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Am I the only one who doesn’t like the backwards-compatibility that Microsoft Windows provides? I find it frustrating to see the operating system itself not coh

Am I the only one who doesn’t like the backwards-compatibility that Microsoft Windows provides? I find it frustrating to see the operating system itself not coherent, thinks like having multiple places for configuration (settings app and the control panel), non-HiDPI panels that popup from various parts of the operating system, etc. I find it frustrating to not have an operating system that has the polish & coherency of macOS on non-Macs, and that’s one of the biggest reasons why these Mac people (myself included) doesn’t even consider moving out of macOS.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
We could retain the ability to launch old apps and still have Settings in one place. They don't inherently go together. Microsoft might need to add something like a legacy control panel which only appears if you install an old app that adds something there. Users who don't use old apps wouldn't see it, so no harm done versus dropping support completely. And, I don't understand why Microsoft couldn't integrate those panels into the modern Settings UI, even if the underlying framework and visuals were different.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > I could imagine you might need a legacy Control Panel that only appears if you install an old app that adds something to it—but anyone who doesn't use those legacy apps wouldn't see it. Yeah, and that means (at least for me) non-coherency of the platform. Why should there be two different settings on one OS, depending whether the user installed the app it or not? > And even then, there's no reason Microsoft couldn't add a visual update and even integrate the UI into Settings. FYI: the reason Microsoft can’t remove this control panel stuff is because some legacy apps (mostly designed for enterprise) installs DLLs that adds a control panel item. This is one of the examples where their backwards compatibility drags them to make a better OS.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    > Yeah, and that means (at least for me) non-coherency of the platform. Then don't install old apps and you'll get coherency. This is much better than outright blocking those old apps for everyone. > FYI: the reason Microsoft can’t remove this control panel stuff is because some legacy apps (mostly designed for enterprise) installs DLLs that adds a control panel item If I were Microsoft, I would remove the "Control Panel" as a program the user can open, but keep the underlying framework. Then, if a legacy program adds a control panel item, I'd place a shortcut to that item in modern Settings. It might not be 100% visually perfect, but you'd get most of the way there. If there's some technical reason Microsoft can't do that (I don't understand how there could be—we're talking about shortcuts), at minimum the legacy Control Panel shouldn't appear until a 3rd party item is pushed to it, and it shouldn't contain any Microsoft settings. The current situation is completely unnecessary.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      > If I were Microsoft, I would remove the "Control Panel" as a program the user can open They did and people got upset. It's a "who moved my cheese" backward compatibility problem for people. People get upset if they can't find that thing they always used and worked just fine. For a brief while Windows 10 the legacy Control Panel was entirely removed from Search, and there were so many complaints so they backed off and it's searchable again. That's about the only way to find it; at this point in Windows 10 it's not in the Start Menu, it's not File Explorer Quick Access. People have to intentionally find the Control Panel. People still talk about the COM GUID to the legacy Control Panel as if it were some secret cheat code to Windows, making shortcuts to the Control Panel because it looks familiar and powerful and/or they don't want to relearn anything new, don't want to get used to the all the cheese that moved around in the modern Settings app.
      - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        I have vague memories of complaints, but I recall it being because Settings was lacking a lot of really basic functionality at the time.
        7y ago
- BEEdwards 7y ago
  >Microsoft might need to add something like a legacy control panel which only appears if you install an old app that adds something there. That's literally what they've done, the problem is most of their own systems are legacy!
airstrike 7y ago
> that’s one of the biggest reasons why these Mac people (myself included) doesn’t even consider moving out of macOS Fortunately for Microsoft this "issue" has historically resulted in some additional (if uneven) familiarity among Enterprise users, where MacOS is nowhere to be found, though I do concede it's been getting out of hand now with Windows 10
- pcr910303 7y ago
  Yeah, and AFAIK they actually maintain an alternative version of Windows (LTSB they call it) for enterprise. I would like a modernized Windows without all the cruft; one of the reasons Windows apps have such poor quality is that apps don’t need to update their internals, so they just can’t get advantage of the newer features. I’m not sure, but last time I saw the Windows land, win32-based apps HiDPI support is opt-in, not opt-out. Apple has a great record on deprecating things in a fairly understandable speed, so apps in macOS generally have up-to-date internals with all of the features working consistently. Most apps use the control-center (compared to Windows where every app reinvents notifications, even with the existence of the notification center added in Windows 10), use macOS tabs, users can define keybindings that work in every Cocoa TextField, etc...
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    LTSB/LTSC isn't an alternate version of Windows per se. It's a "branch" of Windows 10 that gets security updates but not feature updates. As far as I'm concerned, LTSC is _perfect_. I want security updates, but I don't want the rest of my OS to change out from under me. And, because the security updates are much smaller, they download and install far more quickly.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    > I would like a modernized Windows without all the cruft I miss Windows Phone 10 every day still. Sometimes I still miss Windows 8, when the Win32 desktop booted late and if you stayed entirely in UWP apps things were wildly clean and Windows ran like a dream. (I also know how many people hated that experience.) Windows has the "flex" to do it, just not the developer nor the user buy-in. There's an hope with "Windows 10X" they are trying to "flex" a bit, show people what Windows can do when allowed to limit the legacy cruft. The legacy cruft is all still there though, Microsoft has learned the hard way it's there for good, but maybe there's a small bit of hope that developers might be interested in enough in making first class "10X" applications, users enough interest in the magic of post-legacy Windows UI to try new experiences at least some of the time they aren't using the comfort food of the classic Win32 legacy. Maybe a little hope, we'll see.
aasasd 7y ago
> the operating system itself not coherent > settings app and the control panel After using Mac, I once decided to explore Win7's control panel on a friend's machine. I counted ten different kinds of windows in there, not including third-party additions. Some of the windows had controls that weren't used anywhere else in the system—iirc it was the side panel with navigation links. Hearing that MS now made another entire app for the settings, in addition, was a knee-slapper. Control panel is my litmus test for the quality of a desktop environment. E.g. you can easily see how Gnome 2 stole ideas from Mac, in the good sense.
BEEdwards 7y ago
You're not the only one, but I'm of the other thought. I like the insane level of backwards compatibility. When you can run a windows game from 1996 with only a few tweaks, it's beautiful. It's a worthless gimmick, but it makes me pop.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

