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Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

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Re: Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past decade, the U.S. MacOS market share has doubled from 15% to 30%, whereas Windows has dropped from 80% to 60% (according to statcounter)

I don't know where you got your numbers from but they don't appear to be correct. According to this, MacOS is around 16% while Windows is somewhere around 70% https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Yeah, the worldwide data seems more relevant. Still, if you look at it, apparently Windows has lost more than 5 percentage points just in the last three months. It seems to be a historical low. I don't know what triggered this, but at least in the US, Windows seems to be on its way out. Though it could have also to do with Apple's very efficient M CPUs, which aren't available for Windows, not just with MacOS itself.

Re: Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you got your numbers from but they don't appear to be correct. According to this, MacOS is around 16% while Windows is somewhere around 70% https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Yeah, the worldwide data seems more relevant. Still, if you look at it, apparently Windows has lost more than 5 percentage points just in the last three months. It seems to be a historical low. I don't know what triggered this, but at least in the US, Windows seems to be on its way out. Though it could have also to do with Apple's very efficient M CPUs, which aren't available for Windows, not just with MacOS itself.

It's the year of the Linux desktop?

Re: Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

#163
post #150
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the labels were already disabled in Windows 7 by default And literally every Windows user I personally know has turned them back on.

Ok... I can sympathize with wanting to keep the old UI (I installed the "Classic Start Menu" under Windows 7 too), but I like the icons-only taskbar better than the old one. I use Alt+Tab to switch between apps, so I see the window titles there, I don't need them taking up valuable space in the taskbar. The taskbar is there to launch apps and see at a glance what apps are currently open.

Sure, different people have different needs. That's why options are good.

Personally, I like to have the labels with the icons because the icons all by themselves tend to be awful at signaling what applications they go with. Having labels means I can just click on what I want straight away without having to hunt through them first.

Re: Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

#164
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if MS breaks too much or forgets to add compatibility modes/quirks, said enterprise customers are going to be pretty pissed because that can sometimes mean they have to buy new machines costing many millions of dollars The obvious solution is to leave those enterprise customers behind on the legacy edition of Windows and launching something new. But Microsoft seems incapable of going to market with something new al…

It's strange that MS has never did what Apple did with the OS 9 → OS X transition, starting with a fresh foundation and making a clean break from the predecessor by way of a well-integrated "Classic" mode that seamlessly runs legacy applications in a "borderless" VM. The most natural time to have done this would've probably been going from XP → Vista/7, which broke a number of old things anyway. For all that switchin…

Windows 7 had that "XP Mode" feature where it would try to run things in a VM, but it was an unloved stepchild.

Really, they could have done a lot better-- a VM jukebox with everything from DOS 3.3 onwards available could have made the "most compatible Windows ever"-- even old software that assumed a 4.77MHz CPU clock could have been rigged to run natively.

Re: Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

#165
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the first OS X release have great NeXTSTEP compatibility?

They did, via OPENSTEP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system)

This doesn't say much about whether it has great compatibility or not. Yes, there was a continuum of development releases between NeXT and OS X, but how easy is porting?

Re: Windows 11’s taskbar is finally getting labels and never combine app icons

#166
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, via OPENSTEP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system)

This doesn't say much about whether it has great compatibility or not. Yes, there was a continuum of development releases between NeXT and OS X, but how easy is porting?

Relatively easy if they were already OPENSTEP compatible.
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