13 ms·

I work on the core OS. This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not wo

I work on the core OS. This is the answer. Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on (such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future).

Solocomplex 5y ago
They tried modernizing with Windows RT, which was actually very smooth and functional if it wasn't so locked down.
- cheschire 5y ago
  Wasn't RT just windows 8 with an ARM build target and win32 stuff removed so they could sell cheaper tablets? So if you wanted an "unlocked" windows RT, couldn't you just have run windows 8?
  - qball 5y ago
    >win32 stuff removed Win32 was not removed from Windows RT, but your access to it (if your name wasn't "Microsoft"; because that low-level access was reportedly how they got Office on it) was. And because of Secure Boot, which (unlike x86, for now) is mandated enabled for Windows on ARM systems, you had to wait for an unpatchable security hole in the booting process (which, while it exists, wasn't relevant until past the end of the Surface RT's lifecycle), you couldn't run full Windows 8 or a tablet-first Linux distro.
    - my123 5y ago
      It's not mandated on for the newer Windows on Arm64 systems, but is configurable there. Windows RT was just Windows 8 with a locked code signing policy, yup. And yes, Office on Windows RT was Win32, as were File Explorer, MMC, ... it's just recompiled Win8 after all.
gogopuppygogo 5y ago
Could you ever see Microsoft dropping the registry? My probably unpopular opinion is that the registry is the worst feature in Windows. It’s bloat directly impacts the speed of the operating system. Seems like such a waste for so many advancements in Windows but the registry sticks around like a bad hangover.
- for_xyz 5y ago
  If you drop something, then you need some kind of replacement for that. I don't see any alternative on where entire OS could be configured other than registry.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    KDE and all its applications and a majority of other Linux desktop application use the configuration laid out in <https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/>.
- secondcoming 5y ago
  How is it worse than having config files scattered around in distro-specific locations?
  - alexvoda 5y ago
    And how is it worse than dconf? People hated on dconf during the transition to systemd, but it is here now. I do not really think one is better than the other.
    - SSLy 5y ago
      dconf has a nice schema that you can see with the editor
- em500 5y ago
  > It’s bloat directly impacts the speed of the operating system. Do you have any evidence of this? I remember in the XP days the German c't computer magazine tested populating the registry with hundreds MBs of garbage and found no performance impact at all.
jpeter 5y ago
Is this also the reason why there are no tabs in windows explorer?
- blackoil 5y ago
  It is a power user feature which most users won't will not appreciate. I am using Mac for about 7 years now, and almost never use tabs in Finder.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Tabs are great for saving screen real estate. Finder windows are relatively small and, with large screens, the need to cram two or more folders into the same window ceases to exist. It’s easier to remember the window to the right is my docs folder and the one to the left is the downloads one.
    - tveyben 5y ago
      I stopped using Windows file explorer more than a decade ago when I learned about spatial file managers. I have been in love with - and 10x more productive using - TotalCommander! The ability to >98% of the file related tasks from the keyboard is very addictive!!!
      - bmn__ 5y ago
        You have confused terminology. TC is an example of orthodox file manager. Explorer is an example of spatial file manager.
- Flockster 5y ago
  I'm a TreeStyleTab user in Firefox with always >200 Tabs open. But I never got the idea of Tabs in Explorer (or Finder for that matter). When I use multiple Explorer Views, most of the time I do it, to interact between them. This is not the case for websites. So for drag and drop interactions, two windows always beat the drag, hover over the other tab until it catches my intend to switch to this tab, and drop it there workflow. The same goes for copy and paste. Ctrl+c, alt+tab, ctrl+v. I'm sure there is a corresponding command to cycle through the tabs, but alt+tab is deep muscle memory, that it beats this command always.
jiggawatts 5y ago
Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to backwards compatibility is stretching the truth to the point of outright deception. Backwards compatibility is not what stops Microsoft from updating the GUIs for their own components. It is not the reason that the components that have been updated failed to carry forward 100% of the features of the components they're replacing, necessitating the ongoing use of the legacy components. It is not the reason reams of GUIs have gone untouched for 20 years. It is not the reason Windows now has at least 4 versions(!) of Performance Monitor, all of which are broken in at least one glaring way. (More on that below.) The believable reasons for the GUI inconsistencies I've heard are: 1) API churn, because of which the UI teams did not have sufficient time to work on features versus playing catchup. 2) Bad system GUI APIs that are very difficult for even in-house teams to work with. 3) Unwillingness to take ownership of legacy code, with literally noone left at Microsoft willing to touch things like the ODBC connections panel or the Component Services snapin. People prefer to add new things instead of fixing or removing old things because it's "easier". Actually, let's just stop here for a second. That last point explains the performance monitor views. I mentioned at least 4 copies, written over decades, by different people. Each new team has steadfastly refused to touch (or remove!) the old code, but hasn't replaced the functionality of the old code, so now end-users need 4 different versions to get things done. These versions are: 1) The performance tab in Task Manager. The only GUI-based view that exposes some metrics such as GPU temperatures. Only shows a small number of fixed metrics. 2) Resource Monitor, which is opened from Task Manager. The only GUI-based view that shows certain per-process metrics, such as the names of files being touched, or per-connection network stats. Has permanent UI issues that will never be fixed, such as not using the system number formatting in some places, making large metrics unreadable as they change faster than users can count the digits. Similarly, the graphs take forever to change their vertical axes, making them useless 90% of the time. 3) The Performance Monitor MMC snapin. Totally legacy, with un-resizable controls that cut off text. Nonetheless, it is absolutely essential because it provides the only live GUI view of 100% of the performance metrics available in the system. It is also the only way to record metrics and view recordings. It is the only GUI for creating metric logging that persists. Etc... 4) The various versions of Server Manager's performance views, which are so useless that I've literally never used it. Nobody can get their job done doing this, we're all still using RDP to connect to servers so that we can simultaneously launch the three tools above. Why RDP? Because 2 of the 3 above do not support remoting. I could go on and on like this for hours about how bad just this one aspect of Windows is, let alone the hundreds of other GUIs that have been butchered by bad decision making and internal NIH syndrome leaving a trail of half-baked messes behind. Wait... did I say 4 performance metrics GUIs? I meant 5, because there's also the new Windows Admin Center, which was clearly written by people that have never had to diagnose a performance issue on a server. It's very pretty and utterly useless, which means that: Nobody will use it, and it will be superseded by someone else's half-baked attempt in a few years, 100% guaranteed.
azinman2 5y ago
> Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on You state that as fact, but I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. It’s not just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had an entire ecosystem that was uniform. Letting this go has really hurt the brand IMHO, and creates a very low bar for third parties.
- andi999 5y ago
  What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?
  - rocqua 5y ago
    I think this inconsistent experience is what is opening the door for competitors like Apple and Linux.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      I use Apple because their OS is a Unix AND their hardware is nicely built and well integrated with the OS. I use Linux because it’s a way to run a good Unix-like OS on non-Apple hardware. The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as it mostly works, people don’t care about which OS they are using.
      - wayneftw 5y ago
        The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. If businesses had never used Windows, nobody else would have and computers wouldn't come pre-installed with it. Personally, I use all of them for different purposes. I like Windows because it's more compatible than other OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I love Windows is that it's got a high degree of flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced telemetry and updates. I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent window management" is simply beyond the pale to me. For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items to close the window (also you can drag/drop them), similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the issues that people complain about here, like having to fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything just worked for me since day one. Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.
flohofwoe 5y ago
