W7 was the only MS product I ever paid money for (as a student), and feel like it was a great deal.
Would gladly keep paying for security enhancements for it and don't really see anything that W10 (or W11 for that matter) offers over it for work or gaming.
It's a real shame that taking away controls from power users seem to be more important than providing a great product. But I guess when you're a monopoly you can do whatever you want.
What control is taken away from power users? Most things can be toggled in the registry, and won't go away due to compatibility reasons. And patchguard can be disabled extremely easily. Same with DSE. I can't think of a single thing a power user can't do on Win 10 that they can on Win 7.
Can you make the interface of W10 look like W7? How about easily removing bloatware without being an internet detective?
Customize those ugly flat panels that MS stuck everywhere next to Windows 3.1 legacy selection boxes?
Also, yes. I guess if you are willing to spend an extra 10-20hrs of your time to configure group policies and registry tweaks and removing telemetry to get it into an "acceptable" state...for exactly the same experience, then it's fine. Even then, I keep reading horror stories about settings being reverted after updates and the OS generally not respecting uptime over vague "security" updates.
I don't find that acceptable, unless MS cuts me a check for wasted hours of my time every time I have to fix something that wasn't broken. For comparison, my W7 system has been rock stable since 2016, with most system downtime due to physical hardware changes and updates.
To be fair, some use cases were improved in W10. Mobile (bluetooth) connectivity seems to be working great. So are things like making a wi-fi hotspot and networking in general. (I don't have in-depth knowledge about other improvements because they're outside of my use cases)
It's hard to overstate just how bad the Windows 10 UI is compared to 7. Just look at this example of how Windows 7 visually shows you the differences between the various desktop stretching/fitting options, and Windows 10 leaves you guessing:
I agree with that dropdown part, but the UI in the first screenshot is laughable, especially for the scroll bar and menu bars, you surely agree. The Windows 10 UI is much cleaner and so is the macOS one (unchanged since 2001, however there's no tiling support at all):
OS aesthetics just seem so bland and meek these days. I think Win7 Aero/OSX Lion/Compiz cube thing was the peak and after that everything became homogenized and boring. I want my computer to look cool, goddammit
Putting the start menu button in the middle of the panel rather than at a corner seems to forget Fitts' Law. Is this a push to make people use hotkeys more or just bad design?
It’s yet another effort by Microsoft to make Windows relevant to touch form factors at the expense of productivity, desktop, and keyboard/mouse/touchpad.
It’s astonishing how little (close to zero) human factors research is done, much less sought out or taken into consideration by PM or engineering on the software side of Microsoft.
Windows 8 had a ton (!) of smart human factors research done, but people gut reacted to all the individually beneficially changes horribly when released all at once (rather than taking some time to try adapting). I almost wonder if Microsoft learned the exact wrong answer from that and decided to ignore their own research more as they stripped out the beneficial improvements from 8 into 10.
I don't doubt they did research but I don't think they were individually beneficial changes. Nielsen Norman critiqued Windows 8 UX changes and found them fundamentally lacking [1]. If this is the outcome of their internal research, maybe they need better research.
No it didn’t. I worked at Microsoft for 14 years. I know exactly how Windows 8 UX design was designed and built.
There was almost zero HF research, and the brunt of UX research done was trying to justify and fix fundamental issues with an already decided design direction, not to inform a valuable direction in the first place.
That's a weird take on this change. Centering the Start button is less touch friendly. When you're holding a tablet, your fingers are near the sides. The center takes the most effort to get to.
Just bad design. There's a setting to set it hard left, but it's not the default, and the vast majority of users will have to contend with important things moving around and being harder to hit. (There's a lot in the UI that seems to be borrowing from phones used vertically. Which would make sense if the target devices were phones being used vertically.)
While it is a totally legit point, the macOS dock hasn't been corner aligned since OS X 10.0 too and it seems people got used to it. Probably not a big deal after all most of the time.
I would argue that the difference is that there isn't a one most important button in the dock like the Start button. Even if the dock was corner aligned it would only make it easier to select either the Finder or Trash icon depending on which corner it was in.
I feel like a more apt comparison would be moving the Apple Icon from the top left of the screen to the middle. That's a close enough analogue to what the start button did.
The Dock isn't the equivalent to the Start Menu, the closest Mac equivalent is the Apple menu. That dates back to I think the very beginning of the Macintosh, and particularly in the classic era (Mac OS 1 through 9) shared a lot more in common with the Start menu. When Apple was just first barely dipping a toe in the waters of multitasking applications with the 1987 MultiFinder, the Apple menu let you switch between running applications. Also was where desk accessories went, though there were limits (which 3rd parties quickly created offerings working around :)). System 7 expanded it a lot, with a dedicated way to put aliases of docs/software in the menu. Mac OS X and the dock actually kind of split out some of that functionality for better or worse.
But through it all the Apple has stayed glued in the top left corner of the screen, the furthest left thing on the menu bar. The one time they briefly contemplated eliminating it/moving it to the center was IIRC in the Mac OS X public beta (which I think I still have lying around here somewhere, would be a hoot to try to get it running again under QEMU maybe?). But there was harsh feedback from a lot of us in the PB on that one and it was restored from 10.0, so there was never a public release of a "Mac OS" without it. And even though it's visually offset a bit from the edge of the menu and when you click the highlight box also seems offset from the side, that doesn't actually affect the clickable area one bit. You can jam your mouse to the upper corner pixel blind and it'll still open right up. They've stuck with Fitt's Law on that one at least even amongst all their other GUI "innovations" in the last few decades.
Nice history lesson, but for all intents and purposes the Dock _is_ equivalent to the Start Menu, as both are the main ways to start or switch applications for most users.
The Apple menu has nothing to do with running applications in modern macOS versions.
The start menu is a single button, whereas the dock is a large number of icons. Corner aligning the dock would do no good, as any icon other than the one in the corner wouldn't be corner aligned either.
Regardless of how you see the function parity between the two, the corner alignment argument just doesn't hold here.
I wasn't talking about the apple menu, though it is more similar in function to the start menu than the doc is... However, start does a whole bunch of things, so it's not really the same. Nobody switches apps using the start menu (that's what the taskbar is for), but people will search for apps (and files) that aren't on their taskbar already. I don't think people do that with the apple menu, I don't even know if you can do either of those things there on modern MacOS (they were talking about older versions in the above comment). I believe people open the launchpad for apps not on their doc. It's been a while since I have used MacOS, so please correct me if I am wrong.
> the Dock _is_ equivalent to the Start Menu
This is what I was referencing in my previous comment. This is not accurate. They are not even similar. The doc, however, is very similar to the taskbar. The doc and taskbar are used almost exactly the same way by users. I'd say they are effectively equivalent. That's all my first comment was trying to say.
The start button is used for many of the things the apple menu can do, but also for searching for things, from apps to files. I am not sure you can easily compare it to one thing on MacOS, as it seems like those functions are put into multiple different places, many of which are discrete apps _on_ the doc... which may have been what you meant. The above user was saying the Apple menu _was_ the same as the start button is now, but acknowledged that those functions have been broken apart since that time.
There’s a setting for left aligned, but Fitts Law is overrated for the Start menu. None of the apps on your taskbar have ever benefited from it, and you probably click those all the time, much more than the Start button.
Taskbar buttons absolutely benefit from Fitt's Law.
Fitt's Law says that the time required to interact with an element depends on both the distance to that element and the width/height of that element.
Putting an element on an edge (where the cursor cannot go beyond that edge) essentially makes it infinitely large in one dimension. Putting it in a corner makes it infinitely large in two dimensions.
Taskbar buttons in Windows (or menu items in macOS) do benefit from Fitt's Law, just not as much as items in the corners.
UI Designers don't give a rip about Fitt's Law or any of these self-proclaimed design "laws". Unless it's a useful authority to appeal to for beating opposing UI Designers.
That's exactly the problem, UI redesigns are almost never based objective arguments. Instead they are driven by fads and the personal preferences of whoever wins the internal argument, with users caught in the middle.
