Are Windows XP/7 Users Smarter Than a 3-Year-Old? 537
theodp writes "Those sounding the alarm about the difficulty in making the transition to Windows 8, especially on traditional computers, should check out Adam Desrosiers' son Julian, a 3-year-old kid who uses Windows 8 like a champ. 'I read these tech pundits and journalists discussing how hard it's gonna be for the general public to learn the new UI of Windows 8,' says Desrosiers. 'Nonsense. The long and short of it is: If my 3 years old son can learn Windows 8 through very moderate usage, anybody with half a brain can do so too.' Bill Gates has already successfully made the transition to what he calls an 'unbelievably great' Microsoft Surface. On Friday, we'll start finding out if current Windows XP and Windows 7 users are also smarter than the average 3-year-old!"
Still a bad interface for desktops (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think anybody is saying that Windows 8 is going to be completely unusable. This kid is obviously getting coaching from his parent. I'm sure anyone can be taught to use the OS. I'm also sure that they won't complain if they've never used anything different. That doesn't mean that Windows 8 contains any worthwhile changes.
The fundamental problem is that they are trying to shoehorn a single operating system into two very different user experiences. Touch-screen based systems tend to have small screens, and they NEED large icons/menus so your finger can accurately select what you are to get to. Mouse-based systems allow for very precise selection, and because of that, they should be maximizing the amount of information that you have access to while MINIMIZING the number of clicks it takes to get there.
Oh, and insulting me is surely not the best way to convince me that Windows 8 is great. I'm not going to buy an operating system based on a dare.
XCom: Enemy Unknown (Score:5, Interesting)
XCom: Enemy Unknown has a 3D main interface where you can go to the seperate areas, with a fly animation zooming in on the sub sections of your base.
Nice the first time, meh the second, the 1000th time you scream and rage at your monitor and hurl the cat out the window.
Newbie friendly is a great market because you never run out of newbies but the moment a newbie has grown beyond the need for a newbie interface, you lost him forever.
There isn't much repeat business in the training wheel market.
W8 is MS Bob all over again. For older people like me, the desktop is like my toes, haven't seen it in decades. I startup the applications I need automatically and never even minimize them, the desktop could display my golden ticket to nirvana and I will never ever see it.
W8 to me adds just cruft I don't need or want and that increasingly seems to desire to get in the way. I don't use active desktop, widgets or gadgets (98, Vista and W7). The desktop has one use, to stop my applications from falling into the monitor.
I need a start menu to groups application, a taskbar to switch and that is it. End of fucking story.
And trying to sell me on something new because a 3yr old likes it... 3yr olds also like teletubbies, boogers and the word poop. poop... POOP! eheh POOP!!!
what the hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
The OS is just a platform to run your apps. Why are they making it seem like the OS is more than just a platform to run your apps? My software uses Windows, and I use my software, doesn't mean I use windows.
This whole idiotic notion of the OS being important started when Microsoft realized Windows was the most used desktop OS in the world, they figured people must love Windows. Nobody loves Windows! We all cope with it because it runs our god damn software. The only way Windows could be better is if it got out of the way and made our software run better and faster. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that, they somehow think people care about the OS. I'm sure a huge majority of the users don't even know what an OS is.
Admit it, if you use Windows, it's only because it runs your software. The majority of my software runs only on Windows... but that's changing. Linux has lots of great software, and the moment when Linux has the majority of my software will be the moment when I ditch Windows for good and never look back, and I can see that date in the horizon already and there's nothing Microsoft can do to stop it. (except anti-competitiveness)
Re:3 year olds don't do that much. (Score:5, Interesting)
I applaud their attempt to improve it, but I do not care for the end result on a normal PC. It does seem that it would be excellent on a tablet. I do like the way Windows 8 "feels". There is a nice fluidity to it and lots of nice little features such as file transfer statistics that actually work, etc. If I could have a "normal" desktop mode, I'd love to use it, but after a month of playing with the new interface, I rolled back to Windows 7.
Re:Why change the interface at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Another big one that goes along with what you are describing is "learned helplessness".
On the other hand, the three year old likely uses a computer quite differently than you or I. I doubt he writes a lot of code, or really produces much of anything. For him it is probably a device for consumption of games and video. While I could learn EMACS, I have spent so many years with VIM that installing it and ignoring EMACS is the more rational thing to do. The three year old would have no use for that kind of text editor.
Re:3 year olds don't do that much. (Score:5, Interesting)
This.
I was able to work my way through Windows 8 pretty easily. That's not the issue at hand, at all. this didn't stop me from hating its guts, because I needed to break free from my 15 years old habits and do it differently.
And yet during the transition to Windows 95, you'd have been hard pressed to find a Windows 3.x user that didn't immediately love the Start button and the collapsing menus as opposed to progman and it's horrible icons-in-folders organization.
Habits are easy to quit, I think, if the alternative is truly better. Microsoft wants to harmonize touch and non-touch computers, the way Windows Desktop and Windows Server are essentially the same*. This desktop/server harmonization didn't take anything away, though. You can still do it all from command line if you're so inclined. Microsoft's answer to harmonizing touch and non-touch seems to be taking away things from the non-touch side of the house.
As any good DM can tell you, you can't just take away toys from your players, even if they're overpowered and breaking your game. You gotta be more clever than that. If you set up a game event to "aw, someone stole your ill-gotten wand of amazing powers, too bad so sad let's move on." your players are going to hate you.
* the difference is in what's running at any given time, truth is, things that work in one will work on the other.
Re:Why change the interface at all (Score:5, Interesting)
That fails to explain why a three-year-old has no problems using it
Try watching the video. The kid is absolutely terrible at using Windows 8. If this is the new definition of 'a champ', then the interface of Windows 8 can indeed be called 'a champ of an interface'.
His dad has clearly (over the course of a month) learnt him some of the basics (like 'pin to the side') that work, but generally:
- He has difficulties opening the start screen
- He has difficulties making a program fullscreen again
- He has difficulties in getting the list of open apps to show, erroneously selects the time app and then on second try stumbles upon the actual list of open applications.
And if you think about it, the kid hasn't actually done anything remotely complex. Nobody ever argued that it would be impossible for new users to click on the fucking huge tiles to open an application or to learn a couple of basic gestures.
Everybody did and does say that it most of the gestures are counterintuitive, cumbersome and that the interface in general fails when trying to do anything more complex than playing Angry Birds.
This article is fucking bullshit.
Re:3 year olds don't do that much. (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, dude, I'm a Windows user. Been using Windows since 3.1 and Linux almost not at all. I still think Windows 8 is "the suck".
The Windows 8 versus Windows 7 issue, for me at least, is mainly the awful waste of screen estate. I would fit at least 10 icons in just one of those dreadful "tiles". I don't need a 2x2 inch tile to click on a shortcut. And side-scrolling an entire screen to get to more tiles is dumb, especially on the PC.
Opening the "All programs" menu shows 28 entries (on my screen) and takes up maybe 1/10 of my screen estate. They're sorted alphabetically, with no bling-bling of colors. Easy to use and intuitive. I have created a shortcuts folder on my desktop and also a games folder on my desktop, with shortcuts to pretty much everything I usually need to run. And I created toolbars on the taskbar pointing to those folders, transforming them into 1-click menus which bring on all the software I use, ready to run and nicely arranged the way I want them to. Windows 8 tiles are way, WAY behind in terms of functionality and speed. I hated having to move my mouse pointer all around the screen to get to that app I needed. Waste of space, as far as I am concerned.
Re:Why change the interface at all (Score:4, Interesting)
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