You're alone in a room with the Windows 10 out-of-the-box apps. What do you do? Imagine you’ve just returned to work from a lengthy sabbatical and found, among the thousands of increasingly shrill and unanswered emails in your mailbox, one telling you that you are now the proud product owner of a bunch of Windows OS apps. What would you do? Steve Teixeira, a general manager in Microsoft’s Windows and …
Do Win10 users own anything??? Its subscription model hell forever.
You can't even get compensation for Windows, so what do you own!
___________
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/24/microsoft_windows_10_update/
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/12/which_calls_for_compensation_for_customers_amidst_windows_10_upgrade_fail/
I'd invite Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Satya Nadella into my office, lock them in with the computer, and let them battle it out. The survivor gets to be Microsoft CEO. A mean green mother from outer space probably couldn't do any worse at running Microsoft than the other three.
new provisioned apps are a pain to maintain. we uninstall just about all of them via a powershell script (uninstall per user AND the provisioned store too so new profiles wont get them).
calc is a copy of windows 7 calc, notepad++, paint.net, chrome. start menu is an xml copied locally then gpo'd (containing good old fashioned .lnk files). windows doesn't manage printers, there is an old school .lnk to explorer.exe shell for the old printer management. etc etc.
w10 boots quick and with roaming profiles logs in in about 35 seconds on old 1st gen i3s (redirected desktop, documents and appdata).
store is installed but locked off via applocker (we have minecraft installed as a user app on some machines and toshiba print management software as an app on others )
all works well on 1803. Boy was it a fuck about from 1604 to get to this point.
And above all none of that UWP shite of removing a few useful features first . I have Onenote 2016 and it's almost as good as Evernote used to be (before they restricted its use) for my work. The cut down Win10/UWP version is just rubbish.
Edit: Just saw the post about calculator. Another very good example of UWP crap software replacing a perfectly good version.
Many Windows utilities need a refresh and some more features, as a text editor Notepad is really primitive today - I guess a lot of Windows users use Notepad++ or something alike (which could be used as an inspiration, although its programmers may not like it).
But they are apps that need to be powerful enough but not intrusive - once upon a time maybe they could be used to showcase the OS features, but today not - leave it to other applications, not basic utilities, especially if touch-enabling and UWPing them makes them less far usable. And please, no .NET and JS stuff!!!
Go to the Windows App store, install Ubuntu[1], then a simple ‘apt-get install emacs’ will get you the best text editor available.
[1] Before you all start flaming me about my choice of distro, yes, there are other distros, I tried them all, and I found that within Windows 10’s subsystem for Linux, Ubuntu was the most reliable. Otherwise, I’m not a huge Ubuntu fan, I mostly prefer FreeBSD.
"then a simple ‘apt-get install mc’ will get you the best text editor available."
FTFY, you had all those extra letters in the packages name.
"I found that within Windows 10’s subsystem for Linux, Ubuntu was the most reliable."
I think that's the distro Windows 10 Linux subsystem was built around, so that's no surprise.
"as a text editor Notepad is really primitive today"
That's the major feature of Notepad, and it shouldn't change. Having a lean, bare-bones text editor is a very, very good thing. Microsoft's Notepad with additional features is Wordpad, and there's always things like Notepad++.
Don't how many plug-ins you load, but my Notepad++ start is instantaneous.
I don't advocate to make Notepad a bloated application, but it lacks features you expect from a text editor today. And the average computer is enough powerful to not blink if they're added.
For example, it can't become stuck if you open a large file. It needs better search (and maybe replace) features. Some syntax highlighting would be welcome.
Don't how many plug-ins you load, but my Notepad++ start is instantaneous.
I've never used Notepad++, but I had to wonder what the deal was with everyone saying it takes too long to load. When I used to use Windows, I used Metapad in place of Notepad for years, and it has all kinds of features that were lacking in Notepad, like the CR/CR+LF ability. At 190KB, most of which is the embedded icon, the program (a standalone .exe) loads instantly. How much larger can Notepad++ possibly be?
I remember encountering the same kind of thing when I revisited KDE Plasma recently. Since Mint has dropped their KDE version, I tried Kubuntu, then converted that to KDE Neon (rebased 18.04) by swapping in the repo and updating.
Kubuntu comes with Kate as the default text editor, while KDE Neon uses Kwrite. Both are official products of KDE. Why two text editors? I looked it up, and apparently, Kate is so feature-heavy that it supposedly starts too slow, so Kwrite is offered as a pared-down version that starts much quicker.
On my systems, I can get out "one" of "one, one thousand" before Kate is ready to use. I never saw much point in switching to Kwrite to reduce that fraction of a second even further. YMMV if you're not using a SSD, but if the time it takes for a text editor (even a really heavy one) to start bothers you, you really should be.
Sure, but when you're editing some scripts on a server, or a config file maybe in XML, YAML or whatever, some syntax highlighting is welcome, because it reduces the chances of making mistakes, and it won't add much bloat - make it optional, if you fear your computer is too underpowered to run it - c'mon TurboPascal editor could do it on a 286 with 640K of RAM...