Asking the obvious question: why aren't the UIs in newer Windows versions not "just" different themes over Win32 widgets? Instead the UI theme seems to be tied to UI frameworks which seem to be created and discarded annually at Microsoft, so each time some genius decides to overhaul the UI, a completely new sediment layer is created instead of letting some UI designers tinker with a theme editor. I don't get it. Functional UI changes should be different from visual fluff, yet Windows seems to the only OS where the two aren't separated.
- Macha 5y ago
  This was historically the case, it's why despite the article calling out winver, folder properties, the run dialog as being from the win9x -> win2k period, they didn't look remotely as out of place in win7 as win10. Of course there are limits. iirc Windows 7 RTM had an obviously 3.1 derived file picker make it into the add fonts dialog until it was replaced in SP1 if my memory has the timing right. Despite using win32 widgets which had the correct theming, that didn't look native at all
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    FWIW: I consider fixes like the improved environment variable editor in the "old" system control panel in Win10 much more important than the entire new settings panel mess. The same type of improvements would make a lot more sense for the rest of the builtin UIs instead of creating entirely new "construction sites" all the time, which will be left incomplete and outdated in a few years time as the current people are replaced with new people.
- paavohtl 5y ago
  I guess one challenge with this is that old school Win32 doesn't really support anything resembling automatic / responsive layout. All controls are of a fixed size in a fixed pixel location. This means you can't for example change the default font, add margin or padding or do any other significant changes without essentially breaking all existing applications.
  - 5y ago
temac 5y ago
> such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future I'm always very skeptical of refusal to handle the past because of the promise that the same won't reiterate in the future. What could also happen is that 5 years from now, you or another dev justifies refusal to handle inconsistencies developed "temporarily" and or accidentally in the meantime with exactly the same reasoning. A more direct and simple observation is that if nobody is working on converging / cleaning up stuff, they don't converge and aren't cleaned up. As for the amount of backward compat already provided by Windows, it is good but not great anyway. Try to play old games, install/use old VS with a few patches, install/old Matlab, use old devices, etc... Hell even try to continue to use your semi-recent devices across new build of windows, like 20H2 breaking USB-C on my XPS 15 9560 (but now I'm ranting so I'll stop :D )
emsy 5y ago
The juice is absolutely worth the squeeze. Everybody and their grandmas think Windows is a mess, yet theres no real alternative for most people, so there’s no real incentive for MS to make it better (or for a start, stop making it worse with telemetry, forced restarts and adware).
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  > yet theres no real alternative for most people I just don't buy that. Everyone I've ever persuaded to buy a Mac or iOS device comes to prefer it to Windows in a couple of weeks, and I stop needing to fix something for them every other month.
  - emsy 5y ago
    I actually did that for my parents and in-laws and it went as you said. But there’s no alternative to Windows for a lot of professionals and gamers and that’s an issue. There’s no need for Windows to be better because they own that segment. Also, as much as Windows Desktop dominance sucks, Linux just isn’t there yet and I don’t want to see the walled garden dystopia that a majority of Mac desktops would bring us.
- uhryks 5y ago
  From MS' point of view I doubt it is worth thr squeeze. You have to consider that the average user and their grandma make very little revenue for them. They buy a license with their computer and that's mostly it. Pro users, companies are a big part of the Windows revenue and for them, backwards-compatibilty is the biggest sales point. I agree this is super bad and confusing for many users, but the majority of them probably never go past the latest design Win10 screens.
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
This is exactly what unit tests are for. Besides, the business logic should be already fairly separated from the presentation logic. As for preventing inconsistencies in future, try getting your QA team back.
ladyattis 5y ago
Honestly thank goodness for the backwards compatibility, otherwise I'd have to rewrite an existing legacy app I've been put in charge of maintaining at my place of work. The thing is in winforms and a weird third party UI library built with winforms as well. It would just be a nightmare for me to have to go through each screen to recreate it reliably.

