Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
Very similar to the New Explorer thing: most people don't use 80% of explorer menu features, so put them in the ribbon where they take up even more space.
I don't get this line of reasoning.
Instead of navigating through the nested menus within Start, or even searching for apps and documents through the live search function, users began to pin apps to the Start menu or the taskbar for even quicker access. Microsoft data found that most users (above 40 percent) didn't pin a single app to the Start menu, with steadily declining numbers pinning 1 (20 percent), 2 (15 percent), and so on.
It doesn't say anywhere in the article that it was a focus/user group and it sounds like it was generalized to refer to every Windows user so how did they collate all of those data? Shouldn't someone be raising some privacy concerns?
Disclaimer: I've not used Windows since XP. I'm a *nix user.
With that being said, I found W7 to be pretty intuitive. I don't use the start menu for much other than quick access to programs that I don't want to clutter. The start menu is on the corner, and easy to click. It's easy to de-click if I need to, and I don't need to minimize anything to access it. This will be a sad day.
It seems everyone is converging on mobile, as if it's going to replace the desktop. It's not. Desktop will always be here, and to pretend it's going away and force tablet interfaces down everyone's throat is a pretty bold/stupid move in my opinion. Then again, I'm biased because I'm not a complete moron when it comes to computers. Maybe 99% of the market will LOVE not having a start menu.
Is my monitor a touch screen? No. So let's not pretend it is. I don't care about pretty interfaces or big video buttons that play when I hover over them. I want something I can launch programs with. Is it really hard to do something like
if(is_computer) { show_useful_start_menu(); } else if (is_tablet) { show_retarded_start_menu(); }
I understand I'm the minority, but if they do away with the start menu, I'll probably stay on windows 7 forever.
Once I got used to the Start screen I've found it okay to use. I had initial concerns that the constant transition away might be jarring but turns out it's a non-issue. I've also found that the Start menu search in Windows 7 was quite slow, and that in W8 it's actually responsive!
Have you given the new interface a chance?
If Microsoft and Apple have their way, desktops will only be for developers and "professionals". The mobile transition allows them to fix the bug that users can install software that interferes with their business plans, and without giving them a cut.
Oh who am I kidding, my Windows OS is a games launcher and web browser these days, and nothing more. I don't mind how retarded Microsoft and Apple want to get, what concerns me is Canonical and their "me too" attitude with regard to stupid design decisions.
Then, out came winders 95 with its fancy pants "start" menu, and some Rolling Stones song about making a grown man cry, or at least some part of that song. I didn't really like the start menu, too much chasing things down multiple levels of moving targets.
So now, start menu will die. Die, start menu, die. Only to be replaced with something that looks much like Pogrom Manager, only with more pixels and bits per pixel to dress it up nice. Just goes to show you the MicroSlop can admit a mistake, even if the mistake is old enough to get a driver's license.
EDIT: Meant Windows 8, not 7
Or are you saying that already?
I'm finding it hard to believe that people are actually pinning infrequently used things like the Control Panel to the task bar or is there another way to access it that I don't know of? Isn't that leading to visual clutter? Users never cease to amaze me.
How would it work if I don't remember the nname of that new program that I installed 3 months ago and never really used it since.
> So they ripped off OSX Spotlight (which stole it from Quicksilver/etc) - I've used spotlight to launch apps with 3-4 keyclicks since forever:
OSX: CMD+space,Fir<return> = Launch Firefox and Win7: WINkey, Fir <return> = Launch Firefox
I would also use the auto-complete to find things as a second (distant) use case.
One thing that always annoyed me about the Start Menu was how companies would use it. For example, shortcuts notwithstanding I would have to go:
Start > Programs > Firaxis > Civilization IV > Civilization IV Beyond the Sword
The part that really annoyed me was putting the company name in there. I don't care. In fact it may not even be obvious who the company is that makes something you want to use.
I actually bought a copy of Windows 7 retail version for the explicit purpose of using it from computer to computer for years to come, probably in XP-like time frames (ie 5-10 years).
Microsoft needs to realize that these infrequent expensive upgrades (largely for features nobody cares about) are a decade out of date.
Honestly, there's still nothing wrong with XP. Microsoft just went out of their way to kill it by deliberately not supporting it with things they definitely could've. One of the great things about XP was the low resource requirements (minimum 128M of RAM). IIRC 64-bit Windows 7 is at 2GB minimum now. For what exactly?
The iBook shipped in only one model, with 128MB of RAM. The PowerBook G4 started at 128MB of RAM and topped out at 256MB of RAM. The Power Mac G4 started at 128MB of RAM and topped out at 512MB of RAM.
The smallest amount of memory you can get on a Mac nowadays is 2GB, and you would've had to buy an entirely new computer at least once to get Lion running in the intervening time.
