7 ms·

I've been a Windows user since 3.1; and I've even defended Microsoft in the past (particularly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct rea

I've been a Windows user since 3.1; and I've even defended Microsoft in the past (particularly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model). BUT, I won't defend Windows 11 and Microsoft's general direction. I feel like there has been a slow cultural shift within Microsoft, from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned. Plus it feels like a lot of the technical expertise retired out, and left a bunch of engineers scared to touch core systems instead preferring to build on top using Web tech. It means that Windows/Office stopped improving, and have actually both regressed significantly. I've actually found myself recommending MacOS, particularly the prior generation of Macbook Airs which are absurdly powerful with absurd battery life for a fair price. Combine that with the lack of user hostility, and UX, that MacOS brings relative to Windows 11, and it is hard to ignore.

api 11mo ago
A big concern I have for the industry is what happens as people who truly understand how this stuff works age out. Unfortunately we seem to have stopped replacing them. Part of the issue is that computers today require no deep knowledge to use, unlike first or second generation PCs that genX and millennials grew up with. So you’re not getting as many people with this knowledge. Just as significant I think is the prevalence of lucrative work higher up the stack. Why learn deep system internals when slinging JS and wiring together APIs pays as much or more.
- xuhu 11mo ago
  Thank God for lucrative work higher up the stack. Maybe programmers will stop being the only scapegoats for rising home prices and the high cost of living.
- laxd 11mo ago
  > Part of the issue is that computers today require no deep knowledge to use, unlike first or second generation PCs that genX and millennials grew up with. A point that I've often tried to convey among friends and family. No! Todays kids aren't natural tech wizards because they grew into it. All they know is pressing buttons where the UI/UX norms are good enough that you'll figure it out quickly, especially as a kid. In my early days I'd press commands out of the back of a manual in order to see what my commodore 64 was all about if I didn't load a game. Turned out I was programming basic (at the level you'd expect from a clueless kid, but still) Later, in the 90's with your family PC, you were bound to learn some stuff just by wanting to play games. Drivers? Filesystem? Patches? Cracks? OS? Hardware components (you'd not unlikely put it together yourself). And I think I was born too late for the best of lessons.
  - laxd 11mo ago
    A thought in the other direction though. A lot of fields don't really have kids playing their way towards skill. Still people find their way to the frontiers and push on.
    - tscherno 11mo ago
      Yes! The next generation of computer scientists will be more passionate than we are because they have mastered their craft and got curious despite growing up with dumbed down boring computers.
  - carlosjobim 11mo ago
    > Later, in the 90's with your family PC, you were bound to learn some stuff just by wanting to play games. Drivers? Filesystem? Patches? Cracks? OS? Hardware components (you'd not unlikely put it together yourself). We learned all that, but that knowledge is all but worthless and has been for some time. I wish I had learned programming instead. All these other computing and OS skills become unnecessary as time moves on. Except for VPS hosting with FTP.
    - laxd 11mo ago
      Absolutely not. These are fundamental concepts in our computer world and a step on the latter towards becoming a programmer or sysadmin.
- idiotsecant 11mo ago
  Right!!! You don't even have to know Morse code to send a message anymore! Don't even get me started on how they don't teach semaphores in school anymore. Kids these days! Next thing you know they won't be writing programs in assembly anymore!! All these kids know how to do is ask the compiler how to do their work for them.
  - 7thaccount 11mo ago
    You're correct in a sense, but glossing over a very real problem. You still need some kind of knowledge of how to use a desktop computer for a lot of jobs in the workforce. If all you know is how to click on some apps, then you're at a competitive disadvantage. There are plenty of horror stories of Gen Z being just as bad as Boomers at tech (like can't figure out how to copy files) and that should concern everyone on HN. I'm sure some grow up with raspberry pi computers, but 99% are probably iPad only kids.
- christophilus 11mo ago
  Reminds me of Jon Blow’s talk on preventing the collapse of civilization: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
- 7thaccount 11mo ago
  Everyone is growing up with tablets now and have awful tech skills. The only kids I know who can use a desktop computer are those who game. Where this goes long-term I'm not sure. Do we get a really simplified OS in the next 10 years that is built for that generation? Who is going to maintain the old stuff?
