What's broken in this week's Windows 10 build? Try the Start Menu, for one Microsoft has released a new build of Windows 10 for PCs to the Windows Insider program, but the software giant is only recommending it for particularly eager testers for now. Redmond never promoted the last Technical Preview release, Build 10049, to the Slow release ring of its testing program, owing to a bug that caused the …
Weird when //windows cuts multiple builds everyday and performs endless amounts of unneeded worthless automation and only need to push a frickin button to make another build that works or back rev the last working version. Amateur hour back to fooling with the menu again like back in the year 1920. Mankind lacks motivation since Windows has been so slow to innovate anything new except changing the colors for the last fifty years.
Seriously, one of the big advantages of Windows is that it provides a toolkit for things like input boxes. That way you don't have to write your own input boxes, particularly not for simple things like calender GUIs.
So what were those people doing? Is there now a new "input dialog component" with that bug that just happened to be used only there? If yes, why?
> one of the big advantages of Windows is that it provides a toolkit for things like input boxes
The big advantage over what exactly? Every relevant graphical environment has some GUI toolkit (often more than one) and there is even a choice of crossplatform toolkits...
I was quite impressed (unusual for me) with the first TP build when it was released, thought Microsoft had a new sort of fighting spirit to the Company, after Ballmer went, but seems disillusionment has set in.
Its looks to have become a power struggle between Metro/New v Classic/Old teams, the results of which is more broken builds. Stardock's Start10 is better than anything so far in any of the Windows 10 builds, in terms of a new menu.
Windows 10 seems to be a tangled web of obsolete code, patches, security patches, re-patches, dependancies. Change this, and this breaks. Even the idea of skipping a release might be good marketing, but when you look back in 5-8 years trying to support this shit, its another poinless quirk you need to remember, that there was no 9.
Is it even possible to install a final version of Windows 7 or 8 from scratch without having a failed Update within the install log?
Microsoft, it would be worth going back and seeing if you can - I don't think its possible.
...has been variously broken (depending on what sort of account you use to log on with) in every build so far. The same for search and for Spartan. For those playing along at home, try logging in as the Administrator, or as the domain's Administrator. In 10049, the breakage is slightly different in each case.
Naturally I've reported this and I'm assuming that someone is keeping count over there so it will all be fixed in the final release, but I'm intrigued to know just how they are managing such fine-grained damage.
"...has been variously broken (depending on what sort of account you use to log on with) in every build so far."
Well to be fair, they actually broke it for Windows 8, and they're trying to fix it in Windows 10 - what you're seeing isn't various levels of broken, but various levels of fixed that aren't quite there yet.
"they actually broke it for Windows 8"
Aware that I'm way late to this particular party, but this week I've had to replace my 5 year old Win 7 desktop, and the replacement came with win 8.1.
Oh. My. God.
Some of the stuff I'd heard, I naturally assumed were urban myths. Even with an open mind, and willing to try out something new, there are times when I wonder if anyone actually tried to use it on a desktop with mouse and keyboard before releasing it. Crackers.
dont panic!!! follow this link.. I have tried it, looks VERY familiar, **seriously**..
http://windowsitpro.com/windows-81/top-10-tips-make-windows-81-work-like-windows-7
http://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-make-windows-8-look-like-windows-7/
start menu here... FREE.. :) http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-windows-8-8-1-look-like-windows-7-xp/
If you have saved a theme from win 7, it WILL 'just load' - just dbl click on the file - works great for me...
I've now put this on a number of PCs, and while Classic Shell is good, for the little it costs I think Startisback is worth the money.
What gets me is that what is basically a one man band can do better than all those people at MS on $400k. What gives? Have some US corporations reached DoD levels of inefficiency, with $200 screwdrivers and a week of work to get permission to put up a poster? Because, if so, the Chinese are coming.
I am a certified professional that owes their employment to MS being less than perfect with their products. But I still wonder how it is that free OSes like Mint, Ubuntu, etc. manage to get so many things right that Microsoft struggles with. Oh, I'm not saying that the Mint OS that I'm using at the moment is perfect. Everything has problems. But nothing steals focus on this OS, it isn't constantly wasting resources trying to index everything, I don't get absurd warnings like "Do you trust this printer?", and I'm not constantly nagged to tweak this, disable that, "your computer could perform better", etc.
