21 ms·

Windows 11 is half-baked. But it isn't just half-baked because it was rushed out while ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is also half-

Windows 11 is half-baked. But it isn't just half-baked because it was rushed out while ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is also half-baked because Microsoft's management has no particular strategy or plan for what they want Windows to be. So Windows 11 just feels like an "and kitchen sink" where someone picked up an iPad, noted down a bunch of random features without rhyme or reason and then told the people below them to shove them into Windows for some reason. Then you step back and realize that very "101" features on Windows are still incomplete like the migration to Settings, Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys Run (let alone Google Desktop Search RIP or FileLocator Pro), and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. As cliché as this sounds, Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Regardless of what that vision is, at least then Windows would be a something, rather than a whole host of competing ideas and contradictions i.e. a mess. PS - Ironically the "Windows 11 PC Health Check" app symbolizes Windows 11's problems: Released in a half-complete state, pulled, then re-released as a "Preview" also in a half-complete state. The app to check if you're ready for Windows 11 is a "preview" less than 30 days before the FULL retail release of Windows 11... It is almost too perfect.

userbinator 5y ago
and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Also known as "the good part"... Everything else about Windows UI since then has only gotten less usable and more hostile.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  Took the words out of my mouth. I'd prefer a UI element designed for Windows 2K over most anything designed later (with some, but few, exceptions). I'm not sure I would characterize newer UI as more hostile. Some better adjective might be infantilizing, dumbed-down - for the most part; or there's a dichotomy between the UI for dummies part and arcane, not-well-documented, difficult-to-locate parts. This dichotomy was somewhat less pronounced in the past.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    Quite frankly, the ONLY new UX element I like out of windows post 95 is the search bar. Everything else has been just annoying. That 95 interface is STILL there, buried under 1000 clicks through an unnavagable interface..
    - blibble 5y ago
      the search bar in Windows 10 never finds anything either
  - OminousWeapons 5y ago
    I agree, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Windows is legitimately confusing for noobs, so I don't see a problem with making the noob learning curve less steep as long as all the "real" functionality that a power user, dev, or admin would regularly use is left alone on the same paths, with the same UX or syntax.
- cogman10 5y ago
  This is what drives me nuts. Why do they keep messing with the UI? Nobody wants that! Even Apple and Google have both figured out that screwing around with UX every release is a recipe for making your customers HATE you. What I, and probably non-power users want out of windows is for it to be faster and use less power. I'd honestly be happy to go back to a Win95 interface with the latest kernel. Microsoft needs to fire the idiots that keep messing around with the UX. It's not broke, stop trying to fix it.
  - GiorgioG 5y ago
    > Why do they keep messing with the UI? UX folks don't get paid to leave things alone.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Nobody gets paid to leave things alone and maybe that's a big problem with the world.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        Farmers can get paid to not grow crops.
        saurik 5y ago
        Damn... the idea that maybe we should be banding together as a democracy and cutting deals to subsidize the engineering work of companies that are willing to "lay fallow" their design teams is fascinating.
        FridgeSeal 5y ago
        Bonuses paid to design teams that are a direct function of the length between unprompted UI adjustments and redesigns? Iteration on designs is of course permitted, but there’s more pressure on “get it right” rather than “dirty MVP”. Once launched, changes can’t go to prod-lest they lose their bonus-and emphasis is more on more in-depth and longer-term user research and refining the design. This way design teams are still doing valuable work, and there’s no crunch to both design something and then get it out ASAP. The next time front-end teams come back to work on any kind of UI refresh everything is already sorted and ready to go.
- gjvc 5y ago
  > and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Windows 2K + cleartype would be perfect.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Plus individual screen dpi scaling from whenever that was. And the usb handling from win10. Oh and the audio device switcher is so much better in w10 than w7. Actually people seem to focus a lot on UX but in terms of the core features (handling my hardware and managing processes) windows has improved a lot. I also fondly remember win2k but I think it would be absolutely awful to use now.
    - gjvc 5y ago
      fair points, which i was going to mention, but was feeling too wistful. (it does happen)
    - acrobatsunfish 5y ago
      The new win 10 audio swapping is a horrible abomination. The capstone being the removal of audio settings from the system tray. I feel like I could rant for an hour on the topic. The per app sound controller is good when it works, but frequently likes to jump to other devices with something resembling free will.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Personally I prefer non-antialised MS Sans Serif, and turning off antialiasing is one of the first things I do (but they seem to make it harder with each new version to eradicate it completely) because it physically hurts my eyes and makes me feel dizzy after looking at "smoothed" text for too long. But I think the gradual loss of customisability is definitely something we can all agree against. (For another one, I don't think I've ever put the taskbar anywhere other than the bottom, but I definitely think it would be better if people were free to put it where they wanted.)
- nunez 5y ago
  Seriously. Windows Classic was perfect. Fast, functional, and extremely easy to learn.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Yeah if they gave me a high DPI Windows 11 classic theme without telemetry and some actual quality control I’d be all over it. My mother also agrees with me on this. She’s been progressively hating Windows more every release too.
    - handrous 5y ago
      I like that driver management no longer sucks, I like search-to-launch, and I like the way you can send windows to the left or right half of the screen (decent tiling WMs or Spectacle on macOS are much better, but hey, Windows' thing is better than nothing). ... that's a fairly complete list of improvements to Windows since, I dunno, Win2k, that I care about. Most other changes have been neutral, or made it worse. [EDIT] oh, and two of those three probably would have been at least as good as high-quality add-ons (like the Spectacle example is, on macOS), so as far as really vital stuff goes, making drivers suck a lot less is just about it.
      - hughrr 5y ago
