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Microsoft Shows Off Radical New UI, Could Be Used In Windows 8
autospa writes "In a three and a half minute video, Microsoft may have shown the world what it has in store for the eagerly awaited Windows 8. In the video Microsoft showed a radically different interface from past versions of Windows — even Windows 7. Running on Surface 2, the touch-screen successor to the original Microsoft Surface, the device accepts input from a Windows Phone 7 handset (HTC HD7). Gone are the icons that drive Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems of past and present. In their place are 'bubbles' that interact with files and post streaming information off the internet."
And I thought Office 2010 was hard to use. The new Excel is a nightmare to learn well. And now, "bubbles"?
The UI is interesting on its own. You don't need to spice it up with arbitrary easily falsifiable BS like "it'll be in Windows 8" to make it interesting.
by whom?
"eagerly awaited Windows 8" - say what ? :)
next version of grub might be more eagerly awaited than windows 8 or whatever.
ms hired a pr company to build up some buzz ?
Rich
The fundamental problem I see with that UI, at least from the article, is that it is gadget based. Fine for my phone. Even fine for Surface, which isn't targeted at the home. But 98% of what I do on my computer wouldn't have a useful gadget sibling in any way shape or form. Not to mention, the utter waste of screen real-estate. To be fair, I've seen people assume that such concepts are new Windows UIs for years. It hasn't been true yet...
I read TFA, I watched TFV, and I still can't connect the summary to anything of substance.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This has got to be the dumbest thing ever. Microsoft is just being different for the sake of getting attention, because they know they are quickly becoming irrelevant.
Well, so long Microsoft, it was a good run, but you finally have reached the limit of what you can steal from others and the ideas you come up with on your own are pants-on-head retarded. Goodbye.
You know if you use these Linux and such OS, there is so much of cost retraining the employees in the new system. You stick to Microsoft, you can rest assured that all the training costs you have spent will be investments that pay dividend over a long time to come. That is why you should invest in microsoft and stay away from those platforms that keep changing their UI.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sponge Bob will love this.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means":
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/nokia-experiments-with-bubbles-interface-on-symbian-cell-phones-2011024/
different from a row of icons? Except maybe they're not well organized? I didn't see anything in the video I hadn't already seen a million times though. Is it just a slow news day?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I didn't see anything interesting. The promo-video was a waste of time. Someone could have said the same things 10 yrs ago.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Because the "bubbles" got about two seconds of attention. The rest was airy-fairy 'Minority Report'-style handwaving.
Bubble Screen of Death.
"Icons drive the Linux OS"? Really? I don't have any icons on my desktop (Fluxbox), and one can run Linux just fine without any sort of GUI.
MS are so risk averse that the likelihood of this UI showing up in Windows is as likely as them moving the Linux kernel.
They won't do anything drastic because they're in the pockets of their business customers: Who need everything pretty same-y to avoid retraining, software changes etc.
Well, it seems that GP just wants to have hundreds or thousands of tiny text files all with their own incompatible formats, like it is in Linux (mostly).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaWFivMjJG0&feature=player_embedded
Microsoft research does really cool things, but somehow the bureaucracy always kill them. I don't think it will be different this time.
Unless you noticed that similar approaches were already used in things like this (of course that their new minion will sue them, but still)
Don't you remember all the promises about Vista and all the fancy changes etc? Not even half of those made it and we're using Win7 now... I suppose it'll get cut at the last moment for Win9... Maybe it'll be in Win10 or Win11 provided M$ is still functioning :)
There's nothing here you haven't seen before. It's the usual Microsoft Surface things, drawing Fantasia-y colors by waving your hands and rotating 3D objects, which you've seen before. Add to that a lot of vagueness about how everything is going to change and a soundtrack that could easily have come from any HR video on sensitivity training or proper timecard procedure.
Maybe these features will be nifty when we get them. But this video is the worst kind of marketing speak.
I've pegged Steve Ballmer as being a similar type to the halfwit David Cameron. He can't see beyond his own closeness to big business and thinks talking your way through is everything. If this is anywhere near true, and I suspect something like that is, this is Microsoft's answer to the "Big Society". Think George W. Bush and "Compassionate Conservatism."
If things turn out the same and I have no reason to doubt they will the idea that software architecture, usability, and value to the customer has anything to do with it is blown out the door. It will be a lot of plausible flip-flopping waffle and a massive media campaign. People will buy it in their droves but it will eventually crash the company. We're entering the final stage of Microsoft's inevitable death.
If Steve Jobs is on the way out (and part of me hopes he is) then there's a possibility that Apple can get ahead of the curve and enter the marketplace to replace Microsoft. That means lower prices and accessibility. It means letting go and looking at providing products that incentivise the bottom of the market. It means getting back to their roots before they got greedy.
That's gobbledygook.
I don't see anything but speculation in TFA. Hell, if we are speculating, here's something that's better and a lot more believable to be Windows 8:
http://www.vimeo.com/13580196
This space for rent.
