I've looked at the 30" monitor setup in an apple store and simply can't understand it -- it takes two mouse sweeps to hit "file", or a really hard accelaration on the mouse.
Personally, I've always found the mouse movement on Macs to be "slow" and the acceleration "weird". Having played with a few Macs, including some with multiple 30" monitors, I found them quite difficult to use simply because the mouse was too slow.
Either way, not ideal. Apple should make it optional to decouple the menu from the top bar and put it in the application window. I'd think that would help them sell fancy hardware.
I think a per-screen menu bar would be a much better fit for their UI. Not having the menubar as part of the app window is kind of one of the major aspects of the Mac UI.
As an example, consider the difference between the Windows 2000 and XP desk tops. Just how is the XP desktop better than the older one? I sure couldn't see any advantage to it.
Personally, I find the new Start Menu vastly quicker and easier to use than the "Classic" Start Menu, to the point that going back to Windows 2000 is quite annoying (the colour scheme I can take or leave, however - I usually turn the garish colours off on any system I'll be using long term). Being able to "lock" the Taskbar is also very useful.
Yet, if you were to use the darn thing (and not switch to the "classic" view), you'd have to figure out again how to do a bunch of stuff you already knew how to do before the interface changed.
Not really. It looks a bit different, but for "legacy functionality" it largely behaves the same.
It's not that the new icon is better or worse than the old one--but why ever change a familiar, easy to recognize icon? It's done to create the illusion of progress, of course.
To fit with the theme of the new system. Same reason all the icons in OS X changed from MacOS Classic. Indeed, when you find an icon in Windows (or OS X) that *hasn't* been updated, it stands out quite a bit and is "jarring".
Whenever someone releases a new version of their software, they think that people won't believe they got their money's worth if the GUI looks the same--so they jazz up the icons.
Of course. That's because no-one thinks the system is any different unless it looks different. Take Vista as an example, which has had *massive* levels of changes made to its lower level systems from prior versions of Windows. Would anyone even case if it didn't come with an updated GUI ? Even on Slashdot - a supposedly tech-oriented site - the only changes in Vista that anyone ever talks about is the GUI.
If Microsoft just released Vista with the old GUI on top, they'd be crucified. Cries of "it just looks the same - FORCED UPGRADE !" would emanate from Slashdot and similar sites, even though the changes under the hood easily match those of a major kernel revision.
Excuse me, but if you've got "exploded" features, then you do not have a problem that can be solved by a revamped GUI--you have bloatware. Clean up the mess, and start over.
Yet another example of how "bloatware" is little more than a term used by people to describe features they have no interest in.
Look, the people at Xerox Park gave us the foundation of a great GUI, and there's no reason to change that basic set of visual metaphors until there's a fundamental change in the mechanics of the computer/human interface. The requirements for a good GUI are well-understood: it should be as simple as possible, it should be consistent between applications, it should use easily recognized familiar symbols and conventions. It most definitely should not change from one moment to the next according to the notions of some guy in Redmond who thinks he can anticipate what I want to do.
IMHO, the next big innovation in UI design will be touchscreens, hopefully of the multitouch variety. I just don't see people talking to their computers effectively.
Well, personally, I don't want to spend 8 hours every day holding my hands up in front of me tapping a screen...
Touchscreens have their uses, to be sure, but I can't see them replacing a keyboard and mouse for general purpose computer usage.
Once something better comes along, such as AI-assisted video/object recognition, it may open options similar to what was in Minority Report.
While that was quite cool to watch, I don't think I'd like to spend 8+ hours every day waving my hands around just to get my job done...
Re:The problem with guis is they don't work
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GUIs Get a Makeover
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· Score: 1
command --help , man command etc
Contextual help will provide you with relevant information far quicker than scrolling through a man page will.
I'm not saying there aren't things the GUI is useful for, however there are definitely things that are faster with a CLI. Oh, and with any filesystem manipulation? forgettaboutit, the cli is your friend.
Bollocks. It's trivial to come up with examples where GUI file manipulation is quicker.
Re:The problem with guis is they don't work
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· Score: 1
There's nothing you can't do in a shell that a gui provides extra ability for, when you've been well trained or decided to -learn- how to use a text mode interface well.
Selecting a group of arbitrary files with similar, but non-contiguous names out of a list and perform an operation on them. Even with tab-completion, a GUI filemanager will generally be quicker (unless it's a truly atrocious implementation). When you take into account criteria that isn't encoded into the filename being used for selection (eg: thumbnails), the difference is even greater.
That's just one example, I'm sure I can think of others, even without delving into the "obvious" stuff like photoshop, CAD and other tasks that specifically involve non-strict manipulation of graphical imagery.
