Feels like screaming "please don't leave us, we will now build what you ask for". On the one hand, this is great to hear, but on the other side I wonder how much this will matter. Apple is now winning on the hardware other than offering a better UX experience. But they also have lost their touch with it over the years!
These are not improvements, its not even a good bait. I don't care about their stupid taskbar anymore. I 100% believe that any improvements they are promising will be so tiny it won't matter.
As a 20+ year Windows user now happily running desktop Linux for about a year - too little, too late. This company has completely lost my trust over the past 5+ years, with all the ads, upsells, silent telemetry, bugs, background process mess, forced updates, poor performance, etc. It's not only steered me off of Windows, but Azure, Office, and anything else with the Microsoft name on it. I'll do my best to steer fam…
msft don't earn trust, they actively butchers it and see who'd stay, it's a little bit like scam letters that are full of spelling mistakes, that's the filter. those that'd still fall for it are exactly the people they're looking for. the strategy have worked very well for a very long time, it's so successful they don't really know what broke the current users, and you can see that in this release. they analysed the feedback and the number 1 fix is to "raise the bar" literally by allowing users to position bar anywhere, nothing organisational, nothing cultural, just close random tickets
Don't congratulate yet until you see actual outcomes. The author of this commitment is the same person (Pavan Davuluri) spearheading move of Windows into an Agentic OS: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...
I agree and sadly I wouldn't hold hopes to see actual meaningful changes (granted - last time had windows was win 7), My reasoning is from bitter experience. I saw too many these honest talks/commitments - it always this pattern when product/company starts to decline. Suddenly somebody with technical background shows up talks about past mistakes and what need to fix. Even sometimes holds discussion, which is usually…
Something that comes to mind for me is the old Bill Gates trustworthy computing memo [0], from the era when early windows xp was getting flak for poor security. That was supposedly the turning point where they started those overhauls towards service pack 2 and likewise added a security focus in other products, and they decided they couldn't sneak in easter egg flight simulators into excel any more because it just added opportunities for flaws.
What stands out to me is the organization needs to be accept that change is needed and 'walk the walk', and also that those efforts take time. I've no idea what things are in motion in MS, but I wonder how quickly they can turn the ship, how much momentum is in their current direction and how much force is in turning. Moving the taskbar seems like addressing a loud persistent talking point, but it's one among many. What's the timeline (even though windows version timing seems like 'when they need branding')? Win12? Win13?
Microsoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to…
I really hope you're right. The challenge with Linux still seems to be practicalities -- like in particular, does Zoom run well on most distributions? Reports seem to be of system crashes and degraded performance. I imagine there are lots of 'it works for me' stories, but think: for Linux to eat into Windows user market share (which I would greatly support), critical things like Zoom have to work at least as reliably…
I mean... Windows legitimately doesn't work. I work at one of the mag7 and it's a running jokes while using windows that suddenly everyone's microphone quits. We then have to restart. This has been going on years. Our colleagues on Linux don't have such problems.
It's just that we accept windows issues as "that's how computers are". While Linux is expected to work
I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…
Windows is not technically inferior to Linux. To the extent it has problems, it is mainly because of top-down anti-user behaviour mandated from corporate. But anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. I use both literally side-by-side, two laptops with a KVM switch, and I still greatly prefer Windows for many reasons. Some reasons: Even as a low-level…
Windows USED to have a polished UX. Is it still better than most Linux distros? Maybe.
But it has regressed so far from where it was 25 (or more) years ago that every day I'm still infuriated and depressed that I've had to return to it for work. The idiotic UI blunders alone must waste hours of my life per week.
Aside from the absolutely baffling functionality removals, there are the hateful petty ones. Great example: the removal of Remote Desktop. I erred in getting my parents Windows laptops, thinking they'd benefit from the familiarity. NOPE. And when they encounter some defective bullshit that stops them from doing what they're trying to do, they call me for help but I can't log in from 2400 miles away because MICROSOFT REMOVED THAT ABILITY. Disgraceful.
Much of big tech became Product leaders running amok. Somehow It shifted from users know best to "Product" knows best. I think this all stemmed everyone wanting to be Apple except no one actually achieved it and now we have 3 different versions of the audio control panel in Windows, the start button is somehow in the middle of the screen, and windows search no longer searches your PC. Deleting "Product" might save wi…
I've never been bothered by Windows's changes, and I mostly think they were reasonable. But for a number of reasons it's never going to be easy for them to gain total acceptance: 1) the massive backwards compatibility back to Windows 95 stuff, 2) the willingness to try new and/or silly things that Apple is too stuffy to try, and 3) the fact that there's only ever going to be one "flavor" of Windows; if we were stuck…
Windows compatibility is pretty overrated at this point. There are a bevy of programs we use commercially that are quite old that just don’t work on 11, and not well on 10. Compatibility mode only gets you do far.
> where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is > dangerously close on performance sometimes more performant.
> sometimes more performant. That's usually due to: 1. Converting directX into Vulkan (potentially very large performance gains) 2. Less OS overhead (usually minor gains)
Windows is notoriously slow at opening files. So a common optimisation is to store all game content in few package files.
Windows 11 performs like a pig, it’s full of unnecessary notifications and apps that constantly seek attention, copilot isn’t useful, I feel like I’m being spied on, the UI is weird. It could be turned into a great OS if they simply remove some things. Get rid of the ads, make copilot an optional component, stop trying to sell 365, let me turn off telemetry, etc.
Remember when installers allowed you to personalize the components you wanted to install? I miss that. I wasn't on windows but I remember that office allowed you to choose which components you wanted