7 ms·

From the outside world Vista just didn't look compelling. Yet another Microsoft OS with a fresh set of incompatible hardware drivers. There was no clear visio

From the outside world Vista just didn't look compelling. Yet another Microsoft OS with a fresh set of incompatible hardware drivers. There was no clear vision about what a modern OS should be. It felt bloated and clunky. Vista felt like it was trying to be everything to everyone and not really being anything much special to anyone. By contrast, OSX seemed to know what it was, and provided a cohesive integrated whole in which things just worked. Most importantly, Apple somehow managed to generally provide just one way of doing things. For example configuring networking on OSX happens in network preferences. On Windows, to this day, configuration seems to be all over the place, a bit here, a bit there, and many different visual and UI styles for the configuration. Made even worse by add in software for configuration from hardware vendors. Even now with Windows 10 I dread having to resolve ANY sort of network issue - where to start - which rabbit hole will the required setting be down? Windows had - and still has - problems that have never bee fully solved and they make the platform so unappealing. Shutdown of the Windows OS could never be relied on to actually happen without hanging for some reason. Hibernate mode when closing the laptop lid was equally unreliable. Constant application crashes. Multitasking that just wasn't - all the time the OS would become unresponsive due to the behaviour of some application, which leads to the next major issue was a seeming inability for Windows to actually force kill processes when instructed - that rarely worked. Even something as trivial as deleting a job from a printer queue - basically forget it. After Vista, Windows 7 seemed to clean things up a bit before they got even worse, with Windows 8 just being an absolutely definitive statement that Microsoft did not know what Windows was or where to take it - I mean for goodness sake - removing access to control panel? Crazy. The latest versions of Windows are better but no-one has had the courage to do what Windows really needs which is to get rid of the registry - that chewing-gum-in-the-hair-mixed-with-spaghetti central configuration settings black hole.

