alt Hacker NewsOur commitment to Windows quality
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Let me use Windows 10 for 10 more years. You're full of shit Microsoft.
I'll believe it when I see it.
This is good to hear, as someone who has used basically nothing but Windows since 2000. I haven't stepped off the Windows train yet. I use Linux at arm's length for my homelab's hypervisor and at work, but my daily driver is still Windows 10.
I must be the only one to write something like this on HN, but I sincerely like Windows' technical fundamentals and architecture; its design is sensible and extensible. And very frankly I prefer the developer experience on Windows, where you can write a (relatively) high-quality native desktop application with purely first-party tooling and release a single, tiny (~10^4 bytes) executable that quite literally runs anywhere. The Windows API surface area is huge and developers can write entire multi-domain programs without ever looking for a third-party library.
This probably sounds like a lot of copium, but I feel like recent events like the rising costs of memory and competition like the MacBook Neo will light a fire under Microsoft's arse. I really hope some of the AI overboard in Windows 11 is rolled back over the near future. They should migrate core Windows applications back to native and CLI technologies, actually support and maintain these without chasing the next big thing, and release frameworks for safer compiled languages like Rust, Zig, and Odin, and allocate more resources to F#.
It’s frankly embarrassing that they have to come out and say that they are going to make Explorer “faster and more dependable.” It’s amazing how badly they fucked up the most basic function of managing a graphical operating system.
So now that Apple released Macbook Neo, Microsoft has started to care about Windows quality after a decade?
Too little and too late. I’ll believe it when I’ll see it. And so far everything I’ve seen has told me to abandon ship. Even if you reverse course, you’d need a miracle to make me trust you anytime soon.
This is how goodwill works. Easy to burn, hard to earn back. I’m not touching any products by Meta, Google or Microsoft, and none of them are getting me back on board with a cute blog post.
I don't want to be just purely negative but I refuse to believe the sentiment of this post. For years they have been told that windows have pretty shit annoying features which they keep implementing and only thing they did was implement more absolutely useless chatbots all over the place. I do not belive that this is genuine effort to making a better product or answer to ongoing massive enshittifaction of microsoft products to squeeze more money. Maybe people started to leave them for Apple and they noticed?
lol microslop
If Cosmic desktop would be finished, I would now be on Linux. But instead, I am back on Windows 10. Linux desktop is just not there yet. I will either skip Windows 11 and go to 12, or finally end up on Linux by necessity. Looking at the direction of Microsoft and Windows, I think there is no chance for 12 to be a good operating system that I would want to use. I know I can milk Windows 10 for another 5-8 years without any issues. So, we'll see. But then again, there is also HarmonyOS and who knows where *BSD desktop will be and other OSs that might come up. Maybe nVidia will make their own Linux based OS. Or Google. I think this is the direction the OSs are heading towards. The domination of Microsoft and Apple is near its end and if big corporations step in and centralize the completely broken world of linux desktop into few solid distributions, we can have nice things again.
> Receiving updates should be predictable and easy to plan around, so we’re giving you more control.
I can't remember when Update became so intrusive and aggressive - Vista? - but it was the top annoyance for me personally.
If Microsoft leadership thinks that they took a wrong turn in the last few years, they are in for a rude awakening (I hope). They took a wrong turn in the late 90s. Probably earlier than that. They have managed to stave off all user feedback for 30 years through litigious bullying and strict vendor lock-in. This isn't about the taskbar, man. This isn't even about Copilot.
The pushback which you are only now starting to perceive is being caused by an entire generation of Microsoft intentionally and actively positioning itself in conflict with its customers.
I understand that once you have a million customers, you can't really treat them right anymore. But Microsoft has not given a single shit about customer feedback, even in aggregate for decades now.
As I read this, all I can think is "too little, too late." I have watched in my workplace Windows go from being a product that we are happy to purchase to yet another piece of technology that we would simply replace were we not yoked to it.
I guess even now they probably still don't care. Microsoft will continue printing money until the sun burns out.
still no QA lol
This is vague lip service with little substance, as far as I can tell. That is unsurprising consider it's from Microsoft and it's about Windows. It addresses (in cheap words) a few real pain points, but completely fails to address the dozens of either incredibly painful and stupid decisions MS has made.
On the subject of what they address, I have thoughts and many doubts.
> Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus
Just don't, bro. Don't do it. I don't want copilot icons in all the system apps. None.
> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions
This feels like it's too little, too late. They redesigned the UI in yet another toolkit and in the process broke something had worked for decades. Perhaps they could add a 147th different UI toolkit with a different look instead, just to change things up.
> Reducing disruption from Windows Updates
Would be welcome, but I have my doubts. MS has shown clearly they don't care.
> Faster and more dependable File Explorer
See comment on task bar above.
> More control over widgets and feed experiences
Get out of it. If I see one more stock ticker on a screen share from someone I know does NOT track the stock market I'll know you for the lying liars you are. Don't promise "more control" just stop being so invasive and annoying.
On the subjects they didn't address, I have feedback:
- Remove advertising from the start menu, the system, apps, everywhere. Just remove it forever.
- Remove invasive telemetry. Again, forever.
- Respect user choice. Stop trying to force things to open in Edge, ignoring my default browser. I am a Firefox/Zen user, keep a single (other) chromium-based browser around for sites that don't work right (another rant for another time), and try not to touch Edge if I can help it.
- Stop turning the bundled native apps into crappy web apps. "New Outlook" is a real tire fire.
- Make the default Edge page ANYTHING but the advertising and nasty "news" summary that shows up. Why not a simple search page, like when Google was new.
- Stop making start menu searches return web results instead of local apps
- Make start menu searching actually search in a useful way. Why does QGIS not show up when I type GIS? Because it doesn't start with Q? That's garbage. Make it work how users would expect it to work.
- Let people say no, fully and completely, to OneDrive. You can make adding it later easy at user discretion, but don't ask to set it up automatically. Don't use fear mongering like "your files are not backed up" to try to trick people into signing up for it.
- Local accounts should be easy, not a nasty workaround with a moving target for instructions.
"Our Commitment to Gaslighting Everyone with Corporate Marketing Language"
lol who is this guy talking to
“Improved Feedback Hub” is a code for “The corner that we told the plebs to scream into was close enough to the executives that they could hear some of the angry swearing, so we moved everyone over to a padded room in the basement where they can’t bother anybody.”
Lol
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It's very telling that the very first feature listed is that you can position the taskbar on the bottom, top, left and right side of the screen.
Can I change it's color, too? Amazing! /s
Microsoft appears completely bereft of creativity and innovation now.
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Bro Linux gaming is where it’s at - windoze is cooked