Microsoft brings Jenny, Aria, and more interface tweaks to new Windows 11 Insider build Microsoft has dropped another Windows 11 Insider build into the hands of unpaid testers, demonstrating it is serious about tidying up the mismatch of user interface cues in its flagship operating system. Build 22543 arrived in the Dev Channel last night and while the company was keen to trumpet the arrival of more natural …
The candy from the litterbox is called "Almond Roca" & is nutty, crunchy, chewy, & gooey. The first time I saw my then-best-friend eating one of those (actual) candies while I was busy cleaning out the cat box & discovered the (kitty) candy, I nearly blew my cookies.
*Fills a pint glass with MindBleach*
Drink up, it only gets worse from here... =-Jp
Except I've been waiting since Win7 for MS to settle down & find a stable flight path. They're still flitting around as erratic as a hummingbird on caffeinated crack trying to fly through a hurricane.
The OS isn't stable, the UI isn't fixed & changes more often than a nervous teenage girl trying to decide on a prom dress, and MS keeps playing "Wheel of Feature!" with which ones show up/get removed with every update.
At least Win7 is stable enough to stand up on, Win10 & Win11 aren't stable enough to belly-crawl across without risking MS yanking the entire platform sideways as they tweak yet another aspect for yet another brain dead reason. =-(
This. All the computers I responsible in managing which either came with, or which I personally converted to, Win10, 10 in all, have been far less trouble and overall far more stable than Win7. Ironically the only Win10 computer that has acted up has been my own office workstation, mostly due to storage issues (Intel RST issues and then failed HDD, both of which can't be blamed on Windows).
They have to do that because your average cretin judges a new Windows version based on how it has visually changed.
You can't release a visually identical version of Windows and expect grandma to be excited about the new network stack.
Also, the visual appearance gives away how old your tech might be which might be a sore point for your typical "keeping up with the jones" types....
"Oh isn't that the old version of Windows I see?"
We as techies, don't give a flying fuck about aesthetic changes...though Windows 11 looks like the floor of a rock concert when you dig down into the ye olde control panel window. The deeper you dig, the less consistent the new UI actually is. It is broken as fuck.
What many people miss is that the same is true with Windows 10, for which I think the oldest currently "supported" system by Microsoft are 6th generation PCs. The only difference to Windows 11 is that Windows 10 doesn't tell you that Microsoft considers your older system unsupported and reserves the right to break functionality in a future update or to release updates which will cause your system to stop working.
That has always been the case with Microsoft's support. And it's always only been a real issue if you actually relied on Microsoft "supporting" your hardware, a support that never was great to begin with.
In reality, Windows 10 and older variants all just ran fine on older, unsupported PCs, and the same is true for Windows 11.
I'm a little surprised, given all the cr*p MS gives its users over several decades now, there are still fanboys who will stop at nothing to get their fix on the latest from Redmond.
But I suppose there must be market, as I note Dell were selling the same system with a £60~100 premium just for having W11 pre-installed rather than W10 with free upgrade to W11...
Didn't need even that. Windows 11 installed just fine out of the box on any computer I have, of which the oldest is from the Ivy Bridge days. Granted, these were all fresh installs but it's usually better than to carry the cruft from Windows 10 over anyways.
And so far Windows 11 has been a much better experience for me than Windows 10 has ever been. Especially on tablets, Windows 11 is the first Windows that actually makes sense on them.
Odd that, because Windows 11 doesn't install 'out of the box' on unsupported hardware, yes it will install if you mod the Windows 11 ISO to make it install without prompting about unsupported hardware, but not 'out of the box'. There are deliberate 'hard blocks' in place to prevent such an install, on unsupported hardware, hardware without secure boot and a TPM module.
I have Win11 running on an "unsupported" laptop as well. Runs perfectly and has been receiving every update without issue.
Win11 won't install from a non-supported Win10 installation from within Win10. Do a fresh install on a clean partition and Win11 installs, and runs, perfectly.
Mine apparently is supported. Least-wise first I knew of it was when it appeared in Windows Update. Sadly it turns out the Taskbar tooltip issue is still not fixed. It's a pretty weird bug in the first place but they seem to be taking their own sweet time about issuing a release.
Every time I open Windows 10 Update, I now have a prominent text box informing me "This PC doesn't currently meet the minimum system requirements for Windows 11". There is no way to remove this box, it's there every time and if I uninstall Microsoft's PC Health Check App, it comes back like malware, at the next month's update.
My toaster, shower, toilet, car doesn't show me a screen every morning telling me I'm not running the current wiz bang model of loo, to shit on, so why is Microsoft telling me this? FFS, regulators do your job. This is a blatant advert placed in a prime location, where others cannot advertise. It's market abuse of their position, no question. Do your job and prosecute.
It's not an advert. It's an admission of ineptitude.
It's also a reminder that you should be trying to get as many functions as possible off Windows because you are now stuck on a soon-to-be-unsupported platform.
"...trying to get as many functions as possible off Windows because you are now stuck on a soon-to-be-unsupported platform."
Your reply is a bit vague and I may have mis-read it. Do you mean the OP should fall in line and be moving those functions from Win10 to Win11, or do you mean the OP should be moving those functions a non-Windows platform? If the latter, I inadvertently gave you a downvote, thinking you were being a Windows11 fanboi, so apologies.
Especially when the whole acrylic look is just a copy* of the way Apple first morphed the screen change between the desktop and hitting the Launchpad icon on the dock. That 'morph' was introduced by Apple, at a time when Windows 8 was still doing the horrible jarring screen switch between the full screen start menu and the desktop, and Microsoft were still defending the modern start menu design to the hilt.
