There’s an old saying: Anyone who loves the law or sausage should never watch either one being made. That probably applies to Windows, too. I thought about that as I read Chris Pirillo’s attention-getting two-part series Windows Vista Feedback and 65 More Windows Vista Mistakes.
Is this what you get when you combine too much caffeine, a wee tendency toward obsessive-compulsiveness, and a finely honed sense of the controversial? Well, yes. It seems like half of the entries on the list are related to a font that’s in the wrong point size or a dialog box that has a few pixels of white space in the wrong place. Some of the “mistakes” aren’t mistakes at all. Like #19:
You only have seven settings in the Windows Mobility Center – can’t you just make up an 8th one, or are we really going to have to stare at this glaring empty space in the lower right-hand corner?
Hmmm. Here’s the Mobility Center on the notebook PC I’m using to write this post:
Eight boxes. No ugly empty square.
Ditto for #28:
Hey, would someone please fix the fact that the Task Manager’s Applications Pane has a horizontal scroll bar that never goes away – no matter what you do? It serves no purpose and has been annoying the hell out of me since Windows 2000. WHY IS IT THERE?!
Pssst, Chris: You can make that scrollbar go away. Drag the separation bar at the right of the Status column to the left, so it’s visible in the Task Manager window. (I’m pointing to it in the screen below.) As soon as you see the edge of the Status column, the scrollbar goes bye-bye.
Some of these “mistakes” are design decisions that reasonable people can differ about. Like the white volume control icon (#6) and the green progress bar (#64). I don’t see those as mistakes at all.
Some are just plain bugs, like the broken link to Indexing Options in the Performance Ratings and Tools section of Control Panel (#33). This is, after all, a beta. It’s supposed to have bugs. As a widely available beta, it should not have any data-damaging bugs, and fortunately nothing in Chris’s two long posts falls into the “Oh my God, I can’t believe that one got through!” category.
Some are just questions. Like #55:
“Search the Internet” – is that Live’s version of the Internet or Google’s? Can this be toggled to Google easily? If so, where? If not, why not?
It follows your search preferences as set in the Internet Options Control Panel. General tab, Search Options box. Right where one might expect it to be. I’ve set my default search provider to Google, so my searches from this box get sent to Google.
And I’m trying to figure out how #38 is a “mistake”:
Reliability Monitor in the Performance Diagnostic Console is pretty nice. A few controls and images are awfully old, but the tool itself might prove useful in troubleshooting scenarios.
Chris’s list really boils down to two realities of development:
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Every design decision has a cost. Microsoft doesn’t have unlimited development resources, and every feature has to go through a massive test matrix. Ultimately someone decided that the ability to customize the metadata that appears in Windows Explorer won’t be added because no one is available to write the code for that feature, and insisting that it stay on the list would delay the ship date by another three months.
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A lot of Windows reuses code written for a previous version. Many of the fit and finish issues that Chris is identifying exist because they were written by different teams at different times. In some cases the developers didn’t follow the user experience guidelines as closely as they should; in other cases the guidelines changed, but someone decided (see the previous rule) that the change was too expensive to make.
In item #50, Chris quotes a critic who describes the original post as “the most annually [sic] retentive post I’ve ever read.” His response: “[I]t’s attitudes like this which cause potentially ‘great’ products to come across as ‘okay.’ If that kind of sloppiness is happening on the surface, I cringe when I think about what’s going on underneath.”
Well, yes. A lot of what is going on underneath the hood of Windows involves shims, workarounds, and downright kludges to allow old apps and a gazillion third-party devices to work. From a purist’s point of view, it’s got to be ugly. If visual perfection and absolute design consistency are your benchmark, forget about Windows. In fact, forget about any modern operating system, because I’m sure you could do the same pixel-by-pixel critique of any Linux GUI or the Mac or just about any large, complex website, and they’d all come up short.
I can’t quite make out the subtext of Chris’s two posts. Is Vista just another in a long line of sloppy Windows releases? He’s been complaining about this stuff for years, after all, and Windows seems to keep selling. Or is this version so big and so late and so sloppy that it’s going to be a disaster? It’s hard to make out the forest when you’re focusing on all those little tiny trees.
