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Windows needs a change in priorities

den.dev

601–610 of 884 posts

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#601

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…

It's like being in an abusive relationship. Indeed, another way it's like an abusive relationship is people's reluctance to leave despite all they've experienced. I hear all the horror stories and then say "I've been using for ten years and it works well" and I get "oh, but I don't want to have to fiddle with things" (after discussions of how hard Windows is to get to do things). Linux has glitches but Microsoft mani…

I've seen so many people say things like: "Windows is fine, all you have to do is [gigantic list of obscure settings changes, registry edits, external freeware programs] to turn off the telemetry!"

It will eventually get to the point where it will take more settings-twiddling to make Windows do what you actually want than Linux does.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#602
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to frequently be true that Microsoft releases a horrifying nightmare OS, polishes is up and removes hated features, and then releases a new version. It's been a bit of a pattern. Windows 8 -> Windows 10 Windows Vista -> Windows 7 and even before that: Windows Me -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP was a pretty solid chain that shows it over three releases (personally I think XP was buggier, I don't know what the i…

Microsoft has a tick tock approach to consumer OS releases, where every other OS is “the good one”. Windows me - bad Windows xp - good Windows vista - bad Windows 7 - good Windows 8 - bad Windows 10 - good Windows 11 - bad For a bad release windows 11 is pretty good. This gives me hope that windows 12 will be their best ever. This is why it would have been smart of them to stick to windows 10 like they planned, but l…

> For a bad release windows 11 is pretty good.

...and for a good release Windows 10 is pretty bad.

Despite all the flak it got at the time, Windows 8.1 (plus StartIsBack to hide metro crap) is still the best Windows released in the last decade.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#603
This is why I don't think the world makes any sense anymore. How is this a product the worlds 2nd biggest tech conglomerate in the year 2022 thinks is acceptable to be released to the public? How...how are people just accepting this? It's comically bad. Remember when Vista came out and there was this massive hate storm going on because...reasons I guess (yeah, poorly optimized aero on shitty hardware might have sucked but come on...) and now 15 years later THIS is what Windows looks like and ... nobody bats an eye? Hello?! Is anybody still paying attention?

People always talk about google dying. Yeah, how about Microsoft goes dying, how are they even still in business I just don't get it..

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#604

There's been a big shift in the whole software industry from "enable what the user wants to do" over to "we want the user to do this". Back in the '90s, we would go out, talk to customers, find out their needs, gather requirements, and write software that enables them to do what they want to do. Now, in a lot of software companies, it's the opposite. Product leadership starts with "What do we want users to do?" and t…

I guess the ultimate goal is profit, and strategy was implementing what users wanted. “Strategy is how not what” etc etc.

The goal is now growth, not even profit, and control over users is strat.

What comes next? Jerk(2nd derivative of speed, rate of acceleration changes)? — the speed at which users conform a platform?

Capitalism is so ripe for disruption, or innovation, it seems!

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#605

There's been a big shift in the whole software industry from "enable what the user wants to do" over to "we want the user to do this". Back in the '90s, we would go out, talk to customers, find out their needs, gather requirements, and write software that enables them to do what they want to do. Now, in a lot of software companies, it's the opposite. Product leadership starts with "What do we want users to do?" and t…

Indeed. One need only look at something as simple as UI styling to see the drastic difference. It used to be that the user could set every aspect of the UI widgets to pretty much whatever they wanted in terms of color, don't, and size. It wasn't even really noteworthy to come across someone who used italic comic sans in their title bars on a purple and green widget scheme.

Nowadays getting a bespoke dark mode for applications is an advertisement worthy feature.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority actually cares. I don't know if it started with Ballmer, but they do care, but it is just about sales, and making money. It's not as if selling and making money is antithetical to making good software either. It's always the same in the IT industry. The "non technical" managers are invariably higher in the org chart than developers and they have no concept of wh…

Making money and caring about users are related, but there's definitely a difference between making a good product that people would like to use, and trying to make money. The latter may well make you rich, but it may make your product much worse, which you shore up with lots of salespeople and complex pricing schemes and dealmaking to keep people locked in.

Totally unrelated: The Microsoft PowerApps licencing PDF is 6 pages long.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#609
post #468

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…

You are not the target audience for Microsoft, the corporation is. Who uses a home computer anymore? (it's all smart phones now) You start work, you get a pre-installed Windows laptop to use by the corporate IT department, configured to be used as they see fit. You no longer own a computer. Nobody is expected to, these days.

I think combining Macbooks and gaming PCs then home computers are being used more than ever, but I'm not sure, it's true that you don't need one to browse facebook anymore. But at the same time I don't know anyone without a laptop.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#610
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Linux while sitting idle my laptop burns battery about twice as fast as it does on Windows while I go about my normal workflow. This is a laptop which is certified for both Fedora and Ubuntu.

Using auto-cpufreq or other cpu frequency scaling services can make my laptop run way longer than with windows.

I have tried tlp which includes cpu frequency scaling on numerous distributions over the last couple of years with little if any noticeable difference.
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