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Windows 8 Previewed At D9
theodp writes "Mum's still the word on a shipping date for its new OS for laptops, desktops, and tablets ('touch slates' in MS-speak), but Microsoft on Wednesday gave the world a first look at the touch-friendly 'Windows 8' user interface, which sports a live tile-based Start screen reminiscent of the company's Windows Phone 7 interface. Also prominent in the demo was a large 'Store' tile, suggesting that Microsoft plans to offer Windows apps through a marketplace. A Microsoft video offers an overview of the interface, showcasing Win 8's multi-tasking capabilities and some other interesting features, including a virtual keyboard that can be switched from full-screen to a more ergonomic split-screen thumbs layout."
I lost count, are we supposed to hate this one?
It will be interesting to see how this is to use on a desktop computer with a proper mouse. I object to being told that desktop computers are going out of style, and I personally despise majour interface changes (Office ribbon, I'm looking at you!)
Will the "store" be locked in place like it is on my vendor locked cell phone? Kuz that'd be sweet.
...and we're back to the Windows 1.0 tiled window interface. Touch sensitivity corresponds to ye good ol' light pen interface.
Only took 30+ yrs to dump all progress, or is that bloat? No, the bloat is still there.
You've got to love this quote from TFA:
“This is the new version of Windows. It’s going to run on laptops, it’s going to run on desktops, it’s going to run on PCs with mouse and keyboard, it’s going to run on everything,”
Which is basically saying:
“This is the new version of Windows. It’s going to run on PCs with trackpad and keyboard, it’s going to run on PCs with mouse and keyboard, it’s going to run on PCs with mouse and keyboard, it’s going to run on PCs with mouse and keyboard,”
I have no doubt it'll also run on mobiles, tablets, TV's and indeed pretty much everything, but they might have thought about that sentence a bit more.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I was interested to see that the Engadget story is filled with pretty much the same complaints about this new Windows interface that the Linux world is making about GNOME 3 and Ubuntu Unity - that is, people (e.g. me, I'll note) are annoyed at the prospect of the desktop as they know it being made into a big phone.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I think that this kind of interface is very good for computer novices. I've seen many computer-illiterate people to struggle with the WIMP interface; this interface feels a lot more natural to them.
I hope they have a button to take the glitz away though, since Windows is also heavily used by professionals.
I think that's supposed to be a selling point--that traditional applications work just like people are used to.
Would be a fitting name for it.
It looks too messy for me. It looks great for a tablet, but what am I going to use it for my desktop for?
The idea that it can be used for everything is incredibly silly. Every device has its characteristics and its requirements. The giant tiles will look silly on my computer, and I can hit an icon quite effectivly with a mouse, I don't need a target range.
If they offered different 'views' (like KDE Desktop/Netbook) it might be ok, but as it is its a horrible mess.
I am very intrigued by it, as well. It will be interesting to compare this to Mac OS X Lion.
"Adding comments has been disabled for this video."
"Ratings have been disabled for this video."
So, we're back to the Vista days where the old version will retain a huge market share because the new one is such a piece of shit?
Ithink this is supposed to be the reason why he will "resign", so we'll have to wait until this one utterly fails.
Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
I noticed he didn't use Excel or Word. He just scrolled about a bit and swapped windows via 20 different methods.
The problem with touch screen is 100% of the time your own fat hands are in the way when you go close to poke something. Sure they can make the buttons huge but that doesn't work for complex things. I still don't think touch screen is of much use for productivity with an button UI. Better tools and gestures need to be made.
I don't want to touch my monitor on my desktop and get fingerprints all over it. This is great for tablets and phones, but making this the default UI for your desktop is nothing short of asinine.
This is a pretty interface, but most real work will require skipping this whole Start grid and going to the desktop tile. Why force hundreds of millions of PC users to jump through extra hoops to perform the same tasks? Wait, Vista did that as well, and they refused to revert any of those usability regressions with Windows 7.
A pretty interface isn't necessarily a productive one.
And Windows 8 ARM might as well be dead on arrival given that it can't run x86 apps.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
To me, it looks like Windows Media Center. For apps.