preisschild 11mo ago
> arly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model Also UEFI and TPM requirements. And i don't even use Windows.
stefanka 11mo ago
You mean the m3 MacBook Air?
- Someone1234 11mo ago
  Currently, I do, but mostly I mean whatever last year's generation of Macbook Air is. Since you get the best bang for your buck that way, and there are some incredible deals on the M3 and will likely be on the M4 when it is replaced.
mips_avatar 11mo ago
I think the toughest thing for me has been watching my former coworkers on Windows transform from technology loving builders into depressed cynics. Like these were some of the most brilliant people I knew and now they struggle to get out of bed.
- lousken 11mo ago
  100% agree, I still can't believe how fast windows is deteriorating. With that said, Linux and Debian helped me a lot. I enjoy tech again. With windows I hated 95% of changes, with linux it is the exact opposite. Having some experience since Ubuntu 12.04, it's amazing to see the progress especially of the last 5 years.
  - mips_avatar 11mo ago
    As someone who used to make tools for Windows admins I apologize for not doing more to make your life better.
    - lousken 11mo ago
      It's ok, Microsoft has more than enough people that should care today. Overall imo the biggest issue with windows is that it almost never replaces things, it adds layers on top and becomes slowly this convoluted mess. The biggest annoyance for me were the basic tools like MMC snap ins, regedit, ... have not been touched in years. They need a major overhaul at this point. If you change something in cloud defender, intune - you won't even see that change in those tools anywhere. Instead 365 cloud admin sites have been redesigned every year only to cause confusion if you don't open them every day. Also MS Graph? Some simple scripts turned into a mess (not sure if that changed). 1) Microsoft needs to remove some of the old stuff but also new stuff that makes it more difficult to understand for sysadmins. Nobody needs 5 ways of configuring GPOs like Intune has it (+ Azure policies). There should be a single way only for everything in the GUI/web + understandable API/cmdlets. 2) Templates and defaults - Secure setup within the products should be the default, why do I need to create 200+ GPO policies onprem to have at least 75% of CIS covered? Same with MS365, some policies have just reckless defaults. I'd much rather set up 20 policies for each machine specifically to disable things I don't need rather than this. On the other hand - allow me to disable whatever I want (even those security updates), if I shoot myself in the foot, that's my problem. And if I need something quickly, why don't config templates for the entire OS exist? If I have a webserver - give me a list of things I should set up in one place. If I have a db, if I want to disable spyware stuff - same thing. I don't want or need a copilot in exchange or every admin portal, I want to have everything on couple clicks and as fast as possible.
accrual 11mo ago
Dave Plummer, retired Microsoft engineer from the early days, made a video on this 2 weeks ago: > Windows "SUCKS": How I'd Fix it by a retired Microsoft Windows engineer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60
- arcanemachiner 11mo ago
  Isn't he that egotistic attention whore who periodically gets ripped to shreds around here?
  - gonzo41 11mo ago
    Plenty of those types floating around SV and tech circles and it doesn't mean he's wrong.
  - carlosjobim 11mo ago
    No, you're mistaking him for another fellow. He's the guy who anonymously slanders people online and doesn't add anything of value.
cons0le 11mo ago
I fired up my 10yrs old windows 7 PC for the first time in forever and was appalled at how snappy and quick the OS was compared to my same spec win10 PC. As a career primarily-microsoft-shop engineer I'm done with windows for personal use. I'll never forgive the for wasting everyones time with this garbage. Meanwhile I constantly find bugs from before 2002 that are still in windows10. Windows honestly made me slowly hate all computers. The only piece of technology in my life that does exactly what it's supposed to do are my keyboards where I make the firmware. Everything else is pop up ridden dogshit
- intrasight 11mo ago
  Windows 7 was peak windows
  - fancyswimtime 11mo ago
    windows xp pre uac was a golden age ;)
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      win98 SE
      - tscherno 11mo ago
        Peak usability by being able to type a url in to the file manager or a local path in to your browser and have it open in the same window.
        fragmede 11mo ago
        and also peak crashibility. con/con, anyone?
        Grazester 11mo ago
        I think you're mistaking Windows millennium for Windows 98 SE
chneu 11mo ago
Win11 is mostly written by AI now and it's pretty obvious.
- Narishma 11mo ago
  They've been on this road since at least Windows 8, long before AI.
  - miki123211 11mo ago