Sounds like it. If it's one thing I don't miss from the old 9x and Win3.x days is everything being stored in text files. Sure it was easy to find and edit something(with a basic text editor), even in DOS. It was an organizational nightmare if you wanted to do something else like reference something in another non-hived registry(I mean random text file).
The current registry system has it's faults, and hive registries can nuke the OS because of corruption really easily. But right now? Much easier to work with, at least until someone has a brain wave and comes up with a better system.
Om, nomnomnom...
and that is bad? when did you need to open a registry file on Word, Paint or another program that need to understand a single file format? Settings files are not documents, are not videos, are not pictures that must be of a known format because you feed them to different programs, yo give them to other people, settings file doesn 't. Writing all system settings in one .DAT file is technically wrong, it is a single point of failure for all your system
Some of us have to actually use computers to, you know, make a living. We don't want or need yet more fluffy widgets to keep us from getting our work done. For every improved driver in Windows 7, there were at least two annoyances that were added to the mix. Transparent overlays?... useless. God-awful search tool that doesn't even recognize a tilde (~) character?...even worse than useless. Completely arbitrary user interface when trying to copy files (probably depending on which serf wrote that piece of code), absolutely infuriating. Hey, Microsoft, how about you try making your OS better, rather than just putting more lipstick on the pig that is Vista.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
People, please watch that video. The article is wild speculation. I did not hear or see anything that ought to be how Windows 8 looks. Its just MS saying what they recently did with Surface and Kinect.
Those bubbles some speak about (which where in visibly only for seconds, not even showing how interaction would actually work) are not represented as being how Windows 8 would or could work.
Not that i appreciate the idea of such a big company thinking really hard to remove that hassle of having to use a mouse and even then perform verbose, repetitive actions that could be represented with a single voice command. I'd love that.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
This works, if EVERYTHING is streamline, the world isn't streamlined.
[.jpeg] [.jpg] [.jpe] [.jpg] [.gif] [.] []
The above where ALL extensions I found for jpeg images. Yes, the last one is empty and the gif? Just one of the many wrongly named ones. How do you deal with this uniformly? How do you write a super smooth UI that shows images if even determining what is an image is already that hard.
Link the weather to my airplane ticket? That only works if somehow the ticket data exposes location data in a way the weather plugin can understand AND if then the ticket plugin can understand the weather data. My airport is Eindhoven, my weather plugin only knows about Amsterdam (Schiphol is NEAR to it but NOT the same). So how does that work? Ah, only unified services work... nice lock-in you got going there then. This kind of stuff is a chain and chains are only as strong as the weakest link.
It is not like this kind of stuff hasn't been tried before, it is the intelligent home dream.
The dream where you put a carton of milk in your fridge and it tells a phone that it is getting old. My local supermarket has four brands of milk at least. That is ONE supermarket. If my carton I picked up at a new supermarket on the way doesn't register, the entire service is useless and I might well end up drinking spoiled milk trusting that my intelligent home would have warned me.
My flight can not be just delayed because of the weather at departure airport but also by weather enroute and arrival airport or indeed whatever area my plane is coming from in the first place. My ticket doesn't have route information or where the airplane is coming from, how can my PC check this info if even the airline company can't? And does any of this check the road conditions? How about public transport? Does it KNOW whether I will be driving, a friend, a cab or I will be going by train?
Another one, language and subtitle choices. this should be trivial as long as everyone and every coded uses ISO encoding and then agrees on how many letters. Should be trivial, it isn't. Nobody can ever agree on someone elses standard.
Oh, your services are ALL going to MS supplied? Better hand in that iPhone then, just give it to me, I will take it off your hands. GIVE IT... geez, you expect a Windows 8 experience to work out of the box with iOS? No? Then what is the point.
We can't even get MS to smoothly discover various makers MP3 players. They going to bother with any services that don't pay through the nose for it and share all their data?
There is a reason we don't have integrated services that could power such a UI. The world is filled with individuals who all like to do things their own way. See Google and its chrome window that doesn't work the same as every other window on Linux.
This kind of UI is limitted to the movies where god, the writer, knows exactly what is going to be needed to get done next.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The academic world worries about citations and plagiarism in their works but the commercial world never bothers or usually takes credit for others work as their own; the marketing departments go even further.
We (the community) should be pointing out and calling BS to this heavily marketing driven society that has created a world in which smart people and educational institutions lack their due respect as the true innovators and instead we are told to worship the mighty corporations; its no wonder so many Americans are anti-intellectual and pro-corporation -- they see new technologies like this Microsoft PR and think Microsoft "innovated" all that stuff when I didn't see anything there that they innovated other than perhaps the bubble thing which they didn't show much of (and I likely just missed some paper somebody did on the concept 10+ years ago.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
These are people who have obviously never heard of the KISS principle... Yet they will force these new user interfaces upon the world at a huge cost, to that world. As much as I dislike Apple's business practices, I have tremendous respect for their interface designers. As far as I'm concerned, MS failed that class.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
While MS have been mucking about with concepts, Apple have actually added real and useful features to their next OS upgrade.
