I was at Microsoft for a few years. I think some amount of blame has to go to hiring quality declining over the years.
I wrote a bit about this in an old comment:
> They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation of new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So when they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they don't understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up doing less.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472300
Also, a little bit after I left, they eliminated the SDET role. I have memories of encountering many SDETs who didn't know what they were doing. But the good ones kept the developers honest. Getting rid of a parallel org structure dedicated to testing for regressions etc. would certainly seem like a good explanation for a quality dip.
The key to having a nice time with Windows is 1) to give it loads of memory (32GB+ surely) and 2) to run a debloater script the moment you pick up a new system e.g. https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
All the rubbish from the last 20 years - ads, OneDrive, Copilot, Office upsells, Candy Crush in the start menu - it can just disappear, leaving a pretty stable system that hasn't actually changed much.
Apart from the awful control panels, anything else you don't like is probably replaceable. I really love startallback.com which brings back the regular start menu and lots of other little fixes.
Obviously everyone deserves a computer that doesn't try to sell to them CONSTANTLY, and I wish Windows were better out of the box. But it doesn't take much adjustment to get there.
Two years ago I did some cleaning up and finally sorted out the gaming PC from my youth. I believe I bought it around 2007. Ran some old AMD dual core (may have been an Athlon 64 4400), still had an HDD. Installed on it was Windows Vista, which wasn't exactly a crowd favorite. So as I went to backup the final remnants of those gaming days I was flabbergasted by the snappiness of the explorer. Folders just opened instantly! So snappy, it was actually fun just navigating through all the folders. I had been expecting this PC to run at snail's pace, yet the windows experience was much better than on my desktop PC built in 2021 running Windows 10 on an NVMe drive. I have no idea how that is possible, but since then with every interaction with modern Windows there's just this tiny tinge of sadness...
The worst thing is, there is no real alternative to Windows that is backed by somewhat of a corporate guarantee besides macOS.
But many people who use Windows wouldn't want to move to a considerably new platform like macOS, which works quite differently. There is Linux, but then there are compatibility issues and driver issues and other things that are not great for the casual average user.
It feels like Windows could have been better off without being free, but being something like a buy once, keep forever solution, like the good old days. Today it has just turned into a complete toxic pit of mess that tracks you in every little thing you do and works against you to make sure that it maximizes profits for Microsoft and its partners. The usability is completely destroyed, alas.
I really don't mind Windows 11, and don't recognise many of the problems other people here claim to have. For example, I simply don't see all (or any) of the ads that many complain about.
Coming from a Gsuite + Atlassian + AWS world to an all-inclusive Microsoft world was an experience. It should be in the bucket list for every developer to try once in their life.
WSL is a far better developer environment in Windows even for dotnet based development. I use it at work. It is fine.
Windows OS on the other hand is a mess. There are dedicated keyboard shortcut (win + c), keyboard buttons, buttons on desktop for copilot. Copilot is almost on every Microsoft software. I'm not getting the appeal of copilot at all.
Also, I have a personal gripe with a non-standard way of placing the Fn key - first of all, why keep it close to Ctrl, why? and on top of that, Lenovo & Microsoft and every other manufacturer have them in different positions on the keyboard.
I'll be honest, I just want something that I can develop on (linux is the easiest by far) and that's not annoying (Nixos is the best at that).
I don't even use any advanced config, just bare-minimum config for the system, enough (project-specific things handled by nix).
To force the tech giants to actually compete with each other for customers, we have to be willing to switch platforms. If you think of yourselfs as Mac or PC (or iOS/Android) person, then these companies can treat you like a reliable asset they can extract value from, rather than a customer they have to please in order to keep.
Personally, I've worked pretty hard over the last few years to make sure that I can easily switch to a different OS. This means avoiding relying on Mac and Windows apps as much as possible, and most importantly having all of my data in portable formats that do not tie me to any specific software.
Nearly all of the complaints about AI , Ads and Search in Windows are easily bypassed with a few settings (look up Debloat or run the settings manually).
There are quality issues, some severe, but no worse than iOS or MacOS. Honestly Windows 11 performance on my $300 mini PC exceeds latest iOS on my $1400 iPhone 17 pro.
Instead of shaming Microsoft, we should all be a bit more introspective about performance, latency , quality control and the overall decline in software.
1gb memory for a browser tab is more shameful than a Copilot button on the taskbar
how is it not yet a code red inside Microsoft, for the astonishing decline of user experience of Windows 11?
