I recently starting using a Mac laptop again for the first time in almost 6 years, and the stark contrast between the two major OSes was made all the more clear to me. Little things about macOS I never noticed before my long stint with windows practically jumped out at me.
One such glaring oversight that seemed to be unforgivable is the fact that macOS doesn’t currently have a good built in window switcher. If you hold CMD (command) + Tab, you will get an application switcher, but it does not switch between active windows of the same program. This limitation is hard to form a habit around, as I found myself frequently attempted to CMD + Tab to another Firefox window, or another instance of a Finder window I had open. However, I found a nifty application that can bring that behavior to macOS, and I highly recommend you try it out. If you build the fast switching window shortcut into your daily routine, it will help maximize your productivity.
Drag it to your /Applications folder by clicking Finder > Applications on sidebar & drag+dropping into the window
Double click to launch
Click the Controls tab
Make sure shortcut 1 is highlighted
Change the shortcut to your desired keys by clicking the keys in the line “Hold [KEY] and press: [KEY] Select next window”
I highly recommend using CMD + Tab for the average user
Now, close the window, don’t quit it.
Test! You should be able to switch between applications and their windows with a nice, graphical interface upon pressing CMD + Tab. If you want to switch to the last used application then press CMD + Tab ONCE, meaning if you press CMD + Tab and release, you will continue to switch between your recently used applications. This is a great trick for copying down information, or quickly referencing another window while completing the current task.
When Windows 10 came out, it was supposed to usher in a new standard of operating under the Microsoft family. The start menu was brought all the way back in comparison with Windows 8.1, and they finally fixed a number of graphical issues users were having.
The rebrand to Windows 10 was for the numerous changes they’d done to the operating system, back then.
So what changes to instigate a new OS now?
A New Name Means Distance from Old Identity
Changing a name is a great way to distance a person, place, or thing from old actions or non applicable qualities that exist currently. It’s a way to signal change, that something is not the same as before.
Microsoft and other corporations use this strategy often to create positive attention for their brand or distance themselves from negative attention.
And Windows 10 has had a lot of negative attention:
A quick search will pull up almost unlimited articles complaining about Windows 10.
Really, that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Are the changes any good?
Well, no.
Unless you want a bunch of features you could already achieve in Windows 10 with more bloat, more integrated applications, less customization, and more restrictions on which hardware you can install it on.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could already do that in Windows 10?
Oh wait. You can.
This is what my desktop looks like currently on 21H1. I also have a custom dark theme installed to properly theme some of the discrepancies out of the OS like the Task Manager, the dialogue options, and even Notepad.
Using TaskbarX, SecureUXTheme, and a few other dependencies, you can already create what I believe to be a better look than what Windows 11 delivers out of the box.
Changing UX Design
Notice that the start button is on the bottom left in the image above. Now look at a picture of the new Windows 11 taskbar:
The start button has moved to the center with the other icons.
THIS IS BAD UX DESIGN.
Why?
Because when a button is on an edge that you can move your mouse against, it has an infinite width. If you drag your mouse against the left edge of your (leftmost) monitor, it cannot move outside the screen and thus any button on the edge of the screen would be easier to quickly whip the mouse over and click.
In the same way, when a button is in a corner such as the start button was in most previous versions of Windows, it is much easier to drag your mouse to the corner quickly without aiming at all, as two sides have infinite width. This makes it extremely efficient to locate the start button, no matter the cursor location.
However, by moving the start button to the center of the taskbar, Microsoft eliminates that smart UX choice they made all those years ago.
Perhaps Microsoft will realize this and provide an option to restore the default alignment in a later update. As of 8/2/2021, this is not possible.
The main concern for me as Microsoft continually whips around GUI updates is… how has Windows fundamentally changed since the last big update? And how are they fixing the small issues that continue to plague normal operations throughout the working day? Well, the answers to both of those questions are pretty disappointing.
A) It hasn’t changed that much, so don’t expect to notice much difference
B) They haven’t fixed that much, so don’t expect to notice much difference
And that’s where we are. Another graphical change to an OS in an era where to this day, on the latest Windows build, you can open command prompt and hold F11 down to see the old Windows 7 UI underneath for a split second as the GUI is overwritten with the new theme.
Split second after you hit F11 to minimize the CMD prompt window out of fullscreen.
Progress Is Not Bad
But there has to be progress. Windows 11 is completely unnecessary for what they are bringing to the table in the new versions. In a perfect world, maybe Windows 10 would have been rebranded to “Windows” with thematic naming to keep versions clear, saved the sweeping UI upgrades until AFTER THEY’VE FINISHED THE EXISTING DARK THEME FOR THEIR CURRENT OS, and maybe don’t make yet another “Settings” app before the old Control Panel is even removed.
I’ll say it again, I would love for Microsoft to be innovating here, but where is it? What can be achieved on Windows 11 that can’t already be accomplished on existing hardware and software?
