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Reply 22 of 115, by SirNickity

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luckybob wrote:

I'm reminded of this image:

This is really the crux of it for me. Basically, MS had market dominance for so long than innovation fell by the wayside in favor of incremental updates (basically, new hardware support) and changes to the UI so it looked different enough that it might be worth buying. After a while of finding that it was the same old Windows with a new skin, people just hung on to what they had, because it worked. Why fix what isn't broken? The solution to that, of course, is to change enough about the hardware that it can't run old versions of the OS anymore. Like dropping USB 2, and the BIOS, etc. Some of it is "legacy baggage", sure, and this could all just be a crazy conspiracy theory. But we've been hanging on to backward compatibility since the 5150, and in the last five years or so, it's suddenly OK to make hardware incompatible with an OS released in 2009? I'm torn between "it's time for a fresh start I guess", and "seems like a convenient way to keep from having another XP lifecycle problem."

I don't pile on to Microsoft because it's un-hip to like Microsoft. I used to LOVE Windows - I was very enthusiastic about it until... about Win 2K. Then I tried BeOS, and I was astounded at how simple, fast, and stable an OS could be. I started migrating to BeOS little by little - first just to tinker, then I only booted into Windows when I had to for some special app. When Be, Inc. threw in the towel and sold their assets to Palm, I was really bummed about going back to Windows. It felt archaic in comparison. So I tried Unix. 😜 Alright, that didn't make much sense in retrospect, but Linux turned out to be extremely useful so I'm glad I took the time.

Through the years, I started to rely on the flexibility of POSIX, and found myself carrying around two laptops when I traveled for work. The Windows one pretty much just for email and Visio. When Windows 8 came out, I felt like there was a real disconnect between what people wanted and what Microsoft saw as the future of computing. I was not onboard with that. It's not just about change, it's that we've TRIED the fusion of the Windows desktop with touch input so many times before and it just doesn't work. It never has. It never will. When I ask people today how they use touch-screen Windows laptops (I'm always curious if there's been a change in sentiment), I always hear some variation of: "It's cool for scrolling, maybe moving a window around -- kinda feels futuristic, which is fun.... but I still use a mouse." The problem is we ended up something that was not great at touch (too many small elements in too many legacy applications), and was not great at being a traditional desktop because so much screen real-estate was taken up trying to be touch-friendly. It was a horse-by-committee.

Apple saw the problem a different way. They released the iPad, people laughed at it. Now it's so ubiquitous, you can't buy a scone without using one to pay. That's how you innovate. Heck, these days it's not cool to like Apple anymore. And with Tim Cook leading the show, I'm not sure they've got the Midas touch anymore. They may just be coasting right now before the big fall. If that happens, I don't know who's going to save us, 'cause it sure won't be MS.

Reply 23 of 115, by keenmaster486

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On the tech support issue:

Sometimes there are people that you literally cannot even teach the basics like where the Start menu is, or what an icon is, or how the windowing system works. These are the kinds of people who will click on random things just to get the computer to do something, think that the Cloud is a real cloud in the sky, and try to type commands like "E MAil" into Microsoft Word, and as a result can be a security risk because they cannot use the Internet for 10 seconds without clicking on a virus link. There's nothing that can be done about this kind of person except lock down their computer, or get them a Chromebook.

Some people are a little better and will simply memorize what you teach them as far as navigating the OS - e.g. "click on Start menu, click on programs, click on inner menu, etc. etc." This is the kind of person for whom, if something changes about the OS navigational structure, they become completely lost because they only memorized things and isn't even vaguely aware of the standard concept of a navigational structure with layers. Like a person who never learned how to read a map and just has a list of turn-based instructions in their head.

Some people know how to navigate menu layers, file system and such, but are completely ignorant about how the OS works under the hood, and as such are the most annoying people to watch using their computer, as they royally screw up their system while thinking they know what they're doing. These people generally think they know what is going on, but in reality could not tell you the difference between "protocols" and "adapters" in Win9x Network settings.

Now MS doesn't necessarily have an obligation to satisfy the first and second type of person mentioned above by never changing the navigational structure of the OS. But it would be nice, still, if they kept things the same instead of hiding things behind more and more navigational layers like they tend to do with each successive version.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 24 of 115, by dr_st

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keenmaster486 wrote:

On the tech support issue:
Now MS doesn't necessarily have an obligation to satisfy the first and second type of person mentioned above by never changing the navigational structure of the OS. But it would be nice, still, if they kept things the same instead of hiding things behind more and more navigational layers like they tend to do with each successive version.

