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I would be curious for a similar dissection of modern macOS. My intuitive sense is that it is a little better though there are probably still at least 5 layers of stuff. So to some extent, does doing this better at the scale of a modern user-facing OS provide enough return on investment?
Pretty sure MS has just given up on consistency at this point. The control panel on particular is a writeoff - simple things like setting an IP on a net adapter is an adventure in itself
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Costs money.
So does Windows itself. If you're afraid to or don't want to pay for software then you should probably use some variant of GNU/Linux instead.
As a 25+ year user of windows none of this stuff bothers me. What ticks me off is just the abysmal quality of windows 11 compared to the past. It’s like no one working on it has any pride in their job Example: - hate the new notification area. The action center was so much better - dumb stuff like a window update notification that shows a c# class name instead of windows update - clicking said notification does not b…
- swipe from the left is unchangeably wasted for trash news
- touch interaction (especially in Edge) is worse than Windows 8: I am dependant on a virtual touch pad to do certain stuff (e.g. selecting text and copying it via context menu)
- start menu customization possibilities are ridiculously low
I will happily bet there are programs out there that would crash and burn horrifically without moricons.dll.
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I'm not sure why they rushed out the release, Windows 10 was and is fine and I don't think any customers were really interested in this new version/ui update/whatever total blunder imo but I think most people are just happy it's not as screwed up as whatever the hell Windows8 was for me personally besides the common complaints just getting to the weather widget is now a huge microannoyance that drives me up the wall
I am still baffled by the whole Windows 8 drama. All they did was they replaced a menu with another one. Everything else was the same or better. Supposed power users freaking out about something completely inconsequential. What the hell is wrong with people
Now they’ve gone and half-baked that design in new software and it’s less intuitive, eg clicking file menu item and a whole new screen appears.
There is a real cost to consistency/change, and I don't personally believe that this is just laziness or poor design on Microsoft's behalf. Sure, Windows could have changed the look and layout of every component with every release, but with an application as widely used as Windows you really want the ability for users to move from Windows XP to Windows 11 and still have a sense of familiarity and confidence. It is al…
With those 8 or so (partial!) redesigns I do not feel the overwhelming urge for consistency here. (in fact they broke this and that along the road, the latest and most crucial for me is the taskbar, and I am not talking about the alignemnt, not at all, but all the other possibilities gone, starting with the option of grouping/ungrouping, but not ending there)
The way I look at it (which may be wrong!) is that companies get a 'change budget' of how much users will tolerate in terms of change (i.e. an 'emotional' budget with users rather than a cash/resource budget).
Look at the large facebook designs which recieved huge amounts of backlash from the community - while each of them pushed Facebook in the right direction, each of the changes was also very disruptive to an extent that Microsoft probably couldn't tolerate in Windows.
This time around they decided to use a lot of their 'change budget' on the taskbar, which probably means you don't want to touch other parts. IMO they should have added the option of grouping/ungrouping too before making the change, although the fact that people are complaining about taskbar grouping probably further demonstrates how careful Microsoft needs to be with design changes (Especially as you can probably see WHY Microsoft might want to remove the option of grouping/ungrouping and follow their thought process with this, which shows how easily these UI pitfalls can occur when making changes).
I am still looking forward for the option to ungroup task bar buttons, preferably with titles. Again! Something that was there before, worked, and was useful. But some designer decided we don't need that, to the bin with it!
I would be curious for a similar dissection of modern macOS. My intuitive sense is that it is a little better though there are probably still at least 5 layers of stuff. So to some extent, does doing this better at the scale of a modern user-facing OS provide enough return on investment?
(P.S. - Latest Windows when installed with MS 'PowerToys' brings a few missing things in Windows from macOS where it might otherwise shine)
I have a bit of a perfectionistic tendency to 'start over' things over and over and do them again as perfectly as possible; the Windows side of MS feels like a corporate embodiment of this habit. They've done this sort of thing with app installers(setup.exe, click once, appv, msi, msix) and UI frameworks(win32, mfc, wpf, winui 2, winui 3). It's like the teams responsible for their respective product keep starting ove…