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Windows Software Ugly, Boring & Uninspired
An anonymous reader writes "CPU magazine has written a very straight-to-the-point editorial on the lack of quality and innovation in software for the mainstream OS. They compare it to the Mac, which is found in a much different light. Where has all the innovation gone?" From the article: "There's too much coal and not enough diamonds within the sphere of downloads. The greatest pieces of software are plagued by unintelligent design, and very few rise to the level of ubiquity. Windows users don't have a strong sense of belonging; there's no user community rallying around the platform. We use the computer, certainly, or is the computer using us?"
There isn't one of them that gives you functionality that your browser doesn't already afford. Sure, they're pretty, but what's going to happen is that as people amass more and more of these widgets, the dashboard becomes cluttered and slow (it already is painfully slow on my MDD 1.25GHz G4, and that's just with the stock widgets, with the default set active only). Then there's going to be the question as to how to organize them all... the faux dock at the bottom is already insufficient. I know, let's stick a menu in there! Great idea!
Why not call it the Widgets Menu? And when you choose a widget from the menu, up comes the widget! Just like if you had chosen a bookmark from the Bookmarks menu from your favorite browser: up comes the web page containing the info you sought!
Or, we could create a page of little Widgets links, and then the user could click on the link and up pops the widget! Just as if it were a web page full of links, each leading to a separate page with different and useful functionality!
So my question is, why not just use the browser? IT ALREADY DOES THESE THINGS!
Not as pretty? Find a web page that has a decent designer/artist behind it. Between CSS and the GiMP, there's no excuse for ugly web pages anymore.
If you want to throw stones, throw them at a target that deserves to get hit: the Desktop Metaphor. Menus and windows with scrollbars and dialog boxes and lions and tigers and bears. The same constraints that Windows suffers under are also felt by Mac OS X, Gnome and KDE users too.
The branding has nothing to do with it.
BTW, Chris Pirillo, the guy who wrote this, he's the one who couldn't make the cut as a TechTV ScreenSaver, isn't that right?
Does it work? Does it make me more productive? That's what I want to know. Everything else is secondary, especially how "inspired" and "exciting" it is.
They'll be creative and innovative any day now; as soon as they find a creative, innovative company to buy...
Would not change until strong economic incentives force microsoft to innovate.
Monopolies are strange that way.
This is just an idea, but has anybody considered that maybe our computers are designed around our personalities?
Think about it, who do you think of when you think of a mac user? Granted, there are many out there, but when I think of a hardcore mac user I think of somebody who is into designing music, movies, graphics editing, etc. They are designed to cater to a group of people who are more creative and right brained.
How about your average PC user? Picture an office cubicle. You'r accountant, lawyer, and doctor all use a PC.
Let us never forget that pretty software does not automatically mean functional software, and please God let us never make well structured code and functionality less of a priority than UI "prettyness".
With rapid development environments like Visual Basic around for the Windows OS, it's not surprising that there is a lot more crap out there for Windows, verses other OS that don't have these easy to pick up IDEs. It simply takes a more developed skill set to write apps for MAC and *nix. I think that when (not if) a high quality and easy to learn development platform for Linux comes along, we'll start to see mountains of shit for it, too. Indeed, think about all the crappy web apps and dynamic web sites, written in your scripting language de Jour, this is what we have to look forward to.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I sure some of this is due to market-share issues. A developer targeting Windows knows there's 200 million new PC shipped each year (and probably a billion PCs installed). They figure that their software only needs to be good enough to snag only 1% of users to sell 2,000,000 copies a year and gain a 5 million user install base. In contrast, the Mac developer looks at Apple's 3% market-share (say 6 million Macs/year) and thinks that they need to attract 33% of the user base to reach the same target sales figure.
The result is that only the most dedicated and talented Mac developers survive whereas any idiot with a C-compiler can create a PC software title and be assured of some sales (just convince 1-in-10,000 PC users to spend $29 and you gross $600k per year). Given the huge market-share disparity, Mac software must be 30X as good as PC software to survive in its small marketplace. (OK, its a bit more complicated due to dilution by competing vendors, but I'm sure its much harder on the Mac side to attract an economically viable user-base for software package.)
