Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing his account to lock out. Of course he didn't know his current mail password either, so the best option was to just delete the account from Windows Mail.

It took several minutes just to explain how to get into 'Settings'. Then after finally selecting an account, he couldn't figure out that the right-hand panel with the settings actually scrolled. Then when he clicked 'Remove Account' and it gave a cryptic error about how the account couldn't be deleted, because it was his "Microsoft Login" account even though it looked like the work email account. Finally we found the right account and removed it. Almost 30 minutes of my life lost to something which should been about 5 clicks max.

I feel like literally everything about Win8 was designed as the complete opposite to how I would want my computer to actually function. First, the idea that Microsoft is sync'ing settings between machines in ways that is extremely difficult or impossible to turn off is worse than creepy, it feels like a back door. Then every time an app comes up as "Metro" styled or whatever, it seems incredibly wasteful, out-of-place and practically ridiculous looking. No, thank you, I don't want my 4K monitor taken over by a full screen of purple and a tiny bit of text at the top. Then there are things like 'Camera' app which when it fails simply says 'Camera cannot start' and give you absolutely nothing to do about it (all the while Skype video-conferencing is working perfectly).

It's like Microsoft thought, well most of our users don't even know how to use a computer, so lets make an operating system for them! I must have some sort of PTSD from it because I often end up loudly cursing Microsoft's existence any time I need to even approach a Win8 machine.

In short, if Microsoft is making a "case" for Windows 10 to anyone like me, it better look fuck all like Win8.

Yet I am convinced Microsoft still completely does not get it. My desktop is not my phone, and I don't want to run smartphone apps on my desktop. There are incredible opportunities for tying together the computing experience between desktops and phones, but unifying the user interface is just dead wrong. It's like the whole thing is just completely lost in translation. A unified experience does not mean a unified GUI! How can they get this so wrong even after 5 years of staring their failure in the face?

I'm an Android user and I don't feel that Google Play is in the bad shape that you're describing. Quite the contrary, I believe that it's the best app store right now. And I also own a Nokia Lumia, an iPhone and an iPad, so I could make lots of comparisons.

Android as a platform is also the best. Maybe I'm biased, Android being the first platform I tried my hand at - but that's also because Android's SDK is the only one available on Linux and that's what I was using back then. And that's a virtue.

> Developers not strictly of the F/OSS mindset would probably try Windows development...

Well, that's one thing that makes Android great - the availability of great open-source apps for it, like Firefox or VLC. That's one thing setting it apart from iOS. Microsoft copied iOS, but that was a terribly bad decision, because introducing a tightly controlled proprietary platform as a third choice is never going to fly in a market in which Android is number 1.

I don't we'll eve see gnu core utils (due to licensing), but BSD core utilities would be great though.

Edge starts with an 'e' so it can still use a similar logo to Internet Explorer, which is significant.

I guess I got lucky with that one, right? I mean, who would think to go into the account settings and scroll to the bottom of a side-panel with no scroll bars to find a button called 'Remove Account'? Even the videos I was finding on YouTube were showing a way to get a 'Delete' button to show up in the Account list somehow. I mean, imagine, I have to search on YouTube for a video describing how to delete a mail account on Win8. That's just pathetic.

I've used very little Win8, because it literally triggers an unhealthy physiological response in me for some reason. But the few things I've tried have been mind-numbingly painful. The whole 'Microsoft Account' thing after initial install of Win8.1 was very user hostile. I think I had to click Cancel like 7 times before it finally just let me login to my own machine.

In Win7 I start all programs by clicks Start, typing a few letters, and clicking Enter. That sometimes works in Win8, but often you type the name of a program and the auto-complete suggestions are just complete utter Rubbish?!

I installed MegaRAID testing a new SAS setup, and I'm trying to see; "Show me the start folder with all the MegaRAID apps". In Win7, you type 'Mega' and boom you see them all. In Win8, I had to hunt for them in the ridiculous tile view because it just wouldn't show in the auto-complete. (probably it hadn't "Indexed" them yet or something).

Then there was the experience with the Camera app. I was trying to record some video, and it would tell me absolutely nothing about why it wasn't working. Apps from the "Store" likewise failed (btw, their store was incredibly frustrating to search for something like 'Video recording' if you sorted by anything but Relevance then results were completely crap). I quick Googled for some Win7 freeware and of course it worked perfectly.

Then there's the massive cognitive dissonance between Metro and Windows. I'm just constantly hammering Windows-D to try to get back to sanity. The Metro apps hide all scroll and title panes, so just minimizing the window is an act of waiting for UI elements to appear. I mean, the OS is called fucking "Windows" and they eliminated the entire concept of a window. It's just mind blowing.

Like, try to get into IP settings to change your IP address. I think each successive version of Windows has to add at least 2 clicks to the sequence required to view or change your IP. It's easier to go to command prompt now. I never understood what that weird Network panel thing is supposed to even be showing me? Why do I need half my screen to list a single network adapter? And they give it so much space but include absolutely no useful details, just a big block of some randomly chosen solid color and absolutely no affordances for what to click next? Again it just seems they are building an OS for people who don't know what a mouse is. I'm sure they would remove the entire Control Panel if they thought they could get away with it.