Some things may be hidden behind more layers, others may be more accessible now than they used to be; it's all a matter of what Microsoft's UI designers think is more valuable to the average user, even though they frequently can be wrong.

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Reply 25 of 115, by gdjacobs

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luckybob wrote:
I'm reminded of this image: […]
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I'm reminded of this image:

GF8rgGe7UZg5g7m0BuGlQQ2oVwa6tXcT6-YsSkeKf6c.jpg?width=545&auto=webp&s=edcd2881beb57908954dee32aa748801606c173c

350.jpg

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Reply 26 of 115, by ZellSF

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SirNickity wrote:
ZellSF wrote:

I asked technical people why they weren't using a solution available to them, at no point did I imply I was talking about the experience of doing tech support, nor do I see the relevance of it.

Sorry, that was not meant to belittle a perfectly valid suggestion. It doesn't work for me because often when I'm trying to re-acquaint myself with Windows, it's not my computer. That's all I'm saying. Well, that and I don't know why it's necessary to hack the OS back to something usable. The tech support bit is an illustration of why pointless change is not harmless.

Sounds pretty harmless to me. So you have to ask a bit more questions (that you're paid to do anyway), have you ever considered how many less questions you have to ask because of UI improvements over time, improvements you don't even understand because you're a technical person?

As for "why do I have to hack the OS to something usable". You don't, it is usable, just not to your preference. Adjusting it to your preference is simple (just download an alternative launcher), but still far enough out of reach that it won't confuse your grandma.

Reply 27 of 115, by Parts man

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gdjacobs wrote:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/954/660/350.jpg […]
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luckybob wrote:
I'm reminded of this image: […]
Show full quote

I'm reminded of this image:

GF8rgGe7UZg5g7m0BuGlQQ2oVwa6tXcT6-YsSkeKf6c.jpg?width=545&auto=webp&s=edcd2881beb57908954dee32aa748801606c173c

350.jpg

welcome-to-windows-10-16285877.png

Reply 29 of 115, by SirNickity

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ZellSF wrote:

Sounds pretty harmless to me.

Sure it does. Because you're not affected by it. keenmaster486 brought up a very good point -- learning styles. Procedural people are the ones that are affected most by this. On the Meyers-Briggs scale, I score more on the Intuition and Perception side (as compared to Sensing and Judging), which puts me in the "forest" rather than "trees" camp. I can deal with the change, I just grumble when the path to what I'm looking for gets more convoluted.

And sometimes just broken. On my lab VM of Win2k12, if I click on the network icon in the systray, it brings up a sidebar with "View Connection Settings" as apparently-clickable text at the top of the bar. Clicking it "squeezes" the text like it's meant to do something, but it doesn't do anything at all. Clicking the connection icons has the same result. Broken.

Maybe I should be using KB shortcuts, but: 1) I really shouldn't have to - TIMTOWTDI, and any of them are valid; 2) I use SO many OSes and products that I don't have the time, energy, and capacity to memorize every shortcut on every product. So sue me. Stuff I do most, I optimize - the rest, I get by; 3) I spend a lot of time in RDP, VNC, and VMware console windows. These do not always react well to special key combinations, since they either aren't or in some cases can't be captured by the hosting application.

ZellSF wrote:

have you ever considered how many less questions you have to ask because of UI improvements over time, improvements you don't even understand because you're a technical person?

I actually do think about this from time to time, because I find UI design an interesting topic. Hence my arguments here. I mean hey.. bitching about it isn't going to change anything - well, unless one of you happens to be a product manager at Microsoft. It's just an interesting debate to me, and I take valuable things away from opposing viewpoints. So anyway... are there UI improvements over time that have contributed to a better user experience? Absolutely, but probably not as much as it should have.

Having rebuilt a fleet of retro computers recently with DOS 5 and 6, Win 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, and 7, and then also going back to the very beginning of OS X and installing each version up to the latest, AND having successfully booted the installer for BeOS 5 (and then bombing due to hardware incompatibility on the system I chose -- but no matter)... here is one primary example I have re-discovered with the advantage of a time-lapse perspective:

Driver management was a real pain in the butt in Windows. And, to a much lesser degree, it still was as late as Win 7. Consider this possibility -- because this bit me once: You have a computer that you use primarily with a PS/2 KB & mouse. PS/2 is not hot-plug capable. Sometimes it works, usually it doesn't -- depends on the hardware and the OS. If you boot Win 98 or Win ME with a missing mouse, you'll get the little window saying "no PS2 mouse detected, but it's safe to plug in a serial mouse now". Now plug in a USB mouse. New device detected, now let's install drivers. Uh oh, KB didn't work either. Plug in a USB one! Oh wait.. need drivers for that too. Woops, no way to interact with the UI, so the computer is stuck forever waiting for me to confirm that it should use the thing I just plugged in. *Reset*...

