The Windows 8 Power Struggle: Metro Vs Desktop

MojoKid writes "Metro, Microsoft's new UI, is bold; a dramatic departure from anything the company has previously done in the desktop/laptop space, and absolutely great. It's tangible proof that Redmond really can design and build its own unique products and experiences. However, the transition to Metro's Start menu is jarring for some desktop users, and worse yet, Desktop mode and Metro don't mesh well at all. The best strategy Microsoft could take would be to introduce users to Metro via its included apps and through tablets, while prominently offering the option to maintain the Desktop environment. Power users who choose to use the classic UI for desktops and laptops can still be exposed to Metro via tablets and applications without being forced to wade through it on their way to do something important."

Comments

Please read this

[recoiledsnake]

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-consumer-preview-call-common-sense-142476

Also, try to spend a few minutes learning shortcuts etc. before dissing the experience. It's not a SP for Windows 7, it's a new OS.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/02/getting-starte...

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/03/windows-8-tricks-tips-and-s...

And it will enable many devices like these that don't exist now:

Idea Pad Yoga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz2R9y9ZvkA&hd=1

Samsung x86 Tablet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8-K1ELv6DE&hd=1

Try doing that with an iPad.(There are iPad-like ARM Windows 8 tablets too that won't run x86 apps but which will have Office).

83inch displays: http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/29/2833173/windows-8-82-inch-...

All these form factors tied in the with the vast Win32 ecosystem(except ARM tablets) and a single Touch-first Metro ecosystem.

It's interesting how the comments on Apple/iPad/Post-PC articles, financials of Apple/Dell/HP etc. state that "MS is dying in the Post-PC" era, but now when they come out with a solution to make a OS run on different form factors and to have tablets that are not just consumption devices, the comments on here are skewed towards "Why change something that works?". If PCs are really dying, why not attempt to fix that instead of standing by with their head in the sand(like RIMM)?

There will always be people unhappy with anything you build or change. They should just go with their vision of what they think is right and that's what they did. They envision that with Windows 8, most new monitors will be touch enabled because of the demand so that for some functions(like clicking on links), people can use touch.

You may disagree with the vision, but you can't disagree that there is a method behind the madness.

Re:Please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah this is all very interesting but the point is that Microsoft should stop fucking trying to play catch-up and realise that 1) the PC is *not* dead; 2) no-one wants the PC to die except Apple and Google; 3) therefore MS will continue to do well only if it continues building the best PC platform rather than throwing everything into Apple's iPad territory.

In particular, the Start screen is completely inappropriate on the desktop. As an option for tablets, fine. Do MS not understand that no-one just buying a Windows 8 PC will even be able to find it?!

Re:Please read this

[mystikkman]

Agreed, there is too much of hot air from people who expect it to be similar to the transition from Windows 95 to Windows 98. It's not, it's a complete rethinking like from Windows 3.11(for Workgroups!) to Windows 95.

Summary says:

The best strategy Microsoft could take would be to introduce users to Metro via its included apps and through tablets, while prominently offering the option to maintain the Desktop environment. Power users who choose to use the classic UI for desktops and laptops can still be exposed to Metro via tablets and applications without being forced to wade through it on their way to do something important."

That is exactly the strategy behind making iPad a consumption only device, and will exclude many nice form factors like the Transformer, Samsung Slate or the where you just take a tablet with you, and get a full powered device when you attach a keyboard/mouse to it. Or when you take a tablet but want to use touch instead of pecking at the keyboard/trackpad all the time (Idea Pad Yoga). I believe this allow for much more choice and innovation in the hardware choices that people will get once this launches. All-in-ones and two large touch monitors on desktops for power users will allow them to use Touch apps IF they want to.

Disabling Metro on the desktop will lower the demand for touch monitors as well. Making people use Metro also will give the touch ecosystem a big boost by expanding the audience for developer apps to all Windows PCs instead of being limited to just tablets, which will result in more Metro apps for users. Just look at Android tablets and poor selection of apps even after a year of release of major tablets like Xoom, Samsung Tab, Transformer etc The sales are just not there and one big reason is apps. Also remember what happened to the HP Touchpad?. Going against the iPad 200K app juggernaut is not going to be easy without this kickstart.

Re:Please read this

[Vanders]

Disabling Metro on the desktop will lower the demand for touch monitors as well.

You've missed the point. Why do Microsoft believe that people want or need touch monitors? Why do Microsoft believe large-dimension touch interfaces are better interface than a mouse?

Re:Please read this

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's interesting how the comments on Apple/iPad/Post-PC articles, financials of Apple/Dell/HP etc. state that "MS is dying in the Post-PC" era, but now when they come out with a solution to make a OS run on different form factors and to have tablets that are not just consumption devices, ...

Tablets don't have to be just for consumption - people are already using iPads and the like for creative purposes. But, when you think about it, most of what the typical person uses even a full-blown computer for tends to be mainly consumption and communication - Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, email, chat, etc. Even for work, the most content creation they do involves making a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet.

As far as that "vast Win32 ecosystem" goes... remember that Windows tablets aren't exactly a new idea. Microsoft has tried - and failed - to leverage that vast ecosystem to make Windows-based phones and tablets a success before. Time will tell regarding Metro, of course; but while you seem to think their success is a foregone conclusion, recent history shows otherwise. It comes down to whether or not Microsoft learned from their previous failures, which is something I, for one, am not convinced of.

Re:Please read this

[PCM2]

I don't agree with Thurrot's analysis that "the desktop is just an app." Oh really? The desktop is still there, with Explorer, the taskbar, the system tray, and every other feature the desktop has ever had, and Thurrot wants us to believe this is somehow just some little "app" that's running inside of Metro? Hardly. The desktop is still the desktop. It is Windows.

What Windows 8 has done is given us this new launcher application, called Metro, which accepts plug-ins, called apps, and which will now launch automatically when you login to the system and again every time you push the Start button. Metro feels like the ultimate terminate-and-stay-resident program from the 80s, where every time you push the hotkey it takes over your entire screen.

Also, try to spend a few minutes learning shortcuts etc. before dissing the experience. It's not a SP for Windows 7, it's a new OS.

No, it isn't. It really isn't. Keyboard shortcuts do not make an "OS." The fact that the device drivers for every weird hardware device on my laptops carried over from Windows 7 to Windows 8 without a hitch demonstrates that the two are essentially the same OS.

What Microsoft has done with Windows 8 is it has taken a UI that works and put a big curtain in front of it (Metro) so that every time you want to use the OS the way you're accustomed to doing, you have to push the curtain aside. And as soon as you push the wrong button (the Windows key) or you want to launch a new application, the curtain drops down again.

They envision that with Windows 8, most new monitors will be touch enabled because of the demand so that for some functions(like clicking on links), people can use touch.

Just because I can use touch doesn't mean I will want to. I am not going to be reaching across my desk to click on links when there's a mouse sitting in my right hand. I don't need a new repeat strain injury and I don't want to smear my monitor with fingerprints. Poking around in midair with your fingers looks cool in movies, but in practice what we do now is more efficient, which makes it preferable. It's not logical to get rid of the more efficient way of doing things for the sake of something that looks cool.

You may disagree with the vision, but you can't disagree that there is a method behind the madness.

I don't disagree that there's a method. But that doesn't mean it's not madness. When your friend guns his engine and says, "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing -- we can make it across the canyon," it's time to get out of the car.

Re:Please read this

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Where's the menu bar? Why would you want me to work without a menu bar?!

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

Also, try to spend a few minutes learning shortcuts etc.

And Windows users accuse the *nix crowd of being arrogant because we say "rtfm" too often for their tastes.

A lot of people are flippin' lost without visual cues. 8 has taken visual cues and turned them invisible and put them in hot corners and stupid shit like that.

Metro on the desktop is a goddamned failure. Microsoft is doing this simply because they can, and there is almost a cult-like movement within Microsoft about metro that if you don't like it, then there is something wrong with you. This is exemplified by your statement here.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[beelsebob]

You're missing the point. The iPad's UI is significantly different to desktop Mac OS, exactly because apple managed to realise one simple thing. The traditional desktop metaphor UI doesn't work when you hold it in your hand and touch it.

The reason past tablets weren't successful was because they tried to cram a destop UI onto a tablet.

Microsoft are making the exact same mistake again, only this time in reverse. They're trying to cram a perfectly acceptable tablet UI onto a desktop platform. Worse, they're doing it in a way that only half deprecates the old way of doing things. The result is that they have a tablet UI that doesn't work well because you're not using a tablet; and that when you actually try to do anything, you immediately get shifted into a different UI paradigm, because the apps haven't all been recoded.

It's a complete UI disaster, and perfectly sums up microsoft –copy the trend, do something that they claim is new, and don't update anything at all to integrate well into it. The result –a cludge.

Re:Please read this

[mystikkman]

Disabling Metro on the desktop will lower the demand for touch monitors as well.

You've missed the point. Why do Microsoft believe that people want or need touch monitors? Why do Microsoft believe large-dimension touch interfaces are better interface than a mouse?

They're just giving people the choice. Remember, a billion people use Windows. A significant percentage of them might want to use touch monitors. The rest can ignore that and move on. Did they remove the mouse support in Windows and I didn't get the memo?

Re:Please read this

[DJRumpy]

Can't agree more. This new UI has to be the most unintuitive GUI i've used on a desktop. Although I'm sure it's fine on a touch screen, it was painful to use with a mouse, took me 20 minutes just to find common items, a few mins to find the login options, etc.

This from a geek. I can't imagine what my folks would do with this, other than to turn ape like, beat not he screen and make lots of jarring screeches in frustration.

Re:Please read this

[geekoid]

"Try doing that with an iPad."
there was nothing in the video you can't do with an iPad.

Re:Please read this

[geekoid]

Because phones, tables and kiosks are common. There are more screens being used in smart phones and tablet then there are with 'traditional PC'.

Maybe I should ask "Why should MS make the minority of ways to view the OS a high priority?"

Plus that great desk in Tron was touch screen.

Re:Please read this

[geekoid]

So If I had the option to change the interface on the OSX would be a bad OS?

You just don't like change, and assume MS is going to be bad.

I've used it. I like it. I also use OSX and iOS. I like them as well.

Now, what I don't like is what they did you it on the xBox. Used it to shove ads at you in the squares.

Re:Please read this

[sexconker]

I actually read the article you linked to at http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-consumer-preview-call-common-sense-142476 .
And holy shit the author is a moron.

Re:Please read this

[geekoid]

Why do you need it? Meaning, what function does it provide? Because the MB may be gone, but what it does is still there.

Think about it.

Re:Please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

My main issue with Metro is the same problem I have with gnome 3. I have a large dual monitor setup. Why would I want a start menu that covers 3840 x 1080 of screen realestate. I find the whole popup cover the screen thing very jarring.

A good UI should be like a good child, there but so well behaved you don't notice them!

Re:Please read this

[geekoid]

"Metro on the desktop is a goddamned failure."
That's not true by any metric..

You are the one stuck into cult thinking.

Which version did YOU beta? and on what platform?

Re:Please read this

[bertok]

You may disagree with the vision, but you can't disagree that there is a method behind the madness.

The problem with Microsoft, and a lot of us have been around long enough to see it repeatedly, is that when they decide that something is shiny and new, they drop all ongoing development of everything else like it doesn't even exist any more, even if the new thing is not a suitable replacement for the old thing.

When Microsoft decided that XAML was the "Way Forward" for rich web applications, they moved all but one guy off the IE team and into the Visual Studio and Expression teams to develop things like the improved XML editor, the designers, etc... Now, as a developer, I find those improvements very useful, but meanwhile there was one guy left of the IE 'team' doing just security fixes for years. This is why there was such a huge gap between IE6 and IE7, and why IE7 was such a small improvement compared to the progress made by Firefox and WebKit in the same time period.

Now, if you're a XAML-only programmer, then Microsoft was being innovative and moving forward. To HTML-based web application programmers they were being stupid and counter-productive, dragging the entire Internet down to the lowest common denominator that was IE6. That made a lot of people very upset with them, and rightly so. There was no way XAML could ever replace HTML, because it was tied to the .NET Framework in practice, which is not cross platform. A HTML replacement has to be cross-platform. That didn't stop them from ignoring HTML for half a decade.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing again. If you're a phone or tablet programmer, then Microsoft is innovative and moving forward. For desktop users -- Microsoft's biggest market -- they are being stupid and counter-productive, dragging the entire Desktop world down to a lowest common denominator with limited devices that don't have keyboards and mice. The walled garden of WinRT applications can never replace desktop applications, because the APIs are deliberately limited to suit the tablet environment. They have to be, otherwise apps would kill battery life or introduce vulnerabilities. A new framework has to be more than just a Tablet API or GUI, but that won't stop Microsoft from ignoring "classic" Windows applications for the next half a decade.

It's not just the GUI, Microsoft's other technologies have been suffering too from a lack of newness an shinyness. For example, their C++ standards compliance is woeful: the next release amounts to little more than some additional header files -- basically whatever one of their interns could whip up in a month, instead of a real revamp of the core compiler technology to have significantly new features. This is because they were too busy coming up with yet another bastardised non-standard version of C++ so that they can call WinRT APIs efficiently. Don't even think of asking for C99 support!

Sure, nobody is being forced to use WinRT, or tiles, or tablets, but if you're not using them, then you're using APIs and systems that will basically stop dead in the water, which in the computer world is the same as going backwards. Microsoft is atrocious at "seeing things through", because of their short attention span. For example, did you know that both Vista and Windows 7 natively support higher color depths than 24-bit, and GUI scaling? Had Microsoft kept going with that, our desktops could have had "double resolution" just like tablets, 36-bit deep color, wider gamuts, 200 DPI, and a bunch of things by now. But nooo... it was shiny then for a couple of years, and then Microsoft got bored and dropped all ongoing development of that as a feature. They even have a JPG-like image format that supports all of those better color features, but they never had more than some demo code written. Meanwhile, Apple demonstrated the value of technology that Microsoft had been sitting on for years, and suddenly everybody wants an iPad 3 with a Retina Display. Sigh...

Re:Please read this

[cyber-vandal]

It took me a while to find out how to shut it down. That should be very obvious on a computer that gets turned off regularly.

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

>Which version did YOU beta? and on what platform?

I downloaded and installed both the developer and consumer previews and ran them. I still have the consumer preview loaded.

It is a nightmare of stupid UI decisions. Switching between both metro and the "traditional" desktop is a whole level of stupidity not seen in UI failure since Microsoft Bob. The total lack of consistency is jarring.

But hey, obviously i don't know what I'm talking about because I've never used it and this is not a screenshot.

http://ompldr.org/vY3prZQ/stupid.png

And it's not like I try other operating systems out of curiosity and have nothing to compare to, like this:

http://ompldr.org/vY3prZg/naggers1.png

Or this:

http://ompldr.org/vY3praA/haiku.png

No, I don't ever try anything. I just talk shit because I've learned memes from other people.

Fuck you.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[Darinbob]

Maybe the entire problem is that MS is introducing something radically new when the current OS is still new. It feels like just change for the sake of change. They really should have a Windows Tablet versus Windows for Real People and keep them separated. Integrating them is silly, and will result in silly things like people wanting to get touch monitors.

Re:Please read this

[crossmr]

and there is almost a cult-like movement within Microsoft about metro that if you don't like it, then there is something wrong with you.

I don't think anyone who uses a mac or a linux system should accuse anyone who uses window of cult-like thinking.

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

Have you paid attention at all to the Microsoft astroturfing that has showed up here in the past few years?

Articles even slightly critical of anything Microsoft are met with a large copy-paste of some pre-written text within minutes. This is especially apparent when it becomes the first post. Like in this thread, itself. Go look at the first post.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

So If I had the option to change the interface on the OSX would be a bad OS?

Yes. I run OS X on a desktop. The iOS-ification makes it harder for me to use. OS X is not iOS and should not become iOS, but Apple is doing anyways. And yes, it is making it a bad OS.

Re:Please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and Microsoft have both failed to fully realize the technology needed for high-DPI displays. Apple isn't really doing the complicated scaling in iOS that OS X and Windows have been capable of. They're just doubling the pixels. Sure Apple has the first high-DPI displays, but they're going the easy route of simple doubling.

I don't blame Apple or Microsoft for not following through on the development of scalable UIs either. High-DPI displays haven't caught on because 1080p panels became incredibly cheap. It was a lot easier to sell a 24" 1080p panel than it was to create a 200-DPI+ 24" panel. Since there's no demand on the display end of the chain, Apple and Microsoft have predictably not continued development on their scalable UI technologies. I blame HDTV, not Apple or Microsoft.

Re:Please read this

[armanox]

Wow, someone who uses OI. Are you running it on physical or virtual HW? How is it? It doesn't seem to like VBox on my FX-8120, was wondering how you got it running?

Sorry to be off topic...

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

It installed fine on mine in VB.

I picked "Solaris 10 after 10/09" or whatever the hell it said for the install.

The install was pretty painless. Timeslider is cool.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[Necronomicode]

I've spent years learning shortcuts on my special UI and I can do an amazing amount of things really quickly. I can run myriad different apps and give them information about how and what I want them to do. It makes Metro look clunky in comparison. It's definitely the way to go.

I'm thinking of calling it 'Command Line Interface" ;-)

Re:Please read this

[MCSEBear]

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-consumer-preview-call-common-sense-142476

Also, try to spend a few minutes learning shortcuts etc. before dissing the experience. It's not a SP for Windows 7, it's a new OS.

Anybody else remember how concerned and butthurt Thurrott was that some Macintosh applications used the brushed metal appearance four or so versions of MacOS ago? This window is a different color! The horror!

Now he's going off on a butthurt rant because people don't want to be forced to use a touch interface on devices that do not support touch?

Paid shills are hysterical.

Re:Please read this

[recoiledsnake]

"Try doing that with an iPad."
there was nothing in the video you can't do with an iPad.

You can also make an octopus by nailing more legs to a dog, but it will be a very shitty octupus.

Re:Please read this

[Merls the Sneaky]

Turn Metro off in the registry and you got your classic look and usage back.

Re:Please read this

[PCM2]

What? Did you fail reading comprehension? Whoever said that? I only meant that before you discount it, learn it, try it and then do that. Do not expect it to work like Windows 7 on day 1 and do not expect everything to run like the old OSes starting from day one.

Nice ad hominem. If somebody was scoring this debate, though, I doubt you'd win many points for accusing me of "failing reading comprehension" when you said "it's a new OS." It's not a new OS. And, as a matter of fact, everything does "run" just like the old OSes, from Day One. It's all just buried underneath Metro. The problem is you have to push your way through Metro to access the things that run the same, whether you have any interest in what Metro offers or not.