Joeri 9y ago
None of the usability problems you mention have to do with the registry, so I fail to see how getting rid of it would materially improve the windows experience. The core problem with windows 10 for me is and remains the crappy driver situation. Drivers on windows are far less robust than on OS X, and OS and/or driver updates create many more problems. This isn't tied to any particular windows version, but W10 suffers from it more because updates happen with much less control over the when and where, which means drivers break in more awkward moments. An example from my own workplace is that a lot of my coworkers have had their laptop keyboard break after a W7 update. Windows reboots to update, and ctrl-alt-del no longer works, not on the built-in keyboard and not on an external one, so you're locked out. The solution is connecting via remote desktop and logging in once, after which windows update picks back up and fixes the problem, but that's not always a convenient thing to do. I bet that microsoft doesn't even see that in their metrics, because to them it's just a remote desktop login, so they probably think those updates don't have any problems (after all, the update gets installed and people seem to go back about their business).
- thomasrognon 9y ago
  To be fair, drivers are a much more difficult problem for Microsoft because they don't control the hardware like Apple does. There are way more devices out there for Windows machines, and an insane number of combinations that have to work together without ever having been tested together.
  - Joeri 9y ago
    That still doesn't explain why an external keyboard breaks. Keyboards are not exotic hardware, and they all work just fine when connected up to a mac.
    - metaphor 9y ago
      If Windows Update was able to fix the problem after being reinitialized, then your original description sounds more like a Windows Update hiccup rather than an inherent driver issue.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Could be a permissions problem. These days you can authorize Windows to log you in upon reboot so that Update the finish up.
  - wruza 9y ago
    Why the hell changing how drivers work with every release in the first place?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      You are mixing Windows with GNU/Linux. The drivers ABI has only changed a few times, instead of every point release.
      - wruza 9y ago
        I'm not contrasting windows to anything. The fact is that with every Windows Whatever I must go to sites and download new drivers, experiencing a lot of frustration on the way, or buy a new device only to make new generation of windows kernel developers happy. "Few times" is too much.
krylon 9y ago
> On Windows, to this day, configuration seems to be all over the place, a bit here, a bit there, and many different visual and UI styles for the configuration. With mmc and the various snap-ins, I get the feeling the code has not been touched in at least a decade. Regarding the Registry, I have a funny anecdote: During development of Windows 7, Microsoft tried to be very open and communicative to rebuild some of the trust that Vista had shattered. So, there was this video of an interview of a few Windows developers about all the cool and interesting things they worked on. Halfway through the interview, the guy behind the camera asks, "So what do you guys think about the registry?". There was a long awkward silence, the developers started to grin and giggle. Eventually, one of them replied, "Let's just say it has turned out to be more widely used than its creators had anticipated". (In other words, yes, the registry sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner!)
- amatwl 9y ago
  It goes earlier than that. Here's a bit from a presentation that Tony Williams (considered the "co-creator of COM") gave once about the Registry: http://i.imgur.com/52YiK2Y.gifv http://i.imgur.com/52YiK2Y.gifv Essentially, the Registry was a stop-gap to store configuration information about COM in Windows 3.1 until Cairo came along (which never did). Then the Windows 95 guys came around and decided to use it as the replacement for .ini files. And the rest is history.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    You know how the saying goes: Nothing's more permanent than a temporary solution.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- digi_owl 9y ago
  The oddest thing i have found about the Registry is that it has its own ACL, independent of the file system ACL. Thinking about it, it strikes me that the registry is similar to the Office file formats. Effectively file systems rolled up into files.
alkonaut 9y ago
I don't know - perhaps it's selective memory but OS X was a trainwreck too in early releases. If you consider vista to be the .0 release of windows 7 then it makes more sense. Most of what was good in win7 was in vista, but was overshadowed by bugs and performance issues.
- GeekyBear 9y ago
  Jim Allchin, who led the Windows client team, famously wrote an email to Gates and Ballmer during the development of Longhorn saying that Microsoft had lost it's way and that if he didn't work for Microsoft he would run OS X himself. http://www.macworld.com/article/1054364/allchin.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1054364/allchin.html Trainwreck seems a bit of an overstatement when discussing that time period.
insulanian 9y ago
> ... no-one has had the courage to do what Windows really needs which is to get rid of the registry - that chewing-gum-in-the-hair-mixed-with-spaghetti central configuration settings black hole. This! I couldn't say it better myself.
- xaqfox 9y ago
  It's like SystemD for Windows.
  - dTal 9y ago
    Or more accurately, gconf. Thankfully deprecated now.
sjellis 9y ago
> After Vista, Windows 7 seemed to clean things up a bit before they got even worse, with Windows 8 just being an absolutely definitive statement that Microsoft did not know what Windows was or where to take it - I mean for goodness sake - removing access to control panel? Crazy. > The latest versions of Windows are better but no-one has had the courage to do what Windows really needs which is to get rid of the registry - that chewing-gum-in-the-hair-mixed-with-spaghetti central configuration settings black hole. The registry is exhibit A in the case for Windows being essentially a legacy OS at this point. Microsoft no longer seems to have the incentives, or, after the Vista disaster, the political will to make big architectural changes to fix basic problems of Windows: the configuration mess, the gaggle of different poor package management systems that PS PackageManagement is papering over, the muddle of logging, etc. Windows 10 also looks like Microsoft accepting a strategy of slow incremental improvements, or no improvements at all.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  "Windows 10 also looks like Microsoft accepting a strategy of slow incremental improvements" Good.
jpalomaki 9y ago
I believe Windows 8 hit the same problem as Vista. Too ambitious plans for the available time frame so engineers did not have time to get things right. For example the Modern UI was actually pretty neat idea, but of course the version that shipped with Windows 8 was completely useless. They should have waited until the screen splitting was working and figure out a way to easily split the screen between traditional and modern apps. What's the main issue with registry or what would be better alternative? I think this kind of database oriented way of storing the settings with transaction support is actually pretty good approach.
- ethbro 9y ago
  In both cases the story seems like it can be summed up as "spec'd rewrites of major subsystems, and worry about implementations of how people actually use them later". E.g. all the missing Win 8 basic Windows functionality, where the underlying system existed but no GUI had been written to expose it And how Windows Explorer search is still a cluster$&#@ that's regressed in functionality since XP (available operands to specify search params, scope, speed, etc).
- Sunset 9y ago
  Another highly annoying example of good ideas just not finished properly is trying to use multiple virtual desktops on multiple monitors. For some reason switching the virtual destkots switches to the new desktop for ALL physical monitors. Just why... The devs have also STILL not figured out how to give a simple and easy way to move windows from one monitor to another from the alt-tab menu.
digi_owl 9y ago
> removing access to control panel? Crazy. Actually the control panel is present even in Windows 10. You just have to dig it out of the Start view/menu.
- h_r 9y ago
  Or just type "control" into the start bar. No digging required.

