Windows Returns
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
I've heard that MS will offer paid security patches for three years, albeit with the cost doubling each year, so something like $70/$140/$280. I personally wouldn't want to do that for more than a year.
I can say that if you stick to Steam Deck Verified games, you will have very few problems; and if you enable compatibility (Proton) for non-Verified games, then almost every game will work, possibly with some tinkering.
I'm less familiar with non-Steam games, though I know Proton is not intended to be used outside of Steam. I guess that gaming outside of Steam would require more tinkering.
I no longer think of myself as a power user and that seems to make my life easier and more productive.
I think about it like cars on the road. Getting from A to B is the point. Sure sometimes the complexity of an alternate route is more efficient but oftentimes sitting in the slow down is the fastest way.
That's different from making a hobby of driving backroads. There's nothing wrong with making computers a hobby "also." It's also ok to choose other hobbies and just treat computers as tools.
As cattle not pets. Have a cow that doesn't connect to the itnernet. Have a cow that runs Linus. Have one that doesn't pretend it can outgun Microsoft. You'll have more surfaces to put stickers on for aesthetics.
If I gamed, I'd buy a console. But that's me. YMMV.
That's also a reasonable requirement for power users, I don't even consider myself a Windows power user since I mostly live in the terminal, browser and IDE - and play games of course, but gamers are hardly 'power users' either).
But Windows has been on a long downward spiral both for 'regular' and 'power' users (unless one counts stupid ideas like displaying ads in a desktop OS as a useful feature).
Sure there's a bunch of bullshit in Windows. But I see ads on my desktop when I browse the internet anyway. I'll live.
I don't even have to use any of the third-party tools that remove OS functionality - just changing easily accessible settings and Group Policy is enough to get it working how I want it.
Windows 10 feels dated in comparison now.
Also, Windows 10 is the last Windows OS that supports many "not subscription" services. (Desktop Quicken 2016/2017 does everything I need, so why should I pay for a subscription?)
They are playing at a unique scale: even a "narrow interest" feature with .1% take rate is millions of people they snub if they break it. That's a huge responsibility and they used to be very good and respecting it.
The fact they backpedaled some of the changes shows that it wasn't actually a difficult technical limitation, or necessary to enable some new vision. So we can either give them the benefit of the doubt and say they lacked the resources to prioritize these features (on a trillion dollar company?) or we can figure it's a mindset of "if we break people's existing workflow, it steers them into something we prefer" (see, any excuse they can find to monkey with people's default browsers and home pages).
My work sent me a Win11 laptop. I dislike it because of an obvious trifling thing (I miss being able to click on the clock and get a pop-up month calendar), but there are other nuisances:
* Rounded window corners. I don't know who is begging for them, because it's the trend in several newer Wayland desktops, MacOS, and now Win11. It might work well with exclusively new software designed assuming there are keep-out areas, but right now we still have the occasional legacy program with some trim in the corner that's being unceremoniously cut off. This seems like something that would be a themable option, but the ability to style Windows with built-in tools seems to have peaked years ago and is crumbling with every new version. The overall look just felt off, like someone was trying to convince their elderly Grandma that a KDE desktop with Firefox was the Windows XP + IE6 he was used to.
* The constant unasked-for changes. This last week, my machine started displaying a bunch of weather and sports boxes on the lock-screen. I didn't ask for that. I assume it's an extension of the earlier "let's put a bunch of random dialog on the lock screen about the random wallpaper, which happened to of course link back to Bing" feature I didn't ask for. I don't know how to be rid of it offhand, and can't be bothered trying to find out. (It's a work machine, so I'm not going to put that much effort into making it 'mine'.) But I shouldn't have to be going in and making changes to keep the machine I use for work purposes in a predictable steady state (modulo security fixes).
most of my annoyance comes down to the increased telemetry, ads everywhere, and the overall look of the system, dumbing the UI down basically.but I do have concerns of them breaking compatibility with older apps as well.
What you can do is change the alignment to the side instead of the centre.
There are still quite a few annoyances in the taskbar/start menu/system tray area, things that feel like they have changed for the worse.
The problem is now they’re finally changing some things that objectively sucked the ad people in the company are also along for the ride. But they always had the power to change things, now things that sucked are finally getting fixed.
