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Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

pcmag.com

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Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#51

Post by hnalias7 »

commandar wrote: post #37
kfk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ms Office, really. Take that away and businesses will move to other OSes. Everybody is tired of the constant poor quality of Microsoft products.

I've made this argument before, but I've always found Microsoft's recent obsession with killing the desktop as hugely harmful to their own business. The fact is, Microsoft has seen this future coming for some time. They got themselves into antitrust trouble for going after Netscape and Java so aggressively in the 90s because they were afraid of OSes becoming commodity software. So, how have they reacted to a world wh…

It's funny that a company can be so lost while there are so many technology folks and enthusiast that are clearly laying out the solutions for them. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens to this company over the next 10 years.

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#52

Post by mark-r »

domador wrote: post #32
sp332 wrote: post #16

The "miserable counter-productive "ribbon" interface on Microsoft Word" was the result of a lot of actual user testing. I could understand people disliking it just because it was new, but it's been years now... How long does it take people to realize a better interface is more productive? Edit: oh I just noticed it's Dvorak. Never mind.

I've been using the ribbon UI in Office frequently for years, and still find its usability inferior to the old menu system. Aside from its poor usability, I dislike the visual clutter of having all the functions visible all the time. Personally, I'm less productive thanks to the ribbon UI. Well, what do I know... I'm just one data point... probably an outlier.

The thing I hate about the ribbon is that it's not linear - you can't scan it like a drop-down menu. It's a lot harder to find something if you don't already know where it is.

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#54

Post by sp332 »

commandar wrote: post #24
sp332 wrote: post #16

The "miserable counter-productive "ribbon" interface on Microsoft Word" was the result of a lot of actual user testing. I could understand people disliking it just because it was new, but it's been years now... How long does it take people to realize a better interface is more productive? Edit: oh I just noticed it's Dvorak. Never mind.

This is pretty much my exact reaction to the article. That was the exact line that gave me pause, then I looked up at the byline and saw Dvorak's name. I do find his pining for the failed WinFS particularly odd, though. It's something that was pretty much intended to back up the kind of anti-desktop model he's complaining about.

The new fs is all about putting your data first. The new UI is all about putting apps first.

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#55

Post by Zardoz84 »

pixl97 wrote: post #8
namlem wrote: post #5

Am I the only one who hates the old Start Menu? I find it tedious and useless. I'm all for re-adding a start menu, but it should be one that doesn't suck, like the one in Kubuntu. Also absent from this list is an updated console. Windows 8 still uses the old DOS shell. You can't even resize the window past 80 characters. It's embarrassing.

>You can't even resize the window past 80 characters. Or, you can change your defaults... Right click the top bar > Defaults Window Size > Width > 'What ever you want' Oh, and use powershell if you want more.

Windows shells and the cmd.exe are a crap when you compare against anything that you have in GNU/Linux or *BSD.

bash, zsh and fish are far better and more intuitive that Powershell. Plus cmd.exe is a joke if you compare against Konsole, Yakuake, eterm, etc....

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#56

Post by redial »

networked wrote: post #7

Allow me to take this opportunity to address something related to a minor point from the article: >To me an app is a small bit of code for an iPhone to do something cute. Are we going to call the massive SAP suite an "app?" Lately I've been hearing many people complain about "serious" desktop applications being called "apps". Do you think this is a valid complaint? (Myself, I'm not sure; I won't disclose my reasoning…

At least in Mac OS, they have always been called Apps, and with Mac OS X (2001) they even adopted the ".app" extension (Mail.app, Safari.app.) Steve Jobs used to call them apps in public all they way back to the 80s, even during the NeXT days when they only focused on 'serious' enterprise software.

Windows users call them programs and I guess after the 'there's an app for that' campaign, everyone associates apps with smartphones but in reality the term is almost as old as the PC.

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#57

Post by dpark »

axefrog wrote: post #42
namlem wrote: post #5

Am I the only one who hates the old Start Menu? I find it tedious and useless. I'm all for re-adding a start menu, but it should be one that doesn't suck, like the one in Kubuntu. Also absent from this list is an updated console. Windows 8 still uses the old DOS shell. You can't even resize the window past 80 characters. It's embarrassing.

The old start menu may not be perfect but the new start screen is definitely a step backwards. Over the life of a Windows installation, many, many programs tend to be installed, and almost every single one of them dumps a bunch of icons onto the start screen, which quickly kills its utility for visually identifying an application and launching it. After a while there is so much crap that the only way I ultimately lau…

8.1 doesn't push new apps to the screen by default. They appear on the "all apps" screen, where they are indeed grouped (by the old start menu folder presumably, e.g. "Microsoft Office").

Also you can remove apps you don't want from the start screen. It's not supposed to include everything on your PC. It's supposed to be the things you use frequently. They only did the auto-pinning in 8 to increase discoverability, but it added more clutter than value.

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#58

Post by Silhouette »

pixl97 wrote: post #6
guidopallemans wrote: post #3

https://www.readability.com/articles/6w09uyph 1. Fix the file system. The company promised it would develop a database-style file system that would allow for easy and super-fast searches for keywords within the structure of the file. This means it should quickly retrieve every .doc file containing the words "Android OS." The biggest problem with such a file system would be the indexing costs. It is likely that a giga…

>I have a legacy NAS from Cisco that no OS since Vista can access on my network. My guess is that is a security/encryption setting issue with your NAS. Windows won't send a login request to a server that uses weak standards unless you change registry settings. This is done for your protection.

That specific example might be, but Microsoft seem to have been in denial about some adverse side effects of the networking changes in Windows 7 since about five minutes after the launch.

I've seen an office with a hybrid network where numerous machines running XP, OS X and Linux all talked to each other quite happily, at the expected network speeds over wireless and wired connections, all working as you'd expect. However, most of the the Windows 7 machines (both desktops and laptops, from a variety of vendors) transferred data at a fraction of the speed the network could support for no apparent reason.

At some point, you have to accept that the obvious common factor is your new operating system and you've broken something, but MS never have.

Re: Microsoft's Must-Have List for Windows 9

#60

Post by Silhouette »

domador wrote: post #32
sp332 wrote: post #16

The "miserable counter-productive "ribbon" interface on Microsoft Word" was the result of a lot of actual user testing. I could understand people disliking it just because it was new, but it's been years now... How long does it take people to realize a better interface is more productive? Edit: oh I just noticed it's Dvorak. Never mind.

I've been using the ribbon UI in Office frequently for years, and still find its usability inferior to the old menu system. Aside from its poor usability, I dislike the visual clutter of having all the functions visible all the time. Personally, I'm less productive thanks to the ribbon UI. Well, what do I know... I'm just one data point... probably an outlier.

IME there is a strong divide in opinions on the Ribbon interface. Almost all "everyday users" I know came down in favour after getting used to it. Most of the "power users" found it frustrating.

Given that the former group is much, much larger in practice, it's hard to blame Microsoft for making the switch, even if it does invite strong and vocal criticism from some people with legitimate gripes. I suppose this is the inevitable burden of designing some the most widely used business software on the planet.

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