[demione]

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate? We're talking about an OS, not a video game. I get that they're trying to innovate, but it comes across as self-deprecating.

I love how Apple has maintained uniformity in their UI across the past few iterations of OSX. It's just one less thing to worry about relearning, allowing me to get my work done easier.

[larrik]

Microsoft Windows's primary competitor is... Windows. Not OS X. It isn't easy to convince regular users to use the new Windows, or to do an in-place upgrade (which is hundreds of dollars, unlike OS X, and also a terrible idea usually, also unlike OS X).

Apple is simply pushier, dropping support for old versions almost immediately. They also release more often, and I would say that over the same span of time their change drastic-ness is similar (intel, cocoa, app store, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if 10.9 vs 10.5 is as drastic as Windows 8 to Vista, for instance.

[untog]

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate?

They don't, though. Vista was, cosmetically, a big leap from XP, but in terms of actual UI it barely changed at all. Start button is still in the same place, maximise, minimise, etc. All still there.

I do really appreciate the little touches MS add, actually. Drag a window to the top of the screen to maximise, to the left to use 50% of the screen, shake the window to minimise all the other ones... I use that stuff every day, and miss it when I go home to OS X.

[doublextremevil]

I use better touch tool to do pretty much exactly that on OSX (along with multitouch gestures) http://blog.boastr.net/

[ChuckMcM]

Perhaps they are dealing with a public perception that they are 'old sauce' which is to say "Oh my grandparents used Windows, I use <something else>." Technology has its fashion moments and this is one of them. When you elevate the OS to the level of 'brand' you enter into a world where fashion as well as features dictate acceptance. So in that world, they need to have a fashion statement as well as a technology statement.

That being said, its also easy to get stuck in a rut and have that kill your project. Microsoft has perhaps more scars than many in this area. If you recall they did a 'tablet' version of Windows long before iOS, but they failed to 're-imagine' and instead they tried to 'shoehorn' ideas which didn't make sense (we'll assume you have a high precision pointing device like a stylus or mouse) and so those preconceptions prevented them from seeing what needed to be done.

Mostly I think the messaging about the flag and what not is PR to try to tell people "Hey, we're awake and we're trying to innovate, and we want to be better, and we're sorry for Vista." If their stock price is any indication they are having some success there.

[freehunter]

Well in XP Tablet Edition, people with touch screens did have a high precision pointing device. Capacitive screens were uncommon with end users at that time, and almost unheard of (completely unheard of?) in laptops. I don't know if Vista had a tablet edition, but in Windows 7 it's pretty easy to get around the basic OS with a finger. The only real difficulty comes in with third party apps that do not follow finger-friendly design concepts.

Even for Windows 7 checkboxes, I've seen capacitive screen drivers/software that allow for some "fuzzing", where if you hit somewhere around the checkbox/button, it gets checked.

[wvenable]

> Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate?

Raymond Chen posted some reasoning for this on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/14125...

If they don't change anything visually then nobody thinks anything has changed under the hood.

[Game_Ender]

They seem to do it in a very odd way as well. They might change "completely reimagine" but they don't change there decade plus old network, and other, dialogs to improve usability.

[cooldeal]

Huh what? The UI has been pretty much the same since Windows 95. Meanwhile OS X changed the scrolling, and lost scrollbars and a whole bunch of other changes in Lion that people aren't very fond of.

The public seems to have gotten along very well with the Windows 7 UI over XP without much, if any re-learning.

Vista was different because it actually changed the security and driver model, breaking a lot of hardware and software. I haven't seen too many complaints about the actual UI.

By "everytime they iterate", you mean Windows 3.1 to Windows 95(very well received) and Windows 7 to Windows 8(desktop mode is exactly the same) which is what, twice in 20 years? Maybe thrice if you count the taskbar changes in Windows 7.

[wvenable]

Vista's UI is terrible but it wasn't until Windows 7 that I figured out why: Vista is the half-complete transition from the XP UI to the 7 UI. As such, it's got loads of issues and inconsistencies.

[cooldeal]

I know the moving control panel, network properties etc. led to a lot of annoyances, but in terms of the actual window handling, taskbar, start menu, how was it terrible?

The search box on the start menu was itself a huge leap over XP. That was the single big thing I missed in XP.

[wvenable]

Far enough, anything unchanged from XP isn't terrible. And the start menu search box is a big improvement even if the rest of the start menu seems worse.

[Alind]

Directors, Managers, Employee, they want to proof they were doing something.......so this is the only way... :)