Microsoft is reportedly planning a major UI overhaul for Windows 10 next year

At no point did I write they should "oversimplify" anything. I made it clear I think they should clean up the mess, that is, two completely incompatible control panels to handle one computer. I also said, it wouldn't be a problem if they'd put some effort into it, as the only thing needed is to make all the old stuff render with the "new" design.
It just comes across as lazy and I'm writing this as I have very little hope that another UI update will fix this. Worst case scenario, we will be working with three different control panels for one computer next year.
Microsoft is the biggest operating systems and software company in the world. Yet, they often come across as a loosely related bunch of hobbyists submitting personal ideas to some sort of developer community. This Windows 8 foray have been going on for a decade now, and it's still only halfway done, with biannual updates that adds little and fixes less.
Never did I claim you did write such a thing.

Personally, I couldn't care less how many different control panels there are, as I'll just use the one that suits my preferences best. Right now, when I open up my control panel from Start10, I get a Windows 7-style one that I'm very happy with.

We are arguing about two different things here, it seems. My point is very simple: I do not care if there are two versions of the same thing in the OS. It does not matter to me.

You do. Fair enough. Not going to try to convince you otherwise, as it's unrelated to my original point to begin with (which was just wistfulness, more than anything).

All I want is a Windows 7-like experience, and for the time being, some of the menus/interfaces in Windows 10 still offer that, so I'm enjoying 'em while it lasts.
 
Windows XP was as good as it will ever get. There, I said it. Microsoft has become the Disney of software - reinventing stuff in order to seem "woke" to whatever anti-design excrement is produced by their elite team of art school dropouts. Microsoft Office and Support for ancient enterprise programs is the only thing keeping them relevant on the desktop.
 
Windows XP was as good as it will ever get. There, I said it. Microsoft has become the Disney of software - reinventing stuff in order to seem "woke" to whatever anti-design excrement is produced by their elite team of art school dropouts. Microsoft Office and Support for ancient enterprise programs is the only thing keeping them relevant on the desktop.

What do you mean? They just want to improve the user experience through revolutionary and innovative new designs that have groundbreaking potential to change the industry as we know it through the power of collaboration and teamwork.

...Did I do it right? Is that how designer word salad works at big tech companies?
 
Something may get better, a lot of fine tuning panels may be permanently removed. And not just removed, but also made more complex to modify in registry. More beauty panels everywhere, which aren't even properly connected to each other. Microsoft has added lots of apps in win10. Sadly, none of the ones I need work. One of the apps behaves like a worm instead. I don't understand how can they mess up something easy that badly. So much bloat. So many random Windows files want to call home. So many helper processes constantly running for Microsoft programs, or fancy wireless hardware, I never use.
I believe in Microsoft. I believe that they can do even worse.
 
I get that Microsoft needs something to keep their employees busy. So make Windows simpler and modular and break up and dedicate staff to different iteration editions: Enterprise, Busines, Advanced, Home and Media, and Basic. Each with their own default add-ons. If you want extra functionally then you can purchase packages developed for the other editions and customize your edition. Would certainly seem like a better business model.
 
Microsoft should stop updating Windows 10....All these updates make the OS unstable and unsecure...Start another version of Windows (I.e., Windows Infinity) and keep updating that one....! Windows 10 Feature Update need to stop in order to be stable and secure...!
 
I did enterprise support for 27 years. I supported hardware/software/network etc. I worked mostly in Unix space, later Linux.
I personally like Windows 10. If you build your own PCs, then there is always the possibility of an update messing things up. That was true with Unix and Linux.
I remember working with Tru64 Unix engineering and those guys always said that the customers that would be the best field test candidates, wouldn't.
I still play with Linux, but Windows 10 is just fine.
 
How many times does Microsoft have to mess up the Windows UI? Just when it is working pretty well, they mess it up. And, honestly, the Windows 10 Settings are downright ghastly compared to the old style Control Panel. What psychoactive drugs or meds are the Windows UI designers on anyway, or is this simply their way to protect their own jobs.
 
I prefer my PC not infected if malware, so I'll stick with Windows 10. :D
The only gripe I have with Windows 10 is the half-measure approach to the Windows 10 user experience. It's there in most places but disappears in other places. Just stick to one design, Microsoft.

I'm still using Windows 7 and it's never been infected with anything. As long as you are sensible it's fine, and unlike 10, Windows 7 actually 'works' without having to fight with it every single damn day
 
There's always Linux to go to. And from there the user can sit confortably and modify everything they want from /etc/*.conf all in a beautiful text environment.

To be honest, whenever I look at the content of /etc or /var in a windowed environment, it feels like I never saw those files before. Always console. And Torvald's biggest failure says it's that Linux never got to the desktop. Yeah, good luck putting random Joe modifying config files while reading a 500-page documentation.
Yeah, much harder than having to dig through the registry to find settings, find out the location has been moved between Windows 10 and the Windows 10 build from like 6 months ago, and so on. Sorry, having some settings in /etc is not in any way a valid reason to poo-poo Linux.
 
I personally use Ubuntu Linux, so I can update the OS and run whatever desktop environment I want, and even kludge on an older one if I really can't deal with anything changing at all.

That said, good on Microsoft for giving people the option of sticking with the current appearance or using the new one. I personally am not too bothered with things changing if it's an improvement as opposed to "change for the sake of change", but this lets the user (or whoever sets up the computer for the user) decide for themselves.
 
If one of the UX changes isnt adding a polished version of Sets, then they can, and pardon my French; eat a 10lb moist bag of sloppy dicks in a 5lb bag. Stop blueballing standardized tabs in windows. Get it done already.
 
