Windows 8.1 Versus iOS 7 – Which is more annoying?

There’s a balance — not always delicate — between “what we’re used to” and “new and improved.” Cases in point: Microsoft’s Windows 8.1, and Apple’s iOS 7, which went to a lot of trouble to break some of the basics.

Windows 8 and 8.1, for example, have been rightly slammed for doing away with or hiding the START button. On Windows 8.1, that seems to extend to POWER OFF… on my new desktop, which I optimistically got with Win 8, after pushing it to Win 8.1, turning the machine OFF from the Metro screen is often challenging enough that I end up reaching for the power button on the computer.

Installing the free ClassicShell (classicshell.net), which provides a configurable START menu in Windows 8’s desktop view, solves this, for the desktop view. Trying to power down from the Metro view remains a PITA (pain in the fundament).

Similarly aggrevating: iOS 7’s default breaking of messaging — one of the uses that phone users rely on, to say the least.

Apparently, in giving (or foisting on) us iMessage, the ability to text to/from non-iOS users when pushing an iOS device (e.g., my iPhone 4) to 7 is silently disabled. The fix does, thankfully, turn out to be simple: in SETTINGS/GENERAL/RESET, do Reset Network Settings.

Discovering that people thought you were getting their texts when you weren’t — annoying at best. Guessing that it’s Apple’s fault — more annoying. Having to hunt down the fix by lucky keyword guessing — Level 3 PITA. (I ended up driving to the local Apple store, where one of the “support Geniuses” sorted things out in a minute or two.

It continues to be a sad, sorry statement on the computer/technology industry, and its biggest players, that these fails are considered par for the course.