        If you think driver management doesn’t suck then try owning an HP wireless printer. Total shit show.
    - prox 5y ago
      Looks like the “every odd release is terrible” tradition is still strong in Microsoft.
      - kodeninja 5y ago
        Not been on Win for a long time, but isn't Win 7 generally regarded as the best/most stable?
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I hate the UI after Win 7. For years all users that needed to dig into setting knew exactly where they were. Now they expose some through a clunky UI and you have to go digging for that that are, in fact, just the same old UI. Which has to create confusion for many users presented with their new UI only to be thrown into a totally different UI style. The new UI should 1) actually expose all of the settings and 2) offer a toggle to default to the UI that sits behind everything anyway. Otherwise, I just don't understand the need to tweak with UI design that roughly 20 years of Windows users have already learned.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Consistency would be good. Also some of the old elements don't work well anymore. Like new menus that appear in certain folders, except you'd never know because the menu bar is hidden by default. Or forms that were never designed to resize.
- cm2187 5y ago
  I wouldn’t go that far. It is better than the new windows 10 settings for sure but count how many clicks it takes to get to the menu to change the IP of the machine, with non resizable windows, text that is non selectable/copyable, etc. I don’t care for the old battleship-grey look, but lots of the old parts are very clunky. Including important features that are not accessible in UI. Like all scheduled tasks run as low priority, no UI to change that.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  After installing Windows for the first time in easily 6 years, I was shocked that things like the device manager and disk management still look like they're from Win95. It's not better if it's not remotely consistent
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    Those control panels might look dated, but they are a lot more discoverable and feature complete than their modern replacements.
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      Perhaps more feature complete, but idk about discoverable. I wouldn't have found them if I didn't already know they existed, because I had to search for them.
- ladyattis 5y ago
  The worse part is how new settings are pushed into the new UI layer under their own menus rather than being easily accessible from the control panel. I understand the need for backwards compatibility but I'd assume they would want to put together a proper replacement for the control panel that utilizes their newest technology while still being able to manage legacy application settings. But it seems you have to go through multiple screens until you find the right one that has the setting. It's really annoying.
jjoonathan 5y ago
> Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys Run Oh no, that's the one feature I was looking forward to, and only because I was hoping it would be better than Power Toys Run.
heurisko 5y ago
I was trying to check Disk Partitions on Windows 10, so typed this into the search. It gave me a website with some freeware tool. I had to search around again until I found the actual system tool. I don't know what a regular user would have done. I'm not really a Windows user.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  My favorite is when I see the result I want flash by and then I accidentally type the next character -- correctly -- due to momentum, and the result disappears. Then I delete the last character in an attempt to bring back the result, and then I try retyping the whole thing, but the correct result never reappears. It is gone. Only useless web results remain.
  - syntheticnature 5y ago
    This! It's infuriating. I also find that at first it pulls up File Explorer when I type "exp", but in a flash it switches to Edge. Just wanted a file management window, please.
    - 369548684892826 5y ago
      In case you're not aware: Windows Key + E for a file management window.
      - syntheticnature 5y ago
        I live in other OSes most of the time, so thank you for this.
  - deeplowdock 5y ago
    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search] "BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000 "CortanaConsent"=dword:00000000 ^ put this into a .reg file, run it, and never see those bullshit web search results again. Have been doing this first thing after a fresh install on every PC.
rejectfinite 5y ago
>UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. This is good. mmc.exe and its apps is used for actual work in IT.
- Someone1234 5y ago
  I get it but mmc and services still lack basic features like filter/search, which is a daily pain point for me. Is the service named "Microsoft [thing]" "Windows [Thing]" or just plain old "[Thing]" (e.g. "Microsoft Defender Antivirus Service," "Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Service," or "Security Center")?
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  They should make it DPI-aware, though...
pjmlp 5y ago
As I commented in another parts of this thread, you see that quite clearly in the mess of multiple teams, each advocating their own UI framework as the future of WIndows UI, as if they were the only team doing it. It is like management let them all roam free and let the best one win.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  That might have worked, if they had let the best one win. Instead, they treated the teams like a buffet - I'll take this app from this team, and that app from that team... and the result is, as you say, a mess.
seph-reed 5y ago
> Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, Is it possible for a project to be abused for long enough that it becomes irrecoverable from any financially sensible perspective? I mean this seriously: I've heard the codebase for Windows is really, really ancient and making updates is a nightmare. It's almost like trying to revive a lost language. What if Windows has passed the threshold where the cost to fix it is beyond its potential for revenue? What if it's slowly approaching the threshold where simply maintaining it is beyond its potential for revenue?
- Arainach 5y ago
  Whoever you heard that from is wrong. The codebase has evolved over time and has been actively maintained and refactored. Making updates is not a "nightmare".
  - seph-reed 5y ago
    Very few code bases that old are easily maintained. It's not really much of an insult to say so. And given how long it takes to roll out basic features and improvements to long standing issues, my hope is that the code is a nightmare. The other options are terrible leadership, or incompetent developers. Or some mix of all three.
- jychang 5y ago
  Definitely not. I heard the NT kernel codebase is actually beautiful to work with. There's definitely code rot in Windows, but that's probably due to compatibility reasons with third party code rather than actual bad design.
nunez 5y ago
Metro was fucked up on many levels, but Steve Sinofsky had a really good vision for Windows that I just don't think he had enough time to see executed.
dstaley 5y ago
