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The Windows 11 Trash Party

birchtree.me

461–470 of 523 posts

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause everyone already had learned how to "touch"-gui, but microsoft in typical arrogance, redesigned it from the bottom up, throwing all the learnings away, you either had from android or macos. And like introducing a third language, to do the same tasks you already can perform fluent in two other languages, it was just this constant stepping into the void of expectations. It came out 2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

The Metro touch UI first shipped on the Zune HD in 2009. The iPhone launched at the beginning of 2007, and the iPod touch later in the year. I don't think it's fair to say Apple had a 9 year head start.

Zune's were very basic music and video players(I used to own one.) You can't say with a straight face that the user interface of the Zune had any great similarities to the User interface of a desktop OS.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Vista was an universally loathed disaster, but users took it because where else to go? Who? "Nobody" used Vista except eg schools. Same with 8 Maybe for me it feels diffetent maybe thats country difference, but the windows migration felt like: xp 7 10 ... 12? People were using xp and 7 as long as they could >In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default the…

>>In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default theme >No idea what you are talking about, what do you mean? It turns out to be quite hard to find links about this bygone era, even if everyone screamed bloody murder at the time. I found these: Third party themes, a feature loved by win98 users, are forbidden by microsoft in XP. https://www.theregister.com/20…

> "Third party themes, a feature loved by win98 users, are forbidden by microsoft in XP. [...] But the final decision of what was allowed or not was from now on made by microsoft, not the owner."

cough Remember when Win98 had Active Desktop where the desktop and all the Explorer folder views were DHTML and you could style them and write custom pages for them? And then the competition went running to the government to force Microsoft to take their HTML rendering engine out of Windows?

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#463

In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default theme, DRM. There were complaints, but users took it because where else to go? And to be honest, XP was still an upgrade coming from 98 and 2000 was not available for end users. Vista was an universally loathed disaster, but users took it because where else to go? Windows 7 was better, but still an UI downgrade.…

> Windows 11, ad ridden malware by any definition from 10 years ago. Users will take it, because where else to go. 2 of my last 3 jobs have offered MacBooks, something unthinkable even 10 years ago. The majority of my friends kids (70-80%) have Apple devices (phones and laptops). A couple of them, surprisingly to me, even have linux and Chromebook laptops.

Apple products (Macbooks especially) are prohibitively expensive in most of the world. The US market is very important, of course, but Microsoft has very little competition elsewhere.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Metro touch UI first shipped on the Zune HD in 2009. The iPhone launched at the beginning of 2007, and the iPod touch later in the year. I don't think it's fair to say Apple had a 9 year head start.

Zune's were very basic music and video players(I used to own one.) You can't say with a straight face that the user interface of the Zune had any great similarities to the User interface of a desktop OS.

OP was comparing touch interfaces, and used iPhone and Android as examples that were well ahead of MS and by how many years. I mentioned the Zune because it's a counterexample for the specific claim made by OP about the timing of Metro, specifically with respect to touch interfaces.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone wondering some details here [0]. You can now easily download the installation ISO directly from Microsoft, and choose to run it either 'activated' or 'unactivated', but there's no piracy involved. 0: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/get-windows-10-free-or-...

You can download the ISO from Microsoft, and an unactivated OS is usable, but this is still not a properly licensed copy of Windows, which constitutes piracy.

Thanks, I've had a closer look at the Windows EULA and you're right. Guess I should apply some of my product keys to those VMs!

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be fair, I would also avoid any company that uses Microsoft Sharepoint!

Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used. I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess.

>Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used.

>I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess.

I think Sharepoint is exactly what MS envisioned it to be. A development platform to integrate other MS tools/platforms for presentation to internal end users.

If you want something you can just install, tweak and run with, Sharepoint isn't (and never was) an appropriate solution.

But if you want something that (with significant effort) can bring all your MS tools together (encouraging the purchase of even more MS software), Sharepoint and development effort can create something useful.

N.B.: I hate Sharepoint. It's needlessly complicated and overly dependent on other MS products. As such, please don't take this comment as an endorsement of it.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be fair, I would also avoid any company that uses Microsoft Sharepoint!

Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used. I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess.

Every Microsoft product is like that; they think that because every customer uses a different set of features that they need to support them all.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#468
post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't aware of that usage. I feel the same though. I don't see how these things backfire at Microsoft. Rather than them doing something particular, I see that every such entity is doing things like this, so it's more of just a sign of the times, and MS just doing what everyone else is doing.

So, I recall ballmer doing really well financially at msft during his time. Ignoring stocks, revenue was up. I think profits were up. But then they missed every major trend during that time, and were looked at as creaking in the wrong direction. The reason I said they should ask themselves questions about windows is because it feels the same way to me. A product that still makes its way to enterprise and other money…

I don't think they screw the long game at all. I don't see developers having much choice regarding the OS, so MS needs to deal with their companies, not with them directly. They are also placated with things like WSL, which satisfies many use cases where otherwise someone would have installed Linux or used git bash/cygwin/VM. Or a shiny new editor, like VSCode, and they also have GitHub... Businesses, as always, need things to just work, and in the current climate, that would include handling MS Office formats, and only one software exists that handles them well enough - MS Office. Windows is still bundled with new computers as the de facto free system, running it pirated is easier than ever, you can download from MS directly even. And now every of their offering is also online, bundled with a large cloud storage offering for really really cheap.

I really don't think these offerings can be beaten. It makes business sense to use them, it makes sense personally to use them, and you can't avoid them either, because govts, administration, businesses all use them and expect the people to interface with them over these formats.

I don't feel there's anything stupid about what MS is currently doing. But I DO feel that people are hurt by how they operate.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#469
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classic mistake Apple has avoided. The Mac is not numerically their big platform but it’s key to their ecosystem so they have not abandoned it. Also Azure sucks compared to most other cloud providers so that’s not a basket I would put all my eggs in.

Aren't Apple starting to roll out more ads in various places?

Compared to what they had 5 years ago? Yes, albeit limited in scope.

Compared to Microsoft? It's several orders of magnitude smaller.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#470

In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default theme, DRM. There were complaints, but users took it because where else to go? And to be honest, XP was still an upgrade coming from 98 and 2000 was not available for end users. Vista was an universally loathed disaster, but users took it because where else to go? Windows 7 was better, but still an UI downgrade.…

> Windows 7 was better, but still an UI downgrade.

I thought Win7 with the Classic theme was the best Windows UI.

Side note: maybe it's a typo, but why would you use "an UI" instead of "a UI". Whether you pronounce the letters or say "User Interface", it's still going to be "a", unless you pronounce "UI" as "ooey".

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