this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Why are people still surprised?
I can't really think of a reason why 10 is listed as good, does it actually do something better than 7? Even just graphical interface?
Windows 7 is good compared to Vista, but bad compared to Windows Xp SP 1 or SP 2 (in my memory at least). Windows 10 is good compared to Windows 8, but bad compared to Windows 7.
After a couple more years of MS pushing win 11, we'll probably get a win 12 that is less good than win 10, but better than win 11, so thanks to people's short term memory, it will then be considered "good", but anyone with a memory and some critical thinking ability will recognize it as shite.
XP sp1 and 2 were more or less the same as me with an updated UI and non existent 64 bit. However flawed vista was, it added an actual tangible benefit for 7 to further improve on.
I'd argue 7 was the last windows os that could be described as "better" in some way than what came before (which most, even the ones we remember as "bad" at the time, did offer some real step forward which isn't true for 8/10/11).
XP is based on the NT kernel, and ME is based on the 9X kernel. They are extremely different under the hood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
I beleive a large issue, and I say this as an old man yelling at kids on my lawn, is the difficulty in learning new systems. Most of those bad ones largely changed how to navigate a pc. Most of the good ones were smaller leaps from the prior bad one. So yes, I'm sure that also means the devs had more time in the current style to smooth it out and fix newly broken features, but it also got people exposed to the new style. A huge problem with 8 was that it went to that tablet tile bullshit. 10 tries to be a tablet too, slightly less so, but now we're all accepting it as normal. That's my take, at least as a contributing factor. Whatever was normal in your 20s is the standard for the rest of your life.
I see it with cars. People in my cohort get mad at all the chimey nannies in modern cars, so they yearn for when cars weren't so inundated with technology. Peak automotive design was 1985-2005. And yet, the adults when we grew up would complain those 90s cars are way too complicated with their electronic engine control models and emissions systems.
I'm going to disagree on this one, at least for me personally using the base functions of the different windows versions was never a problem. Even when completely ignoring the UI changes (including the always increasingly messier system configuration pages), Windows has definitely been regressing.
The user transition from win XP to win 7 was completely smooth for me, it didn't feel different at all. It's only after using it a bit that the downsides became obvious: I remember that file search worked less good, they had made a bit of a mess of config screens and the bloat needed more ram. But it came with a smashing chess program. It felt like there was some minor regression, but it wasn't a trainwreck.
Windows 8 upon first startup was awful since that was the first time that MS wanted to force the user to create a cloud account through dark pattern design. Even if I had not grown up in a time when my operating system did not use dark patterns against me, I would still be pissed off when I encountered it for the first time. Once I got past that hurdle, the Os was usable and problems only emerged when I tried to do more things.
Things like closing a stuck full screen game with task manager, which didn't work because the new task manager would not come on top. Or the new store app, which installed "apps" that were not "programs" and could fe not be uninstalled in a normal way.
From my first experiences with windows 10 I remember that out of the box you could not control when it would update. That pc would wake up in the middle of the night despite the settings saying that it shouldn't and I had to dig deep till I found how to make it behave permanently. Then at a later point I also made the mistake of using the recommended OneDrive sync system for my documents folder and nearly lost all my personal files, fortunately I had a backup on an external hard disk. And the main goal of Windows search was no longer to find files, but instead to trick users into opening bing, to boost microsoft quarterly statistics.
Microsoft has been adding more and more dark pattern design into Windows, it's not a case of "old man yells at clouds", it has really been getting worse and worse with each new release.
And Microsoft firing their qa team and using their customers as canaries is definitely not helping either. So many issues that should have never gone life.
I wouldn't count on it. MS is moving away from selling desktop-stuff and towards selling cloud stuff (think azure and office356) and consulting. That's why they changed their attitude towards linux (think wsl and c# for linux) and open-source (think github). MS wants companies to use open-source tools (preferably written in c#) and deploy them to azure with the help of MS-consultants.
