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Microsoft just doesn't get it. Windows is a fundamentally mediocre OS that is made great by means of its wide compatibility with software and hardware. It's no

by fleddr 5y ago

Microsoft just doesn't get it. Windows is a fundamentally mediocre OS that is made great by means of its wide compatibility with software and hardware. It's not sexy but it kind of works. Then they figured we now live in a mobile/touch world and went in that direction. But hardly anybody has a mobile Windows device, so it misses the target. To this day, store apps look like they're made for phones. Windows used to be a system where you had the feeling its yours. General purpose computing. Do whatever you want. Increasingly, it feels like some hybrid cloud OS, where gradually you give up user control. Windows 8, a UI clusterfuck, introduced a new design language. That was 2012. Almost a decade later, and not even in Windows 11, is the UI consistent. It's a facade. Why does it take a decade to skin a OS? Windows 11 removes customization options whilst that is exactly what Windows is about. Too many developers were switching to Mac, so now Linux is integrated. Not in itself a bad thing, don't get me wrong. It seems they're running in every direction at once and just give up on each direction halfway through.

vbezhenar 5y ago
Microsoft did not release anything worthy since Windows 2000. All their features were not needed. I'd easily pay $500/year for Windows 2000, just as it was, with support for modern hardware and other things needed to survive in modern Internet. Now I'm not talking about internals. I'm sure that kernel was progressing all those years, for example. I'm talking about user-visible stuff. Windows XP cartoon UI: terrible. Windows 10 UI: terrible. Good old Windows 2000 UI was just better in every way. Windows shell? It was good in Windows 2000. Start was good. May be fast search would be a worthy feature to add, but that's about it. They redesign it every year, but it's not getting better. Windows explorer? It was good in Windows 2000. They move buttons around, but that's not needed. Control panel is 100x better than this settings nightmare UI. They invent new UI frameworks every few years. That's not needed. WinAPI is good enough. It won't happen. But they actually built a perfect OS and lost it. Forever, as corporations can't admit their mistakes. They could have improved upon it all this time, instead of trying to replace it. With Nadella Microsoft is going downhill. Yes, they're doing things that looks interesting. Like integrating VM with Linux. That's cool. But they kind of gave up. Back in the time, they were actually pushing their own agenda. They had their own tech. Now they gave up and adapt old proven tech. Good for customers, but it's path to the end. If someone learned WSL, it's just one step to true Linux, why pay for Windows at all. Ditto about Edge. They built their own browser engine. How cool is that? Very few corporations were able to do so. And they gave up. Microsoft lost his teethes. May be they just don't care about desktop anymore. Well, I don't care about Microsoft anymore.
- gtirloni 5y ago
  > Microsoft did not release anything worthy since Windows 2000 Windows 98 was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows Me. Windows XP was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows Vista. Windows 7 was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows 8. Windows 10 is pretty decent. People are hating Windows 11. And so on and so forth.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    I don't necessarily agree with this chronology, but even if it's true it seems fair for me to hate something that is forced on me just because it's new after I've just previously been forced to use something that's at best "pretty decent".
  - wtallis 5y ago
    The pattern here seems to be that the only way Microsoft can produce a Windows release that will be rated as "pretty decent" is by first subjecting their users to several years of a release that lowers the bar (or a subsequent release that makes an earlier one seem better in hindsight). 98 appears to have been the end of Microsoft's ability to ship consecutive major versions that were unambiguously an all-around improvement.
    - hyperman1 5y ago
      Windows 2000 was an all around improvement. The UI of win95/98 with the kernel from NT. Now 20 years later we see places for decent improvements. It's just that microsoft either didn't do them,or added more antifeatures than features.
      - wtallis 5y ago
        Windows 2000 was definitely an all-around improvement over NT4, but it wasn't marketed as a successor to 98. That was Windows ME, which in hindsight was a bad idea. Microsoft should have abandoned the 9x line after 98 SE and put all their resources into making the NT line suitable as a replacement for the entire customer base. But for some reason they decided they couldn't pull that off in time for Windows 2000, and postponed the unification of the product lines until XP.
jjoonathan 5y ago
If they make desktop search suck a bit less I'll jump at Windows 11.
- kibblesalad 5y ago
  Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/) has essentially replaced my local and network share search option. It's a staggering difference, and Search in Windows 10 seems to be primarily designed to show you ad results with the occasional locally installed app thrown in around 50% of the time.
- rk06 5y ago
  I use FilelocatorPro for search. It is very fast and effective.

