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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

#261
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I see that argument about the security of Google Docs often and I don't really understand it. Speaking hypothetically, as an attacker I'd much rather see you keep your sensitive documents on your own computer where you browse flash-enabled web sites, open and edit PDFs, and download email attachments. Trying to get to your Google Docs through a Google Account with 2-step authentication would be much more painful. Tha…

It's not about "attackers".

In the UK, we have data protection and financial services regulations to adhere to which clearly state where the data must reside. That means we legally can't keep our data offshore in certain industry sectors and applications.

Some "cloudy" providers help us with geographical affinity (Azure and AWS for example) but Google Docs is a big bag of mud with everything stored "somewhere" so it's useless.

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

#262
post #237
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget "tap and hold" on Safari. Found that one by accident.

Are you referring to tapping and holding images to save them to the library?

It works on links too, allowing to open them in a new tab or copy the link.

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

#263

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…

Move To and Copy To exist in XP.

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

#264
post #142

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…

You sure are a "Mac power user" who just don't have a clue what the menu bar in OS X is for and for it... Apple is crap and theire products are overpriced and the OS is a piece of crap too because you can't figure how to use it. Are kidding me? I bet that you only once used Mac OS X in an Apple Store for 1 minute. I understand that a lot Microsoft people don't like Apple and Mac OS X but to say to be an power user of…

I've had more Macs recently than hot dinners. I don't like them.

Software......................

Firstly, the menu bar is awful. Even the shortcut to find stuff is nigh on useless (Squashed-bug + slash). You have to know what you are looking for and the terminology is terribly inconsistent between applications. There are no access keys to navigate around either. If the mouse is easier to use then it's a shit menu.

Also Apple's compiler toolchain is a POS and varies so reliably between releases.

XCode is buggy as hell and the multi window UI sucks (although I hear this is being fixed now).

I could go on but I really want to get onto...

Hardware......................

With regards to my hardware usage, I've had 8 Macs now and three extremely bad experiences:

a) Mac mini failed in 2006 after owning it for 2 weeks. Took Apple 2 weeks to sort it out after denying there was anything wrong with a 100% dead box. I had to threaten to throw the fucking thing at the idiots in the apple store before they'd even think about replacing it.

b) 20" polycarb intel iMac. Crashed regularly with 10.4 on it. After 2 months of arguing with Apple, they replaced the logic board and it was fine for about 6 months then the display failed. Claimed it on the insurance then.

c) 2010 MacBook Pro. Absolutely dangerously retarded stupid design. Can't remove the battery. This is just dangerous. My daughter spilled water on the table (just enough to touch the side of the unit). Due to capillary action, the seam around the base of the machine sucked up all the water. On most machines, you yank the battery quickly if that happens to protect the electronics. You can't on a MacBook. Turned it over and all the liquid that had been sucked inside rained onto the logic board and shorted a few things including the battery. Whilst trying to find some damn mini screwdrivers to get the back off, it CAUGHT FIRE and was promptly chucked in the garden before it burned my house down. It burned for 10 minutes before the LiPoly cells calmed down. The inside of the machine was black and burned, the keyboard had melted and the screen had cracked due to the temperature.

As a qualified electronics engineer, I can assure you that's just a shit and dangrous design. Isolating power is a fairly fundamental aspect of electronic design.

This is why I hate Apple. Bad, dangerous products with shiny happy marketing.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) 2 days with Lion and ten years of Apple fanboys whinging in my ear like angry wasps. 2) Just about everything from the awful toolbar icons (the labels are turned off by default on my MacBook) to the fact that it makes an awful mess of the messages and it's impossible to stick an image attachment in it without it trying to rape you in the eye socket with iPhoto.

You predicted that you would be downvoted for your views. Have you considered the alternate explanation that your fellow HN users appreciate a fresh perspective but don't appreciate dragging the tone of the discussion into the gutter with abusive stereotypes like "Apple fanboys?" It's getting to the point where the use of the word "fanboy" in a thread effectively ends all rational discourse. https://twitter.com/ragan…

That was intentional.

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2940569 for further rational discussion about my hatred of Apple products and how a Macbook Pro nearly burned my house down.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only because the Finder/Explorer has been made harder and harder to use. Apple's OSX Finder is a shocking UI abomination. Their old MacOS Finder was clear and simple - my wife would spend hours arranging her work in coloured folders, each of which opened in a window whose shape and position she had chosen, and was meaningful to her. It was a powerful tool that enabled her to arrange and group her work. Now, b…

Are you talking about spatial mode? That still exists in Finder. Just hit Cmd+Opt+T or select "Hide Toolbars" from the View menu. You're absolutely right. I don't have the citation on me right now, but spatial mode has been found to be easier to grasp for new users in every single test ever. The only reason it was dropped was because (1) Windows Explorer, (2) power users whined about too many open windows and (3) a l…

> Just hit Cmd+Opt+T or select "Hide Toolbars" from the View menu

The problem is that there's no global switch to force Finder in spatial mode coming from anywhere, anytime. This results in a messy affair when suddenly a non-spatial Finder pops up because you never opened that folder directly and previously put it in spatial mode.

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

#267

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…

Move To and Copy To exist in XP.

But they are not shown by default on Vista or 7 (which I guess is where their data comes from).

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cut and pasting files would be useful, but that's about all I miss.

In Lion, after copying a file in Finder, you have available both Paste and Move.

Thanks, I didn't notice that!

The shortcut for move is Cmd-Option-V, if anyone wants to know.

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

#270
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…

Windows 7 SP1 is not exactly svelte - it's around 1GB or so as well.

The size of Windows 7 SP1 is based on how many updates you already have. It's generally 60-100 MB. Only the absolute full ISO download is a gigabyte, and most people simply won't need that. Not to mention that non-SP1 Win7 kept getting security updates for quite a while.
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