Joeri 9y ago

None of the usability problems you mention have to do with the registry, so I fail to see how getting rid of it would materially improve the windows experience. The core problem with windows 10 for me is and remains the crappy driver situation. Drivers on windows are far less robust than on OS X, and OS and/or driver updates create many more problems. This isn't tied to any particular windows version, but W10 suffers from it more because updates happen with much less control over the when and where, which means drivers break in more awkward moments. An example from my own workplace is that a lot of my coworkers have had their laptop keyboard break after a W7 update. Windows reboots to update, and ctrl-alt-del no longer works, not on the built-in keyboard and not on an external one, so you're locked out. The solution is connecting via remote desktop and logging in once, after which windows update picks back up and fixes the problem, but that's not always a convenient thing to do. I bet that microsoft doesn't even see that in their metrics, because to them it's just a remote desktop login, so they probably think those updates don't have any problems (after all, the update gets installed and people seem to go back about their business).

thomasrognon 9y ago
To be fair, drivers are a much more difficult problem for Microsoft because they don't control the hardware like Apple does. There are way more devices out there for Windows machines, and an insane number of combinations that have to work together without ever having been tested together.
- Joeri 9y ago
  That still doesn't explain why an external keyboard breaks. Keyboards are not exotic hardware, and they all work just fine when connected up to a mac.
  - metaphor 9y ago
    If Windows Update was able to fix the problem after being reinitialized, then your original description sounds more like a Windows Update hiccup rather than an inherent driver issue.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Could be a permissions problem. These days you can authorize Windows to log you in upon reboot so that Update the finish up.
- wruza 9y ago
  Why the hell changing how drivers work with every release in the first place?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    You are mixing Windows with GNU/Linux. The drivers ABI has only changed a few times, instead of every point release.
    - wruza 9y ago
      I'm not contrasting windows to anything. The fact is that with every Windows Whatever I must go to sites and download new drivers, experiencing a lot of frustration on the way, or buy a new device only to make new generation of windows kernel developers happy. "Few times" is too much.

krylon 9y ago

> On Windows, to this day, configuration seems to be all over the place, a bit here, a bit there, and many different visual and UI styles for the configuration. With mmc and the various snap-ins, I get the feeling the code has not been touched in at least a decade. Regarding the Registry, I have a funny anecdote: During development of Windows 7, Microsoft tried to be very open and communicative to rebuild some of the trust that Vista had shattered. So, there was this video of an interview of a few Windows developers about all the cool and interesting things they worked on. Halfway through the interview, the guy behind the camera asks, "So what do you guys think about the registry?". There was a long awkward silence, the developers started to grin and giggle. Eventually, one of them replied, "Let's just say it has turned out to be more widely used than its creators had anticipated". (In other words, yes, the registry sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner!)