I'll second that the ultra simple Notepad is just about perfect for editing plain text files. About the only function I can think of that would be nice to have is the ability to Sort, but other than that it's fine just the way it is. I also use Notepad++ for larger files & more complex functions, but it's serious overkill just to Sort a block of text. MS Word 2016 Professional is SO far overkill that it's like hiring a giant lorry capable of hauling hundreds of tonnes of dirt per dumper fill to pull your child in a little red wagon around the yard. To add insult to injury is the fact that Notepad is accessible to a screen reader whereas the full MS Office is an utter crapshoot as to which parts are, which parts are not, & which ones will (not) be the next time you launch the blighted, bloated thing. I don't need Word just to Sort a block of text, I don't *want* some massively bloated program just to do simple editing, & I'm disgusted with the thought of what MS might do to Something That Works in the name of "improving the user experience". Here's a way to improve this user's experience: leave the fekkin' thing alone!
"Many Windows utilities need a refresh and some more features, as a text editor Notepad is really primitive today"
That mentality is what's wrong with Windows today. Notepad is SUPPOSED to be barebones and super fast. If you want to write an HTML document, use Notepad++. If you want to write a BAT, use Notepad.
Edlin had the ability to be used along with a file of commands to be executed, which was pretty useful occasionally. The next comment (when I was reading) suggests programmers are using Linux, in which case they can do all the same sort of things from the shell.
If you really want barebones, try EDLIN. You need to be of a masochistic nature to fully appreciate it, though, and I think they may have finally removed it in Win 10.
As far as I know, it's still in 32-bit builds of Win10, but not (because it's still a DOS executable) in 64-bit builds.
Indeed, the Unreliable Source says so, for what that's worth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edlin
>Notepad does need updating. Nothing much but having an undo buffer and little things such as multi-line tab indenting, column cut/copy/paste, maybe allowing multi-document tabs would go a long way.<
Those would be good improvements to WordPad. Notepad doesn't have to compete with WordPad.
How can it be in anyone's interest to remove apps like this from the OS ?
When in the history of computing hasn't a system come with a basic text editor ?
These get used for any of a thousand different problems - tweaking config files, basic text manipulation, looking at log files.
Many places won't allow external software downloads either, so tying to get the Vogons in change management to approve such a change will often prove pointless.
How can it be in anyone's interest to remove apps like this from the OS ?
I suspect you haven't been using Microsoft software for that long then.
Here is a possible scenario:
1 - isolate (done)
2 - bar access to any apps but those in a MS controlled shop (probably next, I'm betting on "security" as the argument although that is about the most laughable claim especially Microsoft could come up with)
3 - make them part of an optional package - at an extra charge.
Given the way most corporates bend over backwards to hand MS a lot of money, they'll get away with it too. After all, they have been for decades..
"When in the history of computing hasn't a system come with a basic text editor ?"
RHEL 7 when you install using the 'minimal' option. Comes with a web server, but doesn't have nano, emacs, vim, vi, and even lacks ed. Fortunately it does have grep, sed, cat, and echo. RHEL has abandoned the command line and now expects you use the GUI for everything (Seriously, fuck you NetworkManager)
"How can it be in anyone's interest to remove apps like this from the OS "
For Micro-shaft, it's all about LOCKING YOU IN TO SOME SUBSCRIPTION-BASED BLOATWARE for *EVERYTHING*. And with UWP/FLATSO for that "new, shiny" effect.
For the end-user, not such a good thing at all.
/me reaches for the pink liquid
Clearly MS need to Cloud & AI them urgently. How can MS not know this?
JS AND HTML5 ALL THE THINGS!!!!
(^^^ I'm joking. Please do not do that. ^^^)
My guess: Notepad, Calc. et al will become "ad-supported;" ad-free versions will be available, but only in a bundle with Candy Crush Soda Saga and Solitaire.
years ago the source for notepad (and maybe calc) were included in the SDK. One time I compiled an MDI version of notepad that actually worked, using that source, and quite possibly uploaded the binary to an online service with all necessary credit to MS for having written it. (re-distributing binaries derived from the SDK was simpler back then)
These applications are SO trivial I'm surprised nobody has cloned them as some kind of open source "retro looking" versions NOT in the store. Otherwise, we'll have to haul in some gtk or qt-based version, built with cygwin [and distributed with the DLL], etc. etc..
The days of *NON* *BLOATWARE* applications may soon be over...
I propose two streams. In the A-stream, you create fancy new apps with all the latest bling. Calc.exe does blockchain, notepad.exe becomes notepad.js, Paint uses AI to predict what you want to draw, etc. In the B-stream, you leave everything exactly as it is. Randomly assign users to A/B, and after a few months see which is more popular.
Surely they need to create an integrated application which combines the best features of the other applications, and thus create a third stream of in-box apps. As well as ensuring that they acquire a popular competitor software house, preferably one that started off quite small and still retains that small and effective core staffing, then tack their Frankencode feature extension onto that product before rewriting it from the ground up in .Net and creating a fourth, D, stream.