* (sorry, took inspiration from)
So, I haven't moved over to windows 11 on my gaming rig, I moved to Linux from windows 10, my last windows rig now gone, after being part of that "family" since Windows 3.1.1
My observations, over the years, is that Microsoft release Beta's as production builds, in all but name.
Some of the worst offenders being windows ME, windows Vista & windows 8.
Up until windows 8, there was at least consistency in the UI/UX, but Microsoft, desperate to climb aboard the mobile bandwagon, made a pigs ear of the UI/UX in windows 8 - and they still haven't sorted it out.
They seem to be constantly fiddling around the edges, whilst leaving underlying issues unresolved.
The constant monkeying with the UI/UX is infuriating for end users, which is in turn, infuriating for tech support.
I consider myself fortunate to have been issued with a macBook for my role as a software engineer.
Yep, I know macOS is like marmite for many, but there's one thing they got right - consistency of UX/UI.
They understood, right from the get-go, to make small incremental changes and leave the core experience as it has always been.
The menu strip along the top, for example, has been in place since the very start - 1984.
MacOS X - the dock has been a staple since 2001.
The settings are still in the same place, after all this time.
Why is Microsoft incapable, these days, of understanding this fundamental principle of UI/UX ?
The sad thing is, right from win95 to win7, they had it right, despite some flawed releases.
It was never the prettiest desktop, but damn, it worked (mostly) - you knew where everything was.
Windows 8 was where it all went wrong, trying to unify two different paradigms, desktop and mobile, in the same OS. What a stupid idea.
This, coming from a company that may as well be none-existent on mobile devices - they totally failed to make any kind of impact in the market.
Sadly, I believe they are sort of stuck with having to support touch interfaces - by making a blundering bull in a china shop half baked move into that space, they are left with trying to pick up the pieces.
Windows 10 saw a reversal of some aspects, but it was just the most intrusive annoying experience microsoft have ever released - "Hmm, is this my computer, or is it microsoft's? - hard to tell..."
Agreed.
It was the amount of things PUSHED upon you. With no chance of turning them off or making them happen at a convenient time. Updates. Telemetry/Tracking. UI changes. 1 theme (not counting "accessible" themes). Borderless windows.
The amount of time wasted trying to fight the operating system for control and productive time. Madness. Wasted hours.
So much wasted whitespace. And yet, I have a superwide monitor, but Office insists on a ribbon ONLY at the top. At least with Windows 10 the taskbar can be moved to the side.
So, I have a PC, which I then use to access a jumpbox in the inner DMZ, to access a server on the "inside" network. I am going to have 3 start menus accross the bottom. I don't like RDP sessions full screen. Normally, my PC would have 1 on the bottom, or on the right. Admin consoles on the left. Servers ... whatever I feel like on the day. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows 11 is going to force me to have them on the bottom, whether I like it or not?
Now the classic "error" icon (the round red one with a white cross in it) telling you that you "This PC doesn't meet the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11".
This is a dark pattern to freak out less tech-savvy users as you PC has nothing wrong, does work as expected, and Windows 10 is still supported.
A simple message to inform users why they could not upgrade is fine - showing it as if the computer has issues is not. But we all see that Windows development is fully run by the marketing development now.
That would be a lovely thing to happen, but I fear it never will - we have been conditioned to accept mediocrity and obvious bugs and f*uckups for so long that have now just accept them. Who knows, they may even get fixed some day.
I don't 'get' the need to revisit a perfectly good layout which is understood my most people, especially when they don't complete the task...a settings app and a control panel for system settings.....really?
Is that the only way they can innovate on Windows now?
"Is that the only way they can innovate on Windows now?"
This lack of innovation isn't just a Microsoft problem, it's obviously industry-wide. Were there companies out there still being innovative in OS and GUI design, Microsoft would have bought them up to make it look like MS wasn't just rechurning spoiled butter over and over again. Perhaps they just ran out of innovative companies to buy.
Just a thought off the top of my head, but perhaps there should be a rule that once your company gets beyond a certain %age of market segment share, or a certain $value market cap, it's forbidden to make any acquisitions. Related to, but independent of, competition/monopoly regulations.
Any economists or game theorists care to weigh in on whether that would be a good idea?
Yep. Innovation is a hard thing to do, same as growth which can be organic or by acquisition. I've been of the opinion for a while now that MS in particular are appearing increasingly desperate - along the lines of "Oh, shit! We can''t think of anything practical or useful to do that benefits people, so we'd better start pissing about with the UI/UX to justify ourselves".
I'm not saying I could do better - I couldn't - but MS do seem a bit out-of-touch with what would actually be desirable new features. What's happened to the idea of producing something that's useful to end users, rather than a perpetually changing game of 'whack-a-mole'.
I only just installed Win11 last week for the first time. It appears to work OK, all my stuff runs as expected, my dev builds in Rust and Go work OK and my Steam games run OK....no great surprise to have to moan about f**king MS hiding more important stuff under 17 layers of shitty GUI garnish!
MS I know people poke and prod as the settings but surely the more they break it the more you make in support calls? So why you keep hiding the useful stuff all admins need to get to quickly?
When my aging but working PC dies, my new one will probably support windoze 11 (or 12 depending how long it lasts)
What will the new OS do that my existing Win 10 machine can't do? (rounded or square corners, moving the taskbar around don't count as doing anything useful, hiding funtions in different places is the oposite of useful)
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