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Google's Picassa is the first piece of really inspired interface design I've seen in a long time. If only Windows / Mac / Linux was this easy to use and looked as good.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Safari does indeed have tabbed browsing and pop up blocking. Not sure what you mean by ad blocking. Also the case for Orwellian design seems kind of weak to me. If you don't like it then don't buy it.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
As for his other claims -- boring and uninspired. What is he asking for? Is he asking for more bells & whistles? What makes a software "boring"? More innovation? What is he looking for a Windows software to do but can't find?
It is about design skills. The Mac has always employed good designers, both for the user interface and the computer design. Maybe it is just me, but after nearly 30 years of using computers, there is something about sitting down in front of the latest Mac computers and operating systems that makes me want to use them. They look good - they are attractive. I have never felt this about any version of Windows (and I have used them all).
One of the things that few companies do is integrated into the Windows Shell. Windows provides ample opportunities for an application to just dissapear and become part of the operating system. For instance, in a chat program, your chat buddies could appear as icons in a folder right alongside your other files --- dragging and dropping a file onto your friend's icon would start transferring the file. There are a lot of other examples, but part of the problem I think is pride (and not just in windows development) Everybody wants to do something a little differently. If you have a standardized skinnable shell and plug in your apps around that it would do a lot for the appeal of the product.
And don't even get started on annoying popups and those freaking MS Office icons like the paperclip guy.
To me, a big part of design is noticability: if I take my time to notice it, it's getting in the way of the work I want to do.
First off, I didn't read the article, but I will comment
Yep, that's stupid, all right.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And by the way, if you don't like safari, don't use it. In fact if you don't like it DELETE IT! It's just an app, like anything else. Yes the webkit framework will remain for any apps coded to it, but you don't need Safari. Camino and Firefox have always seemed relatively quick to me.
As for OS X being rigid, I think an OS should be fairly rigid, in the same way that the laws of physics are rigid. It's a constraint, but one that we all understand instinctively. And if you don't like it, there are plenty of extensions to it. Check out www.unsanity.com
Show me a WinXX hack as cool as QuickSilver. Hell, windows doesn't even have hot corners.
As for windows theming, most of it is crap. Nice for eyecandy for a while, but totally lacking in consistency.
Want to talk about rigidity? How about the fact that in Windows you only have one command line interpreter? And cmd.exe can't even copy/paste like a normal app.
The one thing that bugs me in OS X is the lack of a quick route to executing a shell command, a la Start:Run in windows, but QuickSilver pretty much fixes this.
That's a feature, not a bug. I HATE the "belonging" aspect of the Mac community. I just want to own the freaking hammer, I don't want to join a hammer cult.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
So, yet another Generation Y-er (OMG! 3 'no carrier' jokes in the first paragraph! U R TEH FUNNYMAN!!!!!11one) posts yet another mindless rant about how Windows sucks. We hear how great his PSP is, how well Apple is doing with the iPod (thank you, Captain Obvious!) and how OS X apps are infinitely superior to Windows apps.
The twin barbs of his attack: Dashboard (which has already been discussed to death; let's just say that as many people hate it as love it) and an application called "Comic Life", which this grizzled veteran of computing (look at the picture) thinks "is likely to drive even the most die-hard Windows user to switch to OS X." Yeah: I'm gonna dump my whole platform to make my digital pictures cuter. Uh-huh. I'm surprised he didn't sneak a 'BSOD' joke into his rant or spell Windows with 'BL' or a dollar sign.
One mark in his favor: clearly, he is an expert in boring and uninspired. A lame blog post about Windows software sucking? Wow. Next.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
If every developer innovated new metaphors for common tasks, the tools would quickly become terribly confusing IMHO. I think it's good with standarized terms for common tasks. Boring isn't exactly the word I'd choose here. Besides, he seem to complain about Windows software in particular, and many of these terms aren't specific to Windows.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Windows users don't have a strong sense of belonging; there's no user community rallying around the platform. We use the computer, certainly, or is the computer using us?"
That is one of the dumbest things I have read all week. Normal folks use computers as a means to an end. Just because the author gets a hardon over extraneous features and eye candy that add nothing to productivity, and is apparently thirteen and in need of being part of a group, doesn't mean the rest of us give a flying shit.
