[CodeMage]

I am not entirely sure how much of your comment is sarcasm. Most of the author's complaints about Windows 10 are on point. Comparing Windows 7 and Windows 10 leads me to similar conclusions: the UI is more cluttered, there's unnecessary (and unwanted) marketing all over the place, the level of built-in privacy intrusion is worrying and the attempts to lock you into Microsoft's online services are blatant.

[stronglikedan]

And let's not forget the ridiculous need to install third-party software just to be able to tell which window has focus by the color of its title bar.

EDIT: I guess they fixed that. I didn't follow up after I installed some third-party software a while back. I guess it wasn't third-party either, but messing with the themes [0]. I've been chugging along in blissful ignorance ever since. My bad.

[0]https://www.howtogeek.com/222831/how-to-get-colored-window-t...

[DaiPlusPlus]

> And let's not forget the ridiculous need to install third-party software just to be able to tell which window has focus by the color of its title bar.

They added back the "active window titlebar color" feature in the 2nd Windows 10 update in late 2015: https://www.howtogeek.com/232176/whats-new-in-windows-10s-fi...

[DanBC]

I don't understand what you're saying. I haven't installed third-party software. My focused windows have bright blue accent colour for the title bar, my unfocused windows have white title bars. I have turned off "automatically pick an accent colour from my background"

I prefer the styling available in older windows versions, but my title bars have different colours if they're focused or unfocused.

[derefr]

A few good ones, yeah. Others, though:

> First of all, holy shit this is a dark desktop theme.

Most applications (e.g. Explorer, Edge) use windows with bright backgrounds. With such windows open, this is actually an extremely high-contrast desktop theme. Like, "Windows 95 with visual accessibility options enabled" high-contrast.

> Also that search box takes up an annoying amount of space in the task bar.

Large tap target for your finger in tablet mode.

> Like Windows 8, this still shows one long list of all programs, but now it is in one single scrolling column.

Something you flick through... in tablet mode.

> Cortana? What the hell is this? It looks like the mutant offspring of Clippy and GlaDOS!

She's actually the hologram lady from Halo. She loves bees. :)

> First they try and bring back touch screens and now they try to bring back speech recognition. Because we all know how pleasant being in an office full of loud talking idiots is.

Not for office use. Once again, this UI is dual-mode on convertible tablet PCs—which you might use for work in an office (in desktop mode), but then also use for leisure at home (in tablet mode.) It's easier to talk to a tablet than to type on it.

(It's also in part because Windows Phone has speech control, and it's good to have feature-parity, for people who know how to do something on one but not the other. And also also, requiring that everything be hooked up to the speech API makes accessibility a first-class concern for the developers. Apple is way ahead in OS-wide accessibility—and, not coincidentally, was the first to integrate OS-wide speech control.)

> Well, at least it has the usual Windows Explorer. Although those "Ribbon" toolbars are looking more cluttered than ever. Give it up already and put the menu bar back!

Experiment: take a touchscreen tablet PC. Install Windows 98 on it (in a VM, presumably.) Maximize said VM. Try navigating one of the menus with your finger.

(Explorer's ribbon really is cluttered, though, yeah.)

> Reports have it that they use different rendering engines. Perhaps this is to address local applications that are assimilated by IE breaking every time they updated it.

Probably true; at this point I wonder why Microsoft don't rebrand IE to "Legacy LAN browser" and lock it down to only access sites whitelisted via Group Policy.

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But, in summary, over half of the article's complaints boil down to "I don't see why they did [thing that has no real disadvantages for desktop users] because I have never played with a Surface Pro for even a single minute."