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Ballmer Hints At 'Metro-ization' of Office
CWmike writes "Microsoft's CEO strongly hinted this week that the company will craft a Metro-style version of the next Office suite. 'You ought to expect that we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style,' Ballmer told a Wall Street analyst. Metro, a tile- and touch-based interface borrowed from Windows Phone 7, would be a massive change for Office, one that would dwarf the 'ribbonization' that set off a firestorm of complaints about Office 2007's new look. The criticism died down, and Microsoft later extended the ribbon in Office 2010 and Windows 7. It will ribbonize other components of Windows 8, notably the OS's file manager. One analyst believes Metro Office is a done deal. 'I think they need something in Metro to enable people to work on documents on tablets,' said Rob Helm, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. 'They need something on ARM.'"
Luckily, there is a patch and you can download it here. (It's not really a library, btw.)
According to whom? On what evidence?
Metro is a pile of shite, the 'designers' are idiots who are simply trying to justify their positions, by ruining everybody's user experience.
'I think they need something in Metro to enable people to work on documents on tablets,' said Rob Helm, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. 'They need something on ARM.'"
Sure, but that doesn't mean that there will be no more desktop version of office. These will be two different office suites that can inter-operate: Traditional desktop Office, and Metro Office. Since it sounds like tablets will only be able to run the Metro-style apps, this is inevitable, and not a big deal.
Is queer eye for the straight guy still on? I honestly thought this was going to be an article about Ballmer bringing the queer eye team to Redmond and having them do some work on Microsoft's headquarters...
Palm trees and 8
I'll hand it to Ballmer for not beating a dead horse and try to wedge Office into a form factor that worked okay but didn't get critical mass (Windows tablets). Now he's going to wedge it using a new UI that probably won't work on ARM tablets. He's clearly moved on to beating dead mules. ;)
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This is one of those really dumb ideas that I hope catches on. Like... well... I can't think of another example.
The reason why it's dumb should be obvious: they're trying to port a program with an input that's 99% keystrokes over to a device that has no keyboard.
The reason why I hope it catches on is that it might encourage tablet hardware designers to start seriously considering adding some kind of hardware keyboard to their devices. No, the on-screen keyboard doesn't count. I have a touchscreen netbook and I still claim it's superior to tablets in almost every respect, but its weaknesses (shorter battery life, bulkier than a tablet, takes too long to power up) keep me from just keeping it in my pocket and using it whenever I have a spare 5 minutes.
Between the addition of a keyboard and a some of the tablet designers finally getting it through their heads that the only way to beat Apple is on price, I might just break down and buy a tablet.
What the hell?
Sincerely, every single pc user on the face of this planet.
"Developers!" when he said it?
Sorry, someone had to risk the OT karma hit.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
So the interface is sooooooo Metro-sexsual, darling
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I remember a feeling coming over me
I was hoping you might change your mind
I remember hating you for changing things
Riding on the Metro
with apologies to Berlin
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Still here, still free, and still being ignored by 99% of consumers.
As much of a train wreck Windows 8 is looking to be, I don't see how it will compel your average computer user to switch to Linux.
...was going to be boring at some point. Apparently that point is now.
/.) think that the old one worked just fine, why mess with it, rightly so
On the bright side something good may come out of this "dumb-down-the-product" approach made popular (and commercially perfected) by Apple. It worked great for them so since MS is trying to re-invent themselves, why not follow the same paradigm.
On the other hand, the pro users (a slight super set of the little crowd here at
I think noone is really wrong or right here. Only time will tell if MS can pull this off.
Yes, I am. I think we should take our medicine now.
Metro doesn't give you ARM. The two aren't related.
The trend in computing is pretty clear: outside of some small niches here and there, it goes: mainframe -> workstation -> PC -> mobile (tablets/smartphones). Ribbonization makes products more suitable for the up and coming mobile world, and it seems like about the only time I can remember that Microsoft was actually on the leading side of the curve rather than the trailing side.
Ubutu has tried this too with Unity, but their attempt at mobile friendliness is a bit of a disaster.
Having had to deal with RE-LEARNING MSOffice pretty much from the ground-up due to "ribbonization", I have to ask: What is the difference between a "Ribbon" and a "Toolbar"? They both take up valuable screen real-estate, and in the case of the Ribbon, I don't think they are as customizable as the old Toolbars were (I might be wrong on that point, though).
Like so, so many of MS' "innovations", the Ribbon seems like change for change's sake. Now, instead of pawing through menus to find the command I am looking for, I now have to paw through Ribbons (plural) to figure out the icon I am looking for (not that the old toolbar icons were any better...)
So, tell me how MS was "ahead of the curve", since Toolbars have been used for at least a couple of decades now.
