I've been a Windows user since 3.1; and I've even defended Microsoft in the past (particularly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model).
BUT, I won't defend Windows 11 and Microsoft's general direction. I feel like there has been a slow cultural shift within Microsoft, from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned.
Plus it feels like a lot of the technical expertise retired out, and left a bunch of engineers scared to touch core systems instead preferring to build on top using Web tech. It means that Windows/Office stopped improving, and have actually both regressed significantly.
I've actually found myself recommending MacOS, particularly the prior generation of Macbook Airs which are absurdly powerful with absurd battery life for a fair price. Combine that with the lack of user hostility, and UX, that MacOS brings relative to Windows 11, and it is hard to ignore.
I think the toughest thing for me has been watching my former coworkers on Windows transform from technology loving builders into depressed cynics. Like these were some of the most brilliant people I knew and now they struggle to get out of bed.
100% agree, I still can't believe how fast windows is deteriorating. With that said, Linux and Debian helped me a lot. I enjoy tech again. With windows I hated 95% of changes, with linux it is the exact opposite. Having some experience since Ubuntu 12.04, it's amazing to see the progress especially of the last 5 years.
It's ok, Microsoft has more than enough people that should care today.
Overall imo the biggest issue with windows is that it almost never replaces things, it adds layers on top and becomes slowly this convoluted mess.
The biggest annoyance for me were the basic tools like MMC snap ins, regedit, ... have not been touched in years. They need a major overhaul at this point. If you change something in cloud defender, intune - you won't even see that change in those tools anywhere.
Instead 365 cloud admin sites have been redesigned every year only to cause confusion if you don't open them every day.
Also MS Graph? Some simple scripts turned into a mess (not sure if that changed).
1) Microsoft needs to remove some of the old stuff but also new stuff that makes it more difficult to understand for sysadmins. Nobody needs 5 ways of configuring GPOs like Intune has it (+ Azure policies). There should be a single way only for everything in the GUI/web + understandable API/cmdlets.
2) Templates and defaults - Secure setup within the products should be the default, why do I need to create 200+ GPO policies onprem to have at least 75% of CIS covered? Same with MS365, some policies have just reckless defaults.
I'd much rather set up 20 policies for each machine specifically to disable things I don't need rather than this. On the other hand - allow me to disable whatever I want (even those security updates), if I shoot myself in the foot, that's my problem. And if I need something quickly, why don't config templates for the entire OS exist? If I have a webserver - give me a list of things I should set up in one place. If I have a db, if I want to disable spyware stuff - same thing.
I don't want or need a copilot in exchange or every admin portal, I want to have everything on couple clicks and as fast as possible.
> from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned.
> MacOS
I think macos is on the same path.
Apple refined the MacBook formula to a perfection and the hardware division made the best of it. But outside of the processor, what is the last significant leap forward that involved brilliant engineers that you can think of ?
One could argue that nothing should change, but that's a lot of missed opportunies (I personally wanted a response to the Surface Pro, and figured out it won't come anytime soon) and we also know that's not how it goes. If there's no significant progress there will be change for the sake of change (coughLiquid Glasscough)
Apple created a boot loader that allows the device owner to install and run an unsigned OS like Asahi Linux without degrading the system's security when you run MacOS.
Applying security per partition instead of per device gives users more control, and you no longer have to worry about Microsoft having control of the machine's signing keys.
Secure Enclave is actually a real dedicated innovation and everything Apple built around this secure box. And the real innovation is not even the technology, but being focused over a decade to design all products to work without making a backdoor. That cant have been easy over so many years
I don't consider work done to prevent me having complete control of my own hardware to be a positive development. In fact it's one of the worst things they could spend their time on (from a long term global optimum perspective).
I see the effort and engineering. Is it an innovation ?
A secure subsystem sounds pretty familiar to me, we've had that since the early NFC days, and that powered mobile offline payment (NFC) since two decades now.
If macos was bringing it to new heights with incredible applications I'd see the significance of it, but securing login using a TPM is also done by the competition. Apple pushed it farther, but not that much farther as to make it special IMHO.
I mean, even in iOS, I see the point in hardening the system, but that's not just the Secure Enclave, and on the other side of the coin we get nothing else that wasn't there before.
I moved on, as other makers are pushing the enveloppe, but feel it's a shame Apple couldn't keep pushing during the Tim Cook area. Also having no good commercial alternative to Microsoft sucks, and that's where we're heading.