    I feel like Windows 7 was the best Windows of all time. It was fast, stable enough to work for months or years without crashing, secure, didn't need frequent re-installs, didn't need constant cleaning / defragmenting, didn't have (too many) anti-features nobody wanted or used, it just did what you wanted it to do. It definitely helped that it existed in an era of app monetization through targeted advertising, as opposed to monetization through bloatware, start page hijacking and completely unnecessary toolbars. 8 was when things started going sideways. 10 was not bad, but it already started the "Microsoft knows better" trend, with automatic updates you couldn't turn off and files you couldn't touch, even as administrator. 11 is what it is.
MangoCoffee 11mo ago
Microsoft's products have always been just good/cheap enough to gain enough market share to squeeze out others
- wartywhoa23 11mo ago
  They also seem to turn a totally blind eye towards the piracy of their OSes for the same reason.
- ReptileMan 11mo ago
  Excel and Visual Studio, .NET Runtime and C#, Windows 2000 were among the best things for their time. I think there were like 2-3 months in which even internet explorer was the best browser on the market
  - tscherno 11mo ago
    My operating system teacher was a hardcore Linux zealot and "M$" hater. But one day he praised Microsoft for Active Directory and group policies. Comparable, well integrated easy to use solutions didn't exist at the time. (mid 2000s). Batch scripts were lame though...
    - funnybeam 11mo ago
      Another thing that Microsoft is regressing on. Entra and intune are a poor substitute for Active Directory. Likewise with SharePoint compared to file shares and NTFS permissions
SSLy 11mo ago
Mac users with longer tenure are also complaining the rot is also creeping through MacOS, especially with Tahoe.
- philistine 11mo ago
  Rumors just came out that next year's release is AI features and bug fixes only. If true, this is great news for the health of their platforms.
- lossyalgo 11mo ago
  Someone posted these settings on HN recently and it has made working on my Mac once again usable: https://imgur.com/a/macos-accessibility-settings-simpler-retro-look-DqfN07k https://imgur.com/a/macos-accessibility-settings-simpler-ret...
  - tarsinge 11mo ago
    Having to tweak the defaults to get something more usable is a huge step back for MacOS. If I wanted to spend time with settings I’d use Linux. I use and recommend Mac OS because historically everything works perfectly out of the box, like an appliance, so I can focus on work and hobbies (that don’t include spending time on the computer as an end goal).
    - lossyalgo 11mo ago
      I totally agree, however, (to wax slightly philosophical) things will change, that's just the nature of tech (and the world at large). To play Devil's Advocate: at least MacOS provides these settings, unlike Windows, which does provide some settings, but many things you are just stuck with unless you install some nerd's github project which tweaks low-level settings and hopefully isn't doxxing you to some gov't. I resisted as long as possible moving from Win10->11 because the UI/UX is such an abomination, similarly bad as the new Liquid (Gl)Ass, but at least MacOS is mostly just changing the color scheme, whereas Windows is constantly changing the position of everythign, what happens when you jiggle the mouse, auto-docking, and pretty much everything that can be changed, they have changed - multiple times! Just as soon as I get comfortable with some UX change, they change it again, because I guess the UX department needs to get paid? Every time I re-install Win11 (4 times in the last 12 months due to new PCs, forced upgrades, etc.) I have needed a full week before everything is to my (near) satisfaction, whereas with MacOS it's just these 5 toggles and bam, I can read things again.
FridayoLeary 11mo ago
Going to paste a recent rant of mine about windows ux. The thread sank so i don't think anyone saw it and i don't want to write a new comment discussing things i hate about windows. >It's worth pointing out what a hideous cludge lots of Win10 ui is. I remember some ui expert complaining how there are half a dozen (maybe more, i don't remember) completely different ui interfaces. The most prominent ones of course is that horrible rectangle thing that's meant to be the start menu. Windows 11 didn't do a worse job, that would be almost impossible, but it's not much better. Then there was openly breaking functionality and discoverability by having a settings app as well as the old control panel, which is an absolute abomination. The manager app probably looked old fashioned on Windows xp. > All of that was ok, because Win10 looks and feels quite nice overall and was a significant upgrade compared to 7. Win11 has none of that saving grace. They needed to fix the many disasters of Win10, not introduce new ones. I will add that the single feature i hate the most about Win10 when it dropped the previous useful start menu and adopting the horrible rectangle thing. The main function of it changed from helping you navigate windows to serving up ads for M$ products. No, i'm not interested in Xbox, if i want to buy your office suite i will. Don't show me a non functioning tile to remind me i don't have it.
