6 ms·

It seems to me that Microsoft really makes no effort to improve subtle aspects of Windows and hardware integration. In fact, their OS is in such shambles and is

by boromi 6y ago

It seems to me that Microsoft really makes no effort to improve subtle aspects of Windows and hardware integration. In fact, their OS is in such shambles and is a disoriented mess with respect to UI consistency. They introduced Vista, Metro, and now Fluent. Yet there's almost no coherence and the UI is now a mish-mash of XP, Metro, and Fluent era elements. By the time they announce their next UI, you can bet you'll now see yet another ingredient added to the jumbled soup. It really is beyond belief that an organization with so many employees can fail to adhere to a uniform vision and standard and focus on correcting details. I'm a life long Windows and Android user. But honestly, seeing articles like this and how smooth the UI on macOS and uniformly they apply new updates and UI changes makes me extremely jealous and resentful that Microsoft is so bad at something so basic. Features are great, but users at their start point interact with UI first. They need to fix that before anything else. Now they want to give you the option to run Android apps on Windows through emulation. This just going to create a bigger jumbled mess.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Apple has gone through their share of UI fads and APIs. And by dropping backward compatibility more often users see less variation.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>It seems to me that Microsoft really makes no effort to improve subtle aspects of Windows and hardware integration. Latest Windows 10 iteration is by far the snappiest OS I've used in a long time since it uses GPU acceleration for the desktop window manager. You can check this in task manager. The icing on the cake, if you gave a laptop with 2 GPUS(Optimus) is when you can run a demanding 3D app like a game in windowed mode in parallel with other stuff like watching videos on youtube and you can see in task manager how windows uses the external GPU to render the game and the integrated GPU to accelerate your web browser, all running butterly smooth. >In fact, their OS is in such shambles and is a disoriented mess with respect to UI consistency. True, but that's what you get with 30 years worth of built in backwards compatibility. I can run a copy of Unreal Tournament 1999 that was just copied off an old PC with no sweat right after ripping and tearing in Doom Eternal. Can you run 20 year old software on current Apple without emulation? Apple can afford to innovate in revolutionary ways when it dumps older baggage whenever it feels like it and start from a fresh drawing board without looking back, see intel to apple silicon transition. In 2 years x86 apps will be considered legacy/obsolete on Mac hardware. Microsoft can't really do this with windows so yeah, it's a mess of new GUI elements for the simple stuff and windows 2000 era GUI elements for the deep pro settings. The advantage is that if you're an old time Windows user you can easily find your way using the "old" settings and if you're new to windows you can do most configs through the "new" GUI without touching the scary looking "old" settings.
- floatboth 6y ago
  > since it uses GPU acceleration for the desktop window manager Uh, Windows started doing that in Vista.
  - musicale 6y ago
    Oddly enough a number of good Windows features showed up first in Vista. I think people just weren't ready for the barrage of security permission dialogs and having their printer drivers broken. ;-)
    - Firehawke 6y ago
      A lot of Vista's issues were driver quality-- Creative Labs and NVIDIA played chicken with Microsoft over the "no more kernel drivers" decision and it took a lot of time for the post-XP drivers to get even remotely good. Creative Labs never did get caught up-- they decided to just do the bare minimum necessary.
  - DiabloD3 6y ago
    WDDM's ability to do that has been progressively enhanced since Vista. Today's OSX is about where Windows was during Vista, and it really shows on Macs that are older, but still supported, usually shown via latency in normal situations, eg, just moving a window around on the screen (something every OS gets correct except OSX). Today's WDDM, however, is snappy as hell, even on my MBP from 2012, but OSX is, and always will be, a sluggish nightmare. Intel GPU alone, no Nvidia or AMD DGPU, old enough that it has no hardware scheduling features, isn't DX12 compliant, but with Win10, its still is just as fast as my brand new workstation build when it comes to just being a plain ordinary desktop. Apple needs to fix their development culture internally, and it strongly shows in their software product quality. Sad, because the M1 seems like a cool chunk of hardware, could be a real winner if it wasn't held down by OSX.
    - pram 6y ago
      Quartz has been GPU accelerated since 2002 my dude
TwoBit 6y ago
The long-standing problem with Microsoft's internal culture is that it rewards people and teams for 'innovating' where innovation in many cases is just reinvention. I worked at Facebook for years and it now has a similar problem. Developers are evaluated every six months on their 'impact', which results in many dropping boring work and joining teams that are doing new things, even if they aren't needed.
- 1-6 6y ago
  Similar with Google. I'm amazed at how Apple can take something as old as typography, breathe new life into it, and make everyone shocked and awed. Another one: I have yet to use a trackpad as good as theirs. It's good because it doesn't have any moving parts. It's all haptic feedback.
Nas808 6y ago
Even on their own hardware (Surface Pro) I've ran into really annoying issues with DPI scaling, especially when docking/undocking from a secondary monitor.
amscanne 6y ago
> It really is beyond belief that an organization with so many employees can fail to adhere to a uniform vision and standard and focus on correcting details. If you’re not spent time in a huge company, this might seem to be the case. But really, Apple’s uniform standard really is the exception. I’m sure there are other organizational costs for this, such as it being harder to take risks with products or execute quickly.. but gosh they are good at producing a cohesive, mostly consistent set of products. I deeply appreciate their attention to detail and long term commitment.
jiggawatts 6y ago
I can now record a 4K Dolby Vision HDR video with my phone and send it to my parents in a text message and it'll display flawlessly. Windows struggles to correctly display Adobe RGB (wide gamut but not HDR) JPG images I've downloaded in 1999, now over 21 years ago and counting. They'll get there... eventually. Maybe next decade, by which I mean 2030, not 2021.

