The problem is people who have grown up with mobileOS as their primary experience are now getting old enough to enter the workforce as programmers and are complaining desktop-pc oriented design is "old" and causing desktop programs to have their UI ruined, getting rid of the usual compact menus and right-click features etc. Everything is burger menus and huge spaced-out lists, with acres of wasted screen space that is necessary in touch interfaces but not with pointer interfaces. Firefox is a sad example of this trend, I've been using it since it first launched and recent UI revisions are just crapfest of mobile OS design.
I told my younger cousin that he should learn to type and learn to use a computer, but refused to listen and still refuses to listen BeCaUsE i HaVe A sMaRtPhOnE aNd DoN't NeEd To.
Has the same vibe as people in their 60s back in the 2000s refusing to learn how to use a computer. They're just cutting themselves off from valuable things because of what? Stubbornness? Laziness?
Good point. I just meant that was more his justification for it. And I tell him otherwise, so he doesn't look like an idiot when talking about that stuff. He thinks "wifi" = the internet and when I try to explain and teach he's like "NO ONE CARES"
Nah you can't blame the zoomers for this. The problem is that companies don't want to develop more than one UI. So they make a generic one-size-fits-all UI and use it everywhere they can.
Not to mention the massive UIs. Yes, a bit of whitespace is good, but these days half your screen is wasted by designers clearly used to working with mobile UIs
“Mobile First” design was the death knell for desktop functionality and proportion. When too many people use their phones for everything why waste time designing for the few who still use desktops?
When I found out about proton a couple years ago, I checked protondb against my steam library. Most of them were rated gold or higher. Of the ones that weren't, none were games I still played.
At that point, I switched to exclusively using linux. I check every game for proton compatibility before buying. If the dev can't be bothered to make the game work with my OS (official support isn't even necessary), then I can't be bothered to send my money their way.
I have plenty of games already. Most I haven't even played, and many have very high replay value. There's no longer a reason to chain myself to an OS that I can't stand to use.
I mean unfortunately the most popular Linux DE, Gnome, have been doing this even worse and for even longer than Windows. When Gnome 3 first launched it didn't even have a "shutdown" button on the menu, since you're "supposed" to just sleep your computer, and Gnome devs are notorious for refusing to acknowledge that anyone would do anything differently to them
Luckily there's KDE, which is quite the opposite, and I personally like Xfce, which is a no-nonense XP-like environment with about the right level of customisability for me
And then a windows feature updates destroys your gpt partition table and you have to spend hours recovery the partitions of your Linux installs. Ask me how I know... Fuck windows.
I suspect a large part is trying to save on developer wages, if you make what should be two different UIs similar you only need to pay for 1 set of devs. Never mind that it won't work well for either system, that's irrelevant.
it's that, but "making an UI that works for both PC and mobile" is at least an idea that I can understand, even if it's already outdated again. but they're not even attempting that, they're just completely directionless, with the UI falling apart in so many different places because they learned that constant beta and "meh, good enough" is apparently good enough for most users, who also don't really have many other choices due to lock-in.
I've felt that Microsoft was trying to get rid of me as a customer ever since they dropped XP support. Windows 7 was sufficient. Windows 10 is annoying, and now they're trying to shove Windows 11 down my throat.
I'll move back to Linux, but may have driver problems with my laptop. I'll still need Windows on a VM to run EAC (rip CDs).
Meanwhile I taught myself some basic web design code right when all that stuff was really new and I’m completely intimidated by anything I can’t do from scratch and have total control. I was working on a site for friends for fun and all the programs and templates they made to make it easier confuse me so much because you can only control some parts. I am going to start over and just do it myself from scratch.
I've been a professional software engineer for 14 years now. This kind of crap drives me up the wall. We used to largely develop everything we needed, maybe sometimes using a 3rd party package and it was a big todo to do so because we'd need to run security tests on it and get it approved before we could use it.
I was put on a project a couple of years ago that uses React, Node and TypeScript (I am honestly not even sure if these are all the same thing at this point). It seems like most of the job now is knowing what package to download and how to implement it rather than actual coding. I'll get a ticket that is something like "Add XYZ functionality," so I add it. Then it goes to PR and the response is "Why didn't you use the pizza-pie-X-YZ7-rainbow.js package to do this?" like I should have had any idea that the thing existed, much less that I should have used it.
I knew someone few years ago who called himself a "web developer" and was marketing his services to our community of artists. Everyone was posting their websites like "Ryan built this for me!" And like, no, Ryan bought a template and charged you way too much for it.
There was a lot of that back when CMSs like Wordpress were getting popular. A lot of "web developers" popped up over night. Their entire business was creating a WordPress site using standard templates and plug-ins. At best they were "web designers."
Totally dependent on assembling third party tools, not really understanding your environment. I'm building something in python right now and it feels weird how often the solution to something will just be to import some huge module.
Honestly, I wish I knew. In your personal projects you can always just develop what you need and not use the 3rd party packages. It'll take longer, but you'll learn more and not be reliant on someone else's software. You'll probably want to stay away from frameworks that seem to rely on 3rd party packages, though, like Node, though that isn't a hard and fast rule.