You've got this fullscreen interface, that might be useful on some devices (tablets, TVs...), but the traditional interface remains more usable for desktop use.
The idiot generation seems to be the target of the new OS UIs.
I guess menus are hard.
I am a cynical person, but even I didn't see the day where the desktop would be treated as oversized mobile devices with respect to interface and functionality.
I think there is too much hype behind the desktop-is-dying phenomenon.
It looks like they will provide optional toggle to switch to a more traditional desktop ... for now.
I think Microsoft is seriously underestimating how this is going to hurt their upgrade sales in the corporate world. It is hard enough to get people off of XP to 7, I can't imagine what this will do for people resisting upgrading from Windows 7. Of course Microsoft will pull, "Latest version of X only works on Windows 8 or higher shenanigans", to try to force people to upgrade.
Instead of taking the opportunity to break up with the past and start with something fresh, they add another layer of compatibility on an essentially 25 year old product. While this new layer contains some interesting concepts, those concepts are clearly targeted towards mainstream users, which might make it difficult to sell Windows 8 to businesses.
This is a reaction to the iPad. It's designed for my Mom.
That's OK as long as they don't nerf up everything else.
For some tasks and devices could be better suited than Apple's User interface and Android 2.x one. But what about Android 3.x or Meego versus this?
Also, for something that should be for all kind of devices, looks a bit too much touch centric, like keyboard taking a second stage on devices using it (and hiding everything when you need pointing device text input), and not very suited for several running windows showing information.
In the plus side, more touchscreen enabled devices will appear in the market, not just tablets or phones, but laptops, netbooks, and even desktop computers. And if they don't slip some restriction on kind of software running on them will be a big help for alternative OSs too.
Windows 8, project codename "D.E.R.I.V.A.T.I.V.E.". I've been scanning the video, looking for something - anything - that they've actually invented. About the only thing I can see is the 'snapping' thing, which looks like an absolutely terrible way of having two windows next to each other. It also seems like it's a layer on top of Windows with the crufty Windows 7 desktop underneath. If this is to have any chance of success, they will need to ditch the traditional Windows GUI and have Old Windows programs run in a compatibility layer, otherwise this new UI will be ignored by the majority of developers and users, and it will become nothing more than a fullscreen Side Bar.
I think Microsoft have already done a lot of "comparing" with OS X Lion.
Is really moving in a lousy direction these days with screen interfaces for desktop systems. It could get to a point where Apple may actually look more like a normal PC when compared everyone else.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Yeah, they drew more than a little inspiration from that horrible board in the back ground. In fact, it looks so similar and unusable that I almost didn't notice the screen between all that crap. I also see that Fisher-Price got the color selection contract again. It is an absolute headache to behold. The entire interface looks like a badly designed website.
I think the thing to remember there is that this is designed to run on both tablets and full computers. Seeing as the Win7 interface isn't streamlined for touch and the tiles aren't streamlined for mouse + keyboard, they have to keep both. What about splitting them apart? Like with Windows Phone, they're coming from (way) behind in the tablet market, so keeping them together means they can leverage their existing Windows 7 user base.
I think the best thing would be to allow the user to "dock" their tablet with a monitor/mouse/keyboard. Imagine having the Win7 interface spring up on the screen where you can use your mouse and keyboard, and keeping the widget-y tiles on the tablet (where you could still interact with them).
Millions of usenet downloaders can't all be wrong!
So Windows 7 is for desktops, Windows 2008 is for servers, Windows Phone 7 is for mobile phone devices and Windows 8 is for mobile non-phone devices?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I must say I find it interesting, but if it were possible to put that new interface on a second smaller touch screen that would be even better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5Gn8jt55LQ
Video production is not so great. Maybe they should've used final cut pro. (And a lapel mic)
I'm not aware about any OS improvement, but a squarified Window Manager.
Yes. It would be quite hard to convert all of Office to a pure touch interface and it will ruin all the suite. You should try any office-like app on a touch screen, either and iPad or a 4" phone. Word processing is not so bad (but it is bad) and you start looking for a mouse as soon as you have to edit the text you wrote. You also start looking for a keyboard very quickly if you're working with a spreadsheet. Entering formulas without mouse and keyboard is a real pain. You end up going back to your computer to do the job.