amatwl 9y ago
It goes earlier than that. Here's a bit from a presentation that Tony Williams (considered the "co-creator of COM") gave once about the Registry: http://i.imgur.com/52YiK2Y.gifv http://i.imgur.com/52YiK2Y.gifv Essentially, the Registry was a stop-gap to store configuration information about COM in Windows 3.1 until Cairo came along (which never did). Then the Windows 95 guys came around and decided to use it as the replacement for .ini files. And the rest is history.
- majewsky 9y ago
  You know how the saying goes: Nothing's more permanent than a temporary solution.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
digi_owl 9y ago
The oddest thing i have found about the Registry is that it has its own ACL, independent of the file system ACL. Thinking about it, it strikes me that the registry is similar to the Office file formats. Effectively file systems rolled up into files.

alkonaut 9y ago

I don't know - perhaps it's selective memory but OS X was a trainwreck too in early releases. If you consider vista to be the .0 release of windows 7 then it makes more sense. Most of what was good in win7 was in vista, but was overshadowed by bugs and performance issues.

GeekyBear 9y ago
Jim Allchin, who led the Windows client team, famously wrote an email to Gates and Ballmer during the development of Longhorn saying that Microsoft had lost it's way and that if he didn't work for Microsoft he would run OS X himself. http://www.macworld.com/article/1054364/allchin.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1054364/allchin.html Trainwreck seems a bit of an overstatement when discussing that time period.

insulanian 9y ago

> ... no-one has had the courage to do what Windows really needs which is to get rid of the registry - that chewing-gum-in-the-hair-mixed-with-spaghetti central configuration settings black hole. This! I couldn't say it better myself.

xaqfox 9y ago
It's like SystemD for Windows.
- dTal 9y ago
  Or more accurately, gconf. Thankfully deprecated now.

sjellis 9y ago

> After Vista, Windows 7 seemed to clean things up a bit before they got even worse, with Windows 8 just being an absolutely definitive statement that Microsoft did not know what Windows was or where to take it - I mean for goodness sake - removing access to control panel? Crazy. > The latest versions of Windows are better but no-one has had the courage to do what Windows really needs which is to get rid of the registry - that chewing-gum-in-the-hair-mixed-with-spaghetti central configuration settings black hole. The registry is exhibit A in the case for Windows being essentially a legacy OS at this point. Microsoft no longer seems to have the incentives, or, after the Vista disaster, the political will to make big architectural changes to fix basic problems of Windows: the configuration mess, the gaggle of different poor package management systems that PS PackageManagement is papering over, the muddle of logging, etc. Windows 10 also looks like Microsoft accepting a strategy of slow incremental improvements, or no improvements at all.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
"Windows 10 also looks like Microsoft accepting a strategy of slow incremental improvements" Good.

jpalomaki 9y ago

I believe Windows 8 hit the same problem as Vista. Too ambitious plans for the available time frame so engineers did not have time to get things right. For example the Modern UI was actually pretty neat idea, but of course the version that shipped with Windows 8 was completely useless. They should have waited until the screen splitting was working and figure out a way to easily split the screen between traditional and modern apps. What's the main issue with registry or what would be better alternative? I think this kind of database oriented way of storing the settings with transaction support is actually pretty good approach.

ethbro 9y ago
In both cases the story seems like it can be summed up as "spec'd rewrites of major subsystems, and worry about implementations of how people actually use them later". E.g. all the missing Win 8 basic Windows functionality, where the underlying system existed but no GUI had been written to expose it And how Windows Explorer search is still a cluster$&#@ that's regressed in functionality since XP (available operands to specify search params, scope, speed, etc).
Sunset 9y ago
Another highly annoying example of good ideas just not finished properly is trying to use multiple virtual desktops on multiple monitors. For some reason switching the virtual destkots switches to the new desktop for ALL physical monitors. Just why... The devs have also STILL not figured out how to give a simple and easy way to move windows from one monitor to another from the alt-tab menu.

digi_owl 9y ago

> removing access to control panel? Crazy. Actually the control panel is present even in Windows 10. You just have to dig it out of the Start view/menu.

h_r 9y ago
Or just type "control" into the start bar. No digging required.