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Windows needs a change in priorities

den.dev

181–190 of 884 posts

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#181
For about ten years now I've only used Windows for rare tasks I can't do on Linux.

Slowly I've just stopped doing those things until eventually, now, we're talking like, a dual boot I use a couple of times a year for things like running exam software or whatever.

Why would they change a winning recipe? Millions (billions) are perfectly happy with their shit sandwiches.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#182

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…

since the announcement that windows 11 will require a microsoft account to install, I've decided that windows 10 is the last version of windows I will use for my personal computers. Your description of microsoft's opinion of their customers ('nobody at microsoft...actually cares') is apt.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but office users should be locked to a browser in 2022 anyway. What do they need Windows for? They can all use a web browser. Microsoft has done an amazing job convincing the office world they need Windows, when they don't need a single feature that it provides in 99% of cases.

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 can vouch for personal experience with macros and Linux, since I made my return to it this month. It's not ideal yet, but it's workable, and there's a generational transition taking place while moving from x11 to Wayland, since the two have different notions of input, so you have to wander through some compatibility stuff to find your way.

This is annoying, but already much better than the Windows story, because you can customize things right down to the kernel level and generally get the result you're looking for in a pretty direct fashion. I now have it set up so that it detects the model of keyboard I plugged in and redirects specific models to specific macro layers - a seemingly obvious two-keyboards use case that can be a serious hassle on Windows without resorting to a hardware solution.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, that legacy control panel doesn't list any apps that use the AppX/MSIX packaging model introduced with Windows 8. I'm still not on Windows 11, so I don't know if Teams is listed in the newer list of apps available in modern Settings, but it's worth looking there.

They deliberately gray out and disable the button that works for every other application if I recall correctly.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#185
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first heard about this, everything that's ever bothered me about the Windows 8-10-11 evolution makes so much more sense. They're turning it into MacOS.

The difference is that Mac OS actually looks somewhat consistent and has kept much of its familiar paradigms (Spotlight, System Preferences, the menubar, context menus...) the same over the past decade. Microsoft seems to have lifted the aesthetics of Mac OS without any of the UX.

OS X has been great for the past decade. I won't say the same for MacBooks, where there have been some pretty horrible decisions (butterfly keyboard, touch bar), but OS X has kept humming along, very usable, very productive. A few issues with Spotlight and some easily removed nags to use crap like iCloud is the worst I can say.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#187

Complaining about Windows UX inconsistency sort of misses the point that the OS and the windowing system should be separate. The function of an OS is not to manage windows, it is to provide an abstraction layer between the applications and the hardware.

I think your argument is valid for something Linux where you can actually decouple those things. Technically, it is still true for windows, but practically it isn't. What you get from Microsoft is a complete OS without any officially sanctioned way to decouple the OS part (kernel and perhaps a few critical user land utils) and windowing system.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#188

This menu is familiar to me because that’s what the Windows API allows you to create (as long as you are not creating it through Windows Forms.) There is no dark theme for this, but at least there are rounded corners. That is just a huge WTF. Since the very earliest versions of Windows there has always been the option of a dark (or white, or rainbow, or ...) theme, where you could adjust the colours and sizes and fon…

Ah, but you see - there is a difference in how theming works in Windows 11, in that it's different from the high-contrast mode. So, you can get a control that swaps the theme to high-contrast (you need to use the native Windows API for that), but you can't get one that works with the Windows 11 style of dark theme out-of-the-box without re-writing it from zero.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#189
post #56

Talking about dark patterns, here are a couple I've noticed. In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft, unless I have to. I make sure I use a local administrator account instead of a Microsoft account. Yesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that would only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken my Xbox Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me th…

> It's even worse when you activate Office 365. There is a small checkbox at the end which if you don't uncheck, converts your local administrator into your Microsoft account.. Going back to a local administrator account is not an easy task. I'm not even sure it's possible, I've tried multiple approaches but gave up after almost having to do a clean install. Now I have to deal with an accountname that contains multip…

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#190
I stopped playing Minecraft recently again. I first quit a few years ago, but wanted to show it to my young son. Trying to go back and EVEN JUST INSTALL it now is filled with Microsoft-ian circles of login catastrophe and "upgrade your account" nightmares.

The installation process was so difficult, I will never play again.

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