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Microsoft Launches Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Posted by Unknown on from the no-more-windows-in-windows dept.

suraj.sun writes "Microsoft on Wednesday made the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 available for download to the general public. Built with touch computing and apps in mind, Windows 8 is crucial to Microsoft's efforts to make inroads against Apple and Google in the red-hot tablet market, where the company is significantly behind rivals. Windows 8 marks the biggest change to the OS since the aforementioned 95 flavor (which, shockingly, turns 17 this year). With Windows 8 comes the introduction of a Metro-style interface, inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone. In it, apps and functions are pinned to tiles and, to interact with those apps, you simply tap those tiles. The former Start Menu has been replaced by a full-screen view of tiles that you can scroll through horizontally. You can pin applications, shortcuts, documents, webpages and any number of other things, customizing the interface in any way you like — so long as what you like is rectangular and only extends from left to right." MrSeb wrote on with info on generating a USB stick installer from the available images, and itwebennet with details about IE10.

12 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. what's new? by DaveGod · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So what are the significant changes? Other than the UI.

    I did try Googling a few previews, they talked about the UI.

  2. Re:Possibly too little, too late ... by dan828 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps MS realizes this and figures they've got a good 9 more years to experiment before they need to make a solid desktop OS that'll be adopted by their enterprise customers? I mean, Windows 7 looks like it's going to have all of the staying power that XP did. Perhaps they're thinking they can do some radical experimenting and still maintain their user base with windows 7.

  3. The more things change the more they stay the same by kirkb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://i.imgur.com/avgcv.jpg

    --
    Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
  4. Too soon by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Uncle with the OS do overs. Win 7 has been out less than three years. Heck I still have two desktops running XP because a) it works and b) I don't have to buy new hardware just to make the OS work. Win 7 is stable enough that they should be doing incremental point releases to that and not wholesale changes like win 8. Who is crying for this crap any how? And you mean there was no way to modify 7 to work as desired on a tablet? Hard to believe. Freaking NetBSD runs on damned toasters and mega servers for gods sake!

    1. Re:Too soon by Your.Master · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Much as I'm not a fan of this interface on the desktop, I think this *is* the way to modify windows 7 to work as desired on a tablet.

      Windows 7 ran on tablets for years and it sucked because the entire interface was designed for a mouse and keyboard, with some bones thrown in for keyboard-only users. Tablets have fundamentally different constraints -- not nearly as precise as the mouse, so you need much larger hit targets and hit-testing correction; there's no "right-click" or any other button, so contextual UI has to be redesigned; can "instantly" move the pointer and even have multiple pointers simultaneously, enabling new interactions; no hardware keyboard means the UI has to dynamically account for a software keyboard; etc..

      That's what the original iPhone got right: a phone is not a small desktop. People weren't asking for specifically what an iPhone was because they lacked the words to express it, like the tale of Ford and "faster horses". However, Apple seems to think that tablets are huge telephones -- and to be fair, iPad sales aren't exactly lacking, so they have a point to some extent. I think there's a different optimum to be found in that form factor, though. Microsoft seems to be betting on something that's a bit more phone-like but not really a big WinPhone, coupled with the old desktop which continues to work as crappily as ever on a tablet. From an approach perspective, I think it's interesting and promising for tablets. I think it's a mistake for any machine that doesn't primarily use touch input. I would recommend Microsoft make Metro the second-class citizen when you use mouse & keyboard, and make desktop the second-class citizen when you use a Touch device. Of course they don't want UI divergence because it would bisect their famously large 3rd party software market. But that's going to happen anyway because the compatibility is still there and the desktop is still better for mouse & keyboard. I think it's cool that you can run tablet-optimized software on a desktop and desktop-optimized software on a tablet, but I don't think that's what you should spend most of your time doing.

  5. Sponsered by MS Sales article? by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have to believe this is one of the new "sales" type posts on slashdot. The part saying "inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone" sounds more like a sales brochure, than a post about a new OS product on a Slashdot front page...?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  6. Re:Lovely and Intuitive? by cayenne8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hit the windows key, type the first few letters and hit enter. Exactly the same as you would do before.

    Hmm..I've never tried doing that before.

    I'm guessing this would be new to a LOT of people too besides me...?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  7. Wait for Win9 by kirkb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Honestly, I think Win8 would be better off deprecating the desktop and being metro-only. But this can't happen on day one, because users will be in a situation where half their apps are metro and half are legacy. So Win8 forces us to endure the jarringly schizophrenic clash between Metro UI and the Classic Desktop. It's the "transition version" of windows. Win9 will get it right.

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    Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
  8. Re:Lovely and Intuitive? by tibit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you don't know about that, you're really wasting a lot of time. Did you truly believe there are no new tricks to be learned as you upgrade your Windows? It's not like an undocumented poweruser thing. The damn key is on the keyboard, and has been for a while, what about pressing it every once in a while to see if they added any new functionality to it...

    It's been quite long on both Windows and Mac since you actually had to browse lists to pick up items from them. You know, computers are quite good at looking things up. Command line with suggestions has come back, and it's known as Search or Spotlight.

    Lists/menus/files in folders are good when you don't know what you're looking for. Once you remember the name (or a sample of contents) of the thing you need, let the machine find it for you.

    </rant>

    --
    A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  9. Re:Lovely and Intuitive? by atlasdropperofworlds · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Mutlitasking is more complex than that. It is possible for tasks to run continuously, it's just an API call to request that ability. If for whatever reason the OS can't give your application the resources it has requested, it notifies you. This means that if you write an application that will do long-term tasks in the background, you will have to write code that will handle the OS suspending you, which will happen on, say, weaker systems than what you envision (such as low-memory ARM devices), but on systems like my hex-core desktop, your application will be allowed to run indefinitely.

    This is pretty much the same situation you encounter on Android and ios. ios in particular is quite draconian about shutting you down. Android is much more lenient, but as a programmer you have to pay attention to what you're doing. Win8 seems to be very much like Android.

  10. Re:Lovely and Intuitive? by SpryGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well... no.

    Metro's overhead is hardly onerous (in fact, Metro apps are much more energy efficient).

    Beyond that, the Start Screen can be very efficient in an Enterprise situation. You can pin anything to the start screen, including deep links. So your first screen can be tailored to your work-flow, or your tasks... whether you're an administrative assistant, or you're an IT professional.

    And the server versions are FULLY scriptable (finally), and scripts can be pinned to the start screen too. As well as reports, documents, folders, whatever.

    I just don't think you're thinking it through.

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    - Spryguy
    There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
  11. Re:Lovely and Intuitive? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > give it a few hours so you can get used to it

    Why should I ?

    I *like* the interface I've got with Win XP. I *liked* the interface of Gnome 2 (Gnome 3 is dogshit). I *do not want* a new interface.

    The various desktop and start menus etc. exist for one purpose only - to allow me to start the programs I want to use. They're not an interactive game. I *do not* want animated crap, flashing crap, desktop effects, popups, notifications or any other crap. Piss off and stop using my CPU cycles for unnecessary crap - I'm trying to do a job here.

    And things should especially not start trying to "help" me as they always. always get it wrong and get in the way.

    Personally I'm fucking sick of all these computer illterate newb children that now pass as developers redesigning the basic UI and throwing away 30 years of good, refined, interface deign.

    My linux boxes now run with Blackbox (and a permanently open terminal) and I'll not be upgrading any XP machines until they (or I) die.

    Fuck all these new interfaces - they all suck donkey balls. Fisher Price inspired shit for idiots.

    'Tractor' Barry (who can't log in and Slashdot won't email me my password...)