> The app to check if you're ready for Windows 11 is a "preview" less than 30 days before the FULL retail release of Windows 11 Unless something has changed recently, I believe the release of Windows 11 will only be for newly purchased devices. The update from Windows 10 to 11 won't be until sometime next year.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Why does this sound eerily familiar to Vista?
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
> and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. I use WindowBlinds to skin my Windows 10 to look like Windows 98. >.> It doesn't work for programs that create their own title bars or remove them entirely (like Chrome, Firefox, and Discord), but I love having 3D buttons on my task bar and windows.
- gruez 5y ago
  can you provide a screenshot (or link to a theme) so I can see how it looks like? All of the windows classic themes I've seen for windows 8.1+ have been pretty meh.
  - etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
    I just found this... https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/9233/ https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/9233/
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
> ... someone picked up an iPad... Love the burn.
bobsmooth 5y ago
>Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys Run 'Everything' is a freeware tool that should be installed by every Windows user. https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
  Those are completely different products. Run and Everything search for file names only. Windows Search searches in file's content too, and understand a lot of file formats.
WalterBright 5y ago
> Google Desktop Search RIP or FileLocator Pro I don't use such apps, not because I don't like them, but because these days I just don't trust them to not surreptitiously send an index of my system to them. I wrote my own file search programs. It's not hard, just a few lines of code. I use them every day.
- trelane 5y ago
  Make sure to turn off the tracking and sending built in to windows if you're concerned. https://www.wired.com/story/windows-10-privacy-settings/ https://www.wired.com/story/windows-10-privacy-settings/
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I don't even trust the "turn off" buttons. I just write my own utilities. They're simple to write, they work, and I port them around as needed. P.S. I have file indexing turned off on my drives.
jarjoura 5y ago
This sounds good in theory, but when Microsoft did just that in 2011 with Windows 8, it ended up backfiring on them big time. It's pretty clear Windows has organizational and structural problems. Mainly because every product they release is always only 80% there. For some reason, whatever it is, it gets mostly finished, shipped and then abandoned and moved into maintenance mode. Yet, it works for them. They usually always win in whatever market they go after. So I can't say they are incentivized to fix those structural problems.
- notatoad 5y ago
  >This sounds good in theory, but when Microsoft did just that in 2011 with Windows 8, it ended up backfiring on them big time. the problem was that while windows 8 had *somebody* with a vision behind it, the vision never really made it through to the product. windows 8 was obviously the product of a dysfunctional system that was pulling in two completely opposite directions - the consumer devices side who wanted modern touch-friendly designs to compete with iPad, and the business customers who wanted the windows they were familiar with and didn't want to have to re-train their employees. and what we ended up with was a half-assed implementation in the middle. "we want to do the best possible job of supporting the huge number of existing applications and users on our platform" is a perfectly valid vision for the future of windows. vision doesn't have to mean change. The problem with there being no vision is you get both the change and the hesitance to change.
  - mycall 5y ago
    The craziest part was how Windows Server 2012 included Windows 8 UI. The worst of both worlds.
    - vetinari 5y ago
      The funniest part is, that Windows Server 2012 had a "desktop experience" feature, which basically brought it on par with Windows 8, UI-wise. It was much more usable if you didn't install it.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
cm2187 5y ago
On windows search, I never understood why it was so bloody slow, particularly on network drives. If I traverse the same folders programmatically I get a result in seconds or less. The search function will takes an order of magnitude that, and I don’t believe it is searching anything else than file names. And don’t even dare changing the sorting order of the search result, because of course it must trigger a new search from scratch. Which leads me to the same conclusion than many other flaws in Windows. I don’t think the windows team at Microsoft uses windows themselves. They must all have macs at home or perhaps don’t care much about computers. But clearly those obvious UX failures do not seen to annoy them.
- speed_spread 5y ago
  I think that like many places nowadays, development of Windows is done by developers according to an entirely business-driven backlog, where details are first broken down into prioritizable bits before being implemented. As long as features are delivered on time in predictable increments, nobody dares to openly question the actual usefulness or quality of the resulting software for fear of impeding that smooth rollout which would make the team look bad and reduce chances of promotion and / or bonuses.
Bilal_io 5y ago
How can you say it is half-baked when it's still in beta? I am not saying it will be perfect when released, but we cannot judge something that's not generally available yet.
taf2 5y ago
For me with windows 10... I spent about 2 hours trying to get it to install on my new machine while it continued to fail due an issue with it recognizing my nvme drive complaining i did not have any sada drive... in about 20 minutes after being very frustrated i downloaded ubuntu and installed... I spent the next 20 minutes installing lutris and the sims4 so my girls could play... so about 4 hours later... 40 minutes of which was to get linux installed with wine and playing video games with a then pretty nice nvidia 1080 ti graphics card... and bonus i can play sc2... i guess i don't see why people still use windows?
asveikau 5y ago
> Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Regardless of what that vision is That sounds a lot like how Windows 8 went. My personal opinion: they should have frozen the UI at Win7. The kernel improvements since that time are fine. Iterative, under the hood improvements over UI revolution.
- jrsj 5y ago