This did START to get better in Win 2K (although I'm not sure that this same scenario wouldn't happen -- I would have to check. Fixed by XP though, IIRC.) By this point, Linux (which was still just a fledgling) and OS X both would load the USB drivers with zero fanfare, thereby giving you an input method. More recent versions of OS X (and not totally current -- just more recent than ~2000!) would actually pop up a window if it didn't detect an input device, and ask if you need to pair something via Bluetooth! That's REALLY nice.

The point here is, Linux, BeOS, and OS X all just accepted new hardware and made its functionality available to the user. No delays while parsing several megabytes of .INF files. No hassle. No "new hardware detected" wizard with often brain-dead driver store location. (Like in early 9x... well, you've told me to look in c:\windows\cabs like a hundred times, but you installed from F:\ four years ago, so that's where I will now and forever look. And I will ask every time you make a change, despite already having the file I need.)

Microsoft revisited the driver infrastructure several times over the years. Changed the New Hardware wizard several times as well. But had not actually made the user experience any better until around Vista... 2006 -- ten years after people began frequently hot-plugging devices into their PCs. That's just pathetic. And even then, you are still notified that driver support is being added. I don't care. Nobody cares. Tell me if there's a problem, but otherwise, just do it!

MOST of the rest of the basic UI hasn't really changed that much. The icons on the desktop changed order. The Start menu is significantly different almost every time beginning with XP. Windows Explorer got a little more cumbersome as of Win 7, using up more screen real-estate with the introduction of the ribbon.

On that note (file managers) -- in comparison, the Mac Finder changed a little in OS X 10.3, and then a little more in uh, ... Lion (10.7) I think? But it's not that much different from today, really. Just kinda periodically refreshed. Apple mostly added convenience features like Expose or the Dashboard (equivalent to Gadgets or Active Desktop -- but actually stuck around). Under the hood, the OS added hardware support and adapted to new web and media technology. Pretty much what you actually need from an OS.

When did Windows users finally get the ability to mount an ISO image? Where's the SSH client? MD5Sum? How long did it take to get IE compliant with current web standards, or even just transparent PNGs? The industry had to DITCH THE FLOPPY DRIVE before you could use a CD or USB thumb drive to load SATA / SCSI / RAID drivers. And you had better be quick on that F6 button -- and keep hitting it, because there's no indication it worked until after every driver is loaded from the CD and we just give up if there's no hard drive visible. Where is the Windows (or better yet -- open!) equivalent of AirDrop? Or universal PCL / PostScript printer drivers?

So yeah, some things got a little better -- you could finally plug in USB stuff and not have to call IT support to get it working. Mostly the paradigms stayed the same. One day your file extensions disappeared. They still matter (unlike BeOS where they were truly irrelevant, and to some extent so in Linux), but you just can't see what they are anymore. The configuration settings scurried around to a new place with every release, but as long as you didn't need to change anything that might not matter as much as it does to people like me.

Looking back, for a long while progress totally stagnated. Meanwhile, the window manager got overhauled from flat gray 3D to blue plastic to glass to everything-is-white-in-this-world -- and you could upgrade to the new paint job for as little as $150. (Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion cost me $20 each. Everything after was, and still is, free.) Other OSes were really trying to push the UX forward, but inertia carried Windows through all of that and put some of them out of business.

If you take away practical considerations like hardware support, or the ability to run current software, would a user actually be better off using Windows 10 than, say, Windows 95? I don't really think so. If anything, it's probably a little more straight-forward. On the other side of the coin, they would hardly notice the difference between OS X Sierra (10.12) and Jaguar (10.2). There's more texture on the Finder windows, and pinstripes. Otherwise same-same. Unless you use gestures. It would kill a Mac user to lose that. Windows user.. eh... many people still lack the hardware to use it anyway.

Reply 30 of 115, by keenmaster486

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I always said the MS Office Ribbon was bad UI design, and refused to use it... instead using old Office versions... or fully switching to LibreOffice when it finally got compatible enough to do that.

So this was sweet vindication for me: https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/15/probeat-mi … on-is-overkill/

I will still not buy the latest version of MS Office. Why? I don't need to! Nothing about my life requires, or will ever require, the latest MS Office.

