7 ms·

Windows 10 is unfinished

104 points by gbl08ma 11y ago

CSDude 11y ago
I guess it is the trend in software now. 'Move fast and break things'. Started with games, now with Operating Systems. I agree, there was a lot of duality in Windows 8 with Metro and classical Windows menus/programs, and they still seem to exist with 10. I even have "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" option in control panel and yet I upgraded from a clean install of Windows 8.1.
- acqq 11y ago
  I actually need the "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" option as, as far as I know, there is no other way to do the disk image backup or restore of my Windows computers without having to use the third party programs. The problem there is naming it "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" and not just "Disk Image Backup and Restore" or something like that. The funny name comes from some managerial decision to hint that it's "unmodern" (hey, an old Windows version!) way to do the backup now with the push for ho-ho clouds.
  - akira2501 11y ago
    > as far as I know, there is no other way to do the disk image backup or restore of my Windows computers without having to use the third party programs. Since Windows 7, Microsoft has provided imagex.exe; it's typically used in high-volume disk imaging applications, but you can easily use it to snapshot or restore an entire installation.
    - acqq 11y ago
      > you can easily use it to snapshot or restore an entire installation. "Easily"? Any link? As far as I know imagex.exe has less functionality than the "backup and restore" application, former being a simpler command line utility (1). Specifically, how would anybody without any programming experience (step by step) - perform the regular backup in order to be prepared for the case his hard disk "dies." - restore from his backup once the new hard disk is inserted in the computer. As far as I know, especially the repartitioning steps are far from being trivial and not done by imagex. "Backup and restore" are GUI based tools, easy to be explained and used by non-professionals to do the full local backups of their computers. The same thing we can still do with iPhone and iTunes (a button in iTunes starting the complete backup of the iPhone, and restoring simply with the another button). Why should I purchase the third party program or do unknown amount of programming to do something like that on a Windows computer? 1) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Cc749003%28v=WS.10%29.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Cc749003%28v=WS....
- devy 11y ago
  > 'Move fast and break things'. In a way, Mac OS X is like that.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  I call it web-ification. More and more programmers likely get their feet wet doing JS/PHP on some site or other, and bring their rapid iteration thinking from there on to compiled projects.
yuhong 11y ago
Also see http://textslashplain.com/2015/07/31/on-defaults/ http://textslashplain.com/2015/07/31/on-defaults/ and a Twitter thread on the problems with the OOBE UI: https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/627145718331904000 https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/627145718331904000
bhouston 11y ago
I find that the Windows Explorer is super cluttered. I need to find a good replacement.
- errantspark 11y ago
  Total Commander, been using it since I was 7 years old, I can't even use a Windows computer without it.
  - jafingi 11y ago
    Haha! Me too! And Norton Commander before that. It's great to be able to use the commander without mouse. Just plain keyboard. Really boosts productivity (especially for a developer like me).
- ivank 11y ago
  I've been very happy with Directory Opus for 10 years now.
Zikes 11y ago
As long as the functionality is there and basic improvements have been made, I'm not at all upset. I got my upgrade for free, and I'm enjoying several of the new features (especially multiple desktops, welcome to the 21st century Microsoft). We've all released minimum viable products before. Hell, "early access" is dominating video games in particular. As long as they continue to improve and have a stable, steady release schedule with tangible results, then I think it was a good move on Microsoft's part. Especially since the longer they waited the more entrenched users of Windows 7 & 8 would become, just like they did with XP.
- javert 11y ago
  I disagree. Basic UI issues are not excusable for a company with the resources of Microsoft. If we were talking about issues in a brand new kernel, maybe. But not basic UI issues.
  - nosideeffects 11y ago
    Why are _kernel_ issues excusable but UI issues are not? I think you have that backwards.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Bugs in massive undertakings like a kernel are unavoidable. It's a bitter pill to get a big improvement. Using the wrong UI framework for dialogs or having links going nowhere is easily avoidable, it just needs manpower.
    - javert 11y ago
      Actually, it's not excusable to have issues in the kernel or UI. I just brought up the kernel thing because I was pandering to someone inventing poor excuses for MS. I shouldn't have pandered.
- wvenable 11y ago
  Windows 10 appears to suffer from the "pick a date" style of project management. A date was chosen before the project started and that's the day it was released regardless of any issues that cropped up in development. And rolling release is a good model and it seems to be working fantastically for browsers but it's predicated on not releasing features until they are ready. But Windows 10 is a marketed product with features that all had to exist on day 1. So instead of a stable core to work from we get a big ball of muddled together. I'm hoping now that the date is passed and the features are all in there that there is nothing left to do but fix everything. The (slow) rolling releases of XP worked well so I too have high hopes for Windows 10. But I'll be waiting for a while before I upgrade.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I don't really agree with the author. I find Windows 10 to be a step up from 8.1. Also, a fair comparison might be to verion 8 when it first came out, right? I think Microsoft and Apple are on a good path: keeping the same major version number for their OS, and just continually bring out little changes.