Software going through massive redesigns every couple versions should be seen as a huge negative. If the last redesign was so bad it needed to be replaced so soon, why should I trust the new one to be any better? Instead these changes often get trumpeted.
It doesn’t? Because I think it’s easier to throw the cursor at the absolute corner of the screen and click rather than have to carefully select a button somewhere along the X axis. Just a thought, I’m a macOS user myself.
I use both windows and mac and I agree. It's why I hate that the menu bar on mac can't be moved (it clashes with the window buttons), and why I don't ever use the dock (I cmd+space for spotlight instead). Hopefully this is customizable
I agree it is easier to throw your cursor at the corner than to precisely target near the corner, but I would rather have the important click targets nearer to wear my cursor already is. I have a 34 inch ultrawide monitor and my cursor is more often near the center where my active focus is. When I want to switch apps, it's easier to move the cursor down rather than diagonal to the lower left corner.
Or just press the windows key on the keyboard. It’s amazing how many people on windows use the mouse as the only ui input. After years of working with a mac and linux, I get cramps in my hand when working with mouse for too long.
> Moving to the corner requires a swipe, pickup, and swipe
I've got an ultrawide and it doesn't require that at all; moving the start menu to the center to compensate for bad mouse speed settings is like reducing display resolution to compensate for bad text/icon size settings.
Fitt's Law says that is exactly backwards. It is when your monitors are largest that you need the largest click targets. It's when things were 640x480 that small targets were easiest to hit.
Bigger, yes. But the issue here is where to position the target area. The less you have to move your cursor to reach frequently accessed targets, the better (as someone who doesn't use mouse accel this extra distance is very noticeable).
The only people using ultrawide monitors (techy people) are the same ones that use the windows hotkey and search, press enter. No mouse movement needed. The UI scale can be changed as well if we are talking about size and not aspect ratio.
I agree that the start menu isn't an issue, but switching between apps can be. I'm personally not a fan of alt-tab because it requires more thought which breaks flow compared to clicking on an icon which is generally in a fixed position.
The entire idea of a start menu just seems crazy to me at this point especially when it's being used to advertise garbage. Why would I mouse around when I can hotkey?
That might be the logic they used. Maybe it is easier to press it in the new location when using tablet mode and they figure people can use a hotkey for the start button on desktop.
But having worked with plenty of users at work, it's very rare they use the windows key rather than dragging their mouse to the corner... if I tell them about the windows key, they act super surprised.
It's bad design in the sense that they took a part of the operating system that's been in the same place for a quarter century and moved it for seemingly no reason while leaving a bunch of other neglected issues to be dealt with later.
I guess fixing the damned control panel and various settings apps isn't sexy enough.
Frankly this whole update stinks of "oh we hired a bunch of new MBAs and they have to make their mark otherwise they're out of a job".
I think it's ironic how often HN discusses various software development methodologies, release early-and-often, etc. But Microsoft slowly iterating on the Settings panel over time is seen as a bad thing.
They are iterating; the Settings panel gets more settings on every release. The first version on Windows 10 was incredibly sparse.
It's also fair to say that there is a novice/expert divide -- Microsoft wants the settings panel to be as simple as settings on a mobile phone. That's great. However, occasionally I need to revert and diagnose the Wifi driver on my cheap Chinese mini laptop and I need a more powerful UI than most average people are never going to need.
At this point, I can't think of a setting that my parents would need that isn't there.
The problem isn't that settings are missing, the problem is that there are related settings in multiple, entirely disconnected locations that interact in subtle ways.
I have 4 UIs on my windows machine where I can set things related to inactivity/power down states. That's unreasonable, and nobody was confused in windows XP when those were all in one place (with an "advanced Settings" fold).
But you really only need the settings app. If you are a power user and want to mess with the individual details you hit "Additional power settings" and get the old UI. But so what?
My point was Microsoft is doing exactly the right thing here -- iterating on an existing design and keeping old software around for those who need it. Everybody seems to want Microsoft to throw out everything and instantly redesign several decades worth of software and that is ridiculous. That's not the way anyone should develop software.
> nobody was confused in windows XP
I'm sure they were -- the new settings app is significantly less complicated.
Right, which is more reason to move to vertical taskbars instead of filling far too many pixels with useless space. The specification note that 11 won't support vertical taskbars is infuriating as someone with an ultrawide. I don't need 1000s of pixels of unusable taskbar white space. Centering it is smart if I did want to waste all that space, but oof I do not want to waste that much space.
I just can't understand how there can be so much argument about the position of a task bar. Why can't Windows just allow people to do what they like with it? I know plenty of people who have their taskbar vertically, surely it can't be hard to have a taskbar that can go vertically, horizontally, to the edges out centred.
I will carry on using my dual bar layout on MATE because I didn't want to change to gnome 3 or unity.
Moving somewhat further off-topic, as a fan of vertical taskbars I also disliked Unity's take on it. In my own testing (going way back to Windows XP era), I found I much preferred right-hand side taskbar. As a left-to-right language user, when applications are full screened there are usually far more important application controls on the left hand side than the right. The obvious one being File menus on the immediate left edge, but that's not the only example. Unity tried to fix the File menu issue by doing the "merged global menu" thing similar to macOS, but it still didn't account for most of the rest of application stuff on the left hand edge.
But I also realizes that not everyone agrees with my "right-hand" taskbar preference. I agree that allowing customization is probably the best bet. It's odd to me that when one of the messages in the Windows 11 announcement was that they wanted it to be more personalizable that according to their notes they are removing an important personalization in taskbar placement. (Which has been supported to varying degrees of success all the way back to Windows 95 at this point.)
I swear by vertical taskbar usage. My right-most monitor has plenty of horizontal space, so my taskbar is about 250px wide, and I can read close to the full names of everything, plus I have plenty of room to see every single open window, WITHOUT combining multiple active windows of the same program. It's lovely.
I swear nobody at Microsoft (and fewer people than I'd hoped on HN) actually talk to non-technical people that use their products.
If they'd just added the option to move it I'd have no qualms but they decided to make it default and I'd be willing to put money down that the overwhelming majority of Windows users do not have super widescreen displays.
> I swear nobody at Microsoft (and fewer people than I'd hoped on HN) actually talk to non-technical people that use their products.
>
> If they'd just added the option to move it I'd have no qualms [...]
I keep mentally blaming this on designers who want to be Steve Jobs (edit:)and Henry Ford and do daring leaps in design.
Edit: I've seen quotes like "if I asked people what they wanted they would say a faster horse" a few times. There's a time for that but most of the time it is time for boring (not really, I love much of it if I'm allowed to) work on getting things right: make it work in all major browsers, make sure tabs work, make sure it works fast etc.
I cracked up at the video where he says "the start is centered... it puts YOU at the center" like no, you're clearly just trying to copy MacOS.
I could see it being easier to hit for tablets when it's not in the corner, but I find the corner a good spot for things like that on a regular desktop.. Granted, I always use the windows key on my keyboard but the other corner button, the one that minimizing everything, I use all the time. Very easy to mindlessly drag your cursor to the corner IMO.
Some of the other design features I really enjoy, but I would love a unified and sensible control panel before anything else.
Is there anything stopping a click in the lower left corner from bringing up the start menu, even with nothing visible there? The other corners do magic surprise things in Windows (like charms bar, app switching) with no UI visible as a precedent.
Ultrawide (21:9) and super ultrawide (32:9) are becoming more common. If you put the menu in the middle, it's more consistent no matter the aspect ratio.
It's only consistent as long as the number of icons/applications on the task bar never changes. Every time an additional program is started, the button will slide further towards the left.
With the older left-aligned positioning, users can just flick their mouse to the left corner to open the start menu, or the right corner to minimize all windows. Buttons are in the same spot every time.
They can just do what they did in Windows 95 (possibly not in the very first version) where the start button doesn't actually extend all the way into the corner, but clicking the corner pixel teleports the cursor a few pixels inwards, so that the click hits the button.
The same fix would work in Windows 11, although it would involve teleporting the cursor halfway across the screen.
