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That was in 2014, doesn't explain the timing of these increasingly common broken patches. I had never gotten as many calls over Windows Update messes from my no

That was in 2014, doesn't explain the timing of these increasingly common broken patches. I had never gotten as many calls over Windows Update messes from my non-techie family as last year.

gloosx 8mo ago
Oh boy, in 2015 Windows 10 was released, and it was extremely broken, including endless reboot loops, vanishing start menu and icons, system freezes, app crashes, file explorer crashes, broken hardware encryption and many broken drivers – so really it was about the same as now. Embracing LLMs and vibe-coding all around made this even worse of course
- unscaled 8mo ago
  Oh, Yes. Windows 10 had big issues on arrival. But this is also selective Amnesia. The Windows 8 UI was nearly unusable on release. Windows Vista was so legendarily broken on release, that even after it became stable, the majority of technical users refused to give up Windows XP went straight to Windows 7. And even Windows XP that everybody fondly remembers was quite a mess when it came out. Most home users migrated from the Windows 9x line of Windows, so they probably didn't notice the instability so much, but a lot of power users who were already on Windows 2000 held up until SP2 came out. And let's not even talk about Windows ME. The only major Windows version release that wasn't just a point upgrade that was stable in the last century was Window 7 and even then some people would argue this was just a point upgrade for Windows Vista. I'm sure that Microsoft greatly reducing their dedicated QA engineers in 2014 had at least some lasting impact on quality, but I don't think we can blame it on bad releases or bungled Patch Tuesdays without better evidence. Windows 10 is not a good proof for, consider Vista had 10 times as many issues with fully staffed QA teams in the building.
  - firesteelrain 8mo ago
    Speaking of XP. Windows XP SP2 is really when people liked XP. By the time SP2 and SP3 were common, hardware had caught up, drivers were mature, and the ecosystem had adapted. That retroactively smooths over how rough the early years actually were.
    - joe_mamba 8mo ago
      Same thing with Vista. By the time WIndows 7 came out, Vista was finally mature and usable, but had accumulated so much bad publicity from the early days, that what was probably supposed to be Vista SP3 got rebranded to Windows 7.
      - kwanbix 8mo ago
        Vista was allways trash. As the tech person for the family, I upgraded no less than 6 PCs to Windows 7. Instant win. EDIT: Downvote as much as you want, but it is the truth. Vista, ME, and 8.x are horrible Windows versions.
        buran77 8mo ago
        > but it is the truth It's a very superficial "truth", in the "I don't really understand the problem" kind of way. This is visible when you compare to something like ME. Vista introduced a lot of things under the hood that have radically changed Windows and were essential for follow-up versions but perhaps too ambitious in one go. That came with a cost, teething issues, and user accommodation issues. ME introduced squat in the grand scheme of things. It was a coat of paint on a crappy dead-end framework, with nothing real to redeem it. If these are the same thing to you then your opinion is just a very wide brush. Vista's real issue was that while foundational for what came after, people don't just need a strong foundation or a good engine, most barely understand any of the innards of a computer. They need a whole package and they understand "slow" or "needs faster computer" or "your old devices don't work anymore". But that's far from trash. The name Vista just didn't get to carry on like almost every other "trash" launch edition of Windows. And something I need to point out to everyone who insists on walking on the nostalgia lane, Windows XP was considered trash at launch, from UI, to performance, to stability, to compatibility. And Windows 7 was Vista SP2 or 3. Windows 10 (or maybe Windows 8 SP2 or 3?) was also trash at launch and now people hang on to it for dear life.
        kwanbix 8mo ago
        It delivered a terrible user experience. The interface was ugly, with a messy mix of old and new UI elements, ugly icons, and constant UAC interruptions. On top of that, the minimum RAM requirements were wrong, so it was often sold on underpowered PCs, which made everything painfully slow.
  - lemoncookiechip 8mo ago
    It also doesn't matter. It doesn't feel like it, but Win11 released almost 5 years ago (October 5, 2021) and there's already rumors of a Win12 in the near future. We're way past the "release issues" phase and into the "it's pure incompetence" phase.
    - sgjohnson 8mo ago