My point was that they did NOT get rid of the more efficient way, it's a just a different way now and all your desktop apps work exactly the same and some even better.

If by "the more efficient way," you mean a rational application launcher, such as the Start menu, then yes, they did get rid of it.

P.S. As a side note for everybody else, the thing I don't get about pro-Microsoft copypasta trolls like recoiledsnake, here (note that his first post was up just three minutes after the submission was accepted, complete with six pro-Microsoft links, including YouTube videos), is now angry and belligerent they get. Is this some kind of new marketing theory -- counteract rational comments with personal insults and sarcasm? How much does Microsoft pay its basement trolls, anyway? I'd really like to know.

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

So not only are you an astroturfer, you're a busy astroturfer going from site to site dropping anything and everything to battle "bias" about Windows 8.

Because Windows 8 needs defenders, since it can't stand on its own on its merits.

There is no shortage of Microsoft PR sites. Go back to ZDNET.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[Daniel Phillips]

You may disagree with the vision, but you can't disagree that there is a method behind the madness.

Au contraire, I totally agree with whatever adds confusion and makes using Windows an ever more miserable experience for Microsoft's customers.

Re:Please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't agree more. This new UI has to be the most unintuitive GUI i've used on a desktop. Although I'm sure it's fine on a touch screen, it was painful to use with a mouse, took me 20 minutes just to find common items, a few mins to find the login options, etc.

This from a geek. I can't imagine what my folks would do with this, other than to turn ape like, beat not he screen and make lots of jarring screeches in frustration.

I agree, it is also very annoying to use even with a mouse. For example, if you are on the desktop and want to see the "charms" or go back to the start screen, you have to move the mouse pointer to one of the corners. As soon as the mouse pointer is there, an icon pops up. But you cannot click the icon right away, you have to move the mouse pointer a little bit to select it. But if you move it a few pixels too far, it goes away again and you click whatever is behind the icon (e.g. another icon to start an application). It really is super annoying, because it honestly is a question of "move 2 pixels and you can click it, move 4 pixels and you're out of luck. What was so wrong with a "Start" button which was just there and which you could click all the time? Why do we have to play hide and seek?

Re:Please read this

[Daniel Phillips]

Where's the menu bar? Why would you want me to work without a menu bar?!

Why do you need it? Meaning, what function does it provide?

Uh... menus?

Re:Please read this

[Daniel Phillips]

It is a nightmare of stupid UI decisions.

Excellent.

Re:Please read this

[mc10]

Most of these links were cut off and are broken. Please post the working links.

Re:Please read this

[ifiwereasculptor]

You can also make an octopus by nailing more legs to a dog, but it will be a very shitty octupus.

I don't think... I mean... the... what?!

Re:Please read this

[symbolset]

Did you try pressing the power button on the PC? If that doesn't work, hold it down for five seconds.

Re:Please read this

[blackicye]

grats, you've managed to slashdot ars technica and kotaku :P

Re:Please read this

[SeaFox]

Why do Microsoft believe that people want or need touch monitors? Why do Microsoft believe large-dimension touch interfaces are better interface than a mouse?

Probably because of their (patented) work on Surface, among other things. Whereas right now they're using a common pointing device everyone's free to utilize without paying Microsoft a license fee.

Re:Please read this

[epyT-R]

The big fallacy people seem to make on this topic is that newer = better. This is not always the case. It's great that a new class of device has revolutionized certain tasks, but forcing their interface onto existing systems that cover the rather large corner cases for them REDUCES choice for those who need/prefer these other systems. This is being done completely for marketing reasons. There is no benefit to the consumer at all.

Have a touch based tuned environment for touch devices, and a traditional desktop environment for desktops.. make it an install and/or control panel option as it is something you'd know up front you want (you are installing on a tablet or a full PC). what ms is doing is forcing touch environments on traditional desktops by having the traditional desktop buried as a metro app that forces you to go back to it to select new applications. making application launch, task switching, and window management visually disruptive moves on a phone might make sense, but not on a desktop with a 23" monitor. tacking mouse support into this 'fullscreen start menu' doesn't help its case either.

Finally, I dont' consider giving touch platforms 'a boost' at the expense of desktops a good thing.. they should both sink or swim on their own merits as they serve different needs as surely as a hummer H1 and F1 mclaren do. (there's your car analogy!)

Re:Please read this

[epyT-R]

while I agree with your assessment about microsoft, apple is pulling this touch interface on desktop crap too.. 10.7 and the upcoming 10.8 are steps in that direction. ugh.. this three pronged attack on my desktop worries me (ms, apple, and oss).

Re:Please read this

[epyT-R]

no that is not what he said.

ad hominem.

you must not use your desktops for much of anything then. a tablet interface on a desktop is little different than using a keyboard to drive a car. it can be done, but the effort is hardly worth it and you lose a lot of capability in the process.

xbox actually fits the model better than a desktop does. not great mind you, but not as bad as it's closer to a tablet single use device than a PC.

Re:Please read this

[Siridar]

Did you try pressing the power button on the PC? If that doesn't work, hold it down for five seconds.

Every time I have to do that, it feels like i'm holding a pillow over my PC's face. "Shhh....shhhhh. It will all be over soon..."

Re:Please read this

[WaffleMonster]

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-consumer-preview-call-common-sense-142476

God you really have to be a hyprocritcal idiot to whine and bitch about other people bitching and do so in the most abusive unprofessional manner possible.. "grow a pair" .. seriously?

There will always be people unhappy with anything you build or change. They should just go with their vision of what they think is right and that's what they did. They envision that with Windows 8, most new monitors will be touch enabled because of the demand so that for some functions(like clicking on links), people can use touch.

The obvious problem with this thinking is that ANY change of any kind can be justified by simply stating people are change adverse. Oh I see your unhappy that your computer was replaced with an abacus and slide rule. Relax..you'll get used to it.

I'm having a really hard time seeing how such statements are able to convey any useful information of any kind.

Re:Please read this

[narcc]

You can also make an octopus by nailing more legs to a dog, but it will be a very shitty octupus.

I don't think... I mean... the... what?!

Maybe he's Japanese?

Re:Please read this

[CodeBuster]

A significant percentage of them might want to use touch monitors.

Unlikely. The full sized touch monitor has always been relegated to niche uses. For example, we see them in Point of Sale, ATM and various forms of vending or other kiosk like setups. All of these devices, regardless of their internal components, are configured to run a single specialized application from which the user cannot, at least by design, deviate. Furthermore, these devices are almost always encountered in public places and are used by many different users for specific and time limited operations in that context. Compare that with more typical home or work use patterns where sessions are longer and the keyboard is generally kept within easy reach of the fingertips with the mouse in close proximity. This is an efficient setup for general computing use, whereas reaching across the desk to touch the screen repeatedly is not. Touch works in the hand-held and portable format because the use cases and ergonomics are almost completely different from those of the more traditional desktop. Will some people want to use touch screens as their desktop display(s)? Perhaps. Will those people represent a majority or even just a substantial minority of users? Almost certainly not.

The rest can ignore that and move on.

Based upon the reviews of the preview release, it's not that simple. The interface is designed to emphasize Metro, imposing itself at the expense of the traditional desktop and forcing users to wrestle with it in order to get their work done. This is particularly irksome in the desktop usage scenarios because few people would prefer a touch-based interface with a single full screen app at a time over the more traditional windowing system common in modern desktop operating systems. Indeed, the windowing systems now present in Windows 7, OSX and the various Linux distros represent decades of accumulated experience and feedback from professional, business, scientific and home users. A radical departure from this well defined and honed interface, ala Metro, is the height of hubris and foolishness. The traditional desktop users, who're still Microsoft's bread and butter, will punish them severely for missteps or other nonsense as they did with Vista (which was itself a less radical departure than Metro).

Microsoft would be well advised to tread cautiously here. It's alright to pursue new markets with new concepts. However, this must NOT be done at the expense of existing users, especially those with professional needs. If the new concepts have merit, they will stand on their own without forced attempts to get people into using them. Finally, to anyone from Microsoft reading this: Heed the warnings of the Win 8 / Metro reviewers and don't ignore them. Remember the lessons of Vista: users will NOT accept software that gets in their way and doesn't work how they want to work, no matter how innovative or cool you think it is. The desktop and mobile touch worlds are DIFFERENT and ought to be treated as such. Don't screw this up.

Re:Please read this

[unixisc]

Agreed, there is too much of hot air from people who expect it to be similar to the transition from Windows 95 to Windows 98. It's not, it's a complete rethinking like from Windows 3.11(for Workgroups!) to Windows 95.

That is exactly the strategy behind making iPad a consumption only device, and will exclude many nice form factors like the Transformer, Samsung Slate or the where you just take a tablet with you, and get a full powered device when you attach a keyboard/mouse to it. Or when you take a tablet but want to use touch instead of pecking at the keyboard/trackpad all the time (Idea Pad Yoga). I believe this allow for much more choice and innovation in the hardware choices that people will get once this launches. All-in-ones and two large touch monitors on desktops for power users will allow them to use Touch apps IF they want to.

Disabling Metro on the desktop will lower the demand for touch monitors as well. Making people use Metro also will give the touch ecosystem a big boost by expanding the audience for developer apps to all Windows PCs instead of being limited to just tablets, which will result in more Metro apps for users. Just look at Android tablets and poor selection of apps even after a year of release of major tablets like Xoom, Samsung Tab, Transformer etc The sales are just not there and one big reason is apps. Also remember what happened to the HP Touchpad?. Going against the iPad 200K app juggernaut is not going to be easy without this kickstart.

Except that the introduction of Windows 95 was to address some serious shortcomings w/ WfW3.11 - such as the lack of pre-emptive multitasking, a 16-bit UI w/ limited 32-bit support under win32s, plug & play, etc. People were waiting for years for Windows 95 before it finally surfaced, and there was an industry wide recognition as to why it was needed. Once it was there, it quickly became the de facto standard since it addressed many of the shortcomings in the existing PC platform.

That's very different from the way Windows is today. XP already was very popular, and I'd say its only shortcomings were its limited 64-bit capabilities, as well as it not supporting IPv6. In both Vista & Windows 7, MS made some significant improvements, although in Vista, they did a bad job in resource consumption, which they fixed in 7. So Windows 7 was pretty much okay, and if they needed something like Windows 8, it should have been more of an evolutionary change - maybe making the OS more platform independent (a return to one of the original goals of NT), making it completely 64-bit (anybody still on 2GB or less, keep them on Windows 7), improve the wireless management, IPv6 management, power management and so on.

The worst thing that MS is doing is potentially destroying the Windows brand. When you see something that says 'Windows', what's the first thing that comes to mind? That it will run Windows i.e. Wintel programs - the millions of legacy apps out there. The moment you have a Windows that does not run some of them (and I'm not talking about things like Windows 7 not running win16 apps, or even older win32 apps), you are confusing the market. They'll see things that say 'Windows', not know anymore whether that'll run their old Windows apps or not, and as a result, go from inhaling Windows to not touching it w/ a bargepole.

The above argument about lowering the demand for touch monitors - here's the problem. With Windows 95 and all versions that followed, it was always about making things easier for the customer. Maybe MS problem was that it became too successful - as it is, it was painful to get people to move from XP to 7, but now, 7 is almost perfect, and more than adequate for everybody's needs. Which is why 8 should have been an evolutionary upgrade to 7. As for Windows Phone and so on, MS would have done like what it did w/ XBox or what Apple did w/ the iPhone - give it a new brandname so that it doesn't touch their existing brands. Apple's

Re:Please read this

[Mashiki]

That's kinda like asking why are all websites going to piss poor designs where they waste 60% of your viewable area by using such a small tiny spot right in the centre. Because they're damned retards who think that the world is stuck in 2002 and blog designs are still shiny and new.

Re:Please read this

[roothog]

Actually, I think you're missing the point. Windows 8 will now be pretty similar to OS X. Microsoft isn't replacing the desktop interface, they're adding Metro to it. It'll be a standard desktop with the ability to load the mobile interface if you choose. That's exactly how OS X works.

Windows: Desktop. Hit a key, see metro.
OS X: Desktop. Run launchpad, see iPad grid.

It's the same thing.

Re:Please read this

[Kagetsuki]

I'm Japanese and I can tell you we don't make octopus this way.

Re:Please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, and you'd be the guy who was around in the 30s telling movie studies to stick with what they know best - silent movies?

PCs are not dead, but they becoming just one device of many. Some consumers don't even need a fullblown PC anyway. Windows Mobile has less than 5% marketshare, and in the tablet world Windows is damned near irrelevant. As someone noted earlier, Microsoft doesn't have the lock-in it has on the PC, because these are brand new platforms that'll require a new set of software. Microsoft's desktop OS monopoly seems to be near enough fucking useless in this fight. At this rate a Windows PC is something that many people will use at the office, but considerably fewer will have at home.

Yes it's a bad idea to shoe-horn touch UI paradigms in to a traditional desktop, but don't conflate this with Microsoft being unwise to expand outside of what will become a decreasingly relevant market.

Re:Please read this

[bemymonkey]

You seem to have gathered some experience with Windows 8, so I have a question for you (no time to install the consumer preview myself unti lin a few weeks):

If I want to exclusively use desktop apps, can I use the Metro "start screen" pretty much solely as a start menu replacement? Press start on the keyboard, type the name of the application I want to launch, press enter? Are there any obstacle to this type of usage?

If this continues to work, adn the only thing I'm losing due to the addition of Metro is the traditional start menu, I'm golden...

Re:Please read this

[iampiti]

+1000. To me is very suspicious, in a piece of news taking about a controversial new Microsoft technology, seeing a first post which is long, well-written and defending the Microsoft change. VERY suspicious

Re:Please read this

[realityimpaired]

It shouldn't need a registry hack to turn off.

Have it enabled by default, sure. But put an option in the control panel to disable it and go back to the Win7 interface. Not having the option easily available is what's going to kill them. Computer gaming is literally the only reason I still have a Windows-based system... everything else I do can easily be replicated on numerous Linux distros, and for people wanting something more mainstream, under OSX. The tiny handful of Windows-only software that I run (or have to run at work) works fine under Crossover, or WINE, or any of the other options out there. In short: there's a lot of portability in the current market, and that trend is only going to increase. There will come a day, very soon, when the tipping point has been reached and there's no longer a business case to run Windows. Metro, specifically, forcing Metro on people without giving them the ability to disable it, will hasten that.

Re:Please read this

[symbolset]

That makes you perceptive and compassionate.

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

Dude, lets cut the bull,kay? Its a fricking SMARTPHONE UI that they bolted on because they are getting pimp slapped by Google and Apple! When the yahoo product girl, whose such a shill her answer to every stupid thing is "Buy it now, no really you should buy it! Just go buy it right now!" says of Win 8 "Uhhh...you should wait until you have something touch enabled before buying it" you KNOW you're in trouble.

Lets be honest folks, its gonna bomb. YOU know this, I know this, hell everyone but MSFT seems to know this. the problem with metro is three fold: One it royally sucks the big wet titty on large screens because surprise! its a smartphone UI, its not made for that. but for desktops and laptops big screens are common, hell you can buy a 24 incher for like $140 now. Second its ENTIRE DESIGN is built around touch. What's wrong with that? How many touch desktops you own? how about touch laptops? look at the numbers, touch enabled desktops and laptops make up less than 2% of the market and that's if you don't cut out POS and kiosks, cut those out you are probably looking at less than a percent. Now this is simply not gonna change because of MSFT because touch screens are MUCH more expensive than dumb panels. last i looked a 17 inch touch was nearly $300, do you HONESTLY think the OEMs are gonna eat the difference? Finally the uber fail, people buy Windows to run WINDOWS PROGRAMS so what does MSFT do? "Hey we'll put it on ARM and call it win 8 too!"...okay, so what happens when all those folks get their Win 8 tablet home and find out windows don't actually run Windows programs? Can you say massive returns boys and girls? i thought you could.

Lets face it Metro IS nice...on ARM tablets, THAT IS ALL. But Ballmer knows developers quit giving a shit about WinMo years ago so he is trying to see if devs are stupid enough to buy the bullshit that "Hey if I develop for Metro i can have the desktop AND mobile with only one program!" while ignoring that X86 and ARM are about as different as different can be and if you don't take the strengths and weaknesses of each into consideration its just gonna suck.

TL:DR? Metro bombs, Win 7 becomes the new XP.

Re:Please read this

[modmans2ndcoming]

try typing the name of your app.....hey look...there is it.

Re:Please read this

[modmans2ndcoming]

what? rethink the work space???? crazyness.

Re:Please read this

[modmans2ndcoming]

an entire start screen that takes up space only when you are launching an app...what is the issue again?

Re:Please read this

[arkhan_jg]

Did they remove the mouse support in Windows and I didn't get the memo?

They might as well have with the new gestures. They're really quite fiddly, and I'm a veteran FPS player. Swipe into the hot corner - and it's a pretty narrow hotspot, you've basically got to 'overshoot' to hit it; then swipe up or down in a straight line into the middle-ish to bring up either the running apps sidebar, or the charms sidebar. Slide too far off line? Disappears. Not far enough, or too far? Disappears. Move off the 'start' hot corner by a few pixels, to try and click that popup metro that appears? Disappears and you end up lauching the far-left icon on the taskbar instead. It usually takes me two or three goes to bring up the charm bar, and I've been testing the CP since it came out, and the DP before that.

Also - have two displays? run in a virtual machine or RDP session in a window on another host? Now you can't 'overrun' into the corner, you have to hit it absolutely precisely and stay there; trying to swipe down and stay in the narrow accepted line? Rediculously hard. I'm familiar with windows from 3.1 up to current, OSX and its predecessors, KDE 2, 3 and 4 for years, gnome for the last few, now unity, CDE and XFCE and BEOS and god knows how many other UIs have been and gone. None of them have made me want to throw my mouse through the screen at the UI. But windows 8? God-damn it's awful.

Couple of pop quizzes - how do you shut down? Not in the metro window. No icons, shortcuts or squares. It's under the charms bar, settings, then there's a little power icon at the bottom. Log off? Ctrl-alt-del, or goto metro and click your name picture. While we're on charms/settings; half the stuff you need has moved there into a new arrangement; half of it hasn't. Finding which bits are still under control panel, and which are under metro is basically guesswork, especially as some app stuff is not under charms, it's right click on a blank area and get a new options bar at the bottom. On the Metro mail program, you have a little bit at the bottom of the accounts side-bar to add a new account, with a close button. Click that close, and there's no way to bring it back. If you right click and then click accounts, it brings up the accounts side bar, but not the button. You now need to go into charms, and do it via settings - but only when you're in the mail app full screen, there's no other way to get to it.