I don't want to touch my monitor on my desktop and get fingerprints all over it. This is great for tablets and phones, but making this the default UI for your desktop is nothing short of asinine.
I can't see any reason why the interface shouldn't work with a mouse or with gestures on a decent size (MacBook-style) trackpad. Its probably easier to take a touch-centric interface and map it on to mouse actions than it would be to make a mouse-centric interface usable with touch.
This is a pretty interface, but most real work will require skipping this whole Start grid and going to the desktop tile.
More likely, they'll go to the Word tile or the Excel tile - and by the time Win8 launches there will probably be an "Office 201x" suite that integrates properly with the tile-based interface, so you'll get a nice "preview" tile. My experience is that non-techie Windows users don't use the desktop much anyway, and live in full-screened Office apps (Unlike OS X, Windows' existing MDI structure promotes this style of working).
Also, its pretty clear that the focus of Win 8 is to win back ground from Apple and Google in the consumer PC/laptop/mobile market - the corporates will be using Win 7 (if not XP) for the forseeable future. MS may have come to the point where it is sensible to "fork" personal and corporate product lines to prevent the corporate demand for endless legacy support hindering their efforts in the consumer/mobile/small biz market while Apple and Google eat their lunch.
Both MS and Apple (with OS X Lion) seem to think this is the way the wind is blowing - if they're right then expect, 3-5 years down the line, to see the old-fangled desktop relegated to the same sort of "power users only" status as the current Command Line/Terminal.
And Windows 8 ARM might as well be dead on arrival given that it can't run x86 apps.
Windows 8 ARM will, initially, be for tablets, mobile devices and ultraportables only. Most tablets and mobiles already run on ARM and are doing quite nicely without being able to run x86 apps. For one thing, the issues moot because most "legacy" x86 apps were never designed for touch interfaces and small screens and would be unusably clunky. Win8 ARM should be able to run .NET bytecode apps and will almost certainly be accompanied by "official" versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook which would be seen by some buyers as an end-of-argument advantage over iOS/Android: MS's domination of office software is just as significant as its OS near-monopoly.
Basically, I want to hate this due to its lack of a fruity logo and MS being Teh Evils, but it actually looks rather interesting and, while its clearly taken some cues from iOS and Android there seems to be a lot of original thinking, too. The big question is what is the perfomance on tablets going to be like when every "icon" is actually an Android-style "widget" requiring continuous updates from its App, and will it still grind to a halt with a borked registry after a few months of use? If only this was running on top of a proper *nix system instead of a CP/M emulator written by VMS engineers I might be sold.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The problem with Windows is that instead of getting rid of old stuff, Microsoft just piles up on top of it. So, next to the simple sleek interface, there is an old Windows 7 screen, and inside that are even older layers of Windows.
Can you imagine the mess it's going to be to talk someone through getting to the old Windows 95-style network configuration dialog box, which you doubtlessly will still need?
You find similar crap in the file system: there is the directory tree, then there is its localized variant of it, and then there is the rearranged tree that you get to see in the file manager.
No, Apple and Google have it right: create specialized versions of their operating systems for different form factors and clean out the crap. And Linux, of course, just got most of this right the first time around: the file system layout doesn't change haphazardly and window management is factored such that regular apps work fine in a tiling window manager as well as many other kinds of window management styles.
Microsoft yet again has proven they don't get it. It is all Windows to them. This is a UI that could easily have been an app. Underneath it is still Microsoft Windows. Same bloat of legacy code. Same vulnerabilities that will make me want to puke when my friends and families and co-workers are infested with malware. Yes the same malware that already cripples MS Windows on a regular basis, for the average user. The same difficulties for the end user to maintain a system. I already dread the day when someone calls me about a tablet that cannot get online and they cannot understand how they have malware because they run Norton 360 on their tablet along with Windows AntiVirus 2011 that they just gave their credit card information to. Then there will be the licensing difficulties when people try to integrate a Windows 8 tablet with their Sharepoint implementation. Sample dialog below. Tech support: I cannot set up your Win8 personal tablet on our network. You are running Win8 tablet home supreme, and it needs to be Win 8 tablet professional enterprise edition with MDOP for that to work. All of the things that Microsoft could do to fix these issues. Create a new OS from the ground up and have Windows run as a VM till apps can be ported over appropriately. This challenges their economic viability, so they won't do it. The new hardware on a tablet form factor could run this as well. Quad Core Tegras are due out end of the 2011. If you wonder why I am focusing on tablets so much in my rant, it is that this UI demo is what Microsoft was selling in the Video. Six different versions of Win8 tablet UI to ensue. Microsoft knows they need to change and change radically. This Win 8 that was the most radical chance Microsoft was ever going to take is just a touch UI skin over their same product. Too Little Too Late. Now all they can do is hope to strong arm the supply chains and manufacturers who are already making products of their own.