- Zikes 11y ago
  It is funny that both major OS developers settled on 10 for their "forever version."
  - phantom784 11y ago
    That's probably part of the reason why 9 was skipped - Microsoft didn't want a lower "forever version" number lower than Apple.
    - swashboon 11y ago
      The anecdotal reason (from reddit[1]) was that it would have broken to much third party code doing checks for Windows 95/98. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_windows_version_will_be_called_windows_10/ckwq83x https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_wind...
      - TillE 11y ago
        This keeps getting mentioned in various places, but it's nonsense. We're talking about a tiny number of obscure Java programs which do the insane thing of checking OS version by string rather than with numbers. For the five people on Earth actually affected by this, there's always compatibility mode.
        bsilvereagle 11y ago
        When this first started to be mentioned, I saw multiple people claiming drivers checking for 95/98 was the driving factor. There are a lot of obscure drivers still in production and I don't know of a 'compatibility mode' for drivers.
coldcode 11y ago
Nothing is ever really finished. Apple's been working on their version 10 for 14 years.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Except that OS X versions are generally not this buggy on release IMHO. Really the dual interfaces to the same thing are the worst part of Windows 10 right now.
  - NDizzle 11y ago
    OSX not buggy? Have you not updated in the last ~3 years or something?!
    - DrJokepu 11y ago
      …or the first ~3 years of OS X, for that matter.
    - joshstrange 11y ago
      I have been using it for the last 5yrs or so. While I have run into 1-2 little issues here and there I have never experienced the level of duplicate interfaces that do the same thing and not knowing where to go to do something. While I use OS X as my primary I need to use (and test) with Windows for some things. I feel utterly lost in Win10 (and largely in 8 as well) because the interfaces they force on you make statements about OS X "Fisher-price-y ease of use/dumbing down" pale in comparison. That's what I focused on in my comment: > Really the dual interfaces to the same thing are the worst part of Windows 10 right now.
  - perssontm 11y ago
    If they keep the trend there will also be at least 4 different folders called Photos in 4 different places by default, and none of them goes to the same photos.
  - mkonecny 11y ago
    The last few OS X versions have been notorious for the amount of bugs they introduced (both general software and driver issues) Coming from a company that only sells on a narrow range of hardware, these is even more unacceptable.
bentcorner 11y ago
Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9bJY6S96820J:gbl08ma.com/windows-10-is-unfinished/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9bJY6S9...
ytdht 11y ago
Microsoft historically released a good OS version at about every 2 major versions... could Windows 10 be the start of a good version at every 3 major release?
- sparky_z 11y ago
  Maybe it's just because they jumped straight from Windows 8 to Windows 10. They skipped the good version this time around.
- sp332 11y ago
  Windows 10 is fine... or will be, once they fix the bugs. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/review-windows-10-is-the-best-version-yet-once-the-bugs-get-fixed https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/review-windows-10-is...
  - ytdht 11y ago
    Once they fix the inserted/deliberate bugs? Arstechnica... I stopped reading that a long time ago.
- jonhohle 11y ago
  I know this is internet canon, but is questionable, in my experience. x DOS - passable o Windows 1 - bad o Windows 2 - bad x Windows 3.1x - good x Windows NT 3.5 - good x Windows 95 - good x Windows NT 4 - good x Windows 98 - better x Windows 2000 - great o Windows ME - bad x Windows XP - better than 9x/ME, on par with 2000, eventually long in the tooth and outdated o Windows Vista - bad x Windows 7 - good o Windows 8 - bad o Windows 10 - ??? The NT lineage was reasonably good prior to Vista (in the context of that OS family). The DOS lineage was reasonable good until ME (again, in the context of that OS family). XP was a significant improvement over the DOS lineage, however, Microsoft had a reasonably good run in the 90s and early 00s.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I'd include the point releases in that. XP once it was patched was awesome, but I recall nothing but problems prior to SP1-2. There's also 8.1, which fixed a lot of people's W8 complaints.
bitwize 11y ago
Release it as-is, then release patches and day-one DLC.
bargl 11y ago
I think this guy brings up a lot of good points about windows 10, but isn't that the point of this OS, to be incrementally updated based on all the user data they are pulling from us? They could use more polish, but I they got rid of one thing that bugged the hell out of me from windows 8. Apps. Every time I slid my mouse to the right I inevitably was on the edge and opened the last app. Infuriating. I had to disable that feature every time. Windowed apps are an improvement, and I really hope they listen to their customers and improve the OS.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  That COULD have been the point but when you push (hard) to get everyone to upgrade on release day you can't really hide behind that IMHO. Using Win10 previews regularly made me want to pull out my hair (which was my general feeling with Win8 as well).
  - bargl 11y ago
    Didn't they actually try to slow people down from upgrading release day? I mean what I read everywhere is that (paraphrasing), "when windows 10 is ready on your PC you'll see a pop up, but register now." Then you could just go and force the upgrade if you are impatient (like me). http://techreport.com/news/28579/microsoft-plans-phased-rollout-for-windows-10-upgraders http://techreport.com/news/28579/microsoft-plans-phased-roll...
decafbad 11y ago
So this is a surprise for you? Which Microsoft software was finished at its release date?
stephengillie 11y ago