Didn't it look like the guy was trying for that Steve Jobs look?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Like most of the other MS innovations of late, they seem to have a lot of very cool ideas, bit not really any great apps that utilize them.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
A bunch of IT and linux curmudgeons poo poo a UI redesign? Shocker!
Maybe, just maybe, MS would like to recapture some of interest of the recreational users rather than the sticking to the grudging loyalty of the corporate machine while Apple scores all the oohs and ahhs. What fools! They should just re-release XP every few years to save everyone the hassle of figuring out how the new alt-tab works.
God, you guys are boring.
Did you watch the video? I found the summary's weaknesses much more palatable than the ridiculously vague video in TFA, which was filled with corporate-speak, and showed off a bunch of interactivity projects without demonstrating how any of these would be used in real world applications, let alone how they would improve the way we currently interact with computers.
Yeah, it was radical and new in 2006, before the iPhone came out with a multitouch display.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sz8ExZndc&feature=player_embedded#at=61
Once again, MS is talking about how bleeding edge they are and showing off half a decade old tech.
While that may be radical and cutting edge for MS, it'd be hilarious if it weren't so sad.
But those you can make redundant. I like the way Mac OS X does it. The Unix-way with individual files for individual programs and the Mac-way with each individual file following a certain format (XML) which is well-documented. The Windows-way is to take all those individual files the old-Unix-way (each program using their own format), stuffing it into a singular file and making it utterly unreadable (using GUID's, allowing proprietary binary code and very deeply nested trees) then giving everyone, everywhere access to it. And then still applications (Office, Internet Explorer) make directories and files in hidden folders with settings, caches etc. so it's apparently not the best solution even for Microsoft themselves.
Ever tried to delete every trace of a program out of Windows? It's nearly impossible. In Linux or Mac you just go to /etc and ~/.program or ~/Library and do a find and delete.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Yeah, let's stay with one freaking file (though there may be 3 it only takes one) that when it becomes corrupt it takes everything down. A better system would be one that decentralizes this task and only affects one or a few programs (and not the OS). If you aren't aware of it, and it really makes your argument seem silly, is that every program writes tons of files to their folders. Some write them all over the place. To look at what there was (with .ini files) and what we have today (the registry) and you consider that programs can place hundreds if not thousands of files on your computer in various folders, one would have to admit that them putting their little .ini file into their folder isn't going to add much to the complexity. The registry is a poor solution that was never improved and it is a single point of failure on the whole system that causes more than its share of grief for users.
And, as far as how Linux accomplishes the same feat you appear to be clueless about the configuration files. I actually see no detriment to being able to show hidden files and to locate the ones that correspond to the program in question and to rename them in an effort to debug issues.
And, as far as incompatible formats go, why would my photo editor need to know the file format of my CD player program's configuration file? And since when do we not have total incompatibility, even in the Windows registry, amongst programs? Why would my photo editor need to know what's happening to the registry settings (or configuration file settings) of my CD player program? They don't know anything about each other nor do they need to know.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
This isn't entirely true. What's the OSX registry name? The Linux one? The Android one? The unix one?
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Dear Apple...
This is what you do when you release a new version. You don't just release one that looks pretty much the same as the previous 6 versions but with a different wallpaper.
Dear Ubuntu... Please take note of the above.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
You mean just like putting it all in a single directory ?
Ever tried to delete every trace of a program out of Windows? It's nearly impossible. In Linux or Mac you just go to /etc and ~/.program or ~/Library and do a find and delete.
Unless the program wants to hide, then it could hide itself anywhere. Now, some of that may be limited by permissions etc, but if, say, Autocad asks for root access so it can hide itself and you need Autocad enough to pay for it, you will give the access and it will be able to leave traces anywhere on the system.
So, for both OSs the only real way to delete every trace of a program is to monitor what it does.
MS changes each os release, people get confused and some people need retraining on it. I don't see the benefits in all their changes. It just confuses people.
Only 'flamers' flame!
This doesn't sound like a "radical new UI", more like re-thinking widgets, or just simply getting rid of the classic monolithic application and providing the user with a deluge of specific-task-oriented programs. It's just bringing apps that we know from mobile phones (i.e. specific software for specific functions) to the desktop. Which we already have, it's called "widgets," and apart from the weather one, nobody uses them anyway. We also have it on the browser, in the form of iGoogle and Yahoo's main page, and others. Will starting a new activity on your computer require you to sift through a ton of different titles, or to start selecting keywords to narrow down what you want to do? In Windows, you already have a search feature on the Start menu, but do you want to start using that for everything you do? Or will you use voice detection and start shouting out keywords? Good for a kiosk, but kinda lame for the desktop.
In the article, they mention: "Bubbles are auto-generated in various categories (personal, entertainment, gaming, etc.) and can also be created by a user." So that means they provide you with a bunch of default activities, and you can also create your own... but does that mean you have to start choosing what functionality you want and then specify the workflow to tie together that functionality? That sounds like too much work for the average user, and it's getting close to programming.
