Paul Thurrott, a guy who loves Microsoft deeper than just about anybody says:
What if you’re doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you’ll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you’re blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.
No I won’t. I’ll be happy with my Mac. I think you mentioned Macs in your article, Paul:
The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple’s marketing materials.
And over here:
Losing WinFS wasn’t a big deal, I was told, because Windows Vista will still include pervasive index-based searching features modeled, apparently, after the Spotlight feature in Mac OS X.
Oh, and again here:
Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don’t get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago.
But, luckily, they added that feature, as mentioned above, in a way that will drive users nuts. So why in the world would I be running Windows Vista, Paul?
Paul Thurrott has had a peek a the new version of Hotmail, due out next year, and has some nice things to say about it.
It seems quite nice – but I can’t imagine switching from Gmail for a couple of reasons:
I mean, take a look at this screenshot and let me know how you’re suppposed to read a message through all of that. And am I missing something, or is the entire right side of the message M.I.A.?
Granted, the screenshot is at 1024 by 768, but that’s pretty close to the width of my browser. And you know that the bar on the right, which is now a helpful tip on how to use their program, will eventually be horizontal banners. And what exactly does it say about the ease of use of your product when you have to devote that much of the screen to telling people how to use the thing?
They mention the Mac programmers that they brought on to help them, but who are the usability geniuses that said, “Screw the message – what we need space for is ads and interface”? Helpful tip to Microsoft: Fire those idiots.
How they plan on competing with Gmail is beyond me. Maybe they could ditch the ads and get an Adsense account.
