Even on fresh, completely updated systems I've found the Start menu is so intermittent that I'm glad I didn't sell them. The quality of Microsoft's work is called into question when the feature you're meant to "Start" with doesn't work.

There was a lot of locking issues, which broke in weird ways. My understanding is that the latest release gets rid of it.

In general I have an even bigger problem with the philosophy of what an OS should do. When I switch on my computer, it's not to admire the OS, its beautiful UI, etc. It is because I want to do something, code something, watch something, read something. I live in the applications not in the OS. The OS should be effortless, surprise-less, it should hide behind and do its basic tasks well. Windows 10 is the exact opposite. It's an OS that is in your face, which interrupts you with full screen banners all the time, which reboots you all the time, which shows you ads, shows you modal pop ups to tell you to do things differently, etc. This is not what we need an OS to do.

The upside is that it is driving developers and users away from the platform. Windows is a dead man walking.

As to why I have to open mouse settings so often, Windows inexplicably forgets my scroll speed setting every time I plug my mouse in.

Windows search will often just refuse to give the correct answer until you type an exact match.

Consider, as a non native speaker, if English speakers used your language of origin to mean "terrible". I don't know your language, but imagine it was Latin, and kids would taunt each other saying, "ha ha you're so latin" on the playground, and "windows search is simply latin". This is a constructed example, of course, but the issue is not that the word is offensive (fucked, or shit would have been fine), but that the word derives its power from being linked to marginalizing and othering people.

For more:

https://www.r-word.org/default.aspx?viewfullsite=Y

Anyway, I agree that such words should be avoided and not used. (Although it's hard to avoid it completely when talking about the word, without using it.)

The world is a big place and everyone does not (thankfully) live in the liberal US coastal areas :-)

A little more concretely: it's not up to the person saying anything to decide whether or not the thing they say conveys disrespect or harm. It is up to the people harmed by those words to decide. You can, of course, choose to ignore the harm done and continue on as before.

That said, I'm sure the OP's intent was innocent enough - this is the kind of thoughtless use of the word that I (and many other people) work to problematize. I had intended to do so publicly but without much fanfare (one quick sentence), to draw attention to this fact in hopes that we could all work to shift the language.

Speaking subjectively, I find it troubling that the notion that basic decency toward other humans who have a relatively simple ask (use "terrible" or "garbagefire" or "shitty" instead of "r_") is viewed as a "liberal US coastal" practice that should be avoided out of sheer tribalism. Not sure there's much else to say rather than "troubling".

This whole thread is OT at this point, but I'm simply not willing to let this go. The lexicon has plenty of synonyms for "is terrible and unintelligently designed and frustrating to use" that we can afford to drop one.

This completely breaks scrolling. My eyes can't properly follow that and the touch component is off: you move your fingers, nothing happens, then suddenly a lot. It's not continuous, which makes no sense for finger interaction.

Apparently it's because the app has to support the specific touch input events for scrolling and before creators update, they would simulate it. Now they don't. I really don't give a fuck for their reason if it means even scrolling in Explorer doesn't work anymore.

On Windows Vista (and later versions) search, sure, it would find the things you were looking for. But no-one gave a thought to how it should be displayed. Does the search work? Check. Feature done.

Apple designed Spotlight in a way that it would actually return the results you expect when you type a search query.

I bet it took a lot of effort at Apple, too, because making a good search is really difficult. If you just depend on the tools given to you by your database, you'll probably end up with something that works, but not necessarily something that does what you want.

Windows has various locations where apps are typically installed or dumped (Program files, Program files x86 , program data, app data...) where the particular executable in buried somewhere amongst everything else. Shortcuts to these and various other applications are scattered all over the place.

If you build such a simple approach to dropping applications into a single directory with big obvious icons, not only does it look clean to a user but it prevents naming duplication and allows your search tool to match to this directory first so you can esasily use Spotlight as a launcher.

For Windows users switching to Mac OS X, it's not really something they're used to doing. Instead of downloading an installer, clicking "Open" in the browser, and just following a guide leads to less issues with placing the application the correct place (Program Files), instead you get either a Zip file (so the bundle is in Downloads), an actual Installer (typically a .pkg), or a Disk Image which is often never unmounted. (I once saw a family member with 7 Flash Update disk images mounted)

As such, a lot of OS X users find themselves with a the Skype app in Desktop (inside a Disk Image), their Mail on the dock and some other app in Documents or Downloads. It requires that you organise it yourself.

Another way of saying it is that it lets you organize it yourself.

There will always be people who don't understand, or care to understand, how the system works. You can put in all the hand-holdy nonsense you want to cater to them and they'll still exist, but you'll be adding tedious and unnecessary hurdles in the workflow of people who do know what's going on.

To be fair, neither Program Data (which is effectively ALl Users AppData), nor AppData are endorsed as application installation locations by Microsoft. For a variety of reasons. Chrome started quite a trend, though for installations without admin privileges to install to AppData for convenience.

The big change was in the registry: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT was no longer a direct shortcut to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes, but instead was a dynamically merged view of that key and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes.

This allowed you to register COM objects for the current user without requiring administrative privileges.

I and many other people were doing per-user installs long before Chrome existed.

This is especially useful for apps that auto-update. If you install in Program Files [(x86)] then you will pop a UAC prompt every time the app updates. If you install per-user it can be a silent update.

Also, Safari.app (e.g.) is not an executable -- it's essentially just a folder with special display characteristics in the Finder. Many app bundles contain several executables.

Heck even using the New... context window in Explorer is a joke.

On top of that, getting info about the application involves parsing .plist files, followed by parsing localization.

Similarly, yes, getting app info involves parsing files in a known location with a known format, how could that situation be better?

I’m not sure how often people fail to put applications where they go. Especially nowadays, where most applications ship as .dmg files that open to a giant arrow telling you to drag the app to Applications, and many nag you if they’re run while not there, and App Store solves this entirely by just putting them there.

Windows+X is your friend. It's the power user menu with all of the things you mentioned on it.

There are a ton of useful Windows+key shortcuts. Try all the letters and the arrow keys too.