This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Scoble reports that Longhorn will be easier Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Second, Windows is too hard to use. I actually think all computers are probably too hard to use, but I never worked product support for any other ones. Just doing simple things is hard because there is too much noise. Because Windows is a multipurpose operating system (as opposed to something like the XBox or your VCR) there are hundreds of options and checkboxes etc. Happily, in our work on Longhorn I know that we are working hard to make this easier - but this experience really brought this home.

Why does that worry me? Because everytime someone tells me that they are going to make the OS easier to use, I think of various easy to use applications I'm familiar with - like the video editing atrocity that my wife has been trying to work with. That software tries to 'help' you by managing its own files and managing its own file names - and by not exposing you to the file system. Maybe Longhorn won't do any of that, but every time I hear someone tell me how easy they are going to make things, I wonder just how stupid the end result will be...