Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Chris Walker — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:57:32 GMT

Solitaire is just lucky. It has no reason to be embedded in other documents via OLE for example. A "copy install" would almost work as long as the PATH variable sees it. The whole concept of an application just organicly grew. Think of the problem of uninstalls of one app where it shares a DLL with other apps (Solitaire has this problem with cards.dll) How about on the fly updates without reboots or terminating the app. Solitaire keeps track of high scores (if memory serves me -- the other games in-box tend to) by changing the registry. Copy install will NOT copy these over.

Kind of a mess. Not the decent people haven't tried to fix it over the years. Lots of people.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Prashant — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:50:15 GMT

Quite impressive!!! the thought process is nice and can bring revolutions in computing world. But my friend we need to understand that the concept of file cabinet has been around for ages and as a concept has matured enough to be in the genome of the human. Whereas software are relatively too young to behave as perfectly expected.

It’s not just about the cabinet........ we end up comparing a lot of stuff and the ease that they have brought with software's. That’s not correct. If you compare 1970's when a UI used to be an alien concept and processing speed of KB's used to be great. Comparing that we have been continuously growing and I say that this kid is growing relatively fast.

Probably some 200 yrs down the line when we are not there the software would become simply a file cabinet.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

TheOtherMe — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:22:56 GMT

App-V seems to be the way things are going and then its just one folder you have to move.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Alun Jones — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:08:11 GMT

Solitaire's undo function fails to let you undo a losing move.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Matt — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:10:42 GMT

@ Susan

I suspect he is thinking it would be there as it was in XP and, I presume, Vista. Since the old classic theme has lower system resource overhead, The inclusion would seem obvious. Apparently presumptions are a bad thing.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Lars — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:49:33 GMT

I cannot even begin to tell you how powerfully this resonates for me as a consumer, power-user, network admin, and now project manager.

We don't even have a clean model for Joe home user to upgrade from one version to another of Windows. Migration sort of works for some (Microsoft) apps. Don't get me started on license transfers -- which can transfer, which cannot. Which go with the machine, which go with the user, which have to be re-purchased.

This is a complete and utter nightmare we have created for our consumers.

There are four things our consumers need: speed, simplicity, consistency and reliability.

If you have a dialog box with an error message, it better not say "Unexpected error. Did you find this message useful?" -- that dialog box has an extremely negative hardware lifecycle impact (picture fist in screen).

Thanks very much for the complete breath of fresh air and common sense.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Magnus — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:26:41 GMT

Thinking differently? Are you contemplating traversing to the Other Side - getting a Mac?

Your blog post almost exactly mimics my thought process when I went Mac a few years ago.

I am a longtime Windows consultant that, for my own computing uses completely switched to Mac. I also gave my relatives and friends an ultimatum: no more support unless you also "switch". Me and my relatives have never looked back.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Rosyna — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:03:54 GMT

Barrett, I believe that ability has been removed as of Office 2008 (but was there for 2004). I think it was due to the "rush" to switch from CodeWarrior to Xcode without fully understanding dyld.

As for the iTunes thing, do you mean the iTunes music folder? You can move (copy and delete) it to another volume just fine. iTunes should ask you to choose library when it next launches, in which case you just point it to the new folder.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Susan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:32:08 GMT

Unless there's something in the RTM I'm not aware of... question to Dale... what classic menu bar in Win7?

As far as I know, there is no such beast and any blog posts that you find are hacking various things up

windows7forums.com/.../1358-classic-start-menu.html

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Matthew Mucker — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:51:20 GMT

Oh, if only we could get this blog post on the required reading list for MSFT devs....

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

George Pribeag — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:07:16 GMT

I only home that the technology improvement will enable the computers to mimic better the tangible world thus to cater to our monkey brains.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Barrett — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:02:38 GMT

I do believe dragging the Office "folder" from computer to computer works in OS X (just like pretty much every appliation) :P

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Dale — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:23:44 GMT

Now Jesper, if we didn't have change, we wouldn't have a shiny new operating system to use. And Microsoft wouldn't have anything to sell.

Having said that, if the Windows 7 GUI erks you so much, switch it to the Windows Classic theme.

That's what we'll probably do for customers we deploy 7 to.

re: Warning: The software you are installing does not match your mental model

Sharon Myers — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:11:54 GMT

When I got to the part where your Dad wanted to just grab the folder and drag it over, I immediately flashed back to my Mac LC I had in 1991.

Sorry ... I know that was some salt in the wound but it is the truth ... MacWorld and all. I commiserate.