Windows 10: Re-Crappifying Windows 8

As for "undermining people's opinions": while I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who genuinely gave Windows 8 a chance, and found it severely wanting, I think it's fair to say that there are at least as many who never did, and just joined in on the bashing. Personally, I've seen a number of people who made jokes about Windows 8, but changed their opinions once they actually saw it on my Surface. It's a bit like Windows Vista, which people suddenly quite liked, once it was renamed to Windows 7 :-)

The actual point of the loss aversion thing, though, was to point out how Microsoft failed when it introduced Windows 8. I write this blog for designers, and learning from other people's mistakes is one reason why I write it. Loss aversion is an important concept in design; a conclusion to draw from this is that design changes should occur gradually, and not be forced upon people with a single, sweeping change.

One thing that makes overlapping windows infinitely nicer for me is a feature in a lot of Linux WMs where window borders "catch" on other windows and the edge of the screen when being moved or resized. That, and having a key to move windows from anywhere, rather than just the titlebar.

edit: And focus-follows-mouse/x-mouse.

I get that the author is probably upset with the changes coming in Windows 10 given his nearly exclusive use of a Surface (it's understandable--and also ironic that early on in the post, he mentions that "learning is uncomfortable"), but he's also forgetting that his favored use case is probably in the minority. How many Surface users are there versus enterprise/business/desktop users?

I use Windows 8.1 on the desktop every day - since Windows 8 was released - and I honestly can't understand why people have such huge problems with it unless it is just about change.

I had my first impressions of it in a VM when it was RTM. At that time I did think it was pretty ugly and I got really frustrated (i.e., I was cussing up a storm) trying to figure out how to shut it down properly via the UI - in the RTM release I believe the only way to do that was to use the Charms bar, and I had to Google to figure that out. I also did not have any particular fondness for the Metro apps.

Sometime later I made it the primary OS on my laptop - which, as I purchased it in 2006, is non-touch. I use an external mouse instead of a touchpad because I hate touchpads, full-stop. And I'd say that in my opinion, Windows 8 is definitely the best Windows for desktop. The one major complaint I had, about shutdowns, was resolved by having a power button on the Start Screen, and additionally adding a context menu to the Start button on the taskbar that gives you quick access to shutdown options.

Almost everything in Windows 8 works the same. For example, I see frequent complaints about how terrible the Start Screen is for desktop users. I don't think it's very pretty, but it works almost exactly the same as the old start menu. The primary difference is that it takes up the full screen, which I don't think is too terribly a big deal since the Start Menu goes away if you take away focus anyway. Opening applications works the same way as it has since Vista: hit winkey, type the first few letters of the application, hit enter. Alternatively, click on the start button, click on the application (if pinned) or click on All Programs to scroll through all your applications. This is moderately improved in Win 8 since you can change what your programs are sorted by, unlike Win 7 (for example: Most Used, Most Recently installed, etc.)

I am not a big fan of the Metro apps, but they do now show up on the taskbar, they do have a titlebar with a close and minimize button, and you can sort-of resize them. The only one I use is Weather. By default (and maybe this has changed since I installed it), Windows does have Metro apps set to open your pictures, etc. The default app setting is easy to change, though I can't imagine many new users expecting or wanting the new Metro apps. The only one I had to change was changing images to open in Windows Photo Viewer; the rest was "fixed" by installing my usual apps (VLC, Firefox, etc.)

Other than that, there are plenty of desktop-centric improvements. Multi-monitor support is much better. There is a fantastic context menu on the Start button with quick access to various administrative functions. Various things throughout the desktop OS get slight improvements; the file copy dialog is better, task manager is better, Windows Explorer is better. For the most part, the average desktop user is almost never even going to see the Metro interface. And I have never, ever touched the Charms bar, ever since that virtual machine. It's totally unnecessary for a desktop workflow. Which I suppose could be a complaint in itself.

The only real regression I see is that the Windows 8 file search kind of blows. It works as well as Windows 7 if you know what you're looking for - hit Windows key, type part of the file name, hit enter - but for any kind of advanced search you have to open up Windows Explorer and do it from there. The Start Screen is also missing the recently-opened files list on the Windows 7 start menu - you have to pin to the taskbar to get the same effect.

Can you go into more exactly why it's terrible on desktop? Is it just you think tiles waste space, the clash between Metro/desktop is kind of jarring, that kind of thing?

I am writing this on a recently purchased Windows 7 Lenovo x220 convertible tablet with a Wacom stylus and a multi-touch screen. (Primarily to use it as a poor man's Cintiq.) With only a few specific failings, Windows 7 seems to be a great OS for such a device. One of the big failings is requiring the user to keep precise track of window focus. The other one is rejection of finger input in contexts where everything but the stylus should be ignored except certain specific exceptions. I've used an AutoHotKey script to compensate for the latter. Other than these (very glaring) few points and others, I think Windows 7 does a very good job of capitalizing on the strengths of the input devices and form factor. I can transition between laptop/workstation, touch-tablet, and Wacom stylus type inputs to best suit the particular context I am working in with reasonable rapidity. As a workman's toolbox, this thing is pretty awesome!

Comparing this to the mess that's Windows 8, it's clear that Microsoft lost a cohesive overall vision for how everything should work together. It's also clear from the glaring problems that they never quite had a cohesive overall vision firmly guiding the whole product in the first place.

A consumer-oriented tablet and a kitchen-sink/swiss-army knife device for coders/creatives are two very different kinds of devices. It's just not clear thinking to try and mix the two. (OS X seems to be facing a similar dilemma.)