Miguel De Icaza has announced a new open source reimplementation of Microsoft's Metro interface, built on the Mono platform. This reimplementation will run on any operating system supported by Mono, unlike the official "Metro" implementation.
The new open source UI has been dubbed "Homo," which means "self" in Latin.
More information can be found the Homo website: Homo project.
After Ribbons, it has become extremely difficult to think up ways to make MS Office worse. Continuing to do so shows an unbelievable level of commitment and effort.
"and good job MS, you cant even settle on a standard UI anymore, you have classic, ribbion and now metro all fighting for our mouseclicks, how the hell does that help anyone when every freaking window has a gd new U I!?!?"
And they say that Windows developers learned nothing from Linux!
(runs)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Does Microsoft understand that different form-factor requires different GUI design? They try to shove the one-size-fit-all approach to all the devices that they design, that's why they fail so hard. You can't take a PC interface, with mouse and keyboard, and copy it directly over to a tablet, where an icon is too small to be touched precisely by a stylus. You can't do serious document editing or spreadsheet on a phone / tablet so design those apps with a "good enough" feature set and let go. You can't copy a panel-based interface to a keyboard and mouse environment. Apple knows how to do those things: they have a scroller for the phone, a pop up for the tablet, and a plain old drop down for the computer. They make them "consistent" but far from identical, cause your interaction with them are different.
still mostly broken, and requires you read a 14 page document to install a video driver
Sorry, I've used linux for 12 years. What's a driver?
Tablets are more amenable to handwriting than desktops, and less to typing than desktops.
Can they bring back handwriting?
Will it be more efficient for input?
Can conversion to typed text be made error-free?
And what of hybrid concepts like Swype?
not really.. all modern nvidia and amd hardware just works when you install the binary driver.
Well, I doubt they would ever port the massive codebase to their new C++/CX dialect. Does anyone remember the C++/CLR thing and all the talk about Office.NET? Yeah, right.
However, I am sure there will be a small tile-based viewer.
So here's the thing. Big tech is all about the verticals nowadays. Here's my future.
Apple showed us how it's done - having the CPU, the iDevice, the OS, developing carrier relations, an app store, a lot of apps and a developer community, and now a cross-device cloud service. Apple makes most of its money from the devices by the way.
Google's not letting down. After Eric Shmidt and Larry Page had their disagreement on whether Google should be fleshing out its own stack or consolidating around its "core business" (see Yahoo for why I believe that's a BAD strategy), Eric left and Larry went to work. They thought about their stack - same stack as Apple only top-down and with only part of the components - the cloud services, the OS, the app store and developer community, and its minor foray into the device business.
So they bought all the stack components they were missing in one lean and mean acquisition of virtually all 'things' Motorola - the solid carrier relations worldwide, a device making capability, the "defensive" patent portfolio - and they even one-upped Apple - they got another rung down - they now make the baseband too.
And here's where the big surprise rolled in.
Microsoft Windows 8.
Windows? In the mobile space? Weren't they late to the party? Aren't they dragging their feet with some distant relative of PocketPC? Wasn't their buddy Nokia about to be decimated and dismembered with cheaper ~350$ iPhone models and cheap Androids in some 100 countries with no carrier subsidies? You know, those places where Nokia still sells more phones than everyone else in the world combined? Those places where nobody buys 500$ phones?
Apple and Google are still going to take them to pieces, right? You know, Apple driving a cloud software package and "Cord-free" in those same countries where many people don't have enough money for both a PC and a phone?
Well... just hang on for a second and let's think about it like rational geeks who pertain to understand why Android and iPhone changed the market.
So don't sell your microsoft stock just yet. Looks like they've been thinking it through. REAL hard.
Remember how in 2007 a "phone" was a device? As was the music player, the GPS and to some extent the camera? Today, just like the others, the phone is an app. Sure, we call the device a "phone", but that's just legacy that stuck. Almost like calling a computer a typewriter. It's a rabidly multi-dimensional device. It's a web node, a tricorder, a content delivery platform and a bank terminal. And so much more. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
All this to say, a phone is an app.
So it's 2007 all over again, only now it's Microsoft actually doing something /different/ for the first time in 24 years. It's their defining iPhone moment.
It's all in the PC, stupid - it got commoditized, all but forgotten, but it still does al the heavy hauling of our actual work.
And on the new breed of mobile devices - "phones", tablets and whatever follows, it is, if Microsoft have their way, going to become, plain and simple, an app.
And not just any app mind you. It'll be the killer app that will allow a lot of people to drop their desktop or laptop.
You'll hook your phone or tablet up to a screen and a keyboard (with or without cables), or not, launch said app, and do your word, excel, visio and other work stuff. When you close this app, under it all will be a mobile OS UI on-par (one would hope) with iOS and Android.
