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It's crazy just how… unfinished everything involving Windows 10 seems to be. Half-assed UI concepts implemented clumsily, supported by an unsupported store, upd

by creshal 11y ago

It's crazy just how… unfinished everything involving Windows 10 seems to be. Half-assed UI concepts implemented clumsily, supported by an unsupported store, updated haphazardly at a pace that makes enterprise scream bloody murder… and all Microsoft does is trying to trick more users into accidentally updating. What are they thinking? They can do better than this. Much, much better.

venomsnake 11y ago
Well ... it is better than 8. A lot.
- nhebb 11y ago
  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually liked Windows 8.1 better than 10. It's hard for me to explain why, but Windows 10 gives me the feeling that I don't own the system - that Microsoft does and they're just letting me use it.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    Windows 10 gives me the feeling that I don't own the system - that Microsoft does and they're just letting me use it. The forced updates, meaning MS has the power to (and likely will) change your environment completely without your explicit consent? I completely agree. They've even stated a few times that Win10 is a "service" and not a "product".
    - james-skemp 11y ago
      If using a laptop or the like switch your WiFi connections over to metered connections. My Surface Pro 4 was having stability issues when it slept, and updates seemed to be the issue. Switched over to metered connections and I haven't lost any work in weeks. Doesn't work for desktops or the like with wired connections.
      - sethrin 11y ago
        So it's got this malicious feature, but you can trick it into not working with some arcane (and conditional) configuration setting. I switched to Linux when XP started feeling too limiting, but this is just getting ridiculous. And without real pushback from the broader user base, odds are this is a trend that will continue.
        kuschku 11y ago
        It this all over again... http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
      - jqm 11y ago
        "haven't lost any work in weeks..." Wow! I guess that's a win... but wow....
  - bobajeff 11y ago
    My dad feels the same way only it's been this way since after 98.
  - m_fayer 11y ago
    I feel exactly the same. For me Win8.1 was the pinnacle of Windows. The whole "tile-world" part of the system was misguided but ignorable, and didn't harass anyone. Tile-world aside, it was one of the most stable and performant OSs I've used. In comparison, Windows 10 makes my top-specced late 2013 Thinkpad feel like an overheating budget machine. All together I must have spent a few workdays trying to fix the machine, and despite being quite knowledgeable about Windows administration I'm still having performance issues and still have the feeling that the system really answers only to MS HQ, and has no intention of ceding control to its owner (me).
    - briHass 11y ago
      Just a thought...did you do an update or a full, clean reinstall of 10 over 8.1? From my anecdotal testing: 4 machines with update 8.1 -> 10. One was fine, the other 3 performed very poorly. Doing a clean install fixed my perf issues. The one that was fine had a almost stock (no additional software) install of 8.1 that was a few months old.
    - speeder 11y ago
      I have Windows 8.1 I also love playing some older games (right now I am in a SimCity 4 binge). I am seriously considering the next time I buy a computer, to ditch windows entirely, and use only Wine, I am having in Windows 8.1 to put Wine DLLs in more and more game folders, also if you enter many serious gaming forums, people recommend you stick with Windows 7. The reason is that Microsoft in their DirectX pushing tactics (that started when they said that WinXP would not be able to run DX10 features at all... despite hackers proving that it ca, also the Xinput vs DirectInput bullshit) they started to resort to stuff that sometimes I am not sure if is just bad coding or intentionally evil. For example for SimCity 4: The game uses DirectX7 (yes, it is that old :( ), and relies heavily on DirectDraw (that I still think is one of the most awesome pieces of tech MS ever made), on Windows 8.1, DirectDraw is completely emulated, partially with software, partially with D3D (or OGL depending on some dll combinations you have), and in a crappily coded manner. Wine ddraw.dll instead translate all DDraw calls to OpenGL equivalent in 2D, still is not perfect, but the different is obvious, DDraw games run like crap in Windows 8.1 native, and frequently run even better than when they were designed in first place when using Wine (be it in Linux, Mac or in Windows using Wine DLLs). Another game that works in Windows 7, but not in 8.1 or 10 without Wine, is the RPG "Arcanum" from Troika Games, also for the same reason: it relies on DDraw, and Windows 8.1 onwards DDraw emulation is so bad that this game renders most of the screen black, or in a wonky manner. So if I am using Wine, on Windows, more and more, why nose use Wine on a NIX anyway? Also many of the newer games have NIX support by default too (source engine games for example). EDIT: a link to someone complaining of this issue on Microsoft forums: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-gaming/directdraw-emulation-is-broken-in-windows-881/4edfc685-72b2-4688-95ed-c745ddd38825 http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-g...
  - JoachimS 11y ago
    Then I'm part of that minority. I use Win 8.1 with classic button in a VM and it is a fast, stable Windows. Esp as a guest in a good OS.
- ferbivore 11y ago
  How so?
  - static_noise 11y ago
    The start menu.
