I will leave this comment here by an ex Windows desktop experience team developer which says that designers have lots of control but don't even use Windows, they use Macs.
> It's almost like some tiny extremist faction has gained control of Windows
This has been the case for a while. I worked on the Windows Desktop Experience Team from Win7-Win10. Starting around Win8, the designers had full control, and most crucially essentially none of the designers use Windows.
I spent far too many years of my career sitting in conference rooms explaining to the newest designer (because they seem to rotate every 6-18 months) with a shiny Macbook why various ideas had been tried and failed in usability studies because our users want X, Y, and Z.
Sometimes, the "well, if you really want this it will take N dev-years" approach got avoided things for a while, but just as often we were explicitly overruled. I fought passionately against things like the all-white title bars that made it impossible to tell active and inactive windows apart (was that Win10 or Win8? Either way user feedback was so strong that that got reverted in the very next update), the Edge title bar having no empty space on top so if your window hung off the right side and you opened too many tabs you could not move it, and so on. Others on my team fought battles against removing the Start button in Win8, trying to get section labels added to the Win8 Start Screen so it was obvious that you could scroll between them, and so on. In the end, the designers get what they want, the engineers who say "yes we can do that" get promoted, and those of us who argued most strongly for the users burnt out, retired, or left the team.
As a Mac user, ironically, it seems like the Mac design team only uses iPhones or worse, not Macs themselves.
I think we are at a stage where the “design rules the world” dominate rather than the full product experience. And there seems to be zero vision left in these products as well.
> As a Mac user, ironically, it seems like the Mac design team only uses iPhones or worse, not Macs themselves.
It seems certain that they use iPhones for everything. They can’t even subject themselves to using an iPad. They just copy things from iOS straight into iPadOS and macOS and let others (end users) deal with the fallout. Craig Federighi doesn’t seem to pay any attention to software anymore.
Same how sex sells for humans, design and looks sell the same way for objects, from phones, to PCs, cars, washing machines, etc.
Consumers don't understand tech specs, so if you show them something that triggers their lizard brains because it genuinely looks really good, appealing, futuristic, trustworthy, etc, then they'll buy it for that.
The issue is that most designers are snake oil salesmen, so from the perspective of management and C-suite who approves designs, you can't objectively verify the claims and buzzwords of the design team. See the pepsi logo redesign fuckup.
I'm sure they use macs but those are only about 8% of Apple sales vs 50+ for iPhone and 22% for services. So I guess they stuff that makes money gets prioritized.
The weird thing is the way it’s trash. It breaks weird things no dev should ever have to touch. At one point Excel left horizontal lines on screen, when scrolling. Bullets and numbering just straight up refuses to restart numbering. It _worked_ why did you break it? Who gained what out of you breaking it?
I am delaying it because iOS development is currently making me money but once that stops, I am so looking forward to moving back to Linux. Neither Windows or macOS are going in a good direction. The difference is only in the degree and speed of ensh*ttification. Ironically the only thing I might miss is the often criticized Xcode.
I disagree. Windows is still a very capable operating system. Is AI nonsense annoying? sure, but so are the ads on internet and only a tiny fraction of population uses adblockers.
Consumer buy laptops and smartphones, not operating systems. As long as there is no competing consumer product, Microsoft is not losing any meaningful share anytime soon. imo smartglasses might be more of a real threat to windows than copilot.
Here in the Netherlands, Macbook Neo is €700. That is by no measure a cheap laptop. Also at this price range there is plenty of competition from companies like Asus.
Recently I built a gaming PC, and I ended up installing Windows. Disabling windows AI features is significantly easier than dealing with small but frequent annoyance of linux distros.
As far as I know in the vast majority of cases Linux with Windows compatibility works better than native Windows (e.g. for games). So much for a capable operating system
Both Windows and Mac OS are going through a rough patch. I think these mature OSs have most things that users want, and since incremental polishes don't give people promotions, executives go for major changes that almost always degrade the product.
One way I phrased it to a friend was: "if you try to make a radical improvement to a spoon, chances are you'll make it worse".