A GUI will certainly allow for some extra functionality right off the bat, when someone is first exposed to a program they know nothing about, but after a few months usage, those who use text mode interfaces will be outstripping their gui counterparts.
There is no reason a well-designed GUI (eg: with extensive keyboard shortcuts) should be meaningfully slower than a CLI, in the general case.
For a simple example, look at a spreadsheet in its most basic form. Tab goes to the next column over, return goes to the next row down. Entire usage of the software can be made in a text screen, and FAR quicker than entering a number, moving to the mouse, moving the mouse to the next cell, clicking, then moving back to the keyboard, when instead you can enter a number, hit return, enter a number, hit return, etc.
It's telling you need to resort to pathological examples like that - which no serious spreadsheet user would do - to try and make a point.
Here's some hints for you:
* Mouse input and GUI are not synonymous.
* Keyboard input and CLI and not synonymous.
* A text mode interface can still be a GUI.
* A text mode interface is not always a CLI.
The "inventors" of the gui really have something to explain.
There are some things GUIs do better than CLIs. Deal with it.
Re:Too much "innovation", too little scope for cha
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Unfortunately too, people learn bad habits and build up expectations that will be with us forever. For example Start/Shutdown is so logically broken, but once people have learnt about the Start button, they expect to see it there.
It makes sense when you understand a) the purpose of the "Start Menu" and b) the history behind it.
The Start Menu is the "one stop shop" for initial tasks in Windows - it's the UI element you go to (or are supposed to) for launching programs, configuring the machine, searching, help, etc, etc. It is (roughly) equivalent to Classic MacOS's Apple Menu, the NeXT Dock, and similar "do it from here" elements in other GUIs. Logically, in Windows, the "Shut Down" command belongs in this UI element and nowhere else (with the possible exception of a dedicated button on the taskbar, like Ubuntu does - although back in the day the problem then would have been wha icon to put on the button).
*Originally* (in the first "Chicago" betas), the Start Menu wasn't actually called the "Start Menu" and didn't have "Start" on it - it was just a button with the Windows logo, much like the GNOME and KDE versions. However, during their usability testing, Microsoft found that users couldn't actually figure out what to do when the system first booted and all they had was an empty desktop and taskbar, with a little Windows logo at one end and a clock at the other (I can't even remember if the clock was there at that stage). So the button got a label - "Start" - to signify that it was the UI element where you "started" to do everything.
First impressions count a lot, so if you take away the Start button most people will feel a bit lost and will have a negative experience. Thus people won't want to let go of Start even if it is in their longer term interests to learn something better.
It's interesting to note that in Vista, the "Start" label is gone. Presumably Microsoft's usability studies have concluded that the "Start Menu" UI element is now so entrenched, users no longer need to be taught what it is.
While the new trend towards mobile-phone-esque "docking cradles" is a distinct improvement from the "poke a cable out in the glovebox and plug the ipod in there" of early efforts, it still sucks.
I want a head unit that I stick the ipod unit into like a cassette tape.
Dude, you're overlooking the obvious. On Windows machines, just let each monitor be another instance of Terminal Services. You can run 50 different desktops under the same user, if you want.
I'm not a TS expert, but I'm thinking that's not going to work too well with moving windows between screens.
Re:Let's cram more stuff on your screen
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This seems incredibly divorced from reality. Lots of people use multiple screens, and extending the same desktop across those screens works really well to manage the available space.
Well, they _work_, but I wouldn't say they work *well*. Some examples:
* OS X only has a single menu bar for all applications and all screens. So if your active application window isn't on the primary screen and you want to access the menu, you need to track all the way back to whichever screen is the primary to access it. Ditto for the Dock. Why can't there be a Menubar and Dock on each monitor ?
(Personally I've always found it rather ironic that MacOS was the early bringing of good multimonitor support, but its UI really doesn't handle them well).
* Windows has a similar problem with only one Taskbar and only one Start Menu. Why not a Taskbar for each monitor and/or, even better, the ability to pop the Start Menu up directly under the cursor ?
* Mouse tracking across multiple, big displays is slow or inaccurate unless you've got the twitch muscles of a fifteen year old first-person gamer. I want trackers on top of each screen that can monitor where I'm looking and move the mouse cursor to that spot.
* There's (typically) no "maximise across all screens" button.
So we should just take that extra screen and fill it up with pretty desklets? And this will make me a more productive person?
This seems to be the model most people think of when talking about multiple screens. For example, the typical multimonitor Mac user wants one screen for their Photoshop (or whatever) window and the other for all the palettes, toolbars and feedback windows is spawns.
And what's wrong with deleting the directory and all files in Blaser or Bonsi Buddy and have it completely gone?
Nothing, except for:
* The per-user configuration data that can't be stored in the same place
* Any other applications that might be using its functionality
* The data linking $APPLICATION to its uses (eg: filetypes) that must exist in a separate location
To name a few.