(Whereas, if you didn't buy a new computer since Windows XP came out, you could run the 32-bit version just fine with 1GB of RAM.)
Methinks you doth protest too much about expensive upgrades.
By comparison, OS X 10.1 was the latest version of OS X available at XP RTM. OS X 10.2 would've set you back $129, 10.4 another $129, 10.6 another $30, and 10.7 another $30. (I don't believe that you can skip OS X release-level updates, but I'm not a Mac user, so I don't know; if you can, feel free to correct me.) Even if you magically bought a computer in 2001 which would still run Lion today, you would've spent $310 on OS upgrades, for a period of time for which upgrading Windows cost less than half as much.
But then again, Apple has the benefit of being in control of the hardware, which makes up the lion's (haha) share of their revenue.
- Apple can let OS X be its loss leader, whereas Microsoft doesn't have a thing to let Windows be a loss leader for (the Windows Store, maybe, post-8?)
- breaking backward compatibility hurts Microsoft's sales, since there's no single source of application updates, and since so many Windows licenses are in the enterprise; it doesn't affect Apple's sales (maybe even helps them) because it sells shiny new Macs for shiny new features and because Apple doesn't live or die on OS X revenue.
its saving grace is that retail sales of Windows licenses are probably dominated by people refreshing their computers.
(though, I'd still argue, an extra $70 per decade is not exactly breaking the bank.)
The developers were probably happy to see it go after working on it for 10 years, too.
It's not entirely difficult to shoehorn Windows 7 onto such systems either, I suspect it's sort of designed that way, to ensure that the only people who do it are the people who know what they're doing and won't be disappointed by the results.
Multiple user logins is a big part of it. All editions of Windows 7 above Starter let an additional user log in when the machine is locked without disrupting the locked session. It's an expected usage pattern that a family of 4 to 6 users will often be all logged in at the same time.
The windowing environment for each user takes on the order of 50 to 100 MB, plus figure 200 - 400 MB for the programs each user is likely to run, and you can get to 2 GB pretty quick.
(I suspect that might be what's happening when the wife and kids swap between 3 or 4 sessions on one of the Ubuntu machines at home -- but Linux isn't dumping actual running programs out to swap as fast as possible to make room for the 500 MB Word doc you might open, either)
I launch programs and find files like this every day. I find it one of the most useful features of 7 vs earlier versions (though I skipped Vista so maybe it was there too).
There are a number of ways in which XP is objectively less secure than successor versions of Windows.
I use nearly 20 programs on a regular basis, and another 20 I use occasionally and would like the be able to find without digging through the Program Files menu, and I don't want to clutter the task bar with all of them. The way I have it set up in six folders on the top of the Start Menu (NOT inside "Programs", but above Programs), I can pull any of them up with a Ctrl-Esc and few hits of the arrow keys.
The text search feature works great when you can remember the name of the app you're looking for. My brain doesn't always work that way, though. Since I have the various apps sorted by category, I don't have to look through more than about 6 at a time to find the one I need.
I'm actually using a "Classic Windows Start Menu" app that replaces the new Windows 7 Start Menu with one that behaves the way I've come to depend on.
Until I found the Classic Start Menu app, I was getting stuck on the search line a lot, trying to remember what some tool was called. No fun.
Doesn't work for me, since I can't get to it from the keyboard. If there's a keyboard shortcut to open it, then I never found it.
Maybe it's just the writing style that's throwing me but the leap forward in a consumer facing OS that iOS delivered felt like a more organic process.
Reminds me of that quote from Jobs : "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
As a result I wonder how much of Apple's process was reactionary from data / focus groups vs. from Steve / Ives "gut"
Honestly, it feels like Apple has been playing it too safe with their UI work the last few years, while Microsoft is doing real innovation. (Hardware, of course, is an entirely different matter.)
I've also always wondered why the CPU isn't stuck on the back of the monitor where it can be provided with better airflow.
As far as the ribbon, I have to disagree, it seems such a hodgepodge to me, and though I like WP7, I don't think it has a warm inviting feel, it's just cool.
iOS always felt boring and cold to me.
That would result in increased latency between the CPU and the rest of the system. Put the the motherboard and memory on the laptop's monitor and it would start getting too top-heavy.
I'm extremely suspicious of their interpretation of usage statistics. As a "power user" I habitually decline any offer to track my behavior. Also, as discussed in the previous article about Explorer changes, do the statistics speak to the number of people who choose other methods, or to the lack of UI discoverability? Clutter up the desktop of your freshly-bought PC with enough partner icons, and the Start Menu gets lost in a sea of visual information.
The new interface reminds me of the old app-launchers/menus in the pre-Windows days.