How we really designed the look and feel of Windows 7
windowsteamblog.com
windowsteamblog.com
"I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." -- Linus Torvalds
One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it's very graphical and easy to use. What we've tried to do with Windows 7 whether it's traditional format or in a touch format is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We've significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it's built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.
Interviewer: So you've taken the style of the Mac platform and built it on the more solid foundations of Vista?
We've taken everything that's good about Vista, along with the core infrastructure of the operating system, and we've made it faster and slimmed down the code to make it more effective.
We've also tried to listen to what customers want in terms of a much slicker user interface and the ability to engage with it far more intuitively. That's the product that we're delivering.
You would think that Redmond "talking to the press 101" would cover stuff like this.
They were extremely late in releasing it to the public, so it looks like they copied other people, but from what I remember, they started working on it before everyone else did.
1) AP - Discussion on the victory (Office Ribbon) that led to Julie Larson-Green being made head of UI Experience
2) WSJ - Fact-less story about how Windows 7 is fixing the failings of Vista. No discussion about UI-inspiration. The closest was a hint to "quieting the system" that is directly addressing the UAC-faults that everyone griped about with Vista.
3) Fast Company - An overview of features that is devoid of anything but marketing information
The only thing 'useful' in this blog post was a link to the Windows 7 Design Blog. And in there, it describes how they highlighted items to improve, Except there's no reasoning behind why they thought these items were necessary, and the requirements they did identify seem to lead directly to their final solution... an indicator that the requirement was actually thought of after the solution.
Debunking, this is not. It's a collection of irrelevant posts and a link to an encyclopedia. It does not address the point it attempts to make and is frankly, a waste of time to read.
As for my issues with Windows 7, removing the email client, requiring users to sign up with Windows Live just to use their Windows Live Mail address book (when the Windows Address Book is perfectly fine), and making interface changes that require more clicks to accomplish the same tasks are my reasons for not caring for the changes... not some incremental innovations that appear similar to other operating systems if those other operating systems have good interfaces.