djaychela 11y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this - I keep finding bits in W10 which seem like a student's half-finished project - the print dialog in Edge's PDF reader was the latest mess I found after a recent update. I detest the UI, it's horribly unfriendly (to my eyes, anyway), and the fact that when I keyword search for an app I use every day (Notepad++) I usually get Notepad as a suggestion before it shows there's something wrong, to me. I guess part of the problem is that Windows 7 had reached the same plateau as Word had - it does everything most people need and there's no real reason to upgrade, and that MS wants to grab a part of the app/user data market so has tried to shoehorn all that into the mess left by the "windows will be the new IOS" debacle that was Windows 8.
jay_kyburz 11y ago
I must admit I was a little surprised when I first powered up my Surface pro. I had not used a windows machine since the early days on windows 7 but needed to start at least looking at my games on windows to make sure it worked there as well. It's rough. I really like some of the new apps designed for touch, but where are the rest? There is no file browser for example? OMG the default explorer window is a mess of icons.
seivan 11y ago
Sounds like an early versions of iOS 7.
moonshinefe 11y ago
Agreed. I was bugged by several 'system notifications' the other day on my Win 10 laptop (it took focus over my RDP client in full screen, too) that various people were trying to add me to Skype, and that I needed to sign into Skype to fill in some details they wanted about something. Thing was, I'd never installed Skype on the system or even signed into it for several years, and here it was out of the blue asking me to accept friend invites from a bunch of spammers. It's now part of the "desktop experience" built in I guess (it may have to do with using a Microsoft account vs. purely local account, in my discussions with others). The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore, so I think it's time to move on soon to alternatives.
- r3bl 11y ago
  While you're mentioning Skype, fun fact: since Windows 8 (or 8.1, not sure), there's absolutely no freaking way to sign into Skype with a local account. Like, at all. You just can't use it what so ever unless you log in with your Windows account. EDIT: about this: > The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore, so I think it's time to move on soon to alternatives. I had the same feeling since Windows 8, then I moved to Linux-based distributions. Never regretted it. I still have to deal with Windows when someone at work screws something up with their computer, but that's about it.
  - throwaway13337 11y ago
    Windows now comes packaged with a version of skype that uses their 'app' system. You can still get their non-app version on the site. That version allows you to sign in to whatever user you want - it's not tied to your windows account. http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ Though I agree that skype and windows have some serious user experience issues.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Yes, you can tell the difference in search because one has a solid background and one has the blue Skype symbol in the background. wish I was kidding
pavlov 11y ago
Although Windows 10 on desktop is a bit of a mess, the Mobile edition is much worse. Microsoft is now selling Lumia phones with Windows 10 Mobile, but even Windows Central thinks it's not ready: "I'm relatively savvy with this stuff. But I was ready to throw it out of a window before someone pointed out the non-obvious thing that I needed to do. This wasn't the only piece of out-of-box jank, either, to which I was told a new firmware update should 'fix' most of. It then took 48 hours for the firmware update to show up, download and install to the phone." http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-lumia-550-review http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-lumia-550-review It's a real shame. Windows Phone 7/8 was so great because it was like an Apple product done better than Apple: it didn't have "kitchen sink" features, but instead everything just worked and was holistically designed. In the original WP7 design, the borders between apps and the OS were faded to a degree that's unique. (This design was eventually lost as Windows Phone tried to catch up with app-oriented mobile rivals.) In Windows 10 Mobile, everything has been rewritten as Universal Windows 10 apps that sort of look like the WP8 equivalents but work much worse (because they're really desktop apps squeezed onto a phone). That kind of endless strategy-driven software rewrites are the plague of Microsoft today. The OP who is disillusioned with Windows Store mentions that the Store Dashboard got much worse when Windows 10 came around. Why? Who knows -- probably somebody at MS just decided that the Dashboard needs to be implemented using hot tech X rather than stale old tech Y. This endless churn sucks and drives customers away. I quit using Windows Phone for good last year, mostly due to the customer-hostile Windows 10 plan and lack of new hardware. Can't say I've regretted it so far.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  > In Windows 10 Mobile, everything has been rewritten as Universal Windows 10 apps that sort of look like the WP8 equivalents but work much worse (because they're really desktop apps squeezed onto a phone). The even sadder thing is that when I tried using Windows 10 as my main OS for a while all the Windows 10 apps felt like phone apps stretched out to work on a desktop.
- Joeri 11y ago
  My experience going from wp8 on a lumia 920 to wp10 on a lumia 950 is that mail, calendar and settings got better, the browser is a wash trading improved site compatibility for worse battery life, and everything else that changed got worse. The wp of old was slow to update, but it was rock solid and highly usable. The new one not so much with crashes, slowdowns and battery drain issues all over. For what i paid for this phone i could have picked any android phone. I probably should have.
LoSboccacc 11y ago
my favourite is the update virus/spyware protection notification that you have to open and click manually to update like it's 1997 every time
