
The True Purpose of Microsoft Solitaire, Minesweeper, and FreeCell - pykello
http://mentalfloss.com/uk/technology/32106/the-true-purpose-of-solitaire-minesweeper-hearts-and-freecell
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eitland
Remember teaching PCs back in 1998 or 1999 and realizing that Microsoft hearts
or soltaire was an excellent way to teach retired people to use the mouse.

The games were familiar and fun helped them stop clutching the mouse like it
was, -I don't know, something that was trying to escape.

Didn't know until now that it was purpose-built for teaching.

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infinityplus1
They should have created a game to teach Windows 8 interface

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vezycash
I think they assumed people would embrace the Metro UI... cos the windows
metro interface was battle tested (windows phone, zune, media center) and most
importantly, it was an award winning interface.

I also think they forgot or underestimated the most important factor which
influences the feeling of ease or neural fluency - familiarity.

They've learned their lesson as instant Familiarity is a chief goal behind
windows 10.

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Terr_
Anecdotally, they failed. I'm still on 7 because 10 just introduced a slew of
unfamiliar UI styling while hiding or removing any mechanism to make it
stop...

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velox_io
They've made some nice improvements with docking multiple applications, plus
multiple desktops. So you can have on for work and another for play.

I'm not a fan of the new Start Menu, but with pinned shortcuts to the task bar
I don't see it very often.

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probably_wrong
> the Microsoft version Minesweeper was introduced to Windows 3.1—not to
> demonstrate that Windows was an adept gaming operating system, but to make
> the idea of left and right clicking second nature for Windows users

It took me all the way to Windows XP to learn that you can right-click in
minesweeper. I showed it to a friend, and he told me that doing that was
cheating. No one in my family knew about it either.

So my take is that they could have made the concept clearer.

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ry_ry
I know a handful of competative gamers, some of whom who would use Minsweeper
to 'warm up' before LANs to get their eye in, and keep their mousing muscles
loose between matches.

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ry_ry
Well, that and smashing Adderall obviously.

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theandrewbailey
Moms everywhere love these. When I moved my mom to Linux, I threw gnome-games
on there. A week later, she calls and says she had no idea there were that
many varieties of solitare.

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pjc50
No Reversi?