      > Win11 released almost 5 years ago Oh wow, I hadn't even paid any attention to that. To me Windows 11 was released on October 1, 2024, when the LTSC version came out, and is roughly when I upgraded my gaming PC to the said LTSC build from the previous Windows 10 LTSC build.
  - sgjohnson 8mo ago
    > Windows Vista was so legendarily broken on release, that even after it became stable Vista is different. Vista was _not_ bad. In fact, it was pretty good. The design decisions Microsoft made with Vista were the right thing to do. Most of the brokenness that happened on Vista's release was broken/unsigned drivers (Vista required WHQL driver signing), and UAC issues. Vista also significantly changed the behavior of Session 0 (no interaction allowed), which broke a lot of older apps. Vista SP2 and the launch version of 7 were nearly identical, except 7 got a facelift too. Of course, the "Vista Capable" stickers on hardware that couldn't really run it didn't help either. But all things considered - Vista was not bad. We remember it as bad for all the wrong reasons. But that was (mostly) not Microsoft's fault. Vista _did_ break a lot of software and drivers - but for very good reasons.
    - anonymars 8mo ago
      Yeah. I challenge the idea that Vista was terrible but 7 was peak. 7 was Vista with a caught-up ecosystem and a faded-away "I'm a mac, I'm a PC" campaign
    - kstrauser 8mo ago
      Vista was good by the time it was finished. It was terrible at launch. I bought some PCs with early versions of Vista pre-installed for an office. We ended up upgrading them to XP so that we could actually use them.
    - Izkata 8mo ago
      I have this vague memory of people being shown a rebranded Vista and being told it was a preview of the next version of Windows, and the response was mostly positive about how much better than Vista it was. It was just Vista without bad reviews dragging it down.
  - dayvid 8mo ago
    Windows 8 was an insane product decision to force one platforms UI to be friendly to another (make desktop more like tablet). Mac is doing this now by unifying their UIs across platforms to be more AR friendly
  - Finnucane 8mo ago
    Every version of Windows released was an unusable piece of garbage, back to the beginning. MS put it out, it was crap, but somehow managed to convince users that they needed to have it, patched it until it was marginally usable, then, when users were used to it, forced them to move on to the next.
  - Izkata 8mo ago
    > The only major Windows version release that wasn't just a point upgrade that was stable in the last century was Window 7 and even then some people would argue this was just a point upgrade for Windows Vista. IIRC Windows 7 internally was 6.1, because drivers written for Vista were compatible with both.
- marcosdumay 8mo ago
  The main difference is that Windows 11 is already 4 years old.
GuB-42 8mo ago
The lack of QA isn't felt right away. They are accumulating tech debt, which mean problems are becoming more frequent and harder to solve over time until they fix the fundamentals, and it doesn't feel like they intend to.
- debugnik 8mo ago
  Windows 10 managed to mature in a way that 11 still hasn't over four years in, though.
- g947o 8mo ago
  1. "isn't felt right away" then what's the correct timescale? Is it 2 years? Is it 5 years? We are looking at 10 years now. Do you have any studies on this that you can quote to prove that at Microsoft scale and for the product they develop, 10 years is the time when things go bad? 2. "becoming more frequent and harder to solve" how much more frequent and harder? Things works pretty fine during Windows 10, but these days I run into a bug in Windows 11 every other day myself. It would be a surprise if this has more to do with QA from 2014 than vibe coding.
  - cabirum 8mo ago
    These are multipliers. First, the QA left, but nothing major happened for years, automated tests did suffice. Then, vibe code happened, that with the lack of QA, led to disaster. I doubt "studies" exist and proving every little assumption takes too much effort as per Brandolini's law.
  - layer8 8mo ago
    Updates breaking stuff already started when they moved from the security/bugfix-only updates to the add-new-features-into-the-mix model with Windows 10. That was roughly 10 years ago. For example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-on-windows-10-anniversary-install-fail-were-finalizing-a-fix/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-on-windows-10-annive... These things have been keeping happening.
- butlike 8mo ago
  Windows is like a fractal layer of progressive enhancements. You can drill into esoteric windows features and almost physically see the different decades windows has existed in, not unlike a physical tree (with leaves). They won't fix the fundamentals, the next API layer will just be built over the broken one.
justonceokay 8mo ago
Just because it’s getting worse faster doesn’t mean that it wasn’t getting worse before

