6 ms·

Many, if not most of these tools contain functionality that is built into other major OSes, and had been for a long time. I don't really understand why Microsof

Many, if not most of these tools contain functionality that is built into other major OSes, and had been for a long time. I don't really understand why Microsoft doesn't include them by default.

gmueckl 4y ago
It's probably a combination of 1. retaining backwards compatibility with applications that don't interact well with these features and 2. exposing users to behaviors that are hard to understand and undo once they are activated by accident.
- nickjj 4y ago
  Number 2 is fun, I get a call from relatives at least twice a year because their screen was rotated 90 degrees from a keyboard shortcut that was hit when a cat walked across their laptop when the lid was left open. The crazy thing is it's happened 4 times now.
  - Forge36 4y ago
    Is that a Windows feature? I know Intel's graphics driver does Ctrl+alt arrow. It can be turned off.
    - tveyben 4y ago
      It it’s the default config - thus 99% will have it enabled…
  - frutiger 4y ago
    > The crazy thing is it's happened 4 times now. So it should be back to normal!
    - tveyben 4y ago
      Spot on !!!!
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  It's not a backwards compatibility thing, PowerToys has been a thing since Windows 95 and we've seen breaking changes in a few iterations of Windows since. The clue is in the name "Power" -- it's additional functionality for power users. Since Windows generally caters for the lowest common denominator, features like this would be deemed too complicated (sometimes even dangerous) for some folk. So it is an optional addon for power users. It's just like how WSL, PowerShell, etc aren't installed by default either.
transcriptase 4y ago
Instead we get “Paint 3D”, “Mixed Reality Portal”, and “Your Phone”. Absolute essentials that I’m certain are chart-toppers in the telemetry activity charts.
- com2kid 4y ago
  I'd guess Your Phone is a direct response to iMessage on MacOS. It'd be more useful if it worked with any messaging app that was running on my phone though!
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    It at least used to work with LINE and Discord for me, but I gave up on using it because it's so damn buggy and the Windows side of it uses like 4GB of RAM. And both of those have native desktop clients I can use instead.
  - drittich 4y ago
    It seems to - I routinely use it for SMS and WhatsApp, as well as it being a handy way to grab a photo off your phone.
- mackrevinack 4y ago
  microsoft are so bad at naming things. "hey cortana, open my your phone app"
HWR_14 4y ago
Most of the tools are gated behind obscure key combos and are useless for many people. Why not make people install them if they want them? The cost of installing them is less than the cost of learning the hot key memorizations.
megaman821 4y ago
That is not true. I use both Windows and Mac a lot and I have about an equal number of OS level plugins. * PowerToys Awake - Amphetamine * PowerToys FancyZones - Moom * PowerToys Run - Alfred * EarTrumpet - Rogue Amoeba SoundSource * Windows Terminal - iTerm * QuickLook - Mac Native Functionality * Nothing for Windows - HazeOver * Windows Native Functionality - Bartender * Snipping Tool - Clean Shot X
- dukeofdoom 4y ago
  Do you know of one for ImageResizer?
  - megaman821 4y ago
    For Mac; select the images you want, right-click, select tools, adjust size.
- maleldil 4y ago
  * PowerToys Run - Alfred * Windows Terminal - iTerm * Snipping Tool - Clean Shot X These are not fair comparisons. The Mac tools you list here are much more powerful than the Windows counterparts, and there are good enough built-in alternatives (Spotlight, Terminal and the default screenshot tool). * PowerToys FancyZones - Moom This isn't fair either. FancyZones is much more powerful; Rectangle is a better comparison.
  - chipotle_coyote 4y ago
    What is it that Rectangle can do that Moom can't? As a long-time Moom user, I've never come across an example of "amazing thing [other MacOS window management extension] does that Moom doesn't," but I always try to be open. (There's also the possibility that there are amazing things I wouldn't use, of course. I have discovered that while I like keyboard shortcuts and Moom's hover dropdown for window resizing/movement, I find "drag a window to the screen edge to resize it" to be a maddening anti-feature.)
Spooky23 4y ago
I think it’s about turf inside Microsoft. By keeping little toys like this outside of the main Windows feature set, they stay out of the 500 review and design steps, where any of 5000 people can kill the feature. There’s a lot of politics too. Something like a unmute button may be “owned” by the liaison to the Teams program management, who in turn want universal unmute to be an Azure service that is incorporated into “Azure Live Office Solutions for Windows (Govcloud) for Business E7”.
philliphaydon 4y ago
Considering the 2nd most used desktop OS is MacOS and you can’t even maximise a window properly out of the box…
- foobarchu 4y ago
  Double clicking any unused portion of the title bar will maximize a window within it's current space without going full-screen (the green button). It's not the most intuitive way to do it, but that's a far cry from being impossible out of the box.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Sorry. Double clicking doesn’t consistently maximise. Half the time it resized vertically only. So it’s not a far cry from impossible out of the box.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - skeletal88 4y ago
    Yes.. but how would I know it had I not read about it here? I have to use macs at work and it's filled with "WTF?" moments. Like why the hell would I want to make something fullscreen with the green button on the window title bar, when coming from linux/windows I expect it to maximise the window.. and window maximising is done by some weird incantation. Installing of applications is done by dragging them into some place, and then there is no feedback about what is happening. And so on and on.
    - dvtrn 4y ago
      > but how would I know it had I not read about it here? Presumably you’ve been a windows user long enough, or at least exposed to Windows enough times to have figured out you can double click a title bar in that operating system and maximize a window, so it’s probably not too far of a stretch to guess you would have figured it out in macOS by simply trying to do the same thing Agreeably macOS is highly opinionated when it comes to “discovering” some of the hidden interaction features, but come on. You really wouldn’t have had any other way to figure how to embiggen a window without without having to come to HN and read the above comment? That feels like an extreme example for the sake of being oppositional
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
I actually think it's bad for an OS to include too many features out of the box. Basically every modern platform has already gone too far in this direction, making computers more difficult for casual users to understand. Vendors should include only the bare essentials, then let users who want more add their own extras. Imagine an OS similar to the original Macintosh, or maybe early versions of iOS, but with add-ons that can add features to the global UI. New users have a basic system with easily-understood behaviors, and experienced users can enable the features they need. In an alternate universe where I believed it was possible to compete with the major vendors, this is the platform I would build...
- na85 4y ago
  Disagree. Fancy features are awesome for "normies". iPhones have a feature where you can create PDFs page by page, using the camera as a scanner. After you snap the photo it offers you a crop and transform tool, and does a little image recognition to assist you and make the edges of the crop tool snap to the page within the photo. I've found that feature immensely useful in a professional context and (it was a company device) when I gave the phone back I seriously considered switching away from Android for my personal phone. Little things like that, baked into the OS, make for a really awesome UX.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Wouldn't it make more sense for the scanning feature to be its own app, so that users can find it, know what it is, and not activate it accidentally?
    - joshgachnang 4y ago
      I've only used this in the Files app, which makes sense because you're making files. I'm not sure if it exists in the camera app as well.
      - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
        This to me is actually a problem with how iOS works versus traditional desktops. Almost everything you create is a file, so you could justify putting almost any feature in the files app. The files app should be exclusively for listing/moving/copying files. Files themselves should be created by and opened with different apps. This isn't to say apps shouldn't be able to talk to the files app. On macOS, for example, apps can install QuickLook plugins.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Many, if not most of these tools contain functionality that is built into other major OSes, and had been for a long time. I don't really understand why Microsoft doesn't include them by default.