> seems to forget Fitts' Law. Is this a push to make people use hotkeys
I feel this is a general problem with Fitts' law: Anything that's used often enough to deserve to be in a corner should really only be accessed by hotkey.
I think I might know what this is, and I haven't seen this anywhere else - a person's hands might cover up both corners when using a laptop. Mine certainly do from certain angles. This might be a usability for laptops (and selling laptops) where the Start icons is now visible for more users.
What's really bad about the new taskbar is that grouping and icon-only buttons seem to be forced, with no options to choose from. I like being able to read the full window titles and being able to reach any window of any application in a single click, if not space constrained.
KDE, even considering it implies Linux (with all the good and the bad of it), has never looked so attractive, as Windows' desktop environment degrades due to chasing fads.
Getting rid of tiles and similar seems like a substantial improvement, and might address part of people's complaints about Windows 10. The most important question, though: is Windows still "evergreen" with free updates, or will people have to buy Windows 11? The latter would mean we can't count on Windows systems being up to date. I was happily looking forward to the day when software could just support Windows 10 and no other Windows version.
That hospital is dumb and will likely face issues in the near future then. Win7 isn't supported by Microsoft since early 2020, which means no more security updates. Given hospitals are getting more and more frequently targeted by ransomware... Well, we'll see how that goes.
There's still win8 and win8.1 to worry about though, and win10 also has LTSC releases that stay supported for at least 10 years IIRC.
What I don’t get is hospitals buying things like MRI scanners, with Windows based “controller” with no upgrade path. The hospital, and the manufacturer, knows that the version of Windows they’re running will be EOL before the hardware, yet nobody ask the manufacturer how they plan to deal with that fact.
The promise of Windows 10 being the last Windows could have but an end to that nonsense.
The manufacturer of the MRI machine doesn't care. In their mind the "upgrade path" is to buy a new one. That might support the current iteration of Windows + their drivers until the next Windows is released. Sure it's nonsense but the hospital can't just not have an MRI machine. They need one and someone will capitalize on that need.
MRI machines aren't like a copier. They're million-plus dollar room-sized installs that require massive facilities support, custom spaces, and in many places in the US, a certificate of need to allow you to purchase and install it (distributed geographically by population and governmental formulas).
I suspect the 'replacement' or 'upgrade' market for such machines is very very low. Major capital expenditure intended to be amortized/depreciated over many years.
Why does it matter? Just don't connect it to the internet and there should be no issue. Why would you want to update software that could potentially break your super expensive machine if it already works?
So what you’re saying is, this can’t have happened because nobody would be dumb enough to buy a convenient Internet-enabled smart device and then actually connect it to the Internet:
And also that this problem definitely won’t get worse as more and more of these devices are built on platforms that want to require you to sign in with a cloud service…
Of course people are going to do silly things, but you can't protect people from stupidity.
>And also that this problem definitely won’t get worse as more and more of these devices are built on platforms that want to require you to sign in with a cloud service…
Which is why it's so important that not giving network access to medical machines becomes standard practice.
It blows my mind that any would be accessible from the internet. These devices shouldn't be networked at all if possible. But at the very least they should be on their own network, preferably physically isolated instead of VLANs.
Windows 7 is absolutely still supported through an ESU subscription through 2022. There are plenty of organizations who are using that program to continue to use Windows 7 in places where it makes financial sense.
A buddy of mine with a Subway franchise is finally being prodded by corporate to upgrade his Windows 7 hardware. They still have support for Windows 7 for a little while, but not long -- it's apparently done by August 31st this year. And, their upgrade path is Windows 10 LTSC, which will expire in 2026.
I believe they have said, or hinted, that it will be a free upgrade. Microsoft has an incentive itself to get as many people on one build itself to lower legacy costs.
It's one thing to force an update that just makes background improvements. It's another thing entirely to force a UI update that breaks your workflow.
Most of us just got the people we support used to the new design now they're going to up and change it completely again.
My Grandmother has basically given up using the computer because she doesn't have the mental energy to relearn a UI every time some MBA comes along wanting to "disrupt" the status quo.
It's basically akin to the company that manufactures your car showing up at your house while you're sleeping, moving the steering wheel to the center of the car, re-arranging buttons on the console, blacking out two of the windows because it looks cool, then leaving a nice little note on your front porch: "We upgraded your car, it's so much better!"
Software developers around the world don't have to build software compatible with your old car, and get blamed for any incompatibility.
There have already been posts showing that there's an option to put the start menu back on the left if you want that. Hopefully there will be options to deal with other inconveniences. As it stands, this already looks like it fixes many of the complaints people had about Windows 10; in that regard, parts of it are exactly what many people asked for.
I don't want people to deal with a UI they dislike. I also don't want developers having to deal with a no-longer-evergreen OS. Windows was the last OS to move to the evergreen model; when Windows 10 came out, it was a great relief to many developers, who saw a point on the horizon where there was only one version of Windows they would have to support, and it would always be up to date.
Remember, the alternative isn't just "oh well, I guess we'll support Windows 10 and Windows 11". One alternative is "guess we'll build a web app instead", or "guess we'll drop support for Windows 10" (in which case people still need to upgrade, but they blame app developers instead of Windows).
I'm sure the option will exist to not upgrade, at least for a while. But if the default is to upgrade, app developers get much less of the blame if they expect and depend on that upgrade.
As an audio application developer who still supports users on OSX 10.6.8, I have to ask, what is this about "Windows was the last OS to move to the evergreen model"? Do the breaking changes in MacOS version updates somehow not count anymore?
If developers don't want to support multiple versions of an OS, there are plenty of domains where that isn't an issue. The desktop seems like a weird place to complain about this issue, though, since this is a challenge inherent in the fact that users have choices and freedoms.
I'm not suggesting that apps should drop such support instantaneously or gratuitously. Rather, I'm just suggesting that in the normal course of development, as an OS version becomes sufficiently old and has genuine issues that make support non-trivial, and if the upgrade to a newer version is free and automatic (so it's reasonable to expect people to upgrade), an app developer may at some point say "we expect at least this OS version; if you're using an older version, you're welcome to try, but we don't test on those OS versions so we can't offer any support or respond to bug reports from those OS versions".
I absolutely believe that the "you're welcome to try" part of that is important, assuming there's no known issue (which there may sometimes be). Developers also have an upper bound on available support bandwidth. I don't think apps (or websites) should prevent users from even trying, unless there's some specific technical reason (e.g. a known incompatibility that's producing substantial support burden just to triage, or a library or API that simply doesn't exist on the older version). I do think it's reasonable to say "please upgrade and try again, and if you're still experiencing the issue we'll take a look".
Along the same lines, if a user reports an issue to a website where it doesn't function properly in Chrome 12, or Firefox 9, it's entirely reasonable for the site to respond with "please upgrade, we don't support outdated browsers". It's a little more questionable for a site to say that about a version released the previous month, unless the site is a tech demo for bleeding-edge technology. But at no point do I think a site should actually block users attempting to use older browsers; at most, it's reasonable to show a "not supported or tested, might not work" message.
> Software developers around the world don't have to build software compatible with your old car, and get blamed for any incompatibility.
That sounds like a problem for software developers, not my grandmother. Now she can't use _any_ software because she has to relearn the OS every few years. She doesn't have that much time left on this earth and I don't blame her for not wanting to expend the mental energy on learning something that's just gonna change for no apparent reason a few years down the road.
I agree with this 100% and it blows my mind that so many in tech take the opposite stance. For the people who just see a computer as a tool, which is probably the vast majority of users, they just want it to work and then get out of their way. Very few are interested in spending a bunch of time relearning a new UI just to keep up with the latest design fad.
All of this bias towards churn is probably great for my career options so I guess that's something. But stories like this make me really feel for the millions of less tech-interested users who get frustrated by big changes like this. Within the tech bubble it's easy to forget how many things we take for granted as simple are actually quite hard for many people.
No, once 20H1 was released it got cut into its own release branch. 20H2, 21H1 and 21H2 are all just updates on top of that branch. You can tell because their build numbers are all 1904x.
Windows 11 is based on the mainline branch after the above (though it too has been cut into its own release branch now). of course, some changes might be ported back and forth between releases.