Solocomplex 5y ago

They tried modernizing with Windows RT, which was actually very smooth and functional if it wasn't so locked down.

cheschire 5y ago
Wasn't RT just windows 8 with an ARM build target and win32 stuff removed so they could sell cheaper tablets? So if you wanted an "unlocked" windows RT, couldn't you just have run windows 8?
- qball 5y ago
  >win32 stuff removed Win32 was not removed from Windows RT, but your access to it (if your name wasn't "Microsoft"; because that low-level access was reportedly how they got Office on it) was. And because of Secure Boot, which (unlike x86, for now) is mandated enabled for Windows on ARM systems, you had to wait for an unpatchable security hole in the booting process (which, while it exists, wasn't relevant until past the end of the Surface RT's lifecycle), you couldn't run full Windows 8 or a tablet-first Linux distro.
  - my123 5y ago
    It's not mandated on for the newer Windows on Arm64 systems, but is configurable there. Windows RT was just Windows 8 with a locked code signing policy, yup. And yes, Office on Windows RT was Win32, as were File Explorer, MMC, ... it's just recompiled Win8 after all.

gogopuppygogo 5y ago

Could you ever see Microsoft dropping the registry? My probably unpopular opinion is that the registry is the worst feature in Windows. It’s bloat directly impacts the speed of the operating system. Seems like such a waste for so many advancements in Windows but the registry sticks around like a bad hangover.

for_xyz 5y ago
If you drop something, then you need some kind of replacement for that. I don't see any alternative on where entire OS could be configured other than registry.
- bmn__ 5y ago
  KDE and all its applications and a majority of other Linux desktop application use the configuration laid out in <https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/>.
secondcoming 5y ago
How is it worse than having config files scattered around in distro-specific locations?
- alexvoda 5y ago
  And how is it worse than dconf? People hated on dconf during the transition to systemd, but it is here now. I do not really think one is better than the other.
  - SSLy 5y ago
    dconf has a nice schema that you can see with the editor
em500 5y ago
> It’s bloat directly impacts the speed of the operating system. Do you have any evidence of this? I remember in the XP days the German c't computer magazine tested populating the registry with hundreds MBs of garbage and found no performance impact at all.

jpeter 5y ago

Is this also the reason why there are no tabs in windows explorer?

blackoil 5y ago
It is a power user feature which most users won't will not appreciate. I am using Mac for about 7 years now, and almost never use tabs in Finder.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Tabs are great for saving screen real estate. Finder windows are relatively small and, with large screens, the need to cram two or more folders into the same window ceases to exist. It’s easier to remember the window to the right is my docs folder and the one to the left is the downloads one.
  - tveyben 5y ago
    I stopped using Windows file explorer more than a decade ago when I learned about spatial file managers. I have been in love with - and 10x more productive using - TotalCommander! The ability to >98% of the file related tasks from the keyboard is very addictive!!!
    - bmn__ 5y ago
      You have confused terminology. TC is an example of orthodox file manager. Explorer is an example of spatial file manager.
Flockster 5y ago
I'm a TreeStyleTab user in Firefox with always >200 Tabs open. But I never got the idea of Tabs in Explorer (or Finder for that matter). When I use multiple Explorer Views, most of the time I do it, to interact between them. This is not the case for websites. So for drag and drop interactions, two windows always beat the drag, hover over the other tab until it catches my intend to switch to this tab, and drop it there workflow. The same goes for copy and paste. Ctrl+c, alt+tab, ctrl+v. I'm sure there is a corresponding command to cycle through the tabs, but alt+tab is deep muscle memory, that it beats this command always.

jiggawatts 5y ago

Stating that the UI consistency issues are due to backwards compatibility is stretching the truth to the point of outright deception. Backwards compatibility is not what stops Microsoft from updating the GUIs for their own components. It is not the reason that the components that have been updated failed to carry forward 100% of the features of the components they're replacing, necessitating the ongoing use of the legacy components. It is not the reason reams of GUIs have gone untouched for 20 years. It is not the reason Windows now has at least 4 versions(!) of Performance Monitor, all of which are broken in at least one glaring way. (More on that below.) The believable reasons for the GUI inconsistencies I've heard are: 1) API churn, because of which the UI teams did not have sufficient time to work on features versus playing catchup. 2) Bad system GUI APIs that are very difficult for even in-house teams to work with. 3) Unwillingness to take ownership of legacy code, with literally noone left at Microsoft willing to touch things like the ODBC connections panel or the Component Services snapin. People prefer to add new things instead of fixing or removing old things because it's "easier". Actually, let's just stop here for a second. That last point explains the performance monitor views. I mentioned at least 4 copies, written over decades, by different people. Each new team has steadfastly refused to touch (or remove!) the old code, but hasn't replaced the functionality of the old code, so now end-users need 4 different versions to get things done. These versions are: 1) The performance tab in Task Manager. The only GUI-based view that exposes some metrics such as GPU temperatures. Only shows a small number of fixed metrics. 2) Resource Monitor, which is opened from Task Manager. The only GUI-based view that shows certain per-process metrics, such as the names of files being touched, or per-connection network stats. Has permanent UI issues that will never be fixed, such as not using the system number formatting in some places, making large metrics unreadable as they change faster than users can count the digits. Similarly, the graphs take forever to change their vertical axes, making them useless 90% of the time. 3) The Performance Monitor MMC snapin. Totally legacy, with un-resizable controls that cut off text. Nonetheless, it is absolutely essential because it provides the only live GUI view of 100% of the performance metrics available in the system. It is also the only way to record metrics and view recordings. It is the only GUI for creating metric logging that persists. Etc... 4) The various versions of Server Manager's performance views, which are so useless that I've literally never used it. Nobody can get their job done doing this, we're all still using RDP to connect to servers so that we can simultaneously launch the three tools above. Why RDP? Because 2 of the 3 above do not support remoting. I could go on and on like this for hours about how bad just this one aspect of Windows is, let alone the hundreds of other GUIs that have been butchered by bad decision making and internal NIH syndrome leaving a trail of half-baked messes behind. Wait... did I say 4 performance metrics GUIs? I meant 5, because there's also the new Windows Admin Center, which was clearly written by people that have never had to diagnose a performance issue on a server. It's very pretty and utterly useless, which means that: Nobody will use it, and it will be superseded by someone else's half-baked attempt in a few years, 100% guaranteed.

