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Even the 1984 Macintosh was snappy in its user interface: when you clicked a menu it opened instantly, when you dragged a window it always moved instantaneously

Even the 1984 Macintosh was snappy in its user interface: when you clicked a menu it opened instantly, when you dragged a window it always moved instantaneously. Working with Windows even 20 years later was disappointing. You click the Start menu, and waited. Finally it appeared. You hovered over a menu item and waited. Finally its submenu appeared.

brokenmachine 10y ago
There was a hover delay built into WinXP which I also found annoying, but you could disable it (for free) using Powertoys for XP from Microsoft. It wasn't the computer that was too slow but a stupid UI decision by Microsoft. That was easy to fix though. I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. It was shit. It was much harder to do anything useful. Try editing a video for instance. Or even just emailing a photo. Or loading a file from a floppy which took tens of seconds. Some people remember the experience of using an old PC as being better because it was simpler because they didn't even attempt to do anything more complex than very basic tasks like word processing. I remember launching an application on a 1989 Mac SE30 took (I'm guessing) about 10 seconds. You heard the HD thrashing around long before the application was visible. Most programs launch in less than two seconds on my >5yr old i5-2500 with an SSD (Windows 7). The machine has started up and is ready to use in less than a minute. I have over 300 tabs in Firefox and it is still responsive (admittedly after a significant launch delay, but after that it's fast). You could run notepad/Word and nothing else if you want on a modern PC and it will run lightning fast, and the menus are quick. If you enjoy the old PC experience so much, there's no reason you can't continue to use one.
- combatentropy 10y ago
  > There was a hover delay built into WinXP No, this was longer and inconsistent. The more I used the menu, the faster it got, until finally the built-in delay was the only delay. > I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. No, I'm just saying that there were some nice things about old Macs that took Windows decades to match. And I'm agreeing with the article that there are some subtleties that are still hard to beat, despite many other things that are of course many times worse. The article wasn't about how an old Mac is better in every way and we should all dump our modern computers and go back. It was pondering the irony: "Hey, isn't it ironic that this computer can't open Facebook, but it has a spatially oriented file browser the remembers the spots for all your icons in every folder." To this day, Windows cannot keep the Recycle Bin in the bottom-right corner across screen resizes. It is obviously recording the coordinate from the screen's top left. That always bugged me too (I know, it's the small things).
cpeterso 10y ago
I recently switched back to Windows after using OS X exclusively for about five years. Windows has the ergonomics and aesthetics of a U-Haul. :) I don't know how regular people can use Windows productively without breaking everything. All the controls and settings are so persnickety and janky, built upon strata of earlier generations that are still in the way. There are so many little things Microsoft could do to streamline the user experience and make it feel solid without alienating existing users, but they just keep adding more to the stew or throwing curve balls like Metro.
- toast0 10y ago
  > I don't know how regular people can use Windows productively without breaking everything. With the keyboard. The UI changes, and the mouse handles move around, but the keyboard shortcuts still work (mostly). After using a Mac for work for almost 5 years, it still annoys me the amount of things you can't easily do without the mouse.
  - cpeterso 10y ago
    That's a good point. I worked at Microsoft, back during Windows 2000, and engineering management would encourage "no mouse" days to identify UI that was not keyboard friendly.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  I don't understand why they haven't updated shell32.dll with new icons in Windows 10, instead of the 50 different icon sets available. Open MMC, put in a snap in, open Explorer, open Control Panel, open Settings and observe the plethora of conflicting icons. It's horrible.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    Because new icons take artists' time and effort? Windows 10 is slowly converging icon sets, it just clearly takes time. Additionally, as you point out, many of the classic icons are embedded into system DLLs and EXEs. Servicing some of those files is a potential backwards compatibility nightmare and as a programmer I can understand not taking that lightly. (Not to mention, as much as people complain about "unnecessary" restarts from Windows updates, how many people would complain about a restart just to change icons in a system DLL?)
digi_owl 10y ago
Woz mentioned something some time ago about how before OSX a whole lot of the Mac OS was housed in ROM. His claim was that this contributed to the security of the platform, and i suspect it may also have contributed to the snappiness you refer to. Frankly, the statement makes me think that pre-OSX Macintosh was the last holdout of the microcomputer era.

