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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#821

Post by piyush_soni »

tonguez wrote: post #716
pie_flavor wrote: post #684

I am the most ardent Windows evangelist I know. I have spent so much time learning Windows's APIs and idiosyncrasies because they're just so cool. I love the APIs, I love the system, I love the software and I love the way everything Just Works. And I'm not installing this shit. It's a skin. It's Windows 10, but retvrned to rounded corners, and with a tenth of the customizability. It's an attempt to put Mac in Windows…

“I love [Windows]… I love the way everything Just Works.” Stopped reading here.

It might be fashionable to say that about Apple products etc., but using a macbook pro for 8 months now (long term user of Windows), I can say, Windows machine DOES actually just work MUCH more than macs. I can't even connect to an external 4K monitor to this stupid silver box without it completely throttling everything meaningful that I can do on it. On top of that there are so many stupid UI/UX decisions that it has taken that make no sense. I would want my company to at least allow people to work on Windows machine too, but they are so much invested in macs that they don't want to.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#822

Post by piyush_soni »

xtracto wrote: post #798
makecheck wrote: post #747

I feel like the industry is really struggling with shipping “boring utilitarian things”. Rather than let software remain boring and just-plain-useful, it is forced to slowly transform into a nightmare of ads, pop-ups and other crap that is clearly NOT required for core functionality and ultimately the whole thing becomes awful to use. Even when the intrusion is small, it is ridiculous because it is not required for t…

I blame "Product Managers" or "Product Owners". In my 20 years of being at different technology companies, I´ve realized that people in this position must come up with new "features", bells and whistles to keep justifying their job. Think about say, Microsoft Word (only word, not office). Word has been feature complete since maybe the 2000 version. But, where would all the "product development" arm of the Word applic…

> _Word has been feature complete since maybe the 2000 version_ I am not sure, say for example the browser / Office 365 release version of Microsoft Word was very useful, and I'm sure they had to make _many_ changes in the desktop Word too in order to sync everything with the online word. That's pretty important I would say and it works great. The requirement of 'Feature completeness' keeps changing with times.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#823

Post by hutzlibu »

Zopieux wrote: post #808
hutzlibu wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I have to fight with a system more than I fight with linux, with it's drivers issues and the problems that I can't fix without googling as I'm not intimate with the SO, what's the point?" Linux with universal good drivers, is probably what most of us would want and need. (except for the lucky few, who never had an issue)

Are you complaining about missing drivers in Linux? For the life of me, I never had to install any particular driver since like 2010 on both laptops and workstations. Not even for printers. Specialized audio/video equipment? Probably, and of course the vendor will only provide them for Windows.

"Are you complaining about missing drivers in Linux? For the life of me, I never had to install any particular driver since like 2010 on both laptops and workstations. Not even for printers."

Yeah well, then you are among the lucky few, or you are not aware of the difference a good driver makes.

Right now I cannot get my linux workstation to do screencasting with hardware encoding(with OBS). On windows no problem.

And the laptops. On ALL my laptops I owned (6+) I tried linux, but experience was always worse, or even impossible. That includes tweaking, messing with grub, tlp and and in one instance even compiling the kernel. Still way worse battery life, performance, standby resume issues, freezes and dont get me started about touchscreen. I hate windows. But I have work to do.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#824

Post by fgonzag »

Zopieux wrote: post #808
hutzlibu wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I have to fight with a system more than I fight with linux, with it's drivers issues and the problems that I can't fix without googling as I'm not intimate with the SO, what's the point?" Linux with universal good drivers, is probably what most of us would want and need. (except for the lucky few, who never had an issue)

Are you complaining about missing drivers in Linux? For the life of me, I never had to install any particular driver since like 2010 on both laptops and workstations. Not even for printers. Specialized audio/video equipment? Probably, and of course the vendor will only provide them for Windows.

I've had light issues on every new PC I've had in the past 5 years. Be it the sound card, or the WiFi, or the NIC, or suspend / sleep. I will state all the issues were usually fixed in 6 months to a year as new kernels with improved drivers were released. So Linux on bleeding edge hardware is usually so so. (My TR workstation wouldn't even boot Linux without a specially compiled kernel and some boot parameters when it came out).

But if your hardware is over a year old, the Linux experience tends to be rock solid.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#825

Post by wolpoli »

jiggawatts wrote: post #353
userbinator wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that, it's basically what keeps Windows alive.

Win32 is on life support. Many new features added since Vista don't work with it at all, or require complex code to enable in Win32 apps.

I got the impression that Windows used to make APIs so that others could use the same UI elements as the OS in their programs. Have they stopped doing that?

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#826

Post by bayindirh »

jazzfool wrote: post #809
bayindirh wrote: post #641

Talking about wonderful backwards compatibility, and then talking inconsistent UI design is kinda ironic though. Because all these older themed windows are using the exact feature you told you love in the opening paragraphs of the piece: "Backwards compatibility". So, why Microsoft shouldn't use the exact feature they have built so painstakingly? Also, forcing these older UI toolkits to render the same as the latest…

No, this is a non-problem. If Microsoft stuck with Win32, just like how Apple stuck with Cocoa, this wouldn't be an issue.