azinman2 5y ago

> Now it could be done to maintain backwards compat and have everything completely up to date, but the juice is not worth the squeeze and there are more important things to focus on You state that as fact, but I believe the poor UI situation is holding windows back from gaining market share. It’s not just the way things look, but uniformly communicate a single experience. Microsoft used to be very integrated and had an entire ecosystem that was uniform. Letting this go has really hurt the brand IMHO, and creates a very low bar for third parties.

andi999 5y ago
What market share is left there to gain? Ok 17% Mac OS, maybe 5% would switch to Windows?
- rocqua 5y ago
  I think this inconsistent experience is what is opening the door for competitors like Apple and Linux.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I use Apple because their OS is a Unix AND their hardware is nicely built and well integrated with the OS. I use Linux because it’s a way to run a good Unix-like OS on non-Apple hardware. The overwhelming majority of people who use Windows (or macOS) is because their computer came with it. As long as it mostly works, people don’t care about which OS they are using.
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      The overwhelming majority of people on Windows are there because Microsoft bent over backwards to give businesses what they needed so that they could beat out Apple and IBM to win the desktop wars of the 80s and 90s. If businesses had never used Windows, nobody else would have and computers wouldn't come pre-installed with it. Personally, I use all of them for different purposes. I like Windows because it's more compatible than other OSes with any hardware that I can throw at it. It's also more stable than any other OS. My Macs have been broken multiple times throughout their life by simply upgrading to the next version of macOS, but Windows has always just kept on trucking along year after year. Another reason I love Windows is that it's got a high degree of flexibility. While Apple hides APIs and does everything they can to prevent you from doing things that they don't approve of, Microsoft does the exact opposite and publishes APIs to help you get it done. Mostly though, I just love the Windows UI and the Windows way of doing things. I find it to be very simple and obvious. The things I don't like are largely unseen, like the forced telemetry and updates. I use my Mac when I need to build or test something for iOS or macOS. Outside of that, I just can't stand the way they do anything. I find the UI and the UX of macOS to be absolutely hideous. The fact that you have to install third party stuff just to get basic features like "decent window management" is simply beyond the pale to me. For work, I started using a Linux desktop a few years ago because Windows was annoyingly slow when doing anything with npm/yarn/node_modules or Docker and I was doing more and more work with NodeJS and less with .NET/SQL Server/etc. So, I installed Manjaro with XFCE and that's when I found out that XFCE does a minimalist Windows style desktop better than Microsoft does. They have all the Windows features that I want, like Window snapping and none of the Windows features that I don't want. They even have a feature that I usually installed 7+ taskbar tweaker to get: They let you middle-click taskbar items to close the window (also you can drag/drop them), similar to how Chrome treats browser tabs. I've had Manjaro installed on multiple systems (desktops and laptops) for years now and I haven't seen any of the issues that people complain about here, like having to fiddle with their system to get it to work. Everything just worked for me since day one. Now I just use Windows for entertainment - I've got a NUC style PC at every TV and I have one gaming PC.

