Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news

Linking this comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307 that designers at Microsoft use Mac and have been given more power than they should.

   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.

There are more https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19780566

The idea of Windows UI/UX designers having macbooks is so absurd to me it's hilarious

Dogfooding should be a requirement for designers.

That explains so very much about the horrible, inconsistent UX. Not the Linux is better, far worse imo, but at least it's getting better not worse.

I think Ballmer had it right, when he (fake-) stomped that iPhone.

tells you everything there is to know

That Microsoft's designers don't take their jobs seriously?

How on earth could you ever pretend to do you job well without using the product you're designing?

Ironically after getting a Mac last year and expecting to hate it and put Linux on instead, I found MacOS a far more restful and pleasant desktop environment to work in than Windows has become. There's a few things I miss, like the File Manager, but OTOH I have a proper terminal environment instead.

But mainly I like that it's the same every time unless I alter something, that it's very consistent, and that it's not constantly trying to steal my attention.

MacOS doesn’t have tabloid news. I doubt the decision to push clickbait was a driven by UX designers.

I can't imagine anyone starting their first day at Microsoft and saying with a straight face: "Yeah, I want a Mac."

(Okay, I can imagine it; it's actually pretty funny.)

Yeah, I switched from Windows over a decade ago, and I still miss Windows File Manager. Nothing I’ve seen in other OS’s can seem to match it. There are mods for Mac OS that can potentially fix it though.

Try Path Finder

https://www.cocoatech.io/

No association, just a happy user when I had Macs.

When it comes to the realm of commercial desktops for personal compute, MacOS is the best by far. Unfortunately, the only truly usable ones are the open source ones. After years of linux usage, I simply cannot operate a windows computer. I am impressed by those who can. You seemingly have to be a mouse ninja to dismiss the various notifications that continuously pop up.

It explains why Win11 feels like the UI/UX is trying to imitate MacOS.

The thing is, it means Microsoft has completely abandoned Windows users that use Windows because it's not MacOS.

IMO, Win7 with the Classic theme was peak UI. It's been downhill ever since, starting first with replacing 3D button controls with flat buttons, which reduces discoverability and relies on using too much negative space. Over time it turned into displaying less information on the screen, like Win11 eliminating the option to have task bar items show the window text, and instead merely having the application icon, which then hides how many windows an application, and making switching between windows in an app requiring two clicks instead of one.

When I eventually install Win11, I'm going to have to buy WindowBlinds and Start11 just to make it usable.

From that comment:

> I fought passionately against things like the all-white title bars that made it impossible to tell active and inactive windows apart

That change was the exact point in time that I knew sanity was gone and that Windows would get progressively worse over time. You can even end up with one window inside another where they sort of blend together. It's mind boggling and it's still the default.

Whoever is responsible for that mess should be banned from touching UI design for the rest of their life. Lol.

That is a disservice to society. Students and workers everywhere are forced to deal with stupid headlines on their OS 10 hours a day, while the people who make those machines get to opt-out. Ridiculous.

Blame the PM/PO and executives who greenlighted the tabloid filth for “engagement” metrics going up

Windows 11 is the number of UI redesigns they've started and never finished. Every time you click "Advanced" or "Properties" you get a UI from Windows one version older.

That’s...uh, surprising as hell. The idea of a designer that could actually tolerate having to use Windows full-time for design work, even at Microsoft; would be much more surprising, from my experience.

It's probably been about a decade since I used Windows as well so this is probably just my memory, but I don't remember anything special about file manager.

What's so good about it?

The lead designers at Ford might drive Porches on the weekends, but I'll bet they still drive Fords into the office.

The more painful it is to eat your own dogfood, the more it's necessary to do so. But it has to be mandated from the top down.

If the only people with the power to actually change the product aren't even using it, the god-awful UI/UX decisions in the latest version of Windows begin to make sense.

Tree + file panel, per-folder display settings

At Mozilla designers use iPads and don't use Firefox.

A file picker/saver dialog that doesn't take ages to open, like it does on MacOS.

For me, the terminal experience on MacOS is uncanny valley because of the BSD implementations:

   $ ls tmp -al
   ls: -al: No such file or directory

This is the ls example, but all the utilities I would reach for on a linux behave like this. I'm told you can install gnu coreutils through brew, but my company locks that down so I get stuck with this surreal terminal experience.