The real issue with Windows 10 UX, and Microsoft in general, is that they have become a hot mess. Bloated and super in its own way. They have so many brilliant people working there that are bogged down under so much overhead, you cant get anything done in a reasonable amount of time, and the things that do make it through are then gated and filtered under a heavy process of what actually makes it into Windows. Some say that it is needed, and I say that QA need not cut away so much fat that you cut deeply into the meat itself. Plus it is clearly flawed, just ask the tens of thousands of people over the last few years that had their work lost due to terrible auto-restarts, or just bad updates.

You can see it in Windows 10 too. This OS is 8+ years old now and it is STILL not a cohesive UX experience. File manager is still ugly, changing fonts in the system to look right is almost impossible without spending hours on 3rd party utilities, high DPI and applications are often a shitshow that take more time to make the OS understand what it should have understood years ago etc etc. This all still exists because they dont just get **** done and put it in the OS and move forward. They linger and wait and hoo and haaa and people give them a vague excuse for it something something security/stability... as if those things are always a scapegoat for *always* going slow as molasses with advancements. Take a look at what this should look like by now. Much more functionality, much more cohesive and done by individual people, not teams making millions a years collectively. https://dribbble.com/tags/windows_10

A lot of people see nothing wrong, but to that I say when humans become so used to a thing, it becomes what they expect and anything other than that is weird. Is UX design objective? Sure. To an extent. Windows 10 was good many years ago, but it has barely changed from 15xx in terms of UX. There are countless areas where it needs improvement, and they have done nothing, because that is what most people demand; nothing. And thats not how you evolve your UX, or, really, anything in life.
 
I'm still using Windows 7 and it's never been infected with anything. As long as you are sensible it's fine, and unlike 10, Windows 7 actually 'works' without having to fight with it every single damn day
I think, the honest truth is the other way around. Windows 10's app containers means security is a lot more likely to "just work" than having to vet everything you click on. :)
 
The W10 UI is the first Windows UI I actually liked. Visually it's great I think. I hope this revamp is to make for less clicking to get to your desired option instead of more hidden settings. I pretty much use search for everything as it's faster than actually clicking the settings then the actual setting, then clicking advanced, then clicking again to get to where you actually want to get to.
 
What I don't understand is why does the OS not give the user the choice of which GUI to use? This is not 1984 and we should not be stuck with a bunch of hard-coded options here. Let the user decide what the GUI looks like. The dumb user can run with the default garbage that Microsoft picks. the better user can chose between a few pre-canned themes, and the power user can set up profiles of a thousand different settings. How hard can this be?
 
Great! Every time they refresh or update the OS it knocks out all my settings and I am back to MS default. Then I have to waste a bunch of time getting everything set back to the way I had it.
 
Great! Every time they refresh or update the OS it knocks out all my settings and I am back to MS default. Then I have to waste a bunch of time getting everything set back to the way I had it.
Surely there would be utilities to save the required registry data, or export it manually.
 
A start menu overhaul won't bother me, since I just use Start10 anyway, but the other overhauls.. A bit troubling.

I'm one of those crazy people that actually appreciates that many Windows 7 menus still persist throughout Windows 10. They're information-dense, and they have lots of settings and toggles within easy reach. The Windows 10 menus, by contrast, are heavily simplified and not nearly as powerful or efficient for me.

I used Start 10 and the truth is I found it buggy as hell. I switched to Classic Shell and except for one bug with the taskbar, which is easy to sidestep, I've had a much better experience. And that's my worry, how much will these changes effect start menu replacements?
 
The W10 UI is the first Windows UI I actually liked. Visually it's great I think. I hope this revamp is to make for less clicking to get to your desired option instead of more hidden settings. I pretty much use search for everything as it's faster than actually clicking the settings then the actual setting, then clicking advanced, then clicking again to get to where you actually want to get to.

So would your perfect desktop UI only use a KB? Because for me that's the big problem with Win 10's UI. They want to unify user experience between mobile (touch) and M&KB. Which they hope will drive mobile device sales. Problem is touch and mouse use aren't really all that compatible. Using a touch screen in a desktop setting is clumsy, I've tried. And using a mouse in win 10 tedious, so we're where we currently are, a inconsistent user experience that feels more forced then intuitive. Oh BTW the new look? Tiles which are easier to touch then flyout menus which work better with a mouse, which only further supports my assertion.
 
What I don't understand is why does the OS not give the user the choice of which GUI to use? This is not 1984 and we should not be stuck with a bunch of hard-coded options here. Let the user decide what the GUI looks like. The dumb user can run with the default garbage that Microsoft picks. the better user can chose between a few pre-canned themes, and the power user can set up profiles of a thousand different settings. How hard can this be?

Win 10 which is simply a refinement of Win 8 has one major philosophy driving design, a unified user experience between desktop and mobile. The aim is to increase mobile share by leveraging the installed desktop user base. So actually letting users choose to not use the mobile focused UI would work counter to that aim. Remember Win 8 at launch? Don't be surprised if slowly Win 10 becomes more and more like that, not less.
 
Windows XP was perfect enough, I still go to the old control panels if I can...

The flat design text & buttons are... still feel very weird and inefficient to me.
I have xp on a very old laptop that is stuffed in my closet. every once in a while when I am bored I take it out and use it. Still works fine.
 
Win 10 which is simply a refinement of Win 8 has one major philosophy driving design, a unified user experience between desktop and mobile. The aim is to increase mobile share by leveraging the installed desktop user base. So actually letting users choose to not use the mobile focused UI would work counter to that aim. Remember Win 8 at launch? Don't be surprised if slowly Win 10 becomes more and more like that, not less.
no way! win8 was a disaster. I had it on my laptop and had so much problems with using old programs, I had to pay to remove it and install win7, which is what I still use.
 
Back