VerifiedReports

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You mean fabrication?

Not sure what you're referring to, but I mean it should be easy to try Linux WITHOUT Windows.

I mean it should be easy WITHOUT Windows.

Yes. It's an absolute mess.

I almost never expand an application to be full-screen, even on my laptop. This despite the fact that I'll resize an application's window to fill the whole screen except for the dock. I think that's why I don't maximize it: I want the dock to remain accessible.

A lot of stupid things about Mac window management stems from the mistake of forcing all applications to share a single menu that's glued to the top of the screen. This essentially turns your entire desktop into ONE application's window, within which its actual windows float around.

Historically this led to the Mac's penchant for apps that spawned an irritating flotilla of windows that you had to herd around your screen. Not only did this deny users a way to minimize the whole app at once, but it also sucked because you could see everything on your desktop (or other apps' UIs) THROUGH the UI of the application you were trying to use. A dysfunctional mess.

Around 15 years ago, I estimate, the huge advantage of a single application window finally permeated the Apple mindset and things have gotten much better in that regard. But Apple should have abandoned the single menu in the transition to OS X, and put menus where they belong: on applications' main frames. That would make the desktop a truly unlimited workspace and eliminate the daily irritation of the menu changes its contents behind the user's back because he clicked on another application's window (perhaps to move it).

Multiple times a day I minimize an application and then attempt to do something in the application that's now filling the screen... only to find that the menu still belongs to the application that isn't even shown. It's just so dumb.

But then... this is the GUI that, for decades, would only let you resize windows from ONE corner and NO edges. Apple grudgingly, half-assedly, and unreliably addressed that in the 2000s, only now to make it even less reliable in the shambolic Tahoe UI.

plug-in

built-in

Hyphens FTW!

This seems like good advice. To this day I haven't explored spreadsheets or variable sets, which makes resizing stuff a giant pain in the ass.

This is an area where FreeCAD really needs work: scaling stuff.

What is that supposed to mean?

Yeah... not sure. What I found, though, is that the people most in need of remote assistance are denied it.

It's not built in anymore. Microsoft took it away.

I can't remember exactly what the last name was that they gave the remote-assistance tool, but they removed it from all but so-called "pro" Windows... the one used by the LEAST-likely people to need it.

More anti-user BS from Microsoft. The baffling aspect is how Microsoft thinks it benefits from screwing users like this. I can't wait to buy my parents a Neo and shitcan Windows from their home forever.

That sounds like a great way to make a mess. Look at Microsoft's own apps shunning proper File dialogs and instead presenting a giant, bizarre pane of mostly text and a few crudely-drawn boxes in order to save a file. You have no idea what you're looking at or where you are in the file system.

Then there's the removal of title bars from Windows. You often have no idea what app you're looking at. Pull up a PDF in Acrobat and also in Edge. Now, at a glance, which is which?

Regressive garbage.

Windows USED to have a polished UX. Is it still better than most Linux distros? Maybe.

But it has regressed so far from where it was 25 (or more) years ago that every day I'm still infuriated and depressed that I've had to return to it for work. The idiotic UI blunders alone must waste hours of my life per week.

Aside from the absolutely baffling functionality removals, there are the hateful petty ones. Great example: the removal of Remote Desktop. I erred in getting my parents Windows laptops, thinking they'd benefit from the familiarity. NOPE. And when they encounter some defective bullshit that stops them from doing what they're trying to do, they call me for help but I can't log in from 2400 miles away because MICROSOFT REMOVED THAT ABILITY. Disgraceful.

This is so depressingly off-base and wrong-headed.

It completely ignores the huge UI regressions Windows has suffered over the last... 20 years?

Windows's UI ineptitude has reached crippling levels. Application windows lack title bars, so you frequently don't know what application you're looking at. Applications lack menus; critical functions are scattered all over the place behind hamburger buttons... and sometimes even further, under a "more" item in the menu the hamburger invokes (try saving a file you're viewing in Edge).

Applications eschew the tidy, readily comprehensible, familiar, and efficient File dialog in favor of a bizarre text-based pane consisting of crude, unlabeled boxes and horizontal lines... with no context as to where you are in the file system.

Then there are the baffling functional regressions. Here's one that wastes my time daily: You can't select multiple files in Explorer and say "Open with." WTF, this was old hat 30 years ago. Want to open several PNGs in Photoshop? NOPE, not anymore!

Just dismal.

"from inside Windows"

That's a problem right there.

Also you get reliable sound quality. The DACs in the iPhones were always decent. Now you have no idea what kind of quality you're going to get from a given listening device. Plenty of them are noisy POSes; my girlfriend had a Belkin adapter that had automatic gain (!) and would ramp up to blast hiss through the car stereo during quiet segments... and sometimes even during non-quiet ones.

The phones will always have to have DACs in them, to drive their speakers if nothing else. Denying customers a physical connection to them is just a dick move.

