I've been using Microsoft products since MS-DOS and the Compaq 386. If that makes me an old bastard, so be it.
In the Olden Days there was the Command Line. The Command Line sucked, because the average used can't/won't remember all that shit. I did, but that's because I was a computer weenie back in the day before it was cool. Normal people hired me because they couldn't figure it out.
In those days Microsoft was a pain in my ass because they KEPT CHANGING THINGS. DOS 2.1, the DIR command had certain options. DOS 2.103, they would change the frigging options. Sometimes they would remove entire commands and replace them with new ones.
Constantly. Constant churn, to no particular benefit.
And eventually the OS that used to fit on a 5.25" floppy ended up needing two 3.5" hard-shells. No one used 90% of that functionality. They just crammed it in there because the damn marketing department told them to.
Then came Windows and Mac. The one constant all these years was this asinine insistence on changing the operating system. There's no reason for most of it.
Example: Changing the shapes of icons is fine if your UI research reveals that "drop-shadows on icons improve ease-of-use by X%!" Okay, I'm up for an X% improvement in ease of use.
But they don't do that. They add drop shadows as an art project. The addition increases the compute load by whatever increment, increases visual clutter, and -decreases- the ease of use by adding a pointless change. Now the user has to acclimate to the new look.
Sometimes that is trivial, as with my drop-shadows example. Sometimes it is not, like when they went from XP to Vista. That was a disaster, as we all remember. They moved -everything-. They changed all the commands. They changed what everything looked like. The equivalent of switching a car from left-hand drive to right-hand drive for the next model year because it fit the styling better.
Change for the purpose of making things "New!" and "Fresh!" is ASININE and I hate them every time they do it.
Now that we have Windows 10 with its forced updates, forced Microsoft accounts, constant phoning-home etc. I've been thinking about quitting Microsoft in favor of something I can regain some personal control over. Whether it be Mac OS, Linux or something else, one of the main features I want is PREDICTABILITY. I want to be the one that decides when it updates. I want to decide if the UI changes or not. I want to say if it phones home or not.
I want to be able to run my office so that everything doesn't break every single fucking time a new update gets pushed. I want the office ladies to be able to PRINT every morning instead of spending an hour chasing down what setting the fucking update broke that made all the printers invisible.
If I never hear "where's my printer?!!!" ever again, it will be too soon.
Dear Microsoft, pay attention.