It is a mess, it's completely illogical and it feels like you've got the old and new interface half-bodged together glued together with gestures that don't make sense on a pc, especially if it's not a full-single-screen pc. Dual screen isn't that uncommon - all our teaching classrooms are setup as dual screen with one on the desk, and the 2nd being the projector - they drag windows to which one they want to display on, so they can put something up for the pupils while having a private desktop for reference while they're at the board or desk. Doing precise mouse gestures at the edge of the screen without wavering, possibly while standing and leaning over the desk? It's ludicrous. I cannot possibly see deploying windows 8 anywhere on our network to replace 7. I'd get lynched.

I'm not even going to start on the insanity of the same interface with tricky gestures for VM-hosted or RDP-managed server 8 boxes; and while the remote admin-tools from a client box work for say, AD operations and file management, they don't work for 3rd party apps that use a local management app on a server, of which we have several.

And no, you can't turn it off. The registry hack and file replacement methods have been removed in the current versions. Now you need to fake it with something like Stardocks software, but there's nothing native to revert to windows 7/2008r2 behaviour.

Metro in and of itself is ok, if a little sparse; I'd actually quite like it as an OSX dashboard equivalent available on a hotkey/gesture for an over-view of various live tiles; I could even live with it as a start menu replacement if it handled a

Re:Please read this

[jez9999]

Computer gaming is literally the only reason I still have a Windows-based system... everything else I do can easily be replicated on numerous Linux distros

There's one big (actually, make that VAST) thing keeping our business with Windows - Visual Studio. The whole VS ecosystem with C#, .NET, developing stuff for and easily deploying stuff on Windows servers can not be replicated by any Linux distro. I take it you use PHP or Ruby or Python instead? Indeed, if it weren't for Visual Studio, I could make a good business case for dropping Windows.

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

Dude a 17 inch touch is $300, a 24 inch non touch is $130, do you honestly think MSFT is gonna magically change those figures? Last time I was looking around I read that adding touch to a laptop added around $60-$80 to the cost depending on the screen size, do you think the OEMs are gonna eat that cost? or that users are gonna turn down a more full featured laptop with better specs for one that can touch?

Lets call a spade a spade, this is a Hail Mary by MSFT who has got such a woody to be Apple since Ballmer took over it ain't even funny, but its not gonna work. they have already missed the boat, both Google and Apple completely pimp smack them in mobile and Win 8 won't change that. The way I see it they have TWO choices, 1.- Accept they are the new IBM and accept their place is desktops/laptops and Office, along with gaming, or 2.-Spin off the mobile division so they can live or die on their own terms without having to drag along the desktop.

they are gonna have to do one or the other, because the market has so little confidence in Ballmer when MSFT had its best quarter ever a little while back their stock didn't even twitch which tells me nobody believes Ballmer has got what it takes and this giant failwhale after Vista failing so soon is gonna be all the proof the market needs. spin off mobile, put the office guys in charge of the desktop, and continue to support gaming and the living room by making windows and Xbox seamlessly work together. this is just a giant disaster.

Re:Please read this

[webnut77]

You forgot Silverlight (listen up Netflix) which doesn't run in 64-bit IE.

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

Is that the new nigger and faggot, troll and shill? Because its pretty damned obvious to tell a real shill, see the one at the top of this article with no less than 6 links including Youtube videos, all in under 3 minutes and still managing to get first post. Now THAT is obviously shilling, since they took the time to have it all prepped and ready to go. oh and the linux guys aren't grass roots, they're just plain old batshit. Look at how many here have Voldemort syndrome. Hell you don't see Apple guys going "That company that is from the northwest one mustn't speak of!" or Windows guys going "That certain company that makes things with the letter i, but don't say it out loud!" but Voldemort syndrome has spread through the Linux community like a damned cancer. I can see why so many of the ones i used to converse with in 05,06 ended up going Mac, the nutjobs are kinda embarrassing now.

So please, go ahead and call me a nigger now, or is it faggot? Since the batshit extremists have started taking over this place I've so far been accused of shilling for, in no particular order, MSFT (which is funny considering how much I've written about why Win 8 sucks ass), Comodo (never been to India, sorry) Apple (WTF? I don't even own an iPod) and I was even told by a FOSSie that my saying IE was a giant pile of shit was actually shilling FOR IE, still haven't figured out how that works. I guess if you don't put "All hail RMS" afterwards it must count as a positive for IE.

But frankly when the REAL shills and astroturfers are so damned obvious you can play buzzword bingo with their posts all this nigger faggot name calling just makes you sound like a 14 year old halo player. BTW I bet you own an X360 yes? can't get enough of that teabagging i bet.

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

But it would be a fucking AWESOME dog! Just think, it could fetch you a beer, the slippers AND the remote at the same time! Man that would be like the bestest doggie ever!

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

So what you are bragging about is you are using a very very very very very very very very very very VERY old GUI, is that correct? Perhaps you might want to read this and rethink your position.

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

I think the part where he took the right turn into totally batshit though is the " most new monitors will be touch enabled because of the demand" part. He seems to be forgetting that adding touch as much as triples the cost on a 24 inch monitor and in fact at current prices the consumer has a choice of a 17 inch monitor for $300 or a 27 inch monitor for $200, ohh and the 27 is 1080p while the 17 is 1366x768. Now I may not be an expert on the free market or anything but I REALLY don't think when given a choice like that the consumer is gonna go "Hey, fuck that high def screen with a great picture, I want to finger my screen baby yeah!" do you?

Besides we know that thurott is a Wintroll, just as SJVN is a lintroll. Both make their daily bread by posting articles designed to piss as many people off as possible to crank up the comments and the pageviews, no different than the "is this the death of (insert FOSS/Linux, MSFT,)" articles that make it to the front page every so often. its clickbait, nothing more. also remember this is the SAME GUY that was practically creaming his shorts over VISTA, which all of us who beta tested it were more than happy to tell you stank of failure. hell I've got a better track record than this bozo, as i called Zune, Kin, and Vista all failwhales and predicted that MSFT hamstringing playsforsure would kill any lock in they had left in the media market. the only thing I called wrong was the Win 7 taskbar but to be fair I didn't think companies would jump on board with jumplist support after getting burnt by Vista and jumplists make the loss of the QL unnoticeable.

Re:Please read this

[Necronomicode]

Perhaps you might want to read what emoticons mean - that ;-) at the end of the line means I'm joking. :-)
Oh, and that article is just stupid, each user interface has its place and there's no point in calling people freetards, emotive rubbish, I'm not sure why you think anybody would rethink any position after reading that tripe. For a second I was expecting a detailed article about the merits and efficiencies of various CLIs and GUIs, but it's worse than that it's not even about CLI vs GUI it's about CLI as an API, irrelevant.
Note I have not expressed an opinion about Metro positive or negative so no need to get defensive about it. I'll try it out and form an opinion for myself, you never know I might agree that it's great.

Re:Please read this

[recoiledsnake]

Look who's talking.

Re:Please read this

[oakgrove]

I was just offering some friendly advice. If you don't want to take it then continue living miserably. It doesn't have to be that way.

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

You are just so buttmad that you were caught out as a fucking shill.

If I go to winsupersite and shill for Linux (I don't, I am just using an example) I wouldn't expect to be received with open arms. Why do you expect to come to Slashdot and expect hugs and kisses shilling for Microsoft?

You're a fucking moron on top of being a shill. Wow.

Stay mad.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[hairyfeet]

Actually if you'd have read the comments (as opposed to the tiny summary which is written by a guy that got hit by "Voldemort syndrome" one time too many and snapped) you'd see just what you are complaining isn't there, a nice long discussion of CLI VS API VS GUI for a job. Personally i have to agree with many of them that the current fad of using CLI in place of an API is just dumb, you have tons of programs in Linux that literally scrape CLI, now WTF is the point of that? But if you want something meatier here. Final verdict? if you're not writing scripts its kinda pointless as that is the big selling point of CLI, how scriptable it is. As one of the guys put in the comments of the first link "Its like building a robot to type on a keyboard, sure it'll work but its kinda pointless".

Sadly that pretty much sums of FLOSS desktop OSes at the moment, kinda pointless. See this overview or see this article. But in the end if you aren't scripting you simply are taking more time to do less, if that floats your boat fine but I can do the same trick with a simple link launcher program that takes arguments.

Re:Please read this

[shutdown -p now]

They're really quite fiddly, and I'm a veteran FPS player. Swipe into the hot corner - and it's a pretty narrow hotspot, you've basically got to 'overshoot' to hit it; then swipe up or down in a straight line into the middle-ish to bring up either the running apps sidebar, or the charms sidebar. Slide too far off line? Disappears. Not far enough, or too far? Disappears. Move off the 'start' hot corner by a few pixels, to try and click that popup metro that appears? Disappears and you end up lauching the far-left icon on the taskbar instead. It usually takes me two or three goes to bring up the charm bar, and I've been testing the CP since it came out, and the DP before that.

All of those things are actually designed to use Fitt's law. For example, switching between apps: the gesture is flicking mouse top-left - "overshoot", as you put it - so it ends up squarely in the corner either way. From there you swipe it down to select the app, but it doesn't have to be a straight line - since your cursor is already at the left edge of the screen, you can swipe bottom-left, and it'll stay at the edge. Ditto for charm bar - "overshoot" to either of the right corners, then swipe the mouse top-right or bottom-right - it won't go any more to the right than it already is, but it will certainly stay at the edge.

I'm more annoyed by the fact that charm bar does not pop up instantly when you place mouse in the corner - there seems to be a delay of 200ms or so, which is just long enough to make me start going "come on, show up already". Interestingly enough, you can actually swipe up (to where the charm you need will be) without waiting for it to appear, but that's extremely counter-intuitive.

What it does really bad is dual monitor. I use a Win8 machine with two screens, and bringing up the charms bar is a constant exercise in frustration. Sure, Win+C does it as well, but when I already have my hand on the mouse, I shouldn't need to fall back to the keyboard.

Couple of pop quizzes - how do you shut down? Not in the metro window. No icons, shortcuts or squares. It's under the charms bar, settings, then there's a little power icon at the bottom.

That annoys me, too, but, apparently, the thinking of the day is that "shut down" is something that mere mortals shouldn't need to do at all. Think about how Macbooks just go to sleep when you close the lid, which is the right thing 99% of the time.

Re:Please read this

[shutdown -p now]

For example, if you are on the desktop and want to see the "charms" or go back to the start screen, you have to move the mouse pointer to one of the corners. As soon as the mouse pointer is there, an icon pops up. But you cannot click the icon right away, you have to move the mouse pointer a little bit to select it.

That's not true, actually. You can just click right there in the corner, at least for start screen - it's same as Start button was in Win7, it visually looks slightly off, but it's deliberately made in such a way that clicking right in the corner will still activate it, so that you can just swipe to corner and click.

Same for the charms bar. You still need to swipe up from the corner to select the charm that you want, but you don't need to swipe left from the edge of the screen - clicking right at the edge works just fine.

Re:Please read this

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah, he got you mixed up with Koreans. You guys make dog by tearing excess tentacles off the octopus.

Re:Please read this

[chromas]

But one hand is already occupied touching other interfaces.

Re:Please read this

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Because the tiny blob happens to fit nicely on a 1024x768 screen, which is still a common resolution. It also happens that most people have a lot of trouble reading slashdot style paragraphs that stretch without any breaks.

Re:Please read this

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Libraries only indeed. They spent most of their development effort on variadic templates but came up short. Herb Sutter addressed this in one of his talks at Going Native. The gcc guys aren't exactly finished either.

Re:Please read this

[recoiledsnake]

Winsupersite is a Windows discussion site- Pro-Tip: See the name.

Slashdot is news for nerds and there's lot of new software and hardware coming with Windows 8. (Linux will start exploiting the new hardware that MS pioneers now). Talking about new technology and posting videos of brand new form factors is not shilling. I did not hate on Linux in my posts.

If you think this is a Linux/centric site, then you're the zealot and the shill. You're just a hater, not a technology lover. Crawl back to techrights.org and/or groklaw with your fellow wankers.

Another pro-tip, the signature goes in the signature option, not in the post. Also, we can see your name on top, why sign it again below like a moron? Oh right, you're just too dumb and stupid to do these simple things that no one here does.

Re:Please read this

[bmo]

Go jump in a lake.

--
BMO

Here, I'll sign it again.

--
BMO

Re:Please read this

[JonathanX]

Wow...all that on the first post. Nice prepared statement.

Re:Please read this

[Archangel Michael]

Dear First Poster,

I'm a Network Analyst for a school district, and I can assure you that reading the crap links you posted doesn't help me or my teachers, students, colleagues and administrators. It helps Microsoft with FUD and Marketing.

I spent a few hours with the new Win 8 Preview last week, and all I could say is that it was an UTTER ABORTION of a user interface. Dumbing down the interface because your (Microsoft) usability studies show that most users only use three or four applications most of the time is just dumb. There are plenty of things wrong with Windows 8 interface, but most notably is that Office doesn't integrate with it seamlessly. I'm sure that by the time Windows 8 is out, that Microsoft is going to release a new version of Office 2013 that works great, requiring both upgrades to the OS and Office to be compliant.

And that may work fine for Microsoft, but it doesn't work for tight IT budgets. At this point, I'm going to say that Win 7 and possibly Office 2010 are the last Microsoft OSes I'm going to recommend. We are already looking at alternatives to Microsoft on the desktop.

Windows 8 sucks, and doesn't offer anything over Windows 7 except more expensive training and support costs. No thank you.

Re:Please read this

[unixisc]

I think that once Metro fails, Windows 7 too will go down w/ it. Why? B'cos the very Windows brandname will have been contaminated. One there will be in market a Windows that does not run Windows programs - namely WOA - people will balk at buying anything Windows due to this confusion. You think that the average Joe or Jane who shops is specific about what Windows they want to buy? No, more often then not, they just buy the default that's selling at the moment. Once customers have a bitter taste buying Windows programs that they can't install on their new WOA device, they won't touch anything Windows w/ a bargeple. So much so that when MS reverts to Windows 7, even that won't bring them back. The bulk of them will probably either buy Macs, or try putting Google's Chromium OS on their PCs. In fact, in that scenario, look for Apple to introduce several low end laptops to capture as much marketshare as possible, while Google finetunes Chromium OS to as many PCs as it possibly can, or works w/ PC OEMs towards that end.

Re:Please read this

[Kagetsuki]

Nice one. I'll bet 90% of the slashdot populus doesn't get how good of a follow up joke that is - which is exactly why it's so good.

Re:Please read this

[shiftless]

The problem is you have to push your way through Metro to access the things that run the same, whether you have any interest in what Metro offers or not.

No, you can remove all the Metro apps from the Start menu. You can pin all classic apps there if you want, and zero metro apps.

Furthermore, Metro aside, I really like the new Windows Explorer and other built-in accessories. The old File Manager in Win 3.1 was much better than the one in Windows 95, and they have sucked ever since. Finally it seems Microsoft is "getting it" in some ways. I wouldn't count them out just yet--I think the Vista incident scared them straight. One big purpose behind releasing this "Consumer Preview" is to gauge people's reactions and figure out early where they're screwing up, so they can make changes before releasing a big flop, like Vista. I think they are headed in the right direction. Only time (and the final release) will tell.

Re:Please read this

[recoiledsnake]

I copy pasted some parts from another comment I just wrote on another site, since the subject was the same(see how some links are broken).

Nothing sinister about it, relax :)

Re:Please read this

[recoiledsnake]

You make some good points. You are right that companies/univs should not upgrade on a whim and should stick with what works. The focus should be on getting work done.

However, as people get used to the new UI at home and with tablets, they may request an upgrade at work too. This might take a long time but it could happen. Also, the new touch based tablets/laptops might be a good fit for students and for employees to take into meetings.

If you think WIndows 8 is too different, how do you think users will adapt to an alternative OS and what will the training costs be? If you choose Apple, the hardware is much more expensive and Apple forces upgrades by taking away support for older software very very quickly while Windows 7 will be supported for a long long time. How will it affect your tight IT budget?

I did not understand why you feel Windows 8 supports only 3 or 4 applications at a time? Also, why do you think Office does not integrate seamlessly with Windows 8? Hit the desktop tile, start Office and it works exactly like Windows 7 (except it's much more lean and faster).

Windows is used by a billion people, if they stopped changing the OS, we would still be stuck at MSDOS 6.22 or Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

Looks like what you're expecting out of Windows 8 is a Windows 7 Service Pack. That already exists and is called Windows 7 which will be supported for many many years to come. But the rest of us want to move to something better.

http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2012/02/when-the-official-support-to-my-windows-expires/ [windows7hacker.com]

If there is a OS that is better supported, let me know, I might switch to that too.

Or maybe you just think all this are FUD and marketing too. In that case, let me know what you're smoking. I might switch to it too.

Re:Please read this

[Archangel Michael]

All your points are moot. Because if I have to pay for training my users, might as well pay to train them on OpenSource Products that do the job "good enough" like LibreOffice and Linux (LTSP). The stupidest thing Microsoft did, make the new interface (which doesn't suit most of my user's needs) mandatory, and not give an option for "classic" mode (or whatever).

As for you Windows 7 service pack comment, I guess that is what you viewed Windows 2K, XP, Vista and Win 7 as, service packs for Windows NT (or worse, ME). Hilarious viewpoint and proof that you're a shill.

Re:Please read this

[Stuarticus]

Every time I see those Metro tiles I wonder how long it will be until they become like the xbox dashboard, surrounded by distracting ads and hideous.

Learn from Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously... lost a lot of market share to Mint.
 
  Which is too bad because Canonical has an amazing reputation!

Trek rule

[girlintraining]

I think Microsoft Operating Systems follow the trek movie rule: Every other release sucks.

Re:Trek rule

[Zaldarr]

To be precise, every odd numbered Trek movie sucked, and the even numbers were good with the exception of #10. That was a stinker.

Re:Trek rule

[Anonymous Coward]

because subjective opinions from random people on the internet are authoritative...

Re:Trek rule

[cpu6502]

Windows 4, 5, and 5.1 (XP) were not bad releases. It is only recently when MS tried to reinvent the wheel that things went bad.

It sounds like I need to buy another Windows 7 machine while they are still available, so I can skip over the Win8 debacle (same way I skipped over vista).