A mate just gave me a laptop; it is the first Windows device I have touched in 20 years. It runs Windows 11. I am assuming it's all as bad as it was 20 years ago, but going from all the Windows 11 talk I am guessing it will be far worse?
I am trying it out today first and then reinstalling it with Linux. It seems its fully supported out of the box except the cam and fingerprint scanner: cam I never use, fingerprint scanner would be nice but I hear it is basically impossible to get working if not supported (and it is not).
It will get more annoying with Satya at the helm and as long as there is a cash cow that is not enduser facing there is not even hope for change.
I work with seniors, who use W11. Aspects of change from W10 confused them, but their primary requests are two quite different things
1) please stop making dark patterns preference onedrive backup and let us run a local file backup cleanly without needing to de-install software
2) please make the charming folded complex flower-like shape an alpha channel overlay so we can make it lie over a background colour of our own choosing, not the one(s) you pre-package
one of them is "stop innovating" and the other is "innovate more" -I think the union over them both is "be nicer"
There is a third one: work better with Apple so that outlook handles photos and icloud mail oauth sync better, but there is a blame game with two parties in that one. An amazingly high number of seniors seem to want apple devices (iphone, ipad) to work with Windows home compute, and no amount of me suggesting they get a mac makes them want to get a mac "office doesn't work properly" mainly the issue. (thats nonsense, but they believe what they believe)
I disagree with this in the article: "Last, but not least, the technical debt of Windows has become almost unbearable. 30+ years of Windows NT certainly adds up."
The actual design of the Windows internals has mostly remained unchanged and continues to be improved. This is not much different than Linux being a design from the 70s. The critical bugs in Windows are due to newer additions to that base -- not the base itself.
But what everyone really hates is the "modern" technology has been piled on top of that Windows NT legacy not the legacy itself.
In wonder whether in a few years, we'll have a post complaining about windows 12 and that 11 was much better.
Not a day goes by that I regret blocking MS from upgrading my personal PC from Win 10 to Win 11. I decided going without ongoing support is a small price to pay for the joy of not stepping into a bottomless pit of wtf every time I log on and work on stuff.
I am still on Win10 on my pc, the day my pc is forced to update to Win11 is the day I finally switch OS. I don’t even care if I loose things that are windows only. What OS should I switch to? Is it Linux Mint that is the closest alternative?
Just repeating all of the threads from the last 6 months; (including two big ones in the last week);
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46761061
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46656998
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011569
etc
XP was peak Windows.
One thing not mentioned here is the Photos app. Out of the box, it is the default way to view images on Windows. That app is so bloated and slow to start that Microsoft announced they were going to preload it as well so it "starts" faster.
Windows 11 couldn't be more aggravating. User hostile is the term. Windows Explorer, move a file and the navigation pane jumps up and down at random. Excell, cannot locate anything on Find and Select. I wish I would have never bought this new computer. HP makes great laptops, but it won't last long if I throw it against the wall. I've been taking classes and using computers on jobs since the late 70s. My dad taught me to do key punch in 1972. My son has been working on computers his entire life to the point he makes me look like a novice. He yelled the same phrase at his computer that I do "STOP TRYING TO HELP ME! IT'S NOT MY FIRST DAY!!!"
Who would have thought forcing one developer to write a million lines of code each month would have negative consequences
I never experienced any of this problems on any of my computers inclusing the ARM one. Same for everybody i know
Vibe coded updates for sure.
Probably also vibe tested.
It‘s not a priority for Microsoft, it‘s intrusive and above all it‘s shit.
My software logic mind asks: I question why if Copilot is so great then why cannot Microsoft turn themselves around by dogfooding their own solution that they have forced on all of their users which then proves to the world that Copilot is great?
I am led to believe from marketing that A.I. has all the answers and with Microsoft having the greatest A.I. don't they have all the answers?
I apologize in advance for my dumb.
try windhawk. it is awesome tweak for mac-os-wannabe windows 11.
Microsoft really needs to retire the Control Panel and other old-school elements of the OS. Windows 11's design system is very pretty and user-friendly, please finish the transition to it ASAP!
State of Windows?
It's so out of touch, people hate it.
People want a simple, clean, minimal, consistent OS that does not have anyone's interests first except the user. Windows 11 is a very, very long way from this.
Honestly Windows 95 is closer to ideal than Windows 11.
The state of Windows is: disaster.