Of course making UIs is a balancing act. I'm with you there. The problem is. IMO, that recently UIs have swinged too much towards being good for touch use. That makes some sense since mobile is where the growth is but such an UI is problematic in certaing settings. e.g.: Windows 10. We know that Microsoft wanted to make it suitable for tablets and convertible devices but Windows is still used by a lot of people (I'd wager a big majority) with a keyboard and mouse. You can certainly use a touch oriented UI with a mouse but a lot of real estate is wasted by making the targets big enough for touch use.
That's one of the reasons I hate Win 10 so much. And Microsoft have stated its UI will change more and more towards a touch one. All I want is a checkbox that lets me use the UI of 7...but no, that would be way too respectul for users.
I'd agree with you if HDDs didn't have any advantage over SSDs like price per byte...but since they do it's fair to think that someone may prefer the larger storage offered by HDDs
It might be a bit convoluted but you could run the web applications locally and just use webassembly as a sort of VM that happens to be runnable on many browsers and OSs. Then you'd have total control about the availability of the application and you could also run it in the OS of your choice
Yep, I also want to pay to get a decent Win 10 version as I paid my Win 7 license a few years ago.
I do NOT want a free lunch, I want a nice OS and I'm willing to pay for it. Sadly, Microsoft is no longer interested in selling a nice version of Windows to people. Also, while they may tweak a few things now and then it's pretty clear what I want from Windows (basically an updated version of 7, with an UI adapted to mouse usage, no ads, no forced Microsoft services and no spying) is fundamentally opposed to want Ms seem to wan from 10 so a "nice" version of 10 will never happen.
Personally, I'm still on Firefox because it's still for me the best browser not because I like their changes of the last few versions.
I'm glad it hasn't affected their marketshare much because having Firefox is good for diversity and for the web ecosystem (if anything to prevent Chrome from becoming the next IE). But they aren't done with the disruptive changes: Some time this year (I think it was in version 57) the old style add ons/extensions will cease to work and with them it'll dissapear one of the most important reasons for running Firefox. That could really affect the marketshare.
Every update of Windows 10 seems to include more and more extraneus things which really don't belong in an OS. The OS should be lean, and if you wished, you should be able to install all these extras.
As it's now, Windows 10 includes lots of Microsoft software I have no use for that just wastes bits on my HD.
Of course, I'm not talking about the spying/telemetry since it's pretty obvious that's one of the main features (for MS) of Win 10 and sure as hell they're not gonna remove it.
Yeah, it's hard to make UIs that work everywhere but you could work well on the vast majority of devices just by having 2 UIs: One designed for mouse and keyboard and another one for touch. Yeah, that wouldn't work for something like smartwatches but if you wanted to do some kind of complex work on such a tiny device you'd realistically had to connect it to a dock with a big monitor and keyboard and mouse anyway.
What I do hate is things like what you said: Forcing a touch oriented UI on everyone since it's the lowest common denominator
Yeah, you can't and that ties with what I was going to say about this topic: Technical limitations are the least of your worries. With enough work they could be overcome but the problem is many of the mentioned OS are owned by companies and usually they're interested in having exclusive software that only runs on their OS. That's the case for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android and more so on the consoles where exclusive games are one of the most important features to get people to buy that console. Linux and other open source OS would be the exception since there aren't interests in having exclusive software there.
TL;dr : Technical problems can be overcome but propietary OS vendors want exclusive software
I don't want to leave Win 7 either but if I want to keep using Windows I'll have to someday. Some day new hardware won't have drivers for 7, some day most new games won't work on 7.
I hate Win 10 as much as anyone and I plan to only use it as a games console when I do have to use it but people can only keep using Win 7 for so long.
Worst of all, Windows is an OS. It's the basic software of your computer. As such it must be stable and performant. So agile it's the absolute worst possible development process for it.
Good job Ms!
I love what the ReactOS guys are doing but the OS is years away from being usable.
I peruse the commit logs from time to time and they seem to have around 10 devs. You can't make much measurable progress with those numbers of people on a task the size of cloning Windows.
To get a Windows clone good enough to be a daily driver would require tens if not hundreds of devs.
Yes, Android also does it and it's also wrong.
What I'd like every OS to have is an option of turning off all gathering of data for money making purposes (i.e. paying the OS with your data) and to pay instead with money. You know, like Windows used to be.
I'm not sure if that should be legally required (I'm not sure either if I want governments putting their noses so deep in everything) but it would be nice.