Seriously, people shouldn't even waste their time reading the front page blurb on this one.
Vote for Pedro
In fact, I would say that the Apple experience is very Orwellian. "Here is the interface you will use. It is the same as every other interface. Your ability to configure it and later it is very limited, but you will learn to love it and live with it."
That's like complaining that the Federation ships in Star Trek are oppressively minimalistic in interior design. These are things which people actually prefer. There's nothing Orwellian about it. It's why New York City is so much easier to navigate than Atlanta, why ancient Rome looks so sane, why the Spaniards were blown away when they saw Tenochtitlan. These things were all planned. The Windows and Linux interfaces show the effects of suburban sprawl, OSX doesn't allow it.
The Apple interface is just as Orwellian as the Google interface. The reason you don't get this with Windows is that Windows has always used a half-assed copy of whatever Apple's doing with its interface. Unix grew up with interfaces that you had to just deal with, and Linux is in constant flux between feature creep and slimming down.
Direct away from face when opening.
I've played with the different Windows programs Google offers (Picasa, Google Earth) and I must say I am damn impressed. In a world of ugly widgets and blaring blue start bars, those programs are *beautiful* - I normally use OS X, and they'd be beautiful even by Mac standards. They're amazing programs to boot (well, GE is, Picasa is only "pretty good").
And that's why Google is not yet evil ^^ although they have copyrighted the world....
The media would have you believe 80% of the women are ugly, boring and uninspired based upon what they hold up as a reference model (heroin-addict thin, vapeous, self-absorbed, etc.) This does not make most women less productive than their "beautiful" counterparts in Hollywood movies or New York runways. In fact, most succesful families and productive careers are spearheaded by women who look nothing like Paris Hilton.
Likewise, there are a bunch of ugly Windows applications doing a lot of work. Like it or not, Microsoft made it possible for mediocre programmers to make boring apps that get a lot of work done. These programs may not be innovative with pretty UI gimmicks that suck up CPU cycles, they tend to use more resources than they ought to, and they are fraught with spaghetti and bugs, but they get the work done.
The lack of innovation may help minimize training when teaching new apps. Teaching new paradigms is expensive and time consuming.
Like it or not, ugly is what most work is getting done on.
Don't underestimate the artistic aspect of the experience.
...
The careful thought put into every pixel on your screen, the whole designer feel of the experience is something impossible to quantify, but it definitely makes late nights with my computer a lot more pleasant than they are under Windows.
I recently set up a new Dell for someone, and despite a pretty nice flat panel monitor it was a pretty drab experience. Of course it didn't help that every piece of software on the machine was trying to sell me something
D
Windows users don't have a strong sense of belonging; there's no user community rallying around the platform
In other news, there's no 'user community' rallying about around the world. I don't see people running around and screaming "HELL YEAH EARTH FOR TEH WIN!" at least.
When something's so big and so vast and there's no majority to keep oppressing you, there's no "user community rallying". People just accept it how it is. If Mac was the dominant platform, if the niche feeling was lost, there would be no 'macintosh user community' feel anymore.
I hate Axialis IconWorkshop on windows precisely because it is custom skinned. I also hate the custom controls in Office. It makes the UI look inconsistent.
You wants skins or icons? Google "interface lift", "resexcellence" "iconfactory", or "unsanity".
Some Apps to google would be cleardock (free), shapeshifter (payware), Tinkertool, WindowsShadeX and Silk to get you started.
Ad blocking can be done in safari with a "free" usercss.css file out of the box. I'm not going to post a link to the one I made but google should turn something up for you. I got mine originally from a mozilla centric site. Once you download the ad blocking stylesheet, select it on the "Advanced" tab in the Safari prefs.
Many people like the consistency of the UI and the adherence to the UI guidelines as it promotes user friendliness by allowing a user to move from one progeam to another without having to shift gears. Do you consider skins to be innovation? I consider useful/innovative features presented in an user friendly manner to be "real" innovation and far more important that having program be "customizable" by an end user/enthusiuast. Leave UI design to the professionals.
iTunes dashboard widgets are the answer to the "desire" of some to have a "skinnable" interface for iTunes.
