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Windows needs a change in priorities

den.dev

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#621

Post by CraigJPerry »

unhammer wrote: post #559
rbut wrote: 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…

> In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft and then you try to look at a picture of your kids but it's a HEIC file from an iPhone so Windows says you have to go to the Store and download Microsoft HEVC decoder which for some reason wasn't bundled with Windows but hey it's just a dollar oh that's nearly free we just need your credit card details and e-mail and make a user account and wou…

Used to be able to get around this charge by using this link https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/hevc-video-extensions-from...

Not sure it’s possible anymore though or what an alternative might be now.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#622

Post by ho_schi »

> There is Windows Forms, WPF, MAUI, UWP, WTL, WinUI, MFC, and I am sure others that I am missing.

The list is missing the old Win32 API? Microsoft never cared about continuation between UI libraries and HIG. Neither application programmers. They just add another UI when they feel the need. While Gtk is puting a lot effort in compatibility and consistency and they're blamed anyway. Usually for theming which Gtk actually doesn't appreciate. And for Qt compatibility is a business model.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#623

Post by rmellow »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #589
GekkePrutser wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the constant ui changes with no reason other than change, with no option to switch them back. Or the ever more locked down environment, or the iOS style dumbed down apps they prefer now.. I think it was pretty much downhill after leopard :(

Last year I went through every version of macOS from 10.1 to the current release and used each for a couple of weeks. The thing that surprised me the most is just how consistent the user interface has been. Anybody familiar with 10.1 would have no problem using Monterey.

You should write a blog post about this. I'd definitely read it.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#625

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

khaledh wrote: post #98
interstice wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory that the people who used the bar on the side and the people who turned the user metrics off are the same people (myself included). But I’m not sure how I feel about the results. In any case I hope shells like litestep make a comeback as a result of ever more hostile ui decisions, either that or everyone jumps ship entirely to put energy into making something else great.

The problem is that Windows with all its warts now is still far ahead of the competition in that department (desktop GUI). Whether that's due to monopoly or being actually better, it doesn't matter. The fact is competition is almost non-existent.

Windows 7 was a GUI horror show compared to pretty much anything else at the time. Ugly font rendering, e.g. Especially if you have a ton of open windows, Windows has always been amazingly bad at helping the user manage them. Multiple / desktops can finally be enabled since Windows 10 (without hackery), but are still a pain. The font rendering has improved but is nowhere near MacOS. I could go on for a while. In my experience, the only people who think Windows has superior GUI have never truly worked with other desktops.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#626

Post by Silhouette »

hulitu wrote: post #464
seanp2k2 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how quickly they forget the lessons of https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21684329 and https://www.computerworld.com/article/2564087/european-commi... . I guess we need higher fines to get the message across.

They (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.) do not care about one payment of a couple of milions dollars.

Do you understand that the potential fines for violations under some of the recent laws (notably the GDPR) have a few extra zeroes on that? The limiting factor at the moment seems to be a lack of resources for the regulators that are responsible for enforcing privacy rules. Obviously a big tech firm facing a fine that could run to hundreds of millions is like to exhaust their legal avenues for challenging it before handing over the cash. It's going to take time and money from the regulator's side to deal with those challenges before any big penalties get applied effectively.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#627

Post by Geenirvana »

dustinmoris wrote: post #583
Geenirvana wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not mind logging into a Microsoft account however the most bizarre situation happened to me very recently. I will occasionally log into my personal Microsoft account when accessing a Microsoft website when I am on Lunch to work on some personal projects. At work last week, I was upgraded to Office 365 and as a result I started downloading the latest versions and trying it out in various ways. One of these was up…

Wow that is CREEPY AF and very very scary. This is an instant reason to never use Windows because I'd be so scared that I'd leak personal/private data to other people's computers. The really fucking scary thing is that even we both as power users who understand computers, the internet and how things work are even extremely vulnerable to those hostile dark patterns in Windows that less tech savvy family members would…

I obviously did not find it amusing.

I had my young son with me at the time so I didn't investigate it further. What would have I seen if I clicked the More > button in the Start Menu - would there have been more leakage? Have I logged into my work account on my personal PC at some point? Why did it only show the OneNote file but not any others? What happened if I actually clicked it and tried to open it? Did I simply make a mistake when using multiple accounts in one OS?

There are numerous questions I am asking myself that I don't have an answer for yet.

As far as I can see, I have removed all traces of my personal account off my work laptop now but I am hoping (not sure this is the correct wording in this context) that I can see still the file in my Recommended Section when I get home.

I really would like to know exactly how it can happen.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#628

Post by augustl »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #44
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…

Even stuff like WSL is loosing it's shine now for me. I've personally hit a bug on multiple computers that I can reliably repo a blue screen if I attempt to update a specific package. The github bug for this issue last had activity from MS 4 months ago. Kinda makes it hard to take it seriously if such a major blocker is treated with such low priority.

You're definitely an early adopter if you're on WSL now. I'd say it's probably not prime time until 2024 or so.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#629

Post by rbanffy »

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…

Windows and macOS users have different expectations. On a Mac, I expect my login account to also know my Apple ID and connect seamlessly with my iCloud, Apple TV, Apple Music, Messages, and all other Apple cloud services. I like being able to answer phone calls on the computer when the phone is nearby. When Microsoft tries to make Windows more Mac-like, it faces a couple problems - not everyone wants to be on Skype or Teams - some people use Zoom or Slack. To make things worse, even Microsoft products are not well integrated into the platform. Depending on how I open a SharePoint document, I can either have another Edge window, with an online version of an Office app or the standalone app opening (with different UI conventions on how shared edits work).

The article mentions the backwards compatibility. Honestly, it never occurred to me to run a binary compiled for Windows 95 on Windows 11 (or 10, which is where I am now). It also mentions dual booting, which is something completely alien to me - this is what VMs are for. When I needed to run Windows on either my Mac or my Linux box, I'd just spin up a small VM with enough brains to run what I needed.

And, since we are talking VMs, WSL 2 is a horrible user experienced compared to a real Linux environment - file sharing with the Windows side is clunkier than it was with WSL 1 (as things don't exist on a single filesystem, and that silly CRLF convention is what Windows expects) or even the venerable Cygwin (which saved me many times when I needed to use a Windows machine). With Macs and Linux you have full Unix environments without any border separating you from the rest of the machine.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#630

Post by zippergz »

lbriner wrote: post #591

It definitely suffers from a number of problems in MS, probably mostly due from having a very large organisation with different priorities: 1) UX teams who have to change things to jutify their existence. None of the problems in Windows 10 imho were related to major UX problems, just things that should have been fixed like the stupid search function which can't find "Explorer" when you type in "Explore" 2) UX people…

As a Mac user, I can tell you that people on this side of the fence have been complaining about how Apple is changing the UI to make it “fresh” for the past few years too. Maybe the changes aren’t as drastic as they are in windows, but the same thing happens, unfortunately.
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