I had an issue with my wife's XP home box. I but on a software copy machine to use the scanner and printer. It worked fine. I needed to re-size some photos to e-mail. I fired up the demo photo editor that Dell was kind enough to leave on the system. It wanted all kinds of personal information to register for the 30 day trial, so I quit. That hosed the scanner instalation. Opening the copier software and trying to photocopy a document now results in the TWAIN driver opening, scanning and launching the photo editor that is not registered putting me into the NAG screen. I uninstalled the photo editor. The photo copier is still broken as it try to re-launch the removed photo editor. In DOS I could peruse the Autoexec and Config files and fix something like this. In XP I can't. There is no documentation. I moved the scanner to my Ubuntu box until the next XP box reformat and reinstall.
None of that is the fault of the Registry, nor would any other current system providing equivalent functionality be immune from it.
There is no reason for an application demo to hi-jack the hardware assuming nothing else on the system would use it.
Other than software developer arrogance.
There should be an easy way to fix the damage. There isn't.
Well, there probably is, but without knowing more details about the situation it's hard to say for sure.
In DOS quiting the MIDI player would free the MIDI port for use by the Piano Tutor. Quiting the Piano Tutor would free the MIDI Port for the game, etc.
DOS is not Windows. DOS is little more than a bootloader. Windows actually does things like manage hardware resources and provide standard ways for programs to interoperate.
Uninstalling a program and removing it's system hooks should not be rocket science.
And it's not, assuming the software developer isn't incompetent (or malicious).
No, not even them. *No user* should be directly manipulating data in the Registry, outside of extraordinary circumstances.
NT as a multi-user OS was always an afterthought.
No, it was conceived and designed as a multiuser OS from day one.
Besides, the concept began (in Microsoft culture) with Win 3.1, which was single user only.
No, it came from NT (I seem to recall the concept - like much NT's design - actually came from something similar in VMS). An extremely primitive version might have appeared in Windows 3.1 (I can't remember) as part of the migration strategy from DOS-based to NT-based Windows, however.
Anyway, how is your statement a requirement for a registry? A multi-user, multi-tasking OS has to be able to do this with almost everything, including files.
Text files wouldn't allow concurrent write access to individual lines (= Registry keys).
With NT 3.x, you wanted the fastest machine you could get with at least 16mb of RAM.
12M was fine (not that there was much to run in those days). Note also that when the Registry would have been conceived and designed (ca. 1990) was not when NT 3.1 was released (ca. 1993).
To users other than/. geeks, what is the difference between Linux and OSX, other than that OSX works out of the box for everybody, not just computer experts. Both have the same Unix heritage, but OSX has many more easy to install and set up programs.
I'd just like to point out that they *don't* have "the same Unix heritage", and that's one of the main reasons OS X is better in certain ways.
You can say that users should never be delving into the registry, but the plain fact is that sometimes it is necessary because software screws things up. Even Microsoft's knowledge base says that certain registry changes need to be made to make repairs.
Indeed. But the important point here is that since it's never meant to be user-visible, how "cryptic" the content of the Registry is in no way a design or implementation error. Since the only things that should ever modify it should be doing so programmatically, no guidelines are in place to make its contents "user friendly", nor is there any real reason to do so.
This in contrast to, say, files under/etc in the typical unix - they *are* specifically meant to be viewed and changed by users, so for them "user friendliness" should be a key engineering constrait (although clearly it isn't).
I can see your explanation for the creation of the registry, but no explanation as to why Microsoft hasn't seen fit to deprecate its use over a better method.
Because it's not something you just change overnight. Nor is it - as a concept - a bad thing.
Added to that, I believe it has changed somewhat in Vista, although I'm not sure to what degree.
In comparison to what Linux and OS X has, the registry system simply makes Windows look bad, and indeed, in my opinion, it severely hurts the maintainability of Windows.
Well, I can't agree that the text-files-in-/etc methodology of Linux (and unix) is anything except an absolute train wreck from pretty much every aspect except disaster recovery (and even then...), but OS X kinds of comes about halfway with its XML config files.
Most of the ongoing dislike and criticism of the Registry stems from its implementation in Windows 95. This is a *very* different beast to the Registry in Windows NT derivatives like XP. Even Windows 98 offered a significant improvement (eg: per-user Registry hives).
Heck, there doesn't even seem to be a validation system to test or correct the registry.
Well, that's because it's basically a general purpose database. It will ensure the wrong types of data aren't put into inappropriate containers (eg: strings into keys that are only supposed to have hex), and that a user without sufficient privileges will not modify things they shouldn't, but it simply has no way of knowing whether or not the correct data (syntax, etc). That is the job of the software developer and their software.
