4 ms·

Windows 10 is not a disaster and never has been. There's great stuff for everybody. It's the same rock-solid OS that every business depends on, that is still a

Windows 10 is not a disaster and never has been. There's great stuff for everybody. It's the same rock-solid OS that every business depends on, that is still able to run all the software from 20 years ago, yet it also offers a ton of new functionality. What other desktop OS can you say that about? IMO, there isn't a better desktop OS out there. Just last night I was actually running some games from 1995 on my 5 year old PC running Windows 10 that is plugged into my brand new 4k smart tv.

rayiner 10y ago
Windows 10 is still a schizoid failure to merge the "desktop" and "modern" worlds: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settings-uis-why-are-both-still-options-in-windows-10 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settin.... High-DPI scaling is a disaster that is only now being fixed in the Anniversary update: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2016/08/16/display-scaling-changes-for-the-windows-10-anniversary-update https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2016/08/16/displ.... There are battery life regressions even on Microsoft hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3isuu4/windows_10_vs_windows_81_battery_life_sp3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3isuu4/windows_10_....
- WayneBro 10y ago
  Wow. So, your evidence that it's a "disaster" is one random blog post and a handful of reddit complaints... That's a BIG deal. I guess I should go uninstall Windows 10 from all the High-DPI devices that I'm running it on right now and install...what? I'm guessing that anything that's not perfect qualifies as a disaster in your opinion. Could you recommend an OS for me? I'll go and make sure that there are no critical articles about it and that the OS manufacturer has never had to fix anything because every major release came out perfectly the first time. Thanks!
  - rayiner 10y ago
    I referenced the articles for the facts therein. Are you disputing that Windows 10 bizarrely has two different control panels? Or that it has trouble moving applications between high-DPI and regular-DPI settings? It's okay to "not be perfect" when it comes to extra features or marginal functions. But stuff like text display, configuration, and power management are things that an OS needs to get perfect.
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      The article you linked to is talking about a new feature, per-thread DPI awareness, which is something that macOS has never had—NSHighResolutionCapable is per-app (in the Info.plist) and always has been. It seems strange, then, to claim that this feature is needed for HiDPI to not be "broken". Rather, the problem here is that legacy APIs, which Windows has a lot of, are not HiDPI capable, and attempts to retrofit them are always going to be hacks. Apple has the same issue with Carbon—Carbon is not HiDPI capable either.
      - rayiner 10y ago
        The article is also talking about non-client area scaling which is not a per thread issue. Also, it gives the example of the print dialog in Notepad not scaling. That's a first party app! Sure, Carbon doesn't scale. It was effectively deprecated almost ten years ago when it wasn't ported to 64-bit. Apple rapidly rewrote its first-party apps and they've been scalable for years. Basic first party apps in Windows 10 don't scale properly. I don't know what you can call that other than a disaster.
        pcwalton 10y ago
        > The article is also talking about non-client area scaling which is not a per thread issue. It's talking about that and the per thread DPI issue. And again, it seems to be backwards compatibility that's the issue. Note that you have to opt in to the non-client-area scaling with a special API. > Also, it gives the example of the print dialog in Notepad not scaling. That's a first party app! Are you sure notepad.exe can be even changed? It's a tiny wrapper around a comctl32.dll TEXT control. The Print dialog is pure comdlg32.dll, and I'm sure there are backwards compatibility reasons why that cannot be changed. Wine has to fairly precisely duplicate notepad.exe, so I suspect there is some backwards compatibility reason why it has to be the way it is. Remember that Win32 is totally based on using exact pixel coordinates for everything. There are a lot fewer apps hardcoding pixel measurements of things in the Apple world (and coordinates in classic Win32 are in integers, not CGFloats as in Core Graphics/Cocoa). Microsoft can't even change the Windows 95 default style of buttons without opt-in without breaking apps! > Apple rapidly rewrote its first-party apps Not iTunes! It is still Carbon.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  > Windows 10 is still a schizoid failure to merge the "desktop" and "modern" worlds: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settin... http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settin.... Apple's "Lion is a Quitter" botched attempt to merge the iOS file paradigm with the Mac file paradigm was easily worse than this. I think it's fair to say that both Apple and Microsoft have had difficulties bringing mobile paradigms to the desktop, and I think it's even fair to say that Windows 8 was deeply flawed. But at this point both Apple and Microsoft (heck, even GNOME 3) have gotten over their growing pains in this regard and have made quite usable systems. I switch between Mac, Windows, and Linux desktop frequently and I find that they've all converged to a pretty similar point of usability.