Enshittifying windows is a step in that direction. For example: The more people have a MS-Account, the easier it is to sell office356. That's why they pressure windows-user into making MS-Accounts.
MS knows that desktop is dying.
With 70% of the market share being w10, no, we wont
They put some under-the-hood improvements in 10 that they didn't put in 7, such as a new display driver model and Directx 12.
But that does not make a difference to most people. Industry desupporting of Windows 7 is the biggest con to it.
Eventually, 10 will share 7's fate. So you'll have both 10's regressions and 11's and so forth to live with as long as you're on Windows. You can't stop Microsoft from desupporting and killing their software in the long run.
Microsoft has a multi-decade history of enshitification when they do not perceive any major threats. Internet Explorer, DirectX, Windows Server, etc. all rotted. Some of these are still active and supported, yes, but they all peaked years ago and are aging poorly. Microsoft doesn't really do the labor of love thing much when customers are bagged.
Linux may be able to dethrone them to an extent if it can reach an ease of access/UX that most people are comfy with. And it has made huge strides over the years. It can also run most Windows software very well.
Mac is still priced very high and still feature-limited and a 2nd/3rd-class citizen when it comes to platform targeting. Offering lower priced conputers would make them a pretty big threat I think.
I think ChromeOS is a decent threat to Windows but it loses tons of features vs all the other options. At least it is really cheap and easy to use.
XP fucking sucked. It wasn't good until service pack 3.
You skipped 8.1 which was the good version that fixed the stuff that sucked about 8. It's existence is almost completely forgotten.
Then Windows 10 came out and it was bad.
They then had about a 10 different OS builds that all had the Windows 10 name instead of giving each build a new name or calling them service packs. The OS that exists now (22h2) has almost nothing in common with the OS that came out in 2015.
Windows 11 has also had several major leaps since that name started. What's current (23h2) is much much different than the OS that came out in 2021.
Windows 2000 is also missing and was probably the last time Microsoft put out an OS that was good from the start rather than sucking on release.
Also the ones listed as bad from Vista onwards simply never got the improvements.
Vista was actually shockingly solid by the end. 7 on release was essentially just Vista Service Pack 3 with a new taskbar skin, because Vista was completely unmarketable by that point and nobody could be convinced to jump to Vista anymore.
Win2K was the last version of Windows I liked. By 2007 I'd had enough of their shit and moved to Linux. Each and every year since then has validated that choice, as desktop Linux has improved and Windows has enshittified further and further.
I agree with everything you write, but I'll also add an unpopular opinion as someone who tested the beta version of Vista and hated it: Vista x64 SP2 was a good OS, which solved most of the issues that existed with the OS.
And into this day, it's the most beautiful Windows UI, at least for me.
People keep repeating that but it's by far the worst and actually the one that made me bail. What is it that good about it that made it worth sacrificing user choice, privacy, performance, latency, search, startup time, solitaire, and much more?
If you include 98SE you should also include 8.1. Or include neither. But then it wouldn't make sense anymore.
XP SP2 is what everyone remembers, too. It wasn’t very good at release and a lot of people stayed on 2000.
Indeed. Plug and play didn't (mostly) get figured out until SP2. Drivers were still quite a nightmare at that time.
2000 though was a server version. Not technically consumer.
I've honestly haven't had any problems with XP SP1. I've had it on a couple computers back in the day. I remember that the upgrade to SP2 wouldn't always go well. Sometimes requiring a reinstall.
Good stopped existing after 7. Only bad and slightly less bad.
You're missing Windows 2000, but I guess you can argue that's Windows NT not mainline Windows. That was definitely in the good camp, and I was not alone in sticking with it for many years (until XP got good).
Edit: I see @[email protected] beat me to this point.
Fixed it for you, thanks!
Edit: strikeout not working as expected...
95 is the best OS of all time.
Never any love for Win 3.1
Too bad win 12 is on track to break the streak.