Are Windows XP/7 Users Smarter Than a 3-Year-Old?
theodp writes "Those sounding the alarm about the difficulty in making the transition to Windows 8, especially on traditional computers, should check out Adam Desrosiers' son Julian, a 3-year-old kid who uses Windows 8 like a champ. 'I read these tech pundits and journalists discussing how hard it's gonna be for the general public to learn the new UI of Windows 8,' says Desrosiers. 'Nonsense. The long and short of it is: If my 3 years old son can learn Windows 8 through very moderate usage, anybody with half a brain can do so too.' Bill Gates has already successfully made the transition to what he calls an 'unbelievably great' Microsoft Surface. On Friday, we'll start finding out if current Windows XP and Windows 7 users are also smarter than the average 3-year-old!"
XCom: Enemy Unknown has a 3D main interface where you can go to the seperate areas, with a fly animation zooming in on the sub sections of your base.
Nice the first time, meh the second, the 1000th time you scream and rage at your monitor and hurl the cat out the window.
Newbie friendly is a great market because you never run out of newbies but the moment a newbie has grown beyond the need for a newbie interface, you lost him forever.
There isn't much repeat business in the training wheel market.
W8 is MS Bob all over again. For older people like me, the desktop is like my toes, haven't seen it in decades. I startup the applications I need automatically and never even minimize them, the desktop could display my golden ticket to nirvana and I will never ever see it.
W8 to me adds just cruft I don't need or want and that increasingly seems to desire to get in the way. I don't use active desktop, widgets or gadgets (98, Vista and W7). The desktop has one use, to stop my applications from falling into the monitor.
I need a start menu to groups application, a taskbar to switch and that is it. End of fucking story.
And trying to sell me on something new because a 3yr old likes it... 3yr olds also like teletubbies, boogers and the word poop. poop... POOP! eheh POOP!!!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The OS is just a platform to run your apps. Why are they making it seem like the OS is more than just a platform to run your apps? My software uses Windows, and I use my software, doesn't mean I use windows.
This whole idiotic notion of the OS being important started when Microsoft realized Windows was the most used desktop OS in the world, they figured people must love Windows. Nobody loves Windows! We all cope with it because it runs our god damn software. The only way Windows could be better is if it got out of the way and made our software run better and faster. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that, they somehow think people care about the OS. I'm sure a huge majority of the users don't even know what an OS is.
Admit it, if you use Windows, it's only because it runs your software. The majority of my software runs only on Windows... but that's changing. Linux has lots of great software, and the moment when Linux has the majority of my software will be the moment when I ditch Windows for good and never look back, and I can see that date in the horizon already and there's nothing Microsoft can do to stop it. (except anti-competitiveness)
That fails to explain why a three-year-old has no problems using it
Try watching the video. The kid is absolutely terrible at using Windows 8. If this is the new definition of 'a champ', then the interface of Windows 8 can indeed be called 'a champ of an interface'.
His dad has clearly (over the course of a month) learnt him some of the basics (like 'pin to the side') that work, but generally:
- He has difficulties opening the start screen
- He has difficulties making a program fullscreen again
- He has difficulties in getting the list of open apps to show, erroneously selects the time app and then on second try stumbles upon the actual list of open applications.
And if you think about it, the kid hasn't actually done anything remotely complex. Nobody ever argued that it would be impossible for new users to click on the fucking huge tiles to open an application or to learn a couple of basic gestures.
Everybody did and does say that it most of the gestures are counterintuitive, cumbersome and that the interface in general fails when trying to do anything more complex than playing Angry Birds.
This article is fucking bullshit.