My apologies for being glib, but I intend to skip Windows 10. Microsoft traditionally releases a revised edition within a year or so, and so I intend to wait for this revision before upgrading. Will it be named Windows 10.1? Will it be named Windows 11, or even Windows 12? I am unsure about the name, but I will hold out for this OS.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I would not blame you, although the press seems to think that most people have been 'skipping' Windows 8/8.1 remaining on 7. As for the next version, Microsoft made a big claim that this is the "last" windows version because they have made everything in the system upgradable. Thus all future upgrades will come as package changes through Windows Update and the "version" will forever be Windows 10 (so why not just call it Windows? I don't know)
- gbl08ma 11y ago
  I'm curious about future versions too. It's possible there will be no more, and Windows 10 is just a rolling release. If that is going to be the case, then you'll need to wait until people tell you that the updates up to that point were enough to make it "OK enough".
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  Funny, I'm on Windows 7 and when 8 came out, I thought "I'm skipping 8 and waiting for the next one." Now that 10 is out, it looks like it fixes a lot of the issues I had/read about with 8. Granted, I'm definitely not going to install until 10.1 (aka "SP1") but assuming they don't try to turn the OS into a cloud-connected clusterfuck, I'm going to give it a shot. I did have Windows 8 in a VM and absolutely hated it. The whole "shove tablet interfaces down your throat even on desktop" thing soured the whole OS for me, and the start screen itself is a joke. I'm glad they brought back the start menu. From what I've noticed, MS releases a shitty version of Windows every other release since 98. 98 was fine, ME was crap, XP was good, Vista was crap, 7 is great, 8 is crap, so hopefully 10 will follow suit and actually be better than 7.
ladzoppelin 11y ago
Whatever. 7 people in my office just upgraded from 7/8.1 in under a hour with all their documents, programs and settings unchanged and then continued working like normal. That's unreal considering how many different hardware combinations exist. People seem to like it and its only going to get better.
- rhodysurf 11y ago
  Just did the same on my work computer. And its working incredibly well too. Every program works fine and it only took an hour
- electic 11y ago
  I think it has been documented quite well the settings have changed and they have introduced a slew of very unsettling new settings that many view as a security and privacy concern.
- Kenji 11y ago
  Yeah, exactly. Try that with a Linux version upgrade (e.g. Ubuntu), hahaha.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    What? I upgraded a Debian machine just last month. Had to reboot it.
  - DrJokepu 11y ago
    There was a time when this was true, but this is not how it works anymore.
  - seba_dos1 11y ago
    My Debian installation has been being updated for years now and went through three different machines, all without any bigger issues. It's also worth noting that this is a version called "unstable".
    - 11y ago
nailer 11y ago
Having used Windows 10, yes, Control Panel is still there and full of junk, but you need it much less in Windows 10 than Windows 8 since Settings is now so much larger. The only time I've needed control panel so far was for mouse acceleration. That should be in settings, but they've done so much work I expect they'll sort it soon.
Negative1 11y ago
Still on the last stable preview release (1 month old) and tons of issues with crashes/freezes, weird UI funkiness and game compatibility. Hoping the final version fixed many of these issues but it's sounding unlikely. My initial impressions remain the same. Compared to 7; lots of invasive privacy policies, much slower (especially bootup), takes WAY more space on my sad little SSD, adds little to no value (I had multiple desktops already using a reliable plugin). Wish I didn't upgrade...
- chadgeidel 11y ago
  According to this article it takes up quite a bit less HDD space and starts up much faster than 7: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/faster-booting-smaller-footprint-make-windows-10-an-easy-upgrade-for-old-pcs/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/faster-booting-smalle...
godgod 11y ago
You have to not care about your privacy and data to be using Windows 10.
McGlockenshire 11y ago
Why does everyone complain about error reporting? A former coworker of mine worked with one of the areas in Microsoft that dealt with error reporting. They actually analyze the data and provide feedback to the vendors of crash-happy programs. It's an important thing that helps generally improve quality of life.
jmnicolas 11y ago
I would think by now everybody knew that you had to wait at least one year before adopting a new Microsoft OS. OK, with the "new Microsoft"* you can probably shorten the delay to 6 months, but any shorter than that you're an early adopter and shouldn't complain. * anybody that used their softwares for 2 decades can see how much they improved
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  Or wait a year before adopting any OS. Microsoft botches just about every other version of Windows, but recently Apple has been doing some really stupid things in OSx, and a few years back Ubuntu screwed up their default interface. Unless you're on a really stable version of linux/BSD, it really makes sense to wait to install any OS until the kinks are worked out. I think the same applies to most software.
anant 11y ago
Almost all of the author's complaints revolve around the Control Panel. Most users won't ever see the Control Panel, just the Settings app. The Control Panel is a legacy piece they decided to keep around for the "enterprise"; just like Windows 10 also still includes the old Internet Explorer.
nhebb 11y ago
> but the RAM usage has gone up when compared to 8.1. On a device with just 2 GB of RAM, this matters, but not nearly as much as what’s coming next… In that entire article, increased RAM usage was the only thing that piqued my interest. The rest of the issues were styling inconsistencies and changes to how some settings are accessed, both of which are problems Windows has had since Vista. At the same time, though, it's impressive that a modern operating system can operate on just 2GB of RAM. The last time I had that little RAM, I was running Windows 98.