That sounds like a bit of a lazy response. Everybody is complaining about Apple, but they are still 10 years ahead of all competition on some features, and 20-30 years ahead of competition on other features.
I'll mention what I personally think they should do in sheer innovation, which has the potential to have a larger impact than their A and M chips: A device with an e-paper display. E-Ink is almost there for black and white. Maybe Apple is the only company who can pull it off? That would be an enormous difference and benefit for consumers, who could better use their devices outdoors and in well-lit environments instead of gloomy offices.
Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. By that token Lenovo is 30 years ahead of Apple in customizability and Asus 20 years ahead in RGB lights. I'm not sure that that wins hearts.
On what I care the most, and as a goal Apple set for themselves, Apple still couldn't make the iPad Pro a general use computer. Microsoft is 10 year ahead of them in that regard, even Samsung's Chromebooks end up being more powerful for a "Pro".
Apple couldn't overcome their gaming aversion, and the Vision Pro is such an unattractive product in no small parts because it's at the crossing of that and the iPad "what is a computer" syndrome. I waited for its launch before renewing my headset, and honestly regretted the wait.
Valve came up last week with a set of devices that genuinely looks fresh and opens new doors. Lenovo keeps pushing the boundaries of what a mobile computer looks like, with actually interesting screen/keyboard combinations I'd buy in a heartbeat if I was still commuting. Asus keeps showing the world what a real "Pro" tablet looks like.
Innovation is happening in spades, while Apple still hasn't fulfilled its own promises.
> e-ink display
Chinese makers are already on that beat, and that's where we saw the first e-ink smartphones. Computer wise, I'd expect Lenovo to hit the mark first. Now I get that many here won't touch a laptop with Windows on it, but Linux support is also getting decently good.
> Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche.
Apple is ahead in every aspect which matters for consumers. Touchpad, speakers, battery, performance, operating system, display. And those are incredibly important aspects. Not gigabytes of RAM and such things which people here care about. If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If any operating system was released which was half as good for general computing (not administering servers and programming), then likewise. It would be considered incredible.
As for gaming, I'll give you that one. It's not Apple's strong point. Never was. Just like enterprise office suites.
> Chinese makers are already on that beat, and that's where we saw the first e-ink smartphones. Computer wise, I'd expect Lenovo to hit the mark first. Now I get that many here won't touch a laptop with Windows on it, but Linux support is also getting decently good.
Yeah, and they are not consumer ready. The display tech is almost there, but the devices mostly suck because manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products. I expect Apple to be the only company to be able to do that, just like with so many other technologies where others were first.
Their hardware is very good, but it's not as far ahead as you think. Intel makes SOC very comparable to M series in terms of compute and power efficiency. They're rare, but they exist.
And MacOS as an operating system is slipping in many ways to open source competitors. The UI is stagnant in a lot of ways, and actively regressing in others, while open source competitors truck forward. Mind you, the same is true for Windows and to a much larger degree, but still.
Touchpad is not subjective. And we've been waiting for at least 15 years for other manufacturers to compete. Realistically it will take 15 more years before they can be bothered.
Battery life is not subjective. Same for performance, same for display quality, same for speaker quality. I deliberately tried to focus on non-subjective aspects in my original post. If you say that Intel has chips to compete with Apple on a laptop, I believe you. But I haven't heard of any such laptop until now.
As for the operating system, MacOS is getting worse. A lot worse with Tahoe. But it is still the only tolerable operating system if you're working within a GUI. For programmers and sys admins who live in the terminal, this doesn't matter. Neither for people who only stay inside one application (Excel). But if you want to have applications and the operating system working together cohesively in a graphical user interface, MacOS is still about 20 years ahead of competition.
Not to mention sleep/hibernate mode, which is part of the OS, and probably the single most important feature of any portable computing device.
There are many annoying things about Windows but Windows/app switching is light years ahead of MacOS. MacOS is slow, has annoying animations, doesn't have properly working alt+tab.
I fully agree on all hardware points: battery, speakers, displays.
Sleep/hibernate is a big one as well. It's surprising seeing Windows dropping the ball on this one as well.
There are also things MacOS does way worse than Linux. For example Finder is pathetic.
The big problem with Cmd+Tab in MacOS is that it only works well on a US keyboard where you have the little ' key next to Tab to switch between app windows. For non-US keyboards I never figured it out.