It's a problem according to the author. Both the lack of an official API for the latest iteration of context menus and existence of older UI artifacts are presented as "paper cuts" and disorienting.

I'm not stating whether it's a problem or not, just iterating/expanding on what the author have said.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#827

Post by bayindirh »

AlexandrB wrote: post #691
bayindirh wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was not about that. That lack of API situation is unacceptable from my point of view, but I'm not terribly surprised about that when we're talking about Microsoft. My comment was about the paragraph starting with: There’s a meme about how there are at least ten different design conventions in Windows 11 and it’s very much “in your face” once you start using Windows 11 on the daily.

A lot of the examples of inconsistent UI in the article are things built into Windows . For example the "Windows security center" vs. "Eject disk" context menus. I think it's fine for third-party apps to have differences in UI based on their vintage, but why are Microsoft's own apps and utilities all over the map? Microsoft has also done a really bad job of evolving existing UI frameworks. Instead they seem to replac…

As a Windows user starting with Windows 3.1 and ending with 7/10 (as a support person for my family), I'm well aware how this inconsistency piled year over year.

During my regular Windows user years, I used to follow Redmond's side closely too. From my understanding, there are some factors contributing to current state.

The leading reason is "backwards compatibility at all costs", including but not limited to how programs behave. It's known that until Windows clamped down on security hard, older Windows programs used whatever functions they can find from .dlls, and also used "bugs" to achieve what they want. So, any changes which might affect how an older program look or feel are strongly frowned upon.

Windows is a gigantic codebase, and until semi-recently, Windows team didn't know what depended on what (the biggest revelation was printing support needed GDI, which brought all UI toolkit in, hence building a CLI only Windows was impossible). So, I'm guessing they're not entirely sure which parts of these applications are used by 3rd party applications. So they leave in, as-is, so nothing breaks.

The latest layer is the Microsoft's culture of "no polish, just new features" mentality. There's a very revealing writing by someone in Microsoft NT kernel team who said that "We can optimize something, but the change will be reverted, and you'll be berated because new features are much important than improving existing others, because new features are which make headlines and bring more revenue in".

Personally, I don't think that Windows team cares much about UI consistency and some other excellence. It's just a cash-cow and enabler of other applications, that's all, and while I'm not a Windows user, I find it sad.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#828

Post by spacexsucks »

yathaid wrote: post #572
rthomas6 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compatibil…

This article has a laundry list of things that annoyed the heck out of me. So I decided to try and dual boot to Ubuntu on my Surface Pro 7. This may come across as a rant, but I do not mean it that way. I know the tears and sweat people have pored it into this. Anyway, here is the list of things that I found are broken: - HDPI monitor support is BAD. Unity cannot do fractional scaling, resulting in perfect fonts on t…

Lol. I have similar annoyances on mac but my linux is fine. At least i can do something about it on linux.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#829

Post by Donckele »

Some weeks ago I resolved issues, for a friend, with searching for files or emails within outlook.

The results for searches firstly did not make sense, some files/emails found but most not.

I resolved the indexing of files by finally finding the right settings page after some time. The only feedback that I had done the right thing was seeing the “number of files indexed” incrementing.

For outlook, I was expecting some settings page within the app that would explain why emails were not being found. After some more time I found that the settings page was outside of outlook! I cannot remember where or how I fixed the issue but it was complete bullshit.

Every once in a while I have these experiences and and wonder how most people live with their computers and the amount of stress and time wasted on stuff that you would expect not to have to deal with in 2022.

Even though I have a soft spot for Microsoft, I abandoned their flagship product, the operating system, many years ago and was probably one of my wisest choices.

Just like I don’t use Google’s flagship product - I just hate it when companies ruin something near perfect by adding shit to please everyone or to milk it so much for profit that it becomes just a pile of trash.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#830

Post by s3micolon0 »

pie_flavor wrote: post #684

I am the most ardent Windows evangelist I know. I have spent so much time learning Windows's APIs and idiosyncrasies because they're just so cool. I love the APIs, I love the system, I love the software and I love the way everything Just Works. And I'm not installing this shit. It's a skin. It's Windows 10, but retvrned to rounded corners, and with a tenth of the customizability. It's an attempt to put Mac in Windows…

Hi pie_flavor, I am interested in learning more about windows myself, since I am using it on a daily basis. I have found it quite difficult to learn deeper about windows (unlike linux) and look into the "power user" features since I find most of the information/blogs on windows is usually surface level and things being described as a blackbox. Seeing that you quite like the windows API and are familiar with windows quite intimately, would you please be interested in chatting with me for windows resources which I can use to dive deeper into and learn more ?

Would really appreciate if I can get in touch with you on some other chat based social platform. Thank you in advance!

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