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Our commitment to Windows quality

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#811

Post by gzread »

econ wrote: post #662
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been bothered by Windows's changes, and I mostly think they were reasonable. But for a number of reasons it's never going to be easy for them to gain total acceptance: 1) the massive backwards compatibility back to Windows 95 stuff, 2) the willingness to try new and/or silly things that Apple is too stuffy to try, and 3) the fact that there's only ever going to be one "flavor" of Windows; if we were stuck…

If you have two candidate ui designs you pick the best of the two. If you have an established ui and a candidate the new design needs to be dramatically better. It has to scream superiority. If it isn't that you are just ruining ux. I install Gimp one time. I like to casual draw on autopilot, usually while doing something else, talking, watching a movie, listening to a podcast etc. For some reason half the icons were…

There's another pressure: each major release has to look different from the last one, otherwise it feels like a minor release. In this regard XP, Vista and 7 were successful. 8 also succeeded here, but at the expense of usability.

It doesn't have to use different window layouts, just differently themed decorations. Changing the default wallpaper is a simple way to do it.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#812

Post by chanux »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #469

Microsoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to…

Even though MacOS is not terribly better, it's good enough. Add to that the new cheaper macbook and it must inspire pause in the great folks at Microsoft.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#814

Post by suby »

Quality is not the issue. We should be more specific - Microsoft has been consciously employing dark patterns that they know will be harmful to users but they do not care because their incentives are misaligned. Employees of Microsoft have surely had meetings scheming of ways to degrade user experience for some internal metric they are trying to hit. A decade+ of conscious, willful decisions which negatively impact users.

I personally will never forgive them for uploading the entirety of my users dir to OneDrive without asking for permission. They're --still-- doing this. Whatever decision making process they have in place that not only cooked this scheme up, but allowed it to continue for years must be broken beyond repair. It's contemptuous, backwards, and hostile to users. It cannot be condemned enough.

This blog post talks about taskbar positioning and vaguely gesturing at quality, which is whatever. I'm not mad about removing features or even a higher incidence of bugs. I'm mad about hostile dark patterns that they have consciously chosen to employ at an ever increasing rate. I don't think you can fix this without drastic company wide changes.

For as long as I live, if I have a choice, I will avoid Microsoft products. They cannot be trusted.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#816

Post by jiggawatts »

pathartl wrote: post #791
jiggawatts wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> improving admin apps? They have a bunch of replacements, all of which are slow as molasses and not feature complete. 1. Server Manager. 2. Windows Admin Centre. 3. Settings App (same as desktop). 4. PowerShell 5. DSC 6. Azure Arc There's also Active Directory Administrative Center which never replaced dsa.msc for me or anyone I've ever worked with. Similarly, there's like half a dozen performance monitor tools for…

PowerShell is slow or not feature complete? It's arguably one of the best shells out there.

It is reasonably feature complete, but not 100%, so some things are absurdly difficult to automate on Server Core, such as changing the ACL of the private key of a certificate (i.e.: to give a service account access).

It also takes a solid two seconds to launch even on a high-end PC with a fast SSD. It takes much longer on a small VM with overpriced cloud remote storage.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#817

Post by thunfischtoast »

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

I use both, Windows 11 and Pop! OS (which is Ubuntu, with Cosmic).

Pop! OS is definitely not ready for the average user in my opinion. Some common work-related apps I need like Citrix Workspace straight up don't work. Audio + Camera randomly give out in the middle of video conferences, only fixable by a complete reboot. Some things are only fixable in the terminal.

I use it as much as I can, but there is still work to be done. I agree that Windows is on the wrong path.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#818

Post by thunfischtoast »

tw04 wrote: post #693

So still nothing about local accounts, or disabling copilot entirely. This is basically: we’re doing the absolute minimum possible to claim we’re listening to users while still pursuing exactly what we were doing before. We realized we just need to boil the frog a little slower. If they were hoping this would help shake microslop, they’re in trouble.

Or random telemetry, or random network usage of some anonymous service that leaves you unable to pretty much do anything internet-related until that service has done it's thing.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#819

Post by NothingAboutAny »

lich_king wrote: post #110
xvector wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely nothing wrong with an "agentic OS", agentic UX is the future of personal computing. The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done. Unless you really think we've reached the pinnacle of user interface with repetitive clicking around and menus. The problem is with shoving AI down user's throats. Make it an option, not the only option.

> The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done. Maybe? For a couple of decades, we believed that computers you can talk to are the future of computing. Every sci-fi show worth a dime perpetuated that trope. And yet, even though the technology is here, we still usually prefer to read and type. We might find out the same with some of the everyday uses of agentic tech: it may…

yeah for me even with other people, the amount of times you think "it would be easier for me to just show you" is maybe 30% of interactions with agents currently.

perplexity keeps trying to get me to use "computer" and for the life of me I can't think of anything I'd actually do with it.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#820

Post by jiggawatts »

lousken wrote: post #573
jiggawatts wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> improving admin apps? They have a bunch of replacements, all of which are slow as molasses and not feature complete. 1. Server Manager. 2. Windows Admin Centre. 3. Settings App (same as desktop). 4. PowerShell 5. DSC 6. Azure Arc There's also Active Directory Administrative Center which never replaced dsa.msc for me or anyone I've ever worked with. Similarly, there's like half a dozen performance monitor tools for…

i've stopped administrating windows some time ago so hopefully my response is still accurate - 1. deprecated lol 2. i think it can't be run on things like AD, so for very small companies this is annoying 3. ... that's not really an admin app? 4. sure, but then i might as well switch to linux if i have to stick to cli (and i did) 5. last time i checked there were two versions, incompatible with one another, not great…

> 1. deprecated lol

It launches by default on new installs of Windows Server 2025!

> 2. i think it can't be run on things like AD, so for very small companies this is annoying

In "Preview", which is a sad state of affairs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/wind...

> 3. ... that's not really an admin app?

I was just listing stuff that generally replaced the old MMC consoles. Things like regional options can be set through the Admin app, and is weirdly difficult with other mechanisms even on Windows Server. Some critical aspects are still MMC-only or require half a page of PowerShell scripts.

> 4. sure, but then i might as well switch to linux if i have to stick to cli (and i did)

Ironically, you're missing out on PowerShell, which is more UNIX than UNIX, and blows every legacy shell on Linux out of the water.

> 5. last time i checked there were two versions, incompatible with one another, not great alternative to ansible

There are three now, all incompatible and incomplete: https://dsccommunity.org/blog/what-is-microsoft-dscv3/

> 6. if you have hybrid and are in azure already, maybe? haven't used [Azure Arc]

It's supposed to replace Group Policy, Windows Update, and bits and pieces of SCCM and SCOM.

It is incredibly, hilariously bad at all of those things.

It's a level of failure that simply boggles the mind, and I can only surmise that it was developed by a small army of junior outsourced Indian developers that had never seen any of the tools they were replacing and did everything "to the letter of the spec".

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