- sedatk 11y ago
  in fact even increased RAM use doesn't matter at all if it makes the system faster and more responsive. for some reason, people keep looking at it from a warped perspective.
  - bsilvereagle 11y ago
    An Arch Linux install with i3 as the window manager will consume <300MB of RAM and be (subjectively) more responsive than Windows. On the same machine, a default Windows 7 install will take 1.6GB of RAM. I think it's a baseline like this that leaves people wondering why Windows by default needs to consume large amounts of RAM.
    - ac29 11y ago
      >On the same machine, a default Windows 7 install will take 1.6GB of RAM. Are you sure about that? https://i.imgur.com/jXRrEJS.png https://i.imgur.com/jXRrEJS.png My mostly stock install of Win8.1 seems to use less than 600MB at idle. I 100% agree with you that Linux can be more efficient (that screenshot was taken from a VM running on Linux, which is my primary OS), but Windows isn't that awful memory wise.
  - chadgeidel 11y ago
    I paid good money for that RAM. I don't want it to go to waste.
sedatk 11y ago
tl; dr: some icons are old and whole control panel is not adapted to modern UI. that is the reason twitter exists people.
GnarfGnarf 11y ago
"History" is still not available in Spartan: "You'll see your browsing history here in the not-too-distant future". Is History that hard to implement? Spartan does not respond properly to ShellExecute(). My app launches a PDF and... Spartan just sits there, without displaying the PDF. Yes, you can open it manually with the PDF Reader, but my users expect it to launch automatically.
- hirsin 11y ago
  Are you on the RTM 10240 build? History has been in Spartan for over a month now publicly.
AdeptusAquinas 11y ago
I'm not surprised by the UI dissonance. I was in the insider preview, and they changed the UI style they were going for a few times. I suspect its just a matter of scale: they eventually settled on a given style, but didn't have a chance to upgrade the six million dialogs in the system in time. Importantly, its not just look but the app technology that needs to shift. The new stuff is in the Universal App framework, some other stuff in WPF, and the ancient stuff in forms. I imagine as the updates come in, one after another dialog will be updated.
graycat 11y ago
Wow. Windows 10 is too hard for Microsoft. What a mess. Right, I'll say with Windows XP or Windows 7. Time for Windows 11. What a disaster. And for what I'm really interested in, security, and compatibility, if they can't get some simple GUI dialogs correct, there's no hope for the rest. Looks like Windows 7 is the most recent usable Microsoft OS.
- mejari 11y ago
  That is certainly quite a bit of not useful hyperbole. What connection do you think that GUI dialog styling and security/compatibility have?
  - graycat 11y ago
    What connection? Just in what people do: If they can't do the simple work on the easy to see label on the bottle right, then can't have confidence in the more difficult work less easy to see for the contents of the bottle.
    - mejari 11y ago
      Have you worked on software projects before? Differing priority levels for GUI consistency and base functionality is not an odd thing, and being bad on one does not really mean you're bad at the other. Plus the people making the label for the bottle are almost never the same ones putting stuff in it.
      - graycat 11y ago
        > Have you worked on software projects before? Yup. From Microsoft, by now for too long I've seen too much poor quality work, apparently bottom to top in the stack and left to right for the applications. I hate to say this and am betting my startup on Windows as the platform, but for too long there have been too many security problems, poor documentation, bugs, "buffer overflows" still, even design issues (Vista), etc. Windows 10? That's a lot, from Windows 3.1, NT, ..., 8.1, and now 10, along with Windows Server, etc. -- that's a lot of software that is supposed to be really serious. So, we have to expect that by now Microsoft could get the routine things right for Windows 10 and not ship something that will need 10 service packs, with lots of user struggles with lots of problems along the way, to get to a solid chunk of code. E.g., the OP looked like just a fast review of 10 but still found some serious problems. So, it looks like Microsoft never did a serious critical review and fixed the obvious issues. I've seen some good work from Microsoft, but there's also been too much poor work, and some of that seems to be in 10. Not good. Microsoft shipping bad code for their main product is an old story that needed to end a long time ago. I just want Microsoft to put their game face on, come ready to play, take bugs, errors, etc. seriously, and design and write good code. E.g., I'm concerned: Clearly Microsoft wants to push their users into Windows 10. Well, if 10 has problems it shouldn't have, then I will have problems I shouldn't have. At this point, I'm very concerned about the basic quality of Microsoft's work.
digi_owl 11y ago
You know the personal computing world has run out of technical ideas when we spend massive amount of time fretting over "ui design language"...
currysausage 11y ago
Flashback to 2001: http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2001/december/windowsxprough http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2001/december/windowsx... (Two years later, Steven analyzed the visual identity of Mozilla: http://www.actsofvolition.com/files/mozillabranding/ http://www.actsofvolition.com/files/mozillabranding/ That article, as far as I can remember, resulted in a fruitful collaboration between Steven (Silverorange) and Mozilla.)
heavymark 11y ago
For people with attention to detail and notice when icons are not updated and other design inconsistencies they are probably far better suited for OS X. Typical windows users don't notice those things so imagine Microsoft didn't focus on them in this version. May take until 11 or 12 to get all those things refined. (And yes mac has had similar issues but far less in release versions).

