# Windows 10 desktop - what the hell happened? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 12, 2019, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691 "2019-10-12T20:06:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/41 "2019-10-15T23:55:22Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > What you are ignoring is that for most people there was no need to customize for something like Win7 UI to be a reasonably productive model of interaction. what you are ignoring is that every version of Windows introduces changes to the UI which causes relentless bitching for months afterward, yet somehow people manage to get used to it. I’m serious, this happens LITERALLY every new release of Windows. - people bitched relentlessly about Windows XP and promised to cling to Windows 98SE forever - people bitched about Vista/7 relentlessly and promised to cling to XP forever - People bitched about Windows 8.x relentlessly and promised to cling to 7 forever oddly enough, once they’re done throwing the toys out of the pram and actually use the new version of Windows, they get used to it. 'cos Macs and Linux haven’t really moved the needle on marketshare for a long while. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/42 "2019-10-16T03:06:05Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > what you are ignoring is that every version of Windows introduces changes to the UI which causes relentless bitching for months afterward, yet somehow people manage to get used to it. I’m serious, this happens LITERALLY every new release of Windows. > > - people bitched relentlessly about Windows XP and promised to cling to Windows 98SE forever > - people bitched about Vista/7 relentlessly and promised to cling to XP forever > - People bitched about Windows 8.x relentlessly and promised to cling to 7 forever > > oddly enough, once they’re done throwing the toys out of the pram and actually use the new version of Windows, they get used to it. 'cos Macs and Linux haven’t really moved the needle on marketshare for a long while. In this millennium, it seems every other version of windows desktop is good, and the intermediate ones are crap. 98 was good, ME was crap. XP was good, Vista was crap. Windows 7 was good, 8 was crap. 10 is actually pretty good. It seems that rather than running the upgrade treadmill, MS seems to be committed to continuously updating 10 going forward. Time will tell whether this will be good, because in some cases, going backwards is not a option. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/43 "2019-10-16T03:12:42Z")
Its my observation about Microsoft - if a feature is useful or important in Windows or MS Office, then Microsoft will hide it or delete it in the new version. I have real problems with a number of feature changes in the interface. The control panel is familiar, so of course it is deprecated and you get totally unfamiliar panels for the purpose of doing the same thing - often without the “Save changes” final commit button that has been a staple of most graphical interfaces since they appeared 30 years ago. Plus, you go through the new and clever interface to get to the guts of various system settings, only to find what is essentially the same panel as you saw in Win7 or Win XP. This makes me think that the re-write effort was only expended on cosmetic changes, n ot in actually fixing issues with the base level of the program. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/44 "2019-10-16T05:31:14Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > funny, I’d think the fact that macOS and Linux don’t run any of the programs they use would be a bigger problem, but what do I know? Any is the wrong word. Linux and MacOS run lots of the same programs and there are alternatives available for most of the rest of the commonly used applications but for most users there are specialized programs you can’t find anywhere else than Windows (business applications and games seem to be the biggest problems)–so why switch to running two separate operating systems instead of one? ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/45 "2019-10-16T06:18:21Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Cite? > > In my experience, Windows users seem to fall into three categories. > > 1. Those who are too scared or too uncomfortable to change ANYTHING. > > 2. Those who do experiment and customize. > > 3. Those who are using a computer on which their corporate IT dept discourages or actively prevents any changes whatsoever. > > I’d be very surprised if categories 1 & 3 don’t substantially outnumber 2. That may be. All I know is that by putting myself in group #2 I don’t have to exert any energy complaining about how 10 is different from 7. I like both, and still occasionally find myself using a 7 machine at work. I can’t really say that there is anything about 10 that substantively makes me do things differently than I do in 7, except for one: the recent folders shortcut when using the “save as” dialog. That can be put back in with a regedit; the only issue is that you have to put it back in again after a major update. Other than that, though, I agree with **Mangetout** : If you like 7, then it isn’t very hard to customize 10 to something which is pretty much the same. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/46 "2019-10-16T07:31:05Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > What you are ignoring is that for most people there was no need to customize for something like Win7 UI to be a reasonably productive model of interaction. > > This is precisely why there was such a massive backlash, because MS broke something that didn’t need fixing in the first place for people that never had to customize anything in the past. \ People I know and worked with customised XP to make it look and behave more like Windows 98; people customised Windows 7 to make it look more like XP. Windows 8 was a massive UI change, and that upset a lot of people; maybe the change was too big - but the core problem here is that the outcomes that arise from resistance to change tend to make people resist change all the more - it’s a self-reinforcing pattern. In terms of where we are now; if Windows 8 had never existed and windows 10 (in its recent state) had been the natural successor to Windows 7… People would probably still be complaining, and trying to get their Aero Glass look and feel, or some such, even though the UI differences between Win7 and Win10 are not so huge. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/47 "2019-10-16T07:32:50Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I did exactly this and it’s a beautiful thing. Personally, I don’t mind the tiles - you can resize them down so they look more like large icons - and it then just becomes a customisable launchpad for programs - just like shortcuts on the desktop or on the taskbar. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/48 "2019-10-16T08:19:08Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > While Macs have a completely different interface, Linux distros have very close approximations of the Windows interface available, and are the default in most. > > And it’s not the interface that is the problem for most people. It’s the extra widgets and the horrible search. The former can indeed be removed, but the latter is built in. I mean, people will type the exact name of the program they want into search and Search won’t find it and will instead show a Bing search result. It’s ridiculous how bad it is. > > Not to mention several updates (including a very recent one) that can break the start menu. What used to be the most stable part of Windows is now loaded with junk that messes things up. Man, I am just so glad I’ve standardized on Windows 7 everywhere. It’s a beautiful, almost-perfect OS. For me it used to be XP but that stopped being viable due to security certificate and .NET framework dependency issues. I hope I never have to face Windows 10 or its successors. As for Linux, with acknowledgment of all its millions of users, sorry, but for me Linux will always be synonymous with “doesn’t work”. No, Linux fans, I’m not going to try the amazing new version you just installed that does everything perfectly. It’s a case of “fool me once” repeated several times. Never again. I just don’t have the time or patience to fiddle with low-level techie crap when I just want to get something done. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/49 "2019-10-16T10:26:50Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > Any is the wrong word. Linux and MacOS run lots of the same programs and there are alternatives available for most of the rest of the commonly used applications but for most users there are specialized programs you can’t find anywhere else than Windows (business applications and games seem to be the biggest problems)–so why switch to running two separate operating systems instead of one? I run Ubuntu on my laptop, mostly because I don’t do much of anything important on it. And most of those “alternatives” suck. They’re typically feature-deficient, poorly designed, and/or poorly maintained. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/50 "2019-10-16T18:31:32Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > […]Please tell me there is a way to turn off the cartoons and any smart-phone type uselessness. Don’t worry, there is what you are looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/51 "2019-10-16T18:45:03Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Here you go: > [Windows 10 start menu: How to change it to look however you want - CNET](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-customize-the-windows-10-start-menu/) > […] > Once you have unpinned all the existing tiles from the Start Menu, the tile area will collapse down and the Start menu is then just a single column of folders, shortcuts, etc. Correct. Easy peasy. And when you then pin your favourite programms to the taskbar, so that you simply open it with [Ctrl]+1, 2, 3… according to the order in which you put them there (and you can change that anytime you want with drag & drop) you only need the start button to switch off your computer (which is funny, when I think of it). Now if I could completely and permanently disable Cortana and improve the search on my computer, everything would be perfect. ---
**Author:** ![mjmlabs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mjmlabs/32/69_2.png) [@mjmlabs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmlabs)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/52 "2019-10-16T19:21:40Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > … > Now if I could completely and permanently disable Cortana and improve the search on my computer, everything would be perfect. Here ya go: [**How to Disable Cortana in Windows 10**](https://www.howtogeek.com/265027/how-to-disable-cortana-in-windows-10/) It’s a one-line regedit, and there’s a one-click downloadable at that link. I’ve been living happily without Cortana since the 8.1 days. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2019, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691/53 "2019-10-16T20:03:47Z")
> [@mjmlabs](#): > > Here ya go: [**How to Disable Cortana in Windows 10**](https://www.howtogeek.com/265027/how-to-disable-cortana-in-windows-10/) > > It’s a one-line regedit, and there’s a one-click downloadable at that link. I’ve been living happily without Cortana since the 8.1 days. That worked like a charm! Thanks a lot! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windows-10-desktop-what-the-hell-happened/841691.md?page=2)