4 ms·

Probably a bit of both. The market settles on a version that's "good enough" and it gets patched until it's "good". But Windows 8 was around for quite a while,

Probably a bit of both. The market settles on a version that's "good enough" and it gets patched until it's "good". But Windows 8 was around for quite a while, and never got to be particularly good. 10 became good over time. 8 was crap, and stayed crap with 8.1. 7 became good over time. Vista was crap. XP became good over time.

jerf 5y ago
I disagree. I think that makes sense as a hindsight view, but at the time, the good version of Windows generally started good, and the bad versions were generally bad out of the gate too. By "good" I don't mean perfect. But Windows 95 was good, 98 was good, XP was amazing compared to what there was at the time, 7 was good, and 10 was good. Vista was immediately a bomb from the moment I first saw its desktop that looked like a not even particularly good Linux desktop theme [1]. ME was a buggy mess from start to finish. 8 wasn't as much of a disaster but the whole attempt to merge tablet UI and desktop UI was just fundamentally flawed. Windows being Windows I'm sure tons of people can pop up with stories about how their first install of XP ate their entire hard drive and also killed their dog, but generally I think it's pretty obvious pretty quickly which way a version of Windows is going to go. One of the major markers of a bad version of Windows is that it's made for Microsoft's needs and not the users. If another comment in this discussion is accurate and Windows 11 is primarily so they can dump a lot of hardware, dump old booting code for non-UEFI boots, etc., then that suggests to me they don't have a strong through-line on what the value for the user is, which is going to lead to sadness. Even though those goals are good and ultimately even necessary in the long haul, that's not going to be a set of requirements that leads to a good Windows. [1]: This one floors me to this day. Like, I don't really have a lot of visual taste and I've run some pretty awful Linux desktop themes back in my younger years for a period of time. My current desktop is a tiling WM and so utilitarian it burns to look at for most people. And that Vista desktop... yeowzers! It was like they pulled a random theme off of a desktop theming site and they got babbies first uploaded theme.
- tremon 5y ago
  In my recollection, 98SE was good. 98 was very unstable, I think because of (usb?) driver issues?
- petters 5y ago
  Let's not forget that for a while it was almost impossible to install Windows XP while connected to the internet. You'd get infected with Code Red. The security was an existential threat to Windows back then. Windows 2000 came before XP and was as good imo.
- filchermcurr 5y ago
  I found Vista to be a huge improvement over the Windows XP Playskool look. I couldn't stand seeing those awful colors and huge bubbly look for all those years... Thankfully you could change the theme to classic, but nobody else did. So it was still everywhere.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Also custom Visual Styles were popular only in XP era. Maybe people satisfied with Win7 default.
  - anthk 5y ago
    The Silver theme was a good balance between moderness and the industrial design.

jerf 5y ago

I disagree. I think that makes sense as a hindsight view, but at the time, the good version of Windows generally started good, and the bad versions were generally bad out of the gate too. By "good" I don't mean perfect. But Windows 95 was good, 98 was good, XP was amazing compared to what there was at the time, 7 was good, and 10 was good. Vista was immediately a bomb from the moment I first saw its desktop that looked like a not even particularly good Linux desktop theme [1]. ME was a buggy mess from start to finish. 8 wasn't as much of a disaster but the whole attempt to merge tablet UI and desktop UI was just fundamentally flawed. Windows being Windows I'm sure tons of people can pop up with stories about how their first install of XP ate their entire hard drive and also killed their dog, but generally I think it's pretty obvious pretty quickly which way a version of Windows is going to go. One of the major markers of a bad version of Windows is that it's made for Microsoft's needs and not the users. If another comment in this discussion is accurate and Windows 11 is primarily so they can dump a lot of hardware, dump old booting code for non-UEFI boots, etc., then that suggests to me they don't have a strong through-line on what the value for the user is, which is going to lead to sadness. Even though those goals are good and ultimately even necessary in the long haul, that's not going to be a set of requirements that leads to a good Windows. [1]: This one floors me to this day. Like, I don't really have a lot of visual taste and I've run some pretty awful Linux desktop themes back in my younger years for a period of time. My current desktop is a tiling WM and so utilitarian it burns to look at for most people. And that Vista desktop... yeowzers! It was like they pulled a random theme off of a desktop theming site and they got babbies first uploaded theme.

tremon 5y ago
In my recollection, 98SE was good. 98 was very unstable, I think because of (usb?) driver issues?
petters 5y ago
Let's not forget that for a while it was almost impossible to install Windows XP while connected to the internet. You'd get infected with Code Red. The security was an existential threat to Windows back then. Windows 2000 came before XP and was as good imo.
filchermcurr 5y ago
I found Vista to be a huge improvement over the Windows XP Playskool look. I couldn't stand seeing those awful colors and huge bubbly look for all those years... Thankfully you could change the theme to classic, but nobody else did. So it was still everywhere.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Also custom Visual Styles were popular only in XP era. Maybe people satisfied with Win7 default.
- anthk 5y ago
  The Silver theme was a good balance between moderness and the industrial design.