The Luna theme was called fisher price, not plastic, in the complaints - Got confused by KDE I guess. I presume it tried to make computers more playfull and less work. But people felt like Microsoft treated them like toddlers. Not everybody realized it could be disabled.
DRM. Can't even find anything relevant anymore. XP was the first MS consumer OS to implement and require it. There was also the required activation, and the digital signing of system components.
All of these represent a deep change of how Microsoft viewed their customers. Before, the user was allowed to do with his computer what he or she wanted, even if the machine got wrecked in the process. Users were assumed to be responsible agents, and protection against malware or legal usage was their responsibilty.
Starting with XP, Microsoft decided it knew better than the user, and needed to limit user activities with cryptographic measures. The PC should protect microsoft, content owners and end users against the incompetency or malice of the owner, even against their wishes. There were sometimes good reasons, e.g. theming allowed injection of malware into anything. But the final decision of what was allowed or not was from now on made by microsoft, not the owner.
> "Third party themes, a feature loved by win98 users, are forbidden by microsoft in XP. [...] But the final decision of what was allowed or not was from now on made by microsoft, not the owner."
cough Remember when Win98 had Active Desktop where the desktop and all the Explorer folder views were DHTML and you could style them and write custom pages for them? And then the competition went running to the government to force Microsoft to take their HTML rendering engine out of Windows?
I am not advocating that every person is a sysadmin, only that the final decision to be or not be a sysadmin should be taken the computer owner.
Windows 98 and XP still had a lot of low-hanging fruit in this case. Auto patching, firewall, virus scanning, system integrity are welcome things, and it is good that they are enabled by default. In fact, application boundaries are still too porous and it should be perfectly possible to install and delete an application without it rewriting random parts of the OS.
But the user should be allowed to influence, grant exceptions, and even disable all of it.
Compare it with buying a random electrical appliance. The law requires basic safety and compatibility. People are not required to be electrical engineers to buy a lightbulb, even if the device is capable of burning down your and your neighbour's house. The process of replacing the bulb is consumer friendly enough and almost any human can do it. There are fuses for when things go wrong. I'd like to see the same thing apply for computers.
The alternative, what we do today, is trusting a third party. This generally starts out reasonably well, and I presume Microsoft had good intentions with the WinXP mentality change. Long term however, this delegation causes a concentration of power that will corrupt that third party, causing much bigger damage than the damage done by the unresponsible individuals. Microsoft is becoming a good example of this.
Notice how in the past, the nobles pleaded how normal people were not capable of governing a country, and were much better off trusting people with enough time and education to do things right. Same story for women's rights. In fact, this was probably at least partially correct at the time it was said, in both cases. Even so, most blood in history books follows the arrogance of the powerfull when nothing keeps them in check. We are all a lot better off now people vote and take part in politics. Woman successfully live their lives without requiring a male. It is said that most homeless today have better access to food, housing, sanitation, ... than the sun king of France, so even the nobles gained a lot.
There is a price to pay: Everyone needs a basic understanding of the thing at hand, and some people will cause trouble by not having it. So we tolerate the flat earth Trump voter male or female, and we tolerate the idiot getting malware by sheer incompetence. They will tire us with their stupidity, bother us with extra work, cause all kinds of stupid risks. Smile when it happens, as the alternative is worse.
We allow people to have children and do their own finances, both requiring a lot more education and having a lot more life impact than the computer ever has. Most of us deal fine enough.
>We allow people to have children and do their own finances, both requiring a lot more education
How finances require more edu than one of the most advanced machines that constantly change the world, for decades?
Finances for 99% of ppl may be just: be careful with spending, prepare for bigger spendings and maybe tax filling? Thats it? You can even invest money into the stocks with just 15min tutorial.
Meanwhile computers from 0 to just web browser, email, etc is way more.
>Compare it with buying a random electrical appliance. The law requires basic safety and compatibility. People are not required to be electrical engineers to buy a lightbulb, even if the device is capable of burning down your and your neighbour's house. The process of replacing the bulb is consumer friendly enough and almost any human can do it. There are fuses for when things go wrong. I'd like to see the same thing apply for computers.
Light bulb??
Compare OSes with similarly complex stuff like cars.
They are definitely not user friendly and require a lot of training to get shit done
Who? "Nobody" used Vista except eg schools.
Same with 8
Maybe for me it feels diffetent maybe thats country difference, but the windows migration felt like: xp 7 10 ... 12?
People were using xp and 7 as long as they could
>In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default theme
No idea what you are talking about, what do you mean?