Windows 8 deserves all the scorn heaped on it

The more I use Windows 8, the more I HATE IT.

The shiny new part – Modern UI – is nice but still very raw especially in terms of integrating with the old. Yes it has the foundational potential to beat iOS, but at this point Modern UI is perhaps 10% of what it needs to be in order to be a real alternative. Considering Microsoft’s propensity to constantly change its direction, it is possible that Modern UI will NEVER mature into something worthwhile before being replaced yet again with something new and equally half (make that quarter or less) baked.

What I truly hate is how they just either removed or changed the behavior of all the old stuff that was working well without giving indications.

For example, there used to be a (ugly, but functional and familiar) dialog box that allows you to resize different portions of the UI, like the desktop icons which is what I want to do right now. Unfortunately, it seems to be gone. The new way of resizing desktop icons is actually apparently cool and nifty, CTRL-wheel. But they never teach you that at all! There are jillions of such examples.

Further annoyances are the “new” Ribbon oriented UI devices in the explorer folders. They’re difficult to use with touch, they’re constantly getting in the way and there’s nothing in them that actually improves the way things are done. Instead, it is more like they present you with 3 dozen different checkboxes and options for doing the same fricking thing. This is really nothing but Sinofsky’s stupid ego-tripping.

I can’t even get consistent touch-drag behavior when scrolling through web pages! Sometimes a touch-drag scrolls the page, other times it registers as a click-drag. This truly annoying behavior is there, regardless of browser! All I can say is, WTF???!?

Windows never had that elegant a UI, but at least it was familiar. Now, they’ve not only removed a lot of the familiarity, they apparently let a bunch of amateur UI designers run amok creating garish gestures and conventions all over the Windows UI environment.

Windows 8 has a Frankenstein’s Monster of a UI. The overall user experience is more garish and uncoordinated than the most gratuitously decorated jeepney you will ever find. Total fail.

Look Microsoft… if you intend for everyone to move to Modern UI as seems to be the case, then why do you have to keep dicking with the older WIMP UI?!? You are not only alienating people with gratuitous changes, you also threw precious resources, programmer time down the drain creating half-baked “improvements” in the old WIMP UI that only a tiny fraction of your customers appreciate and which actually pisses off the majority!! Things would have been better if you had only left things alone.

Or perhaps, these “improvements” are actually meant to make the old UI so annoying to use that people will move to Modern UI, but big mistake… because Modern UI is barely there yet!!

I change my old opinion about Windows 8 being a Vista moment, it’s worse, WINDOWS 8 IS A CLUSTERFUCK. Whatever improvements they made in the user experience, such as the very welcome faster boot-up speed, they seem to have more than offset by the VERY BAD UI/UX choices they are FORCING on users.

Windows 8 hardware: THUMBS UP

Apple hardware is overpriced and their technology is way behind compared to all the nifty new Win8 devices, but if Microsoft cannot fix their crappy UI with the next iteration (and possibly making it even worse with “additions”) and Apple succeeds in overhauling their obsolete OS X hardware with touch-based models, I will just about be ready to defect permanently.

I think right now, we are at a point where the two major vendors are both screwing up. Apple cannot or refuses to deliver touch hardware on their “full-fledged” desktop OS, whereas Microsoft have done it, but their execution could not be worse.

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