For handhelds and tablets, I get the power of a full OS and file system with the ease-of-use of WP7.
What applications can be written for this "full OS" that make sense on a tablet that can't be written for Android Honeycomb? Now that Honeycomb has USB host, what devices make sense for a tablet that can't run on Android? How is the file system more "full" on Windows than Android?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
The 'snap' feature is one of the few Windows features I like.
Open up two PuTTY windows, snap them side-by-side for easy code comparison, or having one tailing some logfile and working in the other.
Much easier than manually trying to resize my windows to what I think is half my screen.
Ubuntu Unity is still more fail than Windows 8.
Perhaps in time the issues with Unity will be addressed, like the ability to customize some aspects of the UI. However, Mark Shuttleworth has said that he dislikes choice, so I don't see very much in the way of Unity customization in the future.
Who gives a fuck?
Um, well, Home users, IT personnel, web designers, programmers, teachers, students, chemists, astronomers, doctors, physicists, etc, etc...
You know, the 99% of the population that is affected in some way by the decisions of the big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple...
It's a bit of an odd situation really. Windows CE aka Windows Mobile had a lot of applications people use - I like Pleco and Opera for example. Not to mention all the bespoke stuff - e.g. delivery drivers often have Windows CE or Windows Mobile Devices.
Now Windows Phone 7 won't actually run any Win32/Arm applications - only C#/Silverlight or XNA ones. Also it's too dumbed down for most Windows Mobile users I suspect. Right now Windows sold 3.6 million smartphones in 1Q11. Unfortunately 2 million of those were Windows Mobile and only 1.6 million were Windows Phone 7. In the same time frame 36 million Android devices were sold, 27 million Symbian and 16 million iPhones. Even RIM sold 13 million.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814
Windows Mobile used to have 6.8% of the market in 1Q10. Now the combined share of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 is only 3.6%. And of that Windows Phone 7 is only 1.6%. A huge number of people seem to have moved to Android - it's share has gone from 9.6% to 36%.
In a sense Microsoft have done what a lot of people on Slashdot have been suggesting for ages - drop back compatibility and do something radically new. And frankly it's a disaster. People with Windows Mobile are buying the few remaining Windows Mobile handsets - notably the excellent HD2 instead of the Windows Phone 7 ones. Or switching to Android. Not a lot of people are switching from Android or iPhone to Windows Phone 7. In fact the two competitor OSs are completely different. Android is very open but a bit of a mess like WinMo. iPhone is very closed but slick. The open one - Android - is growing really fast.
I personally got an HD2 rather than an HD7. I can flash custom Roms and it runs the old applications.
It's very unlikely that Pleco or Opera will ever run on Windows Phone 7. Pleco has ported to iPhone and is porting to Android - they have a system to run the same core code on both but have different UI layers. Opera Mobile runs on Android. The iPhone only has Opera Mini. But in general iPhone has lots of software - it's easily the most profitable platform to develop for.
If things stay the way they are my next phone will be Android - most of the applications I like will work there by the time I upgrade my HD2 and I can get an HTC handset which is not at all locked down.
