
Meet Microsoft's Antidote to Vista - pierrefar
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/meet-microsofts-antidote-to-vista/2009/04/20/1240079593188.html?page=fullpage
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Goronmon
I find it interesting how bad of a image Vista has. While there were obviously
issues right off the bad with hardware incompatibilities, etc...it turned out
to be a really solid OS from my end. I used it for over a year and a half with
fewer problems than I had with XP.

Most people just seem to "know" that Vista is a terrible OS. The read some
forum post that heard that it was terrible, or they saw some random news story
a while back saying people weren't too happy with Vista. I've even heard some
people claim it was Windows Me all over again.

Then you have some of the "advice" people give out for Vista users. My
favorite, of course, is that the first thing a Vista user should do is
completely disable UAC. Now, sure, those pop-ups can be annoying, but I'd
prefer a quick second of annoyance when loading up a program over executables
starting off silently with admin privileges.

In any case, I've used the Windows 7 beta as my main OS for a couple months
now and haven't had any issues so far.

~~~
pbz
All those observations are coming from a technical person's point of view. One
thing that MS doesn't seem to get is that first impressions matter, they
matter a lot. I bought a computer that came with Vista. It took me close to 5
minutes - I'm not kidding - to start up the machine to the point I was able to
use anything. And it was very slow even afterwards. You just can't convince a
regular person, after having such an experience, that Vista is great. You
can't wash away those bad feelings with an SP or with your positive testimony.
You just can't. Regular folks are far more emotional than that. This is
something we as developers have to remind ourselves every day.

~~~
Goronmon
_You just can't convince a regular person, after having such an experience,
that Vista is great._

I wonder how many "regular" users jumped on board at the very beginning while
there were still issues? I rarely have talked to someone who has actual
experience with the problems from Vista (other than it being included on a
system with poor performance, which was an issue, I'll admit).

If Vista really was a poor OS, then Windows 7 would be just putting 'lipstick
on a pig'.

~~~
pbz
It will largely depend on how well MS can control the vendors. In other words
how they can prevent the vendors from installing crap on a computer. For the
longest time computers would ship with 1GB of RAM with tons of applications in
the startup. You really felt like you bought a car for $20K that can only go
20 miles per hour. Don't underestimate the importance of performance.

------
ahpeeyem
"The team tried to build an operating system...with manners, not one that
constantly interrupts with bubbles, boxes and warnings that, data showed,
people ignored or raced to close.

The Windows groups agreed in principle but old habits often reared up. Many
Windows teams still wanted to be able to create alert bubbles for their
functions.

"We've probably talked to every team in Windows about, 'No no no no, we don't
want you to pop your notifications. Windows is not going to use these
notifications to tell users things,'""

Great, getting rid of popup dialogs and notifications sounds like a huge step
in the right direction - people are so used to not understanding or caring
what they say they just ignore them anyway.

~~~
jnovek
While I agree that users generally ignore notification bubbles in Windows, how
should users receive notifications? I mean, sometimes you really do have to
tell people stuff. Is it OK to pop up a notification bubble if you only do it
every once in a while?

I feel pretty certain that a notification bubble is better than any system
that steals focus from another window without responding to a user action.

Is there another accepted way of delivering notifications that I'm not
thinking of?

~~~
chime
> Is there another accepted way of delivering notifications that I'm not
> thinking of?

Yes. Designing your software so that it minimizes the need for such
notifications. E.g. Dropbox has not once shown me a popup yet it does some
very critical file sync operations. Every other app I used before Dropbox kept
annoying me with "do you REALLY want to sync this file even though the source
is older?" Dropbox silently and smartly handles this (by keeping both copies
of the file and naming them accordingly).

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jwvgoethe
"More research and testing yielded a solution - the ribbon, which displayed
different commands depending on what the PC user was doing. Then Larson-Green
pushed Microsoft to get even more radical: to release Office 2007 without the
hedge of a "classic mode" that would emulate the old look and feel for people
who didn't like the changes."

The ribbon almost gives me a stroke every time I have to use office. I've
always said that whoever developed it should be drug out into the street and
shot. well apparently now we know who it was. The odd thing is that microsoft
considered the ribbon a success?! even more stunningly they put ribbon lady in
charge of their next OS. I swear it seems that microsofts enemies are making
their top level corporate decisions.

This spells doom for windows 7.

~~~
stuff4ben
I love the ribbon in Office 2007. It took a while to "get" the paradigm shift,
but it works. As a developer, I don't use Office that much, but when I do, all
of the commands I need are just a ribbon away. No more hunting through tabs of
preferences or endless menus. It's also not just Microsoft that considers the
ribbon a success, many other users do and they've won awards for the
innovative UI.

~~~
jwvgoethe
"as a developer" this seems to be the problem with microsofts new user
interfaces. The tech elite may like them, but they are impossible for the
ordinary user. I posit that the vast majority of non technical end users
utterly hate hate hate the ribbon. I imagine the same thing will happen with
windows 7. In fact we've already been seeing it; the tech elite trying out the
beta are liking it, which means that it will be unusable from the end user's
perspective.

~~~
stuff4ben
No, you have it completely backwards. That was the problem with their old
UI's. They were built by developers for developers with minimal thought
towards everyday users. This was the first major shift away from that and it
seems to have worked. It took into account how people used Office and is the
result of countless focus groups and studies. As I said earlier, it takes a
while to grok it, but once you do, there really is no going back.

My wife is an excellent example of a non-tech user. I surreptitiously
installed Office 2007 on her computer when I upgraded her HD and reinstalled
Windows. She hated it at first because it was different than what she was used
to (Office XP). She hates change as most people do. But as she used it, she
got used to the new UI and now has said she loves it and wishes more of her
programs worked that way.

I hate to sound like a Microsoft homer, but seriously, the ribbon UI is one of
the more innovative and fresh ideas to come out of Redmond lately.

------
GeneralMaximus
MS should take some time to write an HIG document and put it online for
everyone to see. That would help a lot.

I also hope MS uses fewer "violent" colors in Win7. I'm a Mac user, and I love
the way the Mac UI just recedes into the background with gray as it's
dominating color. I don't like the reds and greens in the Vista UI. Of course,
I could turn on classic mode, but why should I have to do that? I like the
modern Aero UI, and I want to keep it - sans the violent colors.

All those horrid bright colors make the Vista UI distracting, especially for
someone who spends a lot of time in CLI environments.

------
duncanj
Is she being set up for the Carly Fiorina award?

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ktharavaad
>>> create a good user experience <<< >>> User interface is customer service
for the computer <<< >>> centralized planning, in contrast with the old
culture that let Windows subgroups set their own agendas <<<

seems like to me that not only are they moving towards a more "mac-like" focus
on user interface, easier-to-use software. They are also copying apple's
approach to software/hardware design, which is centralized around steve jobs.

~~~
Keyframe
oh come on

~~~
jnovek
No kidding.

How is delivering a good user experience and designing a product-appropriate
development process Apple's property? Shouldn't everyone who writes software
try to do those things?

~~~
Maciek416
The contrast here is being made between two development styles: A centralized,
controlled, and focused production system at Apple, versus what Microsoft
apparently had before Windows 7: A network of fiefdoms which fought each other
over implementation and design details but nevertheless had to secure each
others' approval for changes. This brought about stalemates and some truly
bizarre outcomes. Here's the famous story about the Windows shutdown menu
relating to this:

[http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-
shutdown-c...](http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-
crapfest.html)

If Microsoft has overcome these [alleged] problems, it would represent a
significant change in their development style.