So yes, it's a weak point in MacOS. But the discussion isn't whether Apple devices have weak points, it's whether they are innovating or not. And even if they're not perfect, they are still way ahead of the competition, IMO.
You're implying that Linux file managers are much ahead of Finder, what are the innovations they have? One innovation I still miss in Finder is z-snake menus for navigating, moving and copying files:
You are lopping "consumers" in a single basket where they are all supposed to want the exact things Apple focuses on, and even on these aspects Apple isn't guaranteed to be the top choice.
> If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% market share on the PC market. For the record they're at about 15%.
On the bias coming from sticking around nerd circles, yes "normal" customers don't long for shoving 128Gb of RAM in their space heater PC. But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
You'll see people walking from meeting to meeting with their mouse because they just don't use trackpads (though they might touch their screen if/when it's supported), others spending their days with earbuds in ear because it dual connections to the laptop audio and they never hear the speakers in the whole device's life. Some dock their macbook all day and hook it to a FHD monitor. Everyone will care about different things.
That's the part for me where the Apple laptop line is so uniform, you need to fall pretty near the middle of the target to properly get the benefits.
> Apple is ahead
They are ahead regarding the exact balance they are targeting. But you'll get better perfs if you're willing to go full desktop for instance and don't care about the size and power consumption (the mac pro going the way of the DoDo doesn't help). You'll get more/cheaper memory if you don't care about a unified architecture. Apple's GPU isn't the market leader. You also won't get anything smaller or lighter than the macbook Air. And of course no USB-A on laptops, which surprisingly still stings.
It's obvious but merits to be said: Apple targets a very specific consumer, and won't be optimal for everyone, including people who want more than what Apple offers.
> manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products.
This is more a matter of taster I'd argue, what people see as "quality" will vary. I'm still amazed by people praising the glass backs and metal on the iPhones for instance. An eink laptop will probably be the same deal, going the pragmatic way (mostly plastic/composite) or the Apple way (glass and aluminium)
I feel that we've drifted from our original discussion about innovation. The Mac touchpad hardware/software is genuine innovation. Same for getting great sound into a small laptop, removing pixels from being a factor with high DPI retina displays, same for all-day battery, and same for the M chips. These are all things which change the way we do computing. And these examples are all things where nobody would prefer something worse.
Then some things are up to individual preference and needs. But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example. As for market share, that doesn't say too much about innovation, nor quality. The cheapest beer is always going to sell more than any other beer.
Keeping USB-A or cheaper RAM per dollar aren't innovations in my book. Neither is keeping a computer plugged in. We've had plugged in computers since the beginning, but it's only in recent years that they became truly portable.
> But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
Everybody I've seen who've tried a MacBook have been ecstatic about the display and the touchpad.
I really wish that other manufacturers made good products to compete with Apple on other aspects than price. And they do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations. A plastic e-ink laptop with a next-gen e-ink display would be fantastic. But you just know that the manufacturer is going to make the computer horrible in every other way. Unfortunately.
Greatest non-Apple innovations I can think of on the top of my head: E-Ink, 120hz displays, under-display fingerprint reader, AI/LLM (which is massive), wireless laser mouse. And everything related to gaming/gpu. But nobody is complaining about nVidia not innovating, like everybody is complaining about Apple.
>> But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example
I don't like Apple's touchpad because it's too big and makes their keyboard worse.
I much prefer laptops with smaller touchpad. I usually disable it anyway so most of the time it's wasted space for me which makes my main input device worse.
> I feel that we've drifted from our original discussion about innovation. The Mac touchpad hardware/software is genuine innovation. Same for getting great sound into a small laptop, removing pixels from being a factor with high DPI retina displays, same for all-day battery, and same for the M chips. These are all things which change the way we do computing. And these examples are all things where nobody would prefer something worse.
I think this difference in perception is really the crux of it. My TL;DR would be that Apple really pushed the enveloppe for decades, until it mostly stopped doing so (the M chips are the last real advancement for me)
To go point by point:
> touchapds
Apple introducing decent touchpads was an innovation, it happened in 2006. From there they refined the formula, became the absolute best at making touchpads, and decided to leap to button-less touchpads in 2018. That was 7 years ago.
> retina
It was a huge leap in display management and technology. It happened in 2015, 10 years ago.
Current macbook evolved a lot from there, but given how Apple also touted "all day battery life" for the first watches, that milestone was in reach 15 years ago.