Yep, I wouldn't care much if you could get something similar to Win 7, but no, you can't get rid of the touch optimized UI at any cost. And it seems the UI is going more touchy. Yikes!
It will obviously make hardware more expensive since fewer units will be made
Microsoft is pushing hard for that not to happen and it's giving desktop Windows the worst things of smartphone OS (integrated publicity and spying, touch optimized UIs...)
I agree with most of what you say. Very nice post btw.
Yes, sometimes painful transitions are necessary and I undestand the reason why compatibility with the old extensions has to go but what it hurts me most is that they can't even be recreated for the new APIs. This is gonna be a huge blow for Firefox.
Btw, are you involved with Firefox in some way? You seem to know a lot.
I am aware that they've intentionally chosen an API similar to that of Chrome's. That's a good thing.
The bad part is that this new API is much less powerful, it doesn't let you do many things that you could previously do. So, many of the more complex extensions just can't be done with the new API and thus they'll have to die. The fault doesn't lie with the extension developers but with Firefox which have failed to provide an API as powerful as the old one. They've claimed they're open to additions to the API but it's pretty obvious I'll never be a good as the old one
The vast majority of them got replaced because the new version got released.
Me I keep my phones as long as they work. The last one worked for 3'5 years until the Wifi started working intermittently
Yeah, I'm one of those that I'll upgrade bedrugingly when I have no other choice.
Right now the only thing tying me to Windows is games. When there're a few games that I want to play that don't work on 7 or my new hardware doesn't I'll have to upgrade.
Microsoft are not (that) stupid. They do this crap because they know they have people by the balls. Look at what happens whey they have competition: When the PS4 and XBone were shown Microsoft said theirs was to require online connectivity to play at all times and other anti-consumer things. When Sony mocked them saying theirs wouldn't require that and gamers said en masse they were only gonna buy the PS4 Ms retracted in an instant.
TL;DR They only do this because they can. If they had competition they'd have to be pro consumer
Infeasible because of security concerns? That's the only one I can think of because it should take a long time until web stop working on Firefox because it doesn't implement the latest standards
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Of course making UIs is a balancing act. I'm with you there. The problem is. IMO, that recently UIs have swinged too much towards being good for touch use. That makes some sense since mobile is where the growth is but such an UI is problematic in certaing settings. e.g.: Windows 10. We know that Microsoft wanted to make it suitable for tablets and convertible devices but Windows is still used by a lot of people (I'd wager a big majority) with a keyboard and mouse. You can certainly use a touch oriented UI with a mouse but a lot of real estate is wasted by making the targets big enough for touch use. ...but no, that would be way too respectul for users.
That's one of the reasons I hate Win 10 so much. And Microsoft have stated its UI will change more and more towards a touch one. All I want is a checkbox that lets me use the UI of 7
I'd agree with you if HDDs didn't have any advantage over SSDs like price per byte...but since they do it's fair to think that someone may prefer the larger storage offered by HDDs
It might be a bit convoluted but you could run the web applications locally and just use webassembly as a sort of VM that happens to be runnable on many browsers and OSs. Then you'd have total control about the availability of the application and you could also run it in the OS of your choice
CSS grid is already supported by Firefox in version 52 which was released a few days ago.
Yep, I also want to pay to get a decent Win 10 version as I paid my Win 7 license a few years ago.
I do NOT want a free lunch, I want a nice OS and I'm willing to pay for it. Sadly, Microsoft is no longer interested in selling a nice version of Windows to people. Also, while they may tweak a few things now and then it's pretty clear what I want from Windows (basically an updated version of 7, with an UI adapted to mouse usage, no ads, no forced Microsoft services and no spying) is fundamentally opposed to want Ms seem to wan from 10 so a "nice" version of 10 will never happen.
Personally, I'm still on Firefox because it's still for me the best browser not because I like their changes of the last few versions.
I'm glad it hasn't affected their marketshare much because having Firefox is good for diversity and for the web ecosystem (if anything to prevent Chrome from becoming the next IE). But they aren't done with the disruptive changes: Some time this year (I think it was in version 57) the old style add ons/extensions will cease to work and with them it'll dissapear one of the most important reasons for running Firefox. That could really affect the marketshare.
Every update of Windows 10 seems to include more and more extraneus things which really don't belong in an OS. The OS should be lean, and if you wished, you should be able to install all these extras.
As it's now, Windows 10 includes lots of Microsoft software I have no use for that just wastes bits on my HD.