That was in 2014, doesn't explain the timing of these increasingly common broken patches. I had never gotten as many calls over Windows Update messes from my non-techie family as last year.

gloosx 8mo ago

Oh boy, in 2015 Windows 10 was released, and it was extremely broken, including endless reboot loops, vanishing start menu and icons, system freezes, app crashes, file explorer crashes, broken hardware encryption and many broken drivers – so really it was about the same as now. Embracing LLMs and vibe-coding all around made this even worse of course

unscaled 8mo ago
Oh, Yes. Windows 10 had big issues on arrival. But this is also selective Amnesia. The Windows 8 UI was nearly unusable on release. Windows Vista was so legendarily broken on release, that even after it became stable, the majority of technical users refused to give up Windows XP went straight to Windows 7. And even Windows XP that everybody fondly remembers was quite a mess when it came out. Most home users migrated from the Windows 9x line of Windows, so they probably didn't notice the instability so much, but a lot of power users who were already on Windows 2000 held up until SP2 came out. And let's not even talk about Windows ME. The only major Windows version release that wasn't just a point upgrade that was stable in the last century was Window 7 and even then some people would argue this was just a point upgrade for Windows Vista. I'm sure that Microsoft greatly reducing their dedicated QA engineers in 2014 had at least some lasting impact on quality, but I don't think we can blame it on bad releases or bungled Patch Tuesdays without better evidence. Windows 10 is not a good proof for, consider Vista had 10 times as many issues with fully staffed QA teams in the building.
- firesteelrain 8mo ago
  Speaking of XP. Windows XP SP2 is really when people liked XP. By the time SP2 and SP3 were common, hardware had caught up, drivers were mature, and the ecosystem had adapted. That retroactively smooths over how rough the early years actually were.
  - joe_mamba 8mo ago
    Same thing with Vista. By the time WIndows 7 came out, Vista was finally mature and usable, but had accumulated so much bad publicity from the early days, that what was probably supposed to be Vista SP3 got rebranded to Windows 7.
    - kwanbix 8mo ago
      Vista was allways trash. As the tech person for the family, I upgraded no less than 6 PCs to Windows 7. Instant win. EDIT: Downvote as much as you want, but it is the truth. Vista, ME, and 8.x are horrible Windows versions.
      - buran77 8mo ago
        > but it is the truth It's a very superficial "truth", in the "I don't really understand the problem" kind of way. This is visible when you compare to something like ME. Vista introduced a lot of things under the hood that have radically changed Windows and were essential for follow-up versions but perhaps too ambitious in one go. That came with a cost, teething issues, and user accommodation issues. ME introduced squat in the grand scheme of things. It was a coat of paint on a crappy dead-end framework, with nothing real to redeem it. If these are the same thing to you then your opinion is just a very wide brush. Vista's real issue was that while foundational for what came after, people don't just need a strong foundation or a good engine, most barely understand any of the innards of a computer. They need a whole package and they understand "slow" or "needs faster computer" or "your old devices don't work anymore". But that's far from trash. The name Vista just didn't get to carry on like almost every other "trash" launch edition of Windows. And something I need to point out to everyone who insists on walking on the nostalgia lane, Windows XP was considered trash at launch, from UI, to performance, to stability, to compatibility. And Windows 7 was Vista SP2 or 3. Windows 10 (or maybe Windows 8 SP2 or 3?) was also trash at launch and now people hang on to it for dear life.
        kwanbix 8mo ago
        It delivered a terrible user experience. The interface was ugly, with a messy mix of old and new UI elements, ugly icons, and constant UAC interruptions. On top of that, the minimum RAM requirements were wrong, so it was often sold on underpowered PCs, which made everything painfully slow.
- lemoncookiechip 8mo ago
  It also doesn't matter. It doesn't feel like it, but Win11 released almost 5 years ago (October 5, 2021) and there's already rumors of a Win12 in the near future. We're way past the "release issues" phase and into the "it's pure incompetence" phase.
  - sgjohnson 8mo ago
    > Win11 released almost 5 years ago Oh wow, I hadn't even paid any attention to that. To me Windows 11 was released on October 1, 2024, when the LTSC version came out, and is roughly when I upgraded my gaming PC to the said LTSC build from the previous Windows 10 LTSC build.
- sgjohnson 8mo ago
  > Windows Vista was so legendarily broken on release, that even after it became stable Vista is different. Vista was _not_ bad. In fact, it was pretty good. The design decisions Microsoft made with Vista were the right thing to do. Most of the brokenness that happened on Vista's release was broken/unsigned drivers (Vista required WHQL driver signing), and UAC issues. Vista also significantly changed the behavior of Session 0 (no interaction allowed), which broke a lot of older apps. Vista SP2 and the launch version of 7 were nearly identical, except 7 got a facelift too. Of course, the "Vista Capable" stickers on hardware that couldn't really run it didn't help either. But all things considered - Vista was not bad. We remember it as bad for all the wrong reasons. But that was (mostly) not Microsoft's fault. Vista _did_ break a lot of software and drivers - but for very good reasons.
  - anonymars 8mo ago
    Yeah. I challenge the idea that Vista was terrible but 7 was peak. 7 was Vista with a caught-up ecosystem and a faded-away "I'm a mac, I'm a PC" campaign
  - kstrauser 8mo ago
    Vista was good by the time it was finished. It was terrible at launch. I bought some PCs with early versions of Vista pre-installed for an office. We ended up upgrading them to XP so that we could actually use them.
  - Izkata 8mo ago
    I have this vague memory of people being shown a rebranded Vista and being told it was a preview of the next version of Windows, and the response was mostly positive about how much better than Vista it was. It was just Vista without bad reviews dragging it down.
- dayvid 8mo ago
  Windows 8 was an insane product decision to force one platforms UI to be friendly to another (make desktop more like tablet). Mac is doing this now by unifying their UIs across platforms to be more AR friendly
- Finnucane 8mo ago
  Every version of Windows released was an unusable piece of garbage, back to the beginning. MS put it out, it was crap, but somehow managed to convince users that they needed to have it, patched it until it was marginally usable, then, when users were used to it, forced them to move on to the next.
- Izkata 8mo ago
  > The only major Windows version release that wasn't just a point upgrade that was stable in the last century was Window 7 and even then some people would argue this was just a point upgrade for Windows Vista. IIRC Windows 7 internally was 6.1, because drivers written for Vista were compatible with both.
marcosdumay 8mo ago
The main difference is that Windows 11 is already 4 years old.

