Why Microsoft Killed the Windows Start Button 857
Barence writes "Microsoft claims it took the controversial decision to remove the Start button from the traditional Windows desktop because people had stopped using it. The lack of a Start button on the Windows 8 desktop has been one of the most divisive elements of the new user interface, and was widely assumed to have made way for the Metro Start screen. However, Chaitanya Sareen, principal program manager at Microsoft, said the telemetry gathered from Windows 7 convinced Microsoft to radically overhaul the Start menu because people were using the taskbar instead. 'When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar,' said Sareen. 'We are seeing people pin like crazy. And so we saw the Start menu usage dramatically dropping, and that gave us an option. We're saying "look, Start menu usage is dropping, what can we do about it? What can we do with the Start menu to revive it, to give it some new identity, give it some new power?"'"
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod up the parent... I completely concur. Yes I pinned as well, but I did use the start menu to navigate the positions. But hey why do I matter and care. I shifted all of my machines to OSX, and Linux Ubuntu...
Frequency of use is not so relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
I hardly ever use my car's emergency brake; but it had damned well better be there, and I expect it to be in the usual spot, like on the floor next to the shifter or high up on the (older American cars). It doesn't belong on the ceiling.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use the start button about once every 5 minutes. Since my desktop is completely-clean of any icons, the start button is the only method I have to open new programs. Microsoft is probably lying through their teeth about "people don't use it".
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the start button is still there, it's simply hidden under a hot corner. Move your mouse to the same place you would normally, and click as normally, and you still still perform the same action as in older versions of windows. Of course, the menu is replaced with the start screen, but that's another matter.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. I keep the top 5-7 pinned (Browser, Explorer, Winamp, Thunderbird, RDP, Visual Studio, SSMS) and then the rest of the stuff I don't need cluttering up my quicklaunch bar. The next top 10 are in the frequent list of my start menu. The rest I use so rarely that I'm ok hunting for.
I'd be ok with not having a start menu if there was a heirarchical way to organize the things that you don't use often... kind of like OH WAIT THAT'S THE START BUTTON! :)
Why do users pin? (Score:5, Insightful)
pinning [applications] on the taskbar (Score:3, Insightful)
Kinda like the Mac's dock I suppose. Only problem is I have 200+ programs. I can't pin them all to the taskbar; the start menu is still needed. (Also do PEOPLE pin their apps, or was it the annoying install programs doing it automatically? It seems every one of them does it, not me.)
QUOTE: "Sareen also claims that people are taking advantage of keyboard shortcuts to open applications, instead of resorting to the Start menu." ----- That would be fine if my keyboard was not laying on the floor, because I wasn't using it. We still need a mouse-based method to open our programs.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Start menu was at least somewhat intuitive to find buried settings in Control Panel or seldom used programs.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know the little box you can tick that says "Send anonymous usage data to Microsoft"? It's that data. Not a focus group, but telemetry data from actual windows installs.
Oh. The thing everyone and their brother is told to NEVER check!
No wonder they got such asinine and utterly useless feedback. Because the only people giving them feedback were morons.
We've screwed ourselves (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone with a hint of savvy probably turned off the reporting to the 'Consumer Experience' team at Microsoft. The ones who didn't are the morons who have 3000 icons on their desktops. We've done this to ourselves.
Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
"People were happy with the Apple menu through Mac OS 9 but now that they're using Mac OS X, they prefer to use the dock, and the Apple menu no longer works as an application launcher. So now we're going to have our users use the dock too. Oops, I mean the start menu and the taskbar! Forget what I said about that fruit company's name and the nautical term."
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Insightful comment from the FA. They are surveying the novice users not power users, hence they produced a Win8 interface for novices, not us:
Flawed, like most surveys
"Weâ(TM)d seen the trend in Windows 7," referring to the telemetry gathered by the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program." ----- Well there we have it, all but the most basic users opt out of the intrusive MCEIP - so they are surveying people who don't even know what the Start Button is for - I kid you not. As a computer tech I see it all the time.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the start menu will be very rarely used in a well configured system. That is the way it should be. That does not mean that it should be removed.
The Windows version could stand a re-org but that's a different kind of problem.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a misinterpretation of the data.
People pin the programs they use the most and in that way there is less start menu items being used total, but for infrequently used programs one usually accesses them via the start menu.
So basically Microsoft is saying that since you use certain programs 90+% of the time you don't need an easy way to access the ones you don't use on a regular basis. That is actually one of my main complaints in regards to using Linux so I think it is funny Microsoft is fucking this up in this way.
