> Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and interesting. And, just as fixing bugs is tedious and boring, tweaking designs is tedious and boring.
My god, that explains why modern designs and user interfaces suck so much. That, and the fact that many designers work off their gut feelings and personal subjective preferences, rather than systematic and evidence-based study.
Remembered me of a rumor (or fact?) that almost all Windows 10/11 designers use Mac. And it shows: the end results broke all the UX Windows users were used to.
Graphic design has been a Mac stronghold for basically forever. I remember them being the only exception to the Windows only” rules most companies had for a very long time.
Also as a Windows->Mac switcher myself, I’m not sure breaking Windows UX is a bad thing.
Don't you wish there was a vibrant ecosystem of commercial OSes, each providing a different choice regarding the UX or other aspect you want to prioritize, each being financially viable based on their merits and not getting crushed by a monopolistic gorilla ?
You'd have options to go to when Microsoft makes choices you don't agree with.
There's LineageOS. Not sure it is worth the effort to switch just for this though.
Which is also the solution for "OS gorilla". Use Linux. You have a vibrant ecosystem of distros, they work (as much as any OS), and you are free to mix and match. No need to stick to OS that changes under your feet with no recourse.
I'm fine with there being a vibrant ecosystem of open source OSes, each providing a different choice regarding the UX or other aspect I want to prioritize. The monopolistic gorilla is there but the only really effect it has is that other commercial developers like to only support the monopolistic gorilla.
My interest in commercial OS es is on the support/ contracting parts. For instance if tomorrow Sony wants to make a non Windows VAIO machine and look for a partner with an OEM program, open source OSes are out of the picture.
They could take a LTS somewhere, pay another specialized company for additional expertise, but the would be no way to have an actual contract with the leading entity, and have any weight on the direction the OS will be developped (MS is also bigger than any single OEM, but they will still try to keep the majority of OEMs happy and not pull the rug under their feet. Ubuntu for instance doesn’t have such strong incentives)
We’ve had that. Turns out it just shifts the battleground from “I want my company to control the world” to “I want my ideas to proliferate through the whole world”.
Not only do we end up with https://xkcd.com/927/ (15 standards), but we end up with massive amounts of work being essentially trashed because it’s in one of the tiny tiny fragments that gets passed over.
Maybe I’ve just gotten old, but I’d even compromise by making the “power user” the most targeted demographic again. Power users want things to work well, they want the ability to use hardware and software on their terms and for all sorts of things the creators may have never intended, and they want to customize anything that they choose to.
Remember how XP’s theming engine was trying to win users back from all the replacement “shells” like litestep? Or how macs had wild extensions like one that could rotate the mouse cursor as it followed the point? Or mouse-based gesture applications? Or generative art screensavers? Or websites dedicated to showing of the beautiful artistry of user-created desktop UIs where each was entirely distinct from the other (even on Windows!)?
My god, that explains why modern designs and user interfaces suck so much. That, and the fact that many designers work off their gut feelings and personal subjective preferences, rather than systematic and evidence-based study.