While i agree that there's a lot of old layers in Windows I must say that I much prefer this to the way Apple does things. In their camp it is like UI designers change things around for no other reason than to have a job (see also: Firefox). I feel like Apple have moved a lot closer to what they used to point fingers at in their commercials about PCs but without gaining any of the strengths. With that said I also think Gnome (and KDE) are light-years ahead of both OS' UI.
State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
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Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#242How is MacOS able to maintain such a consistent UI even with massive changes in their design language ? Is Windows UI not a separate layer or something that they can update ? Or is it that the UI elements somehow get baked into the program at the time you build it, so if you didn't update you are just stuck with that particular version of UI you built the program ?
I think it relates to how their internal structure is set up and their brand positioning. Apple has only one design team and design system I think, and only caters to folks who prefer simplicity over power features. I suspect that Windows is more like compilation of what different teams produce at MS, each with their own design opinions and target audience. I can only imagine how challenging it is to serve beginners…
> macOS only caters to folks who prefer simplicity over power features
This is said quite often, almost as a given, but I never thought it reflected reality. macOS has an abundance of useful features for power users — system services, automator, AppleScript, tons of productivity touches like titlebar proxy icons and universal drag-and-drop support... not to mention it's all built on Unix so a terminal is right there for anything not exposed in the UI.
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#243There's just an insane amount of UI and code in Windows. I don't even want to hazard a guess how many millions, maybe billions of lines of code it takes to build Windows 10. Nobody is ever going to go through every dialog and update it to the design language of the week, while allocating the testing and QA resources to make sure it all works, in every language. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There's a Uservoice thread I've been following for years as comic relief that demands that Microsoft port all of Visual Studio to Linux and Mac. It's the same thing; people largely have no concept how much hoary old code there is lurking there, or how many man-years their "simple" ask entails.
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work on the core OS. This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on (such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future).
Is this also the reason why there are no tabs in windows explorer?
Generalized tabs accros even different programs is an experiment that has been attempted a few years ago in a few insider builds, but has been quickly abandoned. IMO it was too complex from a UX pov, duplicated some of the use cases of virtual desktops, etc. Maybe had they tried tabs for single applications, it would have succeeded. In this alternate universe we may not have the new Windows Terminal program though (IIRC adding tabs specifically in console.exe was prevented because they were about to start this grand inter-program tab design instead, and Windows Terminal was started after the experiment failed)
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#245The only consistency issue that really has bothered me is the constant mauling of the control panel. Windows 95 basically got it right, and every major release they just hide things further and further. And now the competing "Settings" thing is just an embarrassment. So now we have two competing ways of configuring the system, except the new one sucks and is incomplete, and the old one is kinda unmaintained.
I agree and am actually surprised that several years in there is still a bunch of stuff that is not configurable in the new Settings screen. I am obviously speaking without extensive knowledge of the underlying internals but surely it can't be that difficult to wrap some settings in a new UI if you dedicate a team to it? I actually spent 15 minutes the other day trying to remove an additional keyboard layout that som…
Yep. It seems to occasionally add keyboard layouts if your region, language, and keyboard layout are different. Not handy if you live abroad. The new UI assumes it's more clever than the user.
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows user from 3.1 to Win 7 here. Once I saw the MacOS experience in 2012, I never looked back. an engineer might say the juice isn't worth the squeeze, but to a consumer, and a power user, the swath of UI and UX inconsistencies is what keeps me away from Windows.
For the price of the absolute cheapest MacOS running computer (Mac Mini, with a monitor) one can get basically 2 entire Windows computers. For the cost of the average computer running MacOS, one could buy a TV, a console, a desktop Windows computer, and a laptop. Or whatever it may be. ($1500 on an iMac could be $400 console, $500 TV, $500 computer. Or whatever your break down is. For the lower middle class and worki…
> the cold hard facts of living in the western world is that most people would need to spend irresponsibly to use MacOS regularly.
A $900 MacBook Air would probably have lasted far longer and needed less time troubleshooting than a $500 computer made with subpar components. The amortized costs are far lower with Apple products (or other products using higher quality components) compared to buying the cheapest devices made with the lowest quality components, so there is no point in comparing the two.
And most people only need 1 computer, if that. I would actually bet most people can do everything they need to with iOS and an iPad would suffice. And other than the smaller screen size, I can see people make do with an iPhone even, especially if all you are doing is consuming.
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to backwards compatibility is stretching the truth to the point of outright deception. Backwards compatibility is not what stops Microsoft from updating the GUIs for their own components. It is not the reason that the components that have been updated failed to carry forward 100% of the features of the components they're replacing, necessitating the ongoing use of the le…
This may explain why Microsoft have created so many email clients and none of them 100% work. * Microsoft Mail * Windows Messaging * Outlook Express * Microsoft Outlook * Windows Mail * Windows Live Mail * Mail.app There are also Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS, few different apps for mobile, and at least two web clients, Hotmail and Outlook.com. Did I miss any?