Microsoft could have came to the same conclusion if they were tracking how one uses Windows 95, but instead of it regarding pinning programs in Windows 95 you mainly used desktop items.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:2, Insightful)
I *USED* to use the start menu quite a bit. Then they burred everything and smashed it into a small area of my screen (instead of expanding menus). So yeah I created a zillion icons and pinned the commonly used ones. Did they stop and think *maybe* they broke the start button and so people stopped using it?
Re:stopped using it? (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually love the ribbon. It makes complex features more accessible and provides a superior visual organization of features.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually love the ribbon. It makes complex features more accessible and provides a superior visual organization of features.
Assuming you already know where things are. If you are trying to do something new, you have the added step of trying to figure out what icon represents the task. Also somethings can be only done from the dialog boxes (accessed by clicking the lower right corner of individual panels inside the ribbon). Finally there is the Quick Access Toolbar, which mostly has things that didn't go onto the ribbon. It's placement on the title bar is annoying because by default I'm not going to be looking there.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Maximizing every window isn't even a noob thing.. not a part of the whole stereotype.
In fact, I know lots of people including myself that do it to use the screen real estate. Alt-tab (or apple-tab) or switching screens is pretty simple.
Yes, I switch screens on my work Windows desktop. I was tired of being constrained to one screen, so I downloaded an open source app named VirtuaWin to have easily switchable virtual desktops.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think they've thought this cunning plan all the way through.
To "pin" something you need to have access to it in the first place. Guess where most of the things you can "pin" are stored? Yup - the start menu.
The only way pinning can work well is if they reinvent the start menu, but disguise it as something else.
Hey, Microsoft! Listen up! (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what would be great? If you designed your UI so that we had a CHOICE about whether to adopt your latest "great idea", or just keep using the system we've grown used to. You know...the way we're most productive?
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here. I use pinning for about three or four icons at most; the stuff I open and close often.
Do they have a search&enter function in the metro interface?
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use that, and pinning - so does a lot of the people I know. That said, everyone that I know of uses the All Programs menu to find things they don't often use or forgot the spelling for.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. It is still just as easy as pressing the Windows key, then typing to start your search.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know the little box you can tick that says "Send anonymous usage data to Microsoft"? It's that data. Not a focus group, but telemetry data from actual windows installs.
Oh. The thing everyone and their brother is told to NEVER check!
No wonder they got such asinine and utterly useless feedback. Because the only people giving them feedback were morons.
What's all this hate about? The angriest people seem to be the ones who consciously refused to provide any meaningful feedback. They then spit venom when decisions are made without the input they refused to give. And on a product they're not even being forced to use.
Holy shit, people...
Welcome to OS X ca. 2001 (Score:4, Insightful)
"When we evolved the taskbar we saw awesome adoption of pinning [applications] on the taskbar.
Windows 7 is the first MS OS I like for this exact reason. Too bad it took 10 years to copy OS X.
Telemetry show turn signal stalk is used less (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Valued Customer,
On-Star telemetry shows you rarely use your turn signals when changing lanes and we're striving to "do something about it." We've also noticed you use your audio system menu controls frequently. Because of the audio controls' popularity in our usage statistics from participating customers, future models will eliminate the turn signal stalk in favor of a user-configurable option, allowing you to scroll a tiny screen and search through audio options while making lane changes. Note that you can now change the audio feedback from the traditional clicking relay sound of a turn signal to one of several pre-loaded "ringtones" just like your cell phone. Furthermore, for an additional fee, Microsoft now offers a "plus" package with many more audio themes for your turn-signal.
Thank you for participating in our telemetry feedback programs as we strive to constantly improve our products!
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Win 95 start menu used all the vertical space available, and become larger and larger as you needed deeper menus.
Win 7 start menu puts everything into a small rectangle, where you can't see everything, must click on menus to see what is inside (compounded with the classical bad arrangement of menus in Windows, that's very bad), and nested menus have even less horizontal space because of identation and share the same vertical space with everything else.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:4, Insightful)
of course you use your pinned apps most of the time, that's why they're pinned.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between knowing how to use it and not wanting to use it.
My coworkers generally don't like to use computers as it is, they only use it because their job requires it. Most just learn just enough to get the job done and don't care to put in effort to learn any more.
Re:stopped using it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have less than a dozen applications that you use, and you use them all of the time, pinning to the taskbar is better. The icons will already be there since the applications will generally be open. Pinning them just becomes an improvement in consistancy. The start menu's benefit is in finding applications that you don't use daily, and you might not know the name of.