rayiner 10y ago

Windows 10 is still a schizoid failure to merge the "desktop" and "modern" worlds: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settings-uis-why-are-both-still-options-in-windows-10 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settin.... High-DPI scaling is a disaster that is only now being fixed in the Anniversary update: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2016/08/16/display-scaling-changes-for-the-windows-10-anniversary-update https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2016/08/16/displ.... There are battery life regressions even on Microsoft hardware: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3isuu4/windows_10_vs_windows_81_battery_life_sp3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3isuu4/windows_10_....

WayneBro 10y ago
Wow. So, your evidence that it's a "disaster" is one random blog post and a handful of reddit complaints... That's a BIG deal. I guess I should go uninstall Windows 10 from all the High-DPI devices that I'm running it on right now and install...what? I'm guessing that anything that's not perfect qualifies as a disaster in your opinion. Could you recommend an OS for me? I'll go and make sure that there are no critical articles about it and that the OS manufacturer has never had to fix anything because every major release came out perfectly the first time. Thanks!
- rayiner 10y ago
  I referenced the articles for the facts therein. Are you disputing that Windows 10 bizarrely has two different control panels? Or that it has trouble moving applications between high-DPI and regular-DPI settings? It's okay to "not be perfect" when it comes to extra features or marginal functions. But stuff like text display, configuration, and power management are things that an OS needs to get perfect.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    The article you linked to is talking about a new feature, per-thread DPI awareness, which is something that macOS has never had—NSHighResolutionCapable is per-app (in the Info.plist) and always has been. It seems strange, then, to claim that this feature is needed for HiDPI to not be "broken". Rather, the problem here is that legacy APIs, which Windows has a lot of, are not HiDPI capable, and attempts to retrofit them are always going to be hacks. Apple has the same issue with Carbon—Carbon is not HiDPI capable either.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      The article is also talking about non-client area scaling which is not a per thread issue. Also, it gives the example of the print dialog in Notepad not scaling. That's a first party app! Sure, Carbon doesn't scale. It was effectively deprecated almost ten years ago when it wasn't ported to 64-bit. Apple rapidly rewrote its first-party apps and they've been scalable for years. Basic first party apps in Windows 10 don't scale properly. I don't know what you can call that other than a disaster.
      - pcwalton 10y ago
        > The article is also talking about non-client area scaling which is not a per thread issue. It's talking about that and the per thread DPI issue. And again, it seems to be backwards compatibility that's the issue. Note that you have to opt in to the non-client-area scaling with a special API. > Also, it gives the example of the print dialog in Notepad not scaling. That's a first party app! Are you sure notepad.exe can be even changed? It's a tiny wrapper around a comctl32.dll TEXT control. The Print dialog is pure comdlg32.dll, and I'm sure there are backwards compatibility reasons why that cannot be changed. Wine has to fairly precisely duplicate notepad.exe, so I suspect there is some backwards compatibility reason why it has to be the way it is. Remember that Win32 is totally based on using exact pixel coordinates for everything. There are a lot fewer apps hardcoding pixel measurements of things in the Apple world (and coordinates in classic Win32 are in integers, not CGFloats as in Core Graphics/Cocoa). Microsoft can't even change the Windows 95 default style of buttons without opt-in without breaking apps! > Apple rapidly rewrote its first-party apps Not iTunes! It is still Carbon.
pcwalton 10y ago
> Windows 10 is still a schizoid failure to merge the "desktop" and "modern" worlds: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settin... http://www.techrepublic.com/article/control-panel-and-settin.... Apple's "Lion is a Quitter" botched attempt to merge the iOS file paradigm with the Mac file paradigm was easily worse than this. I think it's fair to say that both Apple and Microsoft have had difficulties bringing mobile paradigms to the desktop, and I think it's even fair to say that Windows 8 was deeply flawed. But at this point both Apple and Microsoft (heck, even GNOME 3) have gotten over their growing pains in this regard and have made quite usable systems. I switch between Mac, Windows, and Linux desktop frequently and I find that they've all converged to a pretty similar point of usability.