[minikites]

>Unfortunately the alternatives are even worse.

I think this is becoming less and less true. I think Mac OS isn't as good as people say it is and Windows is better than people say it is. I can't speak either way to desktop Linux.

[jolux]

Call me when Windows has fewer than three control panels.

[mitchdoogle]

I rarely look at the control panel. It's usually easier for me to type in what settings I'm looking for in the windows taskbar search and it pops up immediately. Although I can type in "Control panel" and go straight there as well. Seems like it may have been a while since you've used Windows.

[jolux]

I was a full time Windows developer (WinForms, WPF, and ASP.NET) for three years until January. I used Windows 10. Still hated it. The search worked sometimes, but that's no excuse for having more than one place to go to change system settings. Microsoft have not released a completed operating system since Windows XP.

[mitchdoogle]

I'm not exactly sure which settings you're talking about, but it seems like you're saying that there are multiple places a user can go to change specific settings.

If that's accurate, that is a GOOD thing from a usability perspective.

[jolux]

There's the "Settings" UWP app, and the older Control Panel, which itself launches lots of even older settings dialogs at various points. It's not actually good for usability that there are multiple places to change the same settings, but what's worse is that they have disjoint functionality. Some things can only be accomplished with the older Control Panel, and some things can only be accomplished with Settings. I find it hard to believe you haven't discovered this, it was an almost daily annoyance for me.

[secabeen]

Okay, so lets assume you're the product owner for Windows settings. You have full, dictatorial control over the Windows settings experience. Windows 7 has reached maturity, and you and your team are starting planning for Windows 8 and beyond. You have identified a number of major flaws in the Windows settings experience, and you want to update it for the future. What do you do?

Note that the Windows settings codebase is huge, has thousands of possible settings options that you can set, and the specific esoteric behavior of those settings is relied on by users, developers and sysadmins every day.

MS clearly decided to re-do the settings system over multiple Windows generations because it was too big to do in a single release cycle. During the transition period, both Settings and Control Panel tooling will be available, and used by many users. Is there any other alternative?

[marshmallow_12]

that takes less then 12 seconds to load. Or is it just me?

[drewzero1]

No, I've definitely had some control panels take a long time to populate. Depends on the machine and the day for me.

[minikites]

The main page of System Preferences has more icons than then equivalent "Settings" page in Windows 10, are you talking about something else? Sure, you can find more complex control panels further down in Windows, but the equivalent in OS X is the "defaults write" interface, which is hardly Mac-like.

[dsego]

I was just uninstalling a program on windows. So I find the icon in the start menu, right click to open the menu and uninstall. That should run the uninstall process, right? WRONG! It opens the dated and derelict control panel. And it has a bunch of icons for all the programs I have on the computer. And the one I just right-clicked to uninstall? Not selected. Oh, but let's find it, where is it in that icon list? There is no search box to type in the name, I try typing to filter but nothing happens. I need to visually find it myself and select the icon. A new panel appears at the bottom with some nonsense info about the app. But how do I uninstall? Oh, the uninstall button actually appears at the top of the icon list, distant to the icon itself. Such and old ux paradigm, contextual buttons that appear in a random part of the interface (looks like a quick prototype by a programmer and they never bothered to get a ux person to design it).

Windows works for people because they are used to its idiosyncrasies. You know how people think their browser icon is to open the internet? It's the same with Windows, to most it's what makes the computer, they don't know otherwise. And these idiosyncrasies are taught in schools and universities in computer classes. How to use a computer has become how to do stuff in Windows and MS Office. Brings back memories from my childhood when I was the "computer expert", helping my parents and their friends fix problems in old Windows 98 and XP. At least the old windows ui was somewhat consistent.

[wincy]

Windows is constantly turning on features for me like I searched for a file on my computer, and it went ahead and reached out to Bing and did a web search. I had to go into Regedit and do some arcane incantations to get it to stop. I feel like it has turned itself back on several times. Thank god I got it to stop downloading Candy Crush and Bubble Witch Saga or whatever nonsense they’re hoping my kid will click so they can get some sweet sweet ad impressions or whatever.

My OS is supposed to be a tool, and windows is super annoying unless you literally download Enterprise edition. Mac is okay, and I’ve been pretty pleased with how capable Linux Mint is, as long as things don’t randomly get broken (looking at you, package manager corrupting and acting weird for weeks before I finally googled and fixed it).

[sp332]

Windows has been improving steadily. You can only tell by the decrease in the amount of high-profile coverage of UI gaffes. No one wants to write an article about how a new OS release just does what it should.

[roflc0ptic]

I bought this video game, and when I tried to find it using windows search, not only could windows search not find the video game, it literally gave me ads to purchase the video game again.

(I wholeheartedly agree that Windows has been getting better in many respects, but the hostility of that experience felt really stark to me. Quit using Ubuntu for the same reason.)

[rStar]

so i should use a dumpster fire of an OS because the flames are a few feet lower than they were 15 years ago?

[rStar]

mac seems to unfortunately be on the path to selling iphones, ipads and chromebook type devices running ios. i really wish steve jobs had believed in modern medicine. if he had, i believe we’d have much better machines.

[twobitshifter]

I am concerned that Apple may try to move away from general purpose computing and more towards an Ios walled garden, but today things aren’t that bad.

The M1 is the absolute best mobile processor on the market, soundly dominating what’s available from intel and it was just released. For mobile computing Apple is very far ahead. Could we have had something better? Maybe, but better than the best is a lot to ask and these advances came largely because of the iPad and iPhone. Without apples focus there, we wouldn’t have the M1 chip.

You also bring up chromebooks which are a google product and we’re predated by “netbooks” pushed by intel. From my perspective Apple is the only company of those 3 that has not resisted selling underperforming hardware. I don’t know of any chromebooks that perform as well as the iPad Air.

[rStar]

i agree with everything you said for our current situation. I can still use homebrew and 3rd party dmg’s to install should I choose to. my concern is for the future, based on how ios/macos convergence seems to be progressing.

[nasalgoat]

I suppose it's a personal preference but after nearly two decades of using OSX I find Windows unusable and clunky.

Linux desktop is still a tinkertoy.

[cure]

Curious opinion, that.

Linux on the desktop has been serving me very well for over 2 decades as my daily driver both at home and at work.

[freedomben]

which Linux desktop are you saying is a tinkertoy?

[wincy]

I really want to get on board with Linux as the desktop, but it’s not there yet for the average person. My package manager broke in Mint, not sure why, and I had to do some Googling and fix it. I had to reformat my wife’s Linux laptop for some reason. They both run great when they’re running, I was surprised even Microsoft Teams has a Linux binary, so it’s definitely improving. But it’s still tough to recommend to grandma.

[nasalgoat]

Whatever Ubuntu ships with.