"Clicking on a bubble brings up a program or interaction item. For example clicking on a bubble for an upcoming flight will display alternate flight times with weather-based probability for delays. Users could use the interface to switch their flight, should the desire."
You could do that pretty easily on a web browser... Same with email, looking up news. Apart from some weird concept art, they're not really showing anything radically new or advantageous.
Twinstiq, game news
My mother is the farthest thing from computer literate that I am with her horse riding interests. While I could adapt to this interface grudgingly with all my computer experience she'd be blown out of the water trying to find anything or how to do anything. It was bad enough getting her from Windows XP to Windows 7.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
And, as far as incompatible formats go, why would my photo editor need to know the file format of my CD player program's configuration file?
No, but if the program has some settings that can only be altered in the config file or registry, I'd rather have compatible formats, that is, so I would not have to google every singe program to find out if the server IP is called "IPAddr" or "Server_IP" or "Server IP", whether to put "=", ":", " " or some other symbol between name and value and so on. Oh, and where the file is - is it C:\Program files\Program_name\program.ini (best on single user computers, so, my favorite), C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Program\Settings\Program.ini or C:\Windows\Program.ini.
Not ot mention the OS itself - on Linux, the various configuration files for system services are very different (some are text files in /etc, some are in /proc and some somewhere else), at least on Windows I can find the system settings a bit easier.
For small programs, the local (meaning in the same folder as the .exe) settings file may be better (so I can have the program on a floppy disk or a removable HDD and use it on any computer I want), but for big programs that distribute their files all over the system anyway and the OS itself, set it into the registry.
The link at the end of the video is to the Microsoft Research website, where they explain most of what you see in the video. The 'bubbles' talked about in TFS don't appear there though.
Excuse me? Finally screens that display text properly? Only on high end laptops and monitors but not on the vast majority of retail equipment with their HD formatting.
We sell used monitors (ex-lease) because they have decent vertical resolutions to use with text.
Try to get a decent laptop with screen real estate and you pay big bucks.
But I agree with taking away useful space by screen bloat. I get irritated every time I open the event viewer on Vista and 7 because the current version wastes so much blank space (not to mention the useless action pane).
home
This is wildly unexciting. Want to build excitement about an OS, Microsoft? In my opinion at this point in MS's life the best thing is to go back to the playbook and lift some ideas from Apple.
Launchpad: An overlay of application launch icons right, sorted how I want them, just like on your mobile device. Not buried in menus or folders. Proven interface. Just give me a touch screen in my macbook now.
More Gestures: Unlike Windows that ships to most users on 2nd and 3rd rate hardware with a USB two button mouse, OS X ships on high quality hardware with an amazing multitouch gesture pad, or available to desktop and home theatre users via the bluetooth magic trackpad. Windows will continue to be built for the least common denominator hardware until MS gets a clue.
Air Drop: Finally. Transferring files between devices without cables and without a fucking "Sync Wizard"
Built-in Version Control: Finally. Integrated RCS for your documents at no cost to you in a consumer OS. Yes, its been done on Linux but never this end user friendly and never this well integrated.
Resume on Reboot: Finally. Done right in a consumer OS. Yes it was done on Unix 20 years ago, but application support for it on Linux was mostly allowed to fall into disrepair over the years where application state really wasn't saved as part of your session. No more spending 20 minutes to get all applications and windows back how they were after work after rebooting for a security patch or turning it back on after being packed away for a trip.
Mission Control: Better than Expose, task bar, and alt+tab combined. No MS, stacking task bar windows is not an improvement.
I remember when the WIMP GUI was so new that everyone had to be trained in it. Now older users have been trained and younger users have been brought up with it, so it seems natural. If you did the same thing with a decent command line, you'd end up with every moderately educated person being a wizard on the command line too. Put another way, computers didn't become popular because of Windows but because of DOS. The Mac, despite its "for the rest of us" tagline and mature GUI way before Microsoft's offering, wasn't the machine everyone ended up buying.
I used to think that computers needed some natural UI. One of my earlier academic projects in the '90s involved all the bullshit with the spinning 3D objects which you could open/close/put under/otherwise manipulate, and I thought I was so clever. Now I'm seeing this sort of thing attempt to reach mainsteam and actually look quite fluid, and I think the same thing now as I concluded back then: it's not worth a miniscule reduction in learning curve to be so restricted and drowned by eye candy. Contrary to popular belief, most people have wonderful brains which can accept new instruction and traning to a good old age. All they have to do is think and concentrate a little, and they'd be much better off with a powerful interface rather than a "natural" interface.
Of course there's a balance, and nothing inordinately hard to learn will ever reach mainstream. But look to a few hundred years ago and even reading and writing was regarded as something that only the elite could do. Yet at some point we managed to unify the planet on the notion that being able to read and write is a reasonable goal for everyone without serious physical or mental difficulties. Why must we dumb things down again?
when you pry it from under my cold dead fingers!
...I'd eat taco bell and sit in the bathtub.
This makes it look like Microsoft is trying to move towards being just another media content provider and drop the 'business' market.
Of cousre there might still be a more traditional desktop for people who actually use computers for work...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm going to disagree.
