231–240 of 884 posts
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I really don't care that much about UI visual consistency so long as it doesn't make the application confusing (i.e. not underlining hyperlinks or something). However, stuff like tasks on startup should be managed in one location that is easy to find.
Task Manager's Startup tab?
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.
And that's not even getting into the mess that is the licensing that was Minecraft Alpha. That was changed even before Microsoft took over, when lawyers took one look at the license and realized that players getting "all future versions" [0] would include any sequels, spin-offs, platform ports, etc.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20101214061702/http://notch.tumb...
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If you think Chrome OS is going to save you, you haven't been paying attention to Google for the past 10 years.
I didn't say it was going to save me. I do think I had a type that said 'good future.' I meant to put something along the lines of 'good probability of a future.' Chrome OS is going to be another user hostile environment for sure. But the point is, Chrome OS has a good shot at displacing windows not because it is better or less user hostile, but because it is putting cheap machines in the hands of kids who will one d…
That's even worse, because as the saying goes, those who never had freedom (or ownership, for that matter) won't miss it.
You've got to admire Microsoft's support of open source software. They're doing their best to push users to Linux! By making their UI as ugly and difficult to use as possible so that users don't feel too much of a bump in usability when they try Linux. I'm sure MS can get the job done and kill off their OS with just a few more years of obnoxious bullshit forcefully shoved into their operating system!
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It’s not quite Windows 2000, but the LTSC edition has much of the bullshit stripped out. It does not support the store therefore Candy Crush is not installed by default. And I don’t think it’s quite $1000, if you can figure out how to buy it.
It's available in volume licensing, with a 5 license as minimal order.
Although I haven't figured out how to ...install the latest version, it seems more complex than the one before.
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…
There's also that they "decided" that none of their core customer bases actually matter. They no longer cater to the needs of anyone . Some random examples: Enterprise -- It's cloud or the highway. You're either migrating to Azure and Microsoft 365, or stuck in dead-ends with virtually no maintenance/attention. Core products have just been left twisting in the wind. Active Directory for example has had no major featu…
Win32?
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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 th…
Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in too, just less obnoxious).
You can use ChromeOS! Which is literally ad tech.
Pick your poison.
It was a bit odd to have a section criticizing UI inconsistencies followed by a section criticizing Microsoft for fixing those UI inconsistencies in Notepad and Task Manager.
As I mentioned in the blog post - both Notepad and Task Manager aren't that inconsistent with the rest of the OS. Notepad is just a giant text box. Task Manager is a compact, tabbed view (tabs didn't go anywhere in the latest version of Windows) that now became Fluent-ified and in the process now looks very wasteful of vertical space. Above all, I think the problem is in priorities - Notepad and Task Manager _should_…
Do you have any evidence that Notepad and Task Manager required "so much focus"?
The new Notepad's about as bare-bones as the old Notepad, it just happens to use XAML Islands for the UI. It would be surprising if it significantly detracted from other efforts.
Maybe the personal desktop idea has done its time and they can't find ways to motivate hard work for the reducing profits.
It's a GOOD thing! The more people that migrate off of Windows the better the world will be because then companies can (hopefully) focus their software development on non-closed, cross-platform ecosystems.
Microsoft is long overdue for a market correction. Hopefully the OS market will diversify, bringing a cambrian explosion of life into the market.