I should point out there that other OSes are the same - there's no automatic facility in Linux to make sure everything in/etc is required or correct, nor any equivalent for OS X. Largely because it's basically impossible.
The "quality" of Windows is far below that of its contemporaries.
No, it's not. Being a quite frequent and regular user of pretty much every OS anyone could reasonably compare Windows to, I can confidently state that they've all got just as many bugs, quirks, annoyances, [lack of] features and outright broken behaviours as Windows does.
And my cell phone can do more out of the box than Windows can.
And Windows can do more out of the box than your cellphone could ever dream of. Your point ?
And it does it with only 12 megs of ram and a half-gig of chip storage.
WinXP is little more than a skin or theme for Win2k plus the downgrade of mandatory product registration. Please note that 2k is Windows version 5.0 and XP is 5.1. I acknowledge some enhancements to the OS, but most could have made an appearance in 2k SP5.
As it will be with XP to Vista, with Windows 2000 to XP, the bulk of the changes were under the hood.
2k is all the Windows OS you'll ever need on your desktop.
Windows XP will make much better use of your high-end (multiple CPUs/cores, large amounts of RAM and disk space) PC than Windows 2000 will. Vista, even more so. Of course, since so few people really strain the OS or the hardware to any great degree, it's highly likely you'll never notice that.
The main floor of Windows is built of balsa wood with a nice hardwood veneer. It looks solid to the casual observer, but isn't. As for the foundation, styrofoam sure can look like concrete blocks with a nice coat of gray paint.
What, exactly is "styrofoamy" about the foundation of Windows ?
MS will require all PC software & games be XP compatible whether the consumers want it or not, and people will just obey.
No, they won't. If Microsoft had even _half_ the influence over the computer industry that Slashbots seem to think it does, it would indeed be a much nicer, more secure, less buggy place today.
For starters, if people "just obeyed", there wouldn't be a plague of software today that needlessly requires Administrator privileges.
Whatever happened to consumers dictating how the market changes?
They do. Which is why Windows 98 and Windows ME (and, to a lesser extent, Windows 95) had to exist. It's why the default logon to Windows XP was an Administrator (and all the subsequent problems that has led to). It's why we have "Windows NT" and not "OS/2 NT". It's why floppy disks were still commonplace on machines only a year or two ago. It's why hardware interfaces like parallel ports and PS/2 ports are only just starting to be phased out, despite being obselete for half a decade.
Consumers most certainly *do* dictate how the market changes. Don't blame Microsoft because you have different priorities to the majority of consumers.
Kernelspace Hardware Drivers - A driver that locks up the system is BAD! I'd be willing to bet that every Windows XP user has at least one such driver on their system.
This is done for performance reasons. The fact that pretty much every contemporary OS does the same thing, should indicate that it's an engineering tradeoff, not a design fault.
Cryptic Registry Settings - I've never quite gotten why it was determined that putting all your settings and configuration in one basket was deemed to be a good idea.
Users should never be delving into the Registry. As such, it's level of "crypticness" is utterly irrelevant to, well, pretty much everyone.
I can't think of any positive justification whatsoever for this.
Well, first you need to take yourself back in time to about 1990...
* You want a standardised system for storing system and application configuration and run-time data, because the existing system results in millions of.ini files strewn all over the system.
* You have a multiuser OS, thus need to be able to provide both system and per-user areas and allow for concurrent read/write access.
* You want access to this data to be ACL-controlled at a fine level.
* You want to be be able to restrict the data stored to particular types and ensure only the rights type of data is stored.
* A top-end PC is a 33Mhz 386 with 4M of RAM.
So, you end up with a centralised database whose contents are protected by ACLs, can only be accessed by a system API and uses binary files for its data store.
OS-level DRM - Bad for so many reasons.
Firstly, fundamentally, you need to blame the media companies for this. *They* are the ones who are attacking your "rights". Microsoft is the messenger.
Secondly, I don't I've ever even noticed that XP even has "DRM", so I can't say it's had any negative influence on my life.
Enabling executeable content by default in Outlook Express - The source of the vast majority of Windows Specific internet worms. This is not really an OS specific issue, but Microsoft is pretty keen on insisting the OE is an uninstallable part of the OS.
No version of OE, AFAIK, has ever automatically executed attachments by design (there have been bugs that allowed it, but that's a different issue).
No real super-user - You can get 'SYSTEM' user access in Windows via illegitimate means. There is no mechanism for a machine administrator to get this without some sort of hack or workaround.
This is a *good* thing. A superuser is a design flaw and a security hole.
I don't think his suggestion is crazy. Why couldn't Microsoft start from scratch with a totally new OS, and include a legacy compatibility environment?
Why couldn't they just write some kind of compatibility layer for legacy apps?