---
> [other manufacturers] do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations.
Apple's niche is also limited. It grew bigger than in the platinum macbook days, but even today I'd consider it a small part of the global market. DELL or Lenovo would be an example of an actual mainstream PC maker. Jobs would spit on their designs, but if we look at the numbers that's what a non niche maker looks like.
On whether an implementation is good or not is on the eye of the beholder, I think we can agree to disagree.
in which specific industry, for which specific product feature? Google Workspace has largely taken over my bubble, I know there's a world outside my bubble, but for me, Google docs > whatever Microsoft Word is now. O365?
I assume you're responding to the commercial alternatives to Microsoft ?
I was thinking about the OS layer. My understanding is that hardware makers want to discharge responsibility of the OS on other entities, and ideally wouldn't even want to write drivers if they could avoid it. Having a partner you can enter a contract to provide an OS and maintain it for however long is needed is IMHO a huge deal they don't get with linux.
That's why Framework is the only maker coming up with remotely innovative ideas and also supporting linux. I love them for that, but as the other side of the coin they are extremely limited in the business side, they won't even ship to most of SEA for instance.
Apple plowing forward at least brings some competition, we've seen that on the ARM side. And looking at Microsoft(!) and other makers plowing forward on the form factors, I'd wish Apple had followed.
There's a boatload of Linux contractors who will do the technical work for you and maintain it for as long as you want, at the right price. That includes fairly large names like Suse. As far as I'm aware, all of those contractors focus on the embedded Linux market because consumer OEMs simply aren't asking for those services. The major OEMs don't have either the margin or the consumer demand for it, and they're not willing to commit the resources to escape that local minimum.
A big concern I have for the industry is what happens as people who truly understand how this stuff works age out. Unfortunately we seem to have stopped replacing them.
Part of the issue is that computers today require no deep knowledge to use, unlike first or second generation PCs that genX and millennials grew up with. So you’re not getting as many people with this knowledge.
Just as significant I think is the prevalence of lucrative work higher up the stack. Why learn deep system internals when slinging JS and wiring together APIs pays as much or more.
Everyone is growing up with tablets now and have awful tech skills. The only kids I know who can use a desktop computer are those who game. Where this goes long-term I'm not sure.
Do we get a really simplified OS in the next 10 years that is built for that generation? Who is going to maintain the old stuff?
> Part of the issue is that computers today require no deep knowledge to use, unlike first or second generation PCs that genX and millennials grew up with.
A point that I've often tried to convey among friends and family. No! Todays kids aren't natural tech wizards because they grew into it. All they know is pressing buttons where the UI/UX norms are good enough that you'll figure it out quickly, especially as a kid.
In my early days I'd press commands out of the back of a manual in order to see what my commodore 64 was all about if I didn't load a game. Turned out I was programming basic (at the level you'd expect from a clueless kid, but still)
Later, in the 90's with your family PC, you were bound to learn some stuff just by wanting to play games. Drivers? Filesystem?
Patches? Cracks? OS? Hardware components (you'd not unlikely put it together yourself).
And I think I was born too late for the best of lessons.
> Later, in the 90's with your family PC, you were bound to learn some stuff just by wanting to play games. Drivers? Filesystem? Patches? Cracks? OS? Hardware components (you'd not unlikely put it together yourself).
We learned all that, but that knowledge is all but worthless and has been for some time. I wish I had learned programming instead. All these other computing and OS skills become unnecessary as time moves on. Except for VPS hosting with FTP.
A thought in the other direction though. A lot of fields don't really have kids playing their way towards skill. Still people find their way to the frontiers and push on.
Yes! The next generation of computer scientists will be more passionate than we are because they have mastered their craft and got curious despite growing up with dumbed down boring computers.
Thank God for lucrative work higher up the stack. Maybe programmers will stop being the only scapegoats for rising home prices and the high cost of living.
Right!!! You don't even have to know Morse code to send a message anymore! Don't even get me started on how they don't teach semaphores in school anymore. Kids these days! Next thing you know they won't be writing programs in assembly anymore!! All these kids know how to do is ask the compiler how to do their work for them.
You're correct in a sense, but glossing over a very real problem. You still need some kind of knowledge of how to use a desktop computer for a lot of jobs in the workforce. If all you know is how to click on some apps, then you're at a competitive disadvantage. There are plenty of horror stories of Gen Z being just as bad as Boomers at tech (like can't figure out how to copy files) and that should concern everyone on HN. I'm sure some grow up with raspberry pi computers, but 99% are probably iPad only kids.