If sticking to a small set of Microsoft endorsed products is what it takes for them to deliver that kind of integrated experience, then I want them to go for it. Because the alternative is not being able to offer it at all in the next 3 years.
Everyone's still trying to figure out what the right ecosystem of devices, products, and services is. Until that comes together, and in order to innovate, big companies or tight networks of partners are going to have to deliver top to bottom ecosystems themselves and not worry about whether Manufacturer X or App Developer Y are going to come to the party. Don't wait for Sony and HP to agree. Don't wait for Walmart's house brand television to support your vision.
If Microsoft can offer this, then I'm happy to go out and buy a Microsoft phone, tablet, laptop, htpc, router, and cloud services.
But right now Apple looks nearest. Although Aitrix looks like the start of something important.
My first impression watching the film is that (circular) bubbles don't stack very well, (too much unused real estate) but let's assume this is the greatest thing since sliced milk. It might be. The Surface group have done some really innovative stuff.
Based on past experience, the chances of these concepts making it into Windows in any meaningful way are practically nil. You'll see this stuff in episodes of Hawaii Five-O and other TV shows that have a technical aspect, but it'll never make it off Surface, and Surface will never make it to the rank and file. It's too bad, really.
I don't even think it's a technical issue. The issue I suspect is that the people managing and promoting the Windows code base are very strong and very ingrained within Microsoft, and this regulates really innovative stuff like this to expensive specialized applications. And dazzling effects on film and tv.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I bash out docs and code. How will this not make things worse.
From the video, all I could think of was a severe case of gorilla arm..
From wikipedia: "Designers of touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans are not designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized—the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen "
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I think you're missing the point. The article is completely speculative and the video is basically about Microsoft's AI research. The guy in the video is talking about making systems that can adapt to the very problems you are talking about.
For instance, a dumb system will just give you an error when the filetype is wrong and stop there. An intelligent system on the other hand can decide that it needs to look at the file more deeply to determine what type it really is (using something like the Unix command "file") and then act on this information. We don't even need a particularly smart system to do something like this.
As for collection of unknown information needed for decision making, there's the same kinds of sources that humans use. Much pertinent information is available in standard formats online. The machine may have its own sensors to collect data. Oh, and of course the device can just ask the user, which is needed for details like which basic method the user plans to get to their destination.
Will MS try to lock us in? Sure. Will they exploit open sources of information while making their own sources impossible to use without their products? Probably. Will there be problems and mistakes? Of course. Is the idea of incorporating AI into a UI to make it easier to use ahead of its time? Maybe. Are these problems insurmountable? No. Maybe it won't be MS, but one day machines will be able to navigate most if not all of the hazards you've laid out...and in fact the idea laid out in the video is to attack these very problems head on.
The fact that Windows left behind its registry corruption issues long ago suggests that it's more robust than you think - and that's probably because it's far easier to implement a self-repairable database file, compared to the headache of a self-repairable filesystem hierarchy. Delete a crucial file and it's a bitch to debug - delete a crucial registry key and it's immediately traceable.
I don't like how Windows populates its registry hive, but that's another story.
/etc
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
Active Desktop meets Workplace Shell
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I certainly want thousands of text files for config. Its simple, its reliable, its easy to tweak. I would much rather edit a text config file than the Windows registry.
What is the problem with incompatible formats? Does Digikam need to read my Sylpheed config all of a sudden? Do Windows app work better together by having a common registry?
Why is interoperability so important? You're putting the cart before the horse.
Let's figure out where we can go and where we want to go, and only then worry about standardizing to let competitors and the little guys play.
But why should we wait for competitors and the little guys? Let's go now. Let's standardize later once the state of the art is a commodity.
I have 2 24" monitors and sit about 2 feet back, it would be a pain to try to use a touch screen interface
...have no desire to 'upgrade' from xp.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I remember when Leopard came out I saw no end of forum threads about how much people hated the little softly glowing white spot under running applications. "I WANT MY BLACK TRIANGLE BACK." So many hacks to get that done, so many workarounds, so many complaints about how dumb it was. The fact is that it looks way, way better. The only reason people didn't want it was because it was different. Complain about change all you want, but it's almost always a caveman-level knee-jerk without any real thought or experience.
The poster has a severe case of rectal caranial inversion. And with Microsoft bashers, flamers, trolls and all the others making mostly useless comments I found it necessary to write a blog here. http://geekswithblogs.net/GGBlogger/Default.aspx Craig Mundie is simply pointing out potential futures for end user interfaces. There is NO WAY this is going to be the LOOK of Windows 8. It will evolve over time as computing hardware gets more powerful and less expensive but folks I think we're stuck with the mouse, keyboard and non-touch displays for another 10 years.
andrea noted that the interface was: .... nice to watch but utterly useless.
which inspired maird to assert:
There is the proof....
You see, maird was saying that the demonstration of something pretty but useless stands as proof that its in the new Windows. The implication is that Windows releases have been dominated by attractive, but worthless items.
