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Windows 11: Just say no

computerworld.com

71–80 of 539 posts

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#71
post #7

I have to agree, even though I have plenty of pro-Windows comments. To me Windows 11 feels like Vista, and to everyone that got burned with the rewrites on the WinRT side, just using plain Win32/MFC/Forms/WPF feels liberating. Multiple teams are fighting UI politics over WinUI, MAUI on top of WinUI, React Native with WinUI, and classical UWP is not going away (Windows 11 Store is written in it), then ASP.NET team is…

I migrated from Win32 to Qt two years ago. Never looked back. Much easier to program dialogs & UI. Qt gives you macOS as well. ( And UWP if you insist). WinRT is the OS/2 of the 21st century.

WinRT looked great, finally .NET being like Delphi and a C++ stack that looked like C++ Builder, for those moments that .NET alone won't do it.

On one side .NET Native is left to stagnate in C# 7, and C++/CX got replaced with C++/WinRT, which to this day (4 years later) still doesn't offer any kind of IDL tooling on VS (lets forget for a second that IDL exists since OLE 1.0), and requires manually merging generated files.

Then to top that, we get MAUI on top of WinUI, but with the XAML format used by Xamarin.

Anyone following the now 2100+ issues on Github, community calls, change of roadmap of what WinUI 3.0, Reunion and XAML Islands were supposed to be originally, and where they are going after Windows 11 announcement, can only be dismayed.

They don't seem to either get the complaints, or most likely, are stuck in a position where they cannot publicly acknowledge them.

OS/2 was actually much better than this with CSet++, while SOM had metaclasses and implementation inheritance, with Smalltalk and C++ support.

Still, I can equally well rant about other platforms, it is all a matter of which flaws we are willing to put up with.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#72

Windows 11 is half-baked. But it isn't just half-baked because it was rushed out while ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is also half-baked because Microsoft's management has no particular strategy or plan for what they want Windows to be. So Windows 11 just feels like an "and kitchen sink" where someone picked up an iPad, noted down a bunch of random features without rhyme or reason and then…

I was trying to check Disk Partitions on Windows 10, so typed this into the search. It gave me a website with some freeware tool. I had to search around again until I found the actual system tool. I don't know what a regular user would have done. I'm not really a Windows user.

I've needed it enough time that I won't ever forget "diskmgmt.msc" command, and AFAIK it works since Windows XP.

I'm not really sure what's so problematic with searching settings, but other platforms I use (macOS, iOS) are not really much better in this regard.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, what? Why wouldn't you want a Lock Screen? That's a basic security measure, without a lock screen Windows would be a non-starter for any secure enterprise.

A lock screen without full disk encryption is security by obscurity. Change my mind.

Windows can definitely also do full disk encryption via BitLocker...

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#74
Why would anyone want to upgrade to Windows 11 on release day? Surely it’s better to wait a couple of years for the worst bugs to be shaken out. What new features are worth putting yourself through version .0 pain?

As far as I can tell, the only reason to upgrade to a new version of Windows is because the old version has stopped getting security updates.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#75
post #7

I have to agree, even though I have plenty of pro-Windows comments. To me Windows 11 feels like Vista, and to everyone that got burned with the rewrites on the WinRT side, just using plain Win32/MFC/Forms/WPF feels liberating. Multiple teams are fighting UI politics over WinUI, MAUI on top of WinUI, React Native with WinUI, and classical UWP is not going away (Windows 11 Store is written in it), then ASP.NET team is…

> I will just wait for Windows 12, whenever it comes up, the UI war will be settled by then.

There is always hope ;-)

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Also known as "the good part"... Everything else about Windows UI since then has only gotten less usable and more hostile.

This is what drives me nuts. Why do they keep messing with the UI? Nobody wants that! Even Apple and Google have both figured out that screwing around with UX every release is a recipe for making your customers HATE you. What I, and probably non-power users want out of windows is for it to be faster and use less power. I'd honestly be happy to go back to a Win95 interface with the latest kernel. Microsoft needs to fi…

> Why do they keep messing with the UI?

UX folks don't get paid to leave things alone.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#77

Windows 11 is half-baked. But it isn't just half-baked because it was rushed out while ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is also half-baked because Microsoft's management has no particular strategy or plan for what they want Windows to be. So Windows 11 just feels like an "and kitchen sink" where someone picked up an iPad, noted down a bunch of random features without rhyme or reason and then…

As I commented in another parts of this thread, you see that quite clearly in the mess of multiple teams, each advocating their own UI framework as the future of WIndows UI, as if they were the only team doing it.

It is like management let them all roam free and let the best one win.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#78

i just upgraded my Windows 7 PC from a 2012 desktop to a modern 2021-level Windows 10 desktop with i7 CPU, 32 GB memory, etc. I honestly can't tell the difference between the two systems. I don't play games which is probably the biggest thing driving upgrades, but for everything that I need to do, which is an advanced use, my 10 year old Windows 7 system was more than good enough. The only reason why I did end up upg…

The biggest difference I noticed in upgrading from a 2011-vintage desktop to a 2020 desktop is that npm and all the JS-heavy compiling and bundling operations were much faster. That's got to be almost entirely CPU-based, because I kept the same SSDs and graphics card when I built the new machine.

If it weren't for Gulp and WebPack, I could have kept using that old machine, even for my moderate gaming purposes, until it wore out.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#79
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multiple teams are fighting UI politics over WinUI, MAUI on top of WinUI, React Native with WinUI, and classical UWP is not going away (Windows 11 Store is written in it), then ASP.NET team is pushing Blazor everywhere including on Web Widgets. Great point. As a developer in the Windows sphere for decades, I'm used to change. However, at this point I have no idea what I am supposed to be developing user interfaces…

VS Code is like the absolute greatest Electron app that has ever, or will ever be written. And yet it had an issue for quite some time where animating the cursor flashing was taking an enormous percentage of CPU.

It is also one that has big chunks of C++ and Rust code, and WebGL based rendering to make it actually usable.
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