104 points by gbl08ma 11y ago

I guess it is the trend in software now. 'Move fast and break things'. Started with games, now with Operating Systems. I agree, there was a lot of duality in Windows 8 with Metro and classical Windows menus/programs, and they still seem to exist with 10. I even have "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" option in control panel and yet I upgraded from a clean install of Windows 8.1.

acqq 11y ago
I actually need the "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" option as, as far as I know, there is no other way to do the disk image backup or restore of my Windows computers without having to use the third party programs. The problem there is naming it "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" and not just "Disk Image Backup and Restore" or something like that. The funny name comes from some managerial decision to hint that it's "unmodern" (hey, an old Windows version!) way to do the backup now with the push for ho-ho clouds.
- akira2501 11y ago
  > as far as I know, there is no other way to do the disk image backup or restore of my Windows computers without having to use the third party programs. Since Windows 7, Microsoft has provided imagex.exe; it's typically used in high-volume disk imaging applications, but you can easily use it to snapshot or restore an entire installation.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > you can easily use it to snapshot or restore an entire installation. "Easily"? Any link? As far as I know imagex.exe has less functionality than the "backup and restore" application, former being a simpler command line utility (1). Specifically, how would anybody without any programming experience (step by step) - perform the regular backup in order to be prepared for the case his hard disk "dies." - restore from his backup once the new hard disk is inserted in the computer. As far as I know, especially the repartitioning steps are far from being trivial and not done by imagex. "Backup and restore" are GUI based tools, easy to be explained and used by non-professionals to do the full local backups of their computers. The same thing we can still do with iPhone and iTunes (a button in iTunes starting the complete backup of the iPhone, and restoring simply with the another button). Why should I purchase the third party program or do unknown amount of programming to do something like that on a Windows computer? 1) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Cc749003%28v=WS.10%29.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Cc749003%28v=WS....
devy 11y ago
> 'Move fast and break things'. In a way, Mac OS X is like that.
digi_owl 11y ago
I call it web-ification. More and more programmers likely get their feet wet doing JS/PHP on some site or other, and bring their rapid iteration thinking from there on to compiled projects.

yuhong 11y ago

Also see http://textslashplain.com/2015/07/31/on-defaults/ http://textslashplain.com/2015/07/31/on-defaults/ and a Twitter thread on the problems with the OOBE UI: https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/627145718331904000 https://twitter.com/yuhong2/status/627145718331904000

bhouston 11y ago

I find that the Windows Explorer is super cluttered. I need to find a good replacement.

errantspark 11y ago
Total Commander, been using it since I was 7 years old, I can't even use a Windows computer without it.
- jafingi 11y ago
  Haha! Me too! And Norton Commander before that. It's great to be able to use the commander without mouse. Just plain keyboard. Really boosts productivity (especially for a developer like me).
ivank 11y ago
I've been very happy with Directory Opus for 10 years now.

Zikes 11y ago

As long as the functionality is there and basic improvements have been made, I'm not at all upset. I got my upgrade for free, and I'm enjoying several of the new features (especially multiple desktops, welcome to the 21st century Microsoft). We've all released minimum viable products before. Hell, "early access" is dominating video games in particular. As long as they continue to improve and have a stable, steady release schedule with tangible results, then I think it was a good move on Microsoft's part. Especially since the longer they waited the more entrenched users of Windows 7 & 8 would become, just like they did with XP.

javert 11y ago
I disagree. Basic UI issues are not excusable for a company with the resources of Microsoft. If we were talking about issues in a brand new kernel, maybe. But not basic UI issues.
- nosideeffects 11y ago
  Why are _kernel_ issues excusable but UI issues are not? I think you have that backwards.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Bugs in massive undertakings like a kernel are unavoidable. It's a bitter pill to get a big improvement. Using the wrong UI framework for dialogs or having links going nowhere is easily avoidable, it just needs manpower.
  - javert 11y ago
    Actually, it's not excusable to have issues in the kernel or UI. I just brought up the kernel thing because I was pandering to someone inventing poor excuses for MS. I shouldn't have pandered.
wvenable 11y ago
Windows 10 appears to suffer from the "pick a date" style of project management. A date was chosen before the project started and that's the day it was released regardless of any issues that cropped up in development. And rolling release is a good model and it seems to be working fantastically for browsers but it's predicated on not releasing features until they are ready. But Windows 10 is a marketed product with features that all had to exist on day 1. So instead of a stable core to work from we get a big ball of muddled together. I'm hoping now that the date is passed and the features are all in there that there is nothing left to do but fix everything. The (slow) rolling releases of XP worked well so I too have high hopes for Windows 10. But I'll be waiting for a while before I upgrade.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I don't really agree with the author. I find Windows 10 to be a step up from 8.1. Also, a fair comparison might be to verion 8 when it first came out, right? I think Microsoft and Apple are on a good path: keeping the same major version number for their OS, and just continually bring out little changes.