And it is the same exact thing with Windows 10 for me. I will never need it, and thank God I don't. If I ever have a job that makes me use Windows 10 of course I'll do that, but in my personal computing life I'll never require it. I like other software better. Good thing MS hasn't yet convinced the government to mandate that all consumers buy MS software! (just like insurers in the health care market, everything done "for the benefit of the people" but really just to cement monopolistic companies.) I am very glad MS is a mere private entity.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 31 of 115, by tannerstevo

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keenmaster486 wrote:

On the tech support issue:

Sometimes there are people that you literally cannot even teach the basics like where the Start menu is, or what an icon is, or how the windowing system works. These are the kinds of people who will click on random things just to get the computer to do something, think that the Cloud is a real cloud in the sky, and try to type commands like "E MAil" into Microsoft Word, and as a result can be a security risk because they cannot use the Internet for 10 seconds without clicking on a virus link.

This reminds me so much of my brother. I loaned him my first pc to use and he came to me and said he was having an issue with it.
I asked him what was going on and he said "this". He double clicked a desktop shortcut, waited about three seconds, and when it did not do what he wanted, he reached under the desk and yanked the power cord out of the outlet! 😠

Reply 32 of 115, by dr_st

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SirNickity wrote:

If you boot Win 98 or Win ME with a missing mouse, you'll get the little window saying "no PS2 mouse detected, but it's safe to plug in a serial mouse now". Now plug in a USB mouse. New device detected, now let's install drivers. Uh oh, KB didn't work either. Plug in a USB one! Oh wait.. need drivers for that too. Woops, no way to interact with the UI, so the computer is stuck forever waiting for me to confirm that it should use the thing I just plugged in. *Reset*...

This did START to get better in Win 2K (although I'm not sure that this same scenario wouldn't happen -- I would have to check. Fixed by XP though, IIRC.) By this point, Linux (which was still just a fledgling) and OS X both would load the USB drivers with zero fanfare, thereby giving you an input method.

So, what exactly is your claim? That Windows handles USB devices worse than contemporary OSX/Linux? But didn't you just say that it was fixed in XP (2001) and probably also in 2K (1999)? And you're comparing it to "early OS X" (2000-2001), so where's this technology gap?

If, for instance, you could show that macOS/Linux had flawless USB support since 1995, and Microsoft only caught up in 2006, then your claim is valid, yes; but that is not true.

So that's just one example I find somewhat flawed (not to mention the rarity of the use case itself; it's not like anyone regularly boots the PC without a keyboard/mouse).

I'm not going to respond to most of your post, because it's things I've seen dozens of times before - cherry-picking specific points to demonstrate advantages of one OS over another, based on the image one is trying to create; anyone with enough usage experience with multiple OSes would easily be able to find many good and bad points of every OS, their kernels and UIs; in the end most of it amounts to which environment one feels more comfortable with.

SirNickity wrote:

If you take away practical considerations like hardware support, or the ability to run current software, would a user actually be better off using Windows 10 than, say, Windows 95? I don't really think so. If anything, it's probably a little more straight-forward. On the other side of the coin, they would hardly notice the difference between OS X Sierra (10.12) and Jaguar (10.2). There's more texture on the Finder windows, and pinstripes. Otherwise same-same. Unless you use gestures. It would kill a Mac user to lose that. Windows user.. eh... many people still lack the hardware to use it anyway.

These 'practical considerations' you are willing to take away for the sake of the discussion are not really easy to separate, you know; software and hardware capabilities are tied into the OS in many ways, and part of the UI changes are there to support workflows that simply did not exist in the past, because there were no software/hardware to support them.

Take, for instance, the way Windows 10 has a panel to conveniently manage all your communication devices - WiFi, BT, cellular, NFC, Mobile Hotspot, etc. etc. This does not exist in early Windows UI, because the technologies did not exist; and even if you magically added all the hardware support for this into Win95, you'd still find that its native UI is much more restrictive than that which is currently offered by Win10 for this task. Just one example off the top of my head.

And while gestures on a Windows PC are not as common as on Mac, there are more devices with very capable touchpads and touchscreens in the PC world than you are willing to admit; you may say that Microsoft has been very late to this party (true), but they are trying. And how many years did take Apple to implement a proper right-click anyway? 🤣

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Reply 33 of 115, by dr_st

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keenmaster486 wrote:

I always said the MS Office Ribbon was bad UI design, and refused to use it... instead using old Office versions... or fully switching to LibreOffice when it finally got compatible enough to do that.