So machines not eligible to be upgraded to Windows 11 will stay on Windows 10 and get 21H2 and who knows how many more updates.
Oh Windows users, what a crazy bunch. I personally would never use a piece of software that updated (or downgraded, depending on the perspective) against my wishes.
I found a link to a tool[0] that checks your PC compatibility with Windows 11, but it seems that many many people with powerful devices are getting a "No" answer.
So now we finally know that 2025 will be the year of the Linux desktop. There will be no more supported Windows version for older hardware, and Microsoft's love for Linux will finally blossom into forcing migration for millions of computers. This is the most interesting part of the announcement, and I hope that desktop Linux distros will take advantage of the situation. Of course, Microsoft could reverse course by then.
> is Windows still "evergreen" with free updates, or will people have to buy Windows 11?
It's a free upgrade, just like 8 -> 10.
I assume Microsoft is doing this because of the hype that typically surrounds new Mac OS versions. I have no doubt that this could have been one of the evergreen updates, if only Microsoft hadn't been calling Windows 10 updates 'exciting' things like "21H2".
I have wondered that too, I don't like the look of the new taskbar, I was hoping they'd do more with it with some of the user concepts floating around (such as a rounded floating taskbar.) I'm sure the true reason is that is what MacOS does, so they just copied it.
With (ultra)widescreens these days moving the Start Menu and Search boxes to the center of the screen makes a lot of sense. Literally brings them "front and center", and I guess if the menus/windows/boxes are moving to the center, moving the icons that open them to the center makes sense.
As a vertical taskbar user (since way back in XP days) though, I'm definitely upset by all the wasted space. I'm perplexed why they aren't allowing vertical taskbars at launch. I'm sure telemetry suggests most users keep a bottom taskbar.
The first rule of UX design, as far as I'm concerned, is: Don't make me think.
Moving stuff around? You just made me think. You'd better have a good reason for that, better than just "it will play better on touch devices". I'm not on a touch device, so you just slowed me down to solve a problem that I don't have.
I agree. Teams is pretty bad about this. Every few weeks some buttons get moved around so you have to look for them. Instead of fixing problems it seems they just keep changing the UI.
> "Microsoft is also integrating Microsoft Teams directly into Windows 11, for both consumers and commercial users."
Not that I have any objections to Teams per se but attempting to drive adoption by bundling got Microsoft in trouble in the IE era; didn't they learn their lesson? Either way, probably the first thing I'll be doing after a fresh install of Windows 11 is uninstalling Teams.
Yeah, I thought of this too when I saw the integration, but a lot of things have changed since the antitrust issues at the time. If there's bundling issues, then I don't know.
The one thing I lament though is that using the same platform for work and personal communication tends to trigger some anxiety reflex in me.
I sometimes dread the long "quick call" in Teams, so hearing the call notification even in a video has me looking for my headphones :(
I'm with you on this reaction. Sometimes hear the message notification while watching Linus Tech Tips' WAN Show. Always triggers a spike of anxiety because I think someone is looking for my help with something on the weekend. Ugh.
Neither iOS nor MacOS are dominant in their respective categories. You can argue that the right metric to look at is market share by revenue and not by devices sold, and iOS does increase its footprint significantly at 42% of global smartphone revenue [1] (cementing itself as the single largest player), but still, arguably, not monopoly levels. I couldn't find a similar figure for the Desktop OS market, only (what I assume) is for devices currently running [2]. Sidenote: I think it's interesting to note that Windows market share has been steadily declining over the years, from a peak of ~91% a mere 8 years ago to around 76% in 2020.
Given this, by bundling a chat/productivity application (that has nothing to do with the OS product that Microsoft is selling), Microsoft is using its huge leverage in one category (OS) to increase its market share in another unrelated category (chat apps). This matches one of the conditions for US anti-trust action [3], and could even match the predatory pricing [uncited, hard to prove] condition (Microsoft bundling Teams for free indicates the cost of Teams is being absorbed by the Windows or some other business unit).
It's just teams replacing skype and easy enough to disable, the issue with IE was strong arming I doubt Microsoft is going to strong arm slack at any other level.. same goes for Onedrive/iCloud
Relevant snippet from the Wiki article on the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit:
"The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft had abused monopoly power on Intel-based personal computers in its handling of operating system and web browser integration. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Windows operating system. Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took a while to download or purchase such software at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft had manipulated its application programming interfaces to favor IE over third-party web browsers, Microsoft's conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Microsoft's intent in its course of conduct."
To draw parallels between that lawsuit and this discussion:
1. I guess the download effort of Slack isn't really a concern anymore. And while I have no idea of the feature parity between the free versions of Teams and Slack, the free versions of both apps should probably be sufficient for casual users (i.e. the inertia of entering payment information is not a concern).
2. I have no idea if Microsoft has added any secret sauce to Windows 11 that would make Teams run better on Windows owing to tighter in-house integration. But if this is true, and Slack (or other competitors) won't be able to use this to boost their own performances as much, I suspect this could be a big deal.
Most likely easy to disable. Pretty sure I have Cortana and Microsoft Store but I disabled the services, removed the Taskbar icons and never think about it heh.
I wouldn't be surprised if both of those are still running in Task Manager's process list if you look, under unassuming names like SearchUI.exe. It's quite hard to disable Microsoft's malware in my experience, a lot of it relaunches itself, or comes back after an OS update. The number of running Microsoft processes goes up every year.
I've given up. If you have a computer with a spinning rust disk this crap alone will saturate the I/O and become completely unusable. (then you have OEM bloatware which has also become harder to remove and bloated software in general on top of that.)
At this point I just hand people thumbdrives with PopOS on them when they complain that their computer is slow. Both OSes run Android apps and between that, the web, and wine most people hardly miss anything.
If you can even uninstall it. That's honestly my biggest gripe about Windows besides the fact it's proprietary is all of the stupid shit it comes bundled with that you will never use and can't remove.
I think they learned their lesson very well. Microsoft suffered little for bundling Internet Explorer into Windows. The court case cost them some time and money, and in return they made no substantive business changes, and shut out browser competition for years. They had a plan and it worked. Why shouldn’t they do it again?
Yes, it worked, and far longer than most corporate initiatives do. The antitrust trial was decided in 2001 and Chrome didn’t launch until 2008. Microsoft owned the pathway to the Internet for Windows users for a solid decade.
Eh, I do have misgivings about Teams and such tight Teams integration since my company chose it as its default communication platform.
My biggest beef is how limited I am as user with configuration ( the notifications are too big for my taste -- and I can either choose that they show or don't) and that UI somehow feels worse than webex.
I'm on MacOS, not Windows, but I really concur with you on the notifications. They're huge, they stay on screen too long, and they can't be dismissed early. I hate that they chose not to go with the standard MacOS notification system.
Another MacOS annoyance: Teams seems to exist in every virtual desktop, so even if the main window is in (say) desktop 3 and I'm in desktop 2, if I cmd-tab to Teams it won't take me to desktop 3. I have to manually switch desktops to get back to Teams.
Does that mean it's finally becoming a native app? By far the worst part of MS Teams is that it's slow and can't really help when it can't connect to its servers because it's just a web page.
WebView2 is shipped/serviced by Windows (auto-updates with Edgmium at roughly the exact same pace as Chromium/Chrome), and it's a shared control with a single install which Windows can optimize memory usage/performance. As opposed to Electron packages its own Chromium, updates have to be shipped inside the application at the application's pace (including and especially security updates), and the install size and memory usage/performance is bloated for every Electron app bundling lots of the exact same Chromium DLLs and whatnot.
Absolutely. Microsoft doesn't have a large existing Windows Store business to protect, so why not make Apple's life harder?
I think it's also the solution that best meets the reality of apps in 2021. Big third-party devs like Netflix and Amazon will opt out of in-app purchase entirely before giving a cut to the platform owner. May as well let them use their own payment system so users get a better experience than signing up on the web.
It's not like Microsoft hasn't tried very hard in the last 10 years to emulate the iOS business model, but I guess Windows users don't like walled gardens.
