Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is driving users away

christitus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 422 posts

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#61

Post by Nition »

Windows really is a confusing mess right now. Especially the two different settings areas.

All sorts of ridiculous stuff like Microsoft realizing people won't be able to find the options to turn system icons on and off on the Desktop anymore, so they add a tiny clickable link to a Bing search for how to find it

If you go back to Windows 95 right now and use the interface it feels amazing in comparison. It feels like everything is designed to be both easy and productive. There's even a little Task Scheduler icon in the taskbar just in case maybe you want to set up something to run sometime. Because why not let normal users discover power user features? The Task Scheduler interface is much clearer and less intimidating than the current one.

Can you imagine getting your first ever PC now and trying to learn Windows 11? Especially without using the Internet to find where everything is?

That's not even mentioning the other issues (advertising/privacy/bloat/Microsoft account to log in...).

-

A while ago I decided to see if there's still local help in Windows and wrote down my experience.

I typed 'help' into the start menu search in Windows 11. An app came up called Get Help.

It opened with an ad banner at the top: "Increase productivity and collaboration all while staying organized, using a new meeting solution designed for small businesses. Learn More". Out of morbid curiosity I chose to Learn More but "We are sorry, the page you requested cannot be found."

There were several features in Get Help beyond the primary feature of linking to a broken URL. You can sign in, you can rate your experience out of five, or you can send feedback. There is no Contents or Index, but there is a search box with a few suggested searches like 'How to install Office'. I tried searching 'how to copy paste' (without quotes) but "Your search did not match any solutions." It suggested I sign in to contact support. Closing the app was a little tricky because the minimise/maximise/close buttons are the wrong colour - white on pale grey. I rated my experience a 1/5, although it's 5/5 as a satire.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/aToMCtE

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#62

Post by Lammy »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #3

>To Access the old devices and printer use the run prompt and type the following: shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A} This is the finest advertisement for every OS not named Windows that I have ever seen.

It's just a GUID. They're a good thing and very useful.

Spoiler alert, your Linux systems probably use them too:

  [lammy@emi] blkid        
  /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p5_crypt: UUID="RjKq3i-w2ov-ZXcp-Uc60-Ylzp-Gc56-xtjpkg" TYPE="LVM2_member"
  /dev/mapper/mint--vg-root: UUID="4d5373f4-d9e2-4787-98d8-24c33a1574b7" TYPE="ext4"
  /dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="d6b28757-9cd9-44a5-b68a-25515537e540" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="bc0382eb-01"
  /dev/nvme0n1p5: UUID="19104716-2c1f-4e92-8c75-35b113d9ecae" TYPE="crypto_LUKS" PARTUUID="bc0382eb-05"
  /dev/mapper/mint--vg-swap_1: UUID="dbfcbc11-37c2-4752-9f8f-6288aa7e8b43" TYPE="swap"
And FreeBSD:

  [lammy@popola] gpart list|grep uuid
    rawuuid: c345aeb1-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea
    rawuuid: c350c1ee-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea
    rawuuid: c359c46d-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea
    rawuuid: c3601e82-1dde-11e9-a10e-0cc42afa3cea
And probably others but this is what I have on hand lol

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#63

Post by lencastre »

nickelpro wrote: post #15

This is basically an article by a guy angry that the UI for printers changed and predicting the end of the Windows empire based on that.

A long time ago there was a video (or was it audio) of a really angry dude ranting about this and that and in the end he exclaims: I can’t print. And that is the punch line, his life was miserable and the root of the problem was printing.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#66

Post by SHY_TUCKER »

Because I have to use Autodesk apps everyday I am forced to use Windows. There is not one other thing I can't do better, with a more efficient workflow on Linux. If ever there becomes a good way to run Revit on the cloud or on Wine, etc, I will throw a massive party.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#67

Post by juujian »

doawoo wrote: post #7

I really agree with this article- I used Windows as my primary OS (not counting work machines) until about 2 years ago, the mess of non coherent design and CONSTANTLY resetting my user preferences every update (like shoving new buttons [see: ads] onto my taskbar) ultimately lead me to buying the first m1 mbp as my new personal machine. Never looked back. I only boot up windows for occasional games now, and even then,…

Meanwhile, Linux keeps getting better and better. I used to run Ubuntu 15 years ago, then went back to Windows for a while for software and because Windows 7 was okish. Now I'm back, and while Ubuntu may not be as good as it was 15 years ago, debian and other distributions are great, and getting awesome new releases left and right. Smartphone connectibility with KDE connect has blown me away. It's and interesting trajectory right now.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#68

Post by mejutoco »

thiago_fm wrote: post #47

The issue with Windows that the HN public might have trouble to understand, is how bad decisions are sticky in a company with little to no taste like Microsoft. You can't suddenly change things and expect app developers to accept it like they do in OSX. This means they can't change Windows too much. Any new change creates lots of compromises and just slapping a new UI doesn't fix the underlying issue. This has been t…

> You can't suddenly change things and expect app developers to accept it like they do in OSX

Ads in the taskbar indicates that Microsoft has no problem pushing some choices.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#69

Post by ChrisArchitect »

nickelpro wrote: post #15

This is basically an article by a guy angry that the UI for printers changed and predicting the end of the Windows empire based on that.

Yep. My first reaction was printer issue? Riiight, that's definitely going to be the large market issue driving ppl away. People like the blackbox OS that doesn't do anything. It's not good for IT, but neither is Mac OS!

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#70

Post by iforgotpassword »

firesteelrain wrote: post #4

As much as I like Linux, tides won’t be shifting for desktop to Linux. It will be Microsoft Windows for years to come

I guess because the majority of Linux folks don't really care about making it a solid user experience for normies, and those that do so might have strong opinions on things that might not roll with everyone, especially coming from Windows (read: gnome).

I've maintained an in-house distro for a couple years so I know the ins and outs of systemd, dbus, polkit, xorg and whatever crap is needed to run a desktop session, and how to track down what's broken if the system misbehaves in some way. So switching every machine I use to Linux wasn't really an extra burden. Ironically it made me switch to i3 as my WM and ditching a file manager, gvfs and other moving parts. I'm doing a lot of things in the terminal. I loathe complicated setups - less moving parts, less things that can break. But I'm fully aware that I'm a complete oddball here, and I don't think nor care whether the day of the Linux desktop will ever come. Unless maybe we're at a point where really absolutely everything runs in the cloud and people only need a browser. But at that point just get a Chromebook?

Post reply on HN