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See, this is the problem. Microsoft has developed this attitude they have good reasons for doing things that aggravate the hell out of virtually 100% of their customers, and the customers will just have to learn to like it. The interface is CRAP. It’s an irrational mish-mash of inscrutable icons and words, with many very commonly used functions relocated to completely random and hard-to-find places. 99.9% of users don’t care about the geeky technical philosophy underlying the giant mess Microsoft made out of its user interfaces; they just want a rational interface that doesn’t have hundreds of pointless rearrangements from what they’re used to. That’s why so many people have “downgraded” from Vista to XP, and why most people who have later versions of the new Office software that enable reverting to the “Classic” interface, have reverted.

And yet for all the misguided attempts at “improvement”, very, very simple obvious improvements that are needed just don’t make it onto Microsoft’s radar screen. Example: on whatever new version of Explorer is on my Vista machine, there’s a spot on the toolbar for “Search” that you can supposedly set up to use the search engine of your choice — except that you can’t, because some genius at Microsoft decided you should only be allowed to set it up with a search engine with a very specific URL format. If your search engine of choice is, like mine, Google Advanced Search, you’re out of luck. Microsoft will generously allow you to set the spot on the toolbar to go to the main Google Search page, but then you have to navigate to the Advanced Search. So of course, after spending time trying to set up this supposedly convenient tool to reach my preferred search engine in a single click, I learned that actually no such thing was possible, and that I just had to stick with the old method of going to my Favorites list to click on my search engine link. I’m all in favor of change when it actually makes sense and makes the software or operating system easier to use, but it’s been quite a while since Microsoft offered that sort of change.

I’m really starting to get the feeling that Microsoft is run by hordes of people with Asperger’s — they understand machines and technical code brilliantly, but are just hopelessly baffled by how PEOPLE work. And they make pathetic attempts to appeal to people, but keep missing the mark because they just lack the basic mental wiring to understand people. For a trivial, but blindingly clear example, see the thread I posted a link to, re a new user’s experience trying to set up the Surface computer. Rhodamine??? WTF is “rhodamine”? They’re talking about indicator lights that are supposed to convey information at a glance, and think it makes sense to concoct some wacko new word for the color pink that nobody on the planet will recognize without a translation. The idea to refer to a pink light as “rhodamine” came out of the same sort of mind that designed the new Word interface, and that decided that the “Start” button on the desktop should be replaced with some blob that looks like a Christmas tree decoration, and that decided that the “File” button on Word should be replaced with another blob that looks like a Christmas tree decoration.

They can write a thousand pages of technical gobbledy-gook about their “reasons” for all this nonsense, but they would do better to spend their time sitting down next to ordinary people who are trying to use their products, and seeing what problems they have and asking what the users would like to see changed. And do this BEFORE developing an expensive new operating system or a complete overhaul of the Office software.