Zikes 11y ago
It is funny that both major OS developers settled on 10 for their "forever version."
- phantom784 11y ago
  That's probably part of the reason why 9 was skipped - Microsoft didn't want a lower "forever version" number lower than Apple.
  - swashboon 11y ago
    The anecdotal reason (from reddit[1]) was that it would have broken to much third party code doing checks for Windows 95/98. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_windows_version_will_be_called_windows_10/ckwq83x https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_wind...
    - TillE 11y ago
      This keeps getting mentioned in various places, but it's nonsense. We're talking about a tiny number of obscure Java programs which do the insane thing of checking OS version by string rather than with numbers. For the five people on Earth actually affected by this, there's always compatibility mode.
      - bsilvereagle 11y ago
        When this first started to be mentioned, I saw multiple people claiming drivers checking for 95/98 was the driving factor. There are a lot of obscure drivers still in production and I don't know of a 'compatibility mode' for drivers.

coldcode 11y ago

Nothing is ever really finished. Apple's been working on their version 10 for 14 years.

joshstrange 11y ago
Except that OS X versions are generally not this buggy on release IMHO. Really the dual interfaces to the same thing are the worst part of Windows 10 right now.
- NDizzle 11y ago
  OSX not buggy? Have you not updated in the last ~3 years or something?!
  - DrJokepu 11y ago
    …or the first ~3 years of OS X, for that matter.
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    I have been using it for the last 5yrs or so. While I have run into 1-2 little issues here and there I have never experienced the level of duplicate interfaces that do the same thing and not knowing where to go to do something. While I use OS X as my primary I need to use (and test) with Windows for some things. I feel utterly lost in Win10 (and largely in 8 as well) because the interfaces they force on you make statements about OS X "Fisher-price-y ease of use/dumbing down" pale in comparison. That's what I focused on in my comment: > Really the dual interfaces to the same thing are the worst part of Windows 10 right now.
- perssontm 11y ago
  If they keep the trend there will also be at least 4 different folders called Photos in 4 different places by default, and none of them goes to the same photos.
- mkonecny 11y ago
  The last few OS X versions have been notorious for the amount of bugs they introduced (both general software and driver issues) Coming from a company that only sells on a narrow range of hardware, these is even more unacceptable.

bentcorner 11y ago

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9bJY6S96820J:gbl08ma.com/windows-10-is-unfinished/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9bJY6S9...

ytdht 11y ago

Microsoft historically released a good OS version at about every 2 major versions... could Windows 10 be the start of a good version at every 3 major release?

sparky_z 11y ago
Maybe it's just because they jumped straight from Windows 8 to Windows 10. They skipped the good version this time around.
sp332 11y ago
Windows 10 is fine... or will be, once they fix the bugs. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/review-windows-10-is-the-best-version-yet-once-the-bugs-get-fixed https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/review-windows-10-is...
- ytdht 11y ago
  Once they fix the inserted/deliberate bugs? Arstechnica... I stopped reading that a long time ago.
jonhohle 11y ago
I know this is internet canon, but is questionable, in my experience. x DOS - passable o Windows 1 - bad o Windows 2 - bad x Windows 3.1x - good x Windows NT 3.5 - good x Windows 95 - good x Windows NT 4 - good x Windows 98 - better x Windows 2000 - great o Windows ME - bad x Windows XP - better than 9x/ME, on par with 2000, eventually long in the tooth and outdated o Windows Vista - bad x Windows 7 - good o Windows 8 - bad o Windows 10 - ??? The NT lineage was reasonably good prior to Vista (in the context of that OS family). The DOS lineage was reasonable good until ME (again, in the context of that OS family). XP was a significant improvement over the DOS lineage, however, Microsoft had a reasonably good run in the 90s and early 00s.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I'd include the point releases in that. XP once it was patched was awesome, but I recall nothing but problems prior to SP1-2. There's also 8.1, which fixed a lot of people's W8 complaints.

bitwize 11y ago

Release it as-is, then release patches and day-one DLC.

bargl 11y ago

I think this guy brings up a lot of good points about windows 10, but isn't that the point of this OS, to be incrementally updated based on all the user data they are pulling from us? They could use more polish, but I they got rid of one thing that bugged the hell out of me from windows 8. Apps. Every time I slid my mouse to the right I inevitably was on the edge and opened the last app. Infuriating. I had to disable that feature every time. Windowed apps are an improvement, and I really hope they listen to their customers and improve the OS.

joshstrange 11y ago
That COULD have been the point but when you push (hard) to get everyone to upgrade on release day you can't really hide behind that IMHO. Using Win10 previews regularly made me want to pull out my hair (which was my general feeling with Win8 as well).
- bargl 11y ago
  Didn't they actually try to slow people down from upgrading release day? I mean what I read everywhere is that (paraphrasing), "when windows 10 is ready on your PC you'll see a pop up, but register now." Then you could just go and force the upgrade if you are impatient (like me). http://techreport.com/news/28579/microsoft-plans-phased-rollout-for-windows-10-upgraders http://techreport.com/news/28579/microsoft-plans-phased-roll...

decafbad 11y ago

So this is a surprise for you? Which Microsoft software was finished at its release date?

stephengillie 11y ago

My apologies for being glib, but I intend to skip Windows 10. Microsoft traditionally releases a revised edition within a year or so, and so I intend to wait for this revision before upgrading. Will it be named Windows 10.1? Will it be named Windows 11, or even Windows 12? I am unsure about the name, but I will hold out for this OS.

