Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10
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@anonymous234 said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
So I can't imagine how any problems in the toolchain wouldn't be worth solving.
I'm surprised they don't have a developer or small team of developers dedicated to tooling and automation.
It's especially surprising from the company whose mantra was "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
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@error said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
It's especially surprising from the company whose mantra was "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
That was covered by some of the other things in the OP's image, namely the problems with management. A wants to do X, B wants to do Y, they can't be done together? DO BOTH ANYWAY! Because of course…
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
I'm just sick of hearing the whining. It's like a forum full of 2-year-olds. Just grow up and cope with the world around you.
Maybe people do cope - by venting here, instead of in RL.
Maybe that's the whole purpose of this forum.
Remember? The purpose of the forum?
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With that said.
I don't get this hate on Windows 10.
I find it a perfectly suitable Windows OS.
If you're not into windows, I totally could see you not liking it. But for windows users... what's the beef?
Hell even 8 hate I don't get. Everyone complained about the 'Start Menu' change. Hell... I NEVER USE THE START MENU! Since windows 7 gave you the ability to Pin applications, that's all I fucking do. And in the RARE instance I need a program that has yet to be pinned, or I don't pin due to the rarity in my using it... then, then I might hit windows key, type the name of the program, and hit enter.
That 3 hole seconds of my life, where yeah sure a metro themed region appears on my screen, that's all the time I have to deal with it. Once a month maybe... I would have pinned the fucking program if I needed it more often than that.
And hell, in Win 10 the start menu is back to the left corner like you all fucking want for whatever reason.
What else is the problem?
Drivers not working? The ONLY driver problem I had (and I use all sorts of weird peripherals) was that in the first few months of the Win 10 release I couldn't run an old Geforce 9600 along side my 560 at the time (I used the old card for a 3rd display that didn't do much graphically intense so I could point the 560 at the main displays when gaming). The thing is... it wasn't Windows fault, it was Nvidia's, and they rectified the situation since then. I can't think of any other driver issues I've had...
No crashes to be heard of.
No more auto-updates than I get on my linux machines... which mind you can be turned off, or set to 'let me know when' mode (which is what I do). Updates are GOOD... they repair things like security holes. And yeah... other OS's have those problems too. Hence why I get updates on my linux machines all the god damn time!
Need to restart often? Bullshit, I seldom if ever restart my windows desktop, or any of my windows servers I happen to operate at home and at work.
We used Windows 7 in my office. It's not bad, but when I go home and get on my Win10 machine I'm more productive. It's just more streamlined for me rather than 7. Just little additions exist that aren't in Win7.
The only thing I don't like is some of the default apps for Windows. Like their media player, or Internet Explorer, and the sort... but I download VLC, Firefox, Chrome, like almost immediately when installed. I don't know anyone who likes any of those default applications.
And I do the same thing on my linux machines since many linux distros don't come with chrome or vlc by default neither.
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
That's where we are: 1000 words of whining to random people on a forum.
Sucks that people are reading his whines instead of yours, eh?
@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
I'm just sick of hearing the whining
Right back atcha.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
But for windows users... what's the beef?
- Modern UI is ugly.
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- Assorted network settings have migrated away from all their related settings in the Control Panel and into a half-baked Metro Settings app that's nowhere near a feature-complete CP replacement. Some settings you can only change in one, some in the other. Others have gone altogether and the only way to alter them is with the CLI.
This is the exact kind of user-hostile crap that Windows weenies have completely correctly been bagging Linux desktop UIs for since approximately forever. The Windows 7 Control Panel just works better.
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@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Vista was awful.
Closed, works for me
Seriously, never had a problem with Vista.
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@asdf "Vista is awful" is just like "Windows Phone is awful". You'll never find a single person who actually used the product for more than 15 minutes saying so.
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@blakeyrat That's odd, because I can name three such people without even thinking about it. One of them hated it so much he took a punt on letting me install Debian on his then-new laptop instead. He's been using that quite happily for eight years.
Edit: not counting me. I've used Vista for well over 15 minutes, and
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@julmu said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
But for windows users... what's the beef?
- Modern UI is ugly.
What the flat boxes?
You prefer the big bubbly window borders of XP and 7?
Change your theme?
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@flabdablet Can you articulate why? Or is that knee just jerking like a pile driver?
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@asdf "Vista is awful" is just like "Windows Phone is awful". You'll never find a single person who actually used the product for more than 15 minutes saying so.
Agreed!
I picked up a Windows Phone because my android crapped out on me, and I wasn't digging its interface all that much.