  Was about to say the same. That is exactly how Windows 8 was made. Really wish we had gotten more of a continuation of the design of Win 7 instead of everything else that’s happened since.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"Just say no." For home computers, I said no many years ago and never looked back. However I sometimes wonder, since strides have been made in booting Windows from USB and with introduction of WinPE, could we have a smaller, limited purpose Windows, bootable from USB drive. We could boot into this to edit Word documents or Excel spreadsheets or some other Office task, then power off.^1 It could boot to RAM so the HDD is never touched. Portable Windows. Normally, WinPE and Windows "boot disks" are used by Windows sysadmins, but there is nothing to limit usage to only Windows sysadmin stuff. A hypothetical Windows sysadmin and/or full-blown Windows-loving reader, who has succumbed to Redmond's propaganda, might think, "What could you even do with that. It would be useless." Yet Microsoft itself anticipates that someone might see the utility and they actively try to prevent such persons from using a fast, unbloated, telemetry and ad-free Windows.^2 Its one thing to require enterprise customers who pay annual fees to use bloated Windows N+1 but what about non-enterprise users. (Perhaps they dont count. They are just sources of data collection.) Personally, I dont need Microsoft to tell me what is and what is not a "general purpose operating system". I will make that call and I will decide how I want to use it. This brazen disrespect for free-thinking users is why I dont use Windows (at home). 1. https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ 2. "Windows PE is not a general-purpose operating system. It may not be used for any purpose other than deployment and recovery. It should not be used as a thin client or an embedded operating system. There are other Microsoft products, such as Windows Embedded CE, which may be used for these purposes. To prevent its use as a production operating system, Windows PE automatically stops running the shell and restarts after 72 hours of continuous use. This period is not configurable." https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-intro https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...
john_moscow 5y ago
It continues a decades-long tradition where every other Windows version is borderline unusable and universally hated. As long as I remember: * Windows 3.0 was perceived as buggy * Windows 3.1/3.11 was a major improvement * Windows 95 was extremely unreliable * Windows 98 sort of addressed most of the issues * Windows 2000 was a weird amalgamation of the NT kernel and 98/ME look'n'feel that wasn't received well * Windows XP fixed that * Windows Vista was universally hated * Windows 7 addressed most of its issues * Windows 8 was a nonsense with phone-style UI on desktops, tablets and servers * Windows 10 fixed it Now it's time for another crappy release to get people really excited about upgrading to Windows 12 in a year or two.
- ycuser2 5y ago
  Where's Windows ME?
  - hulitu 5y ago
    It's crashing. Seriosly is a good thing that they did not mention it although some people claimed it was stable on their computer.
  - worrycue 5y ago
    Probably a repressed memory.
  - lou1306 5y ago
    It should be in Windows 2000's place. ME was a Windows 9x system, 2000 was part of the NT family.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      It is too long ago to properly remember, but during this time when building my desktops I always insisted on getting NT and then Windows 2000 in place of the consumer versions. Had some funny discussions with shops when buying licenses.
      - 5y ago
a-dub 5y ago
> Regardless of what that vision is, at least then Windows would be a something, rather than a whole host of competing ideas and contradictions i.e. a mess. the big problem is, and this is primarily why i dislike everything windows, is that humans are mimicry machines. if you give them tooling that's an inconsistent mess, it's going to normalize the idea of inconsistent messes, and then they will create inconsistent messes. windows ultimately normalizes inconsistency and mediocrity- as such, it encourages these habits of mind in those who are forced to use it. if those who are forced to use it are in any sort of creative positions, they ultimately create and propagate chaos that matches the cage which they are forced to reside within.
- mikro2nd 5y ago
  Well said! I've long maintained that Visual Basic set back the state-of-the-art in graphical user interfaces by (at least) a decade. The original intent and purpose of graphical UIs was direct manipulation of objects on screen. VB turned it into "filling in forms with buttons to click". And that mediocrity lives with us still, the original promise/premise sadly unfulfilled.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > windows ultimately normalizes inconsistency and mediocrity Windows 95-7 design did not, quite to the contrary. Unfortunately I can't find it again, but usually the link appears on any HN discussion about classic Windows design sooner or later... anyway, the point is that the classic Win95 design was consistent across the whole OS (for apps that used the standard OS controls). UI elements had clear shadows, borders and margins separating elements visually, color schemes by default assisted that visual separation and they were customizable (e.g. for those with accessibility needs). Additionally, menus and hotkeys were consistent across Microsoft apps with (IIRC) clear guidelines on how third party apps should use menus, so that end users didn't have to learn much.
  - a-dub 5y ago
    sure, the "chicago" ui was indeed a huge step forward... but until nt4, it was still only skin deep. even after nt4, abominations such as mfc and heritage from ms lan manager lived on. the network protocols were so poorly designed that entire companies (riverbed, et al) sprung up to rewrite them as less latency sensitive alternatives that would actually function over wans.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Honestly I hope they keep UI elements from Windows 2000, because they are functional and informative. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. But at least it allows you to administrate the system. MacOS is nice to use, but that is also restricted to daily use cases. If you want to administrate the system, you have an UI from the 70s, mainly the terminal. If you remove older UI elements from Windows, you are left with a useless toy box. There is no single instance where the new setting perform better than the old ones, on the contrary it is a complete unstructured mess. They should remove it and try again in my opinion.
bronlund 5y ago
This is typical of big technology projects based on greed. The new guys just don't understand what the old guys did and are unable to fix anything. But they have to do something, so they just pile more crap on top. They have been doing this for decades.
wslh 5y ago
> As cliché as this sounds, Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Completeley agree and I want to add: they need a product owner, someone who has used multiple operating systems in different form factors like OSX, iOS, Android, and Linux and can see the pros and cons of them instead of taking sides.
hackerbrother 5y ago
This page says the Health Check is "coming soon".. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11
dTal 5y ago
>Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Do they, though? No one's buying Windows because they think it's swell. They're buying it because it's the default choice that comes with a computer, and because it's the default platform for commercial software. To most consumers, Windows is just what "computers" run, along with a vague notion that "Macs" might be a bit different. As long as Microsoft continues to enjoy its monopoly position in the desktop OS space, they couldn't give a crap if Windows is "something" or not. All they have to do is not screw it up by breaking compatibility too badly, and fart out some sort of named release every few years so people don't think Windows is "old" (the nuances of rolling release being beyond the ken of the average consumer).
silexia 5y ago
This seems to happen to nearly every company after the founder leaves.