gmueckl 4y ago

It's probably a combination of 1. retaining backwards compatibility with applications that don't interact well with these features and 2. exposing users to behaviors that are hard to understand and undo once they are activated by accident.

nickjj 4y ago
Number 2 is fun, I get a call from relatives at least twice a year because their screen was rotated 90 degrees from a keyboard shortcut that was hit when a cat walked across their laptop when the lid was left open. The crazy thing is it's happened 4 times now.
- Forge36 4y ago
  Is that a Windows feature? I know Intel's graphics driver does Ctrl+alt arrow. It can be turned off.
  - tveyben 4y ago
    It it’s the default config - thus 99% will have it enabled…
- frutiger 4y ago
  > The crazy thing is it's happened 4 times now. So it should be back to normal!
  - tveyben 4y ago
    Spot on !!!!
hnlmorg 4y ago
It's not a backwards compatibility thing, PowerToys has been a thing since Windows 95 and we've seen breaking changes in a few iterations of Windows since. The clue is in the name "Power" -- it's additional functionality for power users. Since Windows generally caters for the lowest common denominator, features like this would be deemed too complicated (sometimes even dangerous) for some folk. So it is an optional addon for power users. It's just like how WSL, PowerShell, etc aren't installed by default either.

transcriptase 4y ago

Instead we get “Paint 3D”, “Mixed Reality Portal”, and “Your Phone”. Absolute essentials that I’m certain are chart-toppers in the telemetry activity charts.

com2kid 4y ago
I'd guess Your Phone is a direct response to iMessage on MacOS. It'd be more useful if it worked with any messaging app that was running on my phone though!
- kevingadd 4y ago
  It at least used to work with LINE and Discord for me, but I gave up on using it because it's so damn buggy and the Windows side of it uses like 4GB of RAM. And both of those have native desktop clients I can use instead.
- drittich 4y ago
  It seems to - I routinely use it for SMS and WhatsApp, as well as it being a handy way to grab a photo off your phone.
mackrevinack 4y ago
microsoft are so bad at naming things. "hey cortana, open my your phone app"

HWR_14 4y ago

Most of the tools are gated behind obscure key combos and are useless for many people. Why not make people install them if they want them? The cost of installing them is less than the cost of learning the hot key memorizations.