So Microsoft have a problem - the ISVs have all decided that rewriting their C/C++ code which runs on Windows Mobile, desktop Windows, iPhone and Android in C# to run purely on Windows Phone 7 is not a viable idea. In fact I suspect even if they allowed native C internals but required a C# UI layer (Android is like this I think - the UI needs to be in Java but the core can be in native C) - it's by no means certain ISVs will support the platform if it sells less than Windows Mobile and looks like it will sink. Opera stopped doing Windows Mobile builds when Windows Phone 7's lack of back compatibility was announced. Similarly Pleco have claimed that the iPhone version of the software was outselling Windows Mobile version ten to one - their Windows Mobile version is still available but it will not be updated and they won't do a Windows Phone 7 port.
Now Windows 8 will run on both ARM and x86. It also runs the old Win32 applications - unlike Windows Phone 7. It's not like desktop ISVs will rush to port their ancient Win32/x86 applications to ARM. I'm very sceptical that any ARM chip will be fast enough to emulate x86 code as fast as a lowly Atom chip can run it natively.
So Windows on ARM at the moment is in desperate need of software. The stuff that used to run on Windows Mobile has the advantage of being designed to run on low CPU power devices too.
So just maybe Windows 8 on ARM will be the platform for people who want old applications to work will end up on. I predict Windows Phone 7 will sink just like Zune and Kin. It would be a shame if Microsoft completely killed off their Win32/ARM ISVs in the process. But to be hon
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Either global warming, or mobile phone causing cancer will kill me long before we get to see it.
I mean Windows ME and Windows 2000 came out in the same year, followed by XP one year later, then windows 7 10 years later after a long beta period with a product named something like an activity enjoyed in some dodgy German porn....
Extrapolating I expect windows 8 to be released in 2120
I like this UI, mybe someone will clone it for Linux to see how it goes. Anyway, M$, how about a good CLI environment? It's about time.
Also, Unity and Gnome3 shell are very nice, I like both. KDE not so much. OTOH I despise iOS UI. I don't know why so many praise at its ease of use. It's a very cute piece of crap!
Or the first party apps ie Office. Nothing in that suite has become touch enabled either.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I do that one time, set it as default and it comes up every day like that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I like the Metro style MS has going on here, but there seems to be a lot of concern in the .NET community that they are tossing the "traditional" developers overboard to chase HTML5 over Js. We have been working with WPF/XAML/C# for the last year, and it's not even entirely baked yet, so I just don't understand why they feel the need to start bolting new shit onto it. They SERIOUSLY need to fix VS2010 before doing anything radical like this, or who the hell is going to develop for this thing... and with what? Right now, XAML is non-debuggable, takes twice as much time as forms did to develop with, is SLOW, doesn't deploy well, is incomplete (even after you add all the codeplex add-ons and toolkits), and WPF and Silverlight are nowhere near as "interchangable" as MS marketing wants everyone to believe. And javascript/HTML? Apparently we should all throw out VS2010 and start working with Eclipse?
I guess Apple has them so scared that they are in danger of hopping on trends to try to catch up, and that's going to be a MAJOR PROBLEM if they screw all the .NET developers along the way.
I mean, look, touch is cool and all, and we have been able to make some really cool interfaces on early windows tablets, but I have to agree with Enderandrew above that turning the OS into a giant phone is a bad idea. Sheesh, one would think that MS, one of the largest software shops IN THE WORLD, could do both at the same time, but it appears not ....
Consequently... fingerprints are a huge problem for us (we make medical workstations where smudges can screw up diagnostic quality), so I wonder if anyone is out there working on a smudge-less touch interface? Maybe self-cleaning? Too much to hope for?...
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
I've spent years waiting for mobile OS's to approach desktop OS's interface and system features - I really hate seeing a phone with specs good enough to run XP on and a pretty decent resolution but has a GUI that's more reminiscent of a ten-year-old flip phone and apps that look like flash games from around same time. Instead, Microsoft is trying to ruin a desktop OS.
Well, the good news is, it looks like at least the old interface is hiding somewhere below this tile/touch/swipe thing. Considering most laptops and desktops don't have a touchscreen, we can assume all that stuff they demo'ed will be turned off by most people to just use what looks exactly like Win7. At which point people will wonder what's the point of upgrading.
I think Linux isn't better than Windows hence in the slashdot realm I'm a troll
Does anyone else see the potential for a Kinect style interface?