userbinator 5y ago

and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Also known as "the good part"... Everything else about Windows UI since then has only gotten less usable and more hostile.

einpoklum 5y ago
Took the words out of my mouth. I'd prefer a UI element designed for Windows 2K over most anything designed later (with some, but few, exceptions). I'm not sure I would characterize newer UI as more hostile. Some better adjective might be infantilizing, dumbed-down - for the most part; or there's a dichotomy between the UI for dummies part and arcane, not-well-documented, difficult-to-locate parts. This dichotomy was somewhat less pronounced in the past.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Quite frankly, the ONLY new UX element I like out of windows post 95 is the search bar. Everything else has been just annoying. That 95 interface is STILL there, buried under 1000 clicks through an unnavagable interface..
  - blibble 5y ago
    the search bar in Windows 10 never finds anything either
- OminousWeapons 5y ago
  I agree, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Windows is legitimately confusing for noobs, so I don't see a problem with making the noob learning curve less steep as long as all the "real" functionality that a power user, dev, or admin would regularly use is left alone on the same paths, with the same UX or syntax.
cogman10 5y ago
This is what drives me nuts. Why do they keep messing with the UI? Nobody wants that! Even Apple and Google have both figured out that screwing around with UX every release is a recipe for making your customers HATE you. What I, and probably non-power users want out of windows is for it to be faster and use less power. I'd honestly be happy to go back to a Win95 interface with the latest kernel. Microsoft needs to fire the idiots that keep messing around with the UX. It's not broke, stop trying to fix it.
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  > Why do they keep messing with the UI? UX folks don't get paid to leave things alone.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Nobody gets paid to leave things alone and maybe that's a big problem with the world.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      Farmers can get paid to not grow crops.
      - saurik 5y ago
        Damn... the idea that maybe we should be banding together as a democracy and cutting deals to subsidize the engineering work of companies that are willing to "lay fallow" their design teams is fascinating.
        FridgeSeal 5y ago
        Bonuses paid to design teams that are a direct function of the length between unprompted UI adjustments and redesigns? Iteration on designs is of course permitted, but there’s more pressure on “get it right” rather than “dirty MVP”. Once launched, changes can’t go to prod-lest they lose their bonus-and emphasis is more on more in-depth and longer-term user research and refining the design. This way design teams are still doing valuable work, and there’s no crunch to both design something and then get it out ASAP. The next time front-end teams come back to work on any kind of UI refresh everything is already sorted and ready to go.
gjvc 5y ago
> and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Windows 2K + cleartype would be perfect.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Plus individual screen dpi scaling from whenever that was. And the usb handling from win10. Oh and the audio device switcher is so much better in w10 than w7. Actually people seem to focus a lot on UX but in terms of the core features (handling my hardware and managing processes) windows has improved a lot. I also fondly remember win2k but I think it would be absolutely awful to use now.
  - gjvc 5y ago
    fair points, which i was going to mention, but was feeling too wistful. (it does happen)
  - acrobatsunfish 5y ago
    The new win 10 audio swapping is a horrible abomination. The capstone being the removal of audio settings from the system tray. I feel like I could rant for an hour on the topic. The per app sound controller is good when it works, but frequently likes to jump to other devices with something resembling free will.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Personally I prefer non-antialised MS Sans Serif, and turning off antialiasing is one of the first things I do (but they seem to make it harder with each new version to eradicate it completely) because it physically hurts my eyes and makes me feel dizzy after looking at "smoothed" text for too long. But I think the gradual loss of customisability is definitely something we can all agree against. (For another one, I don't think I've ever put the taskbar anywhere other than the bottom, but I definitely think it would be better if people were free to put it where they wanted.)
nunez 5y ago
Seriously. Windows Classic was perfect. Fast, functional, and extremely easy to learn.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Yeah if they gave me a high DPI Windows 11 classic theme without telemetry and some actual quality control I’d be all over it. My mother also agrees with me on this. She’s been progressively hating Windows more every release too.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I like that driver management no longer sucks, I like search-to-launch, and I like the way you can send windows to the left or right half of the screen (decent tiling WMs or Spectacle on macOS are much better, but hey, Windows' thing is better than nothing). ... that's a fairly complete list of improvements to Windows since, I dunno, Win2k, that I care about. Most other changes have been neutral, or made it worse. [EDIT] oh, and two of those three probably would have been at least as good as high-quality add-ons (like the Spectacle example is, on macOS), so as far as really vital stuff goes, making drivers suck a lot less is just about it.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      If you think driver management doesn’t suck then try owning an HP wireless printer. Total shit show.
  - prox 5y ago
    Looks like the “every odd release is terrible” tradition is still strong in Microsoft.
    - kodeninja 5y ago
      Not been on Win for a long time, but isn't Win 7 generally regarded as the best/most stable?
ineedasername 5y ago
I hate the UI after Win 7. For years all users that needed to dig into setting knew exactly where they were. Now they expose some through a clunky UI and you have to go digging for that that are, in fact, just the same old UI. Which has to create confusion for many users presented with their new UI only to be thrown into a totally different UI style. The new UI should 1) actually expose all of the settings and 2) offer a toggle to default to the UI that sits behind everything anyway. Otherwise, I just don't understand the need to tweak with UI design that roughly 20 years of Windows users have already learned.
Dylan16807 5y ago
Consistency would be good. Also some of the old elements don't work well anymore. Like new menus that appear in certain folders, except you'd never know because the menu bar is hidden by default. Or forms that were never designed to resize.
cm2187 5y ago
I wouldn’t go that far. It is better than the new windows 10 settings for sure but count how many clicks it takes to get to the menu to change the IP of the machine, with non resizable windows, text that is non selectable/copyable, etc. I don’t care for the old battleship-grey look, but lots of the old parts are very clunky. Including important features that are not accessible in UI. Like all scheduled tasks run as low priority, no UI to change that.
brailsafe 5y ago
After installing Windows for the first time in easily 6 years, I was shocked that things like the device manager and disk management still look like they're from Win95. It's not better if it's not remotely consistent
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  Those control panels might look dated, but they are a lot more discoverable and feature complete than their modern replacements.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Perhaps more feature complete, but idk about discoverable. I wouldn't have found them if I didn't already know they existed, because I had to search for them.
ladyattis 5y ago
The worse part is how new settings are pushed into the new UI layer under their own menus rather than being easily accessible from the control panel. I understand the need for backwards compatibility but I'd assume they would want to put together a proper replacement for the control panel that utilizes their newest technology while still being able to manage legacy application settings. But it seems you have to go through multiple screens until you find the right one that has the setting. It's really annoying.