- jrs235 11y ago
  Is this due to a lawsuit in the EU or someplace that requires Microsoft to specifically to ask the end user for permission to update/install files on the user's machine? This might not be on Microsoft.
  - Grue3 11y ago
    >requires Microsoft to specifically to ask the end user for permission to update/install files on the user's machine? They're certainly not doing this with Windows 10.
  - Piskvorrr 11y ago
    Is there such a thing? I don't think so - last time I checked, there was about 6 GB of MS-supplied malware trying to download and install itself on eeeeeeeeevery Win7 computer through Windows Update (where not prevented by technical means such as GPO or GWX Control Panel). So no, that's either a) a fictional requirement, or b) ignored by MS.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  Do you have Windows Update turned off or set to not automatically update, by chance? Windows Defender automatic updates come across Windows Update.
cornholio 11y ago
> They can do better than this. Much, much better. No they can't. It's just your selective memory from the time they were a big-ass monopolist that sucked the life from any competing platform to the point where you had to use theirs. Now, when you are used to high quality design injected by Apple and then refined by competition in the mobile space, your standards have went up so high that you simply can't go back to the half baked buggy interfaces that Microsoft has always produced. The older systems don't /seem that way/ because you are familiar with them.
- out_of_protocol 11y ago
  They surely can (at least they were). Using win7 right now and it's clear day&night difference how crappy the UI became
  - dagw 11y ago
    Also using win7 right now (at work). While the practical differences aren't huge, I personally find the UI of both windows 8.1 and windows 10 an improvement (after a few tweaks).
- creshal 11y ago
  Sure, Windows was never the pinnacle of good, consistent design, but it was still a lot better than Windows 10 is. The last time I was this frustrated with a Windows version was Windows Me.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  >when you are used to high quality design injected by Apple Hmm, people do like to glorify Apple. Just remember that Apple is the same company that told us we were holding the phone wrong and that included copy and paste after three iterations of the iPhone.
blackhole 11y ago
Full Disclosure: I worked at M$ from 2014-2015. MS has some very talented programmers. They're not very common, but they exist. The problem is that the entire company is completely and totally focused on developing an absurd number of new features and products, giving them completely unrealistic deadlines, and then shipping software on those deadlines no matter how half-assed or buggy it is. The idea is that everything is serviceable over the internet now, so they can just "fix it later", except they never do. This perpetuates a duct-tape culture that refuses to actually fix problems and instead rewards teams that find ways to work around them. The talented programmers are stuck working on code that, at best, has to deal with multiple badly designed frameworks from other teams, or at worst work on code that is simply scrapped. New features are prioritized over all but the most system-critical bugs, and teams are never given any time to actually focus on improving their code. The only improvements that can happen must be snuck in while implementing new features. As far as M$ is concerned, all code is shit, and the only thing that matters is if it works well enough to be shown at a demo and shipped. Needless to say, I don't work there anymore.
- cm2187 11y ago
  I think it's largely a dog fooding problem. Visual Studio is a superb piece of software, and you can tell that its designers are the primary users. Microsoft's consumer apps are awful.
  - njloof 11y ago
    Visual Studio is superb? It's still a 32-bit app that crashes in daily usage.
    - JBReefer 11y ago
      I know there's a strong VS counterjerk, but nothing else comes close. I've been using it for years and all of its crashes have been 100% my fault. I know IntelliJ is great, and JetBrains in general rocks, but it's no contest.
      - 11y ago
Gravityloss 11y ago
If some person seriously wants to dedicate their life to building something high quality and long lasting in the software world (1), they're probably interested in building and contributing to open source, open standards, open interfaces, publishing papers etc. This might mean they would not want to dedicate their efforts to working on Windows. Same would hold for things like iOS as well. To me, architecturally, they seem dead ends that have to be completely binned at some point, leaving little useful legacy. Would you like to really put your life work into something like that, if there are alternatives? I think this must affect the culture, and the people they can hire. I have no idea how "open" Windows is nowadays, I haven't really used it in 8 years. 1: not necessarily building software directly, it can be algorithms, books, philosophies, languages etc.
- pjc50 11y ago
  If some person seriously wants to dedicate their life to building something high quality and long lasting in the software world (1), they're probably interested in building and contributing to open source, open standards, open interfaces, publishing papers etc. "Interested in" and "can get paid for" are two very different things. Microsoft have a big reliable revenue stream. The weird thing is that there are clearly some people inside Microsoft that "get it". There's a big open push from the C#/Roslyn team. F# is pretty sophisticated. Microsoft Research are the Xerox Parc of our time: lots of great ideas few of which make it into production. But the Win8/8.1/10 cycle has so clearly been driven by panic over tablets and phones that it's produced strange chimerical half-solutions.
mariusmg 11y ago
Chill out dude. You make it sound it a lot worse than it actually is. The MS circlejerk hate is sure strong in here.
