Linked by Adam S on Thu 10th Jul 2008 16:58 UTC
Gadgetzone.com has an interesting artcile on 20 things Windows 7 MUST include (their emphasis, not mine). They begin "Despite its enhanced security, improved CPU scheduler and excellent stability, it's still the flawed gem in many critics' eyes. But can Microsoft win back the XP crowd with its upcoming Windows 7 offering? The fact is, they have to." My Take: Not sure I agree with them all -- do home users really care about WinFS? -- but some, like home user licensing and simpler management of startup items would be really compelling features for upgraders.
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Member since:
2006-03-12
"Think Linux here".... Linux is by far less modular than the NT Kernel; in several aspects, including binary backwards compatibility.
Userspace, not kernel. Windows treats the userspace like protected system software, rather than anything the user actually owns. Try to delete Movie Maker in XP. It's like an evil magic trick.
A modularized Windows would both put an end to those shenanigans and produce a method for doing away with such unwanted binary cleanly, not that Windows needs any more settings dialogs. Vista is a step in the right direction, but the changes it allows are still quite superficial. "Think Linux" in terms of power to the user, as in every example the author gave.
I am not a "Windows advocate", but the Windows UI is the most familiar UI available.
I wonder whether you mean "familiar" in the purely subjective sense or just that more people have seen the Windows 95 desktop model than any other. In either case, Microsoft keeps messing with it, especially the desktop, My Computer, control panel, and start menu, so that advantage goes away quickly. The real problem is that they add to it without regard to how people actually use computers and without a clear sense of how developers should add their software to the interfaces. Instead, they try to make it a backwards-compatible "all things to all people," i.e. the folder->menu metaphor still dominates the start menu, but they somewhat imitated the NeXT dock metaphor with "pinned" items in XP, which are not compatible with the previous top-level shortcuts or IE4 quick launch, so they added yet another set of top-level shortcuts, and then put a search bar on it to bring the whole mess together. Where did your app land? No one knows. Search for it the old-fashioned way or the new-fangled way, your choice.
What's worse is that the newest idea is always the default one, so it's only the power users who explore these things for fun and would be quick to learn the new ways that know how to get back to the old, familiar interface. When Joe User upgrades, he's lost without a map. It's really not terribly familiar after all.
I like the "64bit" approach, but "64bit only" discriminates older machines and small devices [ultraportable PCs, PDAs, SmartPhones, etc.]... The best approach should be "word width agnostic" I think.
64-bit-only is the only way left to make 64-bit good. They already missed the Common Codebase boat, so all they can do is prune away the 32-bit side. No more of this multiple codebase mess that they temporarily parted from when they merged on NT as of XP.
Microsoft is insignificant in the portable device market (and UM/Tablet PCs are just an insignificant market). Besides, what they put on PDAs is not desktop Windows, obviously. Vista already discriminates against old and light machines with its severe system requirements, so there's no way they're shoehorning that beast onto a phone.
Portable devices are a non-sequitur. There's no reason in the world that the existence of Windows-branded software for 32-bit ARM portables should impede the maturity of their flagship product on their actually-profitable core market of 64-bit x86 home computers.