jjoonathan 5y ago

> Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys Run Oh no, that's the one feature I was looking forward to, and only because I was hoping it would be better than Power Toys Run.

heurisko 5y ago

I was trying to check Disk Partitions on Windows 10, so typed this into the search. It gave me a website with some freeware tool. I had to search around again until I found the actual system tool. I don't know what a regular user would have done. I'm not really a Windows user.

jjoonathan 5y ago
My favorite is when I see the result I want flash by and then I accidentally type the next character -- correctly -- due to momentum, and the result disappears. Then I delete the last character in an attempt to bring back the result, and then I try retyping the whole thing, but the correct result never reappears. It is gone. Only useless web results remain.
- syntheticnature 5y ago
  This! It's infuriating. I also find that at first it pulls up File Explorer when I type "exp", but in a flash it switches to Edge. Just wanted a file management window, please.
  - 369548684892826 5y ago
    In case you're not aware: Windows Key + E for a file management window.
    - syntheticnature 5y ago
      I live in other OSes most of the time, so thank you for this.
- deeplowdock 5y ago
  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search] "BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000 "CortanaConsent"=dword:00000000 ^ put this into a .reg file, run it, and never see those bullshit web search results again. Have been doing this first thing after a fresh install on every PC.

rejectfinite 5y ago

>UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. This is good. mmc.exe and its apps is used for actual work in IT.

Someone1234 5y ago
I get it but mmc and services still lack basic features like filter/search, which is a daily pain point for me. Is the service named "Microsoft [thing]" "Windows [Thing]" or just plain old "[Thing]" (e.g. "Microsoft Defender Antivirus Service," "Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Service," or "Security Center")?
garaetjjte 5y ago
They should make it DPI-aware, though...

pjmlp 5y ago

As I commented in another parts of this thread, you see that quite clearly in the mess of multiple teams, each advocating their own UI framework as the future of WIndows UI, as if they were the only team doing it. It is like management let them all roam free and let the best one win.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
That might have worked, if they had let the best one win. Instead, they treated the teams like a buffet - I'll take this app from this team, and that app from that team... and the result is, as you say, a mess.

seph-reed 5y ago

> Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, Is it possible for a project to be abused for long enough that it becomes irrecoverable from any financially sensible perspective? I mean this seriously: I've heard the codebase for Windows is really, really ancient and making updates is a nightmare. It's almost like trying to revive a lost language. What if Windows has passed the threshold where the cost to fix it is beyond its potential for revenue? What if it's slowly approaching the threshold where simply maintaining it is beyond its potential for revenue?

Arainach 5y ago
Whoever you heard that from is wrong. The codebase has evolved over time and has been actively maintained and refactored. Making updates is not a "nightmare".
- seph-reed 5y ago
  Very few code bases that old are easily maintained. It's not really much of an insult to say so. And given how long it takes to roll out basic features and improvements to long standing issues, my hope is that the code is a nightmare. The other options are terrible leadership, or incompetent developers. Or some mix of all three.
jychang 5y ago
Definitely not. I heard the NT kernel codebase is actually beautiful to work with. There's definitely code rot in Windows, but that's probably due to compatibility reasons with third party code rather than actual bad design.

nunez 5y ago

Metro was fucked up on many levels, but Steve Sinofsky had a really good vision for Windows that I just don't think he had enough time to see executed.

dstaley 5y ago

> The app to check if you're ready for Windows 11 is a "preview" less than 30 days before the FULL retail release of Windows 11 Unless something has changed recently, I believe the release of Windows 11 will only be for newly purchased devices. The update from Windows 10 to 11 won't be until sometime next year.

dylan604 5y ago
Why does this sound eerily familiar to Vista?