Pxtl 11y ago
I have a surface tablet, and I love it as a device and Win10 is definitely a great step in fusing desktop and tablet UI... But there are some serious head-slappers. When running in"tablet mode" many apps open in the background invisibly, only accessible through the task-switcher button. Without even a taskbar you can't even know that anything happened at all.
z3t4 11y ago
I guess the plan is to just keep making "improvements" witch works well for keeping the platform fresh and interesting. Then monetizing it along the way. It's also nice that it will be able to run everywhere and a "Windows" app will work on all "Windows" devices.
melling 11y ago
Wow, as I Microsoft hater I kind of laugh when I read this. My opinion of Windows has always been low. Unfortunately, somewhere over the years I came to realize that the entire industry is really being hurt my Windows consumers dragging their feet about upgrading browsers and operating systems. Microsoft might be rushing too fast but you're probably still better off moving forward with them. 75% of iOS users are on Apple's latest major release. That's worth a lot. If 75% of Windows users were on 10, the Windows community would be much better off. I'd say ignore the perceived warts and get behind upgrading.
- commentzorro 11y ago
  > 75% of iOS users are on Apple's latest major release. That's because wealthier people tend to keep up with the latest technology. And Apple has always made a conscious decision to target the wealthier customers. Walk into any Best Buy and compare prices for Apple machines against the likes of Dell, Asus, Acer, and such. Poor people buy cheap because of need and upgrade only when things stop working. Rich people are more likely to buy to optimize the and share the latest and greatest experience.
  - tcfunk 11y ago
    I'm not totally sure about your statement here, but it only really serves to reinforce what was just stated. People who are picky about their tech (like those of us here on HN) are going to complain about the lack of control and forced updates. However, the population you're describing can only really stand to benefit from it all, since they do a poor job of updating on their own.
  - minionslave 11y ago
    I see more poor people with the latest iPhones and Macbooks than wealthier individuals
    - commentzorro 11y ago
      Where do you live? Maybe that has something to do with it? I help support an app with just a few thousand users (US and Canada). It's about 9 years old but still actively updated. Coincidentally, it's user base is decidedly poorer people. In the years I've been involved there have only been a handful of people running macs and about the same number running Linux. Easily 99 percent run Windows. XP was most common until last year when Windows 7 finally took over. The first Win 10 users are just starting to show up. My (admittedly limited) experience is just the opposite of yours.
gelasio 11y ago
Bullshit. Allow an actual user of Windows 10 to correct your statement, since I bet you haven't used it at all: Some things are unfinished. Mostly the consumer facing stuff (think Metro apps). Other than that, Windows 10 has been rock solid for the past 8 months or so that I've been using it on my main workstation and my main tablet.
- ionised 11y ago
  As another Win 10 user, I agree with him.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  /r/sysadmin is full of Win10 horror stories for multi-user deployments in business environments. Your one anecdote just doesn't compare. I think Win10 is very undercooked, even by MS's standards. There are simply too many use cases where its a step down from Win7. MS has more of less conceded that Win10 isn't business ready, so they have a special distribution called LTSB (Long Term Servicing Branch) of its Enterprise version. It doesn't auto-update, no feature updates, no cortana or edge, no support for app/modern apps, etc. Can you imagine windows 7 shipping with a lot of things stripped from it to make it more like XP? That would be crazy, but that's exactly what's going on here. I think by 2017-2018 it'll be fine, but two or three years from release date to get something as stable as the previous versions seems really rough.
  - gelasio 11y ago
    Right and last year it was full of Windows 8 horror stories and the years before that it was full of Windows 7 horror stories. In other news - StackOverflow.com is full of programming problems so programming must suck. Point being - /r/sysadmin is where people go to complain and ask questions. Also, it's empirically verifiable, not an anecdote - that Windows 10 runs all the same apps that I've been able to run for decades on previous versions of Windows without issue. That's what I call rock solid.
    - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
ProAm 11y ago
> It's crazy just how… unfinished everything involving Windows 10 seems to be This is how the start up world functions. Ship early, ship fast and fix things later. Microsoft is changing how they operate and are more in tuned with the rest of the world. Why the outrage when this same concerns applies to most the software we see here on HN?
- flurpitude 11y ago
  Right, that's how startups work. And that's why enterprises rarely buy software or services from startups. Microsoft is expected to be able to produce something more polished and reliable.
  - ProAm 11y ago
    But everyone complained that Microsoft was slow to change and adopt the new software practices that the world wanted. Can't have your cake and eat it too. I agree the enterprise-y applications need more polish and stability but MS needed a massive change quickly and this is it.
    - flurpitude 11y ago
      Linux distros like Ubuntu and Debian address this issue by offering different update streams so you can choose whether you want all the latest stuff or a more stable experience. Microsoft could do something similar, but they're lacking the "stable" option since the big push to Windows 8 and 10.