by fleddr 5y ago

vbezhenar 5y ago

Microsoft did not release anything worthy since Windows 2000. All their features were not needed. I'd easily pay $500/year for Windows 2000, just as it was, with support for modern hardware and other things needed to survive in modern Internet. Now I'm not talking about internals. I'm sure that kernel was progressing all those years, for example. I'm talking about user-visible stuff. Windows XP cartoon UI: terrible. Windows 10 UI: terrible. Good old Windows 2000 UI was just better in every way. Windows shell? It was good in Windows 2000. Start was good. May be fast search would be a worthy feature to add, but that's about it. They redesign it every year, but it's not getting better. Windows explorer? It was good in Windows 2000. They move buttons around, but that's not needed. Control panel is 100x better than this settings nightmare UI. They invent new UI frameworks every few years. That's not needed. WinAPI is good enough. It won't happen. But they actually built a perfect OS and lost it. Forever, as corporations can't admit their mistakes. They could have improved upon it all this time, instead of trying to replace it. With Nadella Microsoft is going downhill. Yes, they're doing things that looks interesting. Like integrating VM with Linux. That's cool. But they kind of gave up. Back in the time, they were actually pushing their own agenda. They had their own tech. Now they gave up and adapt old proven tech. Good for customers, but it's path to the end. If someone learned WSL, it's just one step to true Linux, why pay for Windows at all. Ditto about Edge. They built their own browser engine. How cool is that? Very few corporations were able to do so. And they gave up. Microsoft lost his teethes. May be they just don't care about desktop anymore. Well, I don't care about Microsoft anymore.

gtirloni 5y ago
> Microsoft did not release anything worthy since Windows 2000 Windows 98 was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows Me. Windows XP was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows Vista. Windows 7 was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows 8. Windows 10 is pretty decent. People are hating Windows 11. And so on and so forth.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with this chronology, but even if it's true it seems fair for me to hate something that is forced on me just because it's new after I've just previously been forced to use something that's at best "pretty decent".
- wtallis 5y ago
  The pattern here seems to be that the only way Microsoft can produce a Windows release that will be rated as "pretty decent" is by first subjecting their users to several years of a release that lowers the bar (or a subsequent release that makes an earlier one seem better in hindsight). 98 appears to have been the end of Microsoft's ability to ship consecutive major versions that were unambiguously an all-around improvement.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    Windows 2000 was an all around improvement. The UI of win95/98 with the kernel from NT. Now 20 years later we see places for decent improvements. It's just that microsoft either didn't do them,or added more antifeatures than features.
    - wtallis 5y ago
      Windows 2000 was definitely an all-around improvement over NT4, but it wasn't marketed as a successor to 98. That was Windows ME, which in hindsight was a bad idea. Microsoft should have abandoned the 9x line after 98 SE and put all their resources into making the NT line suitable as a replacement for the entire customer base. But for some reason they decided they couldn't pull that off in time for Windows 2000, and postponed the unification of the product lines until XP.

jjoonathan 5y ago

If they make desktop search suck a bit less I'll jump at Windows 11.

kibblesalad 5y ago
Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/ https://www.voidtools.com/) has essentially replaced my local and network share search option. It's a staggering difference, and Search in Windows 10 seems to be primarily designed to show you ad results with the occasional locally installed app thrown in around 50% of the time.
rk06 5y ago
I use FilelocatorPro for search. It is very fast and effective.