But they messed up so bad with the Windows store. It is beyond belief:
- By including Candy Crush and other bloatware in the store, the store started with a bad reputation already.
- By allowing manufacturers to define apps you cannot uninstall via the store, this infuriated any power user.
- By no allowing to delete any items from your "purchase history" you could never try out any free apps without them contaminating your history. They did so to prevent people from losing their purchases, but this was just stupid with free apps.
- Discovery in the store was a joke. Search results showed apps with less than 100 installs. Descriptions and screenshots of apps are often so bad that there is no way to figure out what an app does.
- Not finding a way to offer legacy apps in the store was such a fail, it is incomprehensible. It is 2021 and end users still have to download applications from CNet and Sourceforge. A security nightmare. Don't get me started on UWP and the UIs from hell caused by it.
Finally, there is absolutely no reason that the Windows store couldn't have been what Steam is now. Just MS incompetence in their vision of where to start.
--
Edit:
It seems legacy apps are coming to the store with Windows 11. Yeah! Let's see how they mess up this time.
I don't think it helps that MS have been trying to build new UI and app development frameworks for the past several years, each one with varying capabilities. I've lost track, I think UWP is the latest one but it's not UWP any more, or something?
It just seems harder to build and sell software that has that same quality look-and-feel that many MacOS apps have.
I just wonder what they'd be capable of if they had a separate OS that didn't have to concern itself with backwards compatibility. It'd be a monumental undertaking to do all that from scratch, not really worth it from a business standpoint, but it'd be interesting to see what they'd come up with if they started off with Linux.
I think this is similar on Mac. Anecdotally I don't know anyone who uses the Mac App Store to install apps. Everyone I know just downloads the .dmg from whatever website.
It is such a welcome thing. Big platforms like Netflix, Spotify don't owe any revenue share to Apple, Microsoft or others. They made their own brand and have been responsible for their own success.
These big OS/device companies in fact compete with them with unfair advantages like pre installed apps, prominent product placement on AppStore and closed/early integrations.
Alright. So if Netflix wants their app to be hosted and indexed by the App Store, Apple should just provide the costs related to that because of charity? The bandwidth alone I imagine carries a pretty hefty price for an app like Netflix. By your logic, this should all be given free - which actually is negative profit for Apple .. why? Would you create an App Store, dedicate resources on moderation and app curation, as well as infrastructure, and then just give it away free? Would your stakeholders still back you if you did that?
I never understand this line of logic, and the idea that for-profit entities somehow _should_ do lots of charity.
A) Give me X% of revenue, and I will give you free hosting of your app, and some form of promotion.
B) No commission, but you host your own binaries. To be a valid installable app, you need to give me a hash of the binary valid to install, that I have approved before. Each audit of binaries cost X. No promotion for free in the app store.
The main problem with Option B is the potential for bad/inconsistent app download experiences. Many companies may cheap out on binary hosting and have very slow or broken downloads (especially in certain countries), which results in a kind of random "never know if this will work well" patchy UX for iOS/Android users at large.
This isn't an insurmountable problem of course. Perhaps Apple/Google could charge fixed bandwidth rates and host it themselves, or they could contractually set SLA requirements that could be verified regularly with an uptime service.
> The bandwidth alone I imagine carries a pretty hefty price for an app like Netflix.
Apple doesn't pay for Netflix's server costs. They just host the app, there are ways to mitigate the cost of hosting the app as the other reply also mentions.
> Would you create an App Store, dedicate resources on moderation and app curation, as well as infrastructure, and then just give it away free?
Apple is not doing Netlfix any favour here, people signed up for Netflix way before iOS existed. Netflix was a brand in itself before iPhone was.
Also, let us not pretend that the success of iOS has nothing to do with the likes of Netflix, Spotify, YouTube etc. providing first class apps for the platform. Windows Phone died because of app situation despite having a fresh OS with compelling devices.
Apple has more than 40% net margins on iPhone. If they can bundle the cost of their Maps effort with iPhone, even App Store can be taken from that amount. 30% from a business just for gatekeeping is just disgusting and abuse of the duopoly situation we are in.
Thank You for your claim explanation without any rage.
>If they can bundle the cost of their Maps effort with iPhone.....
And just want to add. Apple currently put around ~$3B / year for all of their OS, iCloud, Siri and Map development which are already included in the Net Margin calculation.
I might be wrong (not a developer), but I thought within the official stores, in-app purchases were subject to 30%, as standard, going to the platform provider. At least that's what I understand with regard to Apple and Google stores.
I see now… the Microsoft store will let publishers collect payments in alternative ways.
That’s well and good, but I don’t see that as a big deal because the microsoft app store isn’t that important.
The problem with the Apple ios app store isn’t that they have a specific, restricted payments mechanism. It’s that it’s the only practical way for developers to distribute native software to iOS devices.
I think this is important to Microsoft, and actually quite a smart move. By letting other people use the Microsoft/Windows Store app natively built into windows, with their own billing infrastructure, they basically kill off any reason to have other applications for buying/installing software.
Imagine if Steam allowed Blizzard/Activision/EA to sell their games on the Steam store, and as long as they pay their own hosting/billing infrastructure costs, Valve takes no cut?
I think that would immediately kill the need for EA/Ubisoft/Blizzard/etc. to ever need their own applications to sell software.
The change is that their current Windows Store is a tumbleweed wasteland with astonishingly little uptake, so Microsoft has offered some partners (I presume it's a subset or it'll just become a scam central) like Adobe to put themselves "on" the store, but not actually on it. Basically a package manager.
The announcement was that "bring-your-own-commerce" platform was going to be open to all developers (it is becoming basically a package manager), except for things categorized as Games, where presumably existing Xbox rules still take priority.
Except for, twist, if you are an Android developer. Amazon takes it's 20% cut no doubt, and to avoid the cut you need to make a native Windows app. Which actually isn't an awful incentive structure, but it's not 0% in the Store across the board.
Also it doesn't count if you make Xbox games. Microsoft still takes a cut there.
So it's 0% if it's a native Windows app and it isn't an Xbox Game. So let's just say Epic Games will still not be satisfied with this.
Linux distros also have equivalents to App Stores, and really an app store isn't different than apt-get from a lay persons perspective. Assuming you ignore payment/cuts, but it seems you're opposed to free App Stores too.
Hahahahahhahahaha. You might have a point with the likes of Debian, Arch, and Gentoo, but Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, SUSE, Oracle Linux, Amazon Linux, Rocky Linux are all maintained by corporations.
Lack of curation doesn't really matter for apps, where the user will find the software independently, and just use the MS Store for the final download.
And for games, the curation will be where it matters - on Xbox games pass.
Looks like a ton of nice little QoL improvements for the vast majority of people especially with Snap and Multiple Desktops, with monitor layout memory. Hope that taskbar can still have programs with "non-combined" windows, as opposed to dock style. Using PowerToys Run personally seems like it's going to sidestep most of the complaints I'm seeing from this comment section.
My guess is they are just making a macOS style application taskbar default. I actually already use it that way on Windows 10, but there are occasions when I miss having minimized application instances in little rectangles. But these days I can run so many applications at a time that it quickly becomes too crowded to be of any use.
At this point, I feel I don't have the energy to hate unjustified changes in user interfaces anymore such as integrating Microsoft Teams with the taskbar.
As someone who doesn't use Microsoft Teams, as long as I can right click and remove the button from the taskbar so that I can move on until the next "forced UI change", I'll be good.
I'm pretty sure the main point is to send more spam within the os. I hated Linux ux ui for long time but windows is pushing it to the limits... And I'm finally thinking to move to Linux.
Apart from the UI there seem to be some interesting gaming upgrades backported from xbox into windows (direct storage and autohdr). Autohdr in particular works really well on my xbox / tv combo.
Anyone has a good guess why Microsoft needed to bump the version? All of these updates seems something that can be easily updated to Windows 10 in several or one half year update.
Is this something related to it's corporate clients or licensing services? Really can't understand why a need to create a new version with so much hype, when they've announced in the past that W10 will be the last Windows version.