They did. It's called WoW (Windows on Windows). That's how NT runs old Win16 apps.
Note, however, that there is much old software Windows NT will *never* support, because of the way it expects to access the hardware and OS internals.
I also think it's worth mentioning that they would never do this with Linux; if they did (and I'm not saying they will) they would use one of the BSDs.
Neither Linux, nor any of the BSDs, would provide any technological advantage. At best, they'd be a step sideways. That's the single biggest reason Microsoft would never use them as a base.
Do you really believe that your average Joe SixPack, who decided to try it out because his brother-in-law brought the CD over, is going to be able to recover?
Yeah, heaven forbid the blame actually falls to the person who installed the beta OS, or the person who encouraged him to do so. Of *course* the party considered at fault should be the one disclosing all the information about a completely voluntary exercise.
Of all the places I expect to see propogation of the modern "blame everyone except the perpetrator" attitude, Slashdot is pretty low on the list.
Would you want your car, your cell phone, your landline, your dvd player, your television, your monitor, your lcd display, your printer, your scanner, your microwave, your coffee maker, your watch, your calculator, and everything else running code that was as crappy as Microsofts "Gold Master", never mind RC?
None of the software in any of those devices is even remotely as close to the level of complexity and functionality of Windows (or any other general purpose OS, for that matter).
The "quality" of Windows is on par with its contemporaries. That's all that matters in such a comparison.
Most people don't have an "extra" partition (I've got 10 spare ones that I use to install trials of linux distros, but I'm not your average user). For most users, they'll just install over their current copy of XP
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I've always found the mouse movement on Macs to be "slow" and the acceleration "weird". Having played with a few Macs, including some with multiple 30" monitors, I found them quite difficult to use simply because the mouse was too slow.
Either way, not ideal. Apple should make it optional to decouple the menu from the top bar and put it in the application window. I'd think that would help them sell fancy hardware.
I think a per-screen menu bar would be a much better fit for their UI. Not having the menubar as part of the app window is kind of one of the major aspects of the Mac UI.
Personally, I find the new Start Menu vastly quicker and easier to use than the "Classic" Start Menu, to the point that going back to Windows 2000 is quite annoying (the colour scheme I can take or leave, however - I usually turn the garish colours off on any system I'll be using long term). Being able to "lock" the Taskbar is also very useful.
Yet, if you were to use the darn thing (and not switch to the "classic" view), you'd have to figure out again how to do a bunch of stuff you already knew how to do before the interface changed.
Not really. It looks a bit different, but for "legacy functionality" it largely behaves the same.
It's not that the new icon is better or worse than the old one--but why ever change a familiar, easy to recognize icon? It's done to create the illusion of progress, of course.
To fit with the theme of the new system. Same reason all the icons in OS X changed from MacOS Classic. Indeed, when you find an icon in Windows (or OS X) that *hasn't* been updated, it stands out quite a bit and is "jarring".
Whenever someone releases a new version of their software, they think that people won't believe they got their money's worth if the GUI looks the same--so they jazz up the icons.
Of course. That's because no-one thinks the system is any different unless it looks different. Take Vista as an example, which has had *massive* levels of changes made to its lower level systems from prior versions of Windows. Would anyone even case if it didn't come with an updated GUI ? Even on Slashdot - a supposedly tech-oriented site - the only changes in Vista that anyone ever talks about is the GUI.
If Microsoft just released Vista with the old GUI on top, they'd be crucified. Cries of "it just looks the same - FORCED UPGRADE !" would emanate from Slashdot and similar sites, even though the changes under the hood easily match those of a major kernel revision.
Excuse me, but if you've got "exploded" features, then you do not have a problem that can be solved by a revamped GUI--you have bloatware. Clean up the mess, and start over.
Yet another example of how "bloatware" is little more than a term used by people to describe features they have no interest in.
Look, the people at Xerox Park gave us the foundation of a great GUI, and there's no reason to change that basic set of visual metaphors until there's a fundamental change in the mechanics of the computer/human interface. The requirements for a good GUI are well-understood: it should be as simple as possible, it should be consistent between applications, it should use easily recognized familiar symbols and conventions. It most definitely should not change from one moment to the next according to the notions of some guy in Redmond who thinks he can anticipate what I want to do.
Which is - largely - what Windows does.
I find most of the time the "span" mode just makes thing worse.
Well, personally, I don't want to spend 8 hours every day holding my hands up in front of me tapping a screen...
Touchscreens have their uses, to be sure, but I can't see them replacing a keyboard and mouse for general purpose computer usage.
While that was quite cool to watch, I don't think I'd like to spend 8+ hours every day waving my hands around just to get my job done...
Contextual help will provide you with relevant information far quicker than scrolling through a man page will.
