Microsoft goes retro with Vista, Zune-style Windows Neon makeover Mockups of Microsoft's "Project Neon" redesign have been leaked – we're sure by accident. Neon, as we reported last year, is an attempt to steer Windows away from the "flat" look that has dominated UX design in recent years, and make the system friendly for augmented or mixed-reality users. In the mockups, Aero-style …
Unfortunately humans use neural networks, and one of the downsides of doing so is that tasks that are constantly repeated get automatically laid into hardware for efficient future dispatching. When things change, that circuit has to be *actively* suppressed and the alternate *actively* promoted until the old one dies down enough and the new hardware beds in enough.
If the cycle repeats, you end up with a junkyard full of old robots that occasionally misfire as you pass and need slapping down, and the more there are, the noisier life gets.
You're going to have to rebuild the hardware for your neural interface to your computer, again, for reasons you may not agree with, and will likely have no choice over.
When you've been through a good half dozen of these, I *guarantee* you'll want them to stop.
There is a place to try something new, and it's called a "lab". Always test on "prod", never on "live", sort of thing.
MS made a rod for their own back by not abstracting their GUI libraries. This means that any time they try to change the GUI, they break consistency across apps as many aren't updated to the new paradigm. It's also meant that desktop apps have never worked well with small screens (windows run off the edges, with no way to scroll to the invisible bits) or high pixel-density screens (as text and icons shrink away to nothing)
MS keep going down the route of making a new UI a new hardcoded library, and although the "modern" UI is far friendlier in terms of intelligent scaling, the fact that it's completely distinct from "office Windows" is a major turn-off to developers.
The only thing I can see them trying to do is copying OS X and making it look worse. Not that OS X has been perfect since Jony Ive took over the asylum, but MS just made a more imperfect copy.
Why are window title bars now a good fraction of the window's vertical space, only with no title? What's that about?
That's because people are inherently old farts who don't want things to change. MS, like you, seems to think that change for the sake of change is a good thing, but we old farts know better-- when you get it right, don't mess with it anymore. Try something different with the bits that didn't work, not with those that did. This isn't a term project for some student in a UI design class-- we're actually going to be using these UIs, and we'd kind of like them to not be stupid and counterintuitive just so they can be "pretty" in the eyes of someone who mistakes novelty for beauty.
"That's because people are inherently old farts who don't want things to change. MS, like you, seems to think that change for the sake of change is a good thing..."
Because that's a practical business consideration. There's no long-term return in a one-and-done, which is why you never see Kirby or Electrolux vacuum cleaners in stores anymore (because anyone who bought one still uses it--makes it hard to sell new ones). There's no business like repeat business, and businesses who can't get repeat businesses into them don't tend to last long-term.
"There's no business like repeat business, and businesses who can't get repeat businesses into them don't tend to last long-term..."
I've said the same about MS, that they're changing the UI simply for the sake of change so they can call it a new product and try to get people to buy what they already have. Even so, the vacuum analogy doesn't really work 1:1 with Windows.
Unlike with vacuum cleaners, few people actually go out and buy Windows as a standalone product. Windows, for the most part, piggybacks on PC sales, and as long as the PC works adequately for the users' needs, people just keep using it-- just like the vacuum.
Vacuums, unlike PCs, don't become obsolete. They either clean effectively or they do not. PCs, on the other hand, can do both: they can break AND they can become obsolete, both of which usually result in replacement of the PC and thus a new copy of Windows and another sale for MS-- and it happens quite independently of whether that Windows is new and improved or just the same old thing people have been using for years.
MS has been trying to promote PC sales (and thus Windows sales) by changing Windows for its own sake year after year, but that strategy has been a terrible failure in the post-9x days, if not in general.
Windows 95 may be the only version of Windows to ever gain market share as a direct result of UI changes. People who deliberately changed Windows versions migrated from 95 to 98 mainly for stability, while mostly avoiding ME for the same reason. They went to XP again for stability, and they found it-- and from that point on, XP would be the juggernaut that would not die, regardless of whatever new and shiny baubles MS tried to dangle in front of them with other Windows versions.
The UI changes between XP and Vista didn't stop Vista from being a failure, and 7 mostly featured the same UI as Vista, so you can't really say anyone went to 7 for the UI... and we know the 8 UI was the main reason it was such a failure too. It was arguably better than 7 in many ways, but the part that people could see (the UI) sealed Windows 8's fate.
Windows 10 is a harder nut to crack; certainly, though, it appears that when people actually have a choice in the matter, they want no part of it (as you can see in the almost flat growth of 10 after the free upgrade, though I expect to see a bump for December as a result of Christmas).
