What is Shadenvista?
You heard it here first: “Shadenvista”.
…pleasure taken from watching the misfortunes of Vista users.
Here are some random observations after more than 6 months hands-on usage with Vista.
Notepad
Notepad is unchanged in Vista. Unbelievable. All we really need is an editor that can open any type of text file correctly. But open up a file containing “LF” instead of “CRLF” endings, and you get rubbish:
VIM shows how this file should look:
I don’t get it.
Editing System Variables
All we really need is the ability to resize this dialog:
You cannot resize it. Another Vista failure.
Paint
What decade is this? Why hasn’t Paint changed?
Searching File Contents
I stumbled upon this while editing my WordPress custom theme. I needed to search for PHP files containing a certain snippet of text. For example, let’s search for files containing “true”:
First, the search screen is incredibly complex. But even worse, the results are WRONG. While the results show numerous .js files, all .php files are ignored.
Just like the failed Windows XP search, Vista only searches through a pre-configured list of file extensions. Since PHP is not on the list, you cannot search these files.
There is a workaround described here. Shouldn’t a modern operating system just let you “search” for text without worrying about these technical details?
Shadenvista
All you Mac users are laughing your asses off now, taking great pleasure in my misfortune. I’ve created a new T-Shirt just for you:
Go on over to the It’s Just a Bunch of Stuff store and check it out.
Brilliant, man! I personally don’t take any pleasure in seeing people have to deal with annoying security popup notices or whatever other injustices imposed on you by Vista. There is a mild feeling of embarrassment, but my first-hand exposure to Vista has only been brief (though I have heard other stories of dissatisfaction) and I am sure that there are features of the OS that are real improvements in user experience.
I blogged months ago about Vista a few times. I still wonder if Vista product manager Jim Allchin is in Mexico sipping Corona and working on a Mac. I bet he isn’t using Vista. Wife is in a major corporate environment still happily using Windows 2000. Anyone in a corporate setting using Vista? I got my new laptop last month — with XP.
[...] SchadenVista, anyone? [...]
It is truly amazing they didn’t fix the things you enumerate. The notepad and system variable dialog problems were pet peeves of mine, too, when I toiled under Windows. But aside from all that, just looking at the screenshots I’m reminded of a quote from Steve Jobs from the movie “Triumph of the Nerds”:
“the problem with Microsoft is they just don’t have any taste”.
Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw
What’s funny is, at the time he made that statement, I was a “Microsoft programmer” and I just didn’t get what Jobs was saying. I didn’t hate Macs or anything, they just weren’t on my radar. Now that I use a Mac, I know exactly what he’s talking about. I look at your screenshots, and aside from the functionality problems, they really look like crap. That search window is an abomination. There is absolutely no cohesion. I can’t believe that Apple got the only decent UI designers on the planet, so why can’t Microsoft make something that looks at least decent?
BTW, I love my Mac, but it has plenty of its own problems. Just not as many, and not as annoying and amateurish as the Windows ones.