by creshal 11y ago

venomsnake 11y ago

Well ... it is better than 8. A lot.

nhebb 11y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually liked Windows 8.1 better than 10. It's hard for me to explain why, but Windows 10 gives me the feeling that I don't own the system - that Microsoft does and they're just letting me use it.
- userbinator 11y ago
  Windows 10 gives me the feeling that I don't own the system - that Microsoft does and they're just letting me use it. The forced updates, meaning MS has the power to (and likely will) change your environment completely without your explicit consent? I completely agree. They've even stated a few times that Win10 is a "service" and not a "product".
  - james-skemp 11y ago
    If using a laptop or the like switch your WiFi connections over to metered connections. My Surface Pro 4 was having stability issues when it slept, and updates seemed to be the issue. Switched over to metered connections and I haven't lost any work in weeks. Doesn't work for desktops or the like with wired connections.
    - sethrin 11y ago
      So it's got this malicious feature, but you can trick it into not working with some arcane (and conditional) configuration setting. I switched to Linux when XP started feeling too limiting, but this is just getting ridiculous. And without real pushback from the broader user base, odds are this is a trend that will continue.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        It this all over again... http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
    - jqm 11y ago
      "haven't lost any work in weeks..." Wow! I guess that's a win... but wow....
- bobajeff 11y ago
  My dad feels the same way only it's been this way since after 98.
- m_fayer 11y ago
  I feel exactly the same. For me Win8.1 was the pinnacle of Windows. The whole "tile-world" part of the system was misguided but ignorable, and didn't harass anyone. Tile-world aside, it was one of the most stable and performant OSs I've used. In comparison, Windows 10 makes my top-specced late 2013 Thinkpad feel like an overheating budget machine. All together I must have spent a few workdays trying to fix the machine, and despite being quite knowledgeable about Windows administration I'm still having performance issues and still have the feeling that the system really answers only to MS HQ, and has no intention of ceding control to its owner (me).
  - briHass 11y ago
    Just a thought...did you do an update or a full, clean reinstall of 10 over 8.1? From my anecdotal testing: 4 machines with update 8.1 -> 10. One was fine, the other 3 performed very poorly. Doing a clean install fixed my perf issues. The one that was fine had a almost stock (no additional software) install of 8.1 that was a few months old.
  - speeder 11y ago
    I have Windows 8.1 I also love playing some older games (right now I am in a SimCity 4 binge). I am seriously considering the next time I buy a computer, to ditch windows entirely, and use only Wine, I am having in Windows 8.1 to put Wine DLLs in more and more game folders, also if you enter many serious gaming forums, people recommend you stick with Windows 7. The reason is that Microsoft in their DirectX pushing tactics (that started when they said that WinXP would not be able to run DX10 features at all... despite hackers proving that it ca, also the Xinput vs DirectInput bullshit) they started to resort to stuff that sometimes I am not sure if is just bad coding or intentionally evil. For example for SimCity 4: The game uses DirectX7 (yes, it is that old :( ), and relies heavily on DirectDraw (that I still think is one of the most awesome pieces of tech MS ever made), on Windows 8.1, DirectDraw is completely emulated, partially with software, partially with D3D (or OGL depending on some dll combinations you have), and in a crappily coded manner. Wine ddraw.dll instead translate all DDraw calls to OpenGL equivalent in 2D, still is not perfect, but the different is obvious, DDraw games run like crap in Windows 8.1 native, and frequently run even better than when they were designed in first place when using Wine (be it in Linux, Mac or in Windows using Wine DLLs). Another game that works in Windows 7, but not in 8.1 or 10 without Wine, is the RPG "Arcanum" from Troika Games, also for the same reason: it relies on DDraw, and Windows 8.1 onwards DDraw emulation is so bad that this game renders most of the screen black, or in a wonky manner. So if I am using Wine, on Windows, more and more, why nose use Wine on a NIX anyway? Also many of the newer games have NIX support by default too (source engine games for example). EDIT: a link to someone complaining of this issue on Microsoft forums: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-gaming/directdraw-emulation-is-broken-in-windows-881/4edfc685-72b2-4688-95ed-c745ddd38825 http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-g...
- JoachimS 11y ago
  Then I'm part of that minority. I use Win 8.1 with classic button in a VM and it is a fast, stable Windows. Esp as a guest in a good OS.
ferbivore 11y ago
How so?
- static_noise 11y ago
  The start menu.

