Every one of the "for your convenience" changes in the GUI for W11 have been things which the principal user I support does not find convenient. This mirrors her experience with the W7 to W10 transition, and the W98 to W7 transition. Each increment imposes burdens in assumptive "for your convenience" which are not convenient, and not "for you" either.
Moving her to Outlook reduced some of this: the prior mail GUI were really nice but were moving targets. Outlook has enough critical mass of "if you fuck this up then you lose the entire government contract" risk it isn't broken yet. But O365 keeps peeking round the door: A site admin for me, in work contexts warned us all the next revision is a major GUI spin and we might want to check the 'revert to old look-and-feel' box for a while yet.
They learn, but they also never learn: "for your convenience" is not a message which sparks joy.
I live in OSX. I haven't yet had a "for your convenience" which was a disaster although SIP did ruin my day with alternative desktop managers.
I used to live in Xorg and X11 on BSD, and before that in the various X11 and Sunview worlds. I never had a "for your convenience" risk there. I kind of miss that.
Ignoring what I want and feel about this (and what the user wants and feels) the precheck "your PC is certified for W12" and the new world of "I have this ready for you" is actually pretty smart. I don't fault their overall engineering, they actually write amazing code. But somehow the socialised message around it, and the support experience, is a bit more mixed.
Microsoft Defender is great. I never understood why they let the grey market of virus scanners happen. Sure, the risk in being their own policeman, but MS defender has never let me down and every one of the 3rd party addons has, at some point. I even hear good things about their browser smarts. Their network stacks are pretty solid. They do V6. Lots to admire, in the tech.
The constant WinUI updates makes moving to a new OS cheaper. If you need to relearn how to do even basic tasks, the costs of learning a new OS feels soo much lower.
Moved onto XFCE (feels like XP that gains: start menu application search and work spaces), and Manjaro has images available with Steam/Proton already installed+working. So the two biggest blockers disappeared for me (fighting the UI, and a lot OS projects opinions favoring making nonOS projects a downright bitch to install or seemingly purposefully adding roadblocks (breaking wine, how quickly Steam instal guides break, and similar)).
Microsoft could have kept selling me WinXP with incrementally better security, performance, and driver support and I never would have left. But they kept breaking my setup and popping up crap in my face, so now I'm gone forever.
MDE is an abject failure. Their "rapid response" definitions:
- Deleted users' icons and made them believe all of their apps were deleted and their systems were hacked.
- Caused Chrome to crash when dragging windows.
- I can think of at least another 5 instances where it broke ~100k machines.
Outlook's UX is terrible: tt doesn't highlight the current day or time well enough.
Windows insists on using PINs, making enrollment of biometrics with strong passwords impossible.
Windows is slow. It still suffers from stuttering responsiveness that has plagued it for 20+ years. This is what keeps them on the gravy train of forcing people to buy new machines that they don't need and won't solve their problem. And they prevent taking software licenses to a new machine by embedding the license in the device and tying it to magic numbers in hardware.
>And they prevent taking software licenses to a new machine by embedding the license in the device and tying it to magic numbers in hardware.
Windows 10 and 11 (they're both one and the same in license terms and activate each other) can be activated with Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 licenses of similar or equivalent editions. The only catch is you need a proper retail license. OEM licenses have always been tied to the first mobo they're installed on. I have no knowledge if volume licensing licenses qualify for the upgrade-activations.
Though I have a feeling this gravy train will end with Windows 12, since activating the latest Windows release with a Windows license purchased in 2009 is pretty ridiculously generous.
I actually misspoke earlier, so my apologies; you need a retail license if you want to transfer that license to other mobos. Those OEM licenses will still let you upgrade for free to Windows 10 and, hardware permitting, Windows 11 if you keep the mobo.
I'm actually amazed Microsoft has de facto left that free upgrade program in place after they officially concluded it and even extended it to Windows 11. What other merchant lets you trade up products literally over a decade old for free no questions asked? Not many, I can tell you that.
Overlooking all the bugs, the biggest problem with Windows 11 is there is no way to have small task bar icons like every other previous version of windows. Somehow they think that grouping all your file explorers together in an icon, so you have to perform 3-4 clicks to open what you want, is easier than just clicking on the title. I switched back to Windows 10 yesterday and hope to see further progress on Linux GUIs and games so I can safely make that switch.