By responding to andreas comment with this statement, maird successfully introduced a discontinuity, which the reader may perceive as a delightful surprise, sometimes reacting with laughter. In the traditional world, where this discourse may have occurred around a fire, Mairds companions may have slapped him affectionately on the back, making cooing sounds about wittiness and "bons mots". In this disconnected world "+5 funny" is the depressing equivalent.
Some interpret the delightful surprise as a confusing consternation; often spurning an irrepressible desire to resolve the ambiguity. While this activity in itself is also quite funny, it is more the sad kind of funny.
That was the most useless video I have ever seen. What does this guy want to get across? Who are his intended audience? I lost him after about 5 seconds because he was only talking bullshit.
-- Cheers!
Didn't they learn from Microsoft Bob?
Have you noticed cars all have a similar interface, pedals, steering wheels and so on. There's a good reason for that, it works and people are familiar with it.
All I see is Craig Mundie talking about how great the stuff is they have in their lab. But no demo!
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Or maybe many tiny text files with a common format, like in Windows 3.11?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I am technically stupid (which I'm not), I don't see TFV! All I see are pics. Shit article.
You might have some blocking extension which disables seing the video.
I also didn't notice that there's a video until I read it in a comment. Temporary allowing the site to access youtube fixed the problem.
You can also get the video directly at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaWFivMjJG0
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Seriously. While some of the stuff looks cool, most of it wildly impractical for every day actual use.
Anyone remember the old Microsoft demo of speech recognition?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Stop moving things around or radically changing the interface. STOP. You are a business OS, and businesses like known costs...not having to retrain their employees every couple years because you want to be "new" and "different".
Speaking of which, when you include a "classic" interface, it's recommended to actually be "classic". As in, "from previous versions". Classic does not mean "different from the default". When I select classic, I somehow expect to find icons where they were, not a wildly different interface from before. Call me crazy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
blah blah blah metaphor shear blah blah blah documents blah desktops blah "files" blah blah blah butter churning blah blah automobiles blah path lock blah.....
Until someone comes up with a better metaphor for interactions on a two dimensional screen that most people understand on an intuitive level, we're stuck with what we've got.
On the whole, there aren't a lot of metaphors that are on the whole better than the desktop metaphor for what we have in terms of human interface devices.
From XP, period!
MS keeps trying to sell "newness" for "newness" sake!
It'll just make me boot into Debian or open SUSE.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Windows 8 my pc
Lawyers and patents. Sad but probably true.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
I personally dont like the "bubbles" idea, I dont like Sony's NGP things icon scheme, seems like wasted space. If you wanted to go "hey, lets make something people are used to, have used every day of their life radically different, wacky!", why not use triangles instead? Have them fit together like scales when you're "multitasking", able to be spun out of view or not, and easily detached. Much nicer than "bubbles". But thats a personal opinion, perhaps just societal norms, what I'm used to, square or rectangular windows.
Poor, poor Microsoft. Everything they do turns to shit. I especially HATE when they try and act "edgy", or "cool", dude, you're not cool, ok? You're a older bald guy, bouncing about the stage screaming "developers developers developers" with pit stains. If they handled these "radical new ideas" in a more mature way, surely they'd be more successful? Without all the FUD about competitors, "ho, that i-phoney, it'll never sell, its too expensive! We're going to be aggressive with our ZUNE and really compete in the market..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U&feature=related
UGH! "Zune", what were they thinking? It "squirted" too, perhaps little "bubbles". You know, the Zune? Came in poo brown? In the like, one country it was available in, before JUST coming out in Canada, who share a border? And is not Mac compatible, ha, because it would have been a great idea for Apple to be Mac only with that little "i-pod" thing, right? When you're the underdog, and in Microsofts case, almost universally hated, why bother making a tiny effort that could really change your critics into customers?
Look at the shadows cast on the Surface, who the hell wants that, the detail obscured with wriggly dark shapes? Your fingers, your own body is one thing, but odd, quickly moving shadows? And putting your phone on a glass surface all the time? Who wants to do that? I generally prefer keeping my phone in my pocket, rather than leaving it on some souped up coffee table. Think of the stress over time, and you just KNOW people will be dropping their devices onto Surface all the time, scratches, chips, shattered glass, its going to happen.
The most glaring example of the The Typical Microsoft Frig Up is the URL shown at the end of that video, no kidding,
"microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/RethinkingComputing"
You gotta be kidding me! Why not just use goddamn bit.ly Microsoft, or havnt you guys heard of that yet? "but, if you had a Zune, we coulda "squirted" it to you all! Wanna buy a Zune????"
No thank you.
---
Funny, I was thinking the brainstorming went something like this:
The iPhone interface is kind of cool.
We should do something like that.
If we do squares people will realize we are just copying Apple.
Let's do circles instead.
Let's do it!
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
or pothole
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I meant the incompatibility as in "I need to google every program to know the format of the settings file". Now, this is amplified on Linux by most settings only available in the text file, if the program allows all of its settings to be changed from the UI, I do not care how it saves them, in that case, I would even probably like the separate files, it would make the program and the settings portable.
