4 ms·

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

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.
  - shifto 6y ago
    Not being able to open more than 1 settings screen is dumb as well.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      Yeah, this kind of thing pisses me off when the UI 'expert' thinks they know more about your workflow than you and wall bits off to help you.
      - IanSanders 6y ago
        I've seen this many times, the fresh team who have not worked with the old system but has a lot to say about it, starts redesign "properly this time", finds out bringing the new system to the level of the old one is surprisingly a lot of work (not even accounting the required new functionality), gives up redesign half way through or runs out of time, management cannot afford to admit the mistake and goes along with it, users refuse to switch to the new system, the old system is continuously forcefully deprecated.
- stapled_socks 6y ago
  A funny thing about the desktop icon setting - they are actually aware that it's hard to find so on one of those screens in Settings you get a link like "How do I change the desktop icons?". Clicking that does not take you to screen where you can change it though, instead it opens a help page in your browser that describes the awkward navigation steps to get there.
- traskjd 6y ago
  Don’t forget the genius move of: right click, personalize. Same link on the right about desktop icons that when clicked... ...does a Bing search for where to go to change your desktop icons. Literally both are links on the right, both behave wildly differently. Every. Single. Time. I get the bing link first.
- bigbizisverywyz 6y ago
  >Try changing the mouse pointer speed starting on Settings[1]. Oh, thanks for that! I was looking for that recently and just gave up. From Windows 95 to XP (and maybe Vista?) I could find that setting in 2 seconds. Now? no chance.
pjc50 6y ago
To me it's more: Stone Age (1985): Windows is a single-user graphical shell for the PC that is necessarily very close to the hardware. Bronze Age (1993): Windows NT is launched as a multi-user secure applications platform. Hardware access is no longer direct. This is sold almost exclusively to businesses. Iron Age (late 90s): "Hardware" is no longer fixed at boot. Computers are no longer islands. Users expect TCP/IP networking built in. USB arrives round about Win95OSR2 and complicates everything. Security problems start to matter. Windows acquires a rounded, "friendly" skin and the cheerful rolling hills of the default background. Steel Age (2006): the security problems become untenable. Downloading anything from the internet is extremely risky. A decision is made to kill the "stone age" line of compatibility; everything derives from NT now, and the normal logged in user is no longer "root" all the time. UAC appears to guard the user against malicious executables. Tablet Age (2012): the iPad is eating their lunch. Microsoft panics. Having had a tablet OS for ages that never took off outside of niches (Windows CE), they decide that Windows will be relaunched as a tablet-first OS with everything written in C# using their new flat graphic design style. The 99% of desktop users are disoriented by the tablet-first design. Windows phones are launched, then the burning platform sinks below the waves again, taking Nokia with it. Pity, the Nokia Lumia 1040 was an amazing phone. Missing Era: there is no Windows 9. Final Form (present): Microsoft go to version 10 then promise to stay there forever. Updates are now continuous and rolling. They've mostly backed off the tablet interface .. but never really finished the modernisation. (As a Windows developer, the extinction lines in the fossil record that stand out across all the APIs are "Vista" and to a lesser extent "8". 10 is a consolidation with a drip-feed of additional APIs.) Future? Well, Unixisation is creeping in again along with a friendliness to Open Source. At some point they may deprecate CRLF and try to change the percieved default path character to '/'.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Missing Era: there is no Windows 9. This is to avoid breaking software that checks whether the Windows version string starts with "9".

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.
- shifto 6y ago
  Not being able to open more than 1 settings screen is dumb as well.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Yeah, this kind of thing pisses me off when the UI 'expert' thinks they know more about your workflow than you and wall bits off to help you.
    - IanSanders 6y ago
      I've seen this many times, the fresh team who have not worked with the old system but has a lot to say about it, starts redesign "properly this time", finds out bringing the new system to the level of the old one is surprisingly a lot of work (not even accounting the required new functionality), gives up redesign half way through or runs out of time, management cannot afford to admit the mistake and goes along with it, users refuse to switch to the new system, the old system is continuously forcefully deprecated.
stapled_socks 6y ago
A funny thing about the desktop icon setting - they are actually aware that it's hard to find so on one of those screens in Settings you get a link like "How do I change the desktop icons?". Clicking that does not take you to screen where you can change it though, instead it opens a help page in your browser that describes the awkward navigation steps to get there.
traskjd 6y ago
Don’t forget the genius move of: right click, personalize. Same link on the right about desktop icons that when clicked... ...does a Bing search for where to go to change your desktop icons. Literally both are links on the right, both behave wildly differently. Every. Single. Time. I get the bing link first.
bigbizisverywyz 6y ago
>Try changing the mouse pointer speed starting on Settings[1]. Oh, thanks for that! I was looking for that recently and just gave up. From Windows 95 to XP (and maybe Vista?) I could find that setting in 2 seconds. Now? no chance.

pjc50 6y ago

To me it's more: Stone Age (1985): Windows is a single-user graphical shell for the PC that is necessarily very close to the hardware. Bronze Age (1993): Windows NT is launched as a multi-user secure applications platform. Hardware access is no longer direct. This is sold almost exclusively to businesses. Iron Age (late 90s): "Hardware" is no longer fixed at boot. Computers are no longer islands. Users expect TCP/IP networking built in. USB arrives round about Win95OSR2 and complicates everything. Security problems start to matter. Windows acquires a rounded, "friendly" skin and the cheerful rolling hills of the default background. Steel Age (2006): the security problems become untenable. Downloading anything from the internet is extremely risky. A decision is made to kill the "stone age" line of compatibility; everything derives from NT now, and the normal logged in user is no longer "root" all the time. UAC appears to guard the user against malicious executables. Tablet Age (2012): the iPad is eating their lunch. Microsoft panics. Having had a tablet OS for ages that never took off outside of niches (Windows CE), they decide that Windows will be relaunched as a tablet-first OS with everything written in C# using their new flat graphic design style. The 99% of desktop users are disoriented by the tablet-first design. Windows phones are launched, then the burning platform sinks below the waves again, taking Nokia with it. Pity, the Nokia Lumia 1040 was an amazing phone. Missing Era: there is no Windows 9. Final Form (present): Microsoft go to version 10 then promise to stay there forever. Updates are now continuous and rolling. They've mostly backed off the tablet interface .. but never really finished the modernisation. (As a Windows developer, the extinction lines in the fossil record that stand out across all the APIs are "Vista" and to a lesser extent "8". 10 is a consolidation with a drip-feed of additional APIs.) Future? Well, Unixisation is creeping in again along with a friendliness to Open Source. At some point they may deprecate CRLF and try to change the percieved default path character to '/'.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Missing Era: there is no Windows 9. This is to avoid breaking software that checks whether the Windows version string starts with "9".