Something I just noticed, although I suspect it's been in Windows™ forever: Using Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel to uninstall a program, when you click on a program to uninstall it some additional information about the program is given. One thing is frequency of use, which has three possible values: "rarely," "occasionally," and "frequently." When you click on the displayed value to get pop-up help, you get the following definitions: Reading this highly illuminating bit of pop-up help for the first time this evening instantly made me stupider than I've ever been before, alcohol induced shenanigans included. I never really got the hatred of Microsoft before, but now I understand. Microsoft must die.
I've noticed that too, but I noticed it a long time ago and for some reason it doesn't bother me as much. Poor implementation of a feature seems a lesser sin than deliberate idiocy, or at least a much more common sin than the kind of stupid in that help file. I literally can't imagine a help pop-up conveying less information or being less likely to be helpful.
Eh, they're just covering their asses from the inevitable people who would say "Well, what is this here frequency thing about, I don't see no 107.5 FM here?" Additionally, most of that information is usually wrong because I think most of it relies on the program reporting information into the A/R Programs entry in the registry associated with it, and I think it will fill out stuff like the base install size (but not account for the program directory expanding with use), etc. In short, not terribly useful, but it gives a good, basic indicator.
Kyle, just wondering, what makes you feel like you need to apologize for Microsoft's screwups all the time?
In principle, this could be useful if (for example) you've had several versions of a program on your computer and not all prior installations uninstalled properly. If version w.x was last used in March 2008 and version y.z was last used in January 2005, it's clear at a glance which one to notify the computer as being safe to forget about.
So did you have to post that it "does exactly what I want" in order for this post to show up correctly?
I've used Windows since the beginning. Well, since 3.0 anyway. I think the (client side) OS peaked with 98SE and has been declining ever since. 98SE was lean, light and reliable. Then came ME, which was (or should have been) an abortion. XP fixed most of that but added its own inanities. Not to mention they (IMHO) bitched the UI quite nicely. I seriously question a company's overall judgment when they decided that blob-ish cartoon blue made for an improvement over the clean lines of 9x. Yes, you can reset it to 'classic' but that's not the point. Someone, somewhere, in a high position on the dev team thought that was a good idea. Anyway, as I used my computer for more and more of my life (work, play, entertainment, etc) it became increasingly important. Then, and I remember this day clearly, I was sitting in my IT class at school and we were toying with Longhorn and getting into the guts of the thing and I just kinda stopped reading the text and realized "I can't do this anymore. I can't trust all my stuff to this mess." I realized I couldn't continue down the Windows path anymore. I used to think they were a great company that made good stuff, but it was clear that they had jumped the track somewhere. They got too successful, too big; they were so decentralized in development the myriad of left hands had no idea what the myriad of right hands were doing. And their success and market position meant that they had no real motivation to fix things. I remember reading how great Vista was going to be; all the stuff they were going to add and correct... then when I saw it and dug into it a little I was beyond disappointed. (This may sound melodramatic but I had spent 20 years in computer world and it means a good deal to me. I have always been fascinated with computers since I was a kid.) Anywho, I realized I had two options at that point. Linux or OS X. Linux was attractive because I could keep all of my current hardware. The downside was Linux is difficult to get working exactly perfect - at least the distros I had tried - and the mass of available software was confusing and I knew next to nothing about it. Mac was tempting, as Apple had been putting out some really nice hardware, but I knew even less about it than Linux. I fiddled with some machines at the local CompUSA and was fairly impressed. I made a list of things I needed to be able to do with it and set out to find out if I could. I was, in my ignorance, amazed. It turned out there was only one barrier for me with the Mac, but it was a biggie. One application I depended on had no Mac variant or equivalent. AutoCAD. Absolutely essential, a deal-breaker. There were supposedly some ways to port it over, but none worked all that well - and that's not an app you want crashing on you. I thought about just doing it and keeping a PC around for AutoCAD, which would have worked well enough for a desktop situation but carrying around two laptops seemed a might silly to me. Then something neat happened: Apple switched to Intel and beta'd Bootcamp. That was the moment I decided to go for it. I sold my most expensive machine, saved for a week and bought an iMac. Haven't really looked back since. (Ironically, I ended up moving on from needing AutoCAD about two months later so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.) I like not dealing with Windows anymore. In retrospect, a lot of my frustration, while mainly due to the declining quality of the OS, came from two additional things: First, I was simply tired of using the same thing for close to two decades, and second, I realized shortly after switching to OS X that I had never really liked the Windows UI anyway. I mean, to each his own and all, some people undoubtedly love it and it works for them, but I always felt like I was arm-wrestling it to get it to work the way I wanted it to and never getting anywhere. Like staying in a bad marriage I guess. (Wow, did I type all that? I swear I'm not a dual of Asyncritus.) Anyway, my point was (I think) that the Windows platform is in serious trouble, especially looking forward. It is an OS built for a time that has passed and it needs new ideas and a fresh approach to keep up. Not that its market dominance is in danger anytime soon, but it will be unless something happens in Redmond in the relatively near future. Technology moves ever forward, and that which doesn't move with it is left behind. -A-
Now, I don't have any particularly strong feelings about the "blue blobs", but this is the principle that leads me to intend to avoid Vista-generation MS software as long as possible and as much as possible. Vista, Office programs, and IE absolutely scream shiny-over-substance and a lack of consideration for what the consumer wants, plus a determination to rub everyone's nose in said lack of consideration. What else did somebody in a high position on the dev team think would be a good idea? (Well, increased security, apparently, but that's a cultural issue.) [action=NAHTMMM]sits down with his aging-but-fun games and customizable programs and waves bye-bye to Technology as it departs with its cutting-edge graphics, DRM, and unremovable snot and bloat (hi, Adobe!).[/action]
Wait a second. Are you saying that you would trust 'all your stuff' to an abomination like the 9x line? Where crashing was obligatory every few hours? Where you had to tremble in your boots every time it did a disc doctor thingy when booting and you didn't know if what it 'found' (deleted) was your thesis? Where 'plug and pray' meant just that? That what you're saying - just because you don't like a user interface you can turn off?
