The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products.
At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag it to the trash; (c) the simplicity of System Preferences and Software Update; (d) the composited window manager, enabling things like Expose.
What finally converted him was the horrible experience around updating to Windows XP SP3. Recall at the time, Windows Update opened as a control in an Internet Explorer window. Well, he must have waited a very long time until Windows Update no longer supported IE6. So when he attempted to update to SP3, he got an error that the current version of Windows Update required IE7. But for some reason, he could not install IE7 without updating to SP3 -- again, likely because he waited a long time after the SP3 update became available. He told me "I'm never using Windows again" and promptly bought his first MacBook. To my knowledge, he still hasn't gone back.
Still to this day people view Windows through the lense of XP experiences. I always wonder how much damage that era did. People claimed to "love" XP, but they are all rose tinted in memory. Everyone hated XP until SP2 and SP3. The Security Center was something everyone hated too. But yeah, some things it did really well, but others not so much. 10 is so much better than people give it credit for, and yes there are still bugs. But, all things considered it without a doubt the strongest OS Microsoft has ever built, and it is moving forward...where I feel like OSX is finally moving backward.
The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products.
If you thought that was bad... look at the "app-ombinations" which pass for productivity software today. Wide expanses of useless whitespace, low-contrast ultra-thin fonts, monochrome hieroglyphic icons everywhere, patronising "cute" and unhelpful messages, the ridiculous levels of bloat, and of course the pervasive spyware --- or "telemetry".
> Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print;
this is just the most obtuse way of doing things.
> usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag it to the trash;
So does this, and unreliable as you noted - i.e. usually. But, ugggh... dragging things to other things to do things though?
There's a reason why certain large classes of disabled users are on Windows. Stephen Hawking used Windows.
Aside from the disabled, the mechanics of Windows have always been better, no matter how bad they actually were. That last bit is my opinion, but it is true that many, many more disabled users are on Windows. If they can figure it out, couldn't your roommate? I'm joking of course, some people just seem to have a completely different way of thinking about things and certainly it is a fact that at least some portion of the population prefers the way macOS does things just like there are some people who can only use their chin to move a mouse.
This kind of thing also got me to OS X. Now I'm looking at fiascos like the MBA/MBP keyboards, the bug-fests that are x.0 OS updates, and the way Catalina kills 32-bit applications for little reason (that I can discern), and I find myself wondering if I should quit the Mac world.
After OS X, has anybody ever switched back to Windows from a Mac OS for daily use (i.e. not for a specific application that is only available on Windows)?
I don't even want to look at Windows now. It's so unsightly in a way that you don't notice until you switch away.
"The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products."
Windows 2000 was actually a pretty stable system, considering MS previous standards.
"user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like:"
For me Mac OS was always a terrible system. I was forced to work with some Mac OS during my PhD studies in the lab. Terrible. Today Mac OS is a tax for people who are either to stupid or to lazy to put a decent linux on their machine.
I have a quote that I personally heard in a meeting at the time I was a contractor at GE:
The green check marks mean nothing!
The quote itself maybe isn't too descriptive, so here's some background:
Our team's work was dependent on another team's progress, and so they maintained a progress indicator to know what parts they finished working on. Our team didn't progress very fast, because we encountered a lot of little problems in the parts that were marked 'done' by the other team, and our manager kept nagging us about missing deadlines.
After we explained the situation enough times to our managers, they called a meeting with the other team's managers. After 15 minutes of manager-talk, the other team's leader finally said the above quote that would end the meeting almost immediately.
Bill was doing a fantastic job here, but it is a bit too sad to see how most of the executives in the mail show much less concern for the company's and customer's goals, and more concerns on who should own the problem. I think this is a bit too common in any corporate environment.
There are a lot of issues raised in the email. Some of them are small bugs that could just be fixed on the spot. But many of them are more like design flaws, which could only be fixed by designing and implementing new features. That requires time and planning, so it makes sense that they would be talking about who should be responsible for it.
He’s complaining like he’s a user not trying to fix the dysfunctional communication directly.
The CEO should own making sure ownership is clear and minimizing opportunities for such problematic outcomes in the first place.
To me this reads like Bill wasn’t paying attention to his company until 2003. Sounds like they were poorly supervised and made a sprawling mess before he seemed interested in wondering what they were all up to.
I remember this particular memo very well as I was at Microsoft at the time and it felt so unfair to see the reaction to what you expect any good CEO to do.
Good times. I remember when this was part of the court case.
Sounds like what we need is for Tim Cook to try to use iOS 13 and lose access to one of his favorite apps by upgrading to Catalina, and then to get a crumb or something into his keyboard.
