Not a course correction, but a reaction from some engineers who are tired of getting mocked by everyone.

It sure looks like a PR campaign to take the attention away from how bad the things are, and I need to see it to believe it.

Also, why couldn't they make this announcement as they release the taskbar change. Taking away the most basic features and bringing a few back doesn't mean things are improving, it means things are getting petty.

There is no reason for the start menu to take 2 seconds to show up on a computer with 8 CPUs running at 4GHz. We all know that they're completely half-assing everything now.

Yea concur. "Here's a patch and here are the notes" vs "Here are the notes for future efforts" would be more credible!

I'm sorry but I need to see it to believe it. Otherwise who can explain, how the Windows Explorer struggles to list 20 files.

How is it even possible to spend 4-5 seconds to show a list of files in a local freaking folder?

I find that this happens when you enter folders that have media files like audio files, video files and so on. One way to fix it is to enter one such folder, then remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns. Things like track length, artist, contributing artist or whatever else, then click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (**) and select View tab, then click 'Apply to folders'. This will apply the column and view settings that you just applied to all such folders.

Now all folders with media files open immediately. Also if you want no wait for video files folders, right click in the folder and select 'View -> Details or View -> List or some other option where it doesn't create thumbnails and it'll load even quicker.

I feel like most interns would be smart enough to know that you should lazy load these metrics. It's incredible that MS put this into production.

> remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns [...] click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (*) and select View tab, then click 'Apply to folders' [...] click in the folder and select 'View -> Details or View -> List or some other option

I'm sorry, this is very funny to me in the context of the person upthread arguing about how great "agentic OSes" are. Some people seem to believe that we're living in the future, but I'm pretty sure we're still stuck in Windows '95.

It's not just media files. I'm forced to use Windows 11 on my work PC, and I had to disable the new shell extensions to make the file explorer usable again. It's noticeably faster without the new UI.

This was never a problem in older Windows versions.

> remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns.

Surely you don't mean remove all columns, and if you did you wouldn't have to also specify removing media metadata columns?

Sorry I messed up how I wrote that. I meant to only remove metadata columns, not all columns.

Looking up media details is of course one of the main reasons. Thank you for sharing this information. However, all the folders are already configured as general folders and this one specifically has a bunch of PDF files.

When such basic tasks are failing spectacularly, nobody can have any confidence that complex things can be achieved reliably. Instead of spying on their users and trying to squeeze more and more money from them, they should first focus on making a great product and work on making it better, not researching ways to enshitify things.

It's less work at this point to just wipe the drive and install linux.

The Windows computer I have to use at work takes over 15 seconds to start the new calculator app. The old calculator launched instantly.

I've seen that too. I discovered Calculator was doing a DNS lookup for some reason, and that slow DNS resolution was the cause...

That's a why, but it raises more questions than it does answers.

Arithmetic may have updated.

Nah, analytics. Some PM needs to know which operands are most used so they can optimize the calculator layout to improve the UX. And for the least used operands, they'll take a pragmatic stance and remove them to clean up the interface.

This sounds wildly optimistic. I buy the metrics compilation, but I'll be damned if there's any PM at Microsoft (or Apple or Google for that matter) who's interested in '[optimizing] the calculator layout to improve the UX.'

I need that Drake meme here, where he's negative about the idea "Optimize the calculator layout to improve the UX" and very enthusiastic about the idea "Find ways to get incremental revenue from users of Calculator with ads or selling of data"

The fact these people are probably making 300k/year is seriously starting to piss me off.

Have we considered math results in the context of GDPR? Maybe it needs a cookie configuration dialogue.

Now with new Plus++

An LLM writes and compiles a new calculator app from scratch every time you open it.

Obliterating the performance of a calculator wasn't enough, they actually managed to introduce some all new usability regressions as well. They decided to localize inputs so now periods don't work depending on your locale. Copying numbers also includes the formatted and localized output as well instead of the raw value. Parsers are going to love those commas.

We're reaching Microslop levels we never thought possible. I actually think Claude Code would have done a better job.

Be grateful we are talking about a desktop OS where you are free to not use the built-in apps and even install an arbitrary calculator of your choosing. Unlike dozens of built-in "Apps" on mobile platforms that just exist and you can either use them all as provided, or switch to (Apple or Android).

I'm recommending your for a mid-level management role at my employer right now.