Having to tweak the defaults to get something more usable is a huge step back for MacOS. If I wanted to spend time with settings I’d use Linux. I use and recommend Mac OS because historically everything works perfectly out of the box, like an appliance, so I can focus on work and hobbies (that don’t include spending time on the computer as an end goal).
I totally agree, however, (to wax slightly philosophical) things will change, that's just the nature of tech (and the world at large). To play Devil's Advocate: at least MacOS provides these settings, unlike Windows, which does provide some settings, but many things you are just stuck with unless you install some nerd's github project which tweaks low-level settings and hopefully isn't doxxing you to some gov't. I resisted as long as possible moving from Win10->11 because the UI/UX is such an abomination, similarly bad as the new Liquid (Gl)Ass, but at least MacOS is mostly just changing the color scheme, whereas Windows is constantly changing the position of everythign, what happens when you jiggle the mouse, auto-docking, and pretty much everything that can be changed, they have changed - multiple times! Just as soon as I get comfortable with some UX change, they change it again, because I guess the UX department needs to get paid? Every time I re-install Win11 (4 times in the last 12 months due to new PCs, forced upgrades, etc.) I have needed a full week before everything is to my (near) satisfaction, whereas with MacOS it's just these 5 toggles and bam, I can read things again.
I find both Microsoft and Apple have lost the thread with the desktop operating systems. Microsoft seems intent on trying to kill their market share with adware, slow performance, hardware security requirements, etc. while Apple, has made MacOS an after thought that sometimes gets poorly implemented features from iOS. See liquid glass as the latest example.
For the first time in a long time I tried out Linux again using gnome and was shocked at how refreshingly good it was. I still think Linux has a few too may hurdles for most people, but I think most people would prefer the user experience if they gave it a try.
Going to paste a recent rant of mine about windows ux. The thread sank so i don't think anyone saw it and i don't want to write a new comment discussing things i hate about windows.
>It's worth pointing out what a hideous
cludge lots of Win10 ui is. I remember
some ui expert complaining how
there are half a dozen (maybe more, i
don't remember) completely different
ui interfaces. The most prominent ones of course is that horrible rectangle
thing that's meant to be the start
menu. Windows 11 didn't do a worse
job, that would be almost impossible,
but it's not much better. Then there
was openly breaking functionality and discoverability by having a settings
app as well as the old control panel,
which is an absolute abomination. The
manager app probably looked old
fashioned on Windows xp.
> All of that was ok, because Win10
looks and feels quite nice overall and
was a significant upgrade compared
to 7. Win11 has none of that saving
grace. They needed to fix the many
disasters of Win10, not introduce new ones.
I will add that the single feature i hate the most about Win10 when it dropped the previous useful start menu and adopting the horrible rectangle thing. The main function of it changed from helping you navigate windows to serving up ads for M$ products. No, i'm not interested in Xbox, if i want to buy your office suite i will. Don't show me a non functioning tile to remind me i don't have it.
The start menu is one of the first things I used to fix on a brand-new Win10 install: start removing all those useless/annoying tiles until I have nothing left but a list of programs. (On Win11, the first thing I fix is to move the toolbar back to left-justified instead of centered; then I fix the start menu tiles).
But I do wish graphics designers would learn to leave well enough alone. People don't want their UI to change on them every 5-10 years. They want to learn one UI and stick with it. The Windows 7 UI was just about perfect; if they had kept that UI while changing internals not visible to the user, they would have had far faster adoption of Windows 10. As it is, I know many people who stuck to Windows 7 for as long as possible until the free-upgrade period was about to run out.
EDIT: I'm not saying there weren't things about the Win7 UI that couldn't be improved. The new Terminal app is immensely better than Conhost. IMMENSELY. But that's an incremental change, not a UI replacement.
The Windows 95 left tile was basically perfect. A lot of Linux distros have something similar. It allows you to quickly survey the useful programs. There is no further perfection.
A close second in my book was the PlayStation 3 User Interface. Gloriously intuitive. PlayStation 4 and the new XBox are god awful. I can't wait to buy a Steam Machine and never have to search for my freaking game again like on the XBox monstrosity that has all kinds of crapware on it. Is frustrating your users good for business?