...or try using Google Docs in Safari on iOS 13 with a text editor in split view.
Two blinking cursors and no easy way to choose which window is active. To enter text in the Google Doc after using my text editor, I have to tap the URL bar twice, dismiss the suggestions, and then it's active.
Given that my iPad is my only computer, this release has been really rough. It's getting there, and I'm sure with time it will only get better.
Just wish it was more reliable and less buggy: I've used iPads constantly since the very first one, but this has had me looking at laptops and Microsoft's Surface...
I'd love for him to use a Mac with two monitors and wrestle with his dock constantly switching from one to the other with no way to lock the dock and keep sane window setups.
2003 was the pinnacle of MS Office for me. The introduction of the ‘Ribbon of Confusion’ in 2007 around the time of the adoption of 16:9 screens was appalling. The ribbon was welded to the top of the screen leaving a letterbox sized area for your documents. It was like using a toolbar encrusted IE.
This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked or moved about as required. It was like MS looked at InDesign and Photoshop and simply didn’t understand what they were copying, which imho typifies many MS design decisions.
I very rarely use Windows now (at the time this happened I was working with it M-F doing support) - I’m not convinced it’s any better now is it? I downloaded an “IETester” image from Microsoft to confirm behaviour of a clients site from a Windows PC - it literally spent more time installing updates and rebooting than I did either downloading the entire vm image file or actually testing the thing I wanted to test.
How fucking convoluted is Windows that every single update that can only install via a reboot, then suddenly produces more such updates?
How on earth does anyone still use this on a daily basis?
From a user's perspective, there are signs it's getting better. The most noticeable is that applications that were unloved for years, those low-priority no-group-wants-to-own-them ones like the terminal and Notepad, are finally getting attention. It feels like in the past development was much more design-by-committee with little room for anyone to actually fix broken or substandard things.
The biggest problem seems to be that there is insufficient pushback against bloat. E.g., the calculator is 10MB and takes a quarter second to load on a very fast PC. Lots of little things like that. The whole push for the a new, separate mobile/tablet/Metro environment was a major mistake. It's left a schism between the extant and greenfield worlds. This is exemplified by the disaster of what are effectively _two_ control panels, each of which can only control half of the OS's settings.
You seem to be assuming that behavior is a daily occurrence for most users?
End users are not updating dependencies or even installing that much new software on a weekly basis, let alone daily.
Also a lot of software wants to reboot for no reason other than “just to be sure”. That’s hardly a Windows issue when a random developer includes behavior that isn’t needed.
I have an Ubuntu dedicated server. I reboot it every Sunday, yet there is rarely a week where on Friday I don't see this when SSHing in due to auto-updates:
0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.
*** System restart required ***
Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Linux ubuntu 4.15.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Aug 27 15:21:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I installed Manjaro xfce recently and have been extremely impressed by how easy so many things are. I had been using gnome before that, Mac before that, and yet earlier Microsoft had not added telemetry so I used windows
Granted, some aspects are better. You can get to the .NET download in about 10
seconds [1]. But, why can’t they make Visual C++ easy? What does it have to look
like this?: [2]. Or this?: [3]. Why can’t they just have this?: [4]. Why does it
need to be buried in a blog post, or a help article?
And then there’s the new Microsoft Terminal, which was only available in the
Microsoft Store until people complained [5].
Recently I installed specific parts of MSVC, since I'm using SFML and for now they only deliver binaries for 2017. After all I might not have needed to use 2017 or a particular SDK, since there seem to be ABI compatibility now, but I discovered that too late.
So I used this vs intaller, and I discovered that the vs dev prompt did not set appropriate folder to use cl.exe and lib.exe because it might only do it for the latest SDK or toolset thing. I still managed to do what I wanted, but this is another one of those details.
I still enjoy using C++ though, but it seems way better than the old days, I think... Although I have to admit MSVC sometimes crash and restart on machines that don't have enough RAM (6GB). I wonder how Clion compares to MSVC... I hope clion will be cheaper in the future.
I just use VSCode for the actual editing then build with cmake.exe from command line. VSCode's autocomplete and everything just work. Been a good experience.
I signed up for the xbox game pass for pc (beta) today. After downloading the app I found that signing in to said app was completely broken. After some googling I found a workaround, if I sign in to a completely different app (xbox companion) that would also sign me in to the xbox game pass app.
Then I tried to download a game (The Outer Wilds). The download just sat at 0 bytes. I tried several things so I'm not positive what actually fixed it, but I think what did it is I located the folder it created for game downloads, which I did not even have permission to view, and forced an ownership change of the folder to my user.