I'm betting that getting out of support / lifecycle requirements is part of the major version bump. Internet Explorer 11 support is likely tied to the lifecycle of Windows 10.
> Really can't understand why a need to create a new version with so much hype, when they've announced in the past that W10 will be the last Windows version.
Money is the answer. It hurts sales prospects when you say it's the last version ever.
I am certain that they said 10 was to be the final version of Windows. On the strength of that I decided I didn't want 10 so my only option was to jump ship (to Linux). I wonder how many others did? Saying that I doubt I would want 11 either, but that's academic now.
Looks like Windows Monterey, with the "Start menu" now being a Spotlight clone!
I am unsure if the removal of the titlebar is a good thing - there is still an alt-space menu to the left of windows that do not have an icon top left, and double-clicking on a titlebar is a convenient place to double-click; this isn't possible with no titlebar (eg. in Chrome/Firefox at the moment).
I think an interesting thing mentioned at the end about the Microsoft Store is that if developers use their own "commerce engine" they keep 100% of the profits.
Not a fan of the Android apps installable and discoverable onto Windows...but through the Amazon appstore. Weird, and I'd much more prefer installing to PC from Google Play itself.
Probably not google because google wouldn't play ball. I wonder if users will be able to (easily) sideload android apps since not everything is in Amazon's app store and apps there are often not updated as often as the google play store version.
Right, that was my assumption too. Sideloading would be my way around, but I'm guessing there may be some runtime signing or containerizing involved as well, else every Android vulnerability just became a Windows vulnerability.
Honestly, yes. Someone else mentioned Google Play Services being a probable point of contention. Overall, with Surface Duo, Microsoft Launcher and Google's work towards making Flutter along with the leverage and developer interest they'd gain through having the Windows install base using the Play Store, it seems like a fair relationship.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 314 ms ] threadWould gladly keep paying for security enhancements for it and don't really see anything that W10 (or W11 for that matter) offers over it for work or gaming.
It's a real shame that taking away controls from power users seem to be more important than providing a great product. But I guess when you're a monopoly you can do whatever you want.
Customize those ugly flat panels that MS stuck everywhere next to Windows 3.1 legacy selection boxes?
Also, yes. I guess if you are willing to spend an extra 10-20hrs of your time to configure group policies and registry tweaks and removing telemetry to get it into an "acceptable" state...for exactly the same experience, then it's fine. Even then, I keep reading horror stories about settings being reverted after updates and the OS generally not respecting uptime over vague "security" updates.
I don't find that acceptable, unless MS cuts me a check for wasted hours of my time every time I have to fix something that wasn't broken. For comparison, my W7 system has been rock stable since 2016, with most system downtime due to physical hardware changes and updates.
To be fair, some use cases were improved in W10. Mobile (bluetooth) connectivity seems to be working great. So are things like making a wi-fi hotspot and networking in general. (I don't have in-depth knowledge about other improvements because they're outside of my use cases)
- Touch Keyboard will no longer dock and undock keyboard layouts on screen sizes 18 inches and larger. [1]
- [Start Menu] Named groups and folders of apps are no longer supported and the layout is not currently resizable. [1]
- Windows 11 Home will require a Microsoft account [2]
- TPM 2.0 is required [1] (some gaming/enthusiast mobos sell TPM modules separately AFAICT)
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548480/windows-11-home-...
You can (until 2023) via the (expensive) ESU program. There's also 0patch, not sure how effective is their approach.
http://www.wwddfd.com/plushpuffin/personalize-desktop-7vs10....
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207703
It’s astonishing how little (close to zero) human factors research is done, much less sought out or taken into consideration by PM or engineering on the software side of Microsoft.
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/windows-8-disappointing-usa...
There was almost zero HF research, and the brunt of UX research done was trying to justify and fix fundamental issues with an already decided design direction, not to inform a valuable direction in the first place.
But through it all the Apple has stayed glued in the top left corner of the screen, the furthest left thing on the menu bar. The one time they briefly contemplated eliminating it/moving it to the center was IIRC in the Mac OS X public beta (which I think I still have lying around here somewhere, would be a hoot to try to get it running again under QEMU maybe?). But there was harsh feedback from a lot of us in the PB on that one and it was restored from 10.0, so there was never a public release of a "Mac OS" without it. And even though it's visually offset a bit from the edge of the menu and when you click the highlight box also seems offset from the side, that doesn't actually affect the clickable area one bit. You can jam your mouse to the upper corner pixel blind and it'll still open right up. They've stuck with Fitt's Law on that one at least even amongst all their other GUI "innovations" in the last few decades.
The Apple menu has nothing to do with running applications in modern macOS versions.
Regardless of how you see the function parity between the two, the corner alignment argument just doesn't hold here.
How is the Apple menu equivalent to Start in modern macOS? Do you click the Apple menu to start your apps? Or even switch to them?
> the Dock _is_ equivalent to the Start Menu
This is what I was referencing in my previous comment. This is not accurate. They are not even similar. The doc, however, is very similar to the taskbar. The doc and taskbar are used almost exactly the same way by users. I'd say they are effectively equivalent. That's all my first comment was trying to say.
The start button is used for many of the things the apple menu can do, but also for searching for things, from apps to files. I am not sure you can easily compare it to one thing on MacOS, as it seems like those functions are put into multiple different places, many of which are discrete apps _on_ the doc... which may have been what you meant. The above user was saying the Apple menu _was_ the same as the start button is now, but acknowledged that those functions have been broken apart since that time.
edit: updated comment
[1] - https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-centered-taskbar-in-windo...
Fitt's Law says that the time required to interact with an element depends on both the distance to that element and the width/height of that element.
Putting an element on an edge (where the cursor cannot go beyond that edge) essentially makes it infinitely large in one dimension. Putting it in a corner makes it infinitely large in two dimensions.
Taskbar buttons in Windows (or menu items in macOS) do benefit from Fitt's Law, just not as much as items in the corners.
Software going through massive redesigns every couple versions should be seen as a huge negative. If the last redesign was so bad it needed to be replaced so soon, why should I trust the new one to be any better? Instead these changes often get trumpeted.
It's easy to 'fix' via preferences so serves no other purpose.
I've got an ultrawide and it doesn't require that at all; moving the start menu to the center to compensate for bad mouse speed settings is like reducing display resolution to compensate for bad text/icon size settings.
My eyes aren't good enough for that all the time, and sometimes, the cursor is hidden, so it doesn't even matter.
Getting to a corner has a predictable way to get there
Edit: Alt+Tab too.
But having worked with plenty of users at work, it's very rare they use the windows key rather than dragging their mouse to the corner... if I tell them about the windows key, they act super surprised.
I guess fixing the damned control panel and various settings apps isn't sexy enough.
Frankly this whole update stinks of "oh we hired a bunch of new MBAs and they have to make their mark otherwise they're out of a job".
It's also fair to say that there is a novice/expert divide -- Microsoft wants the settings panel to be as simple as settings on a mobile phone. That's great. However, occasionally I need to revert and diagnose the Wifi driver on my cheap Chinese mini laptop and I need a more powerful UI than most average people are never going to need.
At this point, I can't think of a setting that my parents would need that isn't there.
I have 4 UIs on my windows machine where I can set things related to inactivity/power down states. That's unreasonable, and nobody was confused in windows XP when those were all in one place (with an "advanced Settings" fold).
My point was Microsoft is doing exactly the right thing here -- iterating on an existing design and keeping old software around for those who need it. Everybody seems to want Microsoft to throw out everything and instantly redesign several decades worth of software and that is ridiculous. That's not the way anyone should develop software.
> nobody was confused in windows XP
I'm sure they were -- the new settings app is significantly less complicated.
There is one good reason: some screens are getting really wide.
I will carry on using my dual bar layout on MATE because I didn't want to change to gnome 3 or unity.
But I also realizes that not everyone agrees with my "right-hand" taskbar preference. I agree that allowing customization is probably the best bet. It's odd to me that when one of the messages in the Windows 11 announcement was that they wanted it to be more personalizable that according to their notes they are removing an important personalization in taskbar placement. (Which has been supported to varying degrees of success all the way back to Windows 95 at this point.)