We’ll know in about six months whether Vista is a pretty nifty Windows update with a bunch of tiny visual inconsistencies or a mess of Windows Me proportions. I sure hope the Windows development team is focusing on the stuff that matters.
Ed Bott 
Good post Ed … I couldn’t bring myself to reply to ether of the posts Chris made. Things like the “horizontal scroll bar in Task Manager” made me not bother.
While he may not have done it perfectly I think Chris’ goal is to improve the product. He is pretty passionate about Microsoft products and I think he is hoping to point these little things out now to get them fixed. I agree with him often that little things like he is pointing out are polish details that sometimes get forgotten on MS OS versus possibly an apple os. They aren’t dramatic functionality, but they just show a lack of attention to detail.
You’re absolutely right about Chris’ posts. They are just ridiculous. I suspect, he wants to attract traffic to his site. I can’t explain such nonsense posts about fonts and pixels in beta software. I think I will delete his RSS feed from my aggregator…
Well, this might be the one thing Chris is good at = nitpicking. Don’t get me wrong I actually think they should hire him for this job. Microsoft needs more anal people on staff. My problem is with calling the second blog post “mistakes” when it should be 65 Windows Nitpicks. The title is incredibly misleading and some people will assume some of the new features are mistakes.
Andrew, you’ve put your finger right on it. Someone who reads Chris’s post(s) from start to finish will see that there’s lots of exaggeration. But most people don’t read. They skim the headline and a paragraph or two, and then they come away with an impression – Vista is full of bugs! – which is not supported by any facts.
That’s why I get so exasperated with overhyped articles like this.
It’s a sign of the times that one must be over-the-top to get attention. We all can appreciate the critically honest perfectionist, but I’ve read far too many of Chris’s columns where Microsoft was finally done for “this time!” The sky is falling gets old, even if it took years to get me there.
I hope both users and the media won’t fully judge Vista too harshly until a full set of supporting apps are in place like we have now with XP. Unlike with Vista, users have a solid OS in XP right now and can spend the next 2-4 years upgrading to Vista and 64-bit apps. In 2010, we’ll know just how well Microsoft hit the mark with Vista.
Ed, you must be running a tablet pc, or Vista thinks you are, since that “Screen Orientation” box in Mobility Center is missing on mine, leaving seven boxes. However, the Aero Glass effect in the missing area is so pretty, it doesn’t bother me.
It appears to me that Chris is approaching Windows Vista from the point of view of an interface designer as much as anything else. He’s looking at “fit and finish” as well as the way the product behaves. Even though he may mess up on a few items, this kind of detailed feedback is invaluable to anyone who’s designing complex software — and Vista is certainly that. He’s also identifying the kinds of things that drive everyday users nuts, and this fit-and-finish stuff also, in aggregate, gives everyday users a feel for whether this is a quality product. If I were working on the Vista interface at Microsoft, I’d not take it personally, or worry about whether he’s got another agenda — I’d devour and respond by making the product better.
Also, note that Scoble digs what Pirillo’s doing, calling it “the kind of feedback product teams die for.”
If nothing else, I started a conversation where no conversation previously existed.
Do me a favor, though – open up your task manager again and tell me if the horizontal scrollbar has come back? This is, and HAS BEEN A BUG since Windows 2000.
You’re able to work around / look past a lot of these problems because you’re far beyond a novice user. Like someone’s really going to know where to set Google as their default engine?
This is beta code, but don’t sit there and tell me that these issues would have been addressed by the time RTM shipped. Would you have been happier if I had just pointed out all the UI screw-ups in XP? I don’t really need to – XPize did the job for me.
You’re almost insinuating that UI isn’t important… or that we should “forgive” Microsoft because they have limited resources to attack UX. Don’t apologize for Microsoft, Ed. If you’re not going to hold their feet to the fire on this stuff, then that further entrenches my position.
But I love you all the same. 😉
Thanks for getting the conversation started, Chris.
I’m definitely not apologizing for anyone or saying that UI is not important. I’m just saying that in Vista, that horse has left the barn. It’s too late to do anything more than damage control on the UI for Vista. Now is the time, IMO, when someone should be taking ownership of the next version of Windows and making sure that the interface consistency you want to see is built in, not bolted on.
