4 ms·

I'm tempted to reply it's because MS are spiteful tossers but actually (despite that being true) there's a bigger problem. MS used to be pretty good at interfac

I'm tempted to reply it's because MS are spiteful tossers but actually (despite that being true) there's a bigger problem. MS used to be pretty good at interfaces - true, they really did - but on & after win8 they just forgot that UIs are not there to look 'cool' and 'awesome' but to simply to help users get shit done.

zozbot234 6y ago
It's weird because Win8 looks like quite the opposite of "cool", at least in my view. And their interface is actually somewhat helpful on touch-based devices, but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  > but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input. What are you thinking of? IOS? Android? GNOME? KDE? OSX? Windows isn't perfect at this stuff, but it's honestly the best experience I've had with a 2 in 1 (Tablet with extra keyboard + touchpad). GNOME is close, but the UI arrangement is stupid (ok, it's worse on Windows, but I digress), pen right click doesn't work and the on screen keyboard is like from another universe (it also doesn't seem to be made for people with mice, but I digress again ...). On Windows I can set the keyboard to mini-mode (floats around in a small window) and slide on it with a pen, getting about the same input speed as when typing. It's quite amazing. It's just a shame that there's Windows around it.
  - lstamour 6y ago
    Windows is good, yes. Especially for compatibility with standard desktop apps and new form factors like pen, handwriting, etc. But iPad with touchpad now is also good—better, perhaps, than the Pencil’s OS integration. Presumably the standardization of App Store categories means MacOS and iOS will align eventually as much as Windows modern and native apps can on the same (“desktop”) system. Both platforms and Chrome want app authors adapting new features, but developers generally implement what’s easiest/appropriate for their codebase, so... I think the next big leap in UI will be when AI recognizes and labels patterns in complex code for more advanced refactoring...
diamondo25 6y ago
Wasn't Vista where they went all-in with animations and blurs, like Windows Aero?
- ineedasername 6y ago
  First thing I did on pretty much every new computer was turn all of that off. And in windows 8 found some hack to restore something resembling a "start" menu. Windows 10 hasn't bothered me enough in that regard to go digging for the settings to kill visual effects.
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  And the useless Windows Experience Index. Like they thought developers would ship software with a single WEI for minimum and recommended requirements.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
Seems like Win8 was them trying to push the mobile style UIs onto people even though they were using a Desktop/Laptop. I remember in Win8, the calculator would take up the whole screen, similar to the way it does on an IPhone. I could never understand how such a usability atrocity got past Redmond.
- Lammy 6y ago
  https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_new_surface_tablet_pc.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_n...
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I think MS misread ipad popularity and the resulting "tablet computing" trend as a tidal shift to touch-based interfaces as the emerging "new normal".
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    It kind of made sense at the time, given the popularity of the Surface. The trend certainly seemed to be towards smaller form-factor, lower-power devices that sat nicely on the spectrum between a tablet and laptop. Of course, that didn't mean they needed to completely overhaul the desktop experience though.
    - birdyrooster 6y ago
      This is the sort of wisdom that leads a company to create macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The recognition that some things are too dissimilar to ship in the same box.
      - lostmsu 6y ago
        Meh. I still think that is a mistake. Windows Mobile lost because it was late to market, and was not designed well the first two times. Windows Mobile 10 was good, so was ability to develop for desktop, mobile and Xbox with one codebase. IMO Microsoft shut it down when it actually was becoming awesome. Maybe Windows 10 ARM64 will still come back to phones though.
megameter 6y ago
It's not exactly that the new stuff is even that bad - I do use some parts of it. It's that there's a really awkward shift in philosophy that the new UI engages with: Old: Expose the hardware in a highly compatible way for developers. Help the user do productive work with their applications. Old basically remains in the same paradigm through WinXP. But starting around Vista the concept changes, and that accelerates with Win8. New: Help the user shop and consume content. Protect them from malicious software. And this consumer focus leads in turn towards aesthetics and "wow factor". But it's Vista's shift towards heavy security prompting that I see as the precipitating element in this. It's the change from "they know what they're doing" to "they don't know what they're doing", and the attempt to continually reinvent the same thing but "easier." The UI changes are more like a reflection of the broader trend of aping whatever smartphones do. And one thing I will credit modern Windows for is this - running on contemporary hardware it's really stable and doesn't blow up easily. But it's like running two operating systems at once, and the newer one is mostly unnecessary.
- Nition 6y ago
  The absolute worse of this old vs. new split has got to be the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. Try changing the mouse pointer speed starting on Settings[1]. Or for a bigger challenge, try finding the place to change which Desktop icons appear.[2] ---- Answer key: [1] Settings -> Devices -> Mouse -> Related settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Additional mouse options -> [opens old Control Panel mouse settings] -> Pointer Options -> Motion: Select a pointer speed. [2] Right-click Desktop -> Personalise -> Themes [!?] -> Related Settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Desktop icon settings
  - IanSanders 6y ago
    >the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. All that's going to happen is we'll lose the control panel eventually, and get an inferior settings reimplementation instead. That long scroll alone is really, really terrible.