Mac users have hijacked the ui design in the company. They have absolute control. This is why windows 10 uwp ui sucks so much and is so out of culture with windows users.
There is a Microsoft vp who did a post on this and how he must retrain new designers on why most of their impulses won't work.
I'm a designer and use Windows. Not a big fan of designers who ram their idea of what good design is down our throats. You as a designer have to think about your existing user base and keep in mind how they work, their muscle memory and not taking away power user features etc.
Either they only tested with new users or somehow think that legacy users will die out soon - so let's copy MacOS because that's what all users like apparently.
But maybe the designers did raise these concerns about alienating existing users, but their warnings were ignored by the C-Suite.
Hopefully more Windows apps will be supported by Linux via Wine or maybe what Valve are doing to support games will also support other Windows apps? Haven't looked into it yet.
Except it still opens new windows all the time. There doesn't seem to be a way to force it to stay in one window unless specifically dragged out, like how browsers work.
Agreed. I think the 'year of the Linux desktop' is more personal journey (as cliche as that sounds). Some folks never switch but for those that do, it's their year to experience linux.
When was year of the Linux for you? Mine was mid 2020.
Linux was ready for the desktop in 1998 for me. The funny thing is it only started when the only thing I wanted was a computer whose mp3 playing do not stutter while I was browsing and preparing a document for my degree.
win98 + Winamp + office + netscape/ie couldn't on a pentium 100 I don't remember so little ram I had while linux with blackbox wm + xmms + staroffice + netscape could.
For me it was around this time in 2017. I had already ditched Windows for Mac around 2011-2012, but my work machine was getting long in the tooth and I realized I could get twice the power for half the cost if I switched to linux. A few months later I built a linux desktop for home use. A couple more years and I put linux on my 2013 Air.
Are we the same person? I also switched to macOS in 2011 and to Linux on Desktop in 2017, although I used Linux every once in a while parallel to Windows before. I also have a 2013 Air currently running Ventura with OpenCore, but I gave it to a family member a few years ago. Works well.
I disliked Windows 11 (and Windows in general). Windows 10 was mildly tollerable with tweaks. Windows 11 added a lot of negative features so I had no interest in using it, even for a gaming only PC.
I upgraded my Surface Go to a Go 3 which comes with W11 pre-installed. I was planning to attempt a downgrade to W10. After using W11 for a while, I realized that many of the annoyances that were particular to using a tablet/laptop were greatly improved.
So now, I'll keep using W11 disabling as much of the extra crap that I can get away without.
Maybe if/when there's a "MacBook Touch" I could use that. In theory an iPad could work, but the software is so limited to consumption and not development/creation.
I'm really only running rekordbox, Ableton, and StarCraft2 on the Surface Go3. Audio drivers on Windows still mostly suck.
I recently bought windows tablet for ham radio stuff (digital modes, etc).
Initially on windows 10, i upgraded to win11 and tablet experience was miserable, to say the least. Half of (tablet) stuff working in 10 won't work in win 11.
Moving her to Outlook reduced some of this: the prior mail GUI were really nice but were moving targets. Outlook has enough critical mass of "if you fuck this up then you lose the entire government contract" risk it isn't broken yet. But O365 keeps peeking round the door: A site admin for me, in work contexts warned us all the next revision is a major GUI spin and we might want to check the 'revert to old look-and-feel' box for a while yet.
They learn, but they also never learn: "for your convenience" is not a message which sparks joy.
I live in OSX. I haven't yet had a "for your convenience" which was a disaster although SIP did ruin my day with alternative desktop managers.
I used to live in Xorg and X11 on BSD, and before that in the various X11 and Sunview worlds. I never had a "for your convenience" risk there. I kind of miss that.
Ignoring what I want and feel about this (and what the user wants and feels) the precheck "your PC is certified for W12" and the new world of "I have this ready for you" is actually pretty smart. I don't fault their overall engineering, they actually write amazing code. But somehow the socialised message around it, and the support experience, is a bit more mixed.
Microsoft Defender is great. I never understood why they let the grey market of virus scanners happen. Sure, the risk in being their own policeman, but MS defender has never let me down and every one of the 3rd party addons has, at some point. I even hear good things about their browser smarts. Their network stacks are pretty solid. They do V6. Lots to admire, in the tech.
Great minds in redmond: so-so outcome.