- rmunn 11mo ago
  The start menu is one of the first things I used to fix on a brand-new Win10 install: start removing all those useless/annoying tiles until I have nothing left but a list of programs. (On Win11, the first thing I fix is to move the toolbar back to left-justified instead of centered; then I fix the start menu tiles). But I do wish graphics designers would learn to leave well enough alone. People don't want their UI to change on them every 5-10 years. They want to learn one UI and stick with it. The Windows 7 UI was just about perfect; if they had kept that UI while changing internals not visible to the user, they would have had far faster adoption of Windows 10. As it is, I know many people who stuck to Windows 7 for as long as possible until the free-upgrade period was about to run out. EDIT: I'm not saying there weren't things about the Win7 UI that couldn't be improved. The new Terminal app is immensely better than Conhost. IMMENSELY. But that's an incremental change, not a UI replacement.
  - 11mo ago
makeitdouble 11mo ago
> from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned. > MacOS I think macos is on the same path. Apple refined the MacBook formula to a perfection and the hardware division made the best of it. But outside of the processor, what is the last significant leap forward that involved brilliant engineers that you can think of ? One could argue that nothing should change, but that's a lot of missed opportunies (I personally wanted a response to the Surface Pro, and figured out it won't come anytime soon) and we also know that's not how it goes. If there's no significant progress there will be change for the sake of change (coughLiquid Glasscough)
- javier2 11mo ago
  Secure Enclave is actually a real dedicated innovation and everything Apple built around this secure box. And the real innovation is not even the technology, but being focused over a decade to design all products to work without making a backdoor. That cant have been easy over so many years
  - makeitdouble 11mo ago
    I see the effort and engineering. Is it an innovation ? A secure subsystem sounds pretty familiar to me, we've had that since the early NFC days, and that powered mobile offline payment (NFC) since two decades now. If macos was bringing it to new heights with incredible applications I'd see the significance of it, but securing login using a TPM is also done by the competition. Apple pushed it farther, but not that much farther as to make it special IMHO. I mean, even in iOS, I see the point in hardening the system, but that's not just the Secure Enclave, and on the other side of the coin we get nothing else that wasn't there before.
  - thot_experiment 11mo ago
    I don't consider work done to prevent me having complete control of my own hardware to be a positive development. In fact it's one of the worst things they could spend their time on (from a long term global optimum perspective).
- 11mo ago
javier2 11mo ago
I have mostly kept to linux and macos since 2008, so I was shocked when I could still find the old XP style control panels in windows when I tried it a little about 2 years ago
- Nition 11mo ago
  The worst part is, there are now two control panels (the other is called "Settings"). Some settings are in both, while others are only in one or the other.
  - yeasku 11mo ago
    I bet nobody knew/wanted to touch that code. So they just wrote something worse with less features in React. Peak web development.
    - Firehawke 11mo ago
      No, they absolutely know. They've been very very slowly migrating stuff over to the new Settings panel bit by bit. If you look at what's in Control Panel now, it's maybe half as much as what used to be in there ten years ago. That said, it's insanely ridiculous that it's taken 10 years to get it even halfway done.
      - kristianp 11mo ago
        Yes, and that means that settings in one edition of Win 11 no longer exist in the next one as they rewrite the settings code.
mock-possum 11mo ago
Ditto on legacy of Windows use, and really ‘legacy’ is what it boils down to for me - it’s the devil I know, and you’re a fool if you don’t think MacOS is an angel here - or even whatever -nix flavour you prefer. It’s been my experience that matter what OS you try to pick up, the most likely case is you mutter “why the fuck do people put up with this” and go back to the one you’re used to, because at least you mostly know the tricks and pitfalls and can get it to do what you want.
etempleton 11mo ago
I find both Microsoft and Apple have lost the thread with the desktop operating systems. Microsoft seems intent on trying to kill their market share with adware, slow performance, hardware security requirements, etc. while Apple, has made MacOS an after thought that sometimes gets poorly implemented features from iOS. See liquid glass as the latest example. For the first time in a long time I tried out Linux again using gnome and was shocked at how refreshingly good it was. I still think Linux has a few too may hurdles for most people, but I think most people would prefer the user experience if they gave it a try.