Granted this is a beta but... not looking good for usability so far.
Software engineers should never be allowed anywhere near UX decisions on their own.At work, I'm often in a position,where I need to chose between 'easier for the end user(internal)' and 'easier for the business/manager/developer/whatever'. I try my best to advocate for users most of the time,even if it complicates some things on the implementation side of things. Most technical people,if allowed,would make things far more difficult than they need to be. Not sure what went wrong at MS, however they keep making it more and mote difficult with no apparent good reason. Even the documentation websites are so confusing,even Oracle starts looking good in comparison... I remember a discussion with my colleague,a BA, who argued that people should just fill in a few of those extra fields. Yes,I said, it's easy for you to say this,because you'll just pull a report on these fields,while the users will be doing this hundreds of times a week...
It really says something about the underlying issue that caused that, how the relevant managers devolve into I told you sos and ownership fights rather than getting in a room and leaving with a cohesive plan that their individual teams will execute on.
funny as I'm reading this I'm installing a bunch of dev apps using chocolatey. "choco install visualstudiocode -y" and it's done. I'm kind of surprised MS doesn't have an official way to do this, but it's better than MSDN dev downloads was back in the day. Or (shudder) the big binder of MSDN CDs.
[+] [-] TimTheTinker|6 years ago|reply
At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag it to the trash; (c) the simplicity of System Preferences and Software Update; (d) the composited window manager, enabling things like Expose.
What finally converted him was the horrible experience around updating to Windows XP SP3. Recall at the time, Windows Update opened as a control in an Internet Explorer window. Well, he must have waited a very long time until Windows Update no longer supported IE6. So when he attempted to update to SP3, he got an error that the current version of Windows Update required IE7. But for some reason, he could not install IE7 without updating to SP3 -- again, likely because he waited a long time after the SP3 update became available. He told me "I'm never using Windows again" and promptly bought his first MacBook. To my knowledge, he still hasn't gone back.
[+] [-] partiallypro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|6 years ago|reply
If you thought that was bad... look at the "app-ombinations" which pass for productivity software today. Wide expanses of useless whitespace, low-contrast ultra-thin fonts, monochrome hieroglyphic icons everywhere, patronising "cute" and unhelpful messages, the ridiculous levels of bloat, and of course the pervasive spyware --- or "telemetry".
[+] [-] wayneftw|6 years ago|reply
> Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print;
this is just the most obtuse way of doing things.
> usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag it to the trash;
So does this, and unreliable as you noted - i.e. usually. But, ugggh... dragging things to other things to do things though?
There's a reason why certain large classes of disabled users are on Windows. Stephen Hawking used Windows.
Aside from the disabled, the mechanics of Windows have always been better, no matter how bad they actually were. That last bit is my opinion, but it is true that many, many more disabled users are on Windows. If they can figure it out, couldn't your roommate? I'm joking of course, some people just seem to have a completely different way of thinking about things and certainly it is a fact that at least some portion of the population prefers the way macOS does things just like there are some people who can only use their chin to move a mouse.
[+] [-] jseliger|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|6 years ago|reply
2) Double click setup
3) open setup again - remove option or the more opaque way, uninstall through configuration - software
Your points wouldn't convince me actually.
[+] [-] pishpash|6 years ago|reply
I don't even want to look at Windows now. It's so unsightly in a way that you don't notice until you switch away.
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basch|6 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14160809
[+] [-] 8sleef|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joyjoyjoy|6 years ago|reply
Windows 2000 was actually a pretty stable system, considering MS previous standards.
"user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like:"
For me Mac OS was always a terrible system. I was forced to work with some Mac OS during my PhD studies in the lab. Terrible. Today Mac OS is a tax for people who are either to stupid or to lazy to put a decent linux on their machine.
[+] [-] Hamuko|6 years ago|reply
Quote for the ages.
[+] [-] fabatka|6 years ago|reply
The green check marks mean nothing!
The quote itself maybe isn't too descriptive, so here's some background: Our team's work was dependent on another team's progress, and so they maintained a progress indicator to know what parts they finished working on. Our team didn't progress very fast, because we encountered a lot of little problems in the parts that were marked 'done' by the other team, and our manager kept nagging us about missing deadlines. After we explained the situation enough times to our managers, they called a meeting with the other team's managers. After 15 minutes of manager-talk, the other team's leader finally said the above quote that would end the meeting almost immediately.
[+] [-] enitihas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comex|6 years ago|reply
There are a lot of issues raised in the email. Some of them are small bugs that could just be fixed on the spot. But many of them are more like design flaws, which could only be fixed by designing and implementing new features. That requires time and planning, so it makes sense that they would be talking about who should be responsible for it.