I'm not saying there aren't things the GUI is useful for, however there are definitely things that are faster with a CLI. Oh, and with any filesystem manipulation? forgettaboutit, the cli is your friend.
Bollocks. It's trivial to come up with examples where GUI file manipulation is quicker.
Selecting a group of arbitrary files with similar, but non-contiguous names out of a list and perform an operation on them. Even with tab-completion, a GUI filemanager will generally be quicker (unless it's a truly atrocious implementation). When you take into account criteria that isn't encoded into the filename being used for selection (eg: thumbnails), the difference is even greater.
That's just one example, I'm sure I can think of others, even without delving into the "obvious" stuff like photoshop, CAD and other tasks that specifically involve non-strict manipulation of graphical imagery.
A GUI will certainly allow for some extra functionality right off the bat, when someone is first exposed to a program they know nothing about, but after a few months usage, those who use text mode interfaces will be outstripping their gui counterparts.
There is no reason a well-designed GUI (eg: with extensive keyboard shortcuts) should be meaningfully slower than a CLI, in the general case.
For a simple example, look at a spreadsheet in its most basic form. Tab goes to the next column over, return goes to the next row down. Entire usage of the software can be made in a text screen, and FAR quicker than entering a number, moving to the mouse, moving the mouse to the next cell, clicking, then moving back to the keyboard, when instead you can enter a number, hit return, enter a number, hit return, etc.
It's telling you need to resort to pathological examples like that - which no serious spreadsheet user would do - to try and make a point.
Here's some hints for you:
* Mouse input and GUI are not synonymous.
* Keyboard input and CLI and not synonymous.
* A text mode interface can still be a GUI.
* A text mode interface is not always a CLI.
The "inventors" of the gui really have something to explain.
There are some things GUIs do better than CLIs. Deal with it.
It makes sense when you understand a) the purpose of the "Start Menu" and b) the history behind it.
The Start Menu is the "one stop shop" for initial tasks in Windows - it's the UI element you go to (or are supposed to) for launching programs, configuring the machine, searching, help, etc, etc. It is (roughly) equivalent to Classic MacOS's Apple Menu, the NeXT Dock, and similar "do it from here" elements in other GUIs. Logically, in Windows, the "Shut Down" command belongs in this UI element and nowhere else (with the possible exception of a dedicated button on the taskbar, like Ubuntu does - although back in the day the problem then would have been wha icon to put on the button).
*Originally* (in the first "Chicago" betas), the Start Menu wasn't actually called the "Start Menu" and didn't have "Start" on it - it was just a button with the Windows logo, much like the GNOME and KDE versions. However, during their usability testing, Microsoft found that users couldn't actually figure out what to do when the system first booted and all they had was an empty desktop and taskbar, with a little Windows logo at one end and a clock at the other (I can't even remember if the clock was there at that stage). So the button got a label - "Start" - to signify that it was the UI element where you "started" to do everything.
First impressions count a lot, so if you take away the Start button most people will feel a bit lost and will have a negative experience. Thus people won't want to let go of Start even if it is in their longer term interests to learn something better.
It's interesting to note that in Vista, the "Start" label is gone. Presumably Microsoft's usability studies have concluded that the "Start Menu" UI element is now so entrenched, users no longer need to be taught what it is.
I want a head unit that I stick the ipod unit into like a cassette tape.
*That* would be "iPod integration".
I'm not a TS expert, but I'm thinking that's not going to work too well with moving windows between screens.
Well, they _work_, but I wouldn't say they work *well*. Some examples:
* OS X only has a single menu bar for all applications and all screens. So if your active application window isn't on the primary screen and you want to access the menu, you need to track all the way back to whichever screen is the primary to access it. Ditto for the Dock. Why can't there be a Menubar and Dock on each monitor ?
(Personally I've always found it rather ironic that MacOS was the early bringing of good multimonitor support, but its UI really doesn't handle them well).
* Windows has a similar problem with only one Taskbar and only one Start Menu. Why not a Taskbar for each monitor and/or, even better, the ability to pop the Start Menu up directly under the cursor ?
* Mouse tracking across multiple, big displays is slow or inaccurate unless you've got the twitch muscles of a fifteen year old first-person gamer. I want trackers on top of each screen that can monitor where I'm looking and move the mouse cursor to that spot.
* There's (typically) no "maximise across all screens" button.
So we should just take that extra screen and fill it up with pretty desklets? And this will make me a more productive person?
This seems to be the model most people think of when talking about multiple screens. For example, the typical multimonitor Mac user wants one screen for their Photoshop (or whatever) window and the other for all the palettes, toolbars and feedback windows is spawns.
Nothing, except for:
* The per-user configuration data that can't be stored in the same place
* Any other applications that might be using its functionality
* The data linking $APPLICATION to its uses (eg: filetypes) that must exist in a separate location
To name a few.