I think there's plenty to do in both products, but they are not sexy things that drive upgrade conversations.
I used to manage NT-based infra back in the day, have been on a mac for 15 years now because of stuff like this. A few years ago I bought a Windows box for my daughter. Out of the box the clock was wrong and it would just hang on auto-update. No message, no logs anywhere, just hangs. A few years later the son comes of age and gets his own box. And it’s the same story, no automatic adjustment of the clock. I’m running a bog standard unifi network leading to fiber, nothing complicated, everything else works including all the windows laptops of my wife. But a basic standards-based library-supported Windows function.
Windows NTP client uses UDP port 123 as both the destination and source port, rather than letting the OS assign an ephemeral source port.
Many ISPs (e.g. AT&T Fiber) block UDP traffic with source port 123 to mitigate NTP amplification attacks.
Most people won't notice that problem since low-end consumer routers tend to mangle the source port when they perform outbound NAT. The ISP-provided router will generally do this itself until you enable "DMZ+" or "IP Passthrough" or some similarly-named mode, as home networking experts will typically do so they can manage NAT and firewalling on their own devices.
If a Windows laptop can sync and the wired Windows desktops can't, your wi-fi AP might be doing the necessary source port mangling.
If you add a NAT rule to your router to change the source port for NTP traffic, you should get time sync working.
Windows uses NTP by default with sane settings -- and it logs by default. So whatever issue you're experiencing is not a Microsoft problem, but a *you problem*. And the fact you state that there are no logs, which is false, kinda proves it.
that's such a cop out. Whatever store GP is buying computers from is messing things up, but how come Microsoft lets things get so bugged up in the first place? If I get an iPhone, it'll just work.
My theory, having seen what happens due to incorrect date/time settings on Windows (e.g. rebooting a laptop after the battery has been drained for extended durations):
1. The time, and critically date, is wrong (not syncing with the NTP servers, potentially due to ISP filtering, as the sibling comment implies)...
2. Which is causing SSL errors because the wrong date causes the expiry date on the SSL certificates to appear nonsensical...
3. Which causes connection failures to pretty much any HTTPS endpoint...
3. Which is preventing updates because no sane OS would download updates over an insecure connection.
A lot of comments saying that Windows is indestructable because it has no competition for a portion of the market due to:
- MacOS is too expensive
- Linux requires configuration and expertise
I'm not doubting those too, but like the article points out I would question if they're guaranteed to be true even in the short term. Chromebooks, Steamdecks and Android have all shown making a commercial requirement out of Linux is do-able, and the $600 Macbook Neo is due out any day.
I'm not predicting the death of Windows or anything, but I do think Microsoft's thrown is a lot less stable than they seem to realise.
I was holding these up as proof that Linux could be made into a supported commercial offering, not suggesting Steam Decks are gonna replace Windows, which would be kinda crazy.
The irony here is that Windows used to be a good shell on a truly terrible kernel around Windows 3.1/Windows 95. Now, it is a bad shell and UX on an actually really good kernel.
Obviously there are people who do genuinely prefer it having experience with a variety of platforms, but the ones who seem the most convinced of how superior Windows is always do seem to be the ones who’ve never actually spent time with anything else.
I’ll grant that a cheap Windows laptop was the right call up until recently if price—not ease of use and maintenance—was the overwhelmingly dominant factor and a laptop was absolutely necessary. But the answer for a cheap device for a non-technical person with aspecific needs (email, browsing, media consumption) has been an iPad for a long time at this point.
Once upon a time you could live in a world of Windows apps designed like Notepad++. Launchy or other apps gave you the spotlight style of opening apps fast from the keyboard, and the start menu was for edge cases... and life in windows was good!
After recent update fiascos I decided to install PopOS on a gaming rig that ran Windows 11 (as a pre-made set).
As they say, you can't see the light in the darkness and the difference between two is like between night and day.
Stable performance, consistent Remote Play to Steam Deck, quick bootup and no "hey want to play, that's a shame cause I got 20 minutes of patches to install".