ChuckMcM 11y ago
I would not blame you, although the press seems to think that most people have been 'skipping' Windows 8/8.1 remaining on 7. As for the next version, Microsoft made a big claim that this is the "last" windows version because they have made everything in the system upgradable. Thus all future upgrades will come as package changes through Windows Update and the "version" will forever be Windows 10 (so why not just call it Windows? I don't know)
gbl08ma 11y ago
I'm curious about future versions too. It's possible there will be no more, and Windows 10 is just a rolling release. If that is going to be the case, then you'll need to wait until people tell you that the updates up to that point were enough to make it "OK enough".
orthecreedence 11y ago
Funny, I'm on Windows 7 and when 8 came out, I thought "I'm skipping 8 and waiting for the next one." Now that 10 is out, it looks like it fixes a lot of the issues I had/read about with 8. Granted, I'm definitely not going to install until 10.1 (aka "SP1") but assuming they don't try to turn the OS into a cloud-connected clusterfuck, I'm going to give it a shot. I did have Windows 8 in a VM and absolutely hated it. The whole "shove tablet interfaces down your throat even on desktop" thing soured the whole OS for me, and the start screen itself is a joke. I'm glad they brought back the start menu. From what I've noticed, MS releases a shitty version of Windows every other release since 98. 98 was fine, ME was crap, XP was good, Vista was crap, 7 is great, 8 is crap, so hopefully 10 will follow suit and actually be better than 7.

ladzoppelin 11y ago

Whatever. 7 people in my office just upgraded from 7/8.1 in under a hour with all their documents, programs and settings unchanged and then continued working like normal. That's unreal considering how many different hardware combinations exist. People seem to like it and its only going to get better.

rhodysurf 11y ago
Just did the same on my work computer. And its working incredibly well too. Every program works fine and it only took an hour
electic 11y ago
I think it has been documented quite well the settings have changed and they have introduced a slew of very unsettling new settings that many view as a security and privacy concern.
Kenji 11y ago
Yeah, exactly. Try that with a Linux version upgrade (e.g. Ubuntu), hahaha.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  What? I upgraded a Debian machine just last month. Had to reboot it.
- DrJokepu 11y ago
  There was a time when this was true, but this is not how it works anymore.
- seba_dos1 11y ago
  My Debian installation has been being updated for years now and went through three different machines, all without any bigger issues. It's also worth noting that this is a version called "unstable".
  - 11y ago

nailer 11y ago

Having used Windows 10, yes, Control Panel is still there and full of junk, but you need it much less in Windows 10 than Windows 8 since Settings is now so much larger. The only time I've needed control panel so far was for mouse acceleration. That should be in settings, but they've done so much work I expect they'll sort it soon.

Negative1 11y ago

Still on the last stable preview release (1 month old) and tons of issues with crashes/freezes, weird UI funkiness and game compatibility. Hoping the final version fixed many of these issues but it's sounding unlikely. My initial impressions remain the same. Compared to 7; lots of invasive privacy policies, much slower (especially bootup), takes WAY more space on my sad little SSD, adds little to no value (I had multiple desktops already using a reliable plugin). Wish I didn't upgrade...

chadgeidel 11y ago
According to this article it takes up quite a bit less HDD space and starts up much faster than 7: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/faster-booting-smaller-footprint-make-windows-10-an-easy-upgrade-for-old-pcs/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/faster-booting-smalle...

godgod 11y ago

You have to not care about your privacy and data to be using Windows 10.

McGlockenshire 11y ago

Why does everyone complain about error reporting? A former coworker of mine worked with one of the areas in Microsoft that dealt with error reporting. They actually analyze the data and provide feedback to the vendors of crash-happy programs. It's an important thing that helps generally improve quality of life.

jmnicolas 11y ago

I would think by now everybody knew that you had to wait at least one year before adopting a new Microsoft OS. OK, with the "new Microsoft"* you can probably shorten the delay to 6 months, but any shorter than that you're an early adopter and shouldn't complain. * anybody that used their softwares for 2 decades can see how much they improved

orthecreedence 11y ago
Or wait a year before adopting any OS. Microsoft botches just about every other version of Windows, but recently Apple has been doing some really stupid things in OSx, and a few years back Ubuntu screwed up their default interface. Unless you're on a really stable version of linux/BSD, it really makes sense to wait to install any OS until the kinks are worked out. I think the same applies to most software.

anant 11y ago

Almost all of the author's complaints revolve around the Control Panel. Most users won't ever see the Control Panel, just the Settings app. The Control Panel is a legacy piece they decided to keep around for the "enterprise"; just like Windows 10 also still includes the old Internet Explorer.

nhebb 11y ago

> but the RAM usage has gone up when compared to 8.1. On a device with just 2 GB of RAM, this matters, but not nearly as much as what’s coming next… In that entire article, increased RAM usage was the only thing that piqued my interest. The rest of the issues were styling inconsistencies and changes to how some settings are accessed, both of which are problems Windows has had since Vista. At the same time, though, it's impressive that a modern operating system can operate on just 2GB of RAM. The last time I had that little RAM, I was running Windows 98.