Windows 8 and the Ubuntu of around that time both had absolutely bonkers interfaces. Is it better for a phone? Sure....but I'm not using a phone. Windows 8 was so bad I honestly can't believe it wasn't blocked by upper management. It made all the previous customer/user knowledge worthless. I literally had to memorize all these Window Key + letter commands just to shut down the computer and find the My Documents.
I hung onto win7 till the last possible moment. I don't really miss it but it was a lot more cohesive then 10. Thinking about it i'm increasingly convinced the guys in charge of the taskbar were not on speaking terms with anyone else at Windows and the control panel team all retired or left 6 months before the people designing the settings app arrived.
Just so that you don't accuse me of looking through rose tinted lenses, i think xp looks horrible. Admittedly design has moved on, but i don't remember ever loving it.
I remember it being called "Windows FP" where FP stood for Fischer-Price (maker of colorful plastic toys for babies and toddlers) at the time. Lots of people hated the design of XP after using Win98/2000. I got used to it, but much preferred 7 when it came out. There's a reason why Linux Mint's UI is modeled more or less after the style of Windows 7, not XP or 10.
I fired up my 10yrs old windows 7 PC for the first time in forever and was appalled at how snappy and quick the OS was compared to my same spec win10 PC. As a career primarily-microsoft-shop engineer I'm done with windows for personal use. I'll never forgive the for wasting everyones time with this garbage. Meanwhile I constantly find bugs from before 2002 that are still in windows10. Windows honestly made me slowly hate all computers.
The only piece of technology in my life that does exactly what it's supposed to do are my keyboards where I make the firmware. Everything else is pop up ridden dogshit
I was recently using an ancient Celeron laptop from like 2006 with Windows Vista, a HDD, and something like 256 MB of RAM, and was blown away by how reasonably performant it was compared to my expectations, especially considering it was a budget laptop in its time.
All that performance is still available with Linux, and it's great. I use plenty of modern systems, but my home desktop is over 12 years old (from the last generation of hardware before everything was locked down) with Debian 13. Turn it on, log in, and the fraction of a second it takes for the login screen to disappear is all it takes for the system to be fully up and running.
This was ~2 years ago, but it didn't work on my side. Closing the lid would put the laptop to sleep then quickly wake it up, fan spinning at full speed even if unplugged. I think I used their diagnosing tool and one cause was some non-microsoft (installed by a driver I think, laptop as almost new) scheduled task, so not fully their fault, but forcing this kind of much weaker/unstable sleep without backup when S3 worked well is a bit crazy to me.
(by the way the laptop was a Framework 13 AMD, curious if others experienced the same. Maybe they fixed it now)
For a long time I had issues with my laptop's battery being dead, even when I put it away fully charged.
Until one day when I unpacked it and found that it was both hot and already running, and decided that this had to end.
I found that there was a process that was part of a printer driver which existed only to spam notifications about buying printer supplies, and that some fucking sadist at HP absolutely buried into Windows as a task that would wake the computer to do this even if it was unplugged.
Because that's what I need in my life: A laptop that wakes up to check the supplies on a printer that I don't even own.
The Framework 16 had an issue where the closed lid would flex slightly in your backpack, and press keys on the keyboard, waking up the computer. Ten days ago (Nov 14th), Framework released a BIOS update for the 16 that would turn off the keyboard (and numeric pad) when the lid was closed. I installed that update immediately, and for the first time, when I pulled my laptop out of my backpack after leaving the office and going home (or the reverse), it was still suspended. Had nothing to do with Windows drivers (I run Linux on this laptop), was purely a physical issue.
I haven't checked if the Framework 13 got BIOS updates at the same time. But you could check if the keyboard is causing the wakeup (the Framework 13 has the same keyboard as the 16, but its smaller screen means less flexing in a backpack so it might not be suffering the same issue) by opening a Notepad window before putting the computer to sleep and closing the lid. If you find that random characters have been typed into Notepad while it's sleeping, then the issue was the same that the 16 was experiencing: the keyboard needs to be disabled while the lid is closed. If you don't see random typing with the lid closed, then it's a different issue.
> closed lid would flex slightly in your backpack, and press keys on the keyboard,
FYI: Over time, this repeated pressure + rubbing (especially with dust or grit in between) can leave permanent key-shaped marks or “ghosts” on the screen. Thin laptops and bags that are tightly packed or bulging make this a lot more likely, since there’s less rigidity and more pressure on the lid.