We could retain the ability to launch old apps and still have Settings in one place. They don't inherently go together. Microsoft might need to add something like a legacy control panel which only appears if you install an old app that adds something there. Users who don't use old apps wouldn't see it, so no harm done versus dropping support completely. And, I don't understand why Microsoft couldn't integrate those panels into the modern Settings UI, even if the underlying framework and visuals were different.

pcr910303 7y ago
> I could imagine you might need a legacy Control Panel that only appears if you install an old app that adds something to it—but anyone who doesn't use those legacy apps wouldn't see it. Yeah, and that means (at least for me) non-coherency of the platform. Why should there be two different settings on one OS, depending whether the user installed the app it or not? > And even then, there's no reason Microsoft couldn't add a visual update and even integrate the UI into Settings. FYI: the reason Microsoft can’t remove this control panel stuff is because some legacy apps (mostly designed for enterprise) installs DLLs that adds a control panel item. This is one of the examples where their backwards compatibility drags them to make a better OS.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  > Yeah, and that means (at least for me) non-coherency of the platform. Then don't install old apps and you'll get coherency. This is much better than outright blocking those old apps for everyone. > FYI: the reason Microsoft can’t remove this control panel stuff is because some legacy apps (mostly designed for enterprise) installs DLLs that adds a control panel item If I were Microsoft, I would remove the "Control Panel" as a program the user can open, but keep the underlying framework. Then, if a legacy program adds a control panel item, I'd place a shortcut to that item in modern Settings. It might not be 100% visually perfect, but you'd get most of the way there. If there's some technical reason Microsoft can't do that (I don't understand how there could be—we're talking about shortcuts), at minimum the legacy Control Panel shouldn't appear until a 3rd party item is pushed to it, and it shouldn't contain any Microsoft settings. The current situation is completely unnecessary.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    > If I were Microsoft, I would remove the "Control Panel" as a program the user can open They did and people got upset. It's a "who moved my cheese" backward compatibility problem for people. People get upset if they can't find that thing they always used and worked just fine. For a brief while Windows 10 the legacy Control Panel was entirely removed from Search, and there were so many complaints so they backed off and it's searchable again. That's about the only way to find it; at this point in Windows 10 it's not in the Start Menu, it's not File Explorer Quick Access. People have to intentionally find the Control Panel. People still talk about the COM GUID to the legacy Control Panel as if it were some secret cheat code to Windows, making shortcuts to the Control Panel because it looks familiar and powerful and/or they don't want to relearn anything new, don't want to get used to the all the cheese that moved around in the modern Settings app.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      I have vague memories of complaints, but I recall it being because Settings was lacking a lot of really basic functionality at the time.
      - 7y ago
BEEdwards 7y ago
>Microsoft might need to add something like a legacy control panel which only appears if you install an old app that adds something there. That's literally what they've done, the problem is most of their own systems are legacy!