As I mentioned earlier, I find the ribbon 'good design'. Other software vendors would not have adopted it if it was bad. Can you explain why you think it's bad, other than it was different from what you were used to? Is it only because it takes more screen space, or do you have other points? I'm curious.

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Reply 34 of 115, by keenmaster486

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dr_st wrote:

As I mentioned earlier, I find the ribbon 'good design'. Other software vendors would not have adopted it if it was bad. Can you explain why you think it's bad, other than it was different from what you were used to? Is it only because it takes more screen space, or do you have other points? I'm curious.

Yeah, here's my list:

  • Yes, takes up too much screen space, there is a happy medium somewhere in there and it's blown past it. This is even more important with lower screen resolutions - in 2007, many screens were 1024x768.
  • The advantages of the hierarchical menu structure are decreased by the fact that any menus are now scattered around the ribbon
  • Harder to remember where something is; as you no longer can simply remember the name of the menu it's in - you now have to remember the location of the item on the ribbon. So it is spatially based rather than categorically/linguistically based. This kind of spatial system works OK for very commonly used things such as font type and color, bold, italic, etc., but imho breaks down when it is used for everything.
  • Menus are still used in places, but your "time to completion" of finding a menu task is increased because you have to move your mouse a greater distance (on average) in order to get to where you want to be.
  • The ribbon appears very busy and gets tiresome on the eyes after a while. (I'm sure it can be hidden temporarily though)
  • In earlier versions (2007, 2010), the highly 3D/"bubbly" design of the elements is tolerable on a menu system, but bugs one's eyes out on the ribbon system.
  • (this is an execution issue rather than a conceptual issue) MS locked it down significantly so it was difficult to fully customize everything about it.

Edit: as for other software vendors adopting it, I believe that it was in that case less of an MS thing and more of a trendy fad that needs to go away, if it hasn't already.

Google knows what's up. I will forever respect them for designing Google Docs to look like the old MS Word interface, even though I avoid Google Docs for other reasons (slower/feature-limited).

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 35 of 115, by luckybob

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its a moot point. M$ will cater to the largest groups when designing a OS. They don't care and never did. win7 is damn near perfect. They know it. They also know, if they don't continuously change and attract the slobbering masses, they stop being relevant, and stop selling software and eventually stop existing.

While I agree win10 is a step(or two) backward for the power user, being a snob about it makes you as bad as the Linux circlejerk.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 36 of 115, by gdjacobs

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luckybob wrote:

its a moot point. M$ will cater to the largest groups when designing a OS. They don't care and never did. win7 is damn near perfect. They know it. They also know, if they don't continuously change and attract the slobbering masses, they stop being relevant, and stop selling software and eventually stop existing.

While I agree win10 is a step(or two) backward for the power user, being a snob about it makes you as bad as the Linux circlejerk.

Who benefits from having two distinct sets of control panels? Who benefits from a radical disorganization and cluttering of the Start menu? This isn't snobbery, it's common sense.

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Reply 37 of 115, by keenmaster486

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For many people (and I am personally acquainted with some of these people) 90% of their consideration when buying a product is how new it is. They blindly trust that each second, something better is being made, and look at you in utter bewildered confusion if you suggest otherwise.

It’s sad.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 38 of 115, by dr_st

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keenmaster486 wrote:

Yeah, here's my list:

Thank you! 😎

About the screen space on low resolution screens, this is true to an extent, but resolutions already started to go up at that point (although it took high res a while to become ubiquitous), and in any case, the ribbon can be hidden, so that it appears exactly like the old menu bar.

Your other arguments are basically that the location of items has changed, and that the organization is more horizontal compared to the vertical organization in the menu system. I hope you can understand that these are not objective characteristics, but matters of preference.

Essentially the ribbon system trades screen space for the sake of making the most commonly used functions more prominently visible, and available in a single click, rather than several, as it was in the hierarchical system. It works quite well for many features; choosing styles, customizing page layout, using the review feature - all of it is quite a bit easier to access in the Office 2007 ribbon versus the Office 2003 menu.

I do agree about the "busy look", and this is why you can minimize the ribbon (and then it's two clicks rather than one).

keenmaster486 wrote:

Edit: as for other software vendors adopting it, I believe that it was in that case less of an MS thing and more of a trendy fad that needs to go away, if it hasn't already.

It just means that someone other than MS found it good.

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Reply 39 of 115, by Errius

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I don't like the W10 UI, but then I also didn't (and still don't) like how Windows 7 merged the taskbar and the quicklaunch panel into a single interface. It really bugged me when I started using it, but I eventually got used to it. The same will probably happen with W10.

Is this too much voodoo?