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> although some may prefer XP in classic mode

XP was IMO the inflection point, where Windows started to get worse faster than it got better. And close to my heart, Windows XP was the first version of Windows that was too big to fit on my trusty Compaq Presario 1210 and its whopping 1.4GB hard drive.

If Microsoft had "stopped" at Windows 2000 (like it has ostensibly "stopped" at Windows 10), and had focused on refining that piece of near-perfection, I'd probably still be a Windows user today, and happily so. My dissatisfaction with Windows - starting with XP/2003, but especially every version after - was the big reason why I looked into alternatives like Linux.

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> If Microsoft had "stopped" at Windows 2000 (like it has ostensibly "stopped" at Windows 10), and had focused on refining that piece of near-perfection

I for one, wished for the same thing.

Alas, once Apple came out with its shiny Aqua UI (which I must say was beautify in a totally different way), Microsoft was too insecure not to try and match that. They failed miserably in Windows XP, which felt rushed, forced, and contrived. But it certainly looked more colorful.

> Alas, once Apple came out with its shiny Aqua UI

Which is another thing that I can't stand: "Apple did something, so now we have to do it, too". Apple changed some UI element? Guess what everyone's gonna copy. Apple ditched the headphone jack? Guess what everyone's gonna copy.

You'd think that more companies would figure out that product differentiation is what makes them, you know, actually relevant amidst competition.

I can't stand it either. But I think I'm beginning to understand it.

It seems that's the way it works for competition in the consumer market. Consumers respond to the coolness factor in a major way. Microsoft probably felt that they had to try to keep up.

As near perfect as Windows 2000 was, compared to Aqua it was also perfectly ...boring.

Come to think of it, XP wasn't even a bad start given the less than two years it had in development. The real tragedy is that Microsoft couldn't do any better for the next two decades. Windows 7 was worse, 8 even worse, 10? hopeless.

Maybe it's time Microsoft throw in the towel, admit that they have no taste[0], and go back to the Windows 2000 look. They lucked into it somehow, and it still holds up better than anything else they have tried.

One can always hope.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/news/steve-jobs-our-favourite-quotes/

The control panel was simple and clean in classic Windows, in Windows XP it's a maze with big icons and hypertext links, hopefully the classic view was still there.

Yep. Switching back to that classic view is the first thing I do on any Windows machine I touch. I've given it plenty of honest tries and in all of 5 minutes I'm fed up with it. So much easier to find things when they're, you know, actually visible and not hidden behind multiple different screens.

Discoverability in general seems to be a long-forgotten virtue of UI/UX design. Everything insists on hiding everything now. Phones do it, websites do it, macOS is increasingly doing it, Windows is increasingly doing it, Linux desktop environments are increasingly doing it (though thankfully there are a lot of holdouts)...

The "cluttered" UI is long overdue for a comeback.

I dual-booted 2000 and XP for a time because 2000 was simply superior for meaningful work, while XP was good for gaming. And it looked like a toy, too.

That was just the default theme. You could make it look exactly like Windows 2000 by switching the classic theme.

I'm aware, but many of the settings interfaces and system UIs were nerfed.

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