When I was a windows user, I spent a lot of time trying to cover up the shit that is windows with skinning/customization apps from aqua-soft and stardock but I realized that it was just skin deep and none of it fundamentally changed how windows worked. I was trying hard to not only make windows look more like a mac but also to improve the consistency of the interface. Customization is boring. Using easy to use apps to "start something" on a mac is fun.
PS. That was a half-assed attempt at a troll. Try harder next time.
PPS. If you see something lacking on the mac, tell someone or better yet, start a project yourself and start coding.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Most users I've noticed are perplexed with explorer and its interface. They know specific hierarchies like My Documents and Program Files, but as soon as you drop them into an unfamiliar shell hierarchy, they aren't sure "what to click on" or what in general is possible.
A new interface based in windows shell may be organized the same as others but is functionally different, and people end up looking for things that they are "allowed" to click, like they might an exe in Program Files, or a doc in My Documents. It is far from intuitive, as these custom hierarchies don't necessarily order things intuitively and even when they do, functionality varies from object to object whether you click, double click, or drag and drop.
Functionality of different actions should be implicit in the design, so they can be inferred by those unfamiliar with what actions are possible in a particular application context. Now if windows made it standard that right clicking on an object should not only bring up object-specific options, but also describe simply what drag and click operations are available with respect to that object, then these interfaces might not be such a mystery.
People aren't that dumb, they'll learn given context sensitive documentation like this. Finding their way to documentation is otherwise too frustrating, as it is often mired in a web of unfamiliar material. The frustration the average joe faces at a PC is enough to make him learn, if given a more accessible way to find the immediately relevant sources. He doesn't need to understand why the whole damn system works to find one particular solution, he'll generalize that with enough access to particular solutions.
Lets look at some statistics.
.5? Why not just make it version 1 and clean up any nagging bugs? Unless, of course, they plan on adding more features on their roadmap.
.01 and such. Not even a tenth of a final version. Granted I know that open source projects move slowly, but why even bother advertising your project when it isn't even 1/10th of the way done?
Marketshare for Desktop OS
Windows ~90%
MacOS ~5%
Linux ~3%
That means that for every great app, there is likely to be nearly 100x more terrible apps for Windows than for the other operating systems. Its like the Playstation. Because Sony has the greater market, they also have the larger number of terrible games. An operating system does not make an application good or bad, regardless of whether pretty widgets are in the toolbar. Personally there are quite a few Windows applications that I could not live without that do not have any sort of linux equivalent good enough to allow me to switch.
Here are a few:
Mp3tag (Best tagger out there)
Photoshop
Illustrator
Reason
Ableton Live
Reaktor
Sound Forge
Picasa2
CDex
Alcohol 120%
GAMES GAMES GAMES GAMES
I could go on, but the fact of the matter is that at the very least Linux needs to start getting some serious sound applications for me to make the switch. I used to dual boot, but in the end it was such a pain anytime I wanted to play a game or work on some music that I gave up and stuck with the one environment that has all of my needs satisfied. MacOS is kind of interesting and has all the audio software I would ever need, but at what cost? More expensive hardware and about 0 games I'd be interested in. For what I didn't have to pay for my copy of windows, I'd be awfully hard pressed to start paying apple for an OS update every 6 months.
My point is that its not the platform that it is the problem its just that a lot of lazy and piss poor developers tend to flock to the platform that is the most popular. To be perfectly honest, if you want a great example of a platform that has a lot of god awful software, just take a look at linux and the bazillion apps that never got past their second alpha prerelease.
Hell, just look at how many system tools are included in distributions that are not even version 1 yet. Granted I've had very few problems with a lot of the console tools I've used, but after a while you start to realize that a little bit of polish goes an awful long ways. For instance, apt-get:
aptluna:~# apt-get -version
apt 0.5.28.6 for linux i386 compiled on Mar 22 2005 07:17:03
Granted apt is about as solid as a console tool can get, but version
I love how when I look for linux apps in sourceforge, a great deal of what I find that would be interesting to use is at version
I know people here resent it being called open sores software, but in too many cases, calling it open sores would almost be a compliment.
zosxavius photography
1) There was no benefit to making the registry a non-text file, except that MS wanted to make it more difficult for end-users to poke around and understand more clearly what's going on
2) Applications do have to use the OS to read/write/update (so far so good), but the OS *never tracks what the application puts there*. As a result, every developer puts their copy protection in obscure keys in the registry. Even worse, and unforgiveable, are applications that leave crap behind.