djaychela 11y ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this - I keep finding bits in W10 which seem like a student's half-finished project - the print dialog in Edge's PDF reader was the latest mess I found after a recent update. I detest the UI, it's horribly unfriendly (to my eyes, anyway), and the fact that when I keyword search for an app I use every day (Notepad++) I usually get Notepad as a suggestion before it shows there's something wrong, to me. I guess part of the problem is that Windows 7 had reached the same plateau as Word had - it does everything most people need and there's no real reason to upgrade, and that MS wants to grab a part of the app/user data market so has tried to shoehorn all that into the mess left by the "windows will be the new IOS" debacle that was Windows 8.

jay_kyburz 11y ago

I must admit I was a little surprised when I first powered up my Surface pro. I had not used a windows machine since the early days on windows 7 but needed to start at least looking at my games on windows to make sure it worked there as well. It's rough. I really like some of the new apps designed for touch, but where are the rest? There is no file browser for example? OMG the default explorer window is a mess of icons.

seivan 11y ago

Sounds like an early versions of iOS 7.

moonshinefe 11y ago

Agreed. I was bugged by several 'system notifications' the other day on my Win 10 laptop (it took focus over my RDP client in full screen, too) that various people were trying to add me to Skype, and that I needed to sign into Skype to fill in some details they wanted about something. Thing was, I'd never installed Skype on the system or even signed into it for several years, and here it was out of the blue asking me to accept friend invites from a bunch of spammers. It's now part of the "desktop experience" built in I guess (it may have to do with using a Microsoft account vs. purely local account, in my discussions with others). The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore, so I think it's time to move on soon to alternatives.

r3bl 11y ago
While you're mentioning Skype, fun fact: since Windows 8 (or 8.1, not sure), there's absolutely no freaking way to sign into Skype with a local account. Like, at all. You just can't use it what so ever unless you log in with your Windows account. EDIT: about this: > The feeling is I don't really have control over the OS anymore, so I think it's time to move on soon to alternatives. I had the same feeling since Windows 8, then I moved to Linux-based distributions. Never regretted it. I still have to deal with Windows when someone at work screws something up with their computer, but that's about it.
- throwaway13337 11y ago
  Windows now comes packaged with a version of skype that uses their 'app' system. You can still get their non-app version on the site. That version allows you to sign in to whatever user you want - it's not tied to your windows account. http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ Though I agree that skype and windows have some serious user experience issues.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Yes, you can tell the difference in search because one has a solid background and one has the blue Skype symbol in the background. wish I was kidding

pavlov 11y ago

Although Windows 10 on desktop is a bit of a mess, the Mobile edition is much worse. Microsoft is now selling Lumia phones with Windows 10 Mobile, but even Windows Central thinks it's not ready: "I'm relatively savvy with this stuff. But I was ready to throw it out of a window before someone pointed out the non-obvious thing that I needed to do. This wasn't the only piece of out-of-box jank, either, to which I was told a new firmware update should 'fix' most of. It then took 48 hours for the firmware update to show up, download and install to the phone." http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-lumia-550-review http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-lumia-550-review It's a real shame. Windows Phone 7/8 was so great because it was like an Apple product done better than Apple: it didn't have "kitchen sink" features, but instead everything just worked and was holistically designed. In the original WP7 design, the borders between apps and the OS were faded to a degree that's unique. (This design was eventually lost as Windows Phone tried to catch up with app-oriented mobile rivals.) In Windows 10 Mobile, everything has been rewritten as Universal Windows 10 apps that sort of look like the WP8 equivalents but work much worse (because they're really desktop apps squeezed onto a phone). That kind of endless strategy-driven software rewrites are the plague of Microsoft today. The OP who is disillusioned with Windows Store mentions that the Store Dashboard got much worse when Windows 10 came around. Why? Who knows -- probably somebody at MS just decided that the Dashboard needs to be implemented using hot tech X rather than stale old tech Y. This endless churn sucks and drives customers away. I quit using Windows Phone for good last year, mostly due to the customer-hostile Windows 10 plan and lack of new hardware. Can't say I've regretted it so far.

jon-wood 11y ago
> In Windows 10 Mobile, everything has been rewritten as Universal Windows 10 apps that sort of look like the WP8 equivalents but work much worse (because they're really desktop apps squeezed onto a phone). The even sadder thing is that when I tried using Windows 10 as my main OS for a while all the Windows 10 apps felt like phone apps stretched out to work on a desktop.
Joeri 11y ago
My experience going from wp8 on a lumia 920 to wp10 on a lumia 950 is that mail, calendar and settings got better, the browser is a wash trading improved site compatibility for worse battery life, and everything else that changed got worse. The wp of old was slow to update, but it was rock solid and highly usable. The new one not so much with crashes, slowdowns and battery drain issues all over. For what i paid for this phone i could have picked any android phone. I probably should have.