That's cool, but they need to mount a marketing campaign to announce the arrival of a "new OS" to the everyday user. They need to go on the offensive against Microsoft and educate consumers.

No; it was analog LaserDisc video. I think "Video CD" was a flavor of CD-I, which was very popular in China and was used way, way beyond the introduction of DVD. Well into the 2000s, I think.

More importantly, they need to find an alternative to Windows. A $10,000 computer wouldn't fix that dogshit.

Windows is such an offensive, defect-ridden pile of shit now that every PC maker should be blaming Microsoft for their inability to compete with the Neo.

I bought my parents Asus laptops years ago, and can't wait to replace them with a Neo.

Microsoft has spurned and scorned users. Now it's time for computer makers to push back and reject its shit. I'd love to see a consortium of computer makers come together to refine a Linux distro that's consumer-friendly enough to oust Windows and compete with Mac OS.

BUT... Pioneer put AC-3 (Dolby Digital) surround on LaserDiscs before DVDs came out. So LaserDiscs were the first video medium to offer digital sound at home.

And at that point, most players sold were combo players that could also play CDs.

And there was one more disc format: CD Video. It was a CD-sized digital single that also had a LaserDisc section for the (analog) music video. I have a couple; one is Bon Jovi.

No; it's strictly a reference to constant RPM or variable RPM.

CAV discs contained one frame per rotation. While this meant you could only fit half an hour on one side of a disc, it did give you perfect slow-motion and freeze-frames.

I worked in a video store and loved LaserDiscs. The Duran Duran video album was CAV, and the Pioneer LD-700 had such a fast transport mechanism and remote control that I could to DJ-style "scratching" with it.

That title is neither pro-Communist nor anti-Israel. What are you on about?

That's how you write a title.

Interesting that you bring this up. I'd wonder what you're talking about, since I (while having a huge shitlist of UI complaints for Apple and Microsoft) seldom if ever encounter this...

But I deal with this for my parents ALL THE TIME. They manage to delete core, included iOS apps every month or two; in addition to invoking other bizarre configuration options that I've never seen in my life (and that make no sense and shouldn't exist).

Over and over I have to visit the bizarre app graveyard that exists beyond the last iOS screen... the "app library," and restore something they managed to move there. As far as I can tell, relegating an app there from the home screen is a multi-step, long-press-riddled process. How do they keep doing it accidentally? I have no idea.

And several times my mom has ended up with an idiotic keyboard stretched across the middle of her iPad's screen, with no way to fix or dismiss it. Even typing this out right now, I don't remember WTF causes it or how we fixed it.

Absolutely. I always hated the inverse color scheme that Windows defaulted to, but that was OK because Windows had its color-scheme editor that let anyone create a global scheme he liked. I created a charcoal-toned one that was right in line with today's "dark" themes, and used it throughout the '90s.

Then Microsoft buried and ultimately removed the color-scheme editor... just in time for people to realize that inverse schemes suck.

So now Microsoft and Apple have dribbled out hard-coded "dark" themes, which every application developer has had to cobble together support for separately. Windows had this problem solved more than 30 years ago. Think about it. But then they deleted the solution from their product.

At least Apple NEVER had a proper global color palette for its UI. The fact that Microsoft did, but shitcanned it, stands testament to its complete abandonment of anything resembling good design. Hell, you can't even select multiple PNGs in Explorer and say "Open with..." anymore. The option is just totally GONE. Windows is rife with regressions like this. It's unbelievable.

Design is getting shittier and more ignorant daily. It's depressing.

Yep. I always cite XP as being Windows's peak, but I forgot that it shipped with their insulting Fisher-Price motif enabled by default. Step 1 was to switch the UI to "classic" (essentially Windows 95) mode, and all was well.

Windows 95 is a great case study because with that release, Microsoft did more for GUIs than Apple did through the entire decade of the '90s... and beyond.

All of it is now out the window (pun invited). It's a race to the bottom between Microsoft and Apple, with Microsoft having a HUGE head-start. But Apple has really stepped up to the plate with Tahoe, crippling it with big enough UI blunders to keep them in the enshittification game.

Look how crisp, professional, and usable it all is.

This is a very good write-up. There's no way this level of testing and dedication could have resulted in the execrable shitshow that is Windows today.

Mac OS is going backward with accelerating speed, too. They had just started to recover from Jony Ive when they put a packaging designer in charge of UI... resulting in the "Liquid Glass" debacle, and all the other incompetent UI changes that accompanied Tahoe's rollout.

The record sounds GREAT. I've never heard the CD.

I wonder if The Nightfly has now been ruined with dynamic compression (AKA "remastered") like everything else over the last couple decades.

My CD player came with Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, as a demo of dynamic range. That album (a digital recording) has, shamefully, been "remastered" and dynamically compressed.

Got that too. But then when I hit Back, I somehow ended up on the page.

WTH.