Right now my start menu randomly crashes. Like all I see is a black box with no icons. I'm impressed with how even basic functionalities break pretty often

Reminds me of the new task manager not responding. Like really?

Well honestly, that's the easiest problem to fix: just install any of the dozens of excellent and stable third party file managers. I for instance am (or was, while I still used Windows) a fan of Total Commander (actually, when I started using it, it was called Windows Commander). As a bonus, you'll be spared the useless UI and usability changes inflicted upon you with every new Windows version.

If you're going to replace tools as fundamental as the file manager, you may as well switch to a stable and fast operating system like most Linux distributions or Mac.

Yeah, that's what I did, eventually, but some people still need some software that only runs under Windows, or want to play games without messing around with Proton etc. etc.

Maybe there's an LLM learning about sorting from first principles every time you click to change the sort column.

I think HP continues to see the real problem as getting caught, just like a liar isn't someone who lies, but lies and also gets caught.

If you run it through command line you get some additional features you can turn off or selectively turn on.

I’m still pissed beyond words that they used the driver software as an excuse and installed crapware on my Mac when they released the AI version.

I switched to the offline version right after Logitech forcefully and without my permission downloaded and installed bunch of crap software on my Mac. I was furious that a stupid mouse driver app has the right to install a random crapware. I’m still fuming about it when I remember it.

Knowing what we know about the current environment, each company is going to start selling everything they know about you to anybody who's willing to pay. Enforcing privacy is hard not because it's not possible, but companies have greater financial incentives to just breach your privacy to track and manipulate us.

> Enforcing privacy is hard not because it's not possible, but companies have greater financial incentives to just breach your privacy to track and manipulate us.

No, enforcing privacy is not hard, all it takes is imposing penalties _much greater than_ those financial incentives.

I think they think of time capsule as a done deal. It doesn’t bring any extra money for them, and even though it’s broken, it exist to a point that when they’re selling a Mac they can say that it comes with a backup software as well. Just like a shady landlord tells you that the apartment facing a wall has a nice window.

I don’t know what these engineers are doing at Apple, but it surely isn’t making the ecosystem better, they’re just chasing hypes and shinny useless UI changes.

The cynic in me thinks Apple more or less gave up on Time Machine while ramping up on selling iCloud storage as a backup solution for macOS as well as iOS/ipadOS devices.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Yes, things like small bugs and abnormal user experiences accumulate and over time the OS and other apps become inconsistent.

As heavy users who are generally by profession spend a lot more time with a Mac, they tend to experience more issues, and things that used to work for decades start to crumble. It all works if you’re acting like working on glass pieces, but that’s not what computers are made for.

You’re supposed to use it extensively and get more efficient over time without a glassy UI and other broken systems pulling you down at every turn.

It’s not about using a system for 10 minutes to visit a website with Chrome, but instead spending days programming things, having a normal life, and still having the very simple file discovery features working.

There’s no reason for a computer to be this choppy and slow (in things like context switching etc.) unless something else is going on in the background.

And yet Apple engineers are going through numerous forums and Reddit posts to gaslight people by commenting “well, it doesn’t happen to me, mine works perfectly”.

They managed to mess up an entire ecosystem and they’re acting so stupid about it that I cannot believe all this software was made by Apple.

There’s no elegance, no thought out user experience, no good design, it’s all stupid glass design with comical amount of padding. It all looks like it was designed and implemented by a team five over a half assed pool party.

What the hell is Apple doing with its tens of thousands of engineers, if they cannot make a freaking window manager.

I'm convinced that this is the fate of all successful software companies. It's not a result of arrogance or hubris or anything else like that. It's the result of turnover.

Take your favourite rock band and turn over all the musicians until no one is left from the original band. Should we expect the band to continue cranking out chart-topping hits?

There's one further factor that makes the situation even worse than the "Rock Band of Theseus." That's the fact that young software engineers are not interested in stewardship. They want to build their own projects, not fix bugs in someone else's. Across the software industry we see this lead to a continual churn, rewrites and redesigns no one wants, and a huge amount of wasted effort reinventing the wheel (and often making a worse wheel).

There should be leadership at the top focussing the efforts of developers though. Developers wanting to make new stuff doesn't only happen because of turnover.

It often feels like Apple hires the best hardware and marketing people in the world and holds them to the highest standards, but the software design and engineering people are left to just kind of screw around, redesign stuff for shits and giggles, and laugh as people fill their forums with bug reports and (very obvious) feature requests.