api 11mo ago

A big concern I have for the industry is what happens as people who truly understand how this stuff works age out. Unfortunately we seem to have stopped replacing them. Part of the issue is that computers today require no deep knowledge to use, unlike first or second generation PCs that genX and millennials grew up with. So you’re not getting as many people with this knowledge. Just as significant I think is the prevalence of lucrative work higher up the stack. Why learn deep system internals when slinging JS and wiring together APIs pays as much or more.

xuhu 11mo ago
Thank God for lucrative work higher up the stack. Maybe programmers will stop being the only scapegoats for rising home prices and the high cost of living.
laxd 11mo ago
> Part of the issue is that computers today require no deep knowledge to use, unlike first or second generation PCs that genX and millennials grew up with. A point that I've often tried to convey among friends and family. No! Todays kids aren't natural tech wizards because they grew into it. All they know is pressing buttons where the UI/UX norms are good enough that you'll figure it out quickly, especially as a kid. In my early days I'd press commands out of the back of a manual in order to see what my commodore 64 was all about if I didn't load a game. Turned out I was programming basic (at the level you'd expect from a clueless kid, but still) Later, in the 90's with your family PC, you were bound to learn some stuff just by wanting to play games. Drivers? Filesystem? Patches? Cracks? OS? Hardware components (you'd not unlikely put it together yourself). And I think I was born too late for the best of lessons.
- laxd 11mo ago
  A thought in the other direction though. A lot of fields don't really have kids playing their way towards skill. Still people find their way to the frontiers and push on.
  - tscherno 11mo ago
    Yes! The next generation of computer scientists will be more passionate than we are because they have mastered their craft and got curious despite growing up with dumbed down boring computers.
- carlosjobim 11mo ago
  > Later, in the 90's with your family PC, you were bound to learn some stuff just by wanting to play games. Drivers? Filesystem? Patches? Cracks? OS? Hardware components (you'd not unlikely put it together yourself). We learned all that, but that knowledge is all but worthless and has been for some time. I wish I had learned programming instead. All these other computing and OS skills become unnecessary as time moves on. Except for VPS hosting with FTP.
  - laxd 11mo ago
    Absolutely not. These are fundamental concepts in our computer world and a step on the latter towards becoming a programmer or sysadmin.
idiotsecant 11mo ago
Right!!! You don't even have to know Morse code to send a message anymore! Don't even get me started on how they don't teach semaphores in school anymore. Kids these days! Next thing you know they won't be writing programs in assembly anymore!! All these kids know how to do is ask the compiler how to do their work for them.
- 7thaccount 11mo ago
  You're correct in a sense, but glossing over a very real problem. You still need some kind of knowledge of how to use a desktop computer for a lot of jobs in the workforce. If all you know is how to click on some apps, then you're at a competitive disadvantage. There are plenty of horror stories of Gen Z being just as bad as Boomers at tech (like can't figure out how to copy files) and that should concern everyone on HN. I'm sure some grow up with raspberry pi computers, but 99% are probably iPad only kids.
christophilus 11mo ago
Reminds me of Jon Blow’s talk on preventing the collapse of civilization: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
7thaccount 11mo ago
Everyone is growing up with tablets now and have awful tech skills. The only kids I know who can use a desktop computer are those who game. Where this goes long-term I'm not sure. Do we get a really simplified OS in the next 10 years that is built for that generation? Who is going to maintain the old stuff?

preisschild 11mo ago

> arly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model Also UEFI and TPM requirements. And i don't even use Windows.

stefanka 11mo ago

You mean the m3 MacBook Air?

