"No redeeming merits"

[unixronin]

According to Joel Spolsky, Windows Vista "simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes".  And apparently, neither does the Vista box:

It's a hard plastic case, sealed in two different places by plastic stickies.  It represents a complete failure of industrial design; an utter F in the school of Donald Norman's Design of Everyday Things.  To be technical about it, it has no true affordances and actually has some false affordances: visual clues as to how to open it that turn out to be wrong.

This is the same box that Vista comes in.  Nick White over at Microsoft seems proud of the novel design, but from the comments on the web it seems I'm not the only one who couldn't figure out how to open it.  It seems like even rudimentary usability testing would have revealed the problem.  A box that many people can't figure out how to open without a Google search is an unusually pathetic failure of design.  As the line goes from Billy Madison: "I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Comments

[elegantelbow.livejournal.com]

I knew the Spolskys when I was about 8 years old.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I thought you pointed out that Vista was much better at draining laptop batteries.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Does that qualify as a redeeming merit? :)

[tabbifli.livejournal.com]

I think the Vista box is at least similar to the Office 2007 box. Can't say much about Vista, but I can say this about the Office one:

There's a red tag sticking up on the top of the box, looking like a "pull me to open" tag. Right next to it, on the top of the box, is the certificate of authenticity. Over the certificate is the big round sticky you have to cut through to actually get the box to open when you pull the tab.

Here's the catch: If you pull on the sticky even a little once you've cut it, you will start to tear the certificate, making it unreadable and showing the anti-theft treads woven in. You can't actually get the certificate *off* and move it to a more reasonable location (like, say, the back of the installation manual) - so you're stuck with the big-ass box in case you want to reinstall.

Yay paranoia.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think the Vista box is at least similar to the Office 2007 box.

It's not just similar, it's the same box.