Re:Trek rule

[roc97007]

Windows 4, 5, and 5.1 (XP) were not bad releases. It is only recently when MS tried to reinvent the wheel that things went bad.

It sounds like I need to buy another Windows 7 machine while they are still available, so I can skip over the Win8 debacle (same way I skipped over vista).

Buy a copy of the OS now, build the machine later as needed, when they're faster and cheaper.

Re:Trek rule

[FrootLoops]

Since 10 was bad and 11 was good, obviously the rule is

if digitalroot(n) % 2 == 0:
  return Good
else:
  return Bad

where the digital root of a number is computed by iteratively summing the digits until you're left with just one digit. Example: 1235 -> 1+2+3+5 = 11 -> 1+1 = 2, so digitalroot(1235) = 2.

Re:Trek rule

[sqldr]

Microsoft did once make something that didn't suck. It was a vacuum cleaner.

Re:Trek rule

[bigsexyjoe]

Makes sense. The first release is innovative, but adds a bunch of problems so it sucks. The next one is more of a maintenance release. Since it fixes a bunch of problems, it's good.

Re:Trek rule

[FrootLoops]

BTW, Star Trek #1 was pretty cool...

Only with a fast forward button.

Re:Trek rule

[FrootLoops]

To paraphrase Feynman, "calling the earth a sphere is much less wrong than calling it flat". At least with Star Trek movies, the even-odd rule (modified as I mentioned in another post to invert things for 10 and above) is much less wrong than no rule at all.

Here's a summary of current IMDB ratings (first column) and Rotten Tomato ratings (second column; critics/users) for the films:
I - The Motion Picture - 6.2 - 47%/47%
II - The Wrath of Khan - 7.7 - 90%/86%
III - The Search for Spock - 6.5 - 77%/60%
IV - The Voyage Home - 7.2 - 84%/77%
V - The Final Frontier - 5.1 - 21%/36%
VI - The Undiscovered Country - 7.2 - 83%/77%
VII - Generations - 6.5 - 48%/61%
VIII - First Contact - 7.5 - 92%/83%
IX - Insurrection - 6.3 - 56%/52%
X - Nemesis - 6.3 - 38%/55%
XI - Star Trek - 8.1 - 95%/91%

Certainly the odd ones aren't universally terrible--III is pretty well-reviewed, though not that well-liked, for instance. But the overall trend happens to follow the rule very well.

It's satisfying to me that V got the worst rating in each category. Uhura's sexy dance, Spock's brother, and God at the center of the galaxy--the thought makes me shudder. Hopefully I'll soon re-forget the name of that film.

Re:Trek rule

[Jeremy Erwin]

Star Trek VIII hasn't aged well. Star Trek VI is sublime, like Hamlet in the original Klingon.

Re:Trek rule

[FrootLoops]

I agree. I re-watched VI a few months ago and absolutely loved it. I did the same with VIII and didn't like it as much as the first time (though I still liked it). I think VIII has less replay value for whatever reason--maybe because it's so action-based and a lot of the tension leaves when you know the ending.

Re:Trek rule

[Zaldarr]

This is also true. Factor that!

Re:Trek rule

[jez9999]

It sounds like I need to buy another Windows 7 machine while they are still available

A Windows 7 machine is alternatively known as a PC, a Linux machine, and potentially, a Windows 8 machine.

Re:Trek rule

[hairyfeet]

If you haven't watched the Plinkett review of ST VIII then i highly recommend it. I always wondered why i never really cared for the ST:TNG movies when the TV show was one of my absolute favorites and then Plinkett said something that was like a light bulb for me "There are two Picards". You see in the series Picard was smart and thoughtful, and stuck to his beliefs, more of a chessmaster than Kirk's poker player, yet in the movies he's this angry emotional hothead that is quick to act with little to no thought or regard for those around him. the movie Kirk and the TV Kirk are pretty much the same guy, he was always "Meh, we'll wing it" but Picard thought more about the big picture. The example Plinkett gave was in the series he was given a chance to completely wipe out the Borg AFTER he had been assimilated, yet he refused because it would be genocide yet in First Contact they have him practically foaming at the mouth for the blood of the borg. For me that explained completely why I hated the TNG movies yet couldn't figure out why, its because all the characters play against type and pass around the idiot ball just so they can squeeze more action in.

Re:Trek rule

[PCM2]

This rule has always relied on falsified data, namely that the first Star Trek movie was no good, when in fact it was the only really good one. Star Trek II is a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable blockbuster type movie, and comes in second. The rest are pretty much crap.

Re:Trek rule

[FrootLoops]

I'm sorry; are you implying the data I quoted was falsified?

In my own opinion, the first movie wasn't great, but it's decent if you can fast forward through the endless external shots. I actually don't like II as much as most, though I probably like VI more than most.

Re:Trek rule

[msobkow]

You noticed that, eh?

I think of it as the "public paid beta" and the "ok, now here's the real thing" releases myself.

Two Options

[medcalf]

MS had, basically, two options: create a new brand for an OS tailored for post-PC devices, or continue with what they had. They chose to create a new (and pretty good, actually) interface in Metro, but then apply it to both post-PC devices and PCs and brand it as Windows in both places. I think that I would have gone the other way, creating a Metro brand to go with the interface, and tailoring it even more closely to post-PC systems, while keeping the Win7 interface on the desktop, and sharing the underlying kernel and as many APIs as possible between the two variants. Time will tell if that was a good decision or not; it was certainly a bold decision, given the success that Apple and Google have had with specific post-PC brands and interfaces.

Re:Two Options

[lennier1]

To sum it up: There's a reason why Apple is maintaining two product-specific branches of its operating system.

Re:Two Options

[cpu6502]

I hope Win8's Metro is better than the sucky "ribbon" interface in office. I just started using it last week, and today I couldn't even figure out how to "undo" a mistake I made in Excel. I'm looking at it right now, and all I see in front of me is a confusing mess of heiroglyphics. Grrr. If I wanted my computer menu to look like the wall of an Egyptian pyramid, I would have imported it from there.

I never thought I'd ever say this... but the Commodore GEOS was actually easier to use. I've hated Microsoft a long, long time and they finally produced a usable OS with Windows 95 (copied the mac), but now they've gone back to my "hate" column with this Office/Ribbon frakup.

Time will tell if my next PC is a Windows 8 or a Mac. (Or maybe even an Amiga or Linux machine.) Whatever I choose it definitely won't have Microsoft Ãffice on it.

Re:Two Options

[ganjadude]

for now, There were talks a while ago of integrating IOS with OSX or something along those lines, you can see it start with the mac store, , perhaps, M$ actually beat apple to the punch on something? (something no one is really asking for anyway)

Re:Two Options

[Serious Callers Only]

The reason apple are maintaining two branches is they haven't had time to properly merge the two. If they had the time and resources, I'm sure they'd love to merge them and keep some ui differences, but proceed with one base operating system. At present they're maintaining two separate branches of everything from the view layer up including lots of nearly identical code (e.g. uiwebview), which is neither sustainable nor particularly useful. The desktop has definitely moved toward ios with lion, and I think well see more of that, and at some point they may just decide its not worth maintaining the desktop branch (less than 30% of their revenue now) and move over to the newer iOS branch.

the apple post-facto apologists are going to have some somersaults to do when that happens to explain to themselves why now was indeed the right time to merge them and move beyond the pc, just as ms is hack-handedly trying to do here.

That said, ms have executed incredibly poorly here and ruined the reception of what is quite a good interface by foisting it on people all at once and being too up-front about their intentions - the route suggested by the parent would be a good one to gradually acclimatise people to the change.

Re:Two Options

[zoom-ping]

I just started using it last week, and today I couldn't even figure out how to "undo" a mistake I made in Excel. I'm looking at it right now, and all I see in front of me is a confusing mess of heiroglyphics.

Try ctrl+z.

Re:Two Options

[alexhs]

I just started using it last week, and today I couldn't even figure out how to "undo" a mistake I made in Excel.

IIRC, undo is not in the ribbon. Look up, it should be in the title bar (stupid place, I know). Or you could use the old Ctrl-Z shortcut, which should still work...

Re:Two Options

[Em Adespoton]

Ever used Launchpad on OS X? Notice that almost all Apple apps can be run in a "no menu bar" mode? With the last release, most of the useful bits from iOS have been reintigrated into OS X, such that you can now operate most of OS X with a touch screen (including onscreen keyboard). Of course, Apple did a better job of integrating this interface with that of the traditional UI, such that you can still use a mouse in the traditional manner if you so desire.

Not meaning to sound fanboyish; just meaning that MS and Apple just took different paths to the same thing, with slightly different results.

IMO, neither one will feel right until my PC gets a fully functional kinect-like replacement for the mouse.

Re:Two Options

[PCM2]

for now, There were talks a while ago of integrating IOS with OSX or something along those lines, you can see it start with the mac store

I dunno. It's easy to put two and two together and suggest that a unified OS is the way Apple is heading. No doubt that's why I've read a lot of blog posts along those lines. But I've never seen a story speculating about an integrated Apple OS that includes a source from Apple.

Apple is, of course, notoriously secretive. And it certainly wouldn't surprise me if there were some hybrid OS concepts lurking somewhere in Cupertino. But my gut feeling is that, for the foreseeable future, "Apple OS" is a concept promulgated by the tech press more than anything else. (And I say this as a guy from the tech press.)

Re:Two Options

[PCM2]

I hope Win8's Metro is better than the sucky "ribbon" interface in office. I just started using it last week, and today I couldn't even figure out how to "undo" a mistake I made in Excel.

Ctrl-Z, just like always.

Re:Two Options

[spire3661]

The Apple implementation of touch on the Desktop is light years ahead of Windows 8. The entire enterprise can be summed up as: "We like Apple's unlimited control over a walled garden, we want that at all costs, desktop users be damned, they will come to like it or else"

Re:Two Options

[spire3661]

Here, let me 2 finger pinch on your comment to zoom out to see if it looks any less stupid from far away.......

nope

Re:Two Options

[Archangel Michael]

Right. And if you were a new user, how would you discover this keystroke combination?

I know the key stroke combos because I saw them in the MENU next to the word: Undo (CTRL-Z)

But now, you can't even find "undo" in a menu, let alone learn CTRL-Z unless someone on /. tells you.

Re:Two Options

[toddestan]

Yeah, but how would you know that? It must be really hard to use some of Microsoft's newer interfaces if you weren't used the older versions and memorized all the keyboard shortcuts (which luckily still for the most part work).

The monster with two heads

[ackthpt]

So Metro and Desktop will be different. Well, gee. How did I see that coming? Already fighting with designing interfaces which work well for a tablet or mobile touch screen, also working with Desktop, so the application interface doesn't have to be written twice and confuse users with moving between unfamiliar means of viewing and manipulating data within the same application. Not very easy. I wish them a lot of luck, but that luck begins with the divisions within Microsoft working together, not fighting each other. Drop the ball here and Microsoft may never get back into the game.

"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Failed web "designers" are ruining GUI applications left and right. It doesn't matter if they're open-source apps or if they're closed-source commercial apps. These self-labeled "UI designers" and "usability experts" get involved with a popular project that had a usable UI, and they completely trash it.

This has happened to GNOME. This has happened to Firefox. This is now apparently even happening to Windows!

Somehow, these "designers" have managed to create UIs that are far worse than even non-artistic programmers came up with. Firefox is a perfect example of this. The earlier releases had very usable UIs. Then came Firefox 4, and the entire UI was shit upon. Each subsequent release has fucked up the UI more and more. Now we don't have menus by default, we don't have a status bar by default, and Firefox is damn near unusable without heavy tweaking to re-enable such basic UI elements!

The only appropriate thing to do is to shun these people. It doesn't matter which project it is, or what sort of application is being developed. Refuse their contributions. Refuse their ideas. Shoot down their suggestions in mailing list discussions. Don't allow them direct commit access to any source code. Ensure that bugs are logged regarding their horrible designs, especially when usability is impacted.

We need to go back to software developers creating UIs. Maybe they're not artists, and maybe the UIs they built weren't "pretty" (a.k.a full of curved corners and gradients), but at least they were intuitive and we could use them to get real work done efficiently. We can't do that any longer, now that "designers" are trashing every UI they come into contact with.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[IANAAC]

Failed web "designers" are ruining GUI applications left and right. It doesn't matter if they're open-source apps or if they're closed-source commercial apps. These self-labeled "UI designers" and "usability experts" get involved with a popular project that had a usable UI, and they completely trash it.

This has happened to GNOME. This has happened to Firefox. This is now apparently even happening to Windows!

I used to think that about Gnome, until I installed it and started using it.

True, I installed a couple extensions to help me out, but after spending some time with Gnome Shell, it does a really good job of just staying out of the way.

I'm very much a keyboard kinda guy though. To me, too much mouse use gets in the way.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[ackthpt]

Wait until they bring it all out in 3D!

B-)

B-O

B-(

>B-(

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[cpu6502]

I just installed Firefox 4 on my laptop. I don't see anything wrong with its UI versus the one used in my previous 3.5 version? Why do you hate it so much?

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[tooyoung]

I certainly won't argue against the examples that you've provided, as those truly are UI's that underwent destructive "UI improvements". With that being said, I do think that your rant against all designers and usability experts is misplaced. A lot of the time, developers are so intimately familiar with the product and code that it is difficult to discern when something isn't intuitive to a novice user.

Depending on the product, the developer may not even be too familiar with the actual user's job. Take for instance utility power management. There is a whole ecosystem of tools that are used by people who work at big utility companies. A developer on one of these applications is probably intimately familiar with the specific application, but the likelihood is that they've never worked for a power management company. Do they know what the user does during their normal day at work? Do they know what other applications the user uses? How does their application fit into the user's day?

In such cases, you actually have a situation where the developer may make bad decisions in UI design. The developer may not realize that the user doesn't sit in front of their application all day. Rather, the user may use the application for a sub-set of their work, and use information from one application in conjunction with other applications. The developer of the application may think "well, duh, why wouldn't the user know to look under menuX->optionY->wizardZ to do that?" The reality is, the user probably isn't interested in knowing the ins and outs of the application they are using. If the information they are looking for isn't apparently available, then it might as well not exist.

Is this the way things should be? Perhaps not. Perhaps the user should spend their time reading manuals and becoming intimately familiar with the product. However, this isn't the reality. This is where a good design team can come in. A product can deliver everything functionally, but still be considered a failure if the user isn't able to easily accomplish their goals.

I realize I've digressed from the topic at hand, which is the Metro UI (which I really don't like from what I've seen). However, I think it is worth challenging the assumption that developers are the best people responsible for developing UI's.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[billcopc]

I hear what you're saying about Firefox, but people like you and I are apparently not the target demographic. If I were just a typical web user, the slimmed-down default Firefox UI would be fine. Users want to see the web page, they care very little about extra functionality. They don't even use the goddamned location bar, preferring to have Google as their home page, and searching for "Facebook" in lieu of bookmarks. The first time I saw someone google Facebook 20 times an hour, I was in complete shock. Now a few years later, I've come to accept this as the way normal people use their browser. Thinking is entirely optional, even frowned upon, and this is the crowd to which Firefox is trying to cater.

Luser checklist:
- Does it start with Google ?
- Can it get me to Facebook ?
- Can it get me to Gmail/Hotmail ?
- Can it play Farmville/AngryBirds/Bejeweled/Zuma ?

Now, one could speculate as to why these people use Firefox, when IE9 already does everything they want... I'll suggest that they simply want to be hip. Or, in my wife's case, she uses both IE9 and FF, because then "she has two windows she can put side-by-side".

#idontwanttoliveonthisplanetanymore

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[martin-boundary]

A lot of the time, developers are so intimately familiar with the product and code that it is difficult to discern when something isn't intuitive to a novice user.

Perhaps you didn't quite mean this, but it's a very one sided statement. There are novices and experts, and UIs shouldn't just be designed for novices. In fact, for software that gets used a lot, a user stays a novice only a small amount of time, before transitioning to advanced status. So a UI should be designed primarily for advanced users and experts first, and novices second, provided that doesn't interfere with advanced use too much.

The trouble with outside UI designers is that they think like novices, which they often are when they initially join a project. So their priorities are all wrong, and must be fought. Alternatively, they should prove that they already understand advance usage inside out, and then argue that a change is going to improve novice usage without worsening advanced usage.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[sowth]

Well, at least you can still download 3.6.x from releases.mozilla.org. Though I hear they will stop updating 3.6 soon...

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[dbIII]

I never gave it a chance and just switched to a text console after trying it for a few minutes - and this is from a guy that even uses twm and CDE if necessary. The single window thing seems to break the entire point of a desktop IMHO and I couldn't see an easy way to get multiple windows on it. That meant I was cutting and pasting between different text consoles as if I was using linux in 1994 without X at all.
To me it looked like a tiling window manager (eg. xmonad) without the entire point of the tiling. Maybe I didn't give it enough time and maybe gnome actually do have some docs written this time that I can look at and work out how the hell to use the thing to cut and paste between multiple tasks.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[Tom]

We need to go back to software developers creating UIs.

I agree with everything else you said, especially the Firefox UI has become worse with every release and I find myself looking for alternative browsers - and that's from someone who was using Firefox long before it was called that.

However, please don't allow developers to create UIs.

Put real UI designers to that task. Unfortunately, they are a bit of a scarce resource.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[allo]

at least it is possible to tweak firefox to look like in the 3.x releases. Even Win7 is hard to change to look really like win2000. You can change a lot of stuff, but at all places you will see its not the native look, its a compatiblity option.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[allo]

i know people, who use firefox/ie, so they can login two times with different accounts to the same e-mail provider.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[IANAAC]

I never gave it a chance and just switched to a text console after trying it for a few minutes - and this is from a guy that even uses twm and CDE if necessary. The single window thing seems to break the entire point of a desktop IMHO and I couldn't see an easy way to get multiple windows on it. That meant I was cutting and pasting between different text consoles as if I was using linux in 1994 without X at all. To me it looked like a tiling window manager (eg. xmonad) without the entire point of the tiling. Maybe I didn't give it enough time and maybe gnome actually do have some docs written this time that I can look at and work out how the hell to use the thing to cut and paste between multiple tasks.

I'm late to the Gnome Shell game, so to speak, but I've never gotten any of the impressions you list.

Copy/paste is dead simple in Gnome Shell, the same as it is in any other OS/DE. I'm not sure what you're referring to with "single window" either. Gnome Shell dynamically assigns workspaces as you need them. One of the most useful extensions I've installed in the Workspace Navigator extension. I don't need a mouse at all to navigate/focus on different workspaces.

