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

Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 550 posts

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#331

Post by p_ing »

gausswho wrote: post #175
cfiggers wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Windows 11, when you reconnect to a monitor or set of monitors that you've connected to before, it will automatically return your open windows to the layout across those monitors that you had when you last disconnected (assuming those windows are still open). This is extremely nice and saves me time on a literally (not figuratively) daily basis, to the point that I generally forget that it hasn't always worked tha…

Even aside from the malevolence, Windows is rotten from the thirty-year old metaphor that it started with: windows themselves. The job of positioning and resizing applications is a confusing mix of responsibility between the user and the system. Once you've switched to tiled window managers, examples like these sound like Stockholm Syndrome.

Windows has plenty of tiling utilities built for it, i.e. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon..., or even the built-in Windows Snap which can be driven by mouse or keyboard, along with using pre-defined layouts.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#332

Post by analogpixel »

PeterStuer wrote: post #40

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

> as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.

The perfect OS/Desktop is one you don't even notice, or know is there; it just works. Macos used to be invisible, but then then some ego-driven developer decided to push Apple Glass on to everyone. HEY LOOK HOW COOL I AM!

Although at the rate of LLM improvement, I'm thinking the Next big os, will just be a really good API (gui/sound/graphics...) , you boot to a prompt screen, and then you just tell it what you want to do with the computer and it builds the apps you need from scratch.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#333

Post by modeless »

jiggawatts wrote: post #55
qingcharles wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took a real punch to the gut when File Pilot rolled out and showed them what their own devs should have been doing.

Took the beta for a quick spin and... wow , the speed is truly astonishing! Windows doesn't feel slow because the kernel or the filesystem is inherently "that" slow, it feels like a sloth overdosing on heroin because nobody at Microsoft gives the slightest crap about making it even a tiny bit faster. It's staggering how the instant you double-click a file in File Pilot you're... back in the tar pit. (The Windows imag…

The Windows filesystem is very slow. It's not the main cause of slowness in Explorer, but it's still a real problem.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#334

Post by borplk »

gmueckl wrote: post #314
codedokode wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft doesn't allow its users even to reboot the computer without permission?

I wonder whether it has to do with the actual installation being in progress in the background. There is probably a time window in some updates where an interruption leaves the OS in a bad state.

That doesn't justify it because the user should still be able to decide when to initiate it. People are ok with not interrupting the update if they get to choose when it starts.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#335

Post by joe_mamba »

gchamonlive wrote: post #296
noosphr wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are caused by moral busy bodies who think they know better. To quote CS Lewis: >Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torme…

> They are caused by moral busy bodies who think they know better. If you know better just hack it your way. Linux is an open platform. Nothing prevents you from gutting Ubuntu and making it your own. You can't say the same for Windows though. So I guess is not a matter of monopoly of idiocy, but whether you can do something about idiot decisions when they are made. This is why an open platform will always win. It's…

>If you know better just hack it your way. ... It's just architecturally better for the end user.

As an end user I want the product/tool to serve me well out of the box, I don't have time to hack it to fix what I dislike about it on my own dime. That's what my job is for.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#336

Post by cseleborg »

analogpixel wrote: post #332
PeterStuer wrote: post #40

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

> as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. The perfect OS/Desktop is one you don't even notice, or know is there; it just works. Macos used to be invisible, but then then some ego-driven developer decided to push Apple Glass on to everyone. HEY LOOK HOW COOL I AM! Although at the rate of LLM improvement, I'm thinking the Next big os, will just be a really good API (…

No, thank you. LLMs are great for fuzzy things. But there are still a lot of things I do on my computer that are just a few mouse clicks or keyboard shortcuts away, achievable in less than 3 seconds. It'd be a disaster if that got removed.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#337

Post by ninjagoo »

gmueckl wrote: post #321
ninjagoo wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying. Yeah. Worldwide Neo sales at 5 million units + production raise to 10 million? [1] Even if only 50% of those are US consumers, add to that the number of folks switching over to linux [4]; and suddenly that's not small potatoes, considering there are only about 162 million working folks in the U…

Your first point seems flawed: Apple production numbers are to supply markets worldwide. All the other numbers focus on the US only. That alone makes the threat at the OS level evaporate. Lenovo reportedly sells around 50 million units per year, Dell is at 25 million. 5 to 10 million units is tiny.

> Your first point seems flawed: Apple production numbers are to supply markets worldwide.

That's a good point. Still, assuming 50% US sales since US purchasing power is still relatively higher and Apple penetration in RoW is lower, it's not an order-of-magnitude difference, so the analysis is still useful. An additional indicator is that MS themselves are taking high-level executive action, so they're worried about something.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#338

Post by sagacity »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #228
sagacity wrote: post #81

I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account. Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password becaus…

> I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I see a likely inversion of motives here: you earn your living coding or otherwise are deeply vested in Windows, so you are committed for survival to Windows and to fixing the absurd account problem that MSFT has inflicted on you. The expression "muscle memory" here just means the cognitive load of working with a te…

Yeah, so, to be clear: I'm fairly sure Linux will also have its fair share of issues that I occasionally would have to repair.

I don't necessarily even have a problem with Windows occasionally needing a bit of hand-holding, either. It sucks, but it's IT so meh, unfortunately it still comes with the territory.

What I'm mostly pissed off about is the fact that I have a perfectly useable machine but since I'm unable to login due to vague Microsoft nonsense and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it I need to reinstall. This seems wholly unnecessary.

Even having some sort of repair installation that doesn't blow away all installed applications would have been somewhat ok as a last resort, but that doesn't exist either.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#339

Post by Tanoc »

embedding-shape wrote: post #122
theandrewbailey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.

Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night. Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what…

That's the biggest reason why I stayed on Windows 7 for so long. I could run Blender for two or three days and not give a shit. Meanwhile my friends couldn't even play a game of Factorio without Windows hijacking the computer and rebooting. There was an infamous incident years ago, early in the life of Windows 10, where members of Achievement Hunter lost half of an episode because one of the computers that recorded the audio tracks decided it had to update while they were recording. This has been going on for a decade now and shows no signs of being stopped.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#340

Post by NewsaHackO »

embedding-shape wrote: post #156
alkonaut wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine is a great thing on Linux too…

Wine -> Running Windows programs on Linux WSL -> Running Linux VM inside of Windows Wine is more like emulating Windows API behavior on Linux, while WSL is Microsoft throwing their hands in the air and saying "Lets just VM Linux wholesale". Both aim to avoid Windows, neither replace Linux but instead tries to move more to Linux.

>Both aim to avoid Windows, neither replace Linux but instead tries to move more to Linux.

I don't agree: WSL is an attempt to use programs developed for Linux in Windows. It is clearly for people who want to use Linux programs but don't want the headache of setting up Linux or dual booting.

Post reply on HN