Sure it's still a Linux with all consequences (had to switch from Wayland to Xorg for remote play and being returning user after couple years it wasn't straightforward) but it works much better.
I won't ever install Windows on my family computers. If I can afford to equip them with Macs I'll do so. If not - they'll get Linux instead.
Readit News
It seems certain that they use iPhones for everything. They can’t even subject themselves to using an iPad. They just copy things from iOS straight into iPadOS and macOS and let others (end users) deal with the fallout. Craig Federighi doesn’t seem to pay any attention to software anymore.
Consumers don't understand tech specs, so if you show them something that triggers their lizard brains because it genuinely looks really good, appealing, futuristic, trustworthy, etc, then they'll buy it for that.
The issue is that most designers are snake oil salesmen, so from the perspective of management and C-suite who approves designs, you can't objectively verify the claims and buzzwords of the design team. See the pepsi logo redesign fuckup.
Deleted Comment
Consumer buy laptops and smartphones, not operating systems. As long as there is no competing consumer product, Microsoft is not losing any meaningful share anytime soon. imo smartglasses might be more of a real threat to windows than copilot.
Here in the Netherlands, Macbook Neo is €700. That is by no measure a cheap laptop. Also at this price range there is plenty of competition from companies like Asus.
Recently I built a gaming PC, and I ended up installing Windows. Disabling windows AI features is significantly easier than dealing with small but frequent annoyance of linux distros.
One way I phrased it to a friend was: "if you try to make a radical improvement to a spoon, chances are you'll make it worse".
I think there's plenty to do in both products, but they are not sexy things that drive upgrade conversations.
Many ISPs (e.g. AT&T Fiber) block UDP traffic with source port 123 to mitigate NTP amplification attacks.
Most people won't notice that problem since low-end consumer routers tend to mangle the source port when they perform outbound NAT. The ISP-provided router will generally do this itself until you enable "DMZ+" or "IP Passthrough" or some similarly-named mode, as home networking experts will typically do so they can manage NAT and firewalling on their own devices.
If a Windows laptop can sync and the wired Windows desktops can't, your wi-fi AP might be doing the necessary source port mangling.
If you add a NAT rule to your router to change the source port for NTP traffic, you should get time sync working.
1. The time, and critically date, is wrong (not syncing with the NTP servers, potentially due to ISP filtering, as the sibling comment implies)...
2. Which is causing SSL errors because the wrong date causes the expiry date on the SSL certificates to appear nonsensical...
3. Which causes connection failures to pretty much any HTTPS endpoint...
3. Which is preventing updates because no sane OS would download updates over an insecure connection.
- MacOS is too expensive
- Linux requires configuration and expertise
I'm not doubting those too, but like the article points out I would question if they're guaranteed to be true even in the short term. Chromebooks, Steamdecks and Android have all shown making a commercial requirement out of Linux is do-able, and the $600 Macbook Neo is due out any day.
I'm not predicting the death of Windows or anything, but I do think Microsoft's thrown is a lot less stable than they seem to realise.
Android is for phones, and tablets.
Steamdecks only matters thanks to Windows games, developed on Windows, with developers using Visual Studio.
A lot of people herald Windows XP as the best Windows, but I question if they ever used Windows 2000.
I’ll grant that a cheap Windows laptop was the right call up until recently if price—not ease of use and maintenance—was the overwhelmingly dominant factor and a laptop was absolutely necessary. But the answer for a cheap device for a non-technical person with aspecific needs (email, browsing, media consumption) has been an iPad for a long time at this point.
Now... I'm glad I got a Mac.
As they say, you can't see the light in the darkness and the difference between two is like between night and day.
Stable performance, consistent Remote Play to Steam Deck, quick bootup and no "hey want to play, that's a shame cause I got 20 minutes of patches to install".
Sure it's still a Linux with all consequences (had to switch from Wayland to Xorg for remote play and being returning user after couple years it wasn't straightforward) but it works much better.
I won't ever install Windows on my family computers. If I can afford to equip them with Macs I'll do so. If not - they'll get Linux instead.