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Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

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Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#131

Post by revscat »

sid0 wrote: post #125
revscat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lion 10.7.1 was a whopping 79.3MB. That's nothing, especially for an OS point release. And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive.

Lion 10.7.1 was a whopping 79.3MB. Well, they might have fixed it then. All I know is that I balked at the 1GB OS X update waiting for me. And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive. The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly…

The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly my point.

New technologies tend to be adapted by first world countries first. This was as true of the original IBM PC as it is today for the iPad.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#132

Post by lancewiggs »

Yhippa wrote: post #120
pointyhat wrote: post #99

Disclaimer: I'm a Windows and Mac OS X "power user" and I'm going to be rather critical of Apple who are seen as at the forefront of UI design. I'm probably going to get voted down for this. I'm a proponent of the Ribbon UI and I fucking hate toolbars in OS X. I use Outlook, Word, Excel and Windows Live Mail extensively. All of which have the ribbon UI. It turns out that for the sake of actually getting stuff done, t…

"Also, Microsoft research what you want rather than tell you what you're having (like Apple do)." I feel that's one contributing factor to the bloat of Microsoft Office applications. Instead of having some governance around what features to include you have them including feature after feature that may not align to something more cohesive. As a result after the nth version you have a piece of software with features b…

I'm an Excel geek - and yes sorry I've done far too much VBA in my time. The ribbon has all but destroyed Office for me. The commands are randomly scattered about the sub-menus of the ribbon, much of the content is stuff I will never ever use and it takes up a ridiculous amount of space.

While it seems a large step backwards to folks like me who were expert users, the ribbon apparently makes it easier for "average" users. However in helping the average Microsoft seemed to forget about the power users, with the result that my speed in Excel is slower now than it was in 1995. Indeed there is almost no tangible improvement in Excel for over 10 years. The basic functions are the same, the program still crashes frequently and now the usability is worse than it used to be. No wonder I turn more and more to Google Docs and Scirvener.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#133

Post by sid0 »

revscat wrote: post #131
sid0 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lion 10.7.1 was a whopping 79.3MB. Well, they might have fixed it then. All I know is that I balked at the 1GB OS X update waiting for me. And judging by the popular success of the iPad I have to disagree with the suggestion that Apple is less inclusive. The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly…

The iPad is only popular in rich first world countries. You will find tons of PCs running Windows in not-so-rich countries, orders of magnitude more. That is exactly my point. New technologies tend to be adapted by first world countries first. This was as true of the original IBM PC as it is today for the iPad.

But the iOS model of syncing everything to the cloud or whatever is simply incompatible with the current realities of those countries. Microsoft's taking that into account rather than just shrugging it off.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#134

Post by bmelton »

dhimes wrote: post #60
51Cards wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but people don't WANT to learn things like this. My mother doesn't want to remember what mouse button to click or that CTRL or ALT is a modifier on this command. I would argue that THIS is what made Apple's OS hang on all those years it was in the severe minority. There is a segment of the population that wants only one mouse button to click, not 3, not 3 plus CTRL or ALT or etc. Apple did end up having to rely h…

Then why are the ipad and iphone taking off? It's really hard to learn to do things on those devices. It's cumbersome to turn off wifi and bluetooth to save battery. The control location makes no sense in the settings menu (to my mind, anyway). I was a HUGE Apple fan for the early Macs. I totally get what you are saying. But we LOST in the workplace. It was just too slow for the other folks in the office to use (of c…

I don't know why you got downvoted, and I upvoted to try and offset, but ignoring that...

I think that you overstate the importance of turning off wifi and bluetooth. Those are power user options, for sure. When you're trying to conserve battery power, you're trying to streamline how you use the device, which to me, smacks of 'power user'.

The flipside to that argument is that it is ridiculously easy to browse a web site, check your email and play Words with Friends and Angry Birds. These are the things that the majority of people care about... not whether or not a given physical interface is active or not.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#135

Post by pointyhat »

lancewiggs wrote: post #132
Yhippa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, Microsoft research what you want rather than tell you what you're having (like Apple do)." I feel that's one contributing factor to the bloat of Microsoft Office applications. Instead of having some governance around what features to include you have them including feature after feature that may not align to something more cohesive. As a result after the nth version you have a piece of software with features b…

I'm an Excel geek - and yes sorry I've done far too much VBA in my time. The ribbon has all but destroyed Office for me. The commands are randomly scattered about the sub-menus of the ribbon, much of the content is stuff I will never ever use and it takes up a ridiculous amount of space. While it seems a large step backwards to folks like me who were expert users, the ribbon apparently makes it easier for "average" u…

You're only angry because you have to relearn it.