Microsoft Mail is a product from the early 90s for DOS/Classic Mac OS. Microsoft Internet Mail was a logical upgrade, then added support for newsgroups. Eventually, after the success of Outlook in the MS Office world, it rebranded to Outlook Express. You could still see echoes of Microsoft Internet Mail and News if you looked hard at Outlook Express, its executable was called msimn.exe.
Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail were essentially newer, Vista-era versions of Outlook Express. It's the same program rebranded. Mail was bundled with Vista, Live Mail was a way to push the Live branding and get the newer program into the hands of those running older versions of the OS (WinXP).
Microsoft Outlook is a different beast with a different lineage, part of MS Office, and can be thought of the "pro" version of the basic mail clients bundled with Windows.
Yes, Microsoft could probably do with some branding discipline but the technology is quite predictable.
I'm not sure what Mail.app is, I always thought that was Apple's. Entourage was IIRC a native 'designed for Apple' PIM that eventually made its way into Office for Mac, eventually they decided to rationalize and have one client -- Outlook.
Hotmail / Outlook.com - Outlook.com, again despite the confused branding, is Hotmail evolved. Over time, Microsoft slowly merged its consumer (Hotmail, Windows Live) UI with its 'pro' UI (Outlook for desktops, Exchange Web) so that these days they are all pretty similar. These days you also have Outlook's mobile apps for Android and iOS and those too have a familiar look and feel.
I don't see any of these as a bad thing. Microsoft's history is linked to the history of personal computing and the ebbs and flows of market forces that shaped the PC biz and continues to shape today's technology. Given all the churn in this space, it's actually kind of awesome how their technology has evolved -- and will continue evolving, e.g. with all the focus on a web version of Office. But yes, their sudden shifts in branding is pretty sucky and they could do a lot better there.
But "none of them 100% work" is pretty harsh. No mail client is right for every use case (except emacs, naturally -- if it doesn't work for you it's because you haven't written enough elisp yet). But these are very widely deployed products and do work for a good segment of their target market.
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#248Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows (and I deal with a SaaS at MSFT). I am a FreeBSD committer and help maintain FreeBSD's GNOME packages and (very recently) the graphics drivers. The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is (largely) because of one thing: backwards compatibility. While backwards compatibility has it's perks, it also means having lots of old code in Windows that can't be to…
I work on the core OS. This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on (such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future).
The juice is absolutely worth the squeeze. Everybody and their grandmas think Windows is a mess, yet theres no real alternative for most people, so there’s no real incentive for MS to make it better (or for a start, stop making it worse with telemetry, forced restarts and adware).
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#249Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but not on Windows (and I deal with a SaaS at MSFT). I am a FreeBSD committer and help maintain FreeBSD's GNOME packages and (very recently) the graphics drivers. The reason why Windows is full of UI inconsistencies is (largely) because of one thing: backwards compatibility. While backwards compatibility has it's perks, it also means having lots of old code in Windows that can't be to…
I'm also involved with Microsoft, and my view is that the culture is to move on to the next goal too soon after the next gen solutions have been developed.
So they make control panel 2.0, reach 70% coverage, launch, and never move the remaining features into the new version so they can sunset the old one.
Re: State of the Windows: How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 10?
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Asking the obvious question: why aren't the UIs in newer Windows versions not "just" different themes over Win32 widgets? Instead the UI theme seems to be tied to UI frameworks which seem to be created and discarded annually at Microsoft, so each time some genius decides to overhaul the UI, a completely new sediment layer is created instead of letting some UI designers tinker with a theme editor. I don't get it. Func…
There is no such thing as canonical “win32 widgets.” There have always been several different UI libraries even for win32. The original win32 styling you get with CreateWindow doesn’t support modern font rendering, high DPI, doesn’t work well with touch, is only software rendering, doesn’t support latest accessibility features, etc. The newer stuff sits on top of DirectX. The latest UI framework (XAML/WinUI) sits on…
There's no reason why the old Win32 window and widget foundation couldn't have been lifted on top of a modern rendering architecture though, there was certainly enough time to achieve this. This would also reduce the need for creating entirely new UI frameworks every year (or even better, higher level UI frameworks could be built on top of a modernized but backward compatible Win32 widget foundation instead of doing all their own rendering directly on top of DirectX).
(TL;DR: the Windows UI mess looks to me like an organizational problem, not a technological problem. From the outside it looks like as the old guard is leaving, the new people coming in discard all the old code and instead prefer to start completely new projects, which of course is destined to fail, because the new people are repeating the same errors which had been identified and fixed decades ago).