Praying explorer gets a rewrite cos it’s slow jacked garbage
it was the News popping up uninvited in the Start Menu that ended Windows for me
i was just about to get into a groove for a project, and a News article popped up with a headline that totally knocked all the wind out of my sails
I keep using the last 4 or 5 years using Linux as my gaming OS (and everything). this includes AAA games, and I don't had issues. Plus, I can update my whole system at same time that I'm playing Stellaris without any issue.
That's not to say that there aren't issues (I rushed the Nvidia drivers and that resulted in a blank screen), but I'm definitely less annoyed - no more constantly trying to get rid of OneDrive only for it to re-appear, no more removing apps that I never asked for etc
developers can add “breadcrumbs” to
their apps so that you can not just
return to a specific app but also the
exact context you wanted to Recall
Some people say the web is not made for applications but for pages of content. But I often have the feeling that it is even more suitable for apps than the desktop. You can do so many things with "state in the url" - traverse it, bookmark it, share it, have multiple tabs with the app in multiple states ...
When I read about the developer breadcrumbs my eyes lit up; the creation of these views is necessary but also kind of sucks. I would love to be able to say: “show me front elevation of kitchen, looking at rear of building, with fov set to allow me to see the full counter and pantry”.
I’m new at this 3D modeling thing in the grand scheme of things, and self taught, but I spend an inordinate amount of time getting to the state described above.
Does anyone know what "Buldakian" means? "Buldak" is a spicy Korean dish, literally "fire chicken", but that doesn't seem relevant.
https://stratechery.com/2016/walmart-and-the-multichannel-tr...
Wait, like, on the keyboards? The keyboards that already have those bloody useless Windows and Menu keys between the AltGr and the right Ctrl? Where the hell are they gonna put that new key, exactly?
If you didn't learn to use them for more than a quarter of century thrn it says more about you than of the usability of those keys. Maybe you are that ... person what shoves PrtScr in the place of ContextMenu on ThinkPads.
There is a navigation block (arrows, Home/End, PgUp/PgDown) which is used extensively with Ctrl and Shift when editing text and navigating files and ContextMenu is used when I need a context menu without changing my hand to the mouse to RMB.
Also you can use RWin+ many keys on the right side for your own hotkeys, without clashing with the built-ins.
> but can't imagine navigating the start menu or context menues with the keyboar
My condolences?
There is absolutely nothing wrong doing it with a keyboard. On a notebook it's even more convenient.
Honestly, OP and your comments sounds like you don't use your right hand on the keyboard.
Edit: and to clarify, RWin, arrows, Enter is the fastest way to open an app which is pinned in the Start Menu.
If you don't pin apps there then see my previous comment.
And to both of you: if you never use something it doesn't mean nobody ever in the whole universe does not use it too.
But that also means that I pretty much use only 3 or 4 applications: a terminal window, VSCode, a browser, and Steam, so all the fancy start menu and Explorer features are also wasted on me.
Now that you mention it I actually remember Win+L to lock the desktop back when we still worked in an office, but when working from home that's hardly relevant.
No, the left-right arrows don't let you pick the pinned apps after you press a Window key.
Oh, and now that I am at home and can look at my keyboard, apparently I am not the only one who thinks that RWin is a useless key, but A4Tech as well: [0]. I didn't even notice that before!
In Windows 10. You know, there were other versions before Win10. From 1995.
And if I have both hands on the keyboard, left on the home row and right on the navigation area - RWin is right under the right thumb. And Tab under the left pinky. But sure, your unique inability to use your keyboard is the default for the whole mankind.
I don't need eg IrfanView or VLC in my taskbar all the time, so they are pinned in the Start Menu instead.
* and yes, I know it's essentially abandoned, I've tried the 'spiritual successors' and never found one that is quite as close to ideal workflow for me
Like a link?
oh boy
But anyway, no major tech company will let its AI loose to the public un-lobotomized, as we all saw what happens; the risks of negative press are too high, so if you do want to generate absolutely everything your heart desires, you'll have to run your own independent model locally without using their products, so for this demographic, Microsoft's Copilot is useless, but probably for the casual user it has some uses.
What about hotdogs and not-hotdogs?
they want to fisher-price their cloud services? ok, fair enough it's their hardware.
mobile phone apps? well I don't like it, but that ship has sailed.
my own personal computer? oh hell no. I don't like where this is heading at all.
I am shocked that the Cocreator didn't flag the author's drawing as "unsafe".
It totally depicts a a view from below of a blond woman squatting and peeing.