> Try to add a powerful new feature to Windows, and casual users balk. One example Miller cited is multiple desktops, a feature in OS X and Linux, but still not

> Try to add a powerful new feature to Windows, and casual users balk. One example Miller cited is multiple desktops, a feature in OS X and Linux, but still not built into Windows. Each time Microsoft conducted user tests on multiple desktops, casual users got confused, prompting the company to cut it. The same feature's confusing to causal OS X and Linux users, too. Which is most definitively not a problem, because casual users won't be coming into contact with that feature, anyway. OS X is a single-desktop interface until you actively choose to create a second desktop. Most Linux setups behave roughly the same. On territory this well-trodden, it should have required precisely zero lateral thinking for Microsoft to figure out how to respond to that focus group result. Similarly, when Apple added a tablet-inspired application launcher to OS X, they figured out a great way to make it both easy-to-access and non-disruptive, without displacing any existing workflows. The launcher's there and works well for users who want it, and is effectively non-existent for users who don't. That anecdote from the article, if true, is yet another delightfully pithy illustration of Microsoft's fundamental difficulty with UX: They don't grasp the difference between "one size fits all" and "all fit one size".