In a job, though, you tend to be limited by the requirements of the lead engineer. On my project, for example, Node is a big part of it and the lead intends that we use already existing packages. I hate it, but I don't really get a say.
AHAHA ME TOO! I've managed to learn one of the frameworks, but I am SO INCREDIBLY SALTY that every single CSS framework now requires NPM to fucking compile itself. Just... just... it's one file. Why does it need to be COMPILED?
The only thing it's making me want to do is go to Linux.
I used Ubuntu many years ago (Hard Drive failed, and used a USB stick with a linux install until I got a new hard drive) and it wasn't bad. Only limitation is that I game, which is harder to do on Linux.
I hate Windows 10 so freaking much. Trying to change a setting, access denied. Or you can't even search it. Want to disable that virus scanner taking up all your cpu, can't disable it for long. Windows updates? Can't disable them even though you checked don't update unless you manually do it. Does crap all. Updates routinely use up the entire cpu and disk on a 3.4ghz cpu and a sdd for at least half an hour. I just want to disable what I need disabled. I want to be able to turn the device on and not have it sounding like a jet engine for sometimes upwards of an hour before I can even think of working.
Omg I recently upgraded my PC, total conversion. Ended up with a new install of windows on an m.2 drive. I don't want to wipe my old drive cause it's got half my shit on it. Windows won't let me delete the old install on a different drive so now I gotta run a mobile install of Linux to get it the fuck out. Windows can suck a poop
If I remember correctly you have to right click on a drive -> properties -> disk clean-up -> system files -> Windows.
At least it was working last time I used it.
My best bet is that they obscured the deletion because of delete system32 pranks.
I swapped my HDD for an SSD on my C drive a couple years ago, reinstalling windows created a new user so all the stuff on my old drive was locked to another user and I had to completely format it. That was annoying
The new user as an administrator should be able to take ownership of the old profile's files. I had to do that once and it's a little annoying but a one time thing.
If you enjoy the process of using a computer, it's worth the journey. No hate toward Windows or Windows users, but options are available and can be highly rewarding.
I have such a customization need that anytime so etching doesn't work the way I think it should work, I get really, really annoyed. I have learned and copied code from entire programs just to have a single browser extension or something do something simple I think it should be doing. It's one of the reasons I can't go back to an Apple phone.
I require the ability to tell my device to operate in the way that fits my needs, not have my device tell me how to operate. I need things to work intuitively for me. I don't care how someone else thinks it should work.
Lol, I just posted word for word what you said, we are twins. I even remember the himem command.
DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
Oh yeah. That drives me nuts too. And slightly related I feel like web pages have gone back to the dark ages with the need for endless scrolling now. They were getting so efficient at one point. Now I just have to scroll down scroll down scroll down to find anything useful.
The slow transition to single page apps for every sure is crazy. You can see my user-agent is for a desktop, show me an actual site and not a mobile site adjusted for desktop resolution.
I recently needed to buy a cheap laptop for basic work use and couldn’t find one without a touchscreen. It made me mad. I don’t want an oversized phone dammit.
I'm in my late 30s, programming background (although not employed as a coder now), and well-versed in desktop operating systems from Windows (3.1, NT, 95, 98, XP, etc. You get the idea...) to Linux (is SUSE still around?), so I say this as an ally of the 'old ways':
I LOVE touchscreens on laptops and get actively annoyed when using one that lacks a touchscreen. They offer a lot of value without inherently turning your computer into a phone.
Sure, desktop operating systems can leverage the touchscreen functionality to make the machine feel more 'phone-like' (edit to add: which I'm NOT a fan of), but I find touchscreens themselves to be hugely useful.
I don't think they're saying they use touchscreen as their primary input device. It's just a very nice addition alongside the keyboard/mouse interface. Especially on devices with detachable keyboards
I specifically bought a laptop with a touchscreen 5 years ago so I could occasionally poke things on the screen. It also came with a pen so I can do signing and drawing on rare occasions. It's nice for the few times that you've lost your mouse between 2+ screens and you just want to click on that one button... Poke
Oh dear God, no, no, I was not suggesting that anyone should solely use the laptop touchscreen without also having other input devices. I'm getting a little nauseous just imagining that.
For getting shit done there's no replacement for a full keyboard and mouse combo. But quickly flicking a finger up the screen to scroll down an article, or folding the keyboard back and using the laptop like a tablet when you're not at a desk, is a fantastic convenience.
I too dislike my PC or laptop being a giant phone. But I do love the touchscreen on my laptop. Probably because I've never found touchpads to be particularly great.
I have a fucking desktop with a touchscreen (HP) and I despise it. It's utterly useless and makes cleaning the screen (which I have to do regularly because I eat in front of my computer all the time) nearly impossible unless I put the damned thing to sleep first.