LoSboccacc 11y ago

my favourite is the update virus/spyware protection notification that you have to open and click manually to update like it's 1997 every time

jrs235 11y ago
Is this due to a lawsuit in the EU or someplace that requires Microsoft to specifically to ask the end user for permission to update/install files on the user's machine? This might not be on Microsoft.
- Grue3 11y ago
  >requires Microsoft to specifically to ask the end user for permission to update/install files on the user's machine? They're certainly not doing this with Windows 10.
- Piskvorrr 11y ago
  Is there such a thing? I don't think so - last time I checked, there was about 6 GB of MS-supplied malware trying to download and install itself on eeeeeeeeevery Win7 computer through Windows Update (where not prevented by technical means such as GPO or GWX Control Panel). So no, that's either a) a fictional requirement, or b) ignored by MS.
WorldMaker 11y ago
Do you have Windows Update turned off or set to not automatically update, by chance? Windows Defender automatic updates come across Windows Update.

cornholio 11y ago

> They can do better than this. Much, much better. No they can't. It's just your selective memory from the time they were a big-ass monopolist that sucked the life from any competing platform to the point where you had to use theirs. Now, when you are used to high quality design injected by Apple and then refined by competition in the mobile space, your standards have went up so high that you simply can't go back to the half baked buggy interfaces that Microsoft has always produced. The older systems don't /seem that way/ because you are familiar with them.

out_of_protocol 11y ago
They surely can (at least they were). Using win7 right now and it's clear day&night difference how crappy the UI became
- dagw 11y ago
  Also using win7 right now (at work). While the practical differences aren't huge, I personally find the UI of both windows 8.1 and windows 10 an improvement (after a few tweaks).
creshal 11y ago
Sure, Windows was never the pinnacle of good, consistent design, but it was still a lot better than Windows 10 is. The last time I was this frustrated with a Windows version was Windows Me.
pmelendez 11y ago
>when you are used to high quality design injected by Apple Hmm, people do like to glorify Apple. Just remember that Apple is the same company that told us we were holding the phone wrong and that included copy and paste after three iterations of the iPhone.

blackhole 11y ago

Full Disclosure: I worked at M$ from 2014-2015. MS has some very talented programmers. They're not very common, but they exist. The problem is that the entire company is completely and totally focused on developing an absurd number of new features and products, giving them completely unrealistic deadlines, and then shipping software on those deadlines no matter how half-assed or buggy it is. The idea is that everything is serviceable over the internet now, so they can just "fix it later", except they never do. This perpetuates a duct-tape culture that refuses to actually fix problems and instead rewards teams that find ways to work around them. The talented programmers are stuck working on code that, at best, has to deal with multiple badly designed frameworks from other teams, or at worst work on code that is simply scrapped. New features are prioritized over all but the most system-critical bugs, and teams are never given any time to actually focus on improving their code. The only improvements that can happen must be snuck in while implementing new features. As far as M$ is concerned, all code is shit, and the only thing that matters is if it works well enough to be shown at a demo and shipped. Needless to say, I don't work there anymore.

cm2187 11y ago
I think it's largely a dog fooding problem. Visual Studio is a superb piece of software, and you can tell that its designers are the primary users. Microsoft's consumer apps are awful.
- njloof 11y ago
  Visual Studio is superb? It's still a 32-bit app that crashes in daily usage.
  - JBReefer 11y ago
    I know there's a strong VS counterjerk, but nothing else comes close. I've been using it for years and all of its crashes have been 100% my fault. I know IntelliJ is great, and JetBrains in general rocks, but it's no contest.
    - 11y ago

Gravityloss 11y ago

If some person seriously wants to dedicate their life to building something high quality and long lasting in the software world (1), they're probably interested in building and contributing to open source, open standards, open interfaces, publishing papers etc. This might mean they would not want to dedicate their efforts to working on Windows. Same would hold for things like iOS as well. To me, architecturally, they seem dead ends that have to be completely binned at some point, leaving little useful legacy. Would you like to really put your life work into something like that, if there are alternatives? I think this must affect the culture, and the people they can hire. I have no idea how "open" Windows is nowadays, I haven't really used it in 8 years. 1: not necessarily building software directly, it can be algorithms, books, philosophies, languages etc.

pjc50 11y ago
If some person seriously wants to dedicate their life to building something high quality and long lasting in the software world (1), they're probably interested in building and contributing to open source, open standards, open interfaces, publishing papers etc. "Interested in" and "can get paid for" are two very different things. Microsoft have a big reliable revenue stream. The weird thing is that there are clearly some people inside Microsoft that "get it". There's a big open push from the C#/Roslyn team. F# is pretty sophisticated. Microsoft Research are the Xerox Parc of our time: lots of great ideas few of which make it into production. But the Win8/8.1/10 cycle has so clearly been driven by panic over tablets and phones that it's produced strange chimerical half-solutions.

mariusmg 11y ago

Chill out dude. You make it sound it a lot worse than it actually is. The MS circlejerk hate is sure strong in here.