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

> and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. I use WindowBlinds to skin my Windows 10 to look like Windows 98. >.> It doesn't work for programs that create their own title bars or remove them entirely (like Chrome, Firefox, and Discord), but I love having 3D buttons on my task bar and windows.

gruez 5y ago
can you provide a screenshot (or link to a theme) so I can see how it looks like? All of the windows classic themes I've seen for windows 8.1+ have been pretty meh.
- etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  I just found this... https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/9233/ https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/9233/

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

> ... someone picked up an iPad... Love the burn.

bobsmooth 5y ago

>Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys Run 'Everything' is a freeware tool that should be installed by every Windows user. https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
Those are completely different products. Run and Everything search for file names only. Windows Search searches in file's content too, and understand a lot of file formats.

WalterBright 5y ago

> Google Desktop Search RIP or FileLocator Pro I don't use such apps, not because I don't like them, but because these days I just don't trust them to not surreptitiously send an index of my system to them. I wrote my own file search programs. It's not hard, just a few lines of code. I use them every day.

trelane 5y ago
Make sure to turn off the tracking and sending built in to windows if you're concerned. https://www.wired.com/story/windows-10-privacy-settings/ https://www.wired.com/story/windows-10-privacy-settings/
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I don't even trust the "turn off" buttons. I just write my own utilities. They're simple to write, they work, and I port them around as needed. P.S. I have file indexing turned off on my drives.

jarjoura 5y ago

This sounds good in theory, but when Microsoft did just that in 2011 with Windows 8, it ended up backfiring on them big time. It's pretty clear Windows has organizational and structural problems. Mainly because every product they release is always only 80% there. For some reason, whatever it is, it gets mostly finished, shipped and then abandoned and moved into maintenance mode. Yet, it works for them. They usually always win in whatever market they go after. So I can't say they are incentivized to fix those structural problems.

notatoad 5y ago
>This sounds good in theory, but when Microsoft did just that in 2011 with Windows 8, it ended up backfiring on them big time. the problem was that while windows 8 had *somebody* with a vision behind it, the vision never really made it through to the product. windows 8 was obviously the product of a dysfunctional system that was pulling in two completely opposite directions - the consumer devices side who wanted modern touch-friendly designs to compete with iPad, and the business customers who wanted the windows they were familiar with and didn't want to have to re-train their employees. and what we ended up with was a half-assed implementation in the middle. "we want to do the best possible job of supporting the huge number of existing applications and users on our platform" is a perfectly valid vision for the future of windows. vision doesn't have to mean change. The problem with there being no vision is you get both the change and the hesitance to change.
- mycall 5y ago
  The craziest part was how Windows Server 2012 included Windows 8 UI. The worst of both worlds.
  - vetinari 5y ago
    The funniest part is, that Windows Server 2012 had a "desktop experience" feature, which basically brought it on par with Windows 8, UI-wise. It was much more usable if you didn't install it.
- mr_toad 5y ago

cm2187 5y ago

On windows search, I never understood why it was so bloody slow, particularly on network drives. If I traverse the same folders programmatically I get a result in seconds or less. The search function will takes an order of magnitude that, and I don’t believe it is searching anything else than file names. And don’t even dare changing the sorting order of the search result, because of course it must trigger a new search from scratch. Which leads me to the same conclusion than many other flaws in Windows. I don’t think the windows team at Microsoft uses windows themselves. They must all have macs at home or perhaps don’t care much about computers. But clearly those obvious UX failures do not seen to annoy them.

speed_spread 5y ago
I think that like many places nowadays, development of Windows is done by developers according to an entirely business-driven backlog, where details are first broken down into prioritizable bits before being implemented. As long as features are delivered on time in predictable increments, nobody dares to openly question the actual usefulness or quality of the resulting software for fear of impeding that smooth rollout which would make the team look bad and reduce chances of promotion and / or bonuses.

Bilal_io 5y ago

How can you say it is half-baked when it's still in beta? I am not saying it will be perfect when released, but we cannot judge something that's not generally available yet.

taf2 5y ago

For me with windows 10... I spent about 2 hours trying to get it to install on my new machine while it continued to fail due an issue with it recognizing my nvme drive complaining i did not have any sada drive... in about 20 minutes after being very frustrated i downloaded ubuntu and installed... I spent the next 20 minutes installing lutris and the sims4 so my girls could play... so about 4 hours later... 40 minutes of which was to get linux installed with wine and playing video games with a then pretty nice nvidia 1080 ti graphics card... and bonus i can play sc2... i guess i don't see why people still use windows?

asveikau 5y ago

> Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Regardless of what that vision is That sounds a lot like how Windows 8 went. My personal opinion: they should have frozen the UI at Win7. The kernel improvements since that time are fine. Iterative, under the hood improvements over UI revolution.

jrsj 5y ago
Was about to say the same. That is exactly how Windows 8 was made. Really wish we had gotten more of a continuation of the design of Win 7 instead of everything else that’s happened since.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"Just say no." For home computers, I said no many years ago and never looked back. However I sometimes wonder, since strides have been made in booting Windows from USB and with introduction of WinPE, could we have a smaller, limited purpose Windows, bootable from USB drive. We could boot into this to edit Word documents or Excel spreadsheets or some other Office task, then power off.^1 It could boot to RAM so the HDD is never touched. Portable Windows. Normally, WinPE and Windows "boot disks" are used by Windows sysadmins, but there is nothing to limit usage to only Windows sysadmin stuff. A hypothetical Windows sysadmin and/or full-blown Windows-loving reader, who has succumbed to Redmond's propaganda, might think, "What could you even do with that. It would be useless." Yet Microsoft itself anticipates that someone might see the utility and they actively try to prevent such persons from using a fast, unbloated, telemetry and ad-free Windows.^2 Its one thing to require enterprise customers who pay annual fees to use bloated Windows N+1 but what about non-enterprise users. (Perhaps they dont count. They are just sources of data collection.) Personally, I dont need Microsoft to tell me what is and what is not a "general purpose operating system". I will make that call and I will decide how I want to use it. This brazen disrespect for free-thinking users is why I dont use Windows (at home). 1. https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ 2. "Windows PE is not a general-purpose operating system. It may not be used for any purpose other than deployment and recovery. It should not be used as a thin client or an embedded operating system. There are other Microsoft products, such as Windows Embedded CE, which may be used for these purposes. To prevent its use as a production operating system, Windows PE automatically stops running the shell and restarts after 72 hours of continuous use. This period is not configurable." https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-intro https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

