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Redesigning the Windows Logo

windowsteamblog.com

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Re: Redesigning the Windows Logo

#12
I checked the Windows 8 wikipedia page b/c I was curious whether someone had already put this image there and I was astonished to find the page has 74 references! By comparison, the page for the Civil War has 31 references -- 22 of them from the same book.

Re: Redesigning the Windows Logo

#15
post #3

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate? We're talking about an OS, not a video game. I get that they're trying to innovate, but it comes across as self-deprecating. I love how Apple has maintained uniformity in their UI across the past few iterations of OSX. It's just one less thing to worry about relearning, allowing me to get my work done ea…

Huh what? The UI has been pretty much the same since Windows 95. Meanwhile OS X changed the scrolling, and lost scrollbars and a whole bunch of other changes in Lion that people aren't very fond of.

The public seems to have gotten along very well with the Windows 7 UI over XP without much, if any re-learning.

Vista was different because it actually changed the security and driver model, breaking a lot of hardware and software. I haven't seen too many complaints about the actual UI.

By "everytime they iterate", you mean Windows 3.1 to Windows 95(very well received) and Windows 7 to Windows 8(desktop mode is exactly the same) which is what, twice in 20 years? Maybe thrice if you count the taskbar changes in Windows 7.

Re: Redesigning the Windows Logo

#16
post #3

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate? We're talking about an OS, not a video game. I get that they're trying to innovate, but it comes across as self-deprecating. I love how Apple has maintained uniformity in their UI across the past few iterations of OSX. It's just one less thing to worry about relearning, allowing me to get my work done ea…

Microsoft Windows's primary competitor is... Windows. Not OS X. It isn't easy to convince regular users to use the new Windows, or to do an in-place upgrade (which is hundreds of dollars, unlike OS X, and also a terrible idea usually, also unlike OS X).

Apple is simply pushier, dropping support for old versions almost immediately. They also release more often, and I would say that over the same span of time their change drastic-ness is similar (intel, cocoa, app store, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if 10.9 vs 10.5 is as drastic as Windows 8 to Vista, for instance.

Re: Redesigning the Windows Logo

#18
post #3

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate? We're talking about an OS, not a video game. I get that they're trying to innovate, but it comes across as self-deprecating. I love how Apple has maintained uniformity in their UI across the past few iterations of OSX. It's just one less thing to worry about relearning, allowing me to get my work done ea…

> Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate?

Raymond Chen posted some reasoning for this on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/14125...

If they don't change anything visually then nobody thinks anything has changed under the hood.

Re: Redesigning the Windows Logo

#19

"By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-industrial design characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic, etc.)." Is "materiality" code for "skeumorphism"? Either way, it's a big middle finger to Apple.

It is. But you have it backwards. Skeumorphism is the code. He simply used words that people might actually understand, you know.

Good, this echo chamber can be annoying.

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