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Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

windowscentral.com

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Re: Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

#21

Post by smileybarry »

drumhead wrote: post #4

I won't be "upgrading" to Windows 11. Once W10 support has ended I'm moving full time to Linux. I've already started the transition so I'll be more than ready when the time comes. Unnecessary changes with no benefit just show a lack of respect for the consumer and a level of arrogance I thought had been extinguished in Microsoft after the Windows 8 debacle. Clearly it hasn't.

I have to disagree, Windows 11 feels much more like a desktop UI without all the random Windows 8 fly-ins, sidebars, etc. of Windows 10. The Settings app is much neater and dark/light mode is in better colors than "night blindness white" and "astigmatism-inducing OLED black on IPS". Quick actions and the smaller Wi-Fi menu make more sense and are a lot more responsive than the Windows 8-era network menu that barely changed.

Re: Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

#22

Post by smileybarry »

badpun wrote: post #5
drumhead wrote: post #4

I won't be "upgrading" to Windows 11. Once W10 support has ended I'm moving full time to Linux. I've already started the transition so I'll be more than ready when the time comes. Unnecessary changes with no benefit just show a lack of respect for the consumer and a level of arrogance I thought had been extinguished in Microsoft after the Windows 8 debacle. Clearly it hasn't.

> I won't be "upgrading" to Windows 11 Interestingly, on both my laptops (2013 MBP and a 2015 Lenovo gaming laptop) Windows says that they "don't meet minimum requirements to install Windows 11". They're perfectly reasonable machines and Windows 10 runs smooth as butter on both of them, since when did Microsoft got so picky? Anyway, I'm sort of glad, because if the machines were eliglble for the Windows 11 upgrade, I…

If they're Skylake or newer and the Lenovo has a TPM + UEFI Secure Boot, you can probably clean-install Windows 11 without a hitch. I recently reinstalled a Win10-era Asus ZenBook with a Skylake m3 which Microsoft claimed "is not supported" but a normal, unpatched Win11 setup USB worked fine and Windows Update runs properly. (It doesn't complain about unsupported hardware as it would)

Re: Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

#24

Post by mwint »

qball wrote: post #15
jmpman wrote: post #3

I just want the Windows 95 start menu experience. Simple. Worked. I’ve stopped using Windows because I despise the interface so much. Wasn’t a huge Mac fan, but not that I’ve figured out the quirks, I prefer Mac.

>but not that I’ve figured out the quirks, I prefer Mac And yet, Macs still need third-party software to do window management properly. Not even Monterey lets you snap windows by simply dragging them to the side of the screen, a feature both Windows and all Linux DEs have had for the past 15+ years! It's unfortunate that you now need to pay the same 10 bucks for the Rectangle equivalent on Windows (that being StartAl…

Monterey does let you snap windows by dragging them to the side of the screen.

Re: Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

#25

Post by brokenmachine »

drumhead wrote: post #4

I won't be "upgrading" to Windows 11. Once W10 support has ended I'm moving full time to Linux. I've already started the transition so I'll be more than ready when the time comes. Unnecessary changes with no benefit just show a lack of respect for the consumer and a level of arrogance I thought had been extinguished in Microsoft after the Windows 8 debacle. Clearly it hasn't.

It's only Ableton keeping me on Windows. If Ableton decided to support Linux, I'd switch that very same day.

I'd dual-boot to play games, but I want to be able to run Ableton simultaneously with web browser/etc.

I just don't think Ableton would run very well in a virtual machine with acceptable latency.

Re: Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

#26

Post by qball »

mwint wrote: post #24
qball wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but not that I’ve figured out the quirks, I prefer Mac And yet, Macs still need third-party software to do window management properly. Not even Monterey lets you snap windows by simply dragging them to the side of the screen, a feature both Windows and all Linux DEs have had for the past 15+ years! It's unfortunate that you now need to pay the same 10 bucks for the Rectangle equivalent on Windows (that being StartAl…

Monterey does let you snap windows by dragging them to the side of the screen.

For reference, I'm expecting windowing behavior in macOS to do exactly what Windows does: when you drag a window to the boundary (edge or corner) of the screen, it should automatically resize to that half or quadrant of the screen.

Monterey doesn't do this out of the box (I don't believe I'm using it wrong- even if there is an unpublished keyboard shortcut to trigger it, I don't have to use such a shortcut in any other WM), and the behavior it does have is severely lacking.

For starters, you have to manually hover over the button hiding the feature to use it, and that button isn't on the edge of a window (worst-case for accessibility, per Fitts' Law). Additionally, its window-arranging features aren't capable of arranging more than 2 windows on the screen (you can't do it by quadrant like you can with other tilers), and it also puts them into full-screen mode so it both hides the menu bar and you can't easily just pull them out of the arrangement like you can with other WMs.

I don't believe there are currently any plans to fix this, and that might be just as well (the term 'Sherlocked' originates from Apple for a very good reason), but the fact that it took them 15 years to come up with a half-assed version of what Windows was doing in 2006 isn't actually that great a look.

Re: Former Microsoft director of user experience trashes Windows 11 Start menu

#27

Post by mwint »

qball wrote: post #26
mwint wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monterey does let you snap windows by dragging them to the side of the screen.

For reference, I'm expecting windowing behavior in macOS to do exactly what Windows does: when you drag a window to the boundary (edge or corner) of the screen, it should automatically resize to that half or quadrant of the screen. Monterey doesn't do this out of the box (I don't believe I'm using it wrong- even if there is an unpublished keyboard shortcut to trigger it, I don't have to use such a shortcut in any oth…

My bad, what I was seeing was the free Spectacle utility doing snap-on-drag. It’s so good I thought it was part of the system.
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