[+] [-] cfors|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeieo9nkfkr|6 years ago|reply
He’s complaining like he’s a user not trying to fix the dysfunctional communication directly.
The CEO should own making sure ownership is clear and minimizing opportunities for such problematic outcomes in the first place.
To me this reads like Bill wasn’t paying attention to his company until 2003. Sounds like they were poorly supervised and made a sprawling mess before he seemed interested in wondering what they were all up to.
[+] [-] Hamuko|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnlmorg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sriramk|6 years ago|reply
If you liked this, you might like my collection of business memos here. https://sriramk.com/memos
I remember this particular memo very well as I was at Microsoft at the time and it felt so unfair to see the reaction to what you expect any good CEO to do.
[+] [-] pwinnski|6 years ago|reply
Sounds like what we need is for Tim Cook to try to use iOS 13 and lose access to one of his favorite apps by upgrading to Catalina, and then to get a crumb or something into his keyboard.
[+] [-] 0x38B|6 years ago|reply
Two blinking cursors and no easy way to choose which window is active. To enter text in the Google Doc after using my text editor, I have to tap the URL bar twice, dismiss the suggestions, and then it's active.
Given that my iPad is my only computer, this release has been really rough. It's getting there, and I'm sure with time it will only get better.
Just wish it was more reliable and less buggy: I've used iPads constantly since the very first one, but this has had me looking at laptops and Microsoft's Surface...
[+] [-] post_break|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knolan|6 years ago|reply
This all happened when Adobe were demonstrating excellent UI design in their pro apps with pallets that could be docked or moved about as required. It was like MS looked at InDesign and Photoshop and simply didn’t understand what they were copying, which imho typifies many MS design decisions.
[+] [-] stephenr|6 years ago|reply
How fucking convoluted is Windows that every single update that can only install via a reboot, then suddenly produces more such updates?
How on earth does anyone still use this on a daily basis?
[+] [-] jml7c5|6 years ago|reply
The biggest problem seems to be that there is insufficient pushback against bloat. E.g., the calculator is 10MB and takes a quarter second to load on a very fast PC. Lots of little things like that. The whole push for the a new, separate mobile/tablet/Metro environment was a major mistake. It's left a schism between the extant and greenfield worlds. This is exemplified by the disaster of what are effectively _two_ control panels, each of which can only control half of the OS's settings.
[+] [-] babypuncher|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fty66gg|6 years ago|reply
End users are not updating dependencies or even installing that much new software on a weekly basis, let alone daily.
Also a lot of software wants to reboot for no reason other than “just to be sure”. That’s hardly a Windows issue when a random developer includes behavior that isn’t needed.
[+] [-] linuseouyt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jammygit|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] svnpenn|6 years ago|reply
Granted, some aspects are better. You can get to the .NET download in about 10 seconds [1]. But, why can’t they make Visual C++ easy? What does it have to look like this?: [2]. Or this?: [3]. Why can’t they just have this?: [4]. Why does it need to be buried in a blog post, or a help article?
And then there’s the new Microsoft Terminal, which was only available in the Microsoft Store until people complained [5].
[1] https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-core
[2] https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jagbal/2017/09/04/where-...
[3] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-...
[4] https://microsoft.com/download/visual-c
[5] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1386#issuecomme...
[+] [-] mttjj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|6 years ago|reply
So I used this vs intaller, and I discovered that the vs dev prompt did not set appropriate folder to use cl.exe and lib.exe because it might only do it for the latest SDK or toolset thing. I still managed to do what I wanted, but this is another one of those details.
I still enjoy using C++ though, but it seems way better than the old days, I think... Although I have to admit MSVC sometimes crash and restart on machines that don't have enough RAM (6GB). I wonder how Clion compares to MSVC... I hope clion will be cheaper in the future.
[+] [-] Narishma|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikki93|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contravariant|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamkittelson|6 years ago|reply
Then I tried to download a game (The Outer Wilds). The download just sat at 0 bytes. I tried several things so I'm not positive what actually fixed it, but I think what did it is I located the folder it created for game downloads, which I did not even have permission to view, and forced an ownership change of the folder to my user.
Granted this is a beta but... not looking good for usability so far.
[+] [-] officeplant|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmodisk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monocasa|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omnifischer|6 years ago|reply
I reboot every night.
[+] [-] jlv2|6 years ago|reply
It's only the last in the screen shot posted to twitter. The PDF contains more of the email, and it gets worse (if you can believe that).
[+] [-] std_throwaway|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shireboy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] voldacar|6 years ago|reply