[Cockbrand]

I think the point here is

> wasn't always done with as much thought

While Apple cared a lot about perfecting UX, Microsoft had other priorities.

[troupo]

Microsoft did a lot of user and interface research. It wasn't as streamlined as Apple's, but it's incorrect to say that they didn't give it much thought.

I don't have a link to OS-level considerations, but here's a series of articles on how MS Office's original ribbon came to be: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn...

[Sakos]

What's with this myth that Microsoft never cared about UI/UX design? It's simply not true. They're especially not any better at it now than in the 90s and 00s. Modern designers don't put even a fraction of research into UI design than what Microsoft used to do.

[fortran77]

Windows 3.1 had a beautiful revolutionary design. I remember closely examining all the buttons and icons when I first saw it.

[wongarsu]

Making things intuitive and easily usable was absolutely a priority of Microsoft back then, and they put a lot more thought in that than most modern "UX" design.

Making things pretty wasn't a priority for Microsoft the same way it was for Apple. But I wouldn't call that UX.