One small problem with your post:
From a business standpoint, a revenue stream of $30-100 dollars per update per machine every 6-months seems better strategic plan to me than $100-150 per new OS per machine every 2-3 years. Perhaps Microsoft should take more than just UI design ideas from Apple and the linux distros.
Every six months?
You could've been less obvious with your trolling, especially when one considers that OSX 10.6 came out in 2009, 10.5 came out in 2007, 10.4 came out in *2005*, and 10.3 came out in 2003. Come to think of it, it's the same timetable that Windows used to keep (until that long hiatus between XP and Vista).
That's some screwball "every 6-months" schedule you got there, sport. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
GNOME's gconf is a Linux registry. I'm sure KDE has something in that direction too, just more obscure and difficult to navigate.
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*smugly posts about Linux/Unix/OSX*
*Doesn't understand a pretty simple UI change that just moves some buttons around*
*unironically complains about it on Slashdot*
I realize advancement is important and all but could we please get rid of the ugly avatars that showed up with recent xbox updates? I don't want to be represented in a digital environment by such an ugly thing. Characters I created for online games years ago looked better than the avatars we have now on xbox.
And now, "bubbles"?
till the bubble bursts.
I hear thats what allways happens sooner or later.
Is their user base sporting an average age of four now? Did we decide that rounded corners were too dangerous, or do users just giggle while they play with the round bubbles on screen? Have fun getting people to use that mess.
Did anyone else puke all over their monitor when they saw the screenshots for Windows Bubble, or what it just me?
I come here for the love
Is make getting your hands dirty with the command line a good deal harder.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
It first appeared as Cairo, full of hope and LOTS of promises, but then it died.
With some PR electricity it was brought back to life as LongHorn, but then died again.
Now, with jumper cables from its baby brother, Win Phone 7, it gets another jolt of PR electricity.
But, alas, I fear this new re-incarnation of the perfect desktop/laptop/notebook/netbook/Dag will die just like the rest.... A touch screen laptop is out of their budget, so how many people can afford a 10 foot touch screen/scanner/camera? And, how many of those devices can any corporation afford to buy? CEO's aren't going to learn how to use them, since most of them don't even know how to use a laptop and Dag could never understand their corporate-speak.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Come on, this is one of the worlds largest technology companies, and their spokesman has the gull to come up with drivel like claims that they are now offering us a revolutions by providing, not tools, but "helpers"? And this all comes in the form of stolen Wii Avatars, and a ripped off iPhone touchpanel interface? It would be one thing if it was actually implemented well, but it appears to be a kludge that has been glued together with various other research that they are looking into. Did anyone see the episode of "The Wire" where they used a copy machine to as a "lie detector" to fool some kid into confessing? That is what this video looks like to me.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the unlikely event that there are any women who have whored themselves down from crack'ho to "MS GUI designer", then I'd have to modify the use of the baseball bat, probably involving 10cm nails. But to be honest, I'd expect most women to have more self respect than to lower themselves that far.
Oh, I'm glad that I dumped Windoze.
That reminds me ... portable LibreOffice yet? Seems so ; need that for the memory stick for work.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
To improve Windows, MS should make it stabler, make it faster, and more exploit proof, and for goodness sake actually implement W3C standards in IE.
Otherwise the UI of XP/Win7 is adequate, thats not the problem - the problems are:
1. It crashes frequently (compared to other modern OSs like MacOS and Linux),
2. IE is a huge timesink because of lack of full standards support (though in my last big web project, IE8 was almost not a problem).
3. It is tragically vulnerable to exploits
4. It requires an incredible amount of processor and ram to run - and doesn't seem to really do much more with all that hardware than NT did with much less.
Win7 has a list of recently used folders?
Gnome devs, are you listening?
I want that, please. Normally, you're working with a number of projects during a week, or aspects of various projects. You don't necessary want to open up the same files you opened recently, but rather other files in those folders, or make new ones in those folders.
(Don't say "just code it yourself". Since opensource doesn't have testing labs like Microsoft, one of the most valuable things users can do is give their feedback.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I don't think this new interface is good for writing documents or programs or for working in Excel. But it looks good for controlling a media center TV from the couch. Gesturing with hands at icons or bubbles (or whatever they'll be) should be easier than using a 100 buttons remote. So I don't believe this interface will replace the desktop metaphor for doing office work but it might be good for about everything else. Maybe they'll find a way to make Windows 8 a double-interface (task oriented?) system. More likely this stuff will find its way only into Windows 9 or 10 or some special purpose device (XBox, TV, etc).
Duh... they are not on own incompatible formats... They are all plain text files!
Do you know commandline tools? Did you know that you can actually very easily grep data, change it and push to any other wanted location in any other wanted format you just wish? So much more different possibilities and features than what the register allows.
Register is not same thing as punch of config files in plain text format.