If you look at it all in retrospect, it appears that upgrades beyond 95 happened because people wanted something that crashed less and worked better, not because they wanted a new, shiny UI. Once they find something that works, they stick to it like glue-- they're not out there looking for something new, not by a long shot. They're out there looking for more of the same as what they already have, UI wise.
"If you look at it all in retrospect, it appears that upgrades beyond 95 happened because people wanted something that crashed less and worked better, not because they wanted a new, shiny UI. Once they find something that works, they stick to it like glue-- they're not out there looking for something new, not by a long shot. They're out there looking for more of the same as what they already have, UI wise."
But now we come back to the vacuum cleaners, and OS's and vacuum cleaners do share one thing in common: they still AGE. Filters need to be changed out, belts need to be replaced. Once in a while the motor needs to be changed out. At least with those old Kirby and Electrolux cleaners, their designs have been so monolithic that people know what go in them. You could end up with a Theseus Vacuum Cleaner, but it's still working. But OS's require continual support from the supplier. Of course, that's a money sink to them, especially as miscreants find more and more ways to break them. Thus they use the term End-of-Live, an incarnation of Planned Obsolescence. And there's really very little you can do in a war zone like this. Not even the law can help because that would just insert an economic motive for a company to up and quit, taking all their secrets with them (and they'll rather take their secrets to the grave than be forced to give them to "the enemy"). I'm sure many people would love to stick with XP, but given its history of being pwned within 30 seconds of going online and with plenty of known (and never-to-be-patched) exploits, diminishing returns starts to kick in.
I'm sick to death of people defending Microsoft in this manner. They come up with a half-arsed UI and force change for the sake of change and any time anyone points it out, people like you take the cheap shot of claiming we just "don't like change". I like change when it's *good* change. I could take your bed away and give you some old bed clothes on the floor instead and, when you rightly complain, I can just judge you for "not liking change".
eCS works fine in a VM on macOS. Even the audio.
What would have been nice is if Sun's Project Looking Glass desktop had been ported to OS/2. PLG was 10 years ahead of its time. Soon it will be 20 years ahead of its time.
Blimey - it's been open-sourced :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass
Does using a mid-90s window manager for a desktop make you hipster?
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"Not all of us are happy with shit like the ribbon, we want to slap the stupid out of you for that, so the ability to choose our own themes would be a big boone."
From MS's point of view ribbon was far from stupid. Between that and supporting education (getting schools to train MS Office users) they've now got a cohort of users who don't grok what you and I would call a sane interface, and hence any S/W that uses it. It's lock-in 21st century style.
Not to worry, LibreOffice is fighting back with multiple interface options.
...that whether it's Apple, Microsoft, Google or any other tech company, they always have to find the most achingly hip, you've-probably-never-heard-of-it musician to include in their screenshots?
"Kakoi Miku is a humanoid persona voiced by a singing synthesizer application..."
Christ on a fucking bike. Could these twats be any more achingly, self-consciously hipster if they tried?
Once, just once, I'd like to see someone at a tech company show a sense of humour and send out a screenshot showing something utterly naff. Des O'Connor. Middle Of The Road. Renée and Renato. Captain and Tenille.
...you get the idea. Instead we get stuff like "Sir, this Mongolian throat-yodelling group has put out 2 records in the last twenty years..." "GTFO, far too mainstream."
I was an XFCE user years ago… about the time when XFCE4 came out. It wasn't bad, quite a usable desktop, but I found myself back with KDE a short time later.
These days, I use FVWM, which is one of the older ones, configured with MWM-style window borders.
XFCE reminds me a lot of MacOS X with its dock … moreso than the NextSTEP-inspired AfterSTEP, and to a certain extent, CDE. As a lightweight desktop for newcomers, it isn't a bad option either. It is worth a look.
MS need to realise they're not a cool brand and never will be. Aside from PC gaming, Windows is mostly for corporate machines. The should stop trying to be cool and just accept that their platform is the boring corporate workhorse for office desktops and workstations.
If they really want to continue this UI 'innovation' adventure then they really ought to completely separate the UI so that business users can keep the functional classic UI (Win2k or 7 perhaps?) style but still have shiny new features. And the poor old home/casual users can have whatever the latest UI innovation is.
Since Windows 8 they've been alienating both.
But they also feel they have a captive market. After all, breaking the monoculture would be a Project that would involve mucho dinero which will raise eyebrows with Accounting, if not the Board. Also, for many there's the matter of standards compliance, which again raises the opportunity costs for a major migration versus an evolutionary upgrade.
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