Someone1234 11mo ago
Currently, I do, but mostly I mean whatever last year's generation of Macbook Air is. Since you get the best bang for your buck that way, and there are some incredible deals on the M3 and will likely be on the M4 when it is replaced.

mips_avatar 11mo ago

I think the toughest thing for me has been watching my former coworkers on Windows transform from technology loving builders into depressed cynics. Like these were some of the most brilliant people I knew and now they struggle to get out of bed.

lousken 11mo ago
100% agree, I still can't believe how fast windows is deteriorating. With that said, Linux and Debian helped me a lot. I enjoy tech again. With windows I hated 95% of changes, with linux it is the exact opposite. Having some experience since Ubuntu 12.04, it's amazing to see the progress especially of the last 5 years.
- mips_avatar 11mo ago
  As someone who used to make tools for Windows admins I apologize for not doing more to make your life better.
  - lousken 11mo ago
    It's ok, Microsoft has more than enough people that should care today. Overall imo the biggest issue with windows is that it almost never replaces things, it adds layers on top and becomes slowly this convoluted mess. The biggest annoyance for me were the basic tools like MMC snap ins, regedit, ... have not been touched in years. They need a major overhaul at this point. If you change something in cloud defender, intune - you won't even see that change in those tools anywhere. Instead 365 cloud admin sites have been redesigned every year only to cause confusion if you don't open them every day. Also MS Graph? Some simple scripts turned into a mess (not sure if that changed). 1) Microsoft needs to remove some of the old stuff but also new stuff that makes it more difficult to understand for sysadmins. Nobody needs 5 ways of configuring GPOs like Intune has it (+ Azure policies). There should be a single way only for everything in the GUI/web + understandable API/cmdlets. 2) Templates and defaults - Secure setup within the products should be the default, why do I need to create 200+ GPO policies onprem to have at least 75% of CIS covered? Same with MS365, some policies have just reckless defaults. I'd much rather set up 20 policies for each machine specifically to disable things I don't need rather than this. On the other hand - allow me to disable whatever I want (even those security updates), if I shoot myself in the foot, that's my problem. And if I need something quickly, why don't config templates for the entire OS exist? If I have a webserver - give me a list of things I should set up in one place. If I have a db, if I want to disable spyware stuff - same thing. I don't want or need a copilot in exchange or every admin portal, I want to have everything on couple clicks and as fast as possible.

accrual 11mo ago

Dave Plummer, retired Microsoft engineer from the early days, made a video on this 2 weeks ago: > Windows "SUCKS": How I'd Fix it by a retired Microsoft Windows engineer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60

arcanemachiner 11mo ago
Isn't he that egotistic attention whore who periodically gets ripped to shreds around here?
- gonzo41 11mo ago
  Plenty of those types floating around SV and tech circles and it doesn't mean he's wrong.
- carlosjobim 11mo ago
  No, you're mistaking him for another fellow. He's the guy who anonymously slanders people online and doesn't add anything of value.

cons0le 11mo ago

I fired up my 10yrs old windows 7 PC for the first time in forever and was appalled at how snappy and quick the OS was compared to my same spec win10 PC. As a career primarily-microsoft-shop engineer I'm done with windows for personal use. I'll never forgive the for wasting everyones time with this garbage. Meanwhile I constantly find bugs from before 2002 that are still in windows10. Windows honestly made me slowly hate all computers. The only piece of technology in my life that does exactly what it's supposed to do are my keyboards where I make the firmware. Everything else is pop up ridden dogshit

intrasight 11mo ago
Windows 7 was peak windows
- fancyswimtime 11mo ago
  windows xp pre uac was a golden age ;)
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    win98 SE
    - tscherno 11mo ago
      Peak usability by being able to type a url in to the file manager or a local path in to your browser and have it open in the same window.
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        and also peak crashibility. con/con, anyone?
        Grazester 11mo ago
        I think you're mistaking Windows millennium for Windows 98 SE

chneu 11mo ago

Win11 is mostly written by AI now and it's pretty obvious.

Narishma 11mo ago
They've been on this road since at least Windows 8, long before AI.
- miki123211 11mo ago
  I feel like Windows 7 was the best Windows of all time. It was fast, stable enough to work for months or years without crashing, secure, didn't need frequent re-installs, didn't need constant cleaning / defragmenting, didn't have (too many) anti-features nobody wanted or used, it just did what you wanted it to do. It definitely helped that it existed in an era of app monetization through targeted advertising, as opposed to monetization through bloatware, start page hijacking and completely unnecessary toolbars. 8 was when things started going sideways. 10 was not bad, but it already started the "Microsoft knows better" trend, with automatic updates you couldn't turn off and files you couldn't touch, even as administrator. 11 is what it is.

