If you look at the evolution of OS X, the changes from version to version are minimal. In give or take 13 years it changed relatively little. It matured over 13 years to become a (love it or hate it) polished OS. However each Windows version has been completely different from the last version. Each release XP->Vista->7->8 Microsoft demands a lot of adapting from both their power users and their 'casual' users.
I've always felt that if they would have kept polishing XP or W7, diligently building on each version, they would've had a strong OS with a strong following. Maybe they should stop trying to do a "revolutionary redesign" every new release and just stick with one approach for a couple of years?
Totally agree. Between XP and W7 they moved a ton of settings around for absolutely no reason what so ever. Now they have done it all over again. There is no reason why "Add Remove Programs" should have been renamed to "Programs and Features." I am not saying that one name is batter then the other, just saying they should pick one damn name and stick with it, and polish the rest of the OS.
The change makes sense, considering no one actually adds programs from there anymore. To be honest, I don't remember a time one actually did. Still, I do miss it, even today it kinda trips me up not being able to look at the top left hand corner of the control panel.
7 was little different from Vista, to the point that some people were calling it Vista Service Pack 2. And the basic workflow between XP and Vista was pretty similar - they're both traditional desktops (though somehow vista takes 20GB to do what XP does in 600MB).
Maybe they should stop trying to do a "revolutionary redesign" every new release and just stick with one approach for a couple of years?
It's every second major release, not every release - 3.1 was alright; 95 big redesign, sucked; 98 serviceable; 2000 wasn't ready for primetime, but the redesign was adopting NT into the desktop OS; XP built on that to became the world's default OS; vista sucked; win7 was solid; win8 sucks; win9... ?
I completely agree with the "7 was little different from Vista" claim. I had purchased Vista Ultimate (stupid me) and then my only upgrade path was 7 Ultimate, which was so little different from 7 Pro that I completely regretted buying Vista. Especially when I found that the XP -> 7 upgrade price was the same as Vista -> 7 upgrade price.
In a sense, they did keep polishing. It's just that they had another, much larger team adding shiny features that became roadblocks to existing users.
I used to run Win7 in a form that looked very much like XP. The newer OS had many small improvements and refinements, not just the 'in-your-face' big ticket items. Windows 8 actually sounds the same - Microsoft published some interesting articles during development about lots of kernel-level changes, systems tweaks and so on (e.g. look at the windows process manager)
The problem has always been the massive forced-down-your-throat changes that MS insist upon, and Windows 8 took that even further.
I've always felt that if they would have kept polishing XP or W7, diligently building on each version, they would've had a strong OS with a strong following. Maybe they should stop trying to do a "revolutionary redesign" every new release and just stick with one approach for a couple of years?