Dear Microsoft, What the ...

For a company so prepared to employ the best and the brightest in the service of innovation, it's startling how much Microsoft relies upon aging code (work done a decade ago). Take, for example, Windows XP's dialog boxes, which strangely resemble those found on, say, Windows 3.1. As Anil Dash outlined in his article last week, the font dialog box in XP hasn't changed a bit since its inception.

Truly, compared with the great work being done on UIs like KDE, Gnome and Aqua, Microsoft's UI (both for XP and 2000) is about as useful as Dan's 73 Chevy Vega on a Sunday drive with aunt Rue. Perhaps Microsoft should spend a little less time on dancing paperclips and a little more time on refitting core UI elements -- and I'm not just talking about "candy-fying" buttons either.

And speaking of paperclips... [warning this mpeg, though hilarious, contains many, many explicatives.]