airstrike 7y ago

> that’s one of the biggest reasons why these Mac people (myself included) doesn’t even consider moving out of macOS Fortunately for Microsoft this "issue" has historically resulted in some additional (if uneven) familiarity among Enterprise users, where MacOS is nowhere to be found, though I do concede it's been getting out of hand now with Windows 10

pcr910303 7y ago
Yeah, and AFAIK they actually maintain an alternative version of Windows (LTSB they call it) for enterprise. I would like a modernized Windows without all the cruft; one of the reasons Windows apps have such poor quality is that apps don’t need to update their internals, so they just can’t get advantage of the newer features. I’m not sure, but last time I saw the Windows land, win32-based apps HiDPI support is opt-in, not opt-out. Apple has a great record on deprecating things in a fairly understandable speed, so apps in macOS generally have up-to-date internals with all of the features working consistently. Most apps use the control-center (compared to Windows where every app reinvents notifications, even with the existence of the notification center added in Windows 10), use macOS tabs, users can define keybindings that work in every Cocoa TextField, etc...
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  LTSB/LTSC isn't an alternate version of Windows per se. It's a "branch" of Windows 10 that gets security updates but not feature updates. As far as I'm concerned, LTSC is _perfect_. I want security updates, but I don't want the rest of my OS to change out from under me. And, because the security updates are much smaller, they download and install far more quickly.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  > I would like a modernized Windows without all the cruft I miss Windows Phone 10 every day still. Sometimes I still miss Windows 8, when the Win32 desktop booted late and if you stayed entirely in UWP apps things were wildly clean and Windows ran like a dream. (I also know how many people hated that experience.) Windows has the "flex" to do it, just not the developer nor the user buy-in. There's an hope with "Windows 10X" they are trying to "flex" a bit, show people what Windows can do when allowed to limit the legacy cruft. The legacy cruft is all still there though, Microsoft has learned the hard way it's there for good, but maybe there's a small bit of hope that developers might be interested in enough in making first class "10X" applications, users enough interest in the magic of post-legacy Windows UI to try new experiences at least some of the time they aren't using the comfort food of the classic Win32 legacy. Maybe a little hope, we'll see.

aasasd 7y ago

> the operating system itself not coherent > settings app and the control panel After using Mac, I once decided to explore Win7's control panel on a friend's machine. I counted ten different kinds of windows in there, not including third-party additions. Some of the windows had controls that weren't used anywhere else in the system—iirc it was the side panel with navigation links. Hearing that MS now made another entire app for the settings, in addition, was a knee-slapper. Control panel is my litmus test for the quality of a desktop environment. E.g. you can easily see how Gnome 2 stole ideas from Mac, in the good sense.

BEEdwards 7y ago

You're not the only one, but I'm of the other thought. I like the insane level of backwards compatibility. When you can run a windows game from 1996 with only a few tweaks, it's beautiful. It's a worthless gimmick, but it makes me pop.