MangoCoffee 11mo ago

Microsoft's products have always been just good/cheap enough to gain enough market share to squeeze out others

wartywhoa23 11mo ago
They also seem to turn a totally blind eye towards the piracy of their OSes for the same reason.
ReptileMan 11mo ago
Excel and Visual Studio, .NET Runtime and C#, Windows 2000 were among the best things for their time. I think there were like 2-3 months in which even internet explorer was the best browser on the market
- tscherno 11mo ago
  My operating system teacher was a hardcore Linux zealot and "M$" hater. But one day he praised Microsoft for Active Directory and group policies. Comparable, well integrated easy to use solutions didn't exist at the time. (mid 2000s). Batch scripts were lame though...
  - funnybeam 11mo ago
    Another thing that Microsoft is regressing on. Entra and intune are a poor substitute for Active Directory. Likewise with SharePoint compared to file shares and NTFS permissions

SSLy 11mo ago

Mac users with longer tenure are also complaining the rot is also creeping through MacOS, especially with Tahoe.

philistine 11mo ago
Rumors just came out that next year's release is AI features and bug fixes only. If true, this is great news for the health of their platforms.
lossyalgo 11mo ago
Someone posted these settings on HN recently and it has made working on my Mac once again usable: https://imgur.com/a/macos-accessibility-settings-simpler-retro-look-DqfN07k https://imgur.com/a/macos-accessibility-settings-simpler-ret...
- tarsinge 11mo ago
  Having to tweak the defaults to get something more usable is a huge step back for MacOS. If I wanted to spend time with settings I’d use Linux. I use and recommend Mac OS because historically everything works perfectly out of the box, like an appliance, so I can focus on work and hobbies (that don’t include spending time on the computer as an end goal).
  - lossyalgo 11mo ago
    I totally agree, however, (to wax slightly philosophical) things will change, that's just the nature of tech (and the world at large). To play Devil's Advocate: at least MacOS provides these settings, unlike Windows, which does provide some settings, but many things you are just stuck with unless you install some nerd's github project which tweaks low-level settings and hopefully isn't doxxing you to some gov't. I resisted as long as possible moving from Win10->11 because the UI/UX is such an abomination, similarly bad as the new Liquid (Gl)Ass, but at least MacOS is mostly just changing the color scheme, whereas Windows is constantly changing the position of everythign, what happens when you jiggle the mouse, auto-docking, and pretty much everything that can be changed, they have changed - multiple times! Just as soon as I get comfortable with some UX change, they change it again, because I guess the UX department needs to get paid? Every time I re-install Win11 (4 times in the last 12 months due to new PCs, forced upgrades, etc.) I have needed a full week before everything is to my (near) satisfaction, whereas with MacOS it's just these 5 toggles and bam, I can read things again.

FridayoLeary 11mo ago

Going to paste a recent rant of mine about windows ux. The thread sank so i don't think anyone saw it and i don't want to write a new comment discussing things i hate about windows. >It's worth pointing out what a hideous cludge lots of Win10 ui is. I remember some ui expert complaining how there are half a dozen (maybe more, i don't remember) completely different ui interfaces. The most prominent ones of course is that horrible rectangle thing that's meant to be the start menu. Windows 11 didn't do a worse job, that would be almost impossible, but it's not much better. Then there was openly breaking functionality and discoverability by having a settings app as well as the old control panel, which is an absolute abomination. The manager app probably looked old fashioned on Windows xp. > All of that was ok, because Win10 looks and feels quite nice overall and was a significant upgrade compared to 7. Win11 has none of that saving grace. They needed to fix the many disasters of Win10, not introduce new ones. I will add that the single feature i hate the most about Win10 when it dropped the previous useful start menu and adopting the horrible rectangle thing. The main function of it changed from helping you navigate windows to serving up ads for M$ products. No, i'm not interested in Xbox, if i want to buy your office suite i will. Don't show me a non functioning tile to remind me i don't have it.

