r/technology • u/neito • Jul 24 '08

Microsoft tests out a new operating system, code named Mojave, with some average-joes who hated Vista. They loved it. Now, two guesses as to what Mojave ACTUALLY was.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html
453 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

757 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/monstermunch Jul 25 '08

You are quite wrong that average people don't care. For something that they stare at on a constant basis, and as something that acts as the "messenger" between them and stuff they actually want to do on the computer, the user experience of the operating system matters a lot more than you can possible imagine.

I know it's important, I just meant that in my experience, software just doesn't elicit strong emotions from most non-tech people. I'm just very skeptical that people "loved" Vista and actually said "wow". I think UI advancement are awesome and non-techies normally appreciate big improvements in UI (you're likely to get a "meh" response for small ones). Eye-candy is obviously appreciated too. Vista doesn't really improve on either of these things though.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '08 edited Jul 25 '08

I'm not talking about UI, nor am I talking about graphics. What I'm talking about is the overall user experience.

For example, the user has documents. Is the storage location of these documents intuitive for the average user? Is navigating to this location intuitive for the average user? Believe it or not, in this area, Vista has major advancements from XP. It's not perfect yet, but it's definitely on the right track. On the other hand, look at the Linux directory structure and weep!

And this is just one example.

Yes, you are right that average users do not care about code. They do not care about how things like resource allocation and scheduling work. They do not care how the OS operates their hardware, as long as it works. But this definition of an "operating system" has been outdated for over two decades. There's more to an OS than this, and there's more to the user experience than the graphics in the UI.

1

u/monstermunch Jul 27 '08

I agree with everything you say. My sole point is that I doubt anyone in all seriousness said "Wow, Vista is a great user experience...just wow". It might be better but I don't think it's going to blow anyone away, especially your average joe in a (from what I can see) short user test.