megaman821 4y ago

That is not true. I use both Windows and Mac a lot and I have about an equal number of OS level plugins. * PowerToys Awake - Amphetamine * PowerToys FancyZones - Moom * PowerToys Run - Alfred * EarTrumpet - Rogue Amoeba SoundSource * Windows Terminal - iTerm * QuickLook - Mac Native Functionality * Nothing for Windows - HazeOver * Windows Native Functionality - Bartender * Snipping Tool - Clean Shot X

dukeofdoom 4y ago
Do you know of one for ImageResizer?
- megaman821 4y ago
  For Mac; select the images you want, right-click, select tools, adjust size.
maleldil 4y ago
* PowerToys Run - Alfred * Windows Terminal - iTerm * Snipping Tool - Clean Shot X These are not fair comparisons. The Mac tools you list here are much more powerful than the Windows counterparts, and there are good enough built-in alternatives (Spotlight, Terminal and the default screenshot tool). * PowerToys FancyZones - Moom This isn't fair either. FancyZones is much more powerful; Rectangle is a better comparison.
- chipotle_coyote 4y ago
  What is it that Rectangle can do that Moom can't? As a long-time Moom user, I've never come across an example of "amazing thing [other MacOS window management extension] does that Moom doesn't," but I always try to be open. (There's also the possibility that there are amazing things I wouldn't use, of course. I have discovered that while I like keyboard shortcuts and Moom's hover dropdown for window resizing/movement, I find "drag a window to the screen edge to resize it" to be a maddening anti-feature.)

Spooky23 4y ago

I think it’s about turf inside Microsoft. By keeping little toys like this outside of the main Windows feature set, they stay out of the 500 review and design steps, where any of 5000 people can kill the feature. There’s a lot of politics too. Something like a unmute button may be “owned” by the liaison to the Teams program management, who in turn want universal unmute to be an Azure service that is incorporated into “Azure Live Office Solutions for Windows (Govcloud) for Business E7”.

philliphaydon 4y ago

Considering the 2nd most used desktop OS is MacOS and you can’t even maximise a window properly out of the box…

foobarchu 4y ago
Double clicking any unused portion of the title bar will maximize a window within it's current space without going full-screen (the green button). It's not the most intuitive way to do it, but that's a far cry from being impossible out of the box.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Sorry. Double clicking doesn’t consistently maximise. Half the time it resized vertically only. So it’s not a far cry from impossible out of the box.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- skeletal88 4y ago
  Yes.. but how would I know it had I not read about it here? I have to use macs at work and it's filled with "WTF?" moments. Like why the hell would I want to make something fullscreen with the green button on the window title bar, when coming from linux/windows I expect it to maximise the window.. and window maximising is done by some weird incantation. Installing of applications is done by dragging them into some place, and then there is no feedback about what is happening. And so on and on.
  - dvtrn 4y ago
    > but how would I know it had I not read about it here? Presumably you’ve been a windows user long enough, or at least exposed to Windows enough times to have figured out you can double click a title bar in that operating system and maximize a window, so it’s probably not too far of a stretch to guess you would have figured it out in macOS by simply trying to do the same thing Agreeably macOS is highly opinionated when it comes to “discovering” some of the hidden interaction features, but come on. You really wouldn’t have had any other way to figure how to embiggen a window without without having to come to HN and read the above comment? That feels like an extreme example for the sake of being oppositional

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

I actually think it's bad for an OS to include too many features out of the box. Basically every modern platform has already gone too far in this direction, making computers more difficult for casual users to understand. Vendors should include only the bare essentials, then let users who want more add their own extras. Imagine an OS similar to the original Macintosh, or maybe early versions of iOS, but with add-ons that can add features to the global UI. New users have a basic system with easily-understood behaviors, and experienced users can enable the features they need. In an alternate universe where I believed it was possible to compete with the major vendors, this is the platform I would build...

na85 4y ago
Disagree. Fancy features are awesome for "normies". iPhones have a feature where you can create PDFs page by page, using the camera as a scanner. After you snap the photo it offers you a crop and transform tool, and does a little image recognition to assist you and make the edges of the crop tool snap to the page within the photo. I've found that feature immensely useful in a professional context and (it was a company device) when I gave the phone back I seriously considered switching away from Android for my personal phone. Little things like that, baked into the OS, make for a really awesome UX.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Wouldn't it make more sense for the scanning feature to be its own app, so that users can find it, know what it is, and not activate it accidentally?
  - joshgachnang 4y ago
    I've only used this in the Files app, which makes sense because you're making files. I'm not sure if it exists in the camera app as well.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      This to me is actually a problem with how iOS works versus traditional desktops. Almost everything you create is a file, so you could justify putting almost any feature in the files app. The files app should be exclusively for listing/moving/copying files. Files themselves should be created by and opened with different apps. This isn't to say apps shouldn't be able to talk to the files app. On macOS, for example, apps can install QuickLook plugins.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]