If they'd just added the option to move it I'd have no qualms but they decided to make it default and I'd be willing to put money down that the overwhelming majority of Windows users do not have super widescreen displays.
>
> If they'd just added the option to move it I'd have no qualms [...]
I keep mentally blaming this on designers who want to be Steve Jobs (edit:)and Henry Ford and do daring leaps in design.
Edit: I've seen quotes like "if I asked people what they wanted they would say a faster horse" a few times. There's a time for that but most of the time it is time for boring (not really, I love much of it if I'm allowed to) work on getting things right: make it work in all major browsers, make sure tabs work, make sure it works fast etc.
I swear people just GO OFF with half the story and assume they have the full story.
I could see it being easier to hit for tablets when it's not in the corner, but I find the corner a good spot for things like that on a regular desktop.. Granted, I always use the windows key on my keyboard but the other corner button, the one that minimizing everything, I use all the time. Very easy to mindlessly drag your cursor to the corner IMO.
Some of the other design features I really enjoy, but I would love a unified and sensible control panel before anything else.
I suspect most people using a mouse also have their keyboard and so they just hit the Windows key instead.
The centered start menu is extremely useful for touch users on the other hand.
With the older left-aligned positioning, users can just flick their mouse to the left corner to open the start menu, or the right corner to minimize all windows. Buttons are in the same spot every time.
The same fix would work in Windows 11, although it would involve teleporting the cursor halfway across the screen.
I feel this is a general problem with Fitts' law: Anything that's used often enough to deserve to be in a corner should really only be accessed by hotkey.
KDE, even considering it implies Linux (with all the good and the bad of it), has never looked so attractive, as Windows' desktop environment degrades due to chasing fads.
There's still win8 and win8.1 to worry about though, and win10 also has LTSC releases that stay supported for at least 10 years IIRC.
The promise of Windows 10 being the last Windows could have but an end to that nonsense.
The manufacturer of the MRI machine doesn't care. In their mind the "upgrade path" is to buy a new one. That might support the current iteration of Windows + their drivers until the next Windows is released. Sure it's nonsense but the hospital can't just not have an MRI machine. They need one and someone will capitalize on that need.
I suspect the 'replacement' or 'upgrade' market for such machines is very very low. Major capital expenditure intended to be amortized/depreciated over many years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/17/wanna...
And also that this problem definitely won’t get worse as more and more of these devices are built on platforms that want to require you to sign in with a cloud service…
>And also that this problem definitely won’t get worse as more and more of these devices are built on platforms that want to require you to sign in with a cloud service…
Which is why it's so important that not giving network access to medical machines becomes standard practice.
Now let's hope it's an automatic upgrade for as many Windows 10 users as possible.
It's one thing to force an update that just makes background improvements. It's another thing entirely to force a UI update that breaks your workflow.
Most of us just got the people we support used to the new design now they're going to up and change it completely again.
My Grandmother has basically given up using the computer because she doesn't have the mental energy to relearn a UI every time some MBA comes along wanting to "disrupt" the status quo.
It's basically akin to the company that manufactures your car showing up at your house while you're sleeping, moving the steering wheel to the center of the car, re-arranging buttons on the console, blacking out two of the windows because it looks cool, then leaving a nice little note on your front porch: "We upgraded your car, it's so much better!"
There have already been posts showing that there's an option to put the start menu back on the left if you want that. Hopefully there will be options to deal with other inconveniences. As it stands, this already looks like it fixes many of the complaints people had about Windows 10; in that regard, parts of it are exactly what many people asked for.
I don't want people to deal with a UI they dislike. I also don't want developers having to deal with a no-longer-evergreen OS. Windows was the last OS to move to the evergreen model; when Windows 10 came out, it was a great relief to many developers, who saw a point on the horizon where there was only one version of Windows they would have to support, and it would always be up to date.
Remember, the alternative isn't just "oh well, I guess we'll support Windows 10 and Windows 11". One alternative is "guess we'll build a web app instead", or "guess we'll drop support for Windows 10" (in which case people still need to upgrade, but they blame app developers instead of Windows).
I'm sure the option will exist to not upgrade, at least for a while. But if the default is to upgrade, app developers get much less of the blame if they expect and depend on that upgrade.
If developers don't want to support multiple versions of an OS, there are plenty of domains where that isn't an issue. The desktop seems like a weird place to complain about this issue, though, since this is a challenge inherent in the fact that users have choices and freedoms.
Completely disagree with your attitude here.
I absolutely believe that the "you're welcome to try" part of that is important, assuming there's no known issue (which there may sometimes be). Developers also have an upper bound on available support bandwidth. I don't think apps (or websites) should prevent users from even trying, unless there's some specific technical reason (e.g. a known incompatibility that's producing substantial support burden just to triage, or a library or API that simply doesn't exist on the older version). I do think it's reasonable to say "please upgrade and try again, and if you're still experiencing the issue we'll take a look".
Along the same lines, if a user reports an issue to a website where it doesn't function properly in Chrome 12, or Firefox 9, it's entirely reasonable for the site to respond with "please upgrade, we don't support outdated browsers". It's a little more questionable for a site to say that about a version released the previous month, unless the site is a tech demo for bleeding-edge technology. But at no point do I think a site should actually block users attempting to use older browsers; at most, it's reasonable to show a "not supported or tested, might not work" message.
That sounds like a problem for software developers, not my grandmother. Now she can't use _any_ software because she has to relearn the OS every few years. She doesn't have that much time left on this earth and I don't blame her for not wanting to expend the mental energy on learning something that's just gonna change for no apparent reason a few years down the road.
All of this bias towards churn is probably great for my career options so I guess that's something. But stories like this make me really feel for the millions of less tech-interested users who get frustrated by big changes like this. Within the tech bubble it's easy to forget how many things we take for granted as simple are actually quite hard for many people.
Windows 11 is based on the mainline branch after the above (though it too has been cut into its own release branch now). of course, some changes might be ported back and forth between releases.
So machines not eligible to be upgraded to Windows 11 will stay on Windows 10 and get 21H2 and who knows how many more updates.
[0] https://twitter.com/_h0x0d_/status/1408075658350108674
> Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0
Possibly most AMD motherboards don't have TPM integrated? I don't know a lot about TPM though.
Someone said...
> enable tpm in your bios i did it and it worked for me, I have a 3080, 5800x, 16gb of ram
EDIT: My motherboard (Asus Prime X470 Pro) lists TPM as a separate module you buy, but the connector is present. $12 module, for example: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1237446-REG/asus_tpm_...
The manual does list an fTPM setting as well, but I have not tested that yet.
Ryzen CPUs do have TPM onboard - at least my Ryzen 3800X does have it. It's disabled by default for some reason.
Funny enough, Apple laptops don't have it so Windows 11 won't be usable in BootCamp on Intel Macs.
Supposedly the fTPM should work with Ryzen CPUs and offer TPM 2.0, but I can't confirm now either.
Similar deal to yours, my Gigabyte x570 board offers TPM cards: https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/TPM-Card. I am assuming this is unnecessary tho, but good to know.
Screenshot of the security processor page: https://i.imgur.com/ZWtq8EO.png
Screenshot of the PC health check: https://i.imgur.com/Rb3eZIc.png
no gaming motherboard I've ever had has had a TPM
edit: seems like the intel PTT bios option counts, so maybe not a huge problem (though it's off by default everywhere)
edit: Looks like TPM 2.0 is not a hard requirement, only 1.2. This will likely still result in a lot of users left out of Windows, but the year of the Linux desktop may be delayed again. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/windo...
It's a free upgrade, just like 8 -> 10.
I assume Microsoft is doing this because of the hype that typically surrounds new Mac OS versions. I have no doubt that this could have been one of the evergreen updates, if only Microsoft hadn't been calling Windows 10 updates 'exciting' things like "21H2".
That said I did liked that feature I am happy it is back.
They have real trouble committing to a UI toolkit or design language, though.
1. It creates unnecessary visual clutter in the right and left sides and takes up valuable space.
2. Users will have harder time clicking to start button.
I’m having hard time seeing what is UX benefit of this?
