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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?
They'll be creative and innovative any day now; as soon as they find a creative, innovative company to buy...
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".
I don't use OSX for the pretty interface. I use OSX for the very usable interface built on a solid BSD foundation, with a nice big utility door that I can step into when I want or need to get my hands directly onto that BSD foundation.
I don't need two machines or a dual-boot Windows/Linux box. I have my pretty, useful, friendly desktop (fully media-capable too, in a way that linux simply never has been) and if I want my unix-y goodness, I just pop up a terminal. Life is beautiful!
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.
It simply takes a more developed skill set to write apps for MAC and *nix.
I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Have you even heard of Xcode? It's like Visual Basic, except it's free, a little more intuitive (to me, at least), and it can import make files like they were project files.
Direct away from face when opening.
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.
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