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Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#261

I literraly can’t name one feature since Windows 7 what was worth it, even on the contrary: every update made the system worse. I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?

Tabs on notepad and file explorer are extremely nice.

I can't believe it took them 20 years to add them, but at least they're finally here.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#262

There's no amount of progress that will make me go back to Windows. 1. Microsoft accounts. No. 2. Ads in my OS. No. 3. Slow copying of files. No. 4. A maddening mix of UI/UX paradigms and implementations. No. 5. AI deeply embedded in my OS. No. I don't know wtf their design team is doing.

> I don't know wtf their design team is doing. They're doing what management/business-strategy is asking them to do.

Not even the MBA types would mess things up this bad, it feels like Microslop is now full of programmers that make something and just ship it, no thought or any brain cells involved.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run" changes when they want it to run something new. They don't care about cloud backup for their data? One hard drive failure, and suddenly they do. And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later. But there needs to be a way…

> And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later. The answer is: make the OS extremely modular so that the user can have configure whether he wants an absolutely minimalistic OS or something with "batteries included".

They think they know better than what the user wants. If someone who is not a power user Googles "how to turn off updates" they do not want that user to be able to find an option on how to do it, because the user won't understand the dangers. They won't read any warnings. They will follow the steps, turn it off and be part of a botnet soon. If there is ANY possible way to turn it off, someone will make a video and the people who should not find it will find it.

What if you are ACTUALLY someone who knows what they are doing and need to run a perf test over a multiple day period and need it running and uninterrupted? You can't. You are not a part of their target customer base, and at this point their actions have made it clear that they want such users to leave.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)

>It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. https://status.canonical.com/ You're in for a bad time. It's been three days and they still can't get updates to work. Get Debian if you must. Use something sane like Guix and OpenBSD if you can.

I have no problem using Debian (I’m actually a Linux sysadmin by profession) so I have no problems later switching distros. But as of today, I’m happy with Ubuntu on my road laptop and I would no doubt be happy switching the home PC, too. (Actually the road lap is Lubuntu and it currently has zero visible AI influence.)

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#265
post #10

It fascinates me to speculate about who this is for. At least among people I've talked to, the ones who still want windows (instead of the obvious alternatives) cite wanting things to "just work", often claiming that they "don't want making the computer work to become a second job" or similar. I personally don't think these preferences reflect the reality of how much effort using e.g. a linux distro is in this day an…

Why would they use windows and not macos for "just working" ? Even office moved to web for most companies

I love macOS for a "just working" OS but I wouldn't think people spending a lot of time using Office would prefer the Web versions. They are just (by definition) sluggish, like most web apps are. Use the native apps, whether it's on Windows or Mac.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I see a likely inversion of motives here: you earn your living coding or otherwise are deeply vested in Windows, so you are committed for survival to Windows and to fixing the absurd account problem that MSFT has inflicted on you. The expression "muscle memory" here just means the cognitive load of working with a te…

My Ubuntu servers have been in an undefined state since canonical botched a regular upgrade to 26.04 LTS due to the ongoing DDOS. Their status page says everything works. A simple ping tells me nothing works. Let's not pretend Microsoft has a monopoly on idiocy in the software world. All major Linux distros are hell bent on repeating the mistakes of Windows. Especially since the people in control of the stack (minus…

Linux has lot of bugs and issues, but they are not caused by intention to make users' life worse.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#267
Windows is adding features nobody asked for, like scroll wheel zooming everywhere, like in cmd.exe. Wtf do you need zooming for in the terminal?? I get false positives, and no benefit, at all.

Another is Windows Explorer, loses focus all the time, no hint to where it went, preventing keyboard navigation. Basic UI conventions are being violated, for no reason than having no clue what Windows is.

Windows is apparently being infested by young hackers who think Linux is the best thing since sliced bread and who just want to add tacky features using sloppy AI.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#268

> We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.

Great, this is actual progress. Now it would be amazing if "Update and Shut Down" would actually update and shut down, instead of doing so like 50% of the time with the other 50% just updating and restarting with an actual shut down. (This is on various very diverse machines so I'm rather sure is common, and not just an interaction with a particular machine).

It's baffling that a company like MS can leave this kind of obvious problems lingering for months.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#269

Windows is adding features nobody asked for, like scroll wheel zooming everywhere, like in cmd.exe. Wtf do you need zooming for in the terminal?? I get false positives, and no benefit, at all. Another is Windows Explorer, loses focus all the time, no hint to where it went, preventing keyboard navigation. Basic UI conventions are being violated, for no reason than having no clue what Windows is. Windows is apparently…

Do you mean Ctrl + scroll wheel? I use that feature quite a lot, I like my font size small but it can be difficult to see for other people so being able to quickly scale it up is really useful

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#270

I literraly can’t name one feature since Windows 7 what was worth it, even on the contrary: every update made the system worse. I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?

This may be unpopular, but they made three legitimately GOOD changes to Notepad, before they went absolutely batshit.

- Dark mode

- Tabs

- "Continue previous session" (restore after restart)

But they also made a HUGE regression which isn't talked about enough:

- Previously, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad didn't "notice." Meaning you could Save to recreate it. The file existed in an ephemeral state, as long as the Notepad window remained open. Right now, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad notices immediately, errors out, and closes that tab -- content gone.

VSCode handles this correctly, it puts a line through the filename in the tab (and red-font), but doesn't close the tab on you suddenly. Ephemeral state retained.

In my ideal world Notepad needs exactly ONE new feature:

- Right Click Tab: "Copy Path."

Then just REMOVE: Spell Checker, Formatting, CoPilot, Markdown(!), and Autocorrect. Completely inappropriate functionality for Notepad, and the Vibecoded Markdown implementation already added a security vulnerability(!) to freaking Notepad. Branch off into a product called "Wordpad" and then create all of that garbage in there.

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