Microsoft doesn't understand FPS
The PrimeTime standup with Casey Muratori and Trash dissects the backlash to Casey's tweet about Microsoft's "performance top of mind" Windows 11 run dialog rewrite (~94 ms median). Casey defends measuring UI latency in FPS as a way to reason about monitor-refresh budgets, and argues Microsoft has lost his trust forever.
Why FPS is a fine unit
- Casey converts ms latencies to frames in his head to check whether a UI hits monitor refresh — a habit going back to "racing the beam" on CRTs and Carmack-era input loops.
- Critics insisted FPS only counts as an average over many frames; Casey calls that pedantry — frames/second is just count over time and is the right yardstick for "did this happen on the next frame?"
What's actually wrong with the run dialog
- The previous run dialog was reportedly 104 ms, the new one ~94 ms — i.e. they shipped a rewrite that didn't make it slower and bragged about it. Casey's old Windows 10 box renders the dialog in ~2 frames (~33 ms) on capture, so MS's telemetry numbers smell wrong.
- Phil reimplemented a dialog from scratch at ~20 ms; objections (no plugins, not the same machines) are exactly the cope Casey predicts.
Loading philosophy
- Frequency × cost: optimize the operation users repeat. Load front, cheap interactions inside.
- Always paint a response on the next frame; cover network latency with progressive enhancement / low-detail placeholders.
"I'm never coming back"
- Casey switched off Windows for good. Update loops, ad-laden start menu, broken Explorer behaviors — institutional indifference, not any one bug. No remaster, no Windows 7 reissue would win him back; trust is gone. He'd sooner help fix Linux than return.
- Tangent: TJ couldn't install Minecraft on a Windows box because Windows Update and Microsoft Store deadlocked each other; wiped to Linux and ran Bedrock through an Android emulator faster.