Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003) • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#211

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #191

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and? When it comes to "what OS should I use on my computer", is it your assertion that I should use your definition instead of my own? If so, you're probably a Linux Desktop evangelist.

Ah, when someone questions your assertion, jump to what you perceive as an insult against them. (a) no, I'm not saying everyone should use the same thing, or that my "definition" of worse is more valid than yours. But consider this context: The original linked email is about a list of glaring usability failures in Windows, experienced by someone who should at the very least be very familiar with the product. I commen…

> and made a baseless claim about both what I believe, and my likelihood of pushing others to adopt the same viewpoint.

I did not. I said that if you believed your definition of "worse" was a better metric for me to choose my operating system than mine, then you were probably a Linux Desktop evangelist. A claim I make in full confidence because I've been having to put up with Linux Desktop evangelism for 20 motherfucking years now.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#212

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

computerex wrote: post #149

NicoJuicy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps with you, but looking at the market share he is mostly right.

To be fair, the market share being dominated by Windows has a lot to do with history and strategic deals Microsoft made with the OEM's. Vast majority of devices ship with Windows.

...and Macs being expensive and Linux Desktop being an incoherent mess. Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#213

Post by cosmodisk » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

Software engineers should never be allowed anywhere near UX decisions on their own.At work, I'm often in a position,where I need to chose between 'easier for the end user(internal)' and 'easier for the business/manager/developer/whatever'. I try my best to advocate for users most of the time,even if it complicates some things on the implementation side of things. Most technical people,if allowed,would make things far more difficult than they need to be. Not sure what went wrong at MS, however they keep making it more and mote difficult with no apparent good reason. Even the documentation websites are so confusing,even Oracle starts looking good in comparison... I remember a discussion with my colleague,a BA, who argued that people should just fill in a few of those extra fields. Yes,I said, it's easy for you to say this,because you'll just pull a report on these fields,while the users will be doing this hundreds of times a week...

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#214

Post by computerex » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #212

computerex wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the market share being dominated by Windows has a lot to do with history and strategic deals Microsoft made with the OEM's. Vast majority of devices ship with Windows.

...and Macs being expensive and Linux Desktop being an incoherent mess. Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away.

I think that's being very unfair. Linux is not the same "incoherent mess" it was 10-20 years ago. There are some OEM's that ship with linux pre-installed, some of them are:

  - Dell
  - System76
  - Purism

> Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away.

Beat in what sense?

That's merely your opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Especially when you don't support it with any facts. Fact is that the linux story and experience has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. That's why there are now OEM's that provide linux as an alternative to Windows, and there are some OEM's that target linux exclusively.

My daily driver is a Dell Latitude E7450 and everything worked out of the box with Manjaro linux. Driver/hardware support in linux these days is quite good.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#215

Post by nikki93 » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #10

Recently I installed specific parts of MSVC, since I'm using SFML and for now they only deliver binaries for 2017. After all I might not have needed to use 2017 or a particular SDK, since there seem to be ABI compatibility now, but I discovered that too late. So I used this vs intaller, and I discovered that the vs dev prompt did not set appropriate folder to use cl.exe and lib.exe because it might only do it for the…

I just use VSCode for the actual editing then build with cmake.exe from command line. VSCode's autocomplete and everything just work. Been a good experience.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#216

Post by computerex » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

UweSchmidt wrote: post #210

dmitriid wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

The word "research" implies "science", but to me is valid only if you go all the way, and publish the methods and the data for peer review. Until then my take is, someone had a bunch of opinions and didn't allow users to keep the old menu.

I think that's a very narrow view of research. There are many private for profit entities that don't publish their findings because they'd rather capitalize on their findings.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#217

Post by dmitriid » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

knolan wrote: post #203

dmitriid wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge amount of user research went into the original ribbon. However, it looks like they decided that no further research was needed and just started moving everything into the ribbons without any thinking whatsoever.

I’d be curious to see some of that research. Some technical tools I use have migrated to ribbon UIs. Matlab is one example and it’s utterly broken. Tiling the main IDE window beside a text editor (a standard way of using matlab) on a 15” MBP results in many of the ribbon sections turning into big empty gray spaces requiring yet another click into a cascading shitshow. Fortunately I rarely need to use anything in ther…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21363156

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#218

Post by Enginerrrd » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #104

linuseouyt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an Ubuntu dedicated server. I reboot it every Sunday, yet there is rarely a week where on Friday I don't see this when SSHing in due to auto-updates: 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. *** System restart required *** Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS Linux ubuntu 4.15.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Aug 27 15:21:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

You reboot your server every week? Whatever for?

Don't some updates set a "reboot required" flag?

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#219

Post by shrimp_emoji » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

willtim wrote: post #90

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a peek at KDE sometime; it's my favorite (and IMO most usable) DE of the pack. Xfce is at the "light but jank" end of the pool. Try changing your password via Settings: you can't. Thunar, its file manager, is extremely basic. Dolphin, KDE's file manager, is even better than Windows's Explorer (you have split directory views, way more options, terminal integration, etc.), which always amazed me. How is this free…

What about the Deepin desktop? I haven't tried it but many magazine sites say it's now the most polished. I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens...

Deepin's, elementaryOS's, and Pop!_OS's DEs look nice, but I've never tried 'em.

I generally avoid "niche", satellite distros/software because, well, you can't expect them to work as well as the their major competitors. Cinnamon IS a major DE and a stylistic competitor to KDE and Xfce, and it's quite nice too (but not offered as a Manjaro flavor, sadly).

>I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens...

I've never been brave or OPEN-MINDED enough to try those kinds of DEs... I welcome reinforcement of my biases; w-...what happens when you plug an additional screen in? :v

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#220

Post by garaetjjte » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #120

TheKarateKid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, ME was the result of a development disaster similar to the one which resulted in Vista. Microsoft was planning on building an entirely new Internet-focused consumer version of NT. It was too ambitious for its time, so to meet deadlines, most of it was scrapped and some UI elements were backported into an updated Windows 98 which became ME. This is why Explorer for both ME and 2000 look similar despite havin…

Windows codename Neptune: https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Microsoft_Neptune It’s interesting to see twenty year old experiments with flat UI designs considering how dominant that style is today with Android 5, iOS 7, Windows 8, etc.

These apps looks like they are made in IE6-era Electron..