brokenmachine 10y ago

There was a hover delay built into WinXP which I also found annoying, but you could disable it (for free) using Powertoys for XP from Microsoft. It wasn't the computer that was too slow but a stupid UI decision by Microsoft. That was easy to fix though. I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. It was shit. It was much harder to do anything useful. Try editing a video for instance. Or even just emailing a photo. Or loading a file from a floppy which took tens of seconds. Some people remember the experience of using an old PC as being better because it was simpler because they didn't even attempt to do anything more complex than very basic tasks like word processing. I remember launching an application on a 1989 Mac SE30 took (I'm guessing) about 10 seconds. You heard the HD thrashing around long before the application was visible. Most programs launch in less than two seconds on my >5yr old i5-2500 with an SSD (Windows 7). The machine has started up and is ready to use in less than a minute. I have over 300 tabs in Firefox and it is still responsive (admittedly after a significant launch delay, but after that it's fast). You could run notepad/Word and nothing else if you want on a modern PC and it will run lightning fast, and the menus are quick. If you enjoy the old PC experience so much, there's no reason you can't continue to use one.

combatentropy 10y ago
> There was a hover delay built into WinXP No, this was longer and inconsistent. The more I used the menu, the faster it got, until finally the built-in delay was the only delay. > I think you are being far too nostalgic about the experience using old computers. No, I'm just saying that there were some nice things about old Macs that took Windows decades to match. And I'm agreeing with the article that there are some subtleties that are still hard to beat, despite many other things that are of course many times worse. The article wasn't about how an old Mac is better in every way and we should all dump our modern computers and go back. It was pondering the irony: "Hey, isn't it ironic that this computer can't open Facebook, but it has a spatially oriented file browser the remembers the spots for all your icons in every folder." To this day, Windows cannot keep the Recycle Bin in the bottom-right corner across screen resizes. It is obviously recording the coordinate from the screen's top left. That always bugged me too (I know, it's the small things).

cpeterso 10y ago

I recently switched back to Windows after using OS X exclusively for about five years. Windows has the ergonomics and aesthetics of a U-Haul. :) I don't know how regular people can use Windows productively without breaking everything. All the controls and settings are so persnickety and janky, built upon strata of earlier generations that are still in the way. There are so many little things Microsoft could do to streamline the user experience and make it feel solid without alienating existing users, but they just keep adding more to the stew or throwing curve balls like Metro.

toast0 10y ago
> I don't know how regular people can use Windows productively without breaking everything. With the keyboard. The UI changes, and the mouse handles move around, but the keyboard shortcuts still work (mostly). After using a Mac for work for almost 5 years, it still annoys me the amount of things you can't easily do without the mouse.
- cpeterso 10y ago
  That's a good point. I worked at Microsoft, back during Windows 2000, and engineering management would encourage "no mouse" days to identify UI that was not keyboard friendly.
72deluxe 10y ago
I don't understand why they haven't updated shell32.dll with new icons in Windows 10, instead of the 50 different icon sets available. Open MMC, put in a snap in, open Explorer, open Control Panel, open Settings and observe the plethora of conflicting icons. It's horrible.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  Because new icons take artists' time and effort? Windows 10 is slowly converging icon sets, it just clearly takes time. Additionally, as you point out, many of the classic icons are embedded into system DLLs and EXEs. Servicing some of those files is a potential backwards compatibility nightmare and as a programmer I can understand not taking that lightly. (Not to mention, as much as people complain about "unnecessary" restarts from Windows updates, how many people would complain about a restart just to change icons in a system DLL?)

digi_owl 10y ago

Woz mentioned something some time ago about how before OSX a whole lot of the Mac OS was housed in ROM. His claim was that this contributed to the security of the platform, and i suspect it may also have contributed to the snappiness you refer to. Frankly, the statement makes me think that pre-OSX Macintosh was the last holdout of the microcomputer era.