sedatk 11y ago
in fact even increased RAM use doesn't matter at all if it makes the system faster and more responsive. for some reason, people keep looking at it from a warped perspective.
- bsilvereagle 11y ago
  An Arch Linux install with i3 as the window manager will consume <300MB of RAM and be (subjectively) more responsive than Windows. On the same machine, a default Windows 7 install will take 1.6GB of RAM. I think it's a baseline like this that leaves people wondering why Windows by default needs to consume large amounts of RAM.
  - ac29 11y ago
    >On the same machine, a default Windows 7 install will take 1.6GB of RAM. Are you sure about that? https://i.imgur.com/jXRrEJS.png https://i.imgur.com/jXRrEJS.png My mostly stock install of Win8.1 seems to use less than 600MB at idle. I 100% agree with you that Linux can be more efficient (that screenshot was taken from a VM running on Linux, which is my primary OS), but Windows isn't that awful memory wise.
- chadgeidel 11y ago
  I paid good money for that RAM. I don't want it to go to waste.

sedatk 11y ago

tl; dr: some icons are old and whole control panel is not adapted to modern UI. that is the reason twitter exists people.

GnarfGnarf 11y ago

"History" is still not available in Spartan: "You'll see your browsing history here in the not-too-distant future". Is History that hard to implement? Spartan does not respond properly to ShellExecute(). My app launches a PDF and... Spartan just sits there, without displaying the PDF. Yes, you can open it manually with the PDF Reader, but my users expect it to launch automatically.

hirsin 11y ago
Are you on the RTM 10240 build? History has been in Spartan for over a month now publicly.

AdeptusAquinas 11y ago

I'm not surprised by the UI dissonance. I was in the insider preview, and they changed the UI style they were going for a few times. I suspect its just a matter of scale: they eventually settled on a given style, but didn't have a chance to upgrade the six million dialogs in the system in time. Importantly, its not just look but the app technology that needs to shift. The new stuff is in the Universal App framework, some other stuff in WPF, and the ancient stuff in forms. I imagine as the updates come in, one after another dialog will be updated.

graycat 11y ago

Wow. Windows 10 is too hard for Microsoft. What a mess. Right, I'll say with Windows XP or Windows 7. Time for Windows 11. What a disaster. And for what I'm really interested in, security, and compatibility, if they can't get some simple GUI dialogs correct, there's no hope for the rest. Looks like Windows 7 is the most recent usable Microsoft OS.

mejari 11y ago
That is certainly quite a bit of not useful hyperbole. What connection do you think that GUI dialog styling and security/compatibility have?
- graycat 11y ago
  What connection? Just in what people do: If they can't do the simple work on the easy to see label on the bottle right, then can't have confidence in the more difficult work less easy to see for the contents of the bottle.
  - mejari 11y ago
    Have you worked on software projects before? Differing priority levels for GUI consistency and base functionality is not an odd thing, and being bad on one does not really mean you're bad at the other. Plus the people making the label for the bottle are almost never the same ones putting stuff in it.
    - graycat 11y ago
      > Have you worked on software projects before? Yup. From Microsoft, by now for too long I've seen too much poor quality work, apparently bottom to top in the stack and left to right for the applications. I hate to say this and am betting my startup on Windows as the platform, but for too long there have been too many security problems, poor documentation, bugs, "buffer overflows" still, even design issues (Vista), etc. Windows 10? That's a lot, from Windows 3.1, NT, ..., 8.1, and now 10, along with Windows Server, etc. -- that's a lot of software that is supposed to be really serious. So, we have to expect that by now Microsoft could get the routine things right for Windows 10 and not ship something that will need 10 service packs, with lots of user struggles with lots of problems along the way, to get to a solid chunk of code. E.g., the OP looked like just a fast review of 10 but still found some serious problems. So, it looks like Microsoft never did a serious critical review and fixed the obvious issues. I've seen some good work from Microsoft, but there's also been too much poor work, and some of that seems to be in 10. Not good. Microsoft shipping bad code for their main product is an old story that needed to end a long time ago. I just want Microsoft to put their game face on, come ready to play, take bugs, errors, etc. seriously, and design and write good code. E.g., I'm concerned: Clearly Microsoft wants to push their users into Windows 10. Well, if 10 has problems it shouldn't have, then I will have problems I shouldn't have. At this point, I'm very concerned about the basic quality of Microsoft's work.

digi_owl 11y ago

You know the personal computing world has run out of technical ideas when we spend massive amount of time fretting over "ui design language"...

currysausage 11y ago

Flashback to 2001: http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2001/december/windowsxprough http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2001/december/windowsx... (Two years later, Steven analyzed the visual identity of Mozilla: http://www.actsofvolition.com/files/mozillabranding/ http://www.actsofvolition.com/files/mozillabranding/ That article, as far as I can remember, resulted in a fruitful collaboration between Steven (Silverorange) and Mozilla.)

heavymark 11y ago

For people with attention to detail and notice when icons are not updated and other design inconsistencies they are probably far better suited for OS X. Typical windows users don't notice those things so imagine Microsoft didn't focus on them in this version. May take until 11 or 12 to get all those things refined. (And yes mac has had similar issues but far less in release versions).