I would recommend you give it another try. And have a look at live.gnome.org for a list of keyboard and mouse shortcuts available. Then head over to extensions,gnome.org to supplement anything you think you might be missing.

Re:"Designers" are ruining UIs all over the place.

[dbIII]

If it's a single window per "workspace" I may as well be using ALT-F* between text consoles. Maybe it's not gnome but the applications I tried themselves that seemed to only have a maximised mode and no way to resize :(
A very poor first impression from a live CD anyway.

How ergonomic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see; I work on two 22 inch monitors. I can move from the far left edge to the far right edge with a three inch movement of my mouse. Now you want me to have to lean toward the monitors and move my arm over three feet to accomplish the same thing. How ergonomic! How NEW! How efficient!

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was just the closest item to him so he picked it up and threw it.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anthony Mouse]

Then don't use touch? Remove all the Metro apps from the Start screen and pin only your desktop apps and you'll end up with something like Windows 7 with a glorified start menu.

That's the problem though. Sure, you can reconfigure it to be like Windows 7...but WTF? If that's better then why are they wasting everybody's time developing something that serves only to make everybody turn it back off?

Which is the same problem with the dichotomy between tablets and desktops. There is a reason that iOS is not MacOS and Android is not Ubuntu or Mint or ChromeOS. What Microsoft is obviously trying to do is get everyone on the desktop used to their tablet UI so that they can sell tablets and have people be familiar with them. But that's total fail, because having a tablet UI on a desktop is crap. And if everybody changes it back right away then they both never become familiar with it and associate it with fail (on top of the fail of not running legacy apps on ARM) so that the tablets get associated with fail and nobody buys them. Or, as is far more likely, just nobody buys Windows 8 to begin with -- every business I'm aware of is planning to stick with Windows 7 indefinitely.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

You obviously haven't used Ubuntu since they changed to the crappy new Unity UI, which is basically a touchscreen UI converted to be used on a desktop. Their eventual goal is to have Unity on both desktops and tablets and phones. Of course, most Linux desktop users are rebelling and switching to Mint or other distros because of this.

Re:How ergonomic!

[cvtan]

Wow! You have a cell phone with two 22-inch monitors? I guess it's the only way to play Angry Elephants.

Re:How ergonomic!

[atlasdropperofworlds]

I guess you could still just connect and use the mouse, right?

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? If that's better then why are they wasting everybody's time developing something that serves only to make everybody turn it back off?

Money. Microsoft probably doesn't give a crap what people actually want. Imagine you take all Windows users today, and push them into an environment where the primary access to everything is through an app store model you control. Now think about how Apple makes money on everything that happens within their iPad/iPhone devices, etc.

I don't think Microsoft wants you to use the desktop anymore. It probably doesn't matter how much you bitch about it, there is probably too much money on the table.

Re:How ergonomic!

[PCM2]

You obviously haven't used Ubuntu since they changed to the crappy new Unity UI, which is basically a touchscreen UI converted to be used on a desktop. Their eventual goal is to have Unity on both desktops and tablets and phones. Of course, most Linux desktop users are rebelling and switching to Mint or other distros because of this.

It took me maybe six months to install a version of Ubuntu with Unity, and all that time I heard nothing but bitching about it on /. Now that I have it installed, I don't really mind it. It is a little "Fisher-Priceified," but it is nowhere near as bad as Metro.

In fact, though I may be a square for saying so, I really have no problem with Unity. The desktop is still visually pleasing and the Unity UI doesn't get in my way. It still feels a little bit awkward for me, because I don't really use a Linux desktop for my day-to-day work, so I haven't had much time to get used to it. But the important thing is that I feel like that awkwardness is my issue. I don't feel that way with Metro.

Re:How ergonomic!

[SerpentMage]

To the poster on Ubuntu and Unity. Initially I was very much against it as well. But I have become very used to it. Though Unity != Metro... Unity is a search based mechanism to find your app, which can be pinned to the toolbar. Once you grasp that idea it actually is pretty clever. I really like it now...

Now with respect to the tiles. I find them an absolute waste of time. My problem is that tiles are there to show you live information of the app. So far so good. But here is the problem... The space and information to be shown is a waste of time. It works well on a phone because the information is targeted. But on the desktop I want more general information. Their example is a stock price. Sounds good, but as I trade the market I don't just have one stock, but 250. How on earth will that be displayed? It will be a mess.

I think it is a failing on behalf of Microsoft. But that is to be expected. After all it is Sinosky who is in charge and well he wants Windows everywhere. Remember this goes back to Windows on the smart phone. The irony is that the Windows smartphone predated the iPhone in terms of functionality. What the iPhone did and excelled at is that you could use a finger instead of stylus. Now Microsoft is taking the opposite approach, but still the same, everything is touch! Wankers! They have no grasped the basic that you talk of, a tablet != smartphone != desktop computer != notebook.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

It probably feels awkward because it's not a very good UI, no matter how nice it may look at first glance. Traditional desktop environments have had 30 years to mature to the state you see in systems like OS X, Win7, KDE, and XFCE, and they work well with systems with big monitors, keyboards, and mice. If you don't feew "awkward" with one of these traditional UIs, but you do feel awkward with a new UI, it's not you, it's the UI that's the problem. The name says it all: "Unity". They're trying to merge desktop and mobile touchscreen UIs into one, and it's a bad idea and won't work. Waving your arms around like in Minority Report simply isn't as efficient as moving a mouse, just like using a mouse on a cellphone would be an ergonomic nightmare.

Re:How ergonomic!

[sqldr]

Waving your arms around like in Minority Report simply isn't as efficient as moving a mouse

er, then use the mouse. You can use it to move windows! Which you can't do on a phone/tablet, partly because of screen size, and partly because with finger-dragging, it would suck. Therefore, it's not a tablet UI. I think the source of confusion is people saw some big icons and went "WHAAAA!!, where's the 1990s taskbar gone?!!!!" and couldn't be arsed to try hitting the windows key. oh look, there's my "window list". wasn't hard.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

You're missing my point. The end goal of all these radical UI changes is to force everyone to use a touchscreen interface on their desktop PCs. These people aren't going to stop with having a touchscreen-esque UI on desktop PCs, they want to have a single UI for all devices. Where do you think they got the name "Unity"?

BTW, what's a "Windows" key? I don't see one of those on my IBM Model M keyboard. And besides, if you have to press some special key to see which applications are running on your PC, then there's something seriously wrong with the UI. A taskbar makes perfect sense here, as you can see all the things running without any special actions. WTF is the point of hiding that? To save some screen real estate? Why? I have two 24" monitors; screen real estate is not in short supply here. On a tablet or a phone, then yes screen real estate is in short supply, which is exactly why those devices need different UIs.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Entropius]

My fundamental problem with Unity and all of the hellspawn UI's that copy OSX is that they conflate the two concepts of "make window XYZ the active one, and maximize it if possible" and "launch an instance of program XYZ". These tasks really have nothing to do with each other, other than both resulting, at the end, in program XYZ being on top.

The most common window-manager task I do is to switch from one window to another. GNOME, very sensibly, gives me a taskbar with all of the things running, and I can click on the one I want, and see at a glance what I've got open and how many instances of each. This is important -- this is the main fucking thing I want my window manager to do for me, is fucking manage my windows.

I don't need a giant list of all the programs on my computer lying around on my screen waiting for me to click them, especially if it takes away from my ability to do the above. On the rare instance when I want to launch a new program, I'll fish around in a menu for it, or hit some magic keystroke (like alt-f2) and type its name. If I really want a big list of my common programs, I'll hit Ctrl-Alt-D and pick one from the icons that I've put on my desktop for that purpose. Or I'll even program a hotkey for it (ctrl-alt-T shits out a new terminal window on my system).

This is even worse for Unix folks, half of whose programs tend to be terminals. How people use OSX for scientific computing is beyond me. Just show me my fucking taskbar and get everything else that I didn't ask for out of my way.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Entropius]

+1.

You can even hide the taskbar on all these UI's if you want the damn space back. I have a 1920x1080 screen on this laptop and leave the taskbar open and two tabs tall, since I have a zillion terminals and copies of Evince running. On my netbook it's one tab tall and I hide it sometimes. On a phone I'd probably want to hide it all the time, except when I specifically want it.

The taskbar is the most useful thing a UI can do. Don't muck it up by absorbing the action "launch a copy of X" into it (I do that far less often than I switch windows). Don't make me hit modifier keys to get it unless I want to.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anthony Mouse]

Much of their target audience will not do that. It's the power users and geeks on here who make the most noise, but the platforms still sell millions when they're targeted towards average users.

Assuming the "Slashdot posters" who all of those "average users" go to for advice don't tell them to ask for Windows 7 instead of Windows 8 on their next PC, as happened with Vista.

Remember what Slashdot said about the iPod, iPhone, and iPad?

You may notice those products are each made by a different company than Windows 8 is. Query whether that may change the result.

Re:How ergonomic!

[shutdown -p now]

I can move from the far left edge to the far right edge with a three inch movement of my mouse. Now you want me to have to lean toward the monitors and move my arm over three feet to accomplish the same thing.

Or, you know, you could just use the mouse in Metro.

It's actually designed to operate slightly differently on a device with a mouse compared to touch-only ones like tablets. For example, in touch-only mode, most gestures are done by swiping from beyond the edge of the screen, Playbook style. With mouse, same gestures are available by placing mouse cursor into one of the screen corners.

Re:How ergonomic!

[cosm]

ctrl-alt-T shits out a new terminal window on my system

I have never laughed so hard at a personification of UI functionality ever. Thx.

Re:How ergonomic!

[negRo_slim]

... and partly because with finger-dragging, it would suck.

I've always thought double-tap+drag at the "titlebar" area and single-tap+drag on the border would be fine for window manipulation on a mobile device..

Re:How ergonomic!

[laffer1]

Terminal in OS X supports tabs. I don't have to use the dock that often to switch terminals. I'm in a terminal constantly and it doesn't get in the way. I'll agree that iOS is not a good desktop UI, but OS X has not (yet) turned into that. Apple hasn't made the Microsoft mistake yet.

I think the real problem is that many people who design user interfaces have given up on desktops prematurely. There will always be a need for a real desktop for development and several other tasks. it might be the minority, but it has a place. If you think about it for a minute, it's obvious why all these UI idiots are jumping at the bit for reinventing the wheel, it's something new. They can actually do something significant that might get them fame or credibility if it's a success. It's the biggest opportunity since the graphical user interface. Of course, the GUI never replaced everything and we still have terminals. When the tablet people realize that the traditional desktop isn't going away, maybe they'll get better at accommodating people like me who still want a desktop GUI and a terminal along with the touch interfaces in places it makes sense.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Riiiiight. OSX, which gets basically everything out of the fucking way of what you're doing, is bad. Expose, which shows you all open windows only when you ask it to is bad. Except when its concept is implemented in some slightly different way on another system. Then its exactly what you're looking for.

If you want a window manager to manage your windows.. perhaps you'd like to use the window managing functions of your window manager? Crazy talk, I know..

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anthony Mouse]

I don't need a giant list of all the programs on my computer lying around on my screen waiting for me to click them, especially if it takes away from my ability to do the above.

I...don't think that's mandatory. I'm pretty oblivious to all this unity nonsense since I generally stick to the LTS releases (we'll see whether I decide to switch to Mint after 12.04 is final), but assuming it works anything like the dock in OS X, you get the behavior you're asking for by just taking all the applications out of the dock. Then you open one and it shows up there, just like the task bar.

But the default behavior is useful because you can put the half dozen programs you keep running 99.9% of the time there, which makes it easier for you to open them if you ever reboot your computer (like if the power goes off).

That said, I get what you're saying. It seems to me that half of Linux users are software developers and Canonical has decided they want the other half. The way you design a UI for a programmer is totally different than how you design a UI for your standard issue Farmville customer. Which has actually been one of the problems with Linux previously: The UIs have all been designed to work well for software developers, not so much for others. So I can appreciate what Canonical is trying to do here: They're trying to make something that could convert less computer savvy users to Linux. But now there are a lot of people who don't understand that they aren't the target market anymore, who don't like the new UI because it wasn't designed for them.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7?

Today was my last day at a multinational megacorp. I turned in my software development workstation - a standard-issue laptop running 32-bit Windows XP with 3 GB of RAM when I left. I don't think there are as many big companies running Windows 7 as people think.

Re:How ergonomic!

[owlstead]

It took me about 15 minutes and still I could not get the freakin' button displaying my workspaces at the spot that I want it. Switching workspaces is important to me. Sometimes I cannot get the launch bar or whatever to show either, have to minimize my application first. F*ck that shit, I gave it a fair try, nothing is good about that Unity release. Main stream Ubuntu is now dead to me. Too many switches and fuckups. Dumbing it down is ok to me, but once I cannot get to a folder I choose in a "save as" dialog...bye bye.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Altrag]

You can use the mouse without reconfiguring it. MS might be taking a pretty risky step with Metro, but they're not insane enough to assume that anywhere near approaching a large number of people have a touch screen monitor or are willing to replace their existing monitors just to use Windows 8.

As for Metro itself.. its going to be a rough ride for a couple of years to be sure. Win8 stands a good chance of being the next Vista, but by the time Win9 rolls around, I imagine that most of the important (ie: most-used) programs will have added Metro support and the only people who care anymore are business support staff who are stuck maintaining legacy apps that the developers no longer support. But as long as those are only annoying (and not actually broken), its not going to matter too much.

Far far more of an issue than Metro being new is the rumors of hardware lockdowns and ipad-like app stores (with all the arbitrary validation issues and whatnot, not to mention a developer tax for listing the apps) and other such anti-competitive practices.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anthony Mouse]

After Windows 7 came out they stopped selling XP for new OEM sales, and it's being discontinued in 2014. At that point the choice of Windows was between 7 or Vista. Of course people picked 7 -- and if they hadn't you would be here telling us how Slashdot panned Vista and half a billion people bought it, given that it was one or the other.

How does that tell anything about whether people will choose 7 over 8 like they chose XP over Vista, now that they're back to having the choice?

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anthony Mouse]

Win8 stands a good chance of being the next Vista, but by the time Win9 rolls around, I imagine that most of the important (ie: most-used) programs will have added Metro support

They have to be careful that doesn't lead down the road to perdition. The trouble with expecting good results from developers redesigning for Metro is that if you give developers the impression they're making an app that will be running on tablets, they're going to realize they ought to port it to iOS and Android since they're the #1 and #2 tablet platforms, at which point you've got "the most important (ie: most-used) programs" running on non-Windows operating systems. And then who cares about Win9 if I can run all my software on something not-Windows?

Re:How ergonomic!

[hob42]

First, the same thing was said when Win95's new desktop replaced the Win3.1 Program Manager. A lot of techie people I knew reverted their systems to using the old Program Manager interface for years.

Second, Win8 isn't even out yet. The company I work for still hasn't moved off XP. That must mean it's superior to Win7, right?

I'm sure there will be some hiccups along the way, but in the end, our interfaces will adapt as operating systems advance.

Re:How ergonomic!

[blackicye]

BTW, what's a "Windows" key? I don't see one of those on my IBM Model M keyboard

Ctrl+Esc

Re:How ergonomic!

[dbIII]

Win7 is still very clunky on multiple screens. For a good example try running a screen or two on a desktop and a HDMI cable to a TV in another room for anoyher screen. Having to go into another room each time a window picks a different random screen to appear on makes it very obvious that the GUI is not as perfect as the fanboys claim.

Re:How ergonomic!

[thegarbz]

Please hand in your Ctrl, Alt, and Sysreq keys in at the door. Clearly they are the product of bad UI design and you should not have the ability to shortcut anything. Oh that's right running a separate program like top or ps is what people should be doing to see what is running.

Sarcasm aside I could not disagree with you more. If anything we need MORE keys and more keyboard shortcuts to streamline effective tasks. You dislike the windows key, but when I start a program I hit the windows key (that's Ctrl+Esc for the handicapped), type in the first few letters of the program and hit enter. This is the pinnacle of UI design. It's fast, straightforward, and allows you to not remove your hands from the keyboard. In fact is just as effecient as typing the first few letters of a program in the command line, hitting tab, then hitting enter.

Bring on more keys and more easy to remember shortcuts!

Re:How ergonomic!

[SerpentMage]

ROTFL... That's good!!!

Re:How ergonomic!

[dbIII]

but your example is just asinine

You misspelt "deliberately more obvious than other examples" and substituted a petty little insult to the messenger.
My point is "Windows was never designed for that" applies to just about any situation using multiple screens.

Re:How ergonomic!

[sqldr]

You're missing my point. The end goal of all these radical UI changes is to force everyone to use a touchscreen interface on their desktop PCs.

No it isn't, and never has been. Citation, or it's bollocks.

 

BTW, what's a "Windows" key? I don't see one of those on my IBM Model M keyboard. And besides, if you have to press some special key to see which applications are running on your PC, then there's something seriously wrong with the UI

Alt-M, then. Or top left corner. Cripes. Ever tried reading instructions?

 

A taskbar makes perfect sense here, as you can see all the things running without any special actions. WTF is the point of hiding that?

It's cluttered, it abbreviates names, and yes, it saves realestate.

 

I have two 24" monitors; screen real estate is not in short supply here.

So you have 2 24" monitors, but you can't get a modern mechanical/microswitched keyboard to replace your model M? Try the Filco Majestic touch.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Anne Thwacks]

half a billion people bought i

Half a billion people found it was on their PC, not that they had a say in the matter.

Those who had a choice were using Ubuntu, until Unity was foisted on them!

- now we are all stuffed.

I predict users are going to start asking questions about their OS, not they have realised not all OSes are the same.

I, for one, will be shorting shares in MS.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Kagetsuki]

sudo apt-get install your_preferred_environemnt

Done. And you can add MATE and Cinnamon easily with PPA. Personally I'm using Gnome Shell and I've grown to love it - but I can easily understand why people like Gnome 2 (which I myself didn't want to give up). Unity I don't like on the desktop but I'd like to try it out on a tablet at some point.

Re:How ergonomic!

[fa2k]

You can use Alt+Space to get the window menu, then arrow down a couple of times, then hit enter and move the window around with the arrow keys. After you have moved it with with the keys, it can also be moved using the mouse.

Re:How ergonomic!

[bluegreen997]

The problem is it is not the 1990's anymore. People have been exposed to a ton of UIs now via their smartphones, tablets, and various other types of devices that they are not going to freak out if they are told that now they will be working on something other than the standard Windows UI.

