4 ms·

There will always be tinkerers and people who want to customize their stuff to their personality, but I think the majority of people don't want to tinker, they

There will always be tinkerers and people who want to customize their stuff to their personality, but I think the majority of people don't want to tinker, they want to "get shit done" and the standard wallpaper and theming of stuff now days is visually pleasing enough to not mess with it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Personally I couldn't care less about things being "visually pleasing", to me this is an accessibility feature. People with sight issues or dyslexia might want to use different fonts and weights, they might want high contrast colors, etc. The aesthetic personalization opportunities are second to that. More importantly: this isn't hard. They did it in Windows 3, an OS that had an 8MB install size and required a mere 2MB of RAM. That we can't provide this functionality in 2021 with all these supposedly highly skilled software "engineers" who consider themselves so ridiculously productive because of all the complicated abstractions they use, on hardware that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than was available to Win 3... well it's completely ridiculous and we, as an industry, should be ashamed.
- zepto 6y ago
  I’m curious - have you experimented with the range of accessibility options in Mac OS? Are there particular ones that are missing when it comes to dyslexia?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. I just feel that being able to change colors and fonts is a significantly broader and more simple solution than bespoke accessibility features tuned for specific disabilities.
    - joshmanders 6y ago
      > I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. So what I'm understanding is you're saying an OS that is used by a LOT of people, is inaccessible, but you neither have any of the disabilities nor the OS you're complaining about to back this claim up? Because macOS has tons of accessibility options including font sizes, etc.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        I never claimed MacOS was inaccessible. I don't even use MacOS, and haven't since about 10.1. I don't believe I've made any claims about MacOS at all, actually.
        joshmanders 6y ago
        macOS or Windows. Both are leading operating systems and are both very accessible. You're ranting and raving for absolute zero reason at all. You have no facts to back up your claims nor any actual experience.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        I don't get where you think that I am claiming these operating systems lack accessibility features. That's an invention of yours. I do make the verifiable claim that they lack the configurability of Windows 3 as regards font and color choices throughout the UI, and further that this is in fact an accessibility feature in itself. Windows 10, for instance, only allows you to change the "accent color" and select either "light mode" or "dark mode". While it does allow a change in font size, if there's a place in its settings dialogs to change the default font itself I couldn't find it, although I did find a place to change it in the registry.
        joshmanders 6y ago
        > I don't get where you think that I am claiming these operating systems lack accessibility features. That's an invention of yours. Because you're ranting about operating systems not being accessible, there's only 3 possible options, Windows, Linux or macOS.
- BruiseLee 6y ago
  > They did it in Windows 3, an OS that had an 8MB install size and required a mere 2MB of RAM Technically Windows 3 required only 384KB of RAM... Windows 3.1 required 1MB (in Standard mode).
dfxm12 6y ago
Additionally, vendors just want to ship software. I guess that's their version of getting shit done. For better or worse, functionality sells most software. The stock UI is an afterthought, let alone possible customizations to it. Spending time on features that at best don't sell, and, at worst, can introduce bugs, is a non-starter for most shops. Maybe Microsoft/Apple are big enough that they can (and should) handle it, but I wouldn't generally expect this type of gold plating.
floatboth 6y ago
Default wallpapers are sometimes so good that people import them to other OSes :D

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Personally I couldn't care less about things being "visually pleasing", to me this is an accessibility feature. People with sight issues or dyslexia might want to use different fonts and weights, they might want high contrast colors, etc. The aesthetic personalization opportunities are second to that. More importantly: this isn't hard. They did it in Windows 3, an OS that had an 8MB install size and required a mere 2MB of RAM. That we can't provide this functionality in 2021 with all these supposedly highly skilled software "engineers" who consider themselves so ridiculously productive because of all the complicated abstractions they use, on hardware that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than was available to Win 3... well it's completely ridiculous and we, as an industry, should be ashamed.

zepto 6y ago
I’m curious - have you experimented with the range of accessibility options in Mac OS? Are there particular ones that are missing when it comes to dyslexia?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. I just feel that being able to change colors and fonts is a significantly broader and more simple solution than bespoke accessibility features tuned for specific disabilities.
  - joshmanders 6y ago
    > I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. So what I'm understanding is you're saying an OS that is used by a LOT of people, is inaccessible, but you neither have any of the disabilities nor the OS you're complaining about to back this claim up? Because macOS has tons of accessibility options including font sizes, etc.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      I never claimed MacOS was inaccessible. I don't even use MacOS, and haven't since about 10.1. I don't believe I've made any claims about MacOS at all, actually.
      - joshmanders 6y ago
        macOS or Windows. Both are leading operating systems and are both very accessible. You're ranting and raving for absolute zero reason at all. You have no facts to back up your claims nor any actual experience.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        I don't get where you think that I am claiming these operating systems lack accessibility features. That's an invention of yours. I do make the verifiable claim that they lack the configurability of Windows 3 as regards font and color choices throughout the UI, and further that this is in fact an accessibility feature in itself. Windows 10, for instance, only allows you to change the "accent color" and select either "light mode" or "dark mode". While it does allow a change in font size, if there's a place in its settings dialogs to change the default font itself I couldn't find it, although I did find a place to change it in the registry.
        joshmanders 6y ago
        > I don't get where you think that I am claiming these operating systems lack accessibility features. That's an invention of yours. Because you're ranting about operating systems not being accessible, there's only 3 possible options, Windows, Linux or macOS.
BruiseLee 6y ago
> They did it in Windows 3, an OS that had an 8MB install size and required a mere 2MB of RAM Technically Windows 3 required only 384KB of RAM... Windows 3.1 required 1MB (in Standard mode).

dfxm12 6y ago

Additionally, vendors just want to ship software. I guess that's their version of getting shit done. For better or worse, functionality sells most software. The stock UI is an afterthought, let alone possible customizations to it. Spending time on features that at best don't sell, and, at worst, can introduce bugs, is a non-starter for most shops. Maybe Microsoft/Apple are big enough that they can (and should) handle it, but I wouldn't generally expect this type of gold plating.

floatboth 6y ago

Default wallpapers are sometimes so good that people import them to other OSes :D