I’m not a huge fan of macOS dock bar but UX wise it isn’t so bad.
As a vertical taskbar user (since way back in XP days) though, I'm definitely upset by all the wasted space. I'm perplexed why they aren't allowing vertical taskbars at launch. I'm sure telemetry suggests most users keep a bottom taskbar.
Moving stuff around? You just made me think. You'd better have a good reason for that, better than just "it will play better on touch devices". I'm not on a touch device, so you just slowed me down to solve a problem that I don't have.
Not that I have any objections to Teams per se but attempting to drive adoption by bundling got Microsoft in trouble in the IE era; didn't they learn their lesson? Either way, probably the first thing I'll be doing after a fresh install of Windows 11 is uninstalling Teams.
The one thing I lament though is that using the same platform for work and personal communication tends to trigger some anxiety reflex in me.
I sometimes dread the long "quick call" in Teams, so hearing the call notification even in a video has me looking for my headphones :(
Given this, by bundling a chat/productivity application (that has nothing to do with the OS product that Microsoft is selling), Microsoft is using its huge leverage in one category (OS) to increase its market share in another unrelated category (chat apps). This matches one of the conditions for US anti-trust action [3], and could even match the predatory pricing [uncited, hard to prove] condition (Microsoft bundling Teams for free indicates the cost of Teams is being absorbed by the Windows or some other business unit).
[1] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/04/apples-....
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...
[3] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/antitrust-law.as...
"The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft had abused monopoly power on Intel-based personal computers in its handling of operating system and web browser integration. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Windows operating system. Bundling them is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of IE. It was further alleged that this restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera), since it typically took a while to download or purchase such software at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft had manipulated its application programming interfaces to favor IE over third-party web browsers, Microsoft's conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and Microsoft's intent in its course of conduct."
To draw parallels between that lawsuit and this discussion:
1. I guess the download effort of Slack isn't really a concern anymore. And while I have no idea of the feature parity between the free versions of Teams and Slack, the free versions of both apps should probably be sufficient for casual users (i.e. the inertia of entering payment information is not a concern).
2. I have no idea if Microsoft has added any secret sauce to Windows 11 that would make Teams run better on Windows owing to tighter in-house integration. But if this is true, and Slack (or other competitors) won't be able to use this to boost their own performances as much, I suspect this could be a big deal.
At this point I just hand people thumbdrives with PopOS on them when they complain that their computer is slow. Both OSes run Android apps and between that, the web, and wine most people hardly miss anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
they pretty much lost browser war to chrome and safari
My biggest beef is how limited I am as user with configuration ( the notifications are too big for my taste -- and I can either choose that they show or don't) and that UI somehow feels worse than webex.
Another MacOS annoyance: Teams seems to exist in every virtual desktop, so even if the main window is in (say) desktop 3 and I'm in desktop 2, if I cmd-tab to Teams it won't take me to desktop 3. I have to manually switch desktops to get back to Teams.
I think it's also the solution that best meets the reality of apps in 2021. Big third-party devs like Netflix and Amazon will opt out of in-app purchase entirely before giving a cut to the platform owner. May as well let them use their own payment system so users get a better experience than signing up on the web.
This is how you GET a large existing Windows Store business.
- By including Candy Crush and other bloatware in the store, the store started with a bad reputation already.
- By allowing manufacturers to define apps you cannot uninstall via the store, this infuriated any power user.
- By no allowing to delete any items from your "purchase history" you could never try out any free apps without them contaminating your history. They did so to prevent people from losing their purchases, but this was just stupid with free apps.
- Discovery in the store was a joke. Search results showed apps with less than 100 installs. Descriptions and screenshots of apps are often so bad that there is no way to figure out what an app does.
- Not finding a way to offer legacy apps in the store was such a fail, it is incomprehensible. It is 2021 and end users still have to download applications from CNet and Sourceforge. A security nightmare. Don't get me started on UWP and the UIs from hell caused by it.
Finally, there is absolutely no reason that the Windows store couldn't have been what Steam is now. Just MS incompetence in their vision of where to start.
-- Edit:
It seems legacy apps are coming to the store with Windows 11. Yeah! Let's see how they mess up this time.
It just seems harder to build and sell software that has that same quality look-and-feel that many MacOS apps have.
I just wonder what they'd be capable of if they had a separate OS that didn't have to concern itself with backwards compatibility. It'd be a monumental undertaking to do all that from scratch, not really worth it from a business standpoint, but it'd be interesting to see what they'd come up with if they started off with Linux.
These big OS/device companies in fact compete with them with unfair advantages like pre installed apps, prominent product placement on AppStore and closed/early integrations.
I never understand this line of logic, and the idea that for-profit entities somehow _should_ do lots of charity.
A) Give me X% of revenue, and I will give you free hosting of your app, and some form of promotion.
B) No commission, but you host your own binaries. To be a valid installable app, you need to give me a hash of the binary valid to install, that I have approved before. Each audit of binaries cost X. No promotion for free in the app store.
This isn't an insurmountable problem of course. Perhaps Apple/Google could charge fixed bandwidth rates and host it themselves, or they could contractually set SLA requirements that could be verified regularly with an uptime service.
Apple doesn't pay for Netflix's server costs. They just host the app, there are ways to mitigate the cost of hosting the app as the other reply also mentions.
> Would you create an App Store, dedicate resources on moderation and app curation, as well as infrastructure, and then just give it away free?
Apple is not doing Netlfix any favour here, people signed up for Netflix way before iOS existed. Netflix was a brand in itself before iPhone was.
Also, let us not pretend that the success of iOS has nothing to do with the likes of Netflix, Spotify, YouTube etc. providing first class apps for the platform. Windows Phone died because of app situation despite having a fresh OS with compelling devices.
Apple has more than 40% net margins on iPhone. If they can bundle the cost of their Maps effort with iPhone, even App Store can be taken from that amount. 30% from a business just for gatekeeping is just disgusting and abuse of the duopoly situation we are in.
>If they can bundle the cost of their Maps effort with iPhone.....
And just want to add. Apple currently put around ~$3B / year for all of their OS, iCloud, Siri and Map development which are already included in the Net Margin calculation.
(Windows users/developers have always been able to use various distribution systems... likewise for macOS.
Of course that's easy to offer while nobody uses the Windows Store, but e.g. on MacOS that would be quite a big deal.
That’s well and good, but I don’t see that as a big deal because the microsoft app store isn’t that important.
The problem with the Apple ios app store isn’t that they have a specific, restricted payments mechanism. It’s that it’s the only practical way for developers to distribute native software to iOS devices.
Imagine if Steam allowed Blizzard/Activision/EA to sell their games on the Steam store, and as long as they pay their own hosting/billing infrastructure costs, Valve takes no cut?
I think that would immediately kill the need for EA/Ubisoft/Blizzard/etc. to ever need their own applications to sell software.
Also it doesn't count if you make Xbox games. Microsoft still takes a cut there.
So it's 0% if it's a native Windows app and it isn't an Xbox Game. So let's just say Epic Games will still not be satisfied with this.
It normalizes OS vendor maintained AppStores which is a huge deal for Apple. The only way to avoid them now is to install Linux.
And for games, the curation will be where it matters - on Xbox games pass.
As someone who doesn't use Microsoft Teams, as long as I can right click and remove the button from the taskbar so that I can move on until the next "forced UI change", I'll be good.
(and some newer ones too, rumours say that a TPM might be mandatory to have, finally)
Dumping support for HW and major UX changes without bumping the version number is a bad idea.
For reference, we extended Windows 7 support until just this year lol
Money is the answer. It hurts sales prospects when you say it's the last version ever.
Presumably it’s an easy to change default, but why exactly copy such a user hostile layout.
I am unsure if the removal of the titlebar is a good thing - there is still an alt-space menu to the left of windows that do not have an icon top left, and double-clicking on a titlebar is a convenient place to double-click; this isn't possible with no titlebar (eg. in Chrome/Firefox at the moment).
Looks a nice modern UI refresh though.