If you'd rather buy me the latest Call of Duty every year to free me from the oh-so-miserable shackles of "tapping some buttons on my phone while I'm on the shitter" and "playing Gamepass games," you are more than welcome to.

I personally HATE the new Spotify look and function

The tech behind VR is pretty solid, and there is a ton of VR content available. It's expensive and a niche thing right now, but it's not bullshit or vaporware.

Driven by the recent media blitz, most people are already over it, won’t last

Tim's Newton from Steve's stubbornness.

They could work on their TV apps that is hot garbage.

I'm running 10 and don't see a good reason to switch yet. I'm also running OpenShell because the Start Menu since about 8 or so is just hideous. The real settings are still in the control panel, not the "Settings", the layout of stock 10 Start Menu is just so awful. And there's ads! Ads in your operating system UI.

Assuming they made a blind change. This design must have gone through a humongous validation phase to assess customer reactions

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VR in the 1990s lasted what, two years? Total $ investment in the hundreds of millions at best? No large corporation releasing headsets?

That's wildly different to today. It is still a niche platform for sure, but it's still here and hasn't gone in year three, and has tens of billions of dollars in investment across many large corporations, with a lot of advancements that are being made.

As for AR, it's never been tried before as a consumer product, so there was no previous attempt.

Stop this. VR/AR isn't going to do any better this time around. I know, back in 2011 you were all convinced that VR, Bitcoin, solar freakin' roadways, Elon Musk, and Ron Paul were going to save the world, but that was wrong. On every count. VR isn't going to happen. Maybe when the next hype cycle comes around in 20 years, or maybe the one after that. For now it's a toy.

Bing's top searched term?

"download chrome".

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>The difference between Apple and Microsoft in this particular area is that Apple has been doing a fantastic job at integration while Microsoft is leagues behind.

What integration? Microsoft treats Windows as both desktop and a tablet OS. Their adopted mobile platform is Android which integrates excellently with Windows if you own their or Samsung's phone

I thought it wasn’t live?

Tbh I only use it for Microsoft Rewards.

One hundred million down and a billion to go.

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a lazy programmer wouldn't want to redesign a functional app as now they have to do more work and fix broken tests.

designers implement ui then they're built

Everybody is missing an obvious cause for the UI “sameness”: UI/UX is a discipline that optimizes for certain features, typically user engagement and ease of use. Once the optimal patterns are found, they will be implemented across the board.

For comparison, every nation on the planet has very, very similar traffic laws and signage/symbology. The optimal way to control traffic has been found, so everybody uses it. Imagine if every country had their own unique signage, road markings, right of way rules, etc. You would have to study and relearn everything every time you drove somewhere new.

Furthermore, nobody can explain why having UI “sameness” is a problem at all. Why should UI theory be re-invented from scratch for every app and website? Isn’t it better for them all to use a common visual language so users can jump into them intuitively and focus on getting tasks done rather than learning thousands of different UIs?

I think that's a fair and accurate description of the actual motivations.

It really does seem like a short sighted attempt to capitalize on the success of other mediums at the expense of the actual value their service and app provides.

Not a subscription, actually, but a $5 lifetime license: https://www.startallback.com/

Nope, it's that they seek entertainment value elsewhere off-Spotify.