If anything with the way MS has been changing around their UIs they have opened the door to buisnesses moving off Windows since if MS keeps up with this they will have to retrain their people anyway. I suppose given that fact MS does figure now is a good time to try and force UI changes on people but we will see how that works out for them.

Re:How ergonomic!

[realityimpaired]

Having to go into another room each time a window picks a different random screen to appear on makes it very obvious that the GUI is not as perfect as the fanboys claim.

If you have it set up so that you obviously can't see both screens at the same time, why the hell would you have it set up so the second desktop is an extension of the first, rather than a clone? Setting it up as a clone would solve your problem....

I don't still have multiple screens set up on my Windows 7 system, but it's not because Windows itself is kludgy with multiple displays, it's because gaming on multiple displays is. Most games aren't written to take advantage of multiple displays, those that are usually do it in a gimicky way, and if you use something like eyefinity to trick the game into running across multiple displays, you have a broken image with a gap in the middle, and that can be a problem for a lot of games. The result is that you either have to run in windowed mode so you can still use the OS, or you have a screen doing absolutely nothing when you're playing a game. Since gaming is the only thing I still do on my Windows system, it seemed pointless to set it up with multiple displays.

Re:How ergonomic!

[bluegreen997]

The thing is that we were still just refining the WIMP interface. This is a forced switch to a whole new physical interface.

And while I more than agree that trying to use a WIMP interface with a tablet is silly, so is expecting a desktop to use a touchscreen interface when you can have access to a keyboard and mouse/touchpad/trackball.

The idea that I would want to replace my mouse with having to a) lift my arm up to my screen, b) blocking said screen with my arm/hand, c) smudgeing my screen/possiably moving out of posistion is not going to happen anytime soon for me. (And I'd put money down that I'm far from alone.)

Re:How ergonomic!

[modmans2ndcoming]

why would you say the end goal is to get everyone to use a touch screen on their desktop? There has been no statement to that direction. If the KB and Mouse are equally able to be used to navigate the UI, then saying the UI changes are intended to force touch screens on everyone, without any supporting evidence, is simply paranoia.

Re:How ergonomic!

[allo]

i think you're mixing up panels and WMs.

Re:How ergonomic!

[modmans2ndcoming]

Windows Keys exist between Ctrl and Alt on any Keyboard that is Certified for use on a windows machine.

Re:How ergonomic!

[modmans2ndcoming]

This place and OSNews are full of a bunch of overly self important idiots who can't see past their nose.

Change is bad....Anything MS does is stupid.....Anything Apple Does is evil.....Google is stealing my soul to sell to marketers.....Social is a stupid waste of time....blah blah blah blah blah.

Re:How ergonomic!

[jez9999]

Remember what Slashdot said about the iPod, iPhone, and iPad?

ALL of these are *different hardware devices* from a PC. Their interfaces are new, because the device is different. That's fair enough. Windows 8 is talking about taking the interface for an *existing device* (the PC) and fucking around with it in a most unwelcome way. That's a big difference.

If Windows 8 were just a table OS, fair enough. As it is, Microsoft should really be telling people to stick with Windows7 for the PC - I suspect I'll find myself formatting and installing that (or Linux) if I find myself with a pre-installed Windows 8.

Re:How ergonomic!

[hairyfeet]

Glad to see you got modded up, too bad there isn't a +5 nailed it" moderation. This is nothing but the exact opposite of the failure of WinMo, anybody remember WinMo? How they made it a little desktop with a little start button that made NO FRICKING SENSE for the form factor? Now we have metro which is taking the Smartphone/tablet UI and shoehorning it into the desktop, for the love of God why? Are people gonna throw away all those widescreen monitors to buy little 15 inch touchscreens? are all the laptops suddenly gonna have touch? And to every developer out there...don't you feel insulted? that MSFT thinks you're so damned stupid they can get you to develop for their WinARM app store by trying to sell you the "write once, run anywhere" horseshit?

Sadly I think I know where they got this idea....Vista. Remember what happened with Vista? How people just went back to XP? Well MSFT has already said Windows 7 will be supported until 2020 which means anyone stupid enough to buy Win 8 runs the risk of being abandoned like Vista. Because thanks to 7 there really isn't a big risk here for MSFT, they can continue to sell 7 to businesses and if the OEMs have a shitfit let them sell Win 7 too. To me the sad part is that Metro would make a great replacement for WinMo but its gonna be so covered in the stench of failure it'll never get a chance and frankly there isn't a damned thing wrong with 7, in fact I'd say its the most balanced OS I've ever seen. For the clueless like my dad the easy search makes it all simple to navigate and for power users there is jumplists and breadcrumbs. It plays nice with everything, its solid as a rock, its just a nice OS.

Show of hands, how many here thinks this has even a tiny shot of beating the little green bot and the iShiny? /crickets chirping/ thought so.

Re:How ergonomic!

[harperska]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard

Also, I take it you feel emacs is the epitome of UI design as well?

Re:How ergonomic!

[hairyfeet]

And how do you get back to a page in Chrome you launched 3 days ago with your magic shortcuts? how about that explorer window you had open yesterday? for me i just right click and tada! There's the jumplist. Keyboard shortcuts are the most unintuitive way to do things ever. Sure if you have memorized them they are great, but ask the folks in line at the bank how many Windows shortcuts they know, you'll be lucky if they know how to copy and paste.

In the end it doesn't matter anyway, Win 8 is the new MS Bob, its a bad idea with a bad UI designed for something completely different than what its being run on, all because Ballmer just can't accept he has lost the mobile space. hell even my 70 year old dad is looking at Android phones, give it up Ballmer, you missed the boat.

Re:How ergonomic!

[hairyfeet]

Riiiight, because everybody just bought Vista and said "we'll deal"...oh wait, no...that's not what happened, the revolted en masse and ran back for XP as fast as they could, so fast that when sales completely crapped the OEMs had a living shitfit and demanded (and got) downgrade rights so all their new machines got XP on them.

The masses aren't as helpless as you think friend. sure they won't tweak, they'll just walk away. if you don't give them something they want someone else will. I made a ton of extra scratch making "that damned Vista go away" and by selling nice new XP boxes until the OEMs jumped on board and started selling XP too, i have a feeling I better start printing up those "We have Windows 7!" flyers as I'm probably gonna need 'em.

Re:How ergonomic!

[msobkow]

I agree 100%. I only spent 5 minutes with Unity, but it was enough for me to feel thoroughly insulted.

While it works, it is so simplified compared to a "traditional" desktop that I found it to be utterly useless. I'm sure I could figure out ways to do what I want to do, but doesn't that fly in the face of good design? Shouldn't necessary features be intuitive and obvious rather than being something I have to "figure out"?

The grandparent is right: there's a reason tablet/smartphone and desktop UIs are different. And trying to merge them for the sake of saving some money on the code base is a rather rude and insulting thing to do to the user communities of either ecosystem.

Because those who know and need the desktop power will continue to program for that model, making the applications hell to use on the tablets. In the meantime, those who program for tablets will focus on Metro, and make their applications insultingly, mind-numbingly dumbed down, pissing off the desktop users.

Other than in photoshop, you don't see limousines with the back end of a pick-up truck. You use the right tool for the job; you don't try to make one tool do everything.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Compaqt]

Well, as you say, you don't use it for your day to day work.

That's why you don't really mind it.

I guess I wouldn't, either, if I were just using Ubuntu for light browsing.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Compaqt]

Wait, what do you mean UIs are designed to work well for devs and not for normal people?

We've been using computers in the office and schools for, what, 20 years now?

A whole generation of people has grown up using the Start menu/classic Gnome/KDE mode of operation and their children, too!

Gramps and gramma have been using XP-style interfaces just fine for the last 10 years to check their email and go to senior bulletin boards.

So I ask: exactly how many normal people are there left who don't know how to use an XP interface?

The startmenu interface is basically as common and normal as the steering wheel. For whose benefit is it being changed, other than antsy program managers at M$ and Apple who don't have anything else to do. (MS feels they can impose anything they want because businesses don't have a choice. Apple feels confident that their fans will laud anything they do.)

Re:How ergonomic!

[rikkards]

Or even better... use Kinect. Nothing has been mentioned really about it but you can't tell me that Microsoft isn't thinking about this.

Re:How ergonomic!

[rikkards]

That's a strawman argument. You do the same thing in Chrome in Windows 8 (oh my god you can run it on 8?). For IE if you want to go back with the mouth. You click on the window and drag to the left. I am not exactly a fan of Metro but I see its merits.

Re:How ergonomic!

[manicb]

How people use OSX for scientific computing is beyond me.

iTerm2

Just show me my fucking taskbar and get everything else that I didn't ask for out of my way.

That's... pretty much exactly what it does? You don't have to keep things in the dock if you don't want to, and you can also set it to auto-hide. The setting is really easy to find, it's in several places. I keep TextEdit in the dock; it's a great way to open arbitrary files as plain text (you just drag them onto the icon), which is very useful for scientific computing.

I only really have two major criticisms at the moment with OSX: some useful things are hidden from the Finder by default (root directory, library), and the multiple workspace handling has regressed between Snow Leopard and Lion; for some bizarre reason you can't drag things between workspaces in Mission Control.

Re:How ergonomic!

[hairyfeet]

But to do so you have to go AROUND the lousy Metro first to get to the desktop. lets be honest, okay? its a smartphone. YOU know this, I know this, hell anybody with eyes knows this. the entire UI is designed for a one app at a time max screened smartphone. the reason MSFT is pushing Metro at all is because its getting the living shit stomped out of them in the mobile space and they know that X86 desktops simply will never have the growth rate of smartphones because people don't throw their desktops away every 2 years when a contract is up, which they do with their smartphones.

In the end THERE IS A REASON why Apple isn't running iOS on the new macbooks, and that's because that UI just doesn't work in that form factor. For years MSFT tried to force the Windows desktop metaphor onto smartphones, remember WinMo? With the itty bitty start button? Well after years of that being a mega fail someone says 'Hey...what if we reversed that? you know like Willy Wonka? We'll put the smartphone ON THE DESKTOP and then when people are used to using WinPhone because they get stuck with it on every new Dell...why they'll buy the smartphone because its familiar, its bloody brilliant!" only its NOT brilliant, its a failwhale. I'm sure several in MSFT have tried to point out that's a fail, probably got fired or told to STFU, because Ballmer wants to be the head of Apple so bad it hurts.

Mark my words, this will joining Zune, kin, winMo, and WinPhone on the giant fail heap that is MSFT's mobile efforts proving once again they just don't get it. Personally I'll be glad when they just accept they are the new IBM and save any innovation for the Xbox.

Re:How ergonomic!

[shutdown -p now]

Actually, prototypes for that are already out - just google for "windows 8 kinect".

That does not alleviate GP's problem, though. Kinect is still going to give you gorilla's arm if you use it on a desktop.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

Why would I want a newer keyboard? What do they offer that's better than the Model M except a very high price tag? Windows keys? I never use those in KDE, plus they get in the way and make the spacebar smaller.

Reading instructions? To use a new UI? With any mobile phone, I don't have to read instructions, it's easy to figure out how to use them. Now you want me to memorize secret key combinations just to see which applications are running on a workstation? That's utterly stupid. There's nothing "cluttered" about a taskbar, except in the minds of morons who want to push smartphone-esque UIs onto multi-screen workstations.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

Because it's obvious: the only reason you'd put giant icons on a desktop PC screen is because you want them to be accessed with a touch interface; there's no reason to use 2" square icons with a mouse. The only reason you'd make applications maximized by default is, again, you're trying to emulate a small-screen touch interface.

Re:How ergonomic!

[shutdown -p now]

Their example is a stock price. Sounds good, but as I trade the market I don't just have one stock, but 250. How on earth will that be displayed? It will be a mess.

You can pin individual stocks as more tiles (all of which will open the Stock app and navigate to the corresponding stock). Similar for most other apps - e.g. for weather, you can pin different locations as several tiles; for mail, you should be able to pin folders separately (though I don't think it actually lets you do that in beta).

Also, your use case of 250 stocks at a time is not exactly common, don't you think? Most people who watch the stocks have maybe 5-6 at most which they're concerned about enough to pin them to their home screen such that they are looking at them more than once per day.

Re:How ergonomic!

[CSMoran]

posting to undo moderation.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

Ok, so what about when you don't know the name of the application you're looking for? Or what if you just want to browse through your applications, perhaps to choose a game to play?

Re:How ergonomic!

[modmans2ndcoming]

Seriously? That is the best you have "it's obvious".....

Perhaps, their motivation is to unify the UI across devices? If it was obvious that they wanted to make people use touch as the primary UI, then I guess that is their goal for the x-box too... I mean....metro is on there too.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

This is very true. Gaming is the only thing I use Windows for, too. I eventually turned my second screen off because most games ignored it and those that didn't usually did something incorrect with it.

Both screens work fine for most of my tasks in Debian. But, here too, games never seem to work properly with two screens. I usually have to temporarily disable one screen if I run a game. Then I must reposition a number of my desktop widgets when I turn it back on.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Vlado]

^ This ^

People usually laud Apple as company that is very good with their GUI approaches. Yet, somehow, they don't use the same user experience on iPads/iPhones AND laptops/desktops.

Mobile devices have one type of experience, while more "classic" devices have another.

I think that Metro discussions are really revolving around the fact, that currently MS is trying to push a single experience for everything, which is something that will probably fail with users. I use my computing environment in quite different ways on phones/tablets, than I do on mouse/keyboard-operated devices.

And even then, the Metro approach maybe (maybe, maybe) could work. But only if it was the ONLY GUI. At this point in time there seems to be a mash-up of Metro and non-Metro experience, which invites schizophrenia into everyday usage of computer. Not in the least, since Metro and Non-Metro apps follow different behavior rules for operation, closing, tiling and so on.

Wasn't it hard enough to try and explain to an elderly/new/scared user, how to use one UI paradigm? Now you'll have to support two. And they will mix simultaneously, and probably not always predictably.
And don't even try to add remote desktop environment to the mix here. Total chaos.

I like new things. But in some cases either you do them completely or don't do them at all. With Metro, I believe you have to do the former.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Vlado]

While I agree with you that this kind of behavior is a problem, it's not so much an OS issue. This is usually due to applications that are not written with multiple monitors in mind.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

No shit sherlock, their motivation IS to unify the UI across devices. So how do you think that unification is going to take place? By putting UIs on touchscreens that are more suitable for traditional desktops with keyboards and (multi-button) mice? Obviously not; it's going to go for the lowest common denominator, which is tiny touchscreens. So yes, if their motivation is to unify the UI, that means making everyone use touch-based interfaces.

Re:How ergonomic!

[modmans2ndcoming]

Unifying the UI is not the same thing as unifying the Human Interface Devices. Windows 8 is 100% functional and productive with a mouse and keyboard.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

No, it isn't, because it has that shitty Metro interface. At least they give you a fall-back to the old desktop UI, except that it's crippled because the Start button takes you back to the shitty Metro interface. The Windows UI has been going backwards in usability, starting with 7.

Re:How ergonomic!

[dbIII]

It's due to a window manager that's not written with multiple monitors in mind. You can't blame the applications for that because they don't have much say in where their windows are placed.

Re:How ergonomic!

[dbIII]

why the hell would you have it set up so the second desktop is an extension of the first, rather than a clone?

That assumes identical resolutions which is a very poor assumption with multiple monitor setups. Even the most trivial example of a laptop and external monitor is likely to have different resolutions.
Since you are using gaming as the example - let's try some other very poor multi-screen handling. In linux I've got used to playing WoW on one screen and then mouse over to the other screen for a web browser or whatever. In Win7 the mouse gets trapped by the game and can move onto the other screen but can't click on anything - silly use of ALT-TAB and a pile of clicking results in iconifying the game on the task bar, then doing the same to the web browser, then bring the web browser up again before it can be clicked on. Just clicking on a window isn't enough to give it focus - desktop metaphor broken yet again. Notice that I wrote "web browser" and not chrome, ie or firefox because it's all three and several other applications as well. It's just another little thing but the main annoyance is probably every other multiple monitor system from a decade ago was handling things better than Win7 today - and that includes management of application windows on the MS Windows platform by third party tools such as from Matrox.
It appears that if your graphic card vendor doesn't have their own workaround then the stuff is just going to appear all over the place. It was slack in 2002 for them not to have proper support, in 2012 with all the aero hype it's just a joke.

Re:How ergonomic!

[Dal Platinum]

Run it in windowed fullscreen mode. I have Win7 64, and if I get an IM, or want to switch tunes, I just move to the other screen and click something, then click back on WoW and continue playing. Fullscreen will generally run better, but I get a solid 60fps in windowed fullscreen with a mid-range (now probably sub-midrange) gfx card with everything maxed out, so it makes little to no difference to me.

If that doesn't fix it, then the fault will lie elsewhere.

Re:How ergonomic!

[modmans2ndcoming]

WTF? the Metro UI is 100% functional with a Keyboard and mouse. I am using right now!

Re:How ergonomic!

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, I'm sure the moronic fans of Gnome3 and Unity say that about their crappy non-functional UIs too.

The iPhone UI could be perfectly "100% functional" with a keyboard and mouse too, but it'd still be a shitty UI to use on a desktop.

Re:How ergonomic!

[ciscocontractor]

No, there is a big difference in the results of pressing Win+D and pressing Ctrl+Esc+D. Nothing new with an OS specific Meta key, Apple did it decades before MS. (Open-Apple key, Closed-Apple key)

Re:How ergonomic!

[Stuarticus]

But now there are a lot of people who don't understand that they aren't the target market anymore, who don't like the new UI because it wasn't designed for them.

The problem is it was these people who were persuading the "Farmville customers" to switch and keeping their systems running... Now we have to apologise for asking them to switch and get them to learn another desktop environment that isn't so inherently ridiculous.

Re:How ergonomic!

[awshidahak]

A taskbar makes perfect sense here, as you can see all the things running without any special actions. WTF is the point of hiding that?

It's cluttered, it abbreviates names, and yes, it saves realestate.

If their goal is to reduce clutter and abbreviation, ten they've missed it. Their application launcher is terribly cluttered, and it abbreviated the names of all the applications. Switched away from it for that reason.

Re:How ergonomic!

[SuricouRaven]

Only if the user has small fingers and a fair amount of practice. It's harder to be precise with touch than with a mouse or stylus. Fingers are squishy.

Re:How ergonomic!

[SuricouRaven]

That, and the desktop market has reached the dreaded point of maturity: Everyone who might want a desktop has one, and the upgrade cycle isn't what it used to be. There is minimal prospect of growth. Portables, on the other hand... that's a booming industry, and everyone wants in.