I think you’re absolutely right, but you’re aiming at the wrong target. Hold their feet to the fire for Vienna.
Yeah, like I tried holding their feet to the fire for Vista back when it was Longhorn back when XP was originally unleashed. 😛 You’re asking the impossible – to hit a moving target.
You were asking at the right time. The fact they didn’t listen to you then doesn’t mean they shouldn’t now.
Look, Chris, a release candidate is due out in 60 days, and the final builds have to be locked down in September. Think anyone can hit those dates if they do a complete interface reset?
With Sinofsky taking over from Allchin, there’s probably never been a better time to shake up the Windows dev process. To get the level of fit and finish you want in the Windows UX, Microsoft needs to hire and empower a true user experience fanatic, put that person at the top of the Windows team, and deliver a mandate to make the UX a thing of beauty in time for Alpha 1 of Vienna.
Any nominations for the job? 😉
Vista is driving me to the edge of sanity
I have really had enough sad.gif
My laptop and main PC are set up the same way with the same programs installed
Yesterday I installed norton ghost 9 and I had to install .net 1.1 and then sp1, this broke my control panel
so this morning I reformatted, installed everything, suddenly I find its broken! I didn’t install .net this time or norton ghost
all I get is an empty UI with no icons sad.gif
I can’t get to the add/remove properties to even try and diagnose it and oh yeah, control panel doesn’t work in safe mode, gr8!
my laptop still works fine!
Deleting an icon, running a file SO ANNOYING!
You have to click 3 things to delete an icon -> ‘you are deleting an icon not a program’, ‘you do not have permissions (which I do)’, ‘are you sure?’ of course i’m sure what do you think the recycle bin is for?, 2 to run a file and it refuses to delete .sys files even if the system isn’t using them (which is says they are, but they are on another drive so I had to run win PE to delete them) please please please add some easy way to remove these annoying options (if there is one I don’t know about it!), yes i have disabled the windows user access control
Also vista runs about 50 services, half of which can be disabled and are of no use to an average desktop user!
Oh yea did I mention IE7+ beta 2 is broken and refuses to load websites (beta 3 should fix this! install firefox for now)
Windows live messenger is blocked by the windows firewall by default and doesn’t unblock itself… LOL said I.. lol…
they’ve made it seriously hard for anyone to use it, if I was a system admin i’d be pulling my hair out
but it does have it’s own ‘CompletePC’ backup, shame it doesn’t use compression
Hibernation is sort of removed from the control panel options… I can’t work it out, I don’t want my PC to sleep…
I sent feedback off to MS, hopefully they can make it less annoying and work, in the meantime, back to XP thank god for Norton Ghost!
fixed must have program compatibility assistant service enabled
you would never know though, since it doesn’t explicity state it anywhere
bah 3rd time lucky, it’s SL UI interface manager you need enabled
I found out how to hibernate, it’s hidden in the advanced options, but pretty cool bootup screen! 🙂
Also I found out that when user access control was disabled windows live opens up firewall ports properly, perhaps prevented from accessing registry caused it not to register the ports
Personally, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether making sure the release date was on time or not. I want it to be working properly and I don’t want to have to wait for the second release (as with all previous Windows releases 3.1, 3.11, OSR2, SE, SP2 etc) before it’s stable enough for me to buy it. OS/2 wasn’t pretty but boy did it work well!
Raggedy you have the right idea! I’d stay away from Longhorn/Vista ’till Vienna beta shipped. I MAY go to XP about the time Vista delivery starts. Or, for stability and safety, stay with BSD.
I find I can turn off most of the annoying cr@p Vista throws at me but then I feel that other than eye candy there is no reason to leave XP. IS Vista REALLY more secure than a completely updated XP? I hate the grouping in filemanager my windows update keeps turning off, a few other b!tch3s but Vista is mostly flawless. Man if I could pretty up XP like Vista I think I’d go back! I use the file manager 80% of the time (I handle vast quantities of files) and it NEVER remembers my settings and folder renames do not refresh!
These probs occur on both machines.
Yes, I do regret buying the laptop and the new desktop . . .
p.s. I been around since dos 3!