I had an issue with my wife's XP home box. I but on a software copy machine to use the scanner and printer. It worked fine. I needed to re-size some photos to e-mail. I fired up the demo photo editor that Dell was kind enough to leave on the system. It wanted all kinds of personal information to register for the 30 day trial, so I quit. That hosed the scanner instalation. Opening the copier software and trying to photocopy a document now results in the TWAIN driver opening, scanning and launching the photo editor that is not registered putting me into the NAG screen. I uninstalled the photo editor. The photo copier is still broken as it try to re-launch the removed photo editor. In DOS I could peruse the Autoexec and Config files and fix something like this. In XP I can't. There is no documentation. I moved the scanner to my Ubuntu box until the next XP box reformat and reinstall.
None of that is the fault of the Registry, nor would any other current system providing equivalent functionality be immune from it.
There is no reason for an application demo to hi-jack the hardware assuming nothing else on the system would use it.
Other than software developer arrogance.
There should be an easy way to fix the damage. There isn't.
Well, there probably is, but without knowing more details about the situation it's hard to say for sure.
In DOS quiting the MIDI player would free the MIDI port for use by the Piano Tutor. Quiting the Piano Tutor would free the MIDI Port for the game, etc.
DOS is not Windows. DOS is little more than a bootloader. Windows actually does things like manage hardware resources and provide standard ways for programs to interoperate.
Uninstalling a program and removing it's system hooks should not be rocket science.
And it's not, assuming the software developer isn't incompetent (or malicious).
No, not even them. *No user* should be directly manipulating data in the Registry, outside of extraordinary circumstances.
NT as a multi-user OS was always an afterthought.
No, it was conceived and designed as a multiuser OS from day one.
Besides, the concept began (in Microsoft culture) with Win 3.1, which was single user only.
No, it came from NT (I seem to recall the concept - like much NT's design - actually came from something similar in VMS). An extremely primitive version might have appeared in Windows 3.1 (I can't remember) as part of the migration strategy from DOS-based to NT-based Windows, however.
Anyway, how is your statement a requirement for a registry? A multi-user, multi-tasking OS has to be able to do this with almost everything, including files.
Text files wouldn't allow concurrent write access to individual lines (= Registry keys).
With NT 3.x, you wanted the fastest machine you could get with at least 16mb of RAM.
12M was fine (not that there was much to run in those days). Note also that when the Registry would have been conceived and designed (ca. 1990) was not when NT 3.1 was released (ca. 1993).
I'd just like to point out that they *don't* have "the same Unix heritage", and that's one of the main reasons OS X is better in certain ways.
Indeed. But the important point here is that since it's never meant to be user-visible, how "cryptic" the content of the Registry is in no way a design or implementation error. Since the only things that should ever modify it should be doing so programmatically, no guidelines are in place to make its contents "user friendly", nor is there any real reason to do so.
This in contrast to, say, files under /etc in the typical unix - they *are* specifically meant to be viewed and changed by users, so for them "user friendliness" should be a key engineering constrait (although clearly it isn't).
I can see your explanation for the creation of the registry, but no explanation as to why Microsoft hasn't seen fit to deprecate its use over a better method.
Because it's not something you just change overnight. Nor is it - as a concept - a bad thing.
Added to that, I believe it has changed somewhat in Vista, although I'm not sure to what degree.
In comparison to what Linux and OS X has, the registry system simply makes Windows look bad, and indeed, in my opinion, it severely hurts the maintainability of Windows.
Well, I can't agree that the text-files-in-/etc methodology of Linux (and unix) is anything except an absolute train wreck from pretty much every aspect except disaster recovery (and even then...), but OS X kinds of comes about halfway with its XML config files.
Most of the ongoing dislike and criticism of the Registry stems from its implementation in Windows 95. This is a *very* different beast to the Registry in Windows NT derivatives like XP. Even Windows 98 offered a significant improvement (eg: per-user Registry hives).
Heck, there doesn't even seem to be a validation system to test or correct the registry.
Well, that's because it's basically a general purpose database. It will ensure the wrong types of data aren't put into inappropriate containers (eg: strings into keys that are only supposed to have hex), and that a user without sufficient privileges will not modify things they shouldn't, but it simply has no way of knowing whether or not the correct data (syntax, etc). That is the job of the software developer and their software.
I should point out there that other OSes are the same - there's no automatic facility in Linux to make sure everything in /etc is required or correct, nor any equivalent for OS X. Largely because it's basically impossible.
No, it's not. Being a quite frequent and regular user of pretty much every OS anyone could reasonably compare Windows to, I can confidently state that they've all got just as many bugs, quirks, annoyances, [lack of] features and outright broken behaviours as Windows does.