Re:How ergonomic!

[rioki]

On my 10'' netbook, when I feel like I need more space while browsing some page I simply hit F11 and Firefox goes into full screen mode. You can have both world if you want... Metro is just fail. Especially since it feels like you are going back and forth. What, I need to *close* my email application so that I can copy this piece of text? Why can't I have two applications open, then I swipe to the bottom of the screen (or wherever) and I see my running applications... Not each and every application. There are way saner usability concepts out there.

but

[zlives]

yes but that would make sense.

My start button!

[Zaldarr]

Someone will find a way to get it back to me. YOU'LL NEVER TAKE IT FROM ME!

Re:My start button!

[geekoid]

Man, so many people went on and on on how the Start button sucked, they would never use it and it was the downfall of MS.
Heh.

Why do you need a little round thing in the corner to click on for the sole person of being able to click on something else?

Re:My start button!

[mattgoldey]

Done and done. http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

Re:My start button!

[flimflammer]

Opposed to what, exactly? Every other operating system uses a similar approach, by grouping up applications in a specific place. It just so happens Windows puts it behind a button on the lower left hand part of the screen.

Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Anonymous Coward]

I travel a lot, all over Europe, North America and Asia, and I've come to realize that tablets are basically a myth. While there is a lot of hype around them, and many have been sold, almost nobody actually uses them!

During my travels, I see people using cell phones. I see people using smart phones. I see people using laptops. I see people using netbooks. I see people using desktops. But it's extremely rare to see anyone using tablets. I see literally thousands of other people using smart phones for every tablet user I see.

I visit all sorts of environments, from huge corporate offices, to parks, to restaurants, to planes, to universities and colleges, to airports, to train stations, to city squares, to government offices, to subways, to cafes, to so many other places. Given the amount of traveling I do and the huge number of people I see in any given day, and given how much we hear about tablets, I should be constantly seeing people use tablets. But I just don't.

I think that they're the kind of device that somebody buys because of the marketing hype or because they sound like they might be useful, but then in practice they turn out to be feeble and impractical. Then they sit there on a bookshelf or table top, completely unused, until they're all but forgotten about.

I'm sure a bunch of people are going to reply to this saying how they find tablets useful in some very niche situation, but these are indeed very niche cases. The widespread usage of tablets just isn't there, like it is with smart phones or even netbooks. The popularity of tablets is a marketing myth, I suspect, rather than a reality.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[TheRaven64]

About the only places I've seen tablets are on trains. Even then, they're massively outnumbered by laptops and phones, but I do see a few. I actually own a tablet, and the only thing I use it for is watching films when I'm on a long trip - it can manage about 7 hours of video playback, which is more than enough for most journeys. With power sockets being common in trains now, there's less of a need, and my laptop has the nice advantage that I don't need to prop it up - the screen comes with a convenient stand...

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[sangreal66]

Proving the value of anecdotal evidence, I have had the exact opposite experience. I take flights weekly, and I have not been on a flight without a few tablet users in a long time.

As a tablet owner myself, I find I rarely take the effort to drag it out of my bag when I can just reach for my phone.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[beelsebob]

Actually, not a single niche –many many many niches. The same is true of computers –they suck if you go "hey, what's the killer app", but are great if you realise that they're useful for hundreds of useful little things.

Several of my friends are now considering them, simply because each time they're round the phrase "could you pass the iPad over" gets uttered a couple of times. Be it to check wikipedia, look up some random cat video someone mentioned, display the rules of the game we're playing, ...

All of these individually are trivialities... but they add up to a really fucking useful device.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[PopeRatzo]

I travel a lot, all over Europe, North America and Asia, and I've come to realize that tablets are basically a myth. While there is a lot of hype around them, and many have been sold, almost nobody actually uses them!

Maybe that's because most tablets suck for getting any work done, and thanks to the corporate hostile takeover of all of our lives, people have to work a lot more than they used to. Thus, the tablet stays at home and the phone or the laptop comes out on the train, at lunch, etc etc.

If there were reasonably-priced tablets that could be used to do actual work, you'd see a lot more of them. On a plane, on a train, bus, etc standard laptops can be very clumsy. You end up needing quite a bit of space to use them.

I watched the video of the Lenovo Yoga, and while there are things about it that don't look so great, it's a start toward a tablet-style form factor that can actually be used to accomplish something besides consumption. It's a step in the right direction to create functional tablets that provide keyboards for the few billion people who would rather key input than anything else.

I'm sorry, but Siri-style voice commands are not going to be anything but a novelty until they can be used with sub-vocal sounds. I really don't want to be anywhere near a plane or train where everybody is talking to their computer. I can type faster than I can talk to Siri, anyway.

Now, I won't buy Windows 8 because I won't give Microsoft money (for reasons that don't have anything to do with the quality or lack thereof regarding their products. It's political. But I'm glad to see that somebody is thinking about computer interfaces that can be used to make something, not just buy something. Apple doesn't seem to be doing it, but they're apparently too busy being the richest company in the world by making products that are for consumption-only. That's not a knock on them. I just need tools more than I need home shopping network on steroids.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Grishnakh]

I pretty much only see people with e-book readers on planes, not "tablets" per se. There's a big difference between the two, even though it's quite possible to make an e-book reader work like a tablet; the use cases are quite different. Ebook readers are great for reading (esp. with the e-ink screens), but that's about it.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[medcalf]

Correct: no one uses tablets. Lots of people use iPads, though.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am replying on a tablet and can tell you that their biggest selling point is you can easily read them on the crapper. This post would be longer but I'm done and its time to flush.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[SerpentMage]

Great you see that, I see this...

I am guessing you travel quite a bit because you are a business traveler. Drum roll... Businesses don't use tablets because they have no targetted plan... They are only now trying to wrap their head around a tablet.

Next tablets are toilet devices. I mean that you are going to use a tablet when others don't see them. Sitting on the toilet, in a corner away from everybody, etc. My wife, my father in law, and myself are die hard tablet users. Yet we use them for consumption when we have a quiet moment, like on a toilet, in a bed, on a sofa, etc. These are the places that you don't use a netbook, or at least not effectively.

BTW I do see quite a few tablets, when you look hard for them... I mean if you look beyond the usual culprits...

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[crossmr]

Travel more. Tablets are all over Korea. I see tons every day. Coffee shops, subway, bus, etc.
yes, lots of smart phones, but its easier to whip out a smart phone than to pull the tablet out of your bag. Just because someone has a smart phone in their hand doesn't mean the don't have a tablet in their bag that they're going to use when they get into a more comfortable place.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[medcalf]

I said "use". You said "productive". Not sure we're talking about the same concept, here.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[ChunderDownunder]

Having recently finished backpacking across Europe and South America for 6 months, my experience of wifi users in hostels is

(a) iPads are more commonly owned US travellers than other nationalities. More hipsters?
(b) It's rare to see Android tablets
(c) Netbooks are more common than full size laptops by a factor of 3:1 - portability
(d) Netbooks outnumber iPads by 10:1.
(d) smartphone users check a couple of things but jump on a full sized desktop whenever a machine becomes free.

So netbooks are still popular with the traveller. Keyboards haven't gone the way of the dinosaur for those that want to type lengthy messages to folks back home. Netbooks predating the iPad craze and the cost of choosing a new machine is also a factor, obviously.

The future, for Apple competitors, is to reinvent the netbook as Asus have done with the Transformer. Tablet AND lightweight laptop in one device. Stick Win 8 on these things and MS have a touchscreen tablet that runs Word and Excel when docked.

The gap in the price of capacitive touchscreens over regular netbook displays just narrowed with the new iPad's retina display. As soon as MS have Office ready on ARM, it's game over for the Atom as Transformer-like devices running Win8 retail at netbook prices ~ $US300.

So MS is releasing this preview for x86 desktops but the real prize is claiming a share of the tablet+keyboard market from Android and wooing business customers that a Win8 tablet can run Office when you need to 'get real work done'.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what else is a myth? Beds. I mean, how many beds do you see in huge corporate offices, parks, restaurants, planes, universities, airports, train stations, city squares, government offices, subways, cafes, etc?

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Truekaiser]

tablets are being used to turn the computer from a content creation & consumption device. to just a consumption device no different then a tv or radio.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[PCM2]

I have an Android tablet and a Chromebook. In the situations you describe, I'd rather use the Chromebook.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing I've noticed is managers really like tablets because it enables them to, very frequently and without much weight, carry around a device they can use to monitor what's going on. E-mail and Calendaring are these creature's worlds and for that, typing lots of short sentences and hitting "yes/no" on a calendar appointments is good. Anything further is better done of the cellphone. Opening Office documents for meetings is also a big thing for them.

Although the execs I have worked with have preferred net-books to tablets and some carry both.

If you introduced an application that allowed them to reliably speak-to-text to their computers, that'd make the tablet much better for them. But only just.

For enterprise apps people need to be thinking about either 3d multidimensional interfaces or extremely simple 2d interfaces. Many CRM and ERP systems turn into absolute nightmares to look at or use. It seems like the developers just thought adding lots and lots of buttons was a great idea, without any thought to what those buttons should, or shouldn't, be doing.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Daniel Phillips]

My Xoom with a Bluetooth keyboard works better for me on a plane than a laptop and lasts twice as long. Next road trip I'll leave the laptop at home.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[R3d M3rcury]

I pretty much only see people with e-book readers on planes, not "tablets" per se. [...] Ebook readers are great for reading (esp. with the e-ink screens), but that's about it.

Whereas people using iPads on an airplane are composing music, writing the next Great American Novel, or curing cancer?

I see iPads on airplanes. People use them to read books, watch movies, or play games. I see people using the small Samsung Tablets or Nooks doing the same thing.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[PopeRatzo]

The yoga pad is a non starter. That thing is hideous and you better have a chiropractor on call if you're planning on replacing your iPad with it.

The question isn't whether a Yoga can replace an iPad.

It's "how can we make a portable that will help you get work done instead of a consumption device?"

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[jones_supa]

I've never understood people who want to sit shitting for minutes, reading stuff etc. :)

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[pclminion]

Why make "number two" a stressful event by turning it into a race? There aren't many feelings worse than not feeling "quite finished" with the act. I've noticed people seem to fall into two categories on this, the quick and the leisurely. I have no idea if the people in the "quick" camp actually feel "finished" after only two minutes, but I know for sure that I don't.

Strange, but interesting, topic.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[epyT-R]

I dont' see a difference.. whether this is arrogant fanboism or a rip on apple, ipad and its competitors do the same things by and large..

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[oakgrove]

It's called a laptop. Not something that could double as a lunch tray for the whole table.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[SerpentMage]

I am sorry, but businesses have other issues and rarely apply the "how do we best solve this problem." Businesses typically ask, "What about security, scalability, maintainability, etc, etc... " Somewhere in that train of thought is, "oh yeah what is the best solution."

The problem with tablets is that they usurp topics such as security and thus become a no go, even though they might be the best solution. The iPad has this problem. The reason why companies are looking at the iPad is because the managers, and employees have been usurping the admins and those in charge thus FORCING the company to figure out how to use the tablet.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[SerpentMage]

I have an Android tablet as well. I also would rather use a Chromebook. As a result of my Android tablet I bought another iPad... Android tablets are horrible toilet machines... BTW my Chromebook is called a Macbook Air...

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Tom]

I travel a lot, all over Europe, North America and Asia, and I've come to realize that tablets are basically a myth.

Travel using some other method than the bike and your opinion will change. ;-)

Yes, lots of people use smartphones. Tablet's aren't everywhere, and lots of people seem to keep them at home - I know a lot of people who own an iPad, but never have it with them when I meet them. I myself only carry mine when I expect to use it.
The phone, however, is something you pretty much have with you wherever you go. That's why it's no surprise you see more people using smartphones than tablets.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Tom]

a Win8 tablet can run Office when you need to 'get real work done'.

Very little real work gets done using Office. What you mean to say is "busywork for the managers so they can appear to be doing something else than going to meetings". Which, unfortunately, is the long-term damage Office has done to our work environments. Managers ought to be in meetings, managing is their job, not doing secretary work (and most still need a secretary to fix their documents for them anyways, when having it created by the secretary in the first place would've been just as quick).

Managers love tablets because they can now spend twice the time doing half the work, and everyone can see them doing it in the meeting rooms, on the elevator, etc. etc. It's not a coincidence that most companies that introduced iPads did so for the managers and not for the people who really could've used a highly mobile device that is better at output than at input (sales people, some technical people, etc.)

Win8 will be a success with this class of users for the same reasons - the UI makes you seem busy. Unfortunately, these guys make the buying decisions for everyone else as well.

I fully expect many companies to pass up Win7 and go to Win8 as their next windows version.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[modmans2ndcoming]

The priest who officiated the funeral I was just at yesterday was using a tablet for a bible (at the internment ceremony, not the church).

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[modmans2ndcoming]

At my office, tablets are used for note taking (using those little KBs in the cover). I have considered getting a tablet rather than a laptop for my next personal PC because I do not use my laptop for much work anymore and for the random times I need to take notes, there is a good KB solution for them now.

I plan to get a WOA tablet when they become available.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[jez9999]

Be it to check wikipedia, look up some random cat video someone mentioned, display the rules of the game we're playing, ...

I would use my Android smartphone for all of those, and it fits in my pocket.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[arkhan_jg]

I do the same stuff, but with my smartphone that always lives in my pocket or close to hand. It's portable, has 'net access, and has all my key data on it via sugarsync/evernote/pocket informant. I do have a tablet, but that's reserved for 'net reading on the sofa when I don't fancy sitting up at my desk. And as soon as I try and type on it, I end up going to the desktop if I need to write more than a sentence. At least on my smartphone I can double thumb type pretty quickly; on a 10" tablet, it's too heavy to do other than hold one handed and peck with the other, or awkward to balance on my knee and try and type with both. And there's zero point using a keyboard, when my real computer is Just There.

My wife on the other hand, is inseperable from her laptop. She's forever looking stuff up on it, she uses it on the coffee table, on her lap, always travels everywhere with it.

It's not the tablet is anything special; it's the device you always have with you that is, whether it's smartphone, tablet or laptop.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[beelsebob]

And yet, despite the fact that I, my wife, and all my friends have {iOS|Android} smartphones, the phrase "can you pass the iPad" still keeps getting uttered – because it's more convenient to use.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Bengie]

They found that people get work done faster with the new UI. They used stop-watches and system timers for their results. I bet you used your gut to get your answers.

They did proper research. Get someone to also do proper research and see if they get a different answer. Until then, MS is making a proper informed decision.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Tom]

Source ?

Not because I doubt it happened, but because I'd like to know the details.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[DeathFromSomewhere]

The building windows 8 blog goes into fairly good detail on the decisions they make and how they make them. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/03/evolving-the-start-menu.aspx

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[Tom]

Thanks.

Re:Nobody actually uses tablets.

[steelfood]

A good smartphone does most of that, without having to carry a second device.

Where it doesn't, i.e. you need the larger screen, is where tablets fit in, but the uses cases for that are so incredibly limited it's rare enough as it were. Compound that to the cost-benefit calculation of having to carry yet a second (larger) device veresus having a smaller screen, and tablets become irrelevant very quickly.

I think a lot of people are buying one to have one, because there's a lot of buzz, and a lot of people are envisioning all the new possible things they can do with it. But I think once they start using it, they'll realize the drawbacks are not worth the benefits.

Since we're all on anecdotes here anyway, I have my own to offer up. I used to see the occasional tablet on the train. They weren't so rare that I never saw one, nor so common as the phone. But these days, I don't see anyone riding the train with one. I still see phones, along with the occasional handheld gaming systems (PSP, DS), and e-readers, but no tablets.

And I haven't seen anyone pull one out for anything as casual as looking up a restaurant or definition of something. For this, people use phones. The use cases of a tablet tend to be closer to the use case of a netbook/small laptop. And even so, people tend to take out their phones, so the more accurate statement may be that the use case for tablets are the same as the much narrower use cases for netbooks and laptops.

I tried it. It fails.

[ubergeek65536]

If there are no on screen visuals I'm lost. I rarely use keyboard shortcuts and I can see that increasing when there isn't a keyboard.

The problem I have with Metro is that it's so hard to organize things. I have over 1000 shortcuts currently on my Windows 7 machine, where are they supposed to fit in Metro. I'd need to scroll for a week to find what I'm looking for. "Oh, but you can just type the name of what you are looking for. " but I don't remember the name just what the icon looks like. Keep your Metro, give me a start menu and we can both be happy.

my main problem with it...

[s0litaire]

... Apart from Metro only being useful if you have a laptop/tablet/smartphone (touch screen Desktop/TV never worked!)

Was that both GUI's weren't linked, they were in essence 2 separate desktops.
So if i opened IE (or any other program) on Metro and had to switch to the "other" desktop, If I opened IE there it was a totally new session. (I'd think it would be better, or nice, to ask the user if he wanted to pull the session from metro.)

i gave it a week of use, then wiped it.

But that rule doesn't work

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean Star Trek 3 was good. I mean Reverend Jim the Klingon for FSM sakes.

different != improved

[WombleGoneBad]

I just watched a tv program on a guy who was in charge of an annual exhibition (a home design/decor thing). He said "We had to make the displays better every year, so people will keep coming. This just wasn't possible, so we just make it *different* every year, and hope that people would think its better." I think the same applies to microsoft windows. They just move stuff around and hope people will confuse 'different' with 'improvement'. Really it just means people waste time and effort hunting for the new hiding place of the stuff they need to use.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[Shifty0x88]

LOL, if Windows 8 Preview is anything to show for what they have in mind, then it will be Win 7 with a stupid Start screen which is not needed in a Desktop experience. I feel like the only devices they actually wanted Windows 8 to run on is tablets, and touch-screen netbooks.

Granted, they may not have released everything yet, but the article is right, they don't mesh well (yet?).

The desktop experience is Windows 7 sans the start Button, and then the home screen is the Start Button, sans the All Programs(well they have it it's just different and in my opinion not as easy to navigate with a mouse and keyboard).

I do like the new Task Manager though, it offers all the fields I wish XP and Windows 7 had.

I think it is a fine idea

[Sycraft-fu]

Problem is they fucked up the setup on the desktop. On an embedded device, Metro is everything. Makes sense, it is the embedded GUI, and they can't run PC apps. So you fire up the device, Metro is what you get.

