Scroll bars and window icons

I think we’re dealing with “live fast and die young” coders that were kids in the late 90s/early 00s and thus have little idea of how a computer really works or how people actually interact with them.

I mean, what else can explain why they (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Ubuntu…) eff around with the UI in annoying ways (usually copying Apple) with every freaking major release. ¹

And, no, one does not interact with a mobile device the same way as a traditional with-keyboard computer. I’ll repeat that again for the slow thinkers in the room <cough> Microsoft</cough> One does not interact with a mobile device with a touchy-pokey screen the same way as one interacts with a traditional with-keyboard machine. ²

And, yeah, I’ve been caught out by the self-changing-options thing and it is seriously annoying. People that create such crap should be flipping burgers for a living.

Say what you want about RISC OS, but at least (since v3) it has remained pretty constant. The biggest UI controversy around here was rounded icons, not dumb crap like “let’s put the icon bar down the left side of the screen”…

¹ As if the core inconsistencies aren’t enough, many manufacturers paste on top their own UI with its own set of quirks. Right now my latest Xiaomi is prompting me to update MIUI to HyperOS (HyperOS? sounds like the sort of dumb name Elon Musk would come up with). This will be “just like MIUI, only different”. I really wish they’d leave the notification bar (and the quick buttons) the hell alone. It doesn’t need to be fiddled with endlessly.

² I have this in reverse – a little Android portable computer with a touchpad. It’s not powerful (it was free) but it’s okay, I can write stuff, browse, watch Netflix… but some things are painful because there’s no touchscreen and Android really really “barely copes” when you only have a mouse pointer. In fact, the most recent version of Google Play doesn’t scroll by mouse and it doesn’t respond to the cursor keys at all ³ which means it is now functionally useless (Tab hops to each UI gadget in turn but completely ignores the app list). Luckily the device is linked to my Google account so I can find apps on another device and tell Play to install them on the portable. This is modern mobile operating systems in 2024, folks.

³ This is Google’s brilliant coders at work. You know, the ones who passed the infamous difficult recruitment tests. Previously the use of cursor keys in Play had a 50-50 chance of crashing it. The fix? Just don’t support cursors any more. Brilliant!