windows ui

A short demo showing slow 2D drawing in the Windows 7 GUI compared with XP. It attributes the slowdown to the display driver model lacking hardware accelerated GDI.

Accursed Farms' hour-plus critique of the modern desktop GUI. It argues that current interfaces are a regression from older designs such as Windows 7 and proposes principles for better ones.

The Browser Company's CTO explains how the team is building the Arc browser for Windows using Swift. It covers the de-risking work and why they believe it is feasible.

An animated, profane rant critiquing Windows 8, especially its touch-first interface on desktop PCs. The author draws on a background in tech journalism to lay out the UX problems.

A 74-minute video of upgrading Windows 1.0 through every release up to Windows 8 on a real netbook rather than in a virtual machine.

Chris Pirillo has his father try Windows 8 for the first time to see how ordinary users cope with the new interface.

Bill Atkinson shows and explains his binder of Polaroids taken during Lisa development, documenting how its graphical interface evolved. Recorded at the Computer History Museum.

A one-minute 1986 promo of Microsoft Windows 1.0 presented by Steve Ballmer, with a hyperbolic price pitch ending in the tag line about Nebraska.

Tolgahan Cogulu demonstrates a fixed-fret microtonal guitar, playing music that uses notes between the usual twelve semitones. The channel is dedicated to his microtonal guitar designs.

NCommander investigates why Space Cadet Pinball disappeared from Windows Vista, building on Raymond Chen's explanation about 64-bit incompatibility. He tests it on 64-bit Windows including Itanium and walks through the debugging.

Day 1 of Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero, a live-coded game built from scratch in C on Windows. It reviews C on Windows, sets up a minimal build system and WinMain entry point, and shows a first MessageBox.

A Microsoft Build 2019 session in which the WSL team explains the new WSL 2 architecture, which runs a real Linux kernel alongside Windows on a hypervisor. It covers faster file performance, Linux file access from Windows and better application support.

Linus Tech Tips explains how Windows Modern Standby causes laptops to drain battery while asleep, arguing it makes Windows laptops hard to recommend compared to MacBooks.

Tom Scott explains why Windows does not let you name a file CON, tracing the reserved device names back to backwards compatibility with DOS.

Enderman gets Windows 11 running on a Pentium 4 system with a Radeon HD 5870 and 8 GB of DDR2. It explores how an unsupported, ancient CPU can be made to work by using the rare last Pentium 4 variant and a registry flag.

Microsoft engineers Chiara Mooney and Shiven Mian describe the journey and challenges of building and consuming React Native for Windows inside Microsoft. It was given at Chain React 2023.

A concept video from 2003 showing an early vision of Windows Longhorn's interface, before it shipped as Vista.

A short clip of Bill Gates demonstrating Visual Basic in 1991, showing drag-and-drop building of a Windows GUI.

A short video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.

Microsoft's short announcement video for the new Windows Terminal, a modern terminal app for Command Prompt, PowerShell and WSL. It is a stylized trailer for the unreleased project.

Guitarist Jim Lill methodically tests what in an electric guitar affects its tone, swapping parts on a partscaster and even trying a 2x4 body. He finds that wood and construction matter far less than people assume.

A DIY demonstration of a fan-and-screen mosquito trap that uses carbonated water as a CO2 attractant. The creator reports catching about 8,000 mosquitoes in two nights.

Peter Schiff, during his 2010 Senate campaign, argues that government loan programs and subsidies push college tuition up.

Dave Plummer, a retired Microsoft engineer who wrote Task Manager, responds to the claim that Windows sucks. He describes how he would fix common annoyances, in what he calls a love letter to Windows wrapped in a rant.

Raph Levien presents his new Rust GUI framework, built on data-oriented design and ideas from entity component systems, for the Xi editor. He weighs the approach against alternatives and discusses pros and cons.

A Berkeley Lab Distinguished Lecturer talk on building science, with an expert covering control layers, insulation and vapour barrier placement, and how buildings fail. The delivery is humorous.

Mark Rober builds a hot tub filled with sand fluidized by air blown from below, so that the sand behaves like a liquid. He explains how fluidized beds work and shows people swimming in them.

An episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj on the cruise industry. It looks at worker exploitation, safety shortcuts, and how cruise lines sweep crime at sea under the rug.

Google engineers describe Google's internal build system, a unified, language-agnostic system used across the company. It was presented as a 2012 NYC tech talk.

Steve Mould shows Spintronics, a set of mechanical components such as resistors, capacitors and transistors linked by chains, that give an intuitive feel for how electrical circuits work.

A three-minute demo of a series circuit with three LEDs that behaves in a surprising way, posed as a question of how it works.

A former Microsoft SDET with 15 years on Windows gives his view on why Windows 10 updates keep shipping with bugs. He points to changes in how the company tests its software.

Daniel Dunbar of Apple presents llbuild, a framework for building build systems, at the 2016 LLVM Developers' Meeting. He argues that the traditional way C compilers integrate with build systems limits compile speed, and proposes a new architecture.

Eric Parker connects a fresh Windows XP machine to the internet in 2024 to see how quickly it gets infected with malware. He documents the dangers of running an unpatched legacy OS online.

A short National Geographic piece showing a laser system that tracks and kills mosquitoes, filmed in slow motion, as part of anti-malaria efforts. It comes from Intellectual Ventures' 2010 work.

TheRasteri upgrades a single PC through every Windows version, from early releases through Windows 10, testing that old software keeps running. It is an updated version of the Chain of Fools experiment.

World Builder is a short film by Bruce Branit in which a man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves.

Former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez reviews spy scenes from film and TV and explains how realistic they are, including disguise techniques and masks.

A spoof commercial by the Groen Brothers for a Star Wars-style laser defense system against mosquitoes.

A REACT episode where teenagers try Windows 95 for the first time and react to the retro interface and technology.