Cute, but where's microsoft going to conjure the entire stack needed to pull this off? It ain't a single-layer market anymore where you can get by as a big player making just the OS or just the device....
Microsoft isn't as bad as you'd think in their stack. They have handsets, basebands and carrier relations covered by their now best buddy Nokia, both them and Nokia have access to CPUs, they have a mobile OS that unlike Blackberry, webOS etc is actually competent, with a new kernel and the
-
Why people not only continue to use MS Office but are willing to pay 200 bucks or so for it is beyond me.
...and still being ignored by 99% of consumers.
Someone will figure out how to attract the generic consumer at some point. Compare average user awareness of Linux five years ago versus today. People have actually heard about it by now.
The general perception is probably something along the lines of, "I know it exists. I don't know why I would want it. It's over my head."
Give users a reason to switch and they will as long as they remain comfortable with an OS switch. Android seems to be doing well. LAMP seems to be doing well (not really a consumer product, but it does have a consumer facing aspect since it is an option when purchasing web hosting, which many average people are doing today).
All Linux needs is a good spokesman. Someone with a marketing degree and not an engineering/CS degree. Or, what seems to be the most likely, a wrapper around Linux that tells the user a lot in a simple snappy name. Android did that and it's worked quite well.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Been there, tried that for 3.5 years after seeing Vista was the future of Windows. Win7 brought me back, if Metro is something I abhor then I got no problem making 7 the new XP and keeping it for many years to come. Besides, you typically get one generation of "classic" mode so I'd say at worst it becomes hopeless when Win8 support ends around 2020 or so. And there's Mac, but I figure they're heading down the same path Microsoft is, in fact a bit further up the road. Mostly I'm anxious to see what happens to Qt and KDE, because if Gnome 3 and Unity is any sign of what's to come then I'd rather become a grumpy old fart talking about how everything was better before.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Microsoft is pushing Metro as their new UI, and (possibly, it sounds like Microsoft hasn't even decided) their only ARM SDK. Of course they have an Office port in the works. Otherwise, Office would be unsellable.
It's just a way for old users to feel even more superior. If you can get the job done in vi before they've even found the right ribbon there is something wrong. The same goes with older versions of MS Office and keyboard shortcuts.
ASUS figured that out with the netbooks but they also have a large laptop section that depends on cheap MS Windows licences to be competitive. Thus at a trade show a few years ago the CEO was singing the praises of his linux netbooks in the morning and made a PUBLIC APOLOGY about them not having MS Windows in the afternoon, and then dropped the entire linux product line. He'd had lunch with some people from Microsoft.
There was an article about that incident here at the time.
The details of whatever deal or threats were made were not reported but the results were very clear.
Is not going to happen, you can't force marketing on a "product" thats not mean to be marketed. The trend that Apple started is the "dumbification" of technology, everything has to be easy and work 100% of the time, shit can't go wrong because users are clueless or have better things to do than to fiddle with config files in nano, ascii both ways.
Linux requires users with smarts, curiosity and free time and those are not common to a lot of people. Linux should focus in introducing itself to kids and education environments since, by personal experience, kids easily love Linux because they have the 3 things I mentioned above, also they have the motivation to pose as "teh 1337dude that uses Linux".
Android is a good example, everybody knows android and most of them know that it runs on that stuff called Linux, they see it working, they see it's cool and shinny and at least in the consumer mind Linux is not synonymous of bash prompts and 8 bit color GUI anymore.
Most of us would like Linux to have a relevant market share, but in reality what we'd like to see is more people smart enough to value Linux and with the motivation to learn it and tame it, is not going to happen unless you give them a strong motivation, a tangible motivation. _Freedom_ is not tangible, people ask themselves why using Win or OSX make them _non free people_ and then they realize it's a televangelist kind of discourse and could not care less.
Damn, where are mod points when you need them? Insightful comment indeed, and I agree with everything you said, particularly about a home compute appliance to which your mobile devices connect. And it's interesting you should say that Apple and Google have given the future of mobile much thought. Remember it was Jobs who coined the term "Digital Hub", and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it unspool very much like your prediction. I personally envision something along the lines of a Mac mini/Time Capsule-type hybrid device to fulfill the role of network storage, wireless router, and media/application server, with Thunderbolt ports to connect monitors and peripherals. Kudos. Sharp thinking on your part.
ancient autocad users still tell me "release 14 was the best one ever". That was 1997. There will always be curmudgeons.
This is why Slashdot needs a "Like" or "+1" button.
Oddly enough that was the last version I could justify buying so I don't have a clue what AutoCAD looks like now. At least the "light" version has actual circles now and can draw tangents these days.
Wonderful! Microsoft saved lots of people a good wad of cash when they pushed the awful ribbon onto everyone's neck - more than a quarter of the people I know now use either OpenOffice or LibreOffice thanks to that clusterfuck. And I expect that ratio will increase as it becomes more mainstream.
