People give Windows a hard time. It has a lot going for it, although “polished UI” has never been a particularly fitting bullet point for the operating system’s apps. I’m not sure why Windows developers have had such a hard time with UI… I thought WPF might change the landscape a bit, but it hasn’t done much. Hopefully the new UI changes in Windows 8 (Metro), in addition to the inclusion of a Windows 8 App Store (finally!), might get some Windows developers to design prettier applications… Time will tell.

I have BreakTime on my Mac, but I’m working on my Windows PC for my day job quite a bit, and I wanted something similar for Windows. I was appalled by the selections.

First, let me show you 3 break timer apps from the Mac App Store:

Breaktime

Break Timer

Breaktify

Now for the Windows contenders…

Scirocco Take a Break

Break Reminder

Workrave

The Windows apps are so ugly that I refuse to use them. They might be just as feature-rich as the Mac apps, but I just can’t look at that all day.