flohofwoe 5y ago

Asking the obvious question: why aren't the UIs in newer Windows versions not "just" different themes over Win32 widgets? Instead the UI theme seems to be tied to UI frameworks which seem to be created and discarded annually at Microsoft, so each time some genius decides to overhaul the UI, a completely new sediment layer is created instead of letting some UI designers tinker with a theme editor. I don't get it. Functional UI changes should be different from visual fluff, yet Windows seems to the only OS where the two aren't separated.

Macha 5y ago
This was historically the case, it's why despite the article calling out winver, folder properties, the run dialog as being from the win9x -> win2k period, they didn't look remotely as out of place in win7 as win10. Of course there are limits. iirc Windows 7 RTM had an obviously 3.1 derived file picker make it into the add fonts dialog until it was replaced in SP1 if my memory has the timing right. Despite using win32 widgets which had the correct theming, that didn't look native at all
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  FWIW: I consider fixes like the improved environment variable editor in the "old" system control panel in Win10 much more important than the entire new settings panel mess. The same type of improvements would make a lot more sense for the rest of the builtin UIs instead of creating entirely new "construction sites" all the time, which will be left incomplete and outdated in a few years time as the current people are replaced with new people.
paavohtl 5y ago
I guess one challenge with this is that old school Win32 doesn't really support anything resembling automatic / responsive layout. All controls are of a fixed size in a fixed pixel location. This means you can't for example change the default font, add margin or padding or do any other significant changes without essentially breaking all existing applications.
- 5y ago

temac 5y ago

> such as making the OS work/build in such a way that there won’t be inconsistencies in the future I'm always very skeptical of refusal to handle the past because of the promise that the same won't reiterate in the future. What could also happen is that 5 years from now, you or another dev justifies refusal to handle inconsistencies developed "temporarily" and or accidentally in the meantime with exactly the same reasoning. A more direct and simple observation is that if nobody is working on converging / cleaning up stuff, they don't converge and aren't cleaned up. As for the amount of backward compat already provided by Windows, it is good but not great anyway. Try to play old games, install/use old VS with a few patches, install/old Matlab, use old devices, etc... Hell even try to continue to use your semi-recent devices across new build of windows, like 20H2 breaking USB-C on my XPS 15 9560 (but now I'm ranting so I'll stop :D )

emsy 5y ago

The juice is absolutely worth the squeeze. Everybody and their grandmas think Windows is a mess, yet theres no real alternative for most people, so there’s no real incentive for MS to make it better (or for a start, stop making it worse with telemetry, forced restarts and adware).

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
> yet theres no real alternative for most people I just don't buy that. Everyone I've ever persuaded to buy a Mac or iOS device comes to prefer it to Windows in a couple of weeks, and I stop needing to fix something for them every other month.
- emsy 5y ago
  I actually did that for my parents and in-laws and it went as you said. But there’s no alternative to Windows for a lot of professionals and gamers and that’s an issue. There’s no need for Windows to be better because they own that segment. Also, as much as Windows Desktop dominance sucks, Linux just isn’t there yet and I don’t want to see the walled garden dystopia that a majority of Mac desktops would bring us.
uhryks 5y ago
From MS' point of view I doubt it is worth thr squeeze. You have to consider that the average user and their grandma make very little revenue for them. They buy a license with their computer and that's mostly it. Pro users, companies are a big part of the Windows revenue and for them, backwards-compatibilty is the biggest sales point. I agree this is super bad and confusing for many users, but the majority of them probably never go past the latest design Win10 screens.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

This is exactly what unit tests are for. Besides, the business logic should be already fairly separated from the presentation logic. As for preventing inconsistencies in future, try getting your QA team back.

ladyattis 5y ago

Honestly thank goodness for the backwards compatibility, otherwise I'd have to rewrite an existing legacy app I've been put in charge of maintaining at my place of work. The thing is in winforms and a weird third party UI library built with winforms as well. It would just be a nightmare for me to have to go through each screen to recreate it reliably.