Enough. Please.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Apple and iPad are slowly, but surely, fracturing Microsoft's monopoly. When "does it run Windows apps?" becomes irrelevant, because you can do what you want to do and need to do on any platform, Microsoft's whole house of cards will start collapsing.
It will be years yet, but MS is losing its monopoly, and that's all it has. Being a cheat and bully is all they know how to do now.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
They both take up valuable screen real-estate, and in the case of the Ribbon, I don't think they are as customizable as the old Toolbars were (I might be wrong on that point, though).
You're wrong on that point. In fact, in Office 2010 you can even export all your Ribbon customizations so you can configure multiple copies of Office exactly the way you like it.
Breakfast served all day!
As you said, of course Microsoft is working on a Metro version of Office. They'd be crazy not to be. Office is Microsoft's cash cow, the castle that all their other ventures serve to protect, and it's probably the number one reason why people continue to use Windows. They, and everyone else (including Apple), were caught flatfooted by the runaway train that is the iPad, and I'm willing to bet that its incredible success sent deep chills through the executive suites in Redmond, when they realized that an entire vast new market was developing and they didn't even have a toehold in it. People want tablets (the argument over whether they want "tablets" or iPads can wait for another day), and Microsoft is faced with a twofold challenge: to have a viable tablet OS; and to develop a version of Office that can run on it.
Forgive me for not recalling the source, but I read a piece sometime last year about the severe political infighting inside Microsoft, and as an example the writer gave an anecdote about internal discussions concerning the creation of a touchscreen version of Office. The discussions came to an abrupt screeching halt when the head of the Office division at the time flatly refused to have anything to do with it. Try to imagine anyone at Apple telling Jobs that.
The article painted a portrait of a deeply dysfunctional company, riven by rivalries among the various divisions, and of Ballmer's part in the creation of a nightmarish corporate culture where backstabbing and naked ambition rule. One gets the distinct impression that Microsoft under Gates was like the former Yugoslavia under Tito, with only a strong personality holding together a loose confederation of rivals. With Gates's departure (Tito's death in the case of Yugoslavia), all the bitter divisions came bubbling to the surface, and not only was Ballmer incapable of controlling it, he seemed to actively encourage it in order to weaken potential rivals, similar to Milosevic's misrule in Serbia. Now it's biting Microsoft in the ass, as they find themselves culturally ill-equipped to respond quickly to an external threat.
As I said, they're faced with a twofold challenge, to succeed with a touchscreen device, and to have a version of Office that can run on it. Each by itself is an extremely difficult proposition. Success at both may prove to be an insurmountable problem.
Hi, this is your new car. The controls are dynamically adaptable! The radio station display is large and bright and shiny but the stations have no numbers or text labels. And the gas pedal is mouse-driven. Now, if you want to accelerate, use the 'accelerate gesture' with your hand in the air and move the cursor on the windshield forward, unless it's rainy, and then you have turn on 'rainy day cursor' which makes it about a foot wide at the top of the windshield. If you have any problems, click the "Ford Office' icon at the upper left corner being careful not to cause an accident in the process. Sometimes people outside may think you're giving them the finger, hahah. But our marketing department says 9 out of 10 people think this is cool to do 20 times a day, hahah. Okay now, if you have to brake, 1) don't click the 'Brake' tab, that's not where we put braking, instead, click the 'Alter Velocity' tab and select the unlabeled small 'Reduce Gas Flow' Icon and then select either the 'Handbrake?' button or the 'Footbrake?' button. Now move the braking slider which is located under the passenger seat. If this does not work, click "Ford Internet Help' and go online to see how to brake before you reach the end of that offramp.
Ford Bob: I see you're trying to avoid an accident. Do you want to write a letter?
The interface duh. The fscking article and whole of the discussion are about interfaces. Yes, phones and tablets have been around for a long time, but the interfaces sucked until Apple kicked everyone's ass with the iPhone. No, I will never own an iPhone, but yes I do appreciate that they were the first people to actually design an OS that worked well with a touchscreen.
which is totally what she said
Someone will figure out how to attract the generic consumer at some point.
The only way this will happen is by changing Linux, not changing the message.
Android seems to be doing well.
Android isn't Linux. It merely uses a highly modified Linux kernel.
LAMP seems to be doing well (not really a consumer product, but it does have a consumer facing aspect since it is an option when purchasing web hosting, which many average people are doing today).
Exactly. Every single consumer success for Linux happens everywhere *except* the desktop.
All Linux needs is a good spokesman.
Linux's problem has absolutely nothing to do with marketing. People just simply don't give a shit about free (libre), because there's no practical value to them. And commercial operating systems aren't expensive enough to make people care about free (gratis).