And my cell phone can do more out of the box than Windows can.
And Windows can do more out of the box than your cellphone could ever dream of. Your point ?
And it does it with only 12 megs of ram and a half-gig of chip storage.
Is your cellphone is the only computer you own ?
As it will be with XP to Vista, with Windows 2000 to XP, the bulk of the changes were under the hood.
2k is all the Windows OS you'll ever need on your desktop.
Windows XP will make much better use of your high-end (multiple CPUs/cores, large amounts of RAM and disk space) PC than Windows 2000 will. Vista, even more so. Of course, since so few people really strain the OS or the hardware to any great degree, it's highly likely you'll never notice that.
No, it's not even remotely correct.
The main floor of Windows is built of balsa wood with a nice hardwood veneer. It looks solid to the casual observer, but isn't. As for the foundation, styrofoam sure can look like concrete blocks with a nice coat of gray paint.
What, exactly is "styrofoamy" about the foundation of Windows ?
No, they won't. If Microsoft had even _half_ the influence over the computer industry that Slashbots seem to think it does, it would indeed be a much nicer, more secure, less buggy place today.
For starters, if people "just obeyed", there wouldn't be a plague of software today that needlessly requires Administrator privileges.
Whatever happened to consumers dictating how the market changes?
They do. Which is why Windows 98 and Windows ME (and, to a lesser extent, Windows 95) had to exist. It's why the default logon to Windows XP was an Administrator (and all the subsequent problems that has led to). It's why we have "Windows NT" and not "OS/2 NT". It's why floppy disks were still commonplace on machines only a year or two ago. It's why hardware interfaces like parallel ports and PS/2 ports are only just starting to be phased out, despite being obselete for half a decade.
Consumers most certainly *do* dictate how the market changes. Don't blame Microsoft because you have different priorities to the majority of consumers.
This is done for performance reasons. The fact that pretty much every contemporary OS does the same thing, should indicate that it's an engineering tradeoff, not a design fault.
Cryptic Registry Settings - I've never quite gotten why it was determined that putting all your settings and configuration in one basket was deemed to be a good idea.
Users should never be delving into the Registry. As such, it's level of "crypticness" is utterly irrelevant to, well, pretty much everyone.
I can't think of any positive justification whatsoever for this.
Well, first you need to take yourself back in time to about 1990...
* You want a standardised system for storing system and application configuration and run-time data, because the existing system results in millions of .ini files strewn all over the system.
* You have a multiuser OS, thus need to be able to provide both system and per-user areas and allow for concurrent read/write access.
* You want access to this data to be ACL-controlled at a fine level.
* You want to be be able to restrict the data stored to particular types and ensure only the rights type of data is stored.
* A top-end PC is a 33Mhz 386 with 4M of RAM.
So, you end up with a centralised database whose contents are protected by ACLs, can only be accessed by a system API and uses binary files for its data store.
OS-level DRM - Bad for so many reasons.
Firstly, fundamentally, you need to blame the media companies for this. *They* are the ones who are attacking your "rights". Microsoft is the messenger.
Secondly, I don't I've ever even noticed that XP even has "DRM", so I can't say it's had any negative influence on my life.
Enabling executeable content by default in Outlook Express - The source of the vast majority of Windows Specific internet worms. This is not really an OS specific issue, but Microsoft is pretty keen on insisting the OE is an uninstallable part of the OS.
No version of OE, AFAIK, has ever automatically executed attachments by design (there have been bugs that allowed it, but that's a different issue).
No real super-user - You can get 'SYSTEM' user access in Windows via illegitimate means. There is no mechanism for a machine administrator to get this without some sort of hack or workaround.
This is a *good* thing. A superuser is a design flaw and a security hole.
They did. It's called Windows NT.
They did. It's called WoW (Windows on Windows). That's how NT runs old Win16 apps.
Note, however, that there is much old software Windows NT will *never* support, because of the way it expects to access the hardware and OS internals.
I also think it's worth mentioning that they would never do this with Linux; if they did (and I'm not saying they will) they would use one of the BSDs.
Neither Linux, nor any of the BSDs, would provide any technological advantage. At best, they'd be a step sideways. That's the single biggest reason Microsoft would never use them as a base.
Yeah, heaven forbid the blame actually falls to the person who installed the beta OS, or the person who encouraged him to do so. Of *course* the party considered at fault should be the one disclosing all the information about a completely voluntary exercise.
Of all the places I expect to see propogation of the modern "blame everyone except the perpetrator" attitude, Slashdot is pretty low on the list.
None of the software in any of those devices is even remotely as close to the level of complexity and functionality of Windows (or any other general purpose OS, for that matter).
The "quality" of Windows is on par with its contemporaries. That's all that matters in such a comparison.
"Most people" won't be installing this.