Windows 9 Is No More

sundialsvcs · 10-06-2014, 10:53 AM

I think that many of Windows' ongoing troubles ... certainly since Windows-XP, which was the last truly-successful release they've ever had ... is that the company insists upon being led by its Marketing Department, not by its customers. Marketing Departments want "New!!" and reflexively follow that with "and (therefore) Improved." It seems to be impossible for them to understand that, by and large, computer users are extremely intolerant of: "change for change's sake."

For instance, "I know how to use Microsoft Access." (In fact, I wrote and taught a full-semester for-credit community college course in it for a number of years.) Imagine my surprise and displeasure, then, when I fired-up "Access 2010" and found that its user-interface was completely different ... but, not better. Likewise, when using "Word 2010" and wanting to put a drop-shadow box around a paragraph. Abruptly I am in "learning-curve" mode. But, for no good reason.

Now, I'm of course not saying that software should not change, nor that change is not for the better. But gratuitous change ... to what is basically a tool ... is "not for the better." In fact, it's pretty-much "intolerable." But I don't think that Microsoft really "gets" that. People want to gain from their experiences. They don't want to have to learn all over again how to do what they know how to do ... nor do they appreciate being presented with "five different ways to do it, all in different colors," because they know that (given the fundamental nature of computer software ...) it is now 1/5th as likely that any of them actually work.

Habitual · 10-06-2014, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maples

I saw something earlier today...suppossedly from a MS dev...
http://www.techradar.com/news/softwa...nflict-1267580

Of course, the article contains refrences which potentially contradict this...but here is is anyway.

Apparently, a lot of developers used something like

Code:

if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))
{ /* 95 and 98 */
} else {
}

And since "Windows 9" would also fit the criteria, it would attempt to run code designed to run on Windows 9x.

Again, the credibility of this is very shaky, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

http://www.techradar.com/news/softwa...nflict-1267580 seems almost reasonable, however, when did Microsoft ever do anything "to avoid conflict with third-party code"?

WordPerfect + Win 3.1 Print Drivers anyone?

ReaperX7 · 10-06-2014, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sundialsvcs

I think that many of Windows' ongoing troubles ... certainly since Windows-XP, which was the last truly-successful release they've ever had ... is that the company insists upon being led by its Marketing Department, not by its customers. Marketing Departments want "New!!" and reflexively follow that with "and (therefore) Improved." It seems to be impossible for them to understand that, by and large, computer users are extremely intolerant of: "change for change's sake."

For instance, "I know how to use Microsoft Access." (In fact, I wrote and taught a full-semester for-credit community college course in it for a number of years.) Imagine my surprise and displeasure, then, when I fired-up "Access 2010" and found that its user-interface was completely different ... but, not better. Likewise, when using "Word 2010" and wanting to put a drop-shadow box around a paragraph. Abruptly I am in "learning-curve" mode. But, for no good reason.

Now, I'm of course not saying that software should not change, nor that change is not for the better. But gratuitous change ... to what is basically a tool ... is "not for the better." In fact, it's pretty-much "intolerable." But I don't think that Microsoft really "gets" that. People want to gain from their experiences. They don't want to have to learn all over again how to do what they know how to do ... nor do they appreciate being presented with "five different ways to do it, all in different colors," because they know that (given the fundamental nature of computer software ...) it is now 1/5th as likely that any of them actually work.

I'll politely disagree. Windows 7 was very successful both in corporate and private areas. Windows 8 was a PR nightmare, while 8.1 was a small betterment of the system. Windows XP was actually a very bad OS once you got under the hood of it. I knew plenty of people who went back to Windows 2000 SP4 rather than stick with XP. To date, I'll actually work with Windows 7 more than I'll work with Windows XP by fair comparison.