zozbot234 6y ago

It's weird because Win8 looks like quite the opposite of "cool", at least in my view. And their interface is actually somewhat helpful on touch-based devices, but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input.

solarkraft 6y ago
> but other OS's do a way better job of having a unified interface for 'touch' and 'keyboard+mouse' input. What are you thinking of? IOS? Android? GNOME? KDE? OSX? Windows isn't perfect at this stuff, but it's honestly the best experience I've had with a 2 in 1 (Tablet with extra keyboard + touchpad). GNOME is close, but the UI arrangement is stupid (ok, it's worse on Windows, but I digress), pen right click doesn't work and the on screen keyboard is like from another universe (it also doesn't seem to be made for people with mice, but I digress again ...). On Windows I can set the keyboard to mini-mode (floats around in a small window) and slide on it with a pen, getting about the same input speed as when typing. It's quite amazing. It's just a shame that there's Windows around it.
- lstamour 6y ago
  Windows is good, yes. Especially for compatibility with standard desktop apps and new form factors like pen, handwriting, etc. But iPad with touchpad now is also good—better, perhaps, than the Pencil’s OS integration. Presumably the standardization of App Store categories means MacOS and iOS will align eventually as much as Windows modern and native apps can on the same (“desktop”) system. Both platforms and Chrome want app authors adapting new features, but developers generally implement what’s easiest/appropriate for their codebase, so... I think the next big leap in UI will be when AI recognizes and labels patterns in complex code for more advanced refactoring...

diamondo25 6y ago

Wasn't Vista where they went all-in with animations and blurs, like Windows Aero?

ineedasername 6y ago
First thing I did on pretty much every new computer was turn all of that off. And in windows 8 found some hack to restore something resembling a "start" menu. Windows 10 hasn't bothered me enough in that regard to go digging for the settings to kill visual effects.
birdyrooster 6y ago
And the useless Windows Experience Index. Like they thought developers would ship software with a single WEI for minimum and recommended requirements.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

Seems like Win8 was them trying to push the mobile style UIs onto people even though they were using a Desktop/Laptop. I remember in Win8, the calculator would take up the whole screen, similar to the way it does on an IPhone. I could never understand how such a usability atrocity got past Redmond.

Lammy 6y ago
https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_new_surface_tablet_pc.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/257840/microsoft_announces_n...
ineedasername 6y ago
I think MS misread ipad popularity and the resulting "tablet computing" trend as a tidal shift to touch-based interfaces as the emerging "new normal".
- nmfisher 6y ago
  It kind of made sense at the time, given the popularity of the Surface. The trend certainly seemed to be towards smaller form-factor, lower-power devices that sat nicely on the spectrum between a tablet and laptop. Of course, that didn't mean they needed to completely overhaul the desktop experience though.
  - birdyrooster 6y ago
    This is the sort of wisdom that leads a company to create macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The recognition that some things are too dissimilar to ship in the same box.
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      Meh. I still think that is a mistake. Windows Mobile lost because it was late to market, and was not designed well the first two times. Windows Mobile 10 was good, so was ability to develop for desktop, mobile and Xbox with one codebase. IMO Microsoft shut it down when it actually was becoming awesome. Maybe Windows 10 ARM64 will still come back to phones though.

megameter 6y ago

It's not exactly that the new stuff is even that bad - I do use some parts of it. It's that there's a really awkward shift in philosophy that the new UI engages with: Old: Expose the hardware in a highly compatible way for developers. Help the user do productive work with their applications. Old basically remains in the same paradigm through WinXP. But starting around Vista the concept changes, and that accelerates with Win8. New: Help the user shop and consume content. Protect them from malicious software. And this consumer focus leads in turn towards aesthetics and "wow factor". But it's Vista's shift towards heavy security prompting that I see as the precipitating element in this. It's the change from "they know what they're doing" to "they don't know what they're doing", and the attempt to continually reinvent the same thing but "easier." The UI changes are more like a reflection of the broader trend of aping whatever smartphones do. And one thing I will credit modern Windows for is this - running on contemporary hardware it's really stable and doesn't blow up easily. But it's like running two operating systems at once, and the newer one is mostly unnecessary.

Nition 6y ago
The absolute worse of this old vs. new split has got to be the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. Try changing the mouse pointer speed starting on Settings[1]. Or for a bigger challenge, try finding the place to change which Desktop icons appear.[2] ---- Answer key: [1] Settings -> Devices -> Mouse -> Related settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Additional mouse options -> [opens old Control Panel mouse settings] -> Pointer Options -> Motion: Select a pointer speed. [2] Right-click Desktop -> Personalise -> Themes [!?] -> Related Settings [tiny text on the far right] -> Desktop icon settings
- IanSanders 6y ago
  >the two different settings interfaces (Control Panel and Settings) that have some overlap, but other features that are only in one. All that's going to happen is we'll lose the control panel eventually, and get an inferior settings reimplementation instead. That long scroll alone is really, really terrible.