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Windows 8: The Animated Evaluation

blogphilofilms · 645.5K views · 2012-12-20 · 23:41

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Overview

An animated, profane rant critiquing Windows 8, especially its touch-first interface on desktop PCs. The author draws on a background in tech journalism to lay out the UX problems.

On Hacker News

Linked in Windows 8 threads as a funny but accurate summary of its usability problems.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2012–2015

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What people said

bad_user · 2015-05 · Recommendation

I'm an Ubuntu Linux and OS X user and have been trying to like Windows 8.1 in the last weeks. The problems I have in no particular order ... - network management in Windows 7 was usable, whereas in 8.1 it is totally fucked - Microsoft accounts are on their way to become mandatory, as creating a regular account is not user friendly and there's a big and scary warning when you go that route; they are basically trying to resurrect Windows Live ID - Microsoft has started to force people on using their products - I could not figure out a way to turn OneDrive off completely, or to use anything other than Bing as the search engine in their "Search Everywhere" (this also happens on Windows Phone) - I haven't seen a "modern Windows" app that I like, they are all pieces of crap, including stuff from Microsoft; modern Skype for example is lacking crucial functionality; their app store is filled with trademark-violating malware and I've never seen such a low quality app store - from a usability perspective Windows 8 is a failure - there's something inherently different about a PC with 21 inch monitors, keyboard and mouse, versus a tablet, yet Windows tries to unify both worlds, becoming hostile in the process - see this funny video on the subject - [VIDEO] - of course, you can totally ignore the "modern Windows" side of the coin for now, except that's where Windows is headed - I bought the standard edition, then I discovered that I needed the Pro version to get disk encryption or to conn

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Karunamon · 2013-09 · Recommendation

>unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging Subjective, compared to what, subjective > simple, efficient, usable flat design is in. subjective, subjective, subjective. I don't know where this utterly moronic "flatten ALL THE THINGS" design meme comes from, but I wish it would die in a fire. Flat UI, at least Microsoft's implementation of it, has a great deal of fail about it. It's hard to tell what's clickable and what's not, things are not organized in a logical or easy to reach manner, and on and on. Have a look at this if you have about 20 minutes to spare. Someone goes into a great deal of depth on the 8 UX: [VIDEO]

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mtgx · 2013-01 · Recommendation

Microsoft made a mistake trying to force a made-for-touch interface on PC users, and in the end the strategy is not that different than forcing a PC interface on a touch device. It may actually be worse, because at least in that case you would be familiar with the interface, so at least it would have that advantage. I think this video explains most of the problems with Windows 8: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by blogphilofilms, played through YouTube.

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