This is great for the tech support community! Another non-intuitive user interface for the older sect (40 and over) of computer users to get lost in. I spend a huge amount of time rolling IE9 back to 8, showing users how the ALT key will bring back their beloved file menu, and reverting the task bar to the "classic" (win 98) theme. I cant tell you how many times I've been called because a user accidentally loaded Media Center and couldn't find their way out.
"Have you tried unplugging it, and plugging it back in?"
This interface might be great for tablets designed purely for consuming media , but for a general purpose PC this is one giant leap backwards. God help us if they go with this and frankly I think if they do it may kill Windows in the coporate arena where people need to multitask with half a dozen or more apps at the same time.
You don't do that though. You make a 'lite' application that has a limited functionality but is optimized for the tablet / phone / whatever. Like iWork for the iPad. Review and annotate on the tablet, do large pivot tables on a real computer. You sell it for a few dollars or bundle it. That sort of thing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
MS wants one OS to cover everything from phones to Surface and it AIN'T GONNA FUCKING HAPPEN. Is there one type of vehicle that scales perfectly from single-person transport to the size of a bus? Is there one type of vehicle for land, sea, and air? Is there one type of building that scales perfectly from storage shed to multi-story office? No, no, and no. Different things have different needs. "When great thinkers think about problems, they start to see patterns." Programmers always want to solve "the general problem" but one-size-fits-all solutions rarely work.
Dear MS: Please make a great desktop OS. And a great mobile OS. And a great server OS. And before you start, realize that they're different things.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
OK where is D9? I know when I was at high school that was the maths room (in places outside the USA mathematics is plural)
Here.
I really did like the piloting interface on the alien ship. I'd boot up into that in a flash.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
When they threw every existing VS6 app under the bus, I knew it was only a matter of time before .NET followed so they could cram the next shiny object down our throats. Maybe ReactOS will be up to running VS6 apps reliably by the time Microsoft decides to rewrite the whole OS in HTML.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
So my hands are on the keyboard and mouse and now I need to lift my arms up and stretch them out to my monitors which are about 80cm away? How often?
... but...) tiring.
This sounds incredibily inconvenient and (yes I know this makes me sound lazy
All hand based input devices should be at least somewhat close to each other (the monitor is not close) and shouldn't require you to suspend your arms in front of you for 8 hours a day.
If I only had mod points... Seriously, do some reading - the tile UI isn't for desktop computers or normal laptops. Those users will get a slightly updated Aero UI by default.
This interface leads me to believe MSFT believes we'll have a Kinect-type device being on PC's by the time Windows 8 comes out.
I look forward to the day when offices are full of people jumping up and down and flinging their arms around trying to control their Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint slideshows.
hate is the word I'm looking for, I'm sure of it. Tile's really? easy app management right when you turn it on, I mean what kind of computing power am I going to require to make it run that fast and that smooth? something tells me it's going to take a huge chunk of money out of my wallet. If Microsoft wants me to love it even a little they'd make it able to fun on a 1 ghz processor and 1 gb or ram, just like being able to run things on a tablet with much less programming power but they won't because they'd have to rewrite everything again and that would cost them too much money. So they make this really annoying internet face they have on their windows 7 phone for their new OS, I've been a long time PC lover and I know I'm going to hate this one if they don't start fixing shit that's been broken since XP.
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
If Microsoft forces me to use their crappy UI concept I will gladly switch to linux and never look back. I'm sick and tired of vendors who think they can tell me what I ought to like. There is no excuse at any level for such behavior. I will vote with my money and whatever insignificant influence I have.
What they need to do is fire all of their "creative" UI goons and hire people who know how to write kernel code.
After all these years if MS would just fix those rediculous net dde UI delays that make everyday use of windows painful or stop IE from spawning a zillion processes of itself each using multiple hundreds of megabytes of memory which will not go away even after you close the browser or IE9 blurry text making viewing websites extremely unpleasent I would be impressed.
People just want shit that works. There is plenty broke worth fixing. If you want new gimmicks, alternate shells, UI concepts... go for it. Just don't force people who do not think like your UI designers to care.
