> The new settings stuff is materially worse than the old stuff.
This depends on who your audience is, and I'm shocked by this community not seeing it.
The new settings are far more intuitive for non-experience users who are more comfortable with an iPad than a traditional computer. That's where the market is. The enthusiast demographic who actually understands what the settings mean and how the machine works is minuscule.
Having a function simply not exist can not count towards making it more intuitive to control that function.
Having simple controls that don't accomplish tasks is not a valid example of simple controls to accomplish tasks, and I'm shocked at anyone here not seeing it.
If this theory of the users needs were true, then everyone would and should just use Chromebooks.
The reason Windows exists and must be used by so many even when they don't want to, why a Chromebook or an iPad doesn't cut it, is Windows is where all the actual unimaginably varied productivity and special purpose software is. Not because of the middle of the road generic office and web apps. It's because of those PLUS the infinite other. It takes both to be useful not just the big mass in the middle of the bell curve.
No matter how much bigger the numbers are for the common case, things need to cover all cases in order to be useful. Trying to reduce Windows down to a Chromebook or an iPad is silly when the Windows95 paradigm was already the simplification.
Windows without the functionality of Windows is nothing. An iPad is far better at that than a simplified Widows can ever be. Even if somehow MS managed to make an excellent iPad, then what? iPads already exist and someone else is famous for them. Meanwhile, the thing they ripped out was their very value proposition itself. The differentiator that gives them a reason to exist at all.
All that supposedly unwanted complicated stuff was litterally the primary value and differentiator of the product itself.
> The new settings are far more intuitive for non-experience users who are more comfortable with an iPad than a traditional computer.
Right but the iPad UX is also terrible. All I can really do is remove and recreate. There’s no way to actually fix anything. This isn’t necessary. Advanced options could be exposed in iOS too. It’s just bad design everywhere.
I understand your point from a purely aesthetic standpoint.
However the second that a commonly needed setting is required you're going a layer "deeper" (it's not because before it was at the first level) and that aesthetic is broken. I doubt the iPad first crowd is going to really intuit that.
I use the old control panel but one should concede that it's really quite esoteric and the new control panel is comparatively more straight forward.
I'm also amazed at software developers complaining about Microsoft's development process for the Settings app. They've been incrementally developing it for years -- which is a good thing -- and yet there so many complaints here that it didn't materialize fully formed on day one. It's like when talking about Microsoft everyone forgets how software development is actually done.
The old control panel has a very logical layout, and that's why it stayed this way for so long. But it was also an expert tool and you ought to go there with the manual close at hand because it was so powerful. Like the networks sections having everything related to network thay you may want. Maybe there should be a beginner mode, but you don't want a beginner near those settings. Just like I rarely see people go into their network connection settings on iOS. The rewrite feels like taking Photoshop and morph it into Paint. Easier to understand but ultimately worthless.
But 99.99% of users are "beginners". I really don't know how to use Photoshop but I can use simpler paint tools to do what I want.
Microsoft will not remove the control panel until you can do everything with the Settings app (or something else not yet invented). Despite this "deprecation" it's really not going anywhere.
My use of the settings app has slowly increased over time as more and more settings are available there. I have to be doing something pretty specific to open the control panel now.
The Windows Control Panel was first released in 1985. That’s 39 years ago. That’s longer than the time between the Wright Brothers’ first flight and the first jet aircraft.
How is Microsoft still doing fundamental rewrites of core features?
I still don't get what you mean. Clearly Windows isn't the same as it was 39 years ago and if it didn't change in all that time we wouldn't still be using it. Every operating system rewrites fundamental core features all the time.
The X Window System was originally released June 1984. That's 40 years ago.
And yet we're still having debates and active development on how to have graphical sessions on Linux.
iptables was released in 1998. That's 26 years ago. And yet those Linux devs are still working on nftables and firewalld.
If those Linux devs still haven't figured out how to do graphical sessions or firewall by now they never will.
FFS how to boot/init Linux is still under active development and some rapid changes over the past several years. If they can't even figure out how to boot how can you take those devs seriously?
Or maybe you redesign your stuff for the realities of today instead of just assuming what a few people did in the 80s was the be-all end-all of software and UI design.
And yet, back in the 90s most of the non-experienced users learned to use their computer nonetheless, in some cases gaining deeper understanding through the process of navigating the logically structured interface.
Maybe it's more profitable to keep your users inexperienced. Easier to sell them cruft that way.
Right? Most of us who were children at the time learned how to use 95/98 by ourselves. The vast majority of people had to learn how to use 95/98, and most had never touched a computer before.
I don't think this demographic of tablet users who can't ever possibly accept another UI style actually exists. Poking at an unknown object to figure out how it works is not some ancient lost art. It's one of the most basic things that all humans do. We do this as infants.
Gods, imagine how frightened and confused DOS users were by Windows.
Totally. I was there, porting a FoxPro DOS app to Visual FoxPro and one of the biggest fights with the boss was about why I was adding multiple windows in the app.
And I remember that the mouse was something that confused users.
And the joke about using the CD drawer to put the coffee there? I see it.
Yet, all those users (school managers and a lot of old ladies) get it anyway.
What irks me most about the new Settings app is the lack of keyboard shortcuts. Sure, you can use the arrows to jump around the different elements but whatever happened to good old Alt-F, etc.? Plus, on a traditional menu bar, every keyboard shortcut is clearly labeled. Not so for Settings.
Frankly just because the interface looks more tablet-like doesn't mean it's actually ergonomic for tablet use either.
What they are presenting us is far more like the 90's Macromedia Flash style UI bloatware that hardware peripheral manufacturers also keep trying to foist onto us.
That could be somewhat true if Settings was feature complete. It's not really for iPad audience if you have to spin up RegEdit and google for an afternoon to do half of the stuff you could do by clicking around Control Panel.
Also, ability to filter or sort a list wouldn't confuse iPad audience all that much, would it?
The fact you are trying to copy someone shouldn't prevent you from making it better in some basic ways.
I’ve been a Mac user for more than 20 years and I may be in a minority of one, but I prefer the new settings. When I use my old Mac with the old settings I find myself thinking “so which image do I need to click to do what I want?” but in the new settings I can find what I need from the text labels.
I was a Mac user for about six years, went back to Windows through necessity, and returned to Mac four years ago. I don't hate the new Mac System Settings, but for me it's not as intuitive as the old version. Nor is the iPhone/iPad settings app easy to navigate. I don't completely understand the reasoning for the order or grouping of things. Then I realize I have no control over it, shrug my shoulders, and get on with finding and using the options I want.
catering to developers is important in a completely different way than catering to typical users. I have one stomach for dinner and another for desert.
This depends on who your audience is, and I'm shocked by this community not seeing it.
The new settings are far more intuitive for non-experience users who are more comfortable with an iPad than a traditional computer. That's where the market is. The enthusiast demographic who actually understands what the settings mean and how the machine works is minuscule.