Windows ME was certainly as you describe, but I never had any trouble with 98. But, back then I hadn't really started keeping 'all my stuff' on my PC, either. So it wasn't as critical an issue as it is now. And to be fair, XP wasn't 'worse' than 98 per se, it just wasn't really any better, and it added stuff that I didn't care much for. I stuck with Windows (even though I didn't like the new UI - see below) right up until I saw what Vista was really going to be. That's when I jumped ship. --------- * What I said about the "UI I can turn off was": "XP fixed most of that but added its own inanities. Not to mention they (IMHO) bitched the UI quite nicely. I seriously question a company's overall judgment when they decided that blob-ish cartoon blue made for an improvement over the clean lines of 9x." It made me question what the hell they were smoking up there. If so simple and highly visible a thing could be so screwy, what things that you couldn't see were also screwy due to the same philosophy.
I think the blobbishness was in line with the culture and such. Rather like the translucence in Vista. "Oooh, look what we can do! We aren't restricted to flat-looking rectangles anymore!" And cars had likewise gone from sharp corners to curves well before XP came out.
I think he's also forgetting the vast transformation OS X has enjoyed over the past seven years. I mean, hell, I even look at a Tiger installation now and feel like I've been punched in the dick. But when you look at the shift from OS9's very clean, simple lines and almost stunning lack-of-color in the default UI itself to the very, very plastic, pinstripe-and-primaries OS X, it really looked like a pretty big step back. It took OS X a bit to come back into its own as well - now I think it's pretty gorgeous, and I think Vista's pretty gorgeous as well. And, aside from a few fundamental changes that would have been a bitch to work around, XP and even Vista lets you swap back to what is basically the Windows 2000 theme. It's not going to be quite the same, but it ain't quite the same OS in the first place .
It's true about OS X. I thought the first two versions were nice. Perhaps too non-business-like for some, but I liked it. It was classy and consistent anyway. Then Apple decided on the kitchen sink method for window design. Tiger was actually, IMHO, a mess UI wise. Fortunately, Leopard has brought all of it back under one clean line of though once more, and I am happy about that. But then, I didn't start using OS X until 10.4.6. At that time I thought it was OK, didn't really realize Tiger had so many window designs until 10.5 took them all away. Also, though, when I say UI I don't just mean aesthetics but also functionality. I never had any use for the Start Menu/Panel/Button whatever it's called nor do I like Explorer very much. And the Alt+whatever-the-hell-the-programmer-felt-like approach to application menu shortcuts drives me nuts as well. I'm not knocking Windows for other people that like it, just saying why I don't (anymore).
Yeah, OS X's had an interesting design evolution. I was just pointing out that much of the same criticisms about XP's cartoony, plasticy design were shared by its Mac counterpart of the time. I think both OSes have made really positive strides, both in terms of UI and general usability and in features and functionality. It amused me to come across people bitching about Leopard in a manner that I thought was reserved only for Vista, but they're out there. Unfortunately, the idiosyncracies of Windows stem not from a genuinely careless design, but one that is so obsessed with maintaining compatibility. This is why I was really, really excited with the degree they were going to change Windows with Windows 7 before the anti-Vista zealots scared them off - it looked like they were going to make the jump that Mac OS did when going from 9 to X. And that would have been a great time to enforce some really good human interface guidelines like what Apple has done (well, they too stray on occasion, usually when it comes to their own flagship products like iTunes, but they generally do OK) and, better yet, get rid of all the little Windows quirks that are harmful, yet widely used by software developers. I'm writing this from Leopard right now, actually (I do Boot Camp with Vista, and it's worked out great). And if anything, it's driven home the fact that Windows' greatest strength - its market share - is also its greatest weakness. You've got to support insane hardware configurations, a huge variety of users with an even larger variety of expectations, and countless programmers who will always take the easy way out. If the Mac market share continues to rise, I'd expect that there will be a few more complaints, especially from those who make "the switch." Hell, I would kill for folder-first sorting as an option.
[action=NAHTMMM]recently reassigned Word's shortcut for Styles to . . . Strikethrough, was it? Whatever it was, it was infinitely more useful. [/action]
