Its to do with portable devices, despite microsoft claiming they undoing that mistake they not really. The UI design is still portable device led.

Aero in vista and win7 is a work of art, abandoned so the phone users don't feel left out.

The other issue with the UI in win10 is it doesnt work well on smaller resolutions, win10 imo is designed for 1440p and upwards. On a 1050p screen UI elements look too big, and on 4:3 1024p they look huge with task manager at its default size nearly been full screen.

The flat UI is going back to 1995, where win95 had the same design.

Its the same reason web design has also took a huge step backwards, developers all like to think a single design can work on all devices without penalty but there is penalty for desktop users as website design has gone back a decade.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 30-Dec-15 03:09:43)

Very true.
It was not just Windows 10 I was a moan about for the design, as you said web design have gone backwards as well. Halifax online is awful, the changed it to make it easier for people with touch devices, surely then Halifax can produce a apop for those touch devices, after all there is not that many operating systems that runs on a touch device.

Vodafone website as well as putting in compulsory two stage log in which is a pain in the neck have also gone for the touch screen friendly look.

i do think maybe MS could have gave a choice on the UI, just like they did with Windows 7 and XP, in that you can go back classic. In 10 and 8 for that matter they could have made the flat look a default and allow people to change to aero.
Not having Aero is not a big problem for me, it is just the flat look that I don't like.

this pushing of Windows 10 onto people is going to get worse next year as it seems MS is not happy that some people are not updating. They said they want people to update to keep them safe, which we know is a load of rubbish.

MS knows they are annoying people with pushing Windows 10 and they don't care,m this is the kind of company they are, they will do anything they want and do not care about their customers, just like Intel.

Apps are much more expensive to develop/maintain than making a website responsive.

An app needs to be developed for at least 2 platforms, Android and Apple. You may also need to do Win 10 (possibly although market share is low). Apple have different formats of devices with different screen resolutions that need testing. Android is a wildly fragmented market with many different devices and the same app may not work well on all of them - more testing.

The more costly thing though is that once you have developed your app the devices don't stand still. The OS's have generally 1 major update a year and many minor ones. At each update there is a chance that the app might break and need fixes/dev work.

But, they will already have a website and making it responsive is a relatively small addition. For most requirements it is much cheaper and simpler to make a website "mobile friendly" than it is to make a website AND make apps.

Even with dev tools available it is no small task to make an app and it is costly. What they need to do is concentrate on ensuring that making a website responsive does not negatively impact its use on a "standard" desktop / laptop - something that many people currently are failing to do.

The simple fact is that, although skeuomorphism was useful when the WIMP paradigm was new, helping to relate objects on a computer to their real-world counterparts, most UI designers agree that it is now not only unnecessary but positively detrimental to usability. As always, those who are used to the old paradigm will complain when it changes; the newer and younger users accept that function is more important than form and prefer a simple design that doesn't get in the way.

'Twas ever thus.

i understand what you are saying, I know someone who produces Apps, but with Halifax anyway they have already got apps out for Android, Windows and Iphone, so no need to change their flipping web site.
Even if the apps was not available, why not do what used to be done a few years back, make one site for mobile and one for normal use?

"and can't spend a few days learning new features"

Surely technology is supposed to benefit the user in that it SHOULD be easier and quicker to use?

Can W10 users get more work done in their 8 hour day than W7 users?

In reply to a post by broadband66:

"and can't spend a few days learning new features"

Surely technology is supposed to benefit the user in that it SHOULD be easier and quicker to use?

No new system that you are unused to is going to be as easy as the system that you are used to until you have learnt how to use the new features. MS-DOS users had to spend time to learn how to use the new features in Windows 3; but once they had learnt them, the new OS was far more functional.

Can W10 users get more work done in their 8 hour day than W7 users?

Yes, I would think so. You might as well ask "Could Windows 3 users get more work done during their 8 hour day than MS-DOS users?". The answer, again, is "Yes" - and they could do things that users of the more primitive OS couldn't do at all. It's called "progress" and there are always Luddites who object to it. 'Twas ever thus.

"Yes, I would think so."

Not a definitive answer. Will wait until the answers come flooding in.

I can't be definitive, any more than anyone else can. I wouldn't be so arrogant as to think I could speak for others.

I find that I can certainly achieve more in a session with Windows 10 than I could with Windows 7; others may find they can achieve more using MS-DOS. As with everything, it all depends upon what you wish to achieve. Sometimes I can be more productive using one of my Linux or OS X installs.

I would argue that for many users of the time for what PCs were being used for moving to Windows from DOS was a backwards step.

It is good to see what a document will look like on the screen but in the days of WordPerfect/WordStar etc on DOS there was little to get in the way of writing a document. When Windows came in it was slower to do virtually anything. People who were proficient with the old DOS apps could do things very quickly and efficiently. Windows was a benefit to casual users and made it easier for them to do things - power users could do things much faster in the older DOS versions.

As computers have become more and more powerful the processing power is now much more up to the task. But, a computer will always be faster if it doesn't have to display things - it is the user interface that slows things down and an OS that requires no user interface will always run much more efficiently if it is processing that is the goal.