The USDA food pyramid has been replaced by a "Food Plate", which looks vaguely similar to the Win8 UI - I'm not sure which came first. http://www.choosemyplate.gov/
Guess I'm Mr. Unpopular on here
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
This is the TABLET UI. There is a separate desktop UI that has yet to be announced or shown.
You guys are really funny though.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Way to dump 20+ years of standard GUI development simply to replace it with some hipster, gimmicky GUI that makes my PC look and feel only as useful as my phone. And, for fucks sake, why do I need TWO desktops? If I really wanted to use web-enabled applications, I'd use a web browser. I'd use widgets. If I really wanted all that cool touchscreen functionality, I would get a phone, or a table with a phone OS installed.
I really wish Microsoft would just leave well enough alone. Windows is Windows, and I use Windows for that old Windows experience. Not to convert my PC into a smartphone.
From what I understand, Windows 8 will also be MRSA-compatible!
Well, if you take the cross-section of the population that isn't a hipster douche and doesn't have a scraggly, patchy, irregular beard-like growth running down the entirety of their neck - that's the "who".
There's a reason why everybody's chasing the 'tablet experience'. It's because the desktop has been locked up in an (apparently) unbreakable monopoly. So the only place where there's a (relatively) level playing field is in phones and tablets. The problem all Linux distros face is lack of a desktop market to play in and, yes, lack of a common Linux API for developers to code to.
Android has proven that 'Linux' isn't the problem. Given a marketplace that doesn't 'require' MS applications and legacy 3rd party stuff, add on a standard GUI API the developers can target, and you have a huge success.
Microsoft, on the other hand is chasing the tablet interface, because in typical fashion, they feel they need to 'win' everything. But if only Microsoft doesn't manage to convince the world you need Word, Excel and Exchange on a tablet, iOs and Android can continue to be industry leaders. Presumably Windows 8 tablets will have some significant software charge - unless Microsoft decides to sell tablet hardware. The high price of Android tablets so far has not been an encouraging trend - my Nook Color, on the other hand, is quite encouraging.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
"Hey guys, we really blew the mission with Vista but we hit the nail on the head with Windows 7. Now, instead of continuing the trend seen with XP and 7 where we made huge improvements lets do something very bizarre, edgy and hip. What could possibly go wrong?"
This looks like an interesting way to control tablets, but this cannot work with desktops and laptops, right? And I refuse to upgrade my desktop to some touch screen bullshit. I work way faster with a keyboard and a mouse, and will not spend my days touching my monitor whenever I want to refresh /.
Except when you have about 400 saved sessions in PuTTY, then upgrade to Windows 7.
I'd have to set it as the default for each saved session. I am not that motivated.
The environment with HTML widget tiles reminds of OS X's Dashboard. You pop into it to check the weather or movie times and then drop back to the traditional desktop to do real work.
At least, the guy's humble ... he's not commenting every single feature with 'it's a revolution' 'amazing technology' 'greatest ever seen before' or 'mind blowing'.
... or do I need to be a M$ hating dushe bag? The interface looks awesome and the fact that apps can be created as HTML5 and JS is big ol' tities (.)(.)
While this may be a decent tablet interface, it looks like a poor desktop interface, but it is being pushed for a strategic reason: Market Share.
Despite what some fanboys might think, a funky new interface alone isn't enough for MS to make big inroads into the tablet market. Same applies for WinPhone7, it has similar Tile interface and is floundering.
They need a jumpstart big time.
By forcing the new Tile/Touch interface on every new/upgraded Windows computer, they immediately can leverage their PC monopoly to grow the market share for their Tile/Touch PC interface.
This will give them a market likely 50 to 100 times larger for their Tile/Touch apps to attract a development community, it makes how many tablets the sell almost irrelevant initially. They can likely surpass the installed touch base for iOS/Android in a little over a year. They won't actually have more tablets out there, but they will have a Touch/Time market that big. Solving the Chicken/Egg problem of having the market share to attract developers.
While I think this thing reeks as a desktop interface, I have to give it to them on the strategic side. Brilliant Strategy. Now I understand why they killed WinCE tablets last year when it looked like they were going to follow the industry into lightweight unique tablet OS. Someone came up with a strategy to get them back in the game while maintaining the Windows Everywhere mantra.
Well played.