Perhaps I'm asking a rhetorical question here, but this is a FREE operating system that gets most everything right, including not rearranging my icons when it feels like it in dual monitor mode, nor the asinine "pin to taskbar" method of creating links. Which I wouldn't be so unhappy with if they'd just stay put and not randomly arrange themselves on a whim. How about updates? My Linux OS tells me updates are available, I click to install, things happen for a couple of minutes, and we're done. Never a reboot unless the kernel is being updated. With MS, updating is a cross your appendages and pray affair--Wait for updates to install, see what failed, reboot, endure "Preparing to configure Windows" (always good to be prepared I guess), possibly reboot again. How is it that an OS with man-years of development behind it, and for which we will pay hundreds of dollars (or thousands in subscriptions) manages to be so flaky/buggy/irritating?
How many times has my Linux OS crashed in the last year, even when gaming with it and doing other things that stress it? Not once, not counting having to restart the window manager a few times after doing something stupid. How many times has my Surface Pro at work crashed while just 'idling'? Every 3 days or so, with the latest drivers available from MS, and the Surface is their in-house effort. And let's not get started with Office and SharePoint. Brilliant concepts, but a lot of debugging yet to do.
Maybe it takes a village to write an OS and not a dictatorship where no one communicates with anyone else.
I think we're just seeing the inevitable outcome of perpetual development.
Windows has been around a very long time, and there are ghosts of those early dos days still in the code. Every version has been an update from the version before to some extent - even when we went 32bit native from the awful dirty 16/24bit stuff, and again when the NT kernel came along. Every time there's been some bit of legacy crap from the previous version that couldn't be replaced because too many other things relied upon it.
Like Ankh-Morpork, what Windows is mostly built upon is the remnants of previous iterations of itself. There's so much _junk_ down there that I don't think anyone on the Windows team really knows what a lot of it does, which has turned the development process of each new version into a hunt for buried land-mines.
"manage to get so many things right that Microsoft struggles with"
I'm not a programmer or anything like that, but I guess the 'problem' MS has is making sure that **everything** works with their system, BUT also is 'tweaked DOWN' to make sure there is no 'support nightmare'.. otherwise you would not have to 'tweak' IE etc to make it go faster, from the very conservative settings!!
It looks to me that many small process have not changed since win 95, I see the same 'quirks'... it could well be MS laziness..
Linux has no such problem, it can do most from scratch, it does not have to worry, as the 'desktop' is not 'connected like glue' to the OS.. if it crashes, you just load it again!
ON MS, it can bring the lot down, or leave you with a 'desktop' with nothing on it, the only escape being to turn off the PC...
I don't think it's because of Company bloat/inertia; rather, I think it's symptomatic of a flawed design philosphy.
For example, consider the problem with launching W32 apps from the start menu in this latest build, and the suggested work-around: what on earth are they doing with the program launch process to make it so fragile?
It's the regular occurence of slightly weird problems like this that leads me to the conclusion that the Windows OS is designed, by intent, to incoporate an extremely high degree of very deep integration, not withstanding recent moves towards greater modularity. However, the problem with very deep integration in a very complex system is that a relatively insignificant problem, in an insignificant subsystem, can impact other more important subsystems, despite there being little logical interlocking and/or interdependency between them.
It's difficult not to make comparisons between Windows and Linux in this repect; whilst both systems rely upon a monolithic (modular) kernel, Linux doesn't try to incorporate the deep integration* that appears to be such a major feature of Windows, and certainly, in my experience, doesn't seem to suffer from the same sort of rather weird problems.
For most users, the major difference between the various versions of Windows is the interface, probably followed by any new services/features, and then followed by boot/load times. I see very little info regarding changes in the kernel or infrastructure services though, which is where any work is actually done.
* yeah - systemd bait.
When I read the article I was astounded to see reports of problems with things like Outlook and Visual Studio. The clear implication is that the operating system and the layered applications are so entangled that changes to the system break the applications.
Microsoft has a track record of making secret APIs available to its own applications, and it looks like it's come back to bite them.
Starting Win32 apps is broken? HOW ON EARTH DID THEY MANAGE THAT?
Windows 8:
Mistake #1 - thinking everyone wanted to suddenly use Surface tablets instead of desktops
Mistake #2 - Forcing desktop users into the hell that is Metro
Mistake #3 - The whole Metro look - boring and flat because phones can't render Aero properly or quickly. Excuse me, I DID buy a GPU for my computer, I'd like to use it....
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