You don't get as far as the office drawer apps having lost all will to live post experiencing the dreadful "mail" app. And there is windows 10 problem - designed to be a jack of all trades o/s across pc, tablet and phone it became a master of none. And now? With only the pc needing it the jack of all is inadequate at what it once ruled
well, aside from simply ABANDONING every "new, shiny" concept that came with either 'Ape' or Win-10-nic, here's what I'd do:
a) go back to the simplest method of doing everything;
b) make sure that all window decorations are 'owner draw' and FORCE them to look like 7 or XP;
c) make sure all control windows draw themselves like XP or 7;
d) make sure it uses a TRADITIONAL MENU [no ribbon, no fat-finger-burger]
e) make sure it reminds people of how good Windows *USED* to be at one time, before the arrogant millenial "2D FLATSO" "UWP" "we will SOCK IT TO YOU with ADS" crowd got ahold of it
What sold windows 3.0 in the early 90's: It looked nicer than the 2D FLAT stuff that preceded it, had useful applications _LIKE_ notepad and calc, had some built-in games like solitaire [which probably sold MORE copies of windows than ANY other single application], didn't take forever to load or install (on a 386 SX processor with 4M or RAM!!!) and...
MADE! THE! THINGS! YOU! DID! WITH! A! COMPUTER! MUCH! EASIER! THAN! BEFORE!!!
Now, let's compare Win XP or 7 to Win-10-nic and see if ANY of that is actually TRUE...
SO, ultimately, I'd leverage these applications to *DEMONSTRATE* beyond a shadow of a doubt, so that even the most casual observer could see it, that WIndows 'Ape' and Win-10-nic are ABSOLUTELY GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION, and people can *EASILY* *REBEL* against the ribbon, 2D FLATSO, fat-finger-burger UI by RETURNING to these simple yet elegantly useful applications (like notepad) with only the most MINOR of updates (to handle things like lines ending in LF or CR, or optionally being a fully functional scientific calculator with a choice between RPN and algebraic), and NOT looking like it was designed by the ANIMATORS OF 'SOUTH PARK' [which is DELIBERATELY done poorly, and lampshaded in the starting sequence].
@bombastic bob
and people can *EASILY* *REBEL* against the ribbon, 2D FLATSO, fat-finger-burger UI by RETURNING to these simple yet elegantly useful applications (like notepad) with only the most MINOR of updates
And security?
You said "people", and this implies "regular people" (as opposed to techies who have already jumped to Linux).
Security vulnerabilities? Windows 7 support expires in 2020 or something.
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Actually I got and a Mac and zapped Windows for a Linux Mint.
I need some commercial apps such as what Affinity makes (Designer, Photo and -by the looks of it- Publisher is a winner too) so I need a commercial desktop, but at least I now have one layer of risk (and no license management worries) instead of exposure at app as well as OS level.
LibreOffice works fine on Linux, thankfully I don't need fancy Excel work.
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Some of the little tidbits are leftovers from when MS bought Central Point Software, such as almost all of the disk cleanup buggers.Notepad should be left alone as should calculator. Beyond that, there are probably hundreds of applications and DLLs that could be wiped. If windows had an intelligent installer, most would never see the light of day.
When they went into "the Store" and actually became CRAPP...
actually Micro-shaft has been using the term 'app' since before XP. I forget when it started, maybe around the Windows '98 time frame. They just haven't forced the REST of us to call it that until Apple's iPhone and Google's Android and their associated 'app stores' became 'a thing'.
Then it's all 'hip' and 'cool' and 'new' and 'shiny' and sounds like your dad trying to use teen lingo when you're 15.
Then it's all 'hip' and 'cool' and 'new' and 'shiny' and sounds like your dad trying to use teen lingo when you're 15.
Perfect description. The only thing more cringe-inducing is those restaurant chains using "app" to mean an appetizer in their TV commercials. "Look, we're cool too!"
That rings a bell. And an "application" was usually a utility programme or a suite.i.e. something non-trivial. Whereas now its abbreviated version seems to be for something that is trivial. And to match the concept the existing programmes need to be trivialised (akin to "dumbed down")
Notepad has its uses where it is better than Notpad++, Its latest iteration which includes text zooming is useful additions that actually add stuff with out taking anything away.
The OOB Apps that came with Windows 8 like News, Video, Films and TV, Mesaginging (on a PC?), Connect (My device does not support miracast apparently), Camera (my PC does not have one) and some of the more recent additions like Mixed Reality just need a way to remove them so you don't have to look at them ever again as they are just MS not checking capabilities before installing stuff and generally throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks.
uninstall them all https://www.thewindowsclub.com/10appsmanager-windows-10 and goto a bar
Support more formats
Nothing else. Nothing else at all.
Eg Calc should remember the number when changing mode, and do all arithmetic correctly to high decimal precision (not high binary precision).
Notepad should read and write every text-only format known to humankind. (Every codepage of ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 etc, EOL, CRLF, CR, LF, LFCR etc)
Paint should load and save every image format known to humankind.
Between those two, you'll keep busy and won't break anything.
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