I think this site might want to reconsider using Medium. All of the animated screenshots were covered with ads in Safari on iOS, with no apparent way of getting past them. I had really no idea what they were talking about.
What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#22I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and x…
I’m not sure why it’s important for features to be in the base install (so not in a separate package). Having theM packaged separately makes it easier to push updates, and you only install the power tools if you care about them.
That’s quite nice IMHO.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#23I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and x…
It's obviously a deliberate decision to keep the basic windows experience "simple".
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#24If you have VS Code installed, the JSON configuration for the Windows Terminal won't open in Notepad.
Also, you get fantastic Intellisense, since the JSON schema reference is included in the document.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#25Why is this blog post so negative?
Microsoft are trying and giving all of the developers the tools to help affect the project along the way.
The Terminal project was only announced 1 year ago[0]. As I understand it, they had to more or less split how the whole conhost.exe work in order to allow Terminal to even exist. The settings UI is far from sexy, but they're working on it[1]. I think it's impressive to know that 6 people did that in a year[2].
Regarding the slow startup of WSL2, yes it is slow to start, but would you rather have to wait 5x for a git clone command[3]? They even have a deep dive into how files are save in WSL1 which can be related to how it works in WSL2[4]
I completely disagree with the conclusion of performance is not Microsoft's concern. The comparison is to GNOME3 which was released in 2011. 9 years of development compared to 1 year. "The polish just isn't there"
[0]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windo...
[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1564
[2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-...
[3]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/
[4]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/a-deep-dive-into-...
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#26I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and x…
It is not weird at all once you realise who Microsoft's management wants as its customers. The business people at MS really do not expect nor want customers to be fiddling around with technical stuff. They want customers to see MS as the one who can solve all problems. The business people at Microsoft prefer non-technical customers. Technically-minded customers are not the ideal customers for Microsoft. A great example is Mark Russinovich. They had to hire him to keep him quiet and under control. He had become a problem solver for too many technically-minded customers.
In the mind of the Microsoft business person
Clippy: "Yes."
PowerToys: "Why?"
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#27I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and x…
I’m not sure why it’s important for features to be in the base install (so not in a separate package). Having theM packaged separately makes it easier to push updates, and you only install the power tools if you care about them. That’s quite nice IMHO.
Basic Features in separate packages means, many users will never use them, because they don't know they exist.
Bulk renaming files for example is not something only power users do, it is something only power users can do because it just does not exist and/or is not discoverable for a normal user.
And also as a power user, it is annoying to find a program for every basic thing the system should be able to do.
On the other hand, maybe we should hand it to MS that they so greatly embrace the Unix Philosophy on that point?
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#28> But the first launch of the Linux subsystem after system reboot is unbelievably slow.
Proceeds to provide a video showing a 3s startup time to illustrate the unbelievable slowness that happens once after a reboot.
I suspect the favorite activity of the author is therefore to reboot their computer, and to quickly rush to WSL2 after that. In which case I agree the user experience is not ideal.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#29We are 30+ years and Windows Task Scheduler is still broken. Compare that to simple .txt files to schedule anything you need in Linux. Windows took the UI path for users and that's OK, but most of Power users are still much better off with text files and simple utilities (like crontab) that work. This type of ecosystem is completely broken on Windows, I don't think it can be fixed, it is too much of a paradigm shift. On the same token trying to do good UI/User experience is still too hard on Linux. I take no issue with Windows, business users, friends and my parents are probably better off with it, but the "power" stuff? Please don't.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#30This seems like a joke article. The 'long' startup time appears to be a second or two.
The slow animated menu is quick - I'd like to see someone actually select a menu item in the time it takes for it to drop down. The animation doesn't impact usability. All a bit bizarre.