You're probably used to using the Alt-F-S type key shortcuts. The rest have pretty much been left unchanged (Ctrl+S) for example. Also don't forget the clusterfuck that was the menuing system from Office XP -> Office 2003 where every time you opened a menu, everything was in a different place.

Google Docs is no good for me when I have to deal with sensitive data that has to be kept in-shore as I have no idea where the hell in the world it's being stored.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#136

Post by [deleted] »

varunsrin wrote: post #9

The first problem with the article here is that some of the buttons (Move To, Copy To) did not exist previously. They are also extensions of existing functions (Move, Copy) - so concluding that half the UI is covered by buttons that were not used is an inaccurate assumption. Secondly, the actions are being moved from the context menu to the ribbon. Most new computer users find it very hard to remember additional, non…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#137

Post by benaston »

sid0 wrote: post #101
martingordon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you're out of luck then. What good are those mkv files if you don't have an app to read them? There are a lot of things I'm used to doing on a computer that I can't do on an iPad. Everyone has their examples of things that make X inferior to Y. Apple has shown that they can be successful by offering less of "business as usual" while slowly introducing new ways of doing things. The only way to advance the…

I would say you're out of luck then. What good are those mkv files if you don't have an app to read them? I have a really nice app to read them called Media Player Classic -- I just don't have an app to manage them. Writing apps to manage every single file type I have is very inefficient compared to using a general purpose file manager. You abstract out often-used code rather than copy-pasting it all over the place,…

Files without a dedicated application will be the exception rather than the rule. Movies, Photos, Documents, spreadsheets, databases, music, books; you will usually open in a dedicated application. It's not hard to envisage an improved UI for files that do not have a dedicated application: they could be presented in a view showing all the files that are not associated with a program, for manual association. From then on, the system would know which file types to present along with that application. In addition, it goes without saying that full access to the underlying file system should be possible for developers and those that need it (which will be a tiny fraction of the userbase).

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#138

Post by shriphani »

sunchild wrote: post #84
sid0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still haven't answered my question. I have a set of documents, a subset of which I'd like to copy onto my USB drive. I also have a set of pictures, a subset of which I'd like to copy onto my USB drive. My USB drive already has a set of documents and a set of pictures, and I'd like to get a subset of the documents and a subset of the pictures onto internal storage so that I can plug out my USB drive afterwards and…

I'm not sure what type of "documents" you're referring to, but the images could be handled as with any other media import upon attaching the drive – i.e., within the image browsing app. As for moving images to the USB drive, that's an export from the image browsing app.

Ok, didn't expect I had to do this on HN but here goes:

-> Write code, -> Dump logs to app.log, app.err -> Is there an err browsing app you're aware of ?

If that ever happened to someone on HN, the consequences:

-> If apple implemented something so broken, some nutter would explain to me what extension to use. -> If MS implemented it, there would be a #1 post on HN with the title "MS file management is broken beyond repair and company is irrelevant"

I expect to be downvoted for this but it is impossible to have a fair discussion about Microsoft products.

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#139

Post by qq66 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #19
qq66 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule of any customizable feature is that the vast majority of the users will stick with the defaults. So the defaults have to be optimized.

I'd love to see some stats on this. I wonder just what percentage of users never changes a default UI.

It will depend a lot on the specific product. For example, I'm sure that Eclipse very rarely runs with fully default settings. Consumer products will run in more of a default state, until they get very important to people's lives (I've noticed an increasing awareness and ability with Facebook privacy settings among non-technical friends in the last year).

Re: Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

#140

Post by contextfree »

Lewisham wrote: post #56
martingordon wrote: post #38

Everyone I know loves managing their files, so it's great that Microsoft is finally improving Windows Explorer! WRONG! For the hundreds of nerds complaining that they don't have access to the file system on their iPads, there are millions of normal people who are delighted by a computer that they can use rather than manage. How much longer can Microsoft keep making a 20th century operating system? What's going to be…

I was just thinking this myself. Windows 8 is moving towards a tablet-like structure, they need to go all the way on this and get rid of the filesystem for 90% of users. Open almost any Windows laptop, and you'll see users who basically think of the hard drive as a file dumping ground. You'll see files stored on the Desktop, or everything just goes into one big directory. How many conversations have you had where you…

It looks like they are in fact implementing something at least kinda-sorta like what you describe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I (skip to around 3:30)
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