I’ve spent a few hours playing around with Windows 7 in order to see what the fuss is all about and although there’s no way it’ll have me switch back from OS X. I have to say I’m not entirely averse.
Now I’m going to digress about my personal history with computers. You can skip past it to the part where I go on talking about windows 7.
Me and PCs go way back. I was playing Pac Man and Space Invaders at four and Larry Leisure Suit Larry at eight (It’s taught me everything I know about Lovin’). At 9 I started programming Basic and then Pascal at 10. Although I’ve flirted a lot with the Amiga, I was most certainly a Microsoftee from toddlerhood. First MS-DOS, then Windows.
I remember when Win95 appeared, late 1995 I was discussing it’s pros and cons with a teacher at Polson High School in Montana, where I was an exchange student. Although I was looking forward to my new computer arriving, I was iffy about it having the fancy OS installed. I can’t remember the details of my reluctance, but I was certainly a bit conservative against the new paradigms that Win95 introduced over Windows 3.11. I got used to it just fine though.
In late 2006, I made the switch. I was in Oslo at Fast building a (now defunct) music streaming and sharing service called Ezmo, not unlike Spotify. Although the primary development environment was windows we were working with Java and Apache on the backend. I got my brand new MBP up and running in a day and I’ve never looked back since.
It’s tempting to say that it was the release of Vista that was the tipping point. In fairness, it’s suck-ish nature did contribute to the timing of my switch, but the key was OS X adopting Unix at the turn of the century and few years earlier and it’s move to the x86 architecture – OS X had entered familiar territory and it was looking better than ever.
I still run windows on an almost daily basis. My work focuses on interaction design and user experiences at large, but I still do a fair amount of development in visual studio, both for fun and profit. I run a very stripped version of Windows Server 2003 in a Parallels VM. It’s a great setup and it also allows me to do browser and OS testing easily when creating websites.
On to what I actually think about windows 7
Windows 7 still exhibits many of the problems inherent to the Windows platform. It’s way to eager and it fails to deliver the instant gratification that is so critical to good experiences. The install is surprisingly fast, about 30 minutes. It’s starts up quickly too, but hasn’t windows always on a fresh install?
Why does my desktop only contain the Recycle Bin? Are they really that eager for me to throw things away? Where are my files? There’s a very complicated looking folder with three tabs marked with different colors and some sort of shiny holder at the bottom of my screen. Maybe my files are there? Yup, that’s it.
I’ve started up a fresh install, and I have three “PC issues” to resolve. Why are there issues with a brand new install? There should be endless love, no questions asked and immediate productivity.
The first thing Windows Defender wants to do, is scan for malware. That’s freakishly paranoid.
Next, if windows thinks me having an antivirus program is so important that it suggests I “Find and antivirus program online (Important)”, why isn’t that part of the OS already? It’s patently bizarre.
On the whole, it behaves quite well. My favorite detail is that Shut Down actually shuts down, instead of presenting more options. From a usability perspective it’s getting better, but it has a tendency to become more cluttered rather that less, which really isn’t what anyone needs. Window Snapping is really nice too, we’ll probably see it introduced on other platforms before long.
Windows 7 bores me. I’m going to quit reviewing it now, I feel I can’t do it justice. To summarize, it’s going to replace Vista in the same way that Highlander 3 pretended there was never a Highlander 2. When it’s ready for prime time, it will replace my win 2003 setup, so as I don’t fall hopelessly behind. Good riddance.
Before you go, here’s the most crippling aspect of the Windows user experience
It’s tendency to not surrender the responsibility for it’s experience. This goes both for the OS and for software running on it.Windows is extremely obtrusive. It could just start up with default settings, no questions asked and let me get on with my business. But it seems virtually impossible for anything to happen without there being at least one or two (often more) questions like these;
Please select how you would like the Prolikate Gurb to behave?
How the hell should I know? It’s your f**king show!
Operating systems should be vessels of productivity. In that capacity, their highest priority must be to get out of the way and let us get on with our business.