Register is a single file what has multiple different application configs, it can be a binary or XML but still it is a register and flawed one (all eggs in one basket)
"Anonymous said...
in short: "Microsoft is in an optimal position to enable 'something' that may be 'better' in the 'future'"
Great now if only they could leverage the cloud to seamlessly align an integrated, next-generation dynamic response user experience ensuring a paradigm shift in cost-effective best practices while maximizing ROI. "
WTF!!! Can someone gimme the universal translator rendition of that?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The registry is awesome, once you really look at it and what it does. A few examples follow.
The registry is backed up automatically, even outside of scheduled backups. Check %systemdrive%\windows\system32\config\regback. The actual registry files are in config and the backups are in regback. They can be attached to a functional machine, loaded, edited and saved if you really need to dig deep on a repair.
Fsck the registry up in one place and its almost trivial to fix, especially if its under the CurrentControlSet - the Last Known Good boot option rolls back that portion of the registry, which includes service configurations, device information, driver information and a ton of other stuff - stuff that is most likely to make your system unbootable, to the last time the system booted properly (ControlSet002, if you're rooting around in the registry right now - ControlSet001 is the source copy of CurrentControlSet while the system is booted normally, and is copied to ControlSet002 or higher once you've successfully logged in.)
In addition, the registry is loaded into memory at startup. Rather than apps having to parse configuration files off the ms access time hard drive they can access the information in nanoseconds, leaving your disk subsystem free to load up your por^H^H^Hcontent in whichever application you launched.
Hrm. You could just say "st00pid registry" and continue on your way though =)
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
The /etc folder has nothing to do with a registry in any way.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Clearly because it is a significant point of failure. It is also an overly complex system that could be better handled in other ways. The debate still rages over whether individual configuration files work better. Other operating systems besides windows clearly show that individual configuration files are not a detrimental way in managing configurations.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Gnome's registry does exist, but gnome does not maintain the settings for Linux and the various program. It only maintains settings for itself, the desktop manager.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
This is true. I only have one gripe with the registry myself: don't make it so fucking important that your system becomes unbootable if it's wiped.
I am not devoid of humor.
Maybe, but it is the only place I can think of as a centralized location to store system and application settings in Linux.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
... then I clicked on the link and saw something that looked like a mediocre Winamp skin. Not as good, but still quite funny.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
All of these statements of "natural" interfaces are garbage. There's nothing more natural in touching a monitor to control a cursor than there is using chopsticks to hold a fork. If we could manage to achieve a functional BCI (brain-computer interface, and not the scalp-electrode-based systems), then all these touch devices would be considered crude and simplistic. Everyone's vision of the future is always touch-screen tables or white rooms with floaty transparent screens that people touch to navigate menus; it just reminds me of the same in-the-box thinking when imagining how 2010 would be like to people in 1940. Touch screens are great for moving a zoomed-in picture or finger-painting, but not much more. If we could directly use our brains to control computers (moving objects like moving your arms/hands, writing messages like speaking words), then this would be a huge improvement over control systems now. If one had a BCI, then it would probably be reasonable to think that they would also want some sort of visual overlay in their eyes, and a portable functionality. The end result is somewhat like an implanted smart phone running on your body's fuel, with no screen or controls aside from integration with the person; this is a good bet on the future, since we're already half-way there.
The problem with trying to argue anything on a spectrum is that fools will jump to extremes and then strawman you lowering the conversation down to their level. (There is a nice Ben Franklin quote to this affect.)
As far as I know the iPod wheel was actually new. The touch screen stuff apple and microsoft have been doing is almost completely a rip off of previous works i personally have witnessed and read about in research papers a good ten years ago! They literally added NOTHING with their touch screen interfaces. And gesture work is over 10 years old; just because you put it on a mouse or screen with a finger doesn't make the same action new merely by changing the place where you do it--- including any new tech you do actually invent to detect that gesture (which is not relevant; just another place to make the same gesture.)
FYI: apple bought xerox's stuff.
Its all a matter of degree and the parent apparently is emotionally upset I stepped on his feelings for some corporation. Religion is bad enough when it gets into economics do we need to start spreading it into corporate brands?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I saw the article and Nokia Bubbles came to mind - a bubble driven UI that lets you perform certain functions like viewing SMSes, using the screen as a torch, responding to missed calls etc without having to unlock the phone, released for their Symbian^3 devices recently.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Uh... The 'bubble' UI was shown for about 2 seconds in that video which mentioned NOTHING about it being a possible interface for Window 8. Window 8 wasn't even mentioned in the video.
Who came up with the crappy title for this article?
- Bill
www.GloBible.com
Microsoft is a major sponsor of Hawaii Five-O. This interface should look familiar to watchers of the program.
Probably the first crime fighting show I've seen that regularly includes advertisements for an unpopular smart phone in the dialogue.
The only item that looked even half useful in the real world in that video was being able to place a plain ordinary photo on the screen and have it be automatically scanned and displayed ready to be worked with.
Considering the number of users who have tried to "show" things to a computer by holding them up to a monitor, this might actually work. Scan an image, OCR a document, you name it. Just press it to the surface of the screen or tablet. A phone-based version could involve 'wiping' the phone back and forth over the document to build up an image, or simply centering it on the camera viewfinder.