It's hard to find affordable cheapy old school phones, so I figured I check out the Windows Phone. Grabbed a 45 dollar... I think a Lumia 635 or something like that. It's a low spec WinPhone 8 model... mimimal specs.
The UI took a little bit to get used seeing as I came from Android, but I got used to them.
The lack of software can be annoying, but I don't use a lot of phone apps. Just music players and the sort. But really this isn't the OS's fault, this is a lack of effort from devs to deploy to WinPhone because the user base is so small because so many people thinks it sucks without trying it.
It's no worse than Android, and honestly there's quite a deal of it I like over Android. I find the entire touch screen 'smart phone' experience atrocious, but I guess that ain't going anywhere (srsly people, touch screen keyboards are the bane of my existence... does everyone but me have child sized fingers!?).
One big plus to this phone. In the 2 years or so I've had it, it still runs as smoothly as when I got it. My android phone... not so much. With every automagic update it got slower and slower. I don't install many programs, music player, that's about it. I use my phone for music, calls, texts... that's it. And yet within a year of each android I've owned it crawls to a fucking hault to do anything. It feels like Windows XP all over again! But not windows... android...
I like this phone. It's coming time to upgrade again. And I'm leaning more towards windows phone 10. The only thing holding me back is the lack of a free google music player for my google play account.
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Also, as for Vista.
I installed Vista when it first came out because XP couldn't handle my hardware configuration at the time anymore. I had gone 64-bit CPU, I had a crazy ass video card setup because I invested in the 2560x1600 30-inch Dell monitor that had just came out (and needed a super strong video card for), but still had 2 side monitors. I was super into audio, so I had like 3 different audio expansion cards for crazy stuff. And basically XP kept have IRQ misdirect hits, where video cards and sound cards would swap IRQ addresses and I randomly would lose displays.
It was weird.
Installed Vista and everything just worked.
The new interface though was... different.
Thing is at the time I had also just gotten into linux hardcore. Only a few years prior I installed it for my first time, but it was this time I started actually using it as a primary OS. I'd dual boot, use linux for the most part, and could boot into windows for video games. I even had a virtual machine on the linux side to boot up windows directly from linux off the second hard drive with a virtual wrapper around it so I could run flash from linux without wine (i was big into actionscript 3 back then... paid the bills).
Using vista... made me think of linux a lot.
Everyone cried about the whole vista constantly asking for administrator rights (UMC I think it was called?).
And my linux communities ragged on it the most.
And I was like, "but wait... I have to sudo this and sudo that all the fucking time to! In a gui system I'm prompted for root/admin access when doing all sorts of crap daily. Why aren't we bitching about that???"
Aside from that thing, I don't remember what exactly people hated about Vista. It pestered you a lot for admin rights, that's about it. It was annoying to support because it was such a huge workflow change for plebe users that support people were annoyed of having to explain to Jody in accounting to just click the fucking OK button, after she's been trained to NEVER click any popup window cause it's probably a "virus" (popup ads, circa late 90's internet browsers sucking balls).
The same seems to go for each newer OS release. People hate the UI because it's 'different'.
The only 'hard' examples of what people hate is always these sorts of things.
Anything else is vague "and drivers don't work", ok... what ones? Was it in the first month after the release of the OS? What company were they from, do they suck ass?
I mean again... drivers? Fuck you... when Vista came out linux was STILL a hell whole for drivers. I had to jump through 3 hour long hoops to just get a freaking scanner to work!
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Aside from that thing, I don't remember what exactly people hated about Vista.
It was a major change to the driver and security models, used a lot of resources on all the glass effects, and had (early on) some large memory leaks.
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@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Aside from that thing, I don't remember what exactly people hated about Vista.
It was a major change to the driver and security models, used a lot of resources on all the glass effects, and had (early on) some large memory leaks.
There's that 'driver' thing again... never noticed it myself, and I had WEIRD hardware setups. Really, I covered this in my post you quoted from.
security model, yep, also covered that in my post.
The glass effects... yeah, I didn't touch on that. And I agree, they were resource intensive. I usually turned them off. Thing is... that's actually one of the reasons I love Win10, they went with a very simple minimalist UI! And yet people fucking hate THAT now.
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@lordofduct It was 90% people with old hardware, basically. And the 'vista ready' laptops that were on sale at the time, and weren't at all vista ready.
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@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
used a lot of resources on all the glass effects,
Nope. It'd only activate those if your computer had a GPU capable of handling them. It used fewer resources on the glass effects than XP did on the same sized desktop with no effects at all.
@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
and had (early on) some large memory leaks.