“Windows 11 has all the power and security of Windows 10 with a redesigned and refreshed look. It also comes with new tools, sounds, and apps. Every detail has been considered. All of it comes together to bring you a refreshing experience on your PC.”
I suppose nothing. It’s not like I would consider whatever Microsoft is shipping with their OS to be essential apps, probably just a new version of candy crush 😉.
At the very least, Microsoft says they will still support Windows 10 for 4 more years, until 2025. Maybe by that time, Windows Infinity will have hit shelves and I can skip 11.
Honestly, just please make one settings app and I’ll be happy. 🙏
EDIT: As of 3/20/2022, Searchifier does not work anymore due to Microsoft blocking it. The post and download links will stay up for now, but they could be removed at any point. At some point in the future if a workaround is found this post will be updated.
Something changed between Windows 11 builds 22483 and 22494 (both Windows Insider Preview builds.) The build changelog makes a few mentions of changes to the protocol and file associations/default apps system. However, it omitted the headline news: You can no longer bypass Microsoft Edge [protocol links].
Searchifier works by handling the request send by your start menu to Edge and translating that to a link your other browser can handle. Windows 10’s latest update breaks this functionality by preventing automatically updating your default link handler at all.
No one likes malware, but a particularly malicious type is called Ransomware, and it specifically preys on people’s data.
Ransomware essentially encrypts the entire user’s computer or specific files until a sum of money is paid to the attacker. While there is no guarantee the attacker will make the files or computer available again, it seems to be in their best interest to return access to the computer, otherwise no one else would pay once word got around.
A particularly nasty type of new ransomware has just been discovered, and it utilizes a surprising attack vector: virtual machines.
In a new report by Sophos, the operators of the Ragnar Locker are using another novel method to avoid being detected when encrypting files.
They are now deploying VirtualBox Windows XP virtual machines to execute the ransomware and encrypt files so that they are not detected by security software running on the host.
This attack is started by first creating a tool folder that includes VirtualBox, a mini Windows XP virtual disk called micro.vdi, and various executables and scripts to prep the system.
As the security software running on the victim’s host will not detect the ransomware executable or activity on the virtual machine, it will happily keep running without detecting that the victim’s files are now being encrypted.
Interestingly, Windows 10’s “Controlled Folder Access” may prevent this attack, as it prevents any unauthorized changes by applications without a password.
This is especially problematic for government organizations, business, and hospitals. In fact, one of their more recent attacks was on an energy company EDP (https://www.edp.com/en), where the attackers stole more than 10 TB of files and received a ransom of over 10 million dollars.
This attack illustrates how security software with behavioral monitoring is becoming more important to stem the tide of ransomware infections.
It’s more important than ever to implement safe browsing habits, and common sense when executing unknown files, as once the attacker is in your system, it’s game over.
Recently I wanted to make a simple multiplayer game in Unity, but I didn’t want to use their terribly made UNET, as even though it’s barely a few years old, it’s already deprecated. I also didn’t want to go with a third party like Photon Networking, because I don’t want to pay for CCU (Concurrent User) usage, server costs, and other misc fees.
No, what I wanted was a solution such as Minecraft implements, where you directly connect to a server and it’s served through peer-to-peer networking, with one player being a server. The solution? A small library called LiteNetLib. This library allows you to build multiplayer games in .NET (C#), including Unity, with no limitations on usage, including player count. It was exactly what I needed.
The documentation is slightly sparse but it wasn’t rocket science to get a small example up and running, and the developer seems pretty open to questions. There’s also a small sample included so you can see what it entails.
However, there is at least a prompt to install it.
One of the things iOS has always lacked is the ability to install custom fonts. Apple has delayed it, stating security concerns. Proving Apple’s point, Google-owned Crashlytics is abusing the feature to track users by installing a font with a custom identifier embedded. Because fonts are installed system-wide in order to be used across multiple apps, it could be possible for any app to use Crashlytics’s font to uniquely identify users, and piggy-back off the tracking without doing any workthemselves.
This sets up a host of security and privacy concerns and problems. The basic fact remains that something as innocuous as a font should not be used for fingerprinting users, because most consumers will not know a font should/could be used for that purpose.
This is really old. I will release another tutorial updating this eventually. Follow my blog to get an update when that happens. Thanks!
While this sounds advanced (and it can be), it’s not that hard to set up a very basic setup where a custom application runs in the background in C# by using the built in speech recognition libraries in Windows 10.
Taking this idea further, I personally have a “Jarvis” that runs on my computer, automating basically all of my common actions, including launching games, music, sleeping my computer, adjusting the volume, minimizing windows, controlling the lights, and (best of all), sending emails and messages. I recommend using an external API for speech recognition if you’re serious about building something similar, as Microsoft’s sucks. You can build your own, or attempt to use something like Google’s API.
Anyway, here’s some simple C# code that should get some ideas flowing.
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