What they care about is that the system works with their stuff, and is easy enough to use. Linux fails both criteria for the vast majority of consumers. Who cares if it's "better" if you can't use it?
Or, what seems to be the most likely, a wrapper around Linux that tells the user a lot in a simple snappy name. Android did that and it's worked quite well.
Right. Android was a success in no small part due to throwing out everything that makes Linux recognizable as Linux.
Tablets? MS has been around since 2001
2001? They've been failing in the Tablet market since 1992! I actually have one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
What's wrong with Gnome 3? I've just had a look, and it looks pretty much the same as Gnome 2, but running Docky/Gnome-Do by default, and copying a couple of useful Windows 7 window gestures.
Unity is pants though, I'll agree.
which is totally what she said
Readers of Slashdot use WYSIWYG word processors? I thought we gave only grief and ridicule to anyone who wasn't still using ed to write TeX for all of their office documents. The idea of using various too-brightly colored squares to interface with text does strike me a ludicrous, but then I've been criticized before for using LaTeX (a real geek wouldn't rely on someone else's macros, but would have rolled their own).
This is not that big of a deal. They'll probably have both a metro and desktop version. It's the same thing they're doing for Internet Explorer. The metro version can then be used on windows phone and tablets.
Ballmer and other idiots are firmly at the helm, Microsoft finally has a good chance destroying itself without any outside help.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The target use case for something like this is CXOs tweaking their Powerpoint presentations while on the plane, or proof reading and correcting reports while on the subway. No, you wouldn't want to make the whole thing on the tablet, but being able to make minor changes on the go is a useful feature.
I've used 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2011. They keep changing the UI, not necessarily for the worse, but just moving stuff around. My employer apparently is buying 2012 soon, so I'll see if there's anything interesting in there. For the most part the improvements I'm noticing in latest releases seem aimed at 3d.
So what exactly are they copying?
Apple's tablet OS design ideas.
Which OS design ideas? Be specific because it can't be the GUI which is completely different and follows completely different principles (yes I'm just talking about Metro, of course the fact that it can still run a Windows 7 alike desktop is completely different).
So what is it? Lower level OS architecture? Can't be. E.g. Apple managed to barely fix ASLR only in Lion. Microsoft has it working since ages.
It must be gestures then. Who would have thought that once touchscreen technology advanced, things could be operated touching a screen. No, it can't be, concepts have been around for a decade and something real was already around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface (besides all sort of other tablets, I refer to the surface because from a design concept standpoint has been by far the richest).
Uhm, maybe is the design concept of having a matrix of icons? Pretty looks like my Windows desktop since the last 15 years. Thanks, I'll stay with my Metro tiles that actively display something useful and don't look so Win3.1
No, but WP7's redesign is a direct result of Apple's 2007 entry into the market.
Yep, then they invented a time machine and went back to 2006 to release the Zune with an interface that looks like the genesis of Metro. But the point is another one, so, after all, they didn't copied, they were only forced to re-design? And the big part of that re-design of WP7 vs WP6.5 was the interface?
Like I said, the tablet design ideas. Those tablets that have been around since 2001 simply used the standard Windows GUI. That's why they were a market failure.
So now you switched from OS design to general tablet design. And the failure was the Windows GUI. Not that batteries lasted nothing. Not the weight (couldn't even be used to make a presentation, your arm would hurt if you had to keep it in hands for 1 hour). Not that they were slow as hell. Not that touchscreen technology was a joke. Nope. Nothing. Just the GUI. Everyone was waiting fur such an inspired GUI from Apple. Just swipes, pokes and tons of small apps.
I tell you what: iPads right now are good for coach surfing, watching some videos, reading books (although I prefer e-ink), playing a limited set of games, casually reading e-mails. That's pretty much it (ok, there are some niches like music composers and such, but I'm talking about the mass. If you want to write something seriously, you need an external keyboard. For some some other stuff, a pen would be very useful. We'll see what happens when MS tablet will be released on different form factors with the best of both worlds (Windows Desktop and Metro). I predict that once Excel and Outlook will ship on Metro, a lot of managers will throw their iPads out of the window.
As for the Newton, not sure why you seem to think it doesn't apply, since you seem to be talking about the form factors and not the designs behind them.
Because we are talking about who copied who and if we go back to PDAs then even there Apple was not the first one and the Newton was pretty much a failure. MS came later with CE devices and that was a lot more successful. Not even only in the consumer space, all over different devices (warehouses, hospitals etc.)
Matrix of icons in the GUI? ROTFL...
What?
You struggle to keep focus? We are talking about MS copying Apple, so where is the matrix of icons in Metro? You know, Metro tiles are not just square/rectangular icons. They actively convey information. Yet, in the iOS world a matrix of icons seems to be such an innovation (Apple even put it in Lion). How could MS fail to copy such a fundamental innovation! FWIW the ROTFL was a huge laugh at all the innovation from Apple. Icons. Lots of them.