The search indexer was super-aggressive and took way too much memory (for the first few hours until the index was finished). That was a genuine problem. I don't recall experiencing any memory leaks.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
There's that 'driver' thing again... never noticed it myself,
I think the big one was people with Creative-brand sound cards. Creative was notoriously awful at making their shit work, but that didn't stop them from releasing non-working shit for Vista for like 2 full years before they had a version that kind of sort of worked well.
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@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct It was 90% people with old hardware, basically.
Doesn't explain how it's Vista's fault.
A brand new OS not supporting your obscure FUFME drive in Win95 compatability mode... don't care.
And if you had it on your machine new, then you had new hardware.
This is an excuse not to upgrade. Not an excuse to say the OS is garbage.
If I upgraded my house from lead to copper pipes, I wouldn't complain copper sucks because I no longer get the dizzies and fever rushes in my sleep, which I love so much because they keep me damp and cool me off in the warm summer nights.
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@blakeyrat I'll be honest, it's been forever, but I remember something about ram and vram getting copied back and forth pointlessly. I'm talking purely from the perspective of someone who never actively used it, though.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
This is an excuse not to upgrade. Not an excuse to say the OS is garbage.
But these are humans you're talking about, remember? And for the average user 'it worked until vista' is a pretty big thing.
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@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
This is an excuse not to upgrade. Not an excuse to say the OS is garbage.
But these are humans you're talking about, remember? And for the average user 'it worked until vista' is a pretty big thing.
Agreed.
And that's what I'm arguing against.
The fact people still carry this bias.
"Vista sucked because I had unreasonable expectations, Win10 sucks because it's a repeat of Vista."
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@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Vista was awful.
Vista was so awful that when Microsoft put it in front of people, having changed nothing but the name and told them it was new, they loved it.
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@FrostCat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Vista was awful.
Vista was so awful that when Microsoft put it in front of people, having changed nothing but the name and told them it was new, they loved it.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/153624/windows_7_under.html
Yep, I remember everyone crying about how awful Win7 was going to be.
And now it's their 'best' OS ever since XP.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
I don't remember what exactly people hated about Vista.
The majority, at least the part where it wasn't people hating because it looked different, which happened--in exactly the same way--every other time MS made major UI changes, was (simplified a bit because I don't remember the exact details) hardware vendors not putting out updated drivers. For example, HP said all their printers that were more than a year old or so, just weren't getting Vista drivers at all, and you were expected to buy a new computer.
And a lot of computer vendors put hardware that didn't have Vista drivers in their computers, so they didn't work well. As Raymond Chen's said a million times, people don't care, they just blame the problem on Microsoft.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Win10 sucks because it's a repeat of Vista."
Win10 is the Feyd Rautha to Win 8's Beast Rabban.
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@boomzilla Says the guy who's never been go Giedi Prime.
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@boomzilla said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Win10 sucks because it's a repeat of Vista."
Win10 is the Feyd Rautha to Win 8's Beast Rabban.
I'll take a nearly naked 80's Sting any night of the week, twice if he's feeling frisky!
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@FrostCat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@boomzilla Says the guy who's never been go Giedi Prime.
True, just Gammu.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
You prefer the big bubbly window borders of XP and 7?Yes.
Change your theme?
Where?
Personalization > Themes > Theme settings lets me change only mouse pointers, desktop background, window colors, sounds and screen savers.
Is there some other theme settings window that lets me change more?
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@julmu You can enable high contrast to get a Windows 2000 style theme, if you mess with the colors a little.
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The older themes aren't exactly just there.
You can get the 'aero-lite' theme (win 7 with out the glass effect) by editing a text file or some crap:
You can also install 3rd party options that give you the full aero-glass experience
I personally hate the older ui and think the new minimalist one is so much nicer, so I can't help you much further than that.
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@lordofduct
Thanks.I still miss the rounded corners and the old calculator :(
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@blakeyrat I used Vista for years until 7 came out. Hated the piece of shit. That thing had compatibility issues with just about everything.
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@Erufael said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
That thing had compatibility issues with just about everything.
Like...?
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Erufael said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
That thing had compatibility issues with just about everything.
Like...?
They're called upvotes now.
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@blakeyrat That was a looong time ago, so I don't remember specifics. Quite a bit of software. It was pretty hit or miss if any specific thing would actually work on Vista, or what kind of janky stuff we'd have to do to make shit work.
I don't ever remember any driver problems though, so there's that.
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@flabdablet said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
...and that's where we are.
That's where we are: 1000 words of whining to random people on a forum.
