Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows needs a change in priorities

den.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 884 posts

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#721

Post by neltnerb »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #397
neltnerb wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to frequently be true that Microsoft releases a horrifying nightmare OS, polishes is up and removes hated features, and then releases a new version. It's been a bit of a pattern. Windows 8 -> Windows 10 Windows Vista -> Windows 7 and even before that: Windows Me -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP was a pretty solid chain that shows it over three releases (personally I think XP was buggier, I don't know what the i…

> Windows Me -> Windows 2000 This isn’t a transition which existed. Windows ME didn’t get replaced by 2000, they were both released around the same time. In terms of OS evolution, there were two separate branches, Windows NT and Windows 95. On the 95 branch: 95 > 98 > ME > Discontinued On the NT branch: NT 3.5 > NT 4 > 2000 > XP > Vista > 7 > 8 > 10 > 11 Non-business users were originally only ever on the 95 branch,…

Fair, I switched from 98 to 2000 to XP because Me had such an incredibly bad experience.

From a technology stack side I realize you are right, but I did not experience the UI of Windows ME as a successor to 98 and instead experienced it as a proto-win2k. I'm talking about the UI evolution more than the kernel, which I realize is more subjective.

I do think there is a "paid forced beta -> better after overton window shift" pattern from for instance Vista to 7 and 8 to 10. Those were extremely obviously intended to be the same UI, the first with an extremely questionable UI and the second with a stabilized UI.

From a UI perspective, in the context of a useful work computer, Windows 8 was an absolute failure. Windows 10 I only tolerate because it's gotten most of the bugs worked out and Windows 7 is no longer getting security updates... I fully intend to skip Windows 11 and wait for the next one if I can possibly do so.

It will I'm sure still have a UI mess that makes it even less pleasant than Windows 10, as (in my opinion) Windows 7 was better than Windows 10 and I would have preferred they just keep fine tuning that UI.

I just want my OS to be an OS instead of an experience, and for things to just iterate better rather than see massive overhauls for what they must know is mostly a business OS. It's such a strange approach, I guess they're just worried about going the way of Sun or IBM by not adopting the latest trends. Or maybe they have a business team and a home computer team and the latter is trying to keep up with Apple while the prior is begging them to stop...

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#722

Post by phkahler »

canbus wrote: post #669
phkahler wrote: post #633

Windows users need a change in priorities. FTFY. The OS has gone to shit, but people keep right on using it and complaining about how bad it's getting. What is your lame priority for sticking with it? Don't tell me gaming - get a console or VR headset, or steam on Linux. If you're that hung up on one game that doesn't run anywhere else then again you need to change your priorities. If it's using Excel or Word with a…

Maybe I use it for work? Or because WINE isn't perfect for everything that I need to use, and I don't want to spend hours trying to configure it? What about basic users? They don't care whether they should be using KDE Plasma or a Gnome-based window manager etc - maybe they want something that 'just works'

>> What about basic users? They don't care whether they should be using KDE Plasma or a Gnome-based window manager etc - maybe they want something that 'just works'

There are Linux distributions and MacOS that "just work" a LOT better than Windows these days.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#724

Post by [deleted] »

vishnugupta wrote: post #495
neltnerb wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to frequently be true that Microsoft releases a horrifying nightmare OS, polishes is up and removes hated features, and then releases a new version. It's been a bit of a pattern. Windows 8 -> Windows 10 Windows Vista -> Windows 7 and even before that: Windows Me -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP was a pretty solid chain that shows it over three releases (personally I think XP was buggier, I don't know what the i…

I really need to dig very deep into my memory; wasn't Windows ME kind of dead on arrival? And MS themselves half acknowledged it by releasing XP within a few months.

[deleted]

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#725

Post by digisign »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #639
joe_the_user wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like being in an abusive relationship. Indeed, another way it's like an abusive relationship is people's reluctance to leave despite all they've experienced. I hear all the horror stories and then say "I've been using for ten years and it works well" and I get "oh, but I don't want to have to fiddle with things" (after discussions of how hard Windows is to get to do things). Linux has glitches but Microsoft mani…

While I don't necessarily disagree with the initial statement, I will say that Linux Desktop has its own kind of abusive relationship, especially if you have to deal with certain parts of the community. GNOME in particular is pretty user-hostile in both design and in its community interactions, and while you can use a different DE GNOME is the default for the most popular and recommended distributions. Personally I'v…

Agreed on your first paragraph. I use Mate which allows me to sidestep ~80% of gnome's abuse, however some still leaks in through GTK, I think.

Re the second, I haven't built an app from source since about 2005? or so.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#726

Post by dehrmann »

jaclaz wrote: post #521
vishnugupta wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really need to dig very deep into my memory; wasn't Windows ME kind of dead on arrival? And MS themselves half acknowledged it by releasing XP within a few months.

No, there was a shift. The Win9x/ME (please read as DOS based) series of OS was intended for home users. The NT/2K was intended for business users. Only as an example most games at the time would not have run on NT/2K, and Win9x/Me was essentially single-user only. For some reasons with XP the good MS guys decided to force down the throat of pro/business users (that were very, very, very happy about Windows 2000) the…

> that were very, very happy about Windows 98, not so much about ME [0]

I disagree somewhat. The 9x family didn't handle multitasking well and had driver issues, frequently leading to lock-ups and BSODs. The architecture didn't handle isolation well, but NT did. Windows NT mostly stayed out of people's way in XP unless they looked for those menus. It was a huge problem for Vista, though.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#727

Post by 0xffff2 »

phkahler wrote: post #633

Windows users need a change in priorities. FTFY. The OS has gone to shit, but people keep right on using it and complaining about how bad it's getting. What is your lame priority for sticking with it? Don't tell me gaming - get a console or VR headset, or steam on Linux. If you're that hung up on one game that doesn't run anywhere else then again you need to change your priorities. If it's using Excel or Word with a…

>What is your lame priority for sticking with it?

Adobe and Autodesk products.

>If it's using Excel or Word with a bunch of customizations that won't work in LibreOffice, again you need to change your priorities or approach to solving the problems you did that to solve.

Only because MS is hell-bent on destroying their ecosystem. As long as Windows 10 is still receiving security updates, I can keep getting actual work done instead of investing a ton of time into things I care nothing about. I have no interest in developing office/photo/cad software, only in using those things.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#728

Post by wvenable »

bombcar wrote: post #703
wvenable wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Macification of Windows has been in progress for years -- and it makes no sense! When Microsoft designed the UI for Windows 95 they did extensive user studies and everything from how the start menu worked and the task bar was carefully figured out. They've spend the last few decades undoing all that work piece by piece until nobody actually knows how to use it anymore.

Windows 95 is under-appreciated in the GUI histories I feel - it had many things that became 'standard' pretty much immediately afterwards (I even have a shortcut to Applications in my Dock which mimics a Start Menu). But it's hard for a company to justify "paying to leave shit alone" so even if a maximum was reached, it will recede.

I agree. There's a lot of people paid to re-design Windows every year, they all use Macs, and none of them are doing any user studies at all.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#729

Post by flembat »

Anyone else expect this to be about the Windows scheduler?

It is a godawful shame, as Windows has the potential to be quite a good operating system for PCs, with just a bit more engineering effort and a bit less filthy gunk it could be great.

Post reply on HN