Of course, I'm not talking about the spying/telemetry since it's pretty obvious that's one of the main features (for MS) of Win 10 and sure as hell they're not gonna remove it.
I didn't intend to put any order in that list
Yeah, it's hard to make UIs that work everywhere but you could work well on the vast majority of devices just by having 2 UIs: One designed for mouse and keyboard and another one for touch. Yeah, that wouldn't work for something like smartwatches but if you wanted to do some kind of complex work on such a tiny device you'd realistically had to connect it to a dock with a big monitor and keyboard and mouse anyway.
What I do hate is things like what you said: Forcing a touch oriented UI on everyone since it's the lowest common denominator
Yeah, you can't and that ties with what I was going to say about this topic: Technical limitations are the least of your worries. With enough work they could be overcome but the problem is many of the mentioned OS are owned by companies and usually they're interested in having exclusive software that only runs on their OS. That's the case for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android and more so on the consoles where exclusive games are one of the most important features to get people to buy that console. Linux and other open source OS would be the exception since there aren't interests in having exclusive software there.
TL;dr : Technical problems can be overcome but propietary OS vendors want exclusive software
I don't want to leave Win 7 either but if I want to keep using Windows I'll have to someday. Some day new hardware won't have drivers for 7, some day most new games won't work on 7.
I hate Win 10 as much as anyone and I plan to only use it as a games console when I do have to use it but people can only keep using Win 7 for so long.
He has already re dumped other batches of cartrigdes and already found some bad dumps...so I'd say this redumping is good to have.
VR needs very low latency numbers to work. I don't think you can achieve that without wires (at least yet)
I can't wait for project Neon!, an even flatter, uglier more touchy UI. I'm sure it's gonna be a delight to use on my desktop PC
Worst of all, Windows is an OS. It's the basic software of your computer. As such it must be stable and performant. So agile it's the absolute worst possible development process for it.
Good job Ms!
I love what the ReactOS guys are doing but the OS is years away from being usable.
I peruse the commit logs from time to time and they seem to have around 10 devs. You can't make much measurable progress with those numbers of people on a task the size of cloning Windows.
To get a Windows clone good enough to be a daily driver would require tens if not hundreds of devs.
So charge more, but right now there's no option to get a clean Win 10 for any price
Yes, Android also does it and it's also wrong.
What I'd like every OS to have is an option of turning off all gathering of data for money making purposes (i.e. paying the OS with your data) and to pay instead with money. You know, like Windows used to be.
I'm not sure if that should be legally required (I'm not sure either if I want governments putting their noses so deep in everything) but it would be nice.
Yep, I wouldn't care much if you could get something similar to Win 7, but no, you can't get rid of the touch optimized UI at any cost. And it seems the UI is going more touchy. Yikes!
I agree with most of what you say. Very nice post btw.
Yes, sometimes painful transitions are necessary and I undestand the reason why compatibility with the old extensions has to go but what it hurts me most is that they can't even be recreated for the new APIs. This is gonna be a huge blow for Firefox.
Btw, are you involved with Firefox in some way? You seem to know a lot.
I am aware that they've intentionally chosen an API similar to that of Chrome's. That's a good thing.
The bad part is that this new API is much less powerful, it doesn't let you do many things that you could previously do. So, many of the more complex extensions just can't be done with the new API and thus they'll have to die. The fault doesn't lie with the extension developers but with Firefox which have failed to provide an API as powerful as the old one. They've claimed they're open to additions to the API but it's pretty obvious I'll never be a good as the old one
The vast majority of them got replaced because the new version got released.
Me I keep my phones as long as they work. The last one worked for 3'5 years until the Wifi started working intermittently
Yeah, I'm one of those that I'll upgrade bedrugingly when I have no other choice.
Right now the only thing tying me to Windows is games. When there're a few games that I want to play that don't work on 7 or my new hardware doesn't I'll have to upgrade.
Microsoft are not (that) stupid. They do this crap because they know they have people by the balls. Look at what happens whey they have competition: When the PS4 and XBone were shown Microsoft said theirs was to require online connectivity to play at all times and other anti-consumer things. When Sony mocked them saying theirs wouldn't require that and gamers said en masse they were only gonna buy the PS4 Ms retracted in an instant.
TL;DR They only do this because they can. If they had competition they'd have to be pro consumer
Infeasible because of security concerns? That's the only one I can think of because it should take a long time until web stop working on Firefox because it doesn't implement the latest standards