GuB-42 8mo ago

The lack of QA isn't felt right away. They are accumulating tech debt, which mean problems are becoming more frequent and harder to solve over time until they fix the fundamentals, and it doesn't feel like they intend to.

debugnik 8mo ago
Windows 10 managed to mature in a way that 11 still hasn't over four years in, though.
g947o 8mo ago
1. "isn't felt right away" then what's the correct timescale? Is it 2 years? Is it 5 years? We are looking at 10 years now. Do you have any studies on this that you can quote to prove that at Microsoft scale and for the product they develop, 10 years is the time when things go bad? 2. "becoming more frequent and harder to solve" how much more frequent and harder? Things works pretty fine during Windows 10, but these days I run into a bug in Windows 11 every other day myself. It would be a surprise if this has more to do with QA from 2014 than vibe coding.
- cabirum 8mo ago
  These are multipliers. First, the QA left, but nothing major happened for years, automated tests did suffice. Then, vibe code happened, that with the lack of QA, led to disaster. I doubt "studies" exist and proving every little assumption takes too much effort as per Brandolini's law.
- layer8 8mo ago
  Updates breaking stuff already started when they moved from the security/bugfix-only updates to the add-new-features-into-the-mix model with Windows 10. That was roughly 10 years ago. For example: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-on-windows-10-anniversary-install-fail-were-finalizing-a-fix/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-on-windows-10-annive... These things have been keeping happening.
butlike 8mo ago
Windows is like a fractal layer of progressive enhancements. You can drill into esoteric windows features and almost physically see the different decades windows has existed in, not unlike a physical tree (with leaves). They won't fix the fundamentals, the next API layer will just be built over the broken one.

justonceokay 8mo ago

Just because it’s getting worse faster doesn’t mean that it wasn’t getting worse before