Microsoft Reveals More Windows 8 Details

Barence writes "Microsoft has released the first full details of Windows 8, with an all-or-nothing approach to touchscreen technology. All versions of Windows 8 — whether used on a touchscreen device or not — will use the operating system's new Metro interface, which was first developed for Windows Phone 7 devices. The advent of Windows 8 sees Microsoft introduce a new style of application, dubbed Metro Style apps, and its own app store. The company also claims to have boosted Windows 8 performance with fast boot/shutdown times, a new Task Manager and the option to refresh a PC with a clean install of the OS with apps and settings left intact."

Comments

Nope!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not a fucking chance I'm using that shitty windows phone interface.

Re:Nope!

[Aggrajag]

First thing I've always done with Windows is to enable current incarnation of the classic theme.

Re:Nope!

[Darinbob]

But XP and Windows 7 UI still feel like a step back in some ways. I want SMALLER UI elements and they keep getting larger. The OS keeps trying to get into the foreground instead of being unnoticed in the background.

Re:Nope!

[node 3]

Your mistake was buying an Apple digital audio player. Get one that supports USB mass storage mode next time.

How is that a mistake?

And watch out for the cameras coming out nowadays that don't support USB mass storage mode...

Why?

People buy things for their own purposes, not yours.

Dear Microsoft

[mehrotra.akash]

My Desktop PC is NOT a smartphone with a 22 inch screen

Please dont treat it like one

Translation

[poofmeisterp]

Quote from link: "Every screen needs to be touch. A monitor without touch feels dead."

Response: Like everything developed by every company that wants to have mass market sales, it's humorous to NOT hear "It's what we've noticed as something very popular with other types of [technology] that eats up peoples' time and develops even further interest in buying. Mystery and slow revelation with additional hidden secrets is the key to fast up-front sales. We'll jump on the bandwagon, but it's something completely different from the norm! Buy it and you'll find out how!"

Honesty is too painful to just throw out there, I guess. :)

Not troll material or flamebait at all - It's just something I see constantly and I find it humorous. I may love Windows 8, I may hate it. Don't know until I use it.

I don't believe it... well, OK, I do.

[jimicus]

Let me get this straight.

I only looked at the first link but the first thing that jumped out at me was:

The advent of Windows 8 sees Microsoft introduce a new style of application, dubbed Metro Style apps, and its own app Store. The Metro Style apps are run in full-screen mode, with no Windows taskbar or other menu items getting in the way.

"Every single pixel of your beautiful screen is for your app," said Harris. "You're just immersed in the content."

Ok, so there's two big things here. An App Store and a way to run applications in some sort of full-screen interface.

Hmm. I wonder where I've heard these ideas before.

Re:I don't believe it... well, OK, I do.

[Cajun Hell]

Hmm. I wonder where I've heard these ideas before.

You heard of the app store first probably with some Linux distribution in the 1990s. You heard of full screen mode before you ever heard of any alternative, with nearly every post-dumbterm but pre-windowed platform (e.g. MS-DOS, C64, etc) since fullscreen was all they had.

Re:I don't believe it... well, OK, I do.

[JustinOpinion]

They are indeed mimicking Apple. And making the same mistakes, in my opinion.

"Every single pixel of your beautiful screen is for your app," said Harris. "You're just immersed in the content."

As I said when OS X Lion was released, I think this push towards full-screen apps is a move backwards. Yes, having the app fill the screen makes a lot of sense for smartphones and tablets, where screen/interface space is limited and you're typically focusing on a single task at a time. But on a desktop?

The whole point of a multi-purpose desktop computer is to be able to do a myriad of things, and more importantly to combine all the various resources/applications together in powerful ways. I want to be able to have a web-page reference document open while I code something, or copy-and-paste something from a spreadsheet into a text document. I want to be able to cross-compare multiple graphs/images/whatever at the same time. To do all this, I need to be able to tile, stack, and move windows on my screen. Endless alt-tabbing just doesn't cut it.

With desktop monitors getting bigger and bigger, fullscreen apps just don't make sense. Even maximized apps don't make sense: your mouse has to travel ridiculously far to get from content to controls if you make your app fullscreen on a 30-inch monitor. (There are of course times when you want a single app fullscreen; e.g. photo editing on a large monitor gives you a much better view of the content.) One of the main advantages of modern large monitors is the ability to have multiple apps open at once, without them blocking each other or being ridiculously constrained. Why are we throwing away these advantages?

I'm fully aware of the cognitive science research on multi-tasking (specifically, that people are bad at it and that focusing on a single task for a longer period of time has big advantages). What I'm questioning is whether any non-trivial task can really be accomplished using a single application. We should be optimizing our user interfaces to maximize the efficiency and focus on tasks and workflows: not boxing ourselves into stripped-down full-screen apps.

Re:FUD in the article

[rubycodez]

FUD back at you, when most apps require the Metro, that won't be a useful solution.

And more important

[Sycraft-fu]

Why the fuck would we want that on a desktop? Part of what makes a desktop system so useful is having multiple things open that you can switch between, position around, and so on. Right now I have my browser up on top of my primary window, but my e-mail client hiding behind it. I can see when new mail comes in. On my secondary monitor is the interface for our digital security system so I can watch over the cameras. There are a few other things loaded and running, but the windows are occluded at the moment. I don't want to be "immersed" in any of this shit. The ability to have multiple things going is why I like my desktop, it's why I have 4 cores, 8GB of memory and north of 4 million pixels of total display.

I do not get this obsession with trying to make computers work like phones. No, bad idea. When I heard of what they were doing with Lion I said "What a horrible idea." Now MS is doing the same? What the fuck? How about you give me a phone interface on a phone and a computer interface on a computer?

Re:Every other release

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

If you're at the fucking keynote, describing a demo as "working wonderfully" you're a Microsoft shill by definition.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force...

[Dog-Cow]

MS did not decide that the desktop is no longer relevant. Apple did. MS, is as usual, following Apple's lead. (Witness Mission Control in Lion.)

Re:I for one look forward to windows 9

[Noughmad]

That's why you build your own and keep your OS disks.

Fortunately, the guys I get my OS from keep regular backups on a public server, so I can re-download them anytime.

If your OS vendor doesn't do that, they are most likely using an external service for the same purpose. I can't remember the service's exact name, but their site has a ship with black sails on the front page.

Re:I felt a great disturbance in the Force...

[GameboyRMH]

If Ubuntu can finish its LSD trip in time for the Windows 8 release and go back to being a solid desktop distro, this could be the best thing for desktop Linux since Vista.

Re:Reboot faster!

[0123456]

My Windows 7 desktop has been up for 125 days and the last reboot was because I hook up a UPS after we had two power outages in a week.

Malware writers must love you.