Cash cow? I doubt it.
You don't need to doubt it, just read the financial statement. Windows brings in $12B/year; Office+SharePoint+Exchange is $14B/year.
. In my territory, MS Office is selling at a slightly lower price than Windows. And not only that: it comes with 3-seat license, so it's effectively less than one-third the cost of a Windows license. Sure, this is the vanilla version that comes without the "enterprise" goodness of Access and the groupware tools, but for most people and small businesses having something to print out a quick report or do a spreadsheet of the week's expenses is more than enough.
Thing is, a single large business that buys several thousand, or even ten thousand, seats of enterprise edition "compensates" for a lot of those small home/office users in terms of income. And there are very few businesses with users in thousands that don't license Office for a significant proportion of their employees.
Metro is absolute garbage on a desktop with a mouse. That being said, it's also no worse than anything done on iPhones, Android, or Windows Phones. But it should be only for touch-screens, preferably smartphones. Just as long as they KEEP IT THERE.
Only marketing would ever want Office to be run in Metro. But the Windows 8 devs on msdn, if you read their blogs, are very in-tune with things. Whatever culture that was spawned after the Halloween-documents in 1998 (yes, 13 years ago) is very much active there, and they're neither close-minded nor stupid. They hate things like IE6 and love jQuery as much as anyone here would. Not surprising, considering MSFT have hired a lot of smart OSS-minded people in the past decade.
My guess is that they're only trying to vet unifying the interface part of Windows 8 as hard as they can currently. Despite the new DX9-level graphics requirements, Win8 is otherwise seriously fast enough to be run on modern smartphones. If you stripped out that crap, it'd be faster than Win7, probably faster than XP.
And since ribbons were brought up, Office 2007's ribbons sucked, just like Vista did. Office 2010's actually worked and is what it should have been. Digging through tons of 1980s-Macintosh style menus in Office2k3 or OOO to do things like data bars or text-to-columns a spreadsheet plain sucks. Tabbing through common tasks is far nicer. Four tabs and nothing's buried in Win8 explorer.
There are ways in which it is less customizable, like there is only so much real estate in a ribbon, and it really isn't much when they use those huge, chunky icons.
WTF?!? Still with the "Gates as Borg" icon? How long has Ballmer been in charge of MS now? I'm no fan either, but you have to admit his ball head makes a better Borg. He looks like a Borg without implants.
Metro and WP7 before it were a striking change from the Windows GUI and Windows Mobile. The changes that they made were similar to the ones Apple made of getting rid of much of what makes a PC OS a PC OS.
Prior to the iPhone, MS's answer to tablets and phones was to shoe-horn in Windows. Apple was the first to make a tablet OS designed specifically *for* the tablet, and not just a PC OS with alternate input methods.
As for the Zune, it's clearly a media player UI. That Metro has that style is unsurprising, but the original Zune in no way portends Metro.
Metamoderate more often. When I metamoderate, I usually get about 15 +1/Likes the next day.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
...sexualism is on it's way out? ;-)
Bravo Microsoft for consistently beeing out of touch with trends
-- no sig today
I run gentoo. wit the latest xorg and with no other drivers compiled or set up all i have to do to get either card working is just emerge either nvidia or ati drivers.
It's not the look or the colours, it's the concept of making the UI finger friendly
which is totally what she said
*gets out a real keyboard*
As for previous interfaces, have you ever used Windows Mobile or CE? Especially in the Pre 6.5 days. The interface was basically just a small version of desktop windows - which also is horrible on a touchscreen. All the buttons are tiny. Stupidly simple things like that, for some reason nobody bothered to do anything about it until Apple released iOS. I knew that the interface was the weakest point in my smart phones, but Windows Mobile was still the best option for me until Android came out.
Capacitive touchscreens made a big difference too, and not just because of multi-touch.
which is totally what she said
What does metro actually mean?
Some say under ground bus system in Washington DC, some say it's the bus system in Seattle Area.
Some say it's a non gay man who tends to dress good or sort of guess like a gay man, without being a gay man?
So, it's like a good looking bus/subway system?
So the interface of Windows 8 is Metro, which means it looks gay, but isn't gay, and will take you to destination via the long way, crowded with all sorts of others, and some of them smell. Oh, and over charge you. I almost forgot, it's never on time, and when your running a little late, it's early. Always slow and usually a horrible ride.
Okay, now that i work out the details, i understand.
Do NOT WANT.
thanks
Be seeing you...
The whole point of Windows tablets is that they use the same OS for tablets and PCs. But they couldn't push that same OS for tablets because people chose to buy iPads instead, because the desktop OS isn't optimised for tablets.