by boromi 6y ago

paulryanrogers 6y ago

Apple has gone through their share of UI fads and APIs. And by dropping backward compatibility more often users see less variation.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>It seems to me that Microsoft really makes no effort to improve subtle aspects of Windows and hardware integration. Latest Windows 10 iteration is by far the snappiest OS I've used in a long time since it uses GPU acceleration for the desktop window manager. You can check this in task manager. The icing on the cake, if you gave a laptop with 2 GPUS(Optimus) is when you can run a demanding 3D app like a game in windowed mode in parallel with other stuff like watching videos on youtube and you can see in task manager how windows uses the external GPU to render the game and the integrated GPU to accelerate your web browser, all running butterly smooth. >In fact, their OS is in such shambles and is a disoriented mess with respect to UI consistency. True, but that's what you get with 30 years worth of built in backwards compatibility. I can run a copy of Unreal Tournament 1999 that was just copied off an old PC with no sweat right after ripping and tearing in Doom Eternal. Can you run 20 year old software on current Apple without emulation? Apple can afford to innovate in revolutionary ways when it dumps older baggage whenever it feels like it and start from a fresh drawing board without looking back, see intel to apple silicon transition. In 2 years x86 apps will be considered legacy/obsolete on Mac hardware. Microsoft can't really do this with windows so yeah, it's a mess of new GUI elements for the simple stuff and windows 2000 era GUI elements for the deep pro settings. The advantage is that if you're an old time Windows user you can easily find your way using the "old" settings and if you're new to windows you can do most configs through the "new" GUI without touching the scary looking "old" settings.

floatboth 6y ago
> since it uses GPU acceleration for the desktop window manager Uh, Windows started doing that in Vista.
- musicale 6y ago
  Oddly enough a number of good Windows features showed up first in Vista. I think people just weren't ready for the barrage of security permission dialogs and having their printer drivers broken. ;-)
  - Firehawke 6y ago
    A lot of Vista's issues were driver quality-- Creative Labs and NVIDIA played chicken with Microsoft over the "no more kernel drivers" decision and it took a lot of time for the post-XP drivers to get even remotely good. Creative Labs never did get caught up-- they decided to just do the bare minimum necessary.
- DiabloD3 6y ago
  WDDM's ability to do that has been progressively enhanced since Vista. Today's OSX is about where Windows was during Vista, and it really shows on Macs that are older, but still supported, usually shown via latency in normal situations, eg, just moving a window around on the screen (something every OS gets correct except OSX). Today's WDDM, however, is snappy as hell, even on my MBP from 2012, but OSX is, and always will be, a sluggish nightmare. Intel GPU alone, no Nvidia or AMD DGPU, old enough that it has no hardware scheduling features, isn't DX12 compliant, but with Win10, its still is just as fast as my brand new workstation build when it comes to just being a plain ordinary desktop. Apple needs to fix their development culture internally, and it strongly shows in their software product quality. Sad, because the M1 seems like a cool chunk of hardware, could be a real winner if it wasn't held down by OSX.
  - pram 6y ago
    Quartz has been GPU accelerated since 2002 my dude

TwoBit 6y ago

The long-standing problem with Microsoft's internal culture is that it rewards people and teams for 'innovating' where innovation in many cases is just reinvention. I worked at Facebook for years and it now has a similar problem. Developers are evaluated every six months on their 'impact', which results in many dropping boring work and joining teams that are doing new things, even if they aren't needed.

1-6 6y ago
Similar with Google. I'm amazed at how Apple can take something as old as typography, breathe new life into it, and make everyone shocked and awed. Another one: I have yet to use a trackpad as good as theirs. It's good because it doesn't have any moving parts. It's all haptic feedback.

Nas808 6y ago

Even on their own hardware (Surface Pro) I've ran into really annoying issues with DPI scaling, especially when docking/undocking from a secondary monitor.

amscanne 6y ago

> It really is beyond belief that an organization with so many employees can fail to adhere to a uniform vision and standard and focus on correcting details. If you’re not spent time in a huge company, this might seem to be the case. But really, Apple’s uniform standard really is the exception. I’m sure there are other organizational costs for this, such as it being harder to take risks with products or execute quickly.. but gosh they are good at producing a cohesive, mostly consistent set of products. I deeply appreciate their attention to detail and long term commitment.

jiggawatts 6y ago

I can now record a 4K Dolby Vision HDR video with my phone and send it to my parents in a text message and it'll display flawlessly. Windows struggles to correctly display Adobe RGB (wide gamut but not HDR) JPG images I've downloaded in 1999, now over 21 years ago and counting. They'll get there... eventually. Maybe next decade, by which I mean 2030, not 2021.