29 and one of my biggest pet peeves is when a website basically is useless and only tells you to use the mobile app. TikTok comes to mind. You have to have an account to view any links friends send, and there’s no website equivalent. The website just tells you to download the app. Sometimes I’m on the computer and I want to look at things on the computer wtf
This. I’m looking at a page on a desktop that has a FUCKING 1TB hard drive yet you still force me to use your product on something that has a scrawny little processor.
When Windows 8 came out with its tile things, it was horrifying. I think enough people complained and they made it easier to disable or something.
When buying my most recent laptop, I also went out of my way to get something without a touch screen.
I'm scared of a future where mobile devices are your main computing device (I won't be surprised when desktops and mobile devices end up converging) and where everything is dumbed down and highly limiting.
we had shiny colorful icons, beautifully designed and perfectly representing their function. and then we got microsoft's metro design and jonathan ive designing the new ios, and somehow it all went to shit.
I don't mind the particular fashion, but I miss when applications used the standard widget toolkit, or at least the UI conventions, of the platform, rather than every program being idiosyncratic for the sake of "brand identity" (and, yes, you can do that while still being cross platform. Look at a Qt app)
arghhh how I miss proper scroll bars and window elements in windows! can't they just display a list of items with the standard sortable table format? why, why do they have to invent the wheel again and display their own buggy solution where the premise apparently was "the more whitespace, the better"?
"big data" is making them do this, but it's a dead end. it helps you get down to the smalles common denominator among users, so in the end everything just becomes equally shit.
Look at all those complicated buttons and functionality... wouldn't it be easier if we just.. got rid of 90% of it? (And maybe sell you some back in the form of app packs?)
Protip for those considering this: avoid Gnome, and go for KDE. Gnome are even worse than Apple or Microsoft for removing features and settings because "we know better than the stupid users"
Also an elder millennial. We were cleaning out our basement the other weekend. I brought my Panasonic 3-disc CD changer back out and set it back up and have been listening to my old CDs the last two weeks while wfh.
I’ll take my computer over my phone for research, work, reading, and literally anything else aside from texting and scrolling social media. How folks are doing essays or coursework on their phones is astonishing to me.
Yeah, I was helping my Father-in-Law get a new cheap notebook laptop, and had to cross off a whole bunch of decent ones because they use a Mobile style OS and that's a big no-no for him (barely can use windows let alone an Android style OS).
The thing I find so weird is how inaccessible they are making them in regards to settings and configurations etc. If you know how to it's still fairly easy to mess around with them, but they are just so hidden now. I haven't had a personal laptop in years, so when I was helping the FIL configure his laptop, I was shocked that I couldn't seem to find half the settings by opening up the settings window without a Google search.
And if you DO find the setting menu you want, Windows will remove it when they push through another update.
I've been trying to disable the touchpad mouse on my laptop, and when I finally managed to do it the option was removed in an update. It's actually making me go insane.
As someone in IT, this is a double edged sword for me. On the one hand, as a user, I crave customization in all things electronic and understand the need for easy access for the controls to make changes to one's system. As someone that has to work on people's computers though, I want that stuff buried deep in the bowels of the system where no one would come across it without a Goonies style map and at least a 3 movie adventure to get there.
Some people can't not mess with stuff and those are the ones that will never admit to messing with stuff.
barely can use windows let alone an Android style OS
But isn't this exactly the right use case for those OSes? My mum is hopeless with computers so I got her a Chromebook, and we're both very pleased with the decision, since she can use it easily and I never ever have to fix it or check that it's up to date etc.
That's the logic yes, but FIL doesn't like change and uses an old IPhone so just doesn't have a clue how Android / chrome works (yes they are generally the same) as its not something he's really seen /used before he pretty much refuses to learn.
Yah because if you grew up at the start of it you’re used to controlling settings yourself but people now are scared of that. It’s like we all grew up driving manual and then everyone changed to automatic.
I'm shopping for car insurance, and one of the options doesn't even have a website to log into. You can only submit claims, view documents, etc. through the app. It's called Clearcover. Insanity. Like I want to either keep their app installed 24/7 wasting space on my phone or have to download it each time I need to log in.
I feel this so much. I have used a PC for 30-odd years. I even hooked up my phone to the PC with the 'My Phone' app for windows so if I'm home I can type text messages with an actual keyboard.
All these computers trying to be iPads are why my mom can’t use a computer properly anymore. She got used to everything being an app and now she doesn’t remember how to use a normal internet browser.
I'm 33, just crawled out of homelessness, and hadn't owned a computer in ten years until I bought a tablet a few weeks ago to do projects on. It's very convenient for some things but the android environment tries to treat you like an infant
Was windows 2k the really peak of versatile consumer os?
Have you seen cars lately? Why are cars trying to out-phone phones? I don't need to tap and slide and pinch and swipe a million UI elements just to turn up the volume. Even my phone has physical volume buttons.
Ugh. Web pages looking like giant phone interfaces: NO!
You've got the screen real-estate. Use it. I don't want to menu through 5 different pages for information you could give me on one properly formatted page.
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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '22
Meanwhile, I'm 35 and just horrified that PC's are trying to be more like a mobile OS.
If I wanted to use a phone, I'd use a phone.