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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#101

Post by rthomas6 »

Silhouette wrote: post #42
segphault wrote: post #22

Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of frustrating experiences with the abusive behavior and dark patterns that have taken over the platform. Like when they started having Skype silently run in the background logged in with the user's Microsoft account without any notice or human intervention, and removed the setting to disable it from launching at startup so that it couldn't be prevented. I had to completely u…

Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority actually cares. Acknowledging this is the first step. The second is figuring out what would make them care or how to remove them so someone who does care can take over. That's a much harder thing to do. Realistically Microsoft is in a similar position to the likes of Google and Facebook. They have such an entrenched monopoly, bought through years of ignored warnin…

What is wrong with Linux nowadays? I've used it as my main driver for long enough that I can't see the big problems that are preventing everyone from switching. Like, it seems easier than even WSL to me. Beginner friendly distos seem to have solved the package management problem, and there are adequate desktop environments, office suites, browsers, gaming, and everything else. If a person has good hardware compatibility, in the face of the bloated pushyess of Windows 11, why not use Linux? What am I missing?

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#102

Post by unsupp0rted »

ncmncm wrote: post #59

Windows does what Microsoft wants. Period. Public discussion is just noise. Even more so, Apple. If you want a computing environment that is responsive to your needs, you need to step away from products of those autocratic organizations.

What Apple wants and what I want seems to intersect about 95% of the time, at least in terms of phones and laptops.

Mainly what I want is to not think about my tools at all, and just pick them up or put them down whenever the need arises, without worrying about whether I'm making a secret catastrophic error or that my tools are pretending to be my tools, while actually their master is somebody else.

I gladly sacrifice control to Apple the same way I sacrifice control to my doctor or to my sanitation engineer, or, if I had a car, to my car manufacturer.

I'm not a teenager exploring the universe of options anymore. Now I just want to get from point A to point B.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#103

Post by markus_zhang »

anon1900 wrote: post #28

As an engineer working at Microsoft in Windows, I 100% agree...it's just as frustrating seeing these from inside as well (edit: from throwaway as a protective measure)

I'm wondering who in the org has a bigger voice and from where he or she gets the political support?

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#104

Post by marssaxman »

sylens wrote: post #62
lukas099 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be some amount of money that someone could pay to make it worth it to Microsoft to not show ads or sell data. The problem is, I doubt many people would actually pay that amount.

There was an interesting interview on the Windows Weekly podcast with Chris Capossela (CMO of consumer at Microsoft) a little ways back I believe where the hosts asked Chris why there is no ability to do just this - I believe the answer was that Microsoft views these features as valuable to the user, so why would they think that a user would want to turn them off?

I wonder, do marketing types actually believe that kind of nonsense? Could it actually be true for them, personally, that they feel they get some benefit from intrusive communication? That would be such a different experience of the world that it's difficult to wrap my head around.

And yet... I was once griping about one or another of the many tricky ways excessively-clever web designers abuse javascript to impose their concept of a "user experience" on me when I would deeply prefer they simply left well enough alone, and my listener replied - "but what if I want the experience they're offering"? - Well, that thought had never occurred to me.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#105

Post by ripley12 »

userbinator wrote: post #67
sbierwagen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The UI inconsistencies are one thing (that you would hope get ironed out over time) Windows 8 was released ten years ago. All the old-style control panel dialogs are still with us. Regedit will never get ported to the new UI toolkit.

One hopes it never will, because everything post-Win32 seems to be much worse. UWP (what is used for the new Control Panel/"Settings") is particularly frustrating. ...which is very strange that MS seems to be continuing to rewrite stuff in it, when it's already started saying things like this a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19873198

> ...which is very strange that MS seems to be continuing to rewrite stuff in it

From what I understand, the thinking is something like:

- There currently aren't any great alternatives for an attractive, touch-friendly, modern-looking UI framework. UWP applications generally feel pretty good to use despite UWP's problems.

- MS already has to support UWP apps forever (once something ships with Windows it's immortal), so they might as well take advantage of that support guarantee.

The Windows team is currently investing heavily in Chromium/Edge/WebView2, but it's still fairly early days. I'd bet good money that within the next 5 years, web UI in some form will fully replace UWP for new first-party development.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#106

Post by QuantumSeed »

segphault wrote: post #22

Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of frustrating experiences with the abusive behavior and dark patterns that have taken over the platform. Like when they started having Skype silently run in the background logged in with the user's Microsoft account without any notice or human intervention, and removed the setting to disable it from launching at startup so that it couldn't be prevented. I had to completely u…

To your point, the Programs and Features section of the Windows 11 Control Panel no longer lists Microsoft Teams as a product that can be uninstalled.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#107

Post by the_snooze »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #81
Pasorrijer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an officer worker, there are many many things I do that cannot be done in a web browser. File comparison tools, macros and complex excel queries, hard applications for both new and legacy critical programs... Can this be done on Linux? Frequently. Can it be done in a web browser? Rarely effectively and often not at all.

I'd have to say that, today, all of those can be done in the browser except Excel. File comparison, hard applications, legacy code, can be compiled to WASM and run quite well in the browser. The pieces are in place to do it, they just need polishing and tuning to make it ubiquitous. Even Excel could be compiled like this but again MS wants to own you and pin you over a barrel while extracting everything they can from…

>File comparison, hard applications, legacy code, can be compiled to WASM and run quite well in the browser.

Not when you're working on proprietary/confidential/classified information.

>But many/most Spreadsheets can be done in Libreoffice, or code or no/low code alternatives.

Not when you're working on spreadsheets that you need to send to organizations that heavily rely on MS Office.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#109

Post by creakingstairs »

WithinReason wrote: post #74
anon1900 wrote: post #28

As an engineer working at Microsoft in Windows, I 100% agree...it's just as frustrating seeing these from inside as well (edit: from throwaway as a protective measure)

Is it getting raised at meetings?

Not working in MS but I would guess everyone knows about how bad it is. The problem is so colossal (technically and organisationally) thus no one person has the political capital to push for change.

It’s a kind of thing where the usual growth metrics “looks fine”, so it’s hard to justify big initiatives to fix it, yet everyone knows it’s broken. One day, those metrics will start looking bad and then they will try to fix it, but by then it would be too late.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#110

Post by Sophistifunk »

All of these gripes are valid. And none of them aside from the new actively-evil stuff in 10 and 11 like telemetry can ever be fixed, because all of this poorly-matched stuff is exactly why almost all old Windows software (apart from games, that's just a lie thanks to DRM and GPU vendors) still run.
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