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 with one single Linux distro people would be complaining about that one too.

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chasil 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are two major problems with modern Windows.

The first is coercion. Installing without a Microsoft (Outlook) account is more and more difficult. An attentive steward of Windows would allow older gui themes (xp, Win7 Aero, etc.) to be applied for the nostalgic. And there would be an easy control to disable all Copilot integration. Microsoft is coercive towards their customers with these and other actions.

The second is incompetence. The Windows update process is intrusive, lengthy, and prone to repeatedly bricking unlucky PCs. Linux updates are far more pleasant.

These are big problems, and I agree, it will take great institutional change to curb these abusive tendencies. I don't know if they can.

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econ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you have two candidate ui designs you pick the best of the two. If you have an established ui and a candidate the new design needs to be dramatically better. It has to scream superiority. If it isn't that you are just ruining ux.

I install Gimp one time. I like to casual draw on autopilot, usually while doing something else, talking, watching a movie, listening to a podcast etc. For some reason half the icons were missing and the existing set was replaced with the hipster horrifying flat single color monstrosities. This would have been a waste of their time if it was only an option for no one who wants this some place buried deep in the settings where it would only clutter the nesaserily complex options.

With MS it feels more like intentionally trolling the user

The best spot for the applications sub menu is to not make it a sub menu. The second best is to leave it wherever the fuck it was before. I want to struggle remembering what an application was called and wonder why they are organized so poorly. (Not by file Association) In stead they have me wonder where they even are???

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Induane 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm actually not sure what you're saying about GIMP. I mean - I understand the frustration, the "button groups" or whatever they did to declutter things made things (imo) worse; I don't think it's a good default.

BUT

I don't actually understand your sentences for the most part. I really had to work to glean what you were talking about.

I'm not trying to be insulting here; sometimes I write in inscrutable ways too. But - could you reword a few things so I know what you're trying to say?

	▲	econ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've never been sentenced to repeating myself. I'm sure people normally hope for improvements in silence without informing me. Thanks! The general point was that "Improvement" that ruin muscle memory usually aren't. It should be the most basic UI design principle. One should be able to instinctively click on the Gmail icon while focused on the task at hand. If the icon isn't where one expects it to be you are no longer doing email things. Same goes for having the user search for the inbox inside the application. If they can't find it they are unproductive and feel dumb but they aren't to blame. Some bad designer came up with the brilliant idea to call it "all mail". The inbox is expected to live at the top of the menu. You can't improve it. It's such basic stuff. It's like someone used your tools or your kitchen and put everything in a new spot. Eh, I mean the wrong spot. I could give 1000 example inside windows but it seems everyone is trolling their users. They all want to create the new and improved slashdot, now without threaded discussions! - Hurray!

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coffe2mug 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would say the primary reason that windows still is acceptable is familiarity and games. Nothing else.

Non tech people don't care about control panel etc. they just go through the pain of entering the WiFi password. Done.

- gamers. Double click install - go on. I know very few gamers that have moved to Linux.

And corporate. Most normies that I know DON'T have own computers. Everything can be done via smartphone these days.

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conception 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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alsetmusic 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 1) the massive backwards compatibility

Greatest strength. Greatest papercut.