3) Keeping it all in one place (i.e. registry) sounds like a great idea... until you realize you can't readily *do* anything with it from a user's perspective because guess what... the OS won't let you do a simple "c:>copy registry to registry.backup".
This could be solved easily:
1) Make it impossible for an application to write to c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 or... you get the idea
2) Registry files should be stored locally in the directory the application was stored in, or better yet in "My Directory". The system would have its own registry stored in the system directory.
3) They should be text files that can be copied by the user easily using standard tools.
4) When a program is uninstalled, the OS would ensure all traces of the registry entry are deleted (this is easy because of #2)
5) The only thing allowed to alter a program's registry entry is that program. And every time its altered, a new version is kept. This would allow users to go back to old version if required.
6) A user could tell the OS to lock a registry so that nothing can alter it
7) The system registry could never be altered by any application. Requests to modify would require the root password entered by the user. Every time.
This is easy. But MS makes it hard and in the process makes registry damage fatal to the system. With no way to properly back it up. So they have goofy "restore points" that you can't explain readily what it does. So then they'll add more utilities instead of following the KISS principle.
I sometimes feel over at MS they have a bunch of brilliant programmers who have never set foot outside of Microsoft and don't understand the issues with their own product.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
nokilli said:
.pdf imaging / display, memory management (there was a guy asking after loading apps from a RAM disk on an InDesign mailing list 'cause in Windows XP he couldn't keep large numbers of apps open for extended periods of time and wanted to be able to launch them more quickly than his RAID 0 array would allow), pervasive drag-drop &c.
>The Steve Capps' Finder delivered with the original 128K
>Mac *still* blows away today's Finder in terms of
>elegance, responsiveness and overall usability. Moreover,
>I see no difference between today's Finder and WIndows
>Explorer, except for this odd example you give us which
>really has nothing to do with anything. BTW, I've never
>had the need for force-quit Windows Explorer. You really
>want to call that a feature?
Are you not aware that on the Mac System as shipped on a 128KB Mac Folders were purely a visual organizational cue only expressed / made use of in the Finder, aren't you? When you used a File Open dialog one saw _everything_ that was on a give floppy (except the folders) in a flat listing. Given that, I think your claims are suspect; to iterate:
1st - by hiding the toolbar as a default one can get Finder windows in Mac OS X to behave pretty much like System 6 (which was pretty much like the much older System I see on my wife's SE when I haul out my _Through the Looking Glass_ game floppy, modulo things added since like list view, folders which are actually directories as opposed to visual aids &c.).
2nd - my wife's SE (same CPU speed as my 128KB Mac I bought in 1984) is quite a bit more sluggish than the G5 at work when working from a floppy --- perceived response is about the same from the HD).
3rd - Mac OS X affords a lot of really nice features I'm not finding equivalents for on the XP box at work:
- Miller column file browser (I suppose you could use http://www.winbrowser.com/ 'cept that last time i tried it it crashed, a lot)
- no convenient place for temporarily storing a folder one needs temporary access to --- currently at work I'm updating links to some art w/ munged filenames in an InDesign document --- I drag the current destination folder into the sidebar to drag files into, then I can click on the same folder in the sidebar in the file open dialog in ID to get there w/ a single click, when I'm done w/ that folder I drag it out of the Sidebar and it goes ``poof'' --- how does one do something like that in Windows w/ anywhere near the efficiency?
- the Dock affords one a single place to launch and switch applications --- why is it that in XP I click in one place to launch (the Start Menu) but use another area (the Task Bar) to switch --- in Mac OS X I click on the same icon either way.
Lots of other niceties in Mac OS X such as Services, pervasive
William
(who really wishes Windows XP was well-suited enough to his working style to allow him to justify purchasing a Tablet PC)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I've learned that there really is something powerful about combining several generalized apps (like in bash with pipes and such). Apple seems to be catching on to this idea more with their "Automator" in the newest OSX. Windows still doesn't let you combine things in this way, so the solution to most problems is to download (or write) another specialized program.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?