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Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I’m just coming from a place of ignorance (I haven’t used Windows for years), but why? The Win10 UI looks to me probably the most attractive and usable it’s ever been. Enough so that I’d probably feel comfortable switching to it if I decided the Mac isn’t for me anymore.

Not that I don’t trust MS’s recent design direction, but I have to wonder if such a major overhaul is warranted.

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Windows 10 has a lot of problems. There are two different control panels!

Don't bring that up, they may get rid of the older, more usable one!

Nah, they'll just add a third option.

Thanks for making me laugh.

This is by far the most Microsoft comment ever.

And whatever they miss in the third option they’ll shove it in a fourth one then a subsequent version they’ll do some infuriatinng consolidation between the two that will drive users mad even more, the tutorials will be pointing users to all sort of methods that no longer work. That’s the way Windows’s been. Every other 2 iterations they eventually got it working but the disaster inbetween was the most frustrating experience. No wonder people held onto older version of windows until they no were no longer supported. Upgrading wasn’t worth the wased time most of the time

This is the problem they need to fix. Two different looks, with the modern look removing needed functionality, sacrificing functionality for UI goodness.

This is the real problem. I don't mind the UI changing but it's no use if they remove important functionality.

As of the current release, the only things left in the old Control Panel are things that seem to be adjusted by external programs. For example, the touchpad driver for my laptop exposes itself through a tab on the old Mouse control panel.

Pretty much everything is in the Settings app now, though it was missing a whole lot of stuff back at launch years ago. Every single setting is searchable, which I find to be a vast, vast improvement.

Sure, but that just requires them to finish migrating the UI; it does not require yet another UI overhaul.

(And in fact, the latter is probably worse for completing the migration!)

“finish migrating the UI; it does not require yet another UI overhaul.”

They have been working on this now for 8 years without much progress. For any serious work you still to know if the setting is in the old control panel or the new. I don’t think they are even trying to clean up.

They are moving the functionality to new experience piece by piece.

I wonder if anybody back in the Windows 8 days was even able to estimate how much work all this means. Many of the control panel applets have been there for ages so they must have lot of legacy stuff inside them. Also the modern UI is totally different experience, so they likely ended up rewriting a big part of code.

Caution: Windows 10 is beautiful in static Hi-DPI screenshots, but actually using it may present a different usability opinion.

While I find Windows 10 usable and attractive, I find it still has a lot of clunkiness that needs work.

That clunkiness is windows’ trademark. Why would they polish the os like apple?

Because Microsoft has talented engineers who care deeply about their products. But for whatever organizational reason, we have this design-by-committee monster.

You are not using it, I am not using it, lots of people never use it.

For this reason they need to change it. So we have a reason to use it.

Way back in the Windows 3.11 days and also in the Win 95 days and to some extent the Windows XP days they gave people a good reason to use it. With 3.11 it was more to do with the apps that came along for the ride, with 95 it was neat touches like the context menu and DirectX, with XP it was because it wasn't a DOS system in disguise any more.

In the next iteration they have plenty of opportunities to get it right. Lots of historical design decisions were taken because of reasons that no longer matter. They can just do it right rather than due to a half baked whim.

An overhaul is warranted, to bring people back to using it.

If you only seen curated screenshots then prepare for disappointment. It is a random hodgepodge of UI/UX design patterns and toolkits. Theres few sane global design default so basically every app is just archane memorization as opposed to just groking the OS/Desktop design principles.

I've used Linux distros my whole life but I feel confident saying Linux desktop has surpassed Windows in usability.

I occasionally interact with Windows for family members and it always amazes me how wrong things are.

Well, if you're a corporation with dozens/hundreds of designers, who did a great job of building an extensible design system, and now any engineer can just take that design system and roll with it, what are you going to do? Fire all those designers?

Of course not. You simply re-design every few years.

The re-design will be supported by evidence like "its cleaner" and "it increases visual clarity" or "it unifies our brand", because phrases like that mean nothing but who would ever vote against cleaning something up?

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