Still not? It's a feature everyone needs i'm assuming lots of people at microsoft own laptops. Mac probably figured it out around the same time as the declaration of independence was drafted.
That one is arguably Intel’s fault. The last few generations of intel macbooks did the same thing, and I had the same issues under Linux (except they were debuggable there, and clearly Intel’s problem).
Apple fixed it by switching to their own processors. MacOS is sliding fast too though. If I leave my MacBook plugged in overnight, it’s toasty in the morning at least half the time.
Not sure how many times it died because it was low at night and I forgot to plug it in, and how many were failed sleeps.
To me that was Windows 2000. One day in 1999, I was at the local bookstore going over computer magazines and one of them came with CD to preview Windows 2000. I was mostly a Windows 98/RedHat user at that point, so I decided to try it out.
It almost instantly won me over with the leap in stability due to the NT kernel, but the craziest thing was this feature called "Hibernate". This was the time when booting was painfully slow, and here was a feature that not just booted rapidly, but dropped me into the previous session with all apps open! It was pure magic. I switched over to Linux exclusively a few years after that, but this was the feature that prolonged that decision for a long time. I don't think Linux ever got a useable hibernate, but the feature became not as necessary due to the advent of SSDs.
I feel this even in the edutainment system of my car. It’s one year old. Actual 1-2 second delays per key just to type in an address in the map. wtf is wrong with the industry now.
> arly when they made unpopular choices, but for technically correct reasons, like UAC or forcing vendors to rewrite their drivers into userland or using a safer driver model
Also UEFI and TPM requirements. And i don't even use Windows.
Ditto on legacy of Windows use, and really ‘legacy’ is what it boils down to for me - it’s the devil I know, and you’re a fool if you don’t think MacOS is an angel here - or even whatever -nix flavour you prefer.
It’s been my experience that matter what OS you try to pick up, the most likely case is you mutter “why the fuck do people put up with this” and go back to the one you’re used to, because at least you mostly know the tricks and pitfalls and can get it to do what you want.
Excel and Visual Studio, .NET Runtime and C#, Windows 2000 were among the best things for their time. I think there were like 2-3 months in which even internet explorer was the best browser on the market
My operating system teacher was a hardcore Linux zealot and "M$" hater. But one day he praised Microsoft for Active Directory and group policies. Comparable, well integrated easy to use solutions didn't exist at the time. (mid 2000s). Batch scripts were lame though...
Currently, I do, but mostly I mean whatever last year's generation of Macbook Air is. Since you get the best bang for your buck that way, and there are some incredible deals on the M3 and will likely be on the M4 when it is replaced.
I have mostly kept to linux and macos since 2008, so I was shocked when I could still find the old XP style control panels in windows when I tried it a little about 2 years ago
The worst part is, there are now two control panels (the other is called "Settings"). Some settings are in both, while others are only in one or the other.
No, they absolutely know. They've been very very slowly migrating stuff over to the new Settings panel bit by bit. If you look at what's in Control Panel now, it's maybe half as much as what used to be in there ten years ago.
That said, it's insanely ridiculous that it's taken 10 years to get it even halfway done.
I feel like Windows 7 was the best Windows of all time.
It was fast, stable enough to work for months or years without crashing, secure, didn't need frequent re-installs, didn't need constant cleaning / defragmenting, didn't have (too many) anti-features nobody wanted or used, it just did what you wanted it to do.
It definitely helped that it existed in an era of app monetization through targeted advertising, as opposed to monetization through bloatware, start page hijacking and completely unnecessary toolbars.
8 was when things started going sideways. 10 was not bad, but it already started the "Microsoft knows better" trend, with automatic updates you couldn't turn off and files you couldn't touch, even as administrator. 11 is what it is.
BUT, I won't defend Windows 11 and Microsoft's general direction. I feel like there has been a slow cultural shift within Microsoft, from a core of fantastic engineers surrounding by marketing/sales, to the org's direction being set by marketing/sales UX be damned.
Plus it feels like a lot of the technical expertise retired out, and left a bunch of engineers scared to touch core systems instead preferring to build on top using Web tech. It means that Windows/Office stopped improving, and have actually both regressed significantly.
I've actually found myself recommending MacOS, particularly the prior generation of Macbook Airs which are absurdly powerful with absurd battery life for a fair price. Combine that with the lack of user hostility, and UX, that MacOS brings relative to Windows 11, and it is hard to ignore.