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2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

windowscentral.com

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Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#321

Post by RuslanL »

i80and wrote: post #154
ksynwa wrote: post #142

For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no…

This sort of thing has been a devolving disaster since the Settings App was included in Windows 8 as a partial replacement for the Control Panel. I'm not sure the current state of things, but as of the last time I used Windows, the sets of functionality remained only partially overlapping between the two different tools.

But Microsoft is a small business which just cannot afford to have two versions of interfaces for clearly distinct modes of interaction: touch and mouse-based. They had no other choice except trying to merge things together.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#322

Post by RuslanL »

hulitu wrote: post #289
t0mas88 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10/11 UX is very slow in general. Combined with Intel mobile CPUs of the last few years running much hotter compared to Apple M models makes for terrible laptops. Lots of fan noise with a sluggish UI doesn't feel anywhere near a Macbook Air, even an M1. While full power raw CPU performance may actually be very close and the Intel based laptops typically cheaper.

> Windows 10/11 UX is very slow in general. Drawing gray rectangles is a very resource intensive operation. It is a wonder how a Pentium was able to draw also a 3D border around the rectangle. There were some sick people who, in 4 Megs of RAM were also letting you choose colors while presenting a Win10/11 interface (Apollo) but those were some heretics.

Indeed. I've heard Elon is upgrading his Colossus computer just to experience dragging grey rectangles seamlessly.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#323

Post by BenjiWiebe »

p_ing wrote: post #252
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't noticed slowness in the right click menu on <= windows 10. On Windows 11 it's slower simply because I have to open a second menu to get to what I want.

You've not had WinRAR, 7Zip, TortoiseSVN, et. al. as COM extensions, I see ;-)

7-zip yes, the others no.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#324

Post by sedatk »

obdev wrote: post #298
sedatk wrote: post #207

I love Windows 11. I'm sure some of my code still lives in Windows 11 from my days at Microsoft. But, the hasty and haphazard ways that some teams at Microsoft treat it sadden me. I specifically despise Microsoft Accounts being forced down our throats because, among all other things, they make certain workflows impossible. For instance, you can't schedule tasks to run as your user when you're not logged in[1]. It won…

How many browser tabs you have open right now? I find JavaScript and its ecosystem atrocious in many ways, but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either. In both cases, GPU takes care of the graphics rendering, JIT and GC do what they do,…

> but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ.

"My car runs fine with the five anvils in the trunk" isn't the argument you're looking for.

Performance isn't the only problem with Electron either. Electron apps fail to integrate with native system components both from look and feel and accessibility aspects like incorrect zoom levels on HiDPI displays etc. They are even worse than browser tabs in that manner.

> I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either

RAM usage would be at least an order of magnitude different. Nothing to do with how well-written it is either. It's inevitable.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#325

Post by xnx »

ksynwa wrote: post #142

For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no…

> There is no benefit to the new menu

I personally don't like the new menu and disabled it with some tweak program, but the new menu as the benefit of hiding dozens of context menu items any random app barfs into it (e.g. Google Drive adds 6! items to the root context menu). It would be better if Windows natively supported demoting/pinning items to the unexpanded context menu.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#326

Post by obdev »

sedatk wrote: post #324
obdev wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many browser tabs you have open right now? I find JavaScript and its ecosystem atrocious in many ways, but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either. In both cases, GPU takes care of the graphics rendering, JIT and GC do what they do,…

> but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. "My car runs fine with the five anvils in the trunk" isn't the argument you're looking for. Performance isn't the only problem with Electron either. Electron apps fail to integrate with native system components both from look and feel and accessibility aspects like incorrect zoom levels on HiDPI displays etc. They ar…

Well, we're in the anvil business. Unless someone pulls the cart himself using C++ and MFC, similar amounts of oat will be consumed to get to our destination. Based on my empirical observations, WinUI 3 with C# eats memory like a horse. I'm willing to stand corrected with more data.

Platform integrity and accessibility are the real concerns with Electron. What is the solution, though? Does anyone still have time and patience for the byproducts of WinDev vs DevDiv power plays, even at Microsoft?

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#327

Post by ethbr1 »

xnx wrote: post #325
ksynwa wrote: post #142

For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no…

> There is no benefit to the new menu I personally don't like the new menu and disabled it with some tweak program, but the new menu as the benefit of hiding dozens of context menu items any random app barfs into it (e.g. Google Drive adds 6! items to the root context menu). It would be better if Windows natively supported demoting/pinning items to the unexpanded context menu.

You can also just directly registry hack to force always-more-options: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1cv8xt3/how_ca...

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#328

Post by ethbr1 »

wwweston wrote: post #151
ksynwa wrote: post #142

For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no…

I’d be willing to bet that behind a change like this is a certain amount of data showing that the removed options weren’t used that frequently, and a stakeholder decision that this must mean that they should be demoted. And it’s data driven. Makes for a nice bullet point in a report. Most users don’t miss it, on stakeholders can tell themselves that those that you are a minority who don’t really matter for one reason…

> data showing that the removed options weren’t used that frequently

This is literally the shitshow that's post-Ribbon Microsoft UX in a nutshell.

In the 90s, they designed a logical ontology, then mapped every item somewhere into that.

Post-Ribbon, they pulled whatever happened to be most-commonly used in, and then everything else got stuffed in a jumbled junk drawer (because who uses that?).

What seems to have been lost in the move from one to the other is anyone at Microsoft giving a goddamn 2 seconds of thought, minimum, to EVERY item in the OS.

And because that thought was never given, you get wildly broken edge cases and odd settings, simply because it wasn't anyone's job to make sure everything had a place.

Ribbonification (aka polish the 80% and fuck the 20%) isn't bad for users: it's bad because it lets Microsoft be lazy about organizing.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#329

Post by Fizz43 »

machomaster wrote: post #300
Fizz43 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt this. As someone who is pretty active in a lot of beginner linux communities its becoming the case that a lot issues are caused by users following LLM instructions and creating issues where there were none. Example someone will want to configure something and the LLM will give them advice from the wrong distro thats 5 years out of date. If they asked a person or looked on the fourms they'd have got wha…

> If they asked a person or looked on the fourms they'd have got what they wanted in a few mins. Not minutes. In best case scenario it is hours, in worst it is years to infinity. You are also not taking into account the survivorship bias. You only see people who couldn't fix their system with AI and need further help. But you are not seeing a huge number of beginners (recently a big influx of those), who were success…

I search all the time. If I trusted the AI response i'd be coming away with the wrong answer more often than not. Why would that be a better outcome than spending an extra 30s to get reliable information? Perplexity IS a simple search engine. Its far simpler than google's engine.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#330

Post by robrain »

bigyabai wrote: post #307
robrain wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect - bull.

With respect, every single search query in the App Store displays advertisements by-default, and you know that.

You know you’re moving the goalposts, don’t you? I’ll grant you that the App Store and Music show ads. But that’s not what you claimed originally, is it?
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