But making the desktop OS use Metro means that customers will have to become acquanted with Metro once Microsoft stops selling XP and Windows 7 licenses to OEMs. And then their tablet offering will come with the 'familiar Windows experience', only now in addition to using the same OS that's on your desktop, it will be suitable for tablets.
If they can't shove a desktop OS in a tablet because people can choose not to buy that tablet, they can shove a tablet OS on the desktop and every office worker has to buy that.
man, you just described that it's bought by pretty much by most businesses and YET YOU DON'T THINK OF IT AS A CASH COW WTF? have you no regard for scale? not to mention those which do pony up a sum - any sum at all - for the enterprise stuff.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A big interface problem that potential interactions are not revealed. The Start and settings menu shows up in a Metro app only if you hover the mouse over the lower left corner. In the start interface, you can start typing the name of an app to launch it, but there is no indication in the menu that you can do this.
well.. in chrome, or in new firefox, you can't know that ctrl-f will bring up the find dialog, unless you just assume that it will beforehand.
gestures and magic key combos. wasn't that shit supposed to be for vi and emacs?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From what I've been hearing and seeing, it seems like the current built of Metro interface is heavily skewed toward touch-screen based interaction. As to keyboard and mouse input, it's harder to use than Windows 7 GUI. As I type this message, I sit in front of laptop, using keyboard and mouse and external monitor, in fact I can't even reach that monitor with my hand. And I believe most of the people using laptops, even without external monitors, would agree that the keyboard and mouse
(or touchpad or trackpoint) is preferred way to input. Touchscreen belongs to iPad-like devices and tablets. So what does Microsoft is hoping to achieve? That with Metro people will start buying tablets/convertibles, as an opposite to having two separate devices, laptop and, say, iPad? I have my doubts. And, in any case, I use Windows primarily because of the number of applications available for it (and for hardware compatibility as well). Lots of legacy applications, all are keyboard/mouse type of input oriented. So what's going to happen when Windows 8 appears? I just hope that by the time (at least) beta version is available, the traditional keyboard/mouse interface will be on the same level as it is in Windows 7. If not, IMHO, Microsoft will be shooting itself in foot.
in the line of copiers following Apple, as usual.
Sorry, I don't see where MS has copied Apple here. Metro is dramatically different from iOS.
Apple, it seems, is the one who's stopped innovating. iOS wasn't terribly innovative to begin with, and STILL stuffers from some particularly horrid UI problems (notifications stand out here).
Other mobile UI's have long since surpassed iOS it terms of usability. webOS was well ahead of iOS before HP killed it, as is WP7. I don't know that iOS ever matched BBOS in terms of productivity. With QNX improving on the best parts webOS, Apple looks to be way behind the rest of the industry in the UI department.
If you can accuse anyone of copying Apple, it would be Android. Though this isn't true in every case, it's only slightly ahead of iOS on phones, though not significantly so. On tablets Android is coming into it's own, though it's not really pushing any boundaries like other mobile OS's.
Apple can't live on the myth that they're the "best" and "easiest to use" forever. If they want to stay relevant, they need to start innovating again.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Capacitive touchscreens made a big difference too
They did -- in that they made touch-screen devices even less usable.
Sure, you can slide your greasy fingers across them to make gross ape-like gestures and "click" gigantic targets, but you can't do anything that requires more precision than jamming your finger into your nose.
Common tasks like selecting text and re-positioning the text-cursor (easy with a stylus) are extraordinarily frustrating on the wretchedly imprecise mess that is the capacitive touch-screen.
Thankfully, some companies offer an optical trackpad to make those sorts of tasks less-painful. Still, for many applications, you still can't beat a stylus.
If you want to blame Apple for this particular usability and productivity killing trend, be my guest.
As for nobody innovating in the smartphone arena before Apple, you're out of your mind. RIM offered new ideas year after year both before and after the iPhone. (The iPhone is still WAY behind RIM in terms of productivity. They don't even come close if you look at things like notifications -- which RIM has nearly perfected.)
That's just one company. There were MANY other innovators from Nokia to Motorola who offered new and interesting concepts.
The iPhone was a total joke when it first came out. I have no idea how a "smartphone" without MMS, extremely short battery-life, and lacking other basic features common to the cheapest dumb-phone sold at all. iOS 5 promises to bring notifications up to RIM c. 2003 standards. That's right, they STILL haven't caught up to RIM. That's pretty sad.
As for innovation, it's well known that Apple is far from the first with a touchscreen phone, nor even one with a capacitive touchscreen. And the wall-of-icons UI is hardly innovative. It's ridiculous that anyone could come to such an absurd conclusion.
Sure, they shook the industry -- but in the process, they set it back several years. We're just now starting to see manufactures break away from the touch-screen only horror show and offer REAL smart phones that actually enhance productivity -- and they're achieving that by copying a real industry innovator: RIM.
