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Comment by goosedragons | Hacker News Reader

What was the point of changing the Taskbar drastically in the first place? It's not something in Windows 10 I'd have identified as must fix unlike the mess that is search, control panel/settings etc. It got a whole bunch of regressions like the inability to move the Taskbar, grouping apps, having a clock on a another monitor (recently fixed), worse file operation indicators, etc. I just have no idea why they did it. It didn't actually IMPROVE anything it just looks slightly different. MS did a whole bunch of work to piss off people for as far as I can tell no noticeable gain.

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The point is, just like Google, Apple and others, they want control over users computers. They want a walled garden.

But how does this change help Microsoft build a walled garden? Doesn't it do exactly the opposite, if it encourages people to download software to workaround the new bug/limitation?

Power users are a minority. They’re going after the masses who unbox their computer and click the Internet/Facebook icon.

The success of smartphones with a much more curated experience suggests the market values ease of use over customization.

MBA's using macs telling their ux and ui "engineers" to make things better by copying Apple.

If they had copied Apple you'd be able to move the taskbar.

The point was to get rid of legacy code. Plain and simple. That’s what they have been trying to do with explorer as well. Not saying it has been going all hunky dory. Also, I believe this specific statement regarding taskbar is their current stand - and will likely change later - considering the new taskbar is lacking so many other mission critical features which obviously take precedence over the ones which only a tiny fraction of community “want”.

It was originally made for the fully sandboxed dual screen Surface Neo (and similar dual screen/foldable devices from other manufacturers). That project failed (because every semi-competent developer at Windows division has either quit or moved to Azure). So they slapped together Windows 11 by merging Windows 10 and the shell from that failed project.

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