I don't think you people understand the problem here. I don't care what you think about Windows 10 .
I'm just sick of hearing the whining. It's like a forum full of 2-year-olds. Just grow up and cope with the world around you.
If you're not going to switch to Windows 10: fine! Don't! But stop whining about it.
I don't think you understand the problem here. I don't care what you think about OSS.
I'm just sick of hearing the whining. It's like you're a 2-year-old. Just grow up and cope with the world around you.
If you're not going to use OSS software: fine! Don't! But stop whining about it.
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@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
If you're not going to use OSS software: fine! Don't! But stop whining about it.
The problem with the "I don't care if you don't like OSS" approach is this:
"Hey guys, today we released a patch, version 2.03.4, which fixes A, B, and C!"
"WARGARBL OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DOESNT PATCH SO MUCH OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR YOU SHOULD HAVE PICKED OPEN SOURCE WARGARBL"
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@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
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@Erufael said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
That thing had compatibility issues with just about everything.
I still use some software that has issues. Because the programmer put an active database into the Program Files directory (dbase-based). And then blamed the OS file system for corrupting things. I tried to explain things... sigh. (The "fix" was to install into a top level directory instead. I also gave up reporting bugs - because I was obviously making a personal attack.)
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@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
If it includes a "walled garden" model where the manufacturer, not the device owner, has control over what apps can be used on the device, it's in no way comparable to Android's app ecosystem.
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@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
As well as the stdhivy!
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@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
If you're not going to use OSS software: fine! Don't! But stop whining about it.
The problem with the "I don't care if you don't like OSS" approach is this:
"Hey guys, today we released a patch, version 2.03.4, which fixes A, B, and C!"
"WARGARBL OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DOESNT PATCH SO MUCH OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR YOU SHOULD HAVE PICKED OPEN SOURCE WARGARBL"I seriously don't understand what you mean. Completely.
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@masonwheeler said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
If it includes a "walled garden" model where the manufacturer, not the device owner, has control over what apps can be used on the device, it's in no way comparable to Android's app ecosystem.
Huh, sure. You can't install busybox for iOS. Other than that, show me one useful app that you can't get from the AppStore but you can get from the Durex Play Dildo Store.
I get it, huh, principles, right? But thanks to the fact that keeping an app in the AppStore costs 100 bucks per year and that someone actually tests your app (sure, maybe not always as thoroughly as we'd like) you don't get the same amount of half baked moronic apps with duplicated functionality that was done by a teenager for a school project clouding app your app search results. Oh, and you can be quite sure every app you download is safe.
I hate the "walled garden" argument. It's moronic.
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@lordofduct said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
As well as the stdhivy!
As well as the… what?! Wait a sec, are you the same guy who's critisised people for judging an OS without actually using it? Can't be!
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@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
LOL. You should double post that in the funny thread.
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@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@lordofduct you should try iOS. You'd get WP's stability and android's app ecosystem. Oh, and great UI.
LOL. You should double post that in the funny thread.
This is a funny place, where praising windows phone gets wider acceptance than praising iOS. :D
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@kt_ said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Thanks to the fact that keeping an app in the AppStore costs 100 bucks per year and that someone actually tests your app (sure, maybe not always as thoroughly as we'd like) you don't get the same amount of half baked moronic apps with duplicated functionality that was done by a teenager for a school project clouding app your app search results.
And your point is... what? That Sturgeon's Law is a thing?
Oh, and you can be quite sure every app you download is safe.
Yeah, because iOS malware totally doesn't exist. Oh, wait... turns out all it takes is something hidden just carefully enough to not get noticed by the "not always as thoroughly as we'd like" testing. And when severe problems are found, on the other hand, you have to wait for a full resubmit-and-test cycle, whereas patches can be pushed out the door for an Android app with very little overhead.
I hate the "walled garden" argument. It's moronic.
I know, but Apple continues to stick with it. Meanwhile, they keep pushing the equally moronic "fragmentation!!!!!!1111one!!" argument against Android. It's as if they've completely forgotten the late 80s and early 90s, because we're seeing the exact same thing play out again.
Apple comes out with a shiny product, but clings to absolute control over the ecosystem with a white-knuckled death grip. Meanwhile, their biggest competitor sets up an open standard that any hardware manufacturer can build to. This puts their ecosystem at a disadvantage at first in terms of homogeneity, but they gain a huge boost in market share and developer mindshare for it. Eventually the competitor's system becomes firmly entrenched as the market leader, while Apple's system hemorrhages market share and ends up as a footnote. (Am I talking about Mac vs. PC or iOS vs. Android here?)