Pxtl 11y ago

I have a surface tablet, and I love it as a device and Win10 is definitely a great step in fusing desktop and tablet UI... But there are some serious head-slappers. When running in"tablet mode" many apps open in the background invisibly, only accessible through the task-switcher button. Without even a taskbar you can't even know that anything happened at all.

z3t4 11y ago

I guess the plan is to just keep making "improvements" witch works well for keeping the platform fresh and interesting. Then monetizing it along the way. It's also nice that it will be able to run everywhere and a "Windows" app will work on all "Windows" devices.

melling 11y ago

Wow, as I Microsoft hater I kind of laugh when I read this. My opinion of Windows has always been low. Unfortunately, somewhere over the years I came to realize that the entire industry is really being hurt my Windows consumers dragging their feet about upgrading browsers and operating systems. Microsoft might be rushing too fast but you're probably still better off moving forward with them. 75% of iOS users are on Apple's latest major release. That's worth a lot. If 75% of Windows users were on 10, the Windows community would be much better off. I'd say ignore the perceived warts and get behind upgrading.

commentzorro 11y ago
> 75% of iOS users are on Apple's latest major release. That's because wealthier people tend to keep up with the latest technology. And Apple has always made a conscious decision to target the wealthier customers. Walk into any Best Buy and compare prices for Apple machines against the likes of Dell, Asus, Acer, and such. Poor people buy cheap because of need and upgrade only when things stop working. Rich people are more likely to buy to optimize the and share the latest and greatest experience.
- tcfunk 11y ago
  I'm not totally sure about your statement here, but it only really serves to reinforce what was just stated. People who are picky about their tech (like those of us here on HN) are going to complain about the lack of control and forced updates. However, the population you're describing can only really stand to benefit from it all, since they do a poor job of updating on their own.
- minionslave 11y ago
  I see more poor people with the latest iPhones and Macbooks than wealthier individuals
  - commentzorro 11y ago
    Where do you live? Maybe that has something to do with it? I help support an app with just a few thousand users (US and Canada). It's about 9 years old but still actively updated. Coincidentally, it's user base is decidedly poorer people. In the years I've been involved there have only been a handful of people running macs and about the same number running Linux. Easily 99 percent run Windows. XP was most common until last year when Windows 7 finally took over. The first Win 10 users are just starting to show up. My (admittedly limited) experience is just the opposite of yours.

gelasio 11y ago

Bullshit. Allow an actual user of Windows 10 to correct your statement, since I bet you haven't used it at all: Some things are unfinished. Mostly the consumer facing stuff (think Metro apps). Other than that, Windows 10 has been rock solid for the past 8 months or so that I've been using it on my main workstation and my main tablet.

ionised 11y ago
As another Win 10 user, I agree with him.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
/r/sysadmin is full of Win10 horror stories for multi-user deployments in business environments. Your one anecdote just doesn't compare. I think Win10 is very undercooked, even by MS's standards. There are simply too many use cases where its a step down from Win7. MS has more of less conceded that Win10 isn't business ready, so they have a special distribution called LTSB (Long Term Servicing Branch) of its Enterprise version. It doesn't auto-update, no feature updates, no cortana or edge, no support for app/modern apps, etc. Can you imagine windows 7 shipping with a lot of things stripped from it to make it more like XP? That would be crazy, but that's exactly what's going on here. I think by 2017-2018 it'll be fine, but two or three years from release date to get something as stable as the previous versions seems really rough.
- gelasio 11y ago
  Right and last year it was full of Windows 8 horror stories and the years before that it was full of Windows 7 horror stories. In other news - StackOverflow.com is full of programming problems so programming must suck. Point being - /r/sysadmin is where people go to complain and ask questions. Also, it's empirically verifiable, not an anecdote - that Windows 10 runs all the same apps that I've been able to run for decades on previous versions of Windows without issue. That's what I call rock solid.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago

ProAm 11y ago

> It's crazy just how… unfinished everything involving Windows 10 seems to be This is how the start up world functions. Ship early, ship fast and fix things later. Microsoft is changing how they operate and are more in tuned with the rest of the world. Why the outrage when this same concerns applies to most the software we see here on HN?

flurpitude 11y ago
Right, that's how startups work. And that's why enterprises rarely buy software or services from startups. Microsoft is expected to be able to produce something more polished and reliable.
- ProAm 11y ago
  But everyone complained that Microsoft was slow to change and adopt the new software practices that the world wanted. Can't have your cake and eat it too. I agree the enterprise-y applications need more polish and stability but MS needed a massive change quickly and this is it.
  - flurpitude 11y ago
    Linux distros like Ubuntu and Debian address this issue by offering different update streams so you can choose whether you want all the latest stuff or a more stable experience. Microsoft could do something similar, but they're lacking the "stable" option since the big push to Windows 8 and 10.