Required reading for internet skeptics
If you want to do work on your phone, a stylus could be acceptable I guess. For those of us that just want to use the phone generally, we don't want to whap out a stylus every time we need to add a contact or check our email. Capacitive touch with large buttons is much more pleasant for that kind of use.
I never looked at Blackberrys seriously. Any time I've had to deal with them or the desktop software for them they seemed very poorly designed. If it wasn't for the crazy cheap roaming costs, we wouldn't use them where I work.
Yes, the iPhone has always been a joke in one way or another, but it did force an improvement on the interface end.
There are still resistive phones out there if you want them. I don't understand why you would. Then again, my phone has a 5 inch screen so precision isn't really a problem.
which is totally what she said
I was hopeful when I heard that the 2010 Ribbon was customizable. And indeed, I was able to get rid of that useless 1980s mail merge ribbon (or tab or whatever it is) in Word. But the customizability is very limited. There appear to be pieces you can't get rid of (they're grayed out in the customization dialog), and limits to where you can put new pieces in. So far I have not intuited the reason why some commands can be added/ deleted, and some can't.
If you want to do work on your phone, a stylus could be acceptable I guess.
That was the point, really. Then again, I thought doing work on the phone was the whole point of a smartphone?
For those of us that just want to use the phone generally, we don't want to whap out a stylus every time we need to add a contact or check our email.
I'll agree, though I think a physical keyboard is even better suited to the task.
I never looked at Blackberrys seriously. Any time I've had to deal with them or the desktop software for them they seemed very poorly designed.
Well, if you don't plan on using your phone for work, I can see how you'd get that impression. In actual use, they're incredibly well-designed. Things like email, contacts, scheduling, etc. are either immediately available or just a single keystroke away. The desktop software isn't really necessary, save for local backups and switching to a new device. Otherwise, BB Protect will handle most users backup needs. I very rarely use it, though I haven't noticed any problems with it so far. For music, you can use just about any music-manger you want -- treating the SD card like any inexpensive MP3 player
My wife, a huge android fan, recently traded in her new Samsung for an antique Blackberry 8500. She wanted the better battery life, and the improved productivity she's seen me get out of my phones. As her needs became more complex with her new job, she needed more productivity out of her phone. Sure, she can do all of the things she does now on her android, just not nearly as well. An overview of her schedule and all of her notifications are on the home screen, available at a glance. In two keystrokes she can check and delete or respond to a new message -- and far more quickly and accurately with the physical keyboard.
When her needs were less work-focused, however, she gained much more value out of her Android. It had better games, a nicer browser, and worked adequately enough for email, SMS, and facebook.
A phone like the Bold 9900 offers an interesting compromise, with a touchscreen on top, and keyboard & trackpad below. Touch when it makes sense, trackpad and keyboard for when it doesn't.
RIM does have a patent on a hybrid capacitive/resistive touchscreen, which I'd like to see on new phones. I would prefer to use a stylus when working with spreadsheets, for example, that the optical trackpad -- I already know that I can't manage the things with a capacitive touchscreen alone. It's just not well suited.
Of course, that's the point isn't it? The capacitive touchscreen isn't the end-all of the hand-held UI. It's good for a few things, but all-but-useless for other, common, tasks.
Required reading for internet skeptics
It has been 4 years now and the few times a month I have to use an Office product, I still can't find common things in the damn "ribbons" that I used to be able to find in the plain-jane menu.
I will change a bit the order of quoting
As for the Zune, it's clearly a media player UI. That Metro has that style is unsurprising, but the original Zune in no way portends Metro.
How can say so it's beyond my comprehension. Have a look at this side-by-side picture of Zune V1 and V2: http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/13/zune-2-0-update-ready-for-your-first-generation-zune I'm pretty sure everyone can recognize traits of the same design language.
Metro and WP7 before it were a striking change from the Windows GUI and Windows Mobile. The changes that they made were similar to the ones Apple made of getting rid of much of what makes a PC OS a PC OS.
TBH, I think this is simply a common belief coming from Apple marketing department and channeled through Apple fan boys. If anything, I'd say that Microsoft GUIs are exactly what were already under change. Apple simply pushed the changes to happen (far) more quickly.
For example, have a look at these:
Save all pictures somewhere, review the Metro design language article here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language) and then tell me again that Microsoft started changing GUIs after Apple push.
MS was already undertaking changes in various GUIs and I can clearly see the Metro design behind those changes. They may have not spelt out a name for it, and/or formally defined design rules, but I can clearly see the common roots. They already had the grounds and simply came up with the concept of tiles that was new.
Prior to the iPhone, MS's answer to tablets and phones was to shoe-horn in Windows. Apple was the first to make a tablet OS designed specifically *for* the tablet, and no