john_moscow 5y ago

It continues a decades-long tradition where every other Windows version is borderline unusable and universally hated. As long as I remember: * Windows 3.0 was perceived as buggy * Windows 3.1/3.11 was a major improvement * Windows 95 was extremely unreliable * Windows 98 sort of addressed most of the issues * Windows 2000 was a weird amalgamation of the NT kernel and 98/ME look'n'feel that wasn't received well * Windows XP fixed that * Windows Vista was universally hated * Windows 7 addressed most of its issues * Windows 8 was a nonsense with phone-style UI on desktops, tablets and servers * Windows 10 fixed it Now it's time for another crappy release to get people really excited about upgrading to Windows 12 in a year or two.

ycuser2 5y ago
Where's Windows ME?
- hulitu 5y ago
  It's crashing. Seriosly is a good thing that they did not mention it although some people claimed it was stable on their computer.
- worrycue 5y ago
  Probably a repressed memory.
- lou1306 5y ago
  It should be in Windows 2000's place. ME was a Windows 9x system, 2000 was part of the NT family.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    It is too long ago to properly remember, but during this time when building my desktops I always insisted on getting NT and then Windows 2000 in place of the consumer versions. Had some funny discussions with shops when buying licenses.
    - 5y ago

a-dub 5y ago

> Regardless of what that vision is, at least then Windows would be a something, rather than a whole host of competing ideas and contradictions i.e. a mess. the big problem is, and this is primarily why i dislike everything windows, is that humans are mimicry machines. if you give them tooling that's an inconsistent mess, it's going to normalize the idea of inconsistent messes, and then they will create inconsistent messes. windows ultimately normalizes inconsistency and mediocrity- as such, it encourages these habits of mind in those who are forced to use it. if those who are forced to use it are in any sort of creative positions, they ultimately create and propagate chaos that matches the cage which they are forced to reside within.

mikro2nd 5y ago
Well said! I've long maintained that Visual Basic set back the state-of-the-art in graphical user interfaces by (at least) a decade. The original intent and purpose of graphical UIs was direct manipulation of objects on screen. VB turned it into "filling in forms with buttons to click". And that mediocrity lives with us still, the original promise/premise sadly unfulfilled.
mschuster91 5y ago
> windows ultimately normalizes inconsistency and mediocrity Windows 95-7 design did not, quite to the contrary. Unfortunately I can't find it again, but usually the link appears on any HN discussion about classic Windows design sooner or later... anyway, the point is that the classic Win95 design was consistent across the whole OS (for apps that used the standard OS controls). UI elements had clear shadows, borders and margins separating elements visually, color schemes by default assisted that visual separation and they were customizable (e.g. for those with accessibility needs). Additionally, menus and hotkeys were consistent across Microsoft apps with (IIRC) clear guidelines on how third party apps should use menus, so that end users didn't have to learn much.
- a-dub 5y ago
  sure, the "chicago" ui was indeed a huge step forward... but until nt4, it was still only skin deep. even after nt4, abominations such as mfc and heritage from ms lan manager lived on. the network protocols were so poorly designed that entire companies (riverbed, et al) sprung up to rewrite them as less latency sensitive alternatives that would actually function over wans.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Honestly I hope they keep UI elements from Windows 2000, because they are functional and informative. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. But at least it allows you to administrate the system. MacOS is nice to use, but that is also restricted to daily use cases. If you want to administrate the system, you have an UI from the 70s, mainly the terminal. If you remove older UI elements from Windows, you are left with a useless toy box. There is no single instance where the new setting perform better than the old ones, on the contrary it is a complete unstructured mess. They should remove it and try again in my opinion.

bronlund 5y ago

This is typical of big technology projects based on greed. The new guys just don't understand what the old guys did and are unable to fix anything. But they have to do something, so they just pile more crap on top. They have been doing this for decades.

wslh 5y ago

> As cliché as this sounds, Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Completeley agree and I want to add: they need a product owner, someone who has used multiple operating systems in different form factors like OSX, iOS, Android, and Linux and can see the pros and cons of them instead of taking sides.

hackerbrother 5y ago

This page says the Health Check is "coming soon".. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11

dTal 5y ago

>Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands off and let them materialize that vision. Do they, though? No one's buying Windows because they think it's swell. They're buying it because it's the default choice that comes with a computer, and because it's the default platform for commercial software. To most consumers, Windows is just what "computers" run, along with a vague notion that "Macs" might be a bit different. As long as Microsoft continues to enjoy its monopoly position in the desktop OS space, they couldn't give a crap if Windows is "something" or not. All they have to do is not screw it up by breaking compatibility too badly, and fart out some sort of named release every few years so people don't think Windows is "old" (the nuances of rolling release being beyond the ken of the average consumer).

silexia 5y ago

This seems to happen to nearly every company after the founder leaves.