but that’s a masterclass in awful UI design all on its own.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the Microsoft IE vm's to do IE testing in virtualbox and I have never had to install an update.

Great, so I guess the rest of us must be imagining it then?

I don't know what images the "rest of you" are using, but I have literally never had the windows update problem. I have never had Windows update go off at all when using the images provided here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

Even if you run into a situation where Windows update is for some strange reason bugging you (even though the vm's provided are only for testing purposes) then you can always run through the update and simply snapshot the vm so that you don't have to go through the process again, as described by the usage instructions:

> These virtual machines expire after 90 days. We recommend setting a snapshot when you first install the virtual machine which you can roll back to later.

I haven't done that though and have been using the same Windows 7 VM to test IE changes for close to a year now.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#205

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?

Same. I suppose if you view lock screen as an "ad"... I built my own 10 home box which has had no problems for years now.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#206

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…

This kind of thing also got me to OS X. Now I'm looking at fiascos like the MBA/MBP keyboards, the bug-fests that are x.0 OS updates, and the way Catalina kills 32-bit applications for little reason (that I can discern), and I find myself wondering if I should quit the Mac world.

How long should Apple keep 32 bit support? Apple hasn’t shipped a 32 bit Mac for a little over a decade, warned developers back in the 10.6 - 10.7 era and they cancelled 64 bit Carbon.

Should Apple also still maintain Classic MacOS support? PPC support? 68K support? As far as “no good reason” with as bad as Intel is falling behind ARM - especially Apple’s own ARM designs, it’s widely expected that Apple will move away from Intel to ARM in their consumer laptops. Apple dropped 32 bit support in their ARM chips two or three years ago.

Besides, every bit of code you can get rid of is less of a service area to support, maintain and for security vulnerabilities. The more than half dozen ways of defining a string in Windows has led to security vulnerabilities by itself.

Even MS dropped support for 16 bit apps in 64 bit Windows.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#207
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a result lots of big companies have competing “pulls” — eg fiefdoms. Exactly. Why? Because they suck plain and simple. My wife (a highly paid and educated professional) just wasted 3 hours today trying to get a simple new cable box installed from Verizon. Earlier she tried to have Best Buy do a simple TV pickup and ended up having to cut her losses cancel Best Buy and just get 800junk to pick it up (at a higher…

Corporations are officially aligned with the interests of shareholders, and unofficially aligned with the interests of management, many of whom are more interested in turf wars and power plays than in doing their jobs. Customers come at the bottom of that list. In a worker-hostile culture, employees at all levels can easily become passive aggressive towards customers, because they're caught between bullying by manage…

The original iPad UI would have been just a blown up iPhone UI without any accordances to the larger screen if Jobs had of had is way. There was push back from other developers at Apple. This came out in some of the Debug podcast’s interviews with former Apple employees.

Also don’t forget that all of the pre iCloud service disasters happen under SJ including MobileMe.

Apple moved away from “Pro users” under Jobs. It was clear that he even said before he came back to Apple that if he was in charge he would “milk the Mac for all its worth and move on to the next big thing”.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#208
post #60

Good times. I remember when this was part of the court case. Sounds like what we need is for Tim Cook to try to use iOS 13 and lose access to one of his favorite apps by upgrading to Catalina, and then to get a crumb or something into his keyboard.

...or try using Google Docs in Safari on iOS 13 with a text editor in split view. Two blinking cursors and no easy way to choose which window is active. To enter text in the Google Doc after using my text editor, I have to tap the URL bar twice, dismiss the suggestions, and then it's active. Given that my iPad is my only computer, this release has been really rough. It's getting there, and I'm sure with time it will…

You couldn’t even use Google Sheets in Safari well before iOS 13. I don’t know about Google Docs.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#209
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 99% of cases this is efficiently mean that your kernel been upgraded, but it's doesn't affect system usability at all and rarely affect security. I have servers that been continuously upgraded over years, never got single reboot and still function properly.

As far as I know, Linux doesn't support library hotswapping any more than Windows does, so if you have a security update in libc for example, you can either manually restart all programs which use it, or reboot the system. Unless you do one of these, you don't have the security patch up and running, right?

Yes it does but differently: the library is placed on disk and the symlink pointing to the new version is updates. Services depending on this library are restarted. Ssh handles this exceptionally well in that it keeps running sessions open and new sessions use the new library. There is alsof no risk of having locks on files during installation: Unix keeps a gidsen copy of a file until the last process closes it. All in all, almost no reboots required unless a critical kernel bug is found that can be exploited remotely.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#210
post #162

2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE. This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked…

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

The word "research" implies "science", but to me is valid only if you go all the way, and publish the methods and the data for peer review. Until then my take is, someone had a bunch of opinions and didn't allow users to keep the old menu.
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