rmunn 11mo ago
The start menu is one of the first things I used to fix on a brand-new Win10 install: start removing all those useless/annoying tiles until I have nothing left but a list of programs. (On Win11, the first thing I fix is to move the toolbar back to left-justified instead of centered; then I fix the start menu tiles). But I do wish graphics designers would learn to leave well enough alone. People don't want their UI to change on them every 5-10 years. They want to learn one UI and stick with it. The Windows 7 UI was just about perfect; if they had kept that UI while changing internals not visible to the user, they would have had far faster adoption of Windows 10. As it is, I know many people who stuck to Windows 7 for as long as possible until the free-upgrade period was about to run out. EDIT: I'm not saying there weren't things about the Win7 UI that couldn't be improved. The new Terminal app is immensely better than Conhost. IMMENSELY. But that's an incremental change, not a UI replacement.
- 11mo ago

makeitdouble 11mo ago

> from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned. > MacOS I think macos is on the same path. Apple refined the MacBook formula to a perfection and the hardware division made the best of it. But outside of the processor, what is the last significant leap forward that involved brilliant engineers that you can think of ? One could argue that nothing should change, but that's a lot of missed opportunies (I personally wanted a response to the Surface Pro, and figured out it won't come anytime soon) and we also know that's not how it goes. If there's no significant progress there will be change for the sake of change (coughLiquid Glasscough)

javier2 11mo ago
Secure Enclave is actually a real dedicated innovation and everything Apple built around this secure box. And the real innovation is not even the technology, but being focused over a decade to design all products to work without making a backdoor. That cant have been easy over so many years
- makeitdouble 11mo ago
  I see the effort and engineering. Is it an innovation ? A secure subsystem sounds pretty familiar to me, we've had that since the early NFC days, and that powered mobile offline payment (NFC) since two decades now. If macos was bringing it to new heights with incredible applications I'd see the significance of it, but securing login using a TPM is also done by the competition. Apple pushed it farther, but not that much farther as to make it special IMHO. I mean, even in iOS, I see the point in hardening the system, but that's not just the Secure Enclave, and on the other side of the coin we get nothing else that wasn't there before.
- thot_experiment 11mo ago
  I don't consider work done to prevent me having complete control of my own hardware to be a positive development. In fact it's one of the worst things they could spend their time on (from a long term global optimum perspective).
11mo ago

javier2 11mo ago

I have mostly kept to linux and macos since 2008, so I was shocked when I could still find the old XP style control panels in windows when I tried it a little about 2 years ago

Nition 11mo ago
The worst part is, there are now two control panels (the other is called "Settings"). Some settings are in both, while others are only in one or the other.
- yeasku 11mo ago
  I bet nobody knew/wanted to touch that code. So they just wrote something worse with less features in React. Peak web development.
  - Firehawke 11mo ago
    No, they absolutely know. They've been very very slowly migrating stuff over to the new Settings panel bit by bit. If you look at what's in Control Panel now, it's maybe half as much as what used to be in there ten years ago. That said, it's insanely ridiculous that it's taken 10 years to get it even halfway done.
    - kristianp 11mo ago
      Yes, and that means that settings in one edition of Win 11 no longer exist in the next one as they rewrite the settings code.

mock-possum 11mo ago

Ditto on legacy of Windows use, and really ‘legacy’ is what it boils down to for me - it’s the devil I know, and you’re a fool if you don’t think MacOS is an angel here - or even whatever -nix flavour you prefer. It’s been my experience that matter what OS you try to pick up, the most likely case is you mutter “why the fuck do people put up with this” and go back to the one you’re used to, because at least you mostly know the tricks and pitfalls and can get it to do what you want.

etempleton 11mo ago

I find both Microsoft and Apple have lost the thread with the desktop operating systems. Microsoft seems intent on trying to kill their market share with adware, slow performance, hardware security requirements, etc. while Apple, has made MacOS an after thought that sometimes gets poorly implemented features from iOS. See liquid glass as the latest example. For the first time in a long time I tried out Linux again using gnome and was shocked at how refreshingly good it was. I still think Linux has a few too may hurdles for most people, but I think most people would prefer the user experience if they gave it a try.