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kicking babies

Now I don’t consider myself a dog hater; heck no! EH has sported enough puppy pictures to keep […]

XP-searchdog.gifNow I don’t consider myself a dog hater; heck no! EH has sported enough puppy pictures to keep any dog lover happy and me vaguely embarrassed.

But when I am in “My Documents” in Windows XP and I click on “Search” I want a text input field, not a three-D puppy. This thing annoys me each and every time I see it.

Lordie, why did I leave 2000 for the siren call of XP? The default interface looks like Mickey Mouse designed it.

And no gloating, you Mac OsX types, your interface looks more like it came out of a Bed, Bath and Beyond catalog. C’mon, chrome is for bath fixtures and 1950’s chevy’s.

Of course, these are entirely SUBJECTIVE opinions. I’m sure somebody out there feels their life has been muchly improved now that their widgets have the illustion of being three dimensional.

7 Comments

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  1. 1
    owen

    y’know, maybe we should stop calling this stuff ‘chrome’ and start calling it ‘tailfins’. make real clear that it’s useless bloat and not aesthetic enhancement. spin is powerful, sad to say.

    [yes, yes, i miss the rocket cars sometimes too. but i’m old enought to remember when the rusting crudmobiles were still common. it was bad. kinda like the seventies.]

  2. 2
    bostich

    I always thought of it as Fischer Price’s My First OS. No one ever told me something XP would do for me that 2000 doesn’t, glad I never switched.

  3. 3
    ralph

    I’m staying with Mac OS 9. No chrome. No pulsing, throbbing buttons. No annoying Clifford Nass inspired dancing animatronic geegaws. Just a nice, subtle interface with a great fit and finish and no future.

    I despair for the future of computing when I see the direction the two main OSes are going in. I want a full-sized equivalent of my Palm Pilot, something that turns on immediately, is very easy to use, never crashes, and is uncluttered by superfluous elements. Jeff Hawkins created the Strunk and White archetype of computer interfaces — omit needless interface elements.

    I’m going to go live off the grid in the woods now….

  4. 4
    Victor

    Ruff ruff! Ruff! Ruff ruff ruff!

    [ translation: but I’m so cute! How could you not like me? ]

    Just upgraded to OS X, and yes some of it is pretty goofy. But it was due for some goofiness. When the Mac OS was new and innovative it looked completely goofy next to DOS and Windows 3.1. We were losing the goofy race and it was time to leap frog.

  5. 5
    jefflash

    I’m with Ralph — I’ll be on OS9 for at least a while longer. Although there are ways to make OS X act more like OS9, there’s a handful of very important things that OS X can’t do (like sync up my Handspring Visor with Entourage). I started thinking about it when I saw the elegant iPhoto (which is only available for OS X), but it’ll take more than that to get me to upgrade. I spend 95% of my time on my Mac in Entourage and IE, and until there are obvious benefits to upgrading, I’ll be one of those old-school curmudgeons.

  7. 7
    vanderwal

    Excuse me? Siren of XP? Windows 2000 is a good solid OS, for Microsoft. XP is not realy an advance from Win2k and most folks I know have moved back to Win2k from XP. Hopefully you picked up XP Pro and not XP Home, which is stable but miserable for anything but the mundane things like Web browsing and Office.

    Nice line about OS X looking like BB&B, but operating systems have not advanced to the point of purchasing for the look. Operating systems are still working on the basics, like getting things to work properly and consistantly all the time. That is why I buy an OS, the purchasing of an OS has always been predicated on making the crashes and lack of functionality go away. I don’t care about the visual gimicks, yes I love design and it helps the experience and use, but not as much as solid functionality. This is why I love Mac OS X, it works, it does not crash, I can put in a DVD and it plays perfectly and beautifly and it does not lock up. I can not get XP to do that.

    The first hurdle of an operating system is to operate. The second hurdle is to allow you to operate applications. It is that simple. XP gets the first one right on a consistant basis and it has problems with the second, where as OS X does not have problems with either. Not everything is fully ported to OS X, but it gets things right when they are ported.

    Visual gimmiks like the puppy and other diversions from an operating system that does not understand "operate" is a waste of time. This is like posting words on the Web that people are to read, but not having enough contrast to allow the words to be read. This is really not a religious debate over OS as it is about an operation system’s functionality. Having had lunch today with 9 other folks from different walks of life (scientists, theater producers, lawyers, designers, programmers) nearly all of us were Mac converts, for only one reason. It is the first consumer operating system that really works.

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