However on a PC, the desktop should be what you get, Metro should be something you open in it. That way you can run Metro apps if you want, which is cool, but on the terms of a desktop. You can let them run full screen, or not, put them in a window. It'll seem "full screen" to them, they'll just be told that window is their screen.

The reason is the multi-window paradigm is what works for desktop computing. It is an efficient way to work with multiple programs, which is what almost everyone does. Even non tech types. It is efficient to be able to open up multiple things, arrange them as you like, switch between them easily, and so on.

The smart phone idea is not an efficient way to work, it is just a necessary one given the limitations of the platform. Trying to force it on the desktop is rather stupid.

I can see the benefits of sharing a codebase, but the fundamental interface is going to need to remain different.

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[shutdown -p now]

However on a PC, the desktop should be what you get, Metro should be something you open in it. That way you can run Metro apps if you want, which is cool, but on the terms of a desktop. You can let them run full screen, or not, put them in a window. It'll seem "full screen" to them, they'll just be told that window is their screen.

While it can't do it out of the box, it seems that it can be hacked into working that way. Have you seen Stardock's Start8? There was a story about it the other day. What it does is bring back the Start button, but it doesn't pop up the traditional Win7-style Start menu. Instead, it shows the new Metro home screen - except it does that inside a popup window that's about as big as the old Start menu was.

The next logical step for them would be to do just what you say - let people run Metro apps in movable, resizable windows on the desktop. I hope it works.

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[ZorinLynx]

Yep, Metro apps being full screen is a deal breaker for anyone with large screens. I'm really not sure what they were thinking.

Back when computing started, all apps were full screen apps. The *instant* technology allowed it, we moved towards a windowed paradigm, because it's nice to be able to do and look at multiple things at once. Since then, displays have gotten larger with higher pixel density, making the windowed paradigm more and more useful.

And now we're going backwards to mandatory full screen apps? Why should I have to use my entire 24" or bigger display(s) to do ONE thing? The only time I ever full screen apps on my large monitors is to watch videos, and I'd rather do that on my TV anyway.

Full screen apps only make sense on small screens. They should never, EVER only be able to run in full screen. At least Apple seems to understand this; OS X's full screen support is entirely optional on every app that implements it.

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[aaron552]

In Windows 8, all metro-style apps are supposed to be able to run in "sidebar" mode, too. Sure it's not a "window", but I actually like the tiling effect, so perhaps I'm just weird.

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[PCM2]

Well, to be fair, most of the time I use my applications maximized. (I'm talking real-work applications, now, with menus, palettes, etc.) That's one of the things I always liked better about Windows than Mac OS X (though I understand Mac OS X can do something like Windows' maximize now). When I'm using something like a word processor or a Web browser, I'm really only doing one thing at a time. Why do I want a bunch of other windows hanging around, cluttering up my view?

On the other hand, if I'm cleaning up files in a directory while I run something in a terminal window, I'll use the desktop with a bunch of windows open on it. I guess I like having both options. With desktop computers being as powerful as they are, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do both.

The problem with Metro apps being full screen is not really that they take up the whole screen, it's that 90 percent of that real estate is wasted.

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[hvdh]

The reason is the multi-window paradigm is what works for desktop computing. [..] It is efficient to be able to open up multiple things, arrange them as you like, switch between them easily, and so on.

Just like Excel and Powerpoint windows..... hopefully, someday in the future

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[fa2k]

Why should I have to use my entire 24" or bigger display(s) to do ONE thing?

Sorry to be pedantic (I completely agree with your post), but you can do "one thing" with many windows. If you're reading a paper and have another reference document open, you're still just reading a paper. You just don't have to alt-tab to the reference every minute. Same when coding; if you have the .h and .cpp file open at the same time, that's still just coding a class. When developing a website, you may need a file manager, a html editor and a browser just to do that one thing. The multi-window paradigm is most useful when doing one thing (a close second is when you're running programs that take O(minutes), then it's useful to do something else while waiting for them to finish)

Re:I think it is a fine idea

[shutdown -p now]

Sidebar is pretty small, though - about 1/6 of the width - and the problem is that you can't resize it. It would be nice if you could place two Metro apps (or Metro and desktop) side by side in a 50%/50% arrangement. It would be even better if it let you show up as many apps as you want and resize them freely - at that point it would effectively be a tiling WM. But it's much more limited than that in practice.

Granted, it's still more than you get on iOS or Android, where there's no ability to show apps side-by-side at all. It's still annoying when you think of all the things it could be...

corporate users?

[demonbug]

The more I see about Win 8, the more I'm convinced that Microsoft has no plans of marketing it to corporate users (outside of tablets). I guess they've decided that Win 7 is good enough for people to do actual work on, and don't plan on discontinuing it. At least, I hope that's the plan. They've had enough trouble getting people to move off of XP, this is going to be a thousand times worse. I'd be totally fine with that decision, assuming they patch Win 7 with some of the back-end improvements (which by most accounts are generally pretty minor). Even the strongest proponents I've read for Win 8 say that once you get used to it (and learn the new shortcuts) the new UI isn't any worse than the existing one on the desktop. Not exactly a strong recommendation to go out and upgrade.

Re:corporate users?

[geekoid]

It's an advantage to corporate customers. On platform on ALL devices and computers.

Re:corporate users?

[knorthern knight]

> It's an advantage to corporate customers. On platform on
> ALL devices and computers.

Sorry, one size does NOT fit all. Do you want to put a joystick+manual_throttle+rudder_pedals on your car, or do you want to put a steering wheel+automatic_transmission+brake+gas_pedals on an airplane?

Nobody denies that a desktop UI sucks on a touchscreen device with no keyboard and no mouse. What we need to convince people of is that fact that a smartphone UI sucks on a desktop.

Apps

[cosm]

I hate to say this--but this concept of 'Apps' that everybody is latching on to--it is a huge pile of steaming buzzword. Yes their are applications, but the concept that all of computing can be neatly tucked and packed into an easily marketable single purpose flashy shiny big round button GUI software as a service plug in API model full of synergism and one-click-wonder wow--perhaps, but not for the power users, not for enterprise. There may be a day, but it isn't this decade IMO. I understand how consumers want this and blah blah rah grandma simplicity blah new age computing blah ease of use apple blah, but I'm here to comment about Apps and how I hear that word used in the wrong places (IMO).

Where's my 'app' for DBA activity? Where's my simple one click 'app' that monitors hundreds of servers, routers, switches? Where's my 'app' that automates my build processes? Where's my app that gives my complex analysis of all my interconnected nodes? You wont find them--not soon and not on 'markets'. Because these are complex intertwined multi-APPLICATION, to use the full word, work-flows that require desktops or complex usage of scripting and consoles. Sorry but for power use, it's just the way it is, in this decade and probably a few to come. These things can be done well and simply, but not without serious power-tools and planning.

Let's me honest, computing has been around for decades now, and even though on the consumer level 'apps' reign supreme it seems, there will always always always be power users who will need more complex environments for the vast array of software suites, tools, languages, and utilities needed to maintain and administer complex networks for build processes or whatever. Perhaps there will be a day when it is all unified. But that would require vast cooperation across industries, standards bodies, companies, open-sources houses, etc. Until some defacto design standard from layer 1 to 7 and from user space to kernals to whatever is implemented across the industry, nothing will ever be 'simple apps' while separate unique tools and such exist--thus guaranteeing the lifetime of the terminal and the desktop. It seems we are now defining apps as "guis that are flashy, sleek, use large rounded buttons, and have limited functionality', well, there's many of those out there. End rant. (the word app just sets me off)

Re:Apps

[medcalf]

But you said it yourself, in a way. Apps are great for day to day stuff - even most day to day business stuff. But they're not the solution for enterprise-level IT work, that's certain. I can't use an app to set up, monitor (past a certain point) and control (past a certain point) the directory servers I'm working on, but I can use apps for email and calendaring and information sharing and quick picture/document creation and most of the things ancillary to that main job. And when your job is only the ancillary stuff - say for marketers or secretaries or managers or product designers or shippers or whatever - well, in that case it may be that all you need boils down into the app format. Apps aren't replacing enterprise IT any time soon, but they may well drive enterprise IT back into the glass house model.

Re:Apps

[PCM2]

This is one thing that really bugs me about Microsoft's current marketing push. I don't mind talking about "apps" on smartphones or tablets. A lot of those things feel like "apps," as in literally abbreviated forms of applications. But Microsoft has started using the word "apps" to refer to traditional desktop software, too. As in, "You can still run all of your current apps, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP." It's like Microsoft is consciously trying to overload the term so that it doesn't sound like something inferior -- because if apps were inferior to applications, then why would anyone want Metro?

Re:Apps

[cosm]

To that I agree. What is really happening is a rethinking of interfaces and what is really wanted and needed by the unwashed masses for their computing needs. Simple and streamlined and single task driven. Which I can agree that user roles exist that fit this model. But as PCM2 says below, it is the push by some in the industry to shove this 'App' model down the throats of everything, fitting their square peg into the round hole of already good solutions, that gets frustrating. The way I look at it is simply this--the people who write these so called new-fangled 'apps', well, they are writing them in all likelihood in complex desktop environments, not on tablets, not on smartphones, apps are being written on full-blown desktop operating systems. Perhaps 100 years from now people will be using natural language and speech recognition to convey concepts to some natural human symbolic interpreter that writes everything and pushes it to some compiler, but in the meantime massive IDEs and libraries and filesystems and all that will be needed through some sort of multi-application multi-tasking desktop that cannot be simply boiled down into a single self-contained app.

Re:Apps

[westyvw]

Yep, I agree, and its one reason why I like the desktop paradigm KDE gives me, and why I see all of Microsoft's efforts as complete failure. With KDE I can create Activities, which are just one click buttons, that set up an entire desktop with the tools I need to do that task. In essence I have an "app" to click and launch a pre configured environment (pre configured by me I might add) for all the separate pieces I need for the DBA activity, the server monitoring activity etc.

Add to that the fact that windows desktop is fairly poor at providing a cohesive environment anyways (can I drag and drop something on the desktop or folder - well sometimes. Can I look at the clipboard? Can I make it interactive or Smart in anyway? Can I join two workflows together into a tabbed window? Can i set an application onto another desktop while I am doing something else?). Sure there are third party tools, but that is also part of the problem. Vendor applications, and hacks and tweaks to the desktop shell dont often play nice with each other. Just like my windows Expose I use, it sometimes causes the whole system to halt while it devotes resources, something I dont see in the Mac or in Linux.

The day of at least managing workflows, and having some semblance of a cohesive environment is out there in KDE (or in other DE's using scripts, tiles, what have you) but it has NEVER been in a windows environment, and it looks like it is just getting worse.

Re:Apps

[Tom]

I hate to say this--but this concept of 'Apps' that everybody is latching on to--it is a huge pile of steaming buzzword.

Depends which world you come from.

When I migrated from Linux (with windows at work) to OS X (with windows at work), I was pleasantly surprised at their Application concept - everything neatly packed into exactly one directory, uninstalling an application means deleting it, done.
Compared to both windows and Linux, where apps shit all over the place whenever you install them (though on Linux you have working package management that makes uninstall painless), that is 90% of the "App" concept right there.

It doesn't mean various Apps can't talk to each other and interact. Even on iOS you have tools like TextExpander.

Basically, an "App" is just the marketing term for what we've been calling a "package" in the Linux world for 10+ years.

Re:Apps

[Blaskowicz]

how funny, in my language the "app" word doesn't seem to exist, we say "application iphone" rather than "iphone app".

Re:Apps

[PCM2]

When you say something like that, you should mention which language you mean. I'm thinking French?

metro

[MickyTheIdiot]

I liked it when it was a Macintosh app called "At Ease."

Re:metro

[Jeremy Erwin]

I remember At Ease. The first thing I did when I encountered At Ease was to boot up MS Word, use that to delete some At-Ease related configuration file, and rebooted to find myself staring at the Finder.

God, I hated that thing.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[aaaaaaargh!]

It would help if the new UIs were based on actual studies in user interface ergonomy because I could swear this is no longer the case. Apple, Microsoft, Google, rather seem to "invent" GUIs and interface elements based on patent portfolios and wishful corporate thinking... heck, even Ubuntu is going into that direction.

Another option - fail and fall back

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

My gut feeling is that Win 8 is going to be a spectacular failure like Vista. People who buy PCs with Win 8 loaded are going to throw a fit and demand a downgrade to Win 7. Microsoft will survive because no matter how much they screw up, the competition can't really take their place. So it's not necessarily a bad gamble for Microsoft. It might work. I doubt it, but I could be wrong. If I'm right then after it fails and they get burned by the "not gonna buy it" and "I demand a downgrade from this crap" crowd, they'll quickly re-design WIn 9 to look like Win 7 with some added features and put that out.

Re:Another option - fail and fall back

[Tom]

Microsoft will survive because no matter how much they screw up, the competition can't really take their place.

It already is. The competition (for a large group of users) is called iPad and Android tablets.

A lot of users who own or know these will face the epic fail that Win8 is going to be in a different way than before. When confronted with Vista, or WinME, etc. they basically had to suck it up and they rarely even knew that alternatives existed.
Now they look at the Metro screen, and then look to their iPad, and many of them will be able to say "fuck this, I'm returning this new PC and do my stuff with my tablet".

Re:Another option - fail and fall back

[arkhan_jg]

Personally, I've started the switch to OSX as my primary - given my boss is an Apple nut, it wasn't too hard to talk him into buying us imacs in the end. I run a windows 7 vm for system admin tools (vmware/AD) and RDP. I've a hackintosh at home, and though it took a bit of getting used to, the learning curve is way less than that of windows 8 - with a magic trackpad, it works really nicely. With some add-ons; iterm2, totalfinder, gitbox, sublime text etc, I've grown to quite like it. Finder in Lion is a mess, but I've more or less got the hang of that now.

I wouldn't be at all surprised that windows 8 prompts a bunch of people to stick with windows 7, or try out the alternatives (osx/linux). It's really that bad for classic desktops/laptops, and without substantial surgery prior to release, it's going to make vista look like a storming success story.

I also suspect it's going to directly accelerate the growth of post-pc devices; between iOS and ICS, microsoft doesn't stand a chance in that space, especially if they think this half-baked fiddly UI is a real contender. In an attempt to remake windows to take on iOS - and failing badly - I think they're going to hammer their marketshare in both.

Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

[WillAffleckUW]

Face it, nobody likes it.

Any time you find yourself explaining Why People Should Like Your Stuff if they Only Used It Right, it means you have failed Marketing 101 and need to turn in your diploma, because you obviously weren't paying attention in class.

(my first degree was in Marketing, fwiw)

Re:Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Any time you find yourself explaining Why People Should Like Your Stuff if they Only Used It Right, it means you have failed Marketing 101 and need to turn in your diploma, because you obviously weren't paying attention in class.

(my first degree was in Marketing, fwiw)

Given that WPSLYSitOUIR is something that marketing people seem to do all the time, at least in the tech industry, I'm forced to conclude that either Marketing 101 is generally teaching the wrong things, or the vast majority of people with marketing degrees failed Marketing 101 and got their degrees anyway, implying that marketing programs have very low standards. Perhaps you can shed some light on this? ;)

Re:Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

[WillAffleckUW]

Or, as is more likely, most of the tech people doing Marketing were rebadges from the tech side (and thus know the tech part but not how to sell) or were never tech (and thus have no idea what it is they're selling).

Which is usually the case.

One of the downsides of promotion in Tech (IT) is you go from 100 percent tech to 0-5 percent Tech overnight, in terms of job function. I could sell you a coffee cup even if you don't need it, but that doesn't make it an optimal marketing pathway.

Re:Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

[crossmr]

I don't quite get the gist of what you're saying.

Re:Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

[WillAffleckUW]

I'd estimate we have about 100 Linux machines in our lab.

They work fine.

Do they "make money"? Nope. They just work.

Endusers

[nurb432]

End users should be designing the interfaces, as what is 'apparent' to a developer isn't to the rest of the world. They 'think' computers, but the average Joe on the street just wants a working appliance

Re:Endusers

[billcopc]

Designers don't think computers. They think bunnies and lolcats and premium blended marijuana.

Programmers think computers. You want a button ? Okay, [button] here's a button. It's too square looking ? Okay, (button) here's a rounded button. Too plain ? Okay, {.,-'button'-,.} here's a fancy button. Too ugly ? Okay, *deletes button* talk to me when you actually want to click the damn button.

End users can't design for shit. They will have an opinion if you put something in front of them, but to ask them to come up with an interface from scratch will not yield any results. They don't know what they want to do until you tell them what they CAN do.

Re:Endusers

[nurb432]

And that attitude is why we often have crap for interfaces.

Don't discount the end user, your customer, as they are lot smarter than you about their job and do know what they need. You don't. You don't have a f-ing clue what the customer needs to get their job done. And that you think you do just proves it.

the *best* interfaces i have ever seen were when they pulled end users out of their jobs for a few weeks and made them sit with the developers, and made the coders actually listen and work with the users, instead of against them.

Re:Endusers

[billcopc]

That's the piece I neglected to write in my original post: the developer MUST understand the user. It's not like I sit here on my tech throne, telling people how they should do their jobs. I mean, I do, but only after I've had a chance to see how the users are currently accomplishing their tasks, and figured out how I can make those tasks easier to complete.

I get a lot of people asking me for a web site, or a mobile app, without having the slightest clue what their goals are. They just want it, because someone asked them why they didn't have one already. My job is to offer technical expertise and a completely out-of-the-box take on the problem, because I don't spend 40 hours a week in the user's world, doing their job the way they've always done it. It's up to me to ignore the "old ways" and come up with a new, streamlined path from start to finish. Users simply cannot do this on their own, because they are set in their ways, much like I'm set in my uber-technical ways and you couldn't ask me to change my programming habits, not without showing me a better way because I cannot find it myself.

The biggest trainwrecks I've ever witnessed were projects where the client was dictating too many technical details, effectively positioning themselves as the "analyst", reducing their developer to a mindless coder. So, unskilled analyst + frustrated coder = shitty product. You're pounding out miles of code, getting paid your full rate for it, and you know it's the wrong approach, but any attempt to steer the client is met with extreme resistance, so you eventually concede defeat, fulfill your end of the contract and accept your client's wasted money. What clients want is rarely in-line with what they actually need.

Create your first Metro style app using C++

[hey]

An article that everyone (including plenty Slashdotters) see when they open Microsoft Visual Studio today:

Create your first Metro style app using C++
[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]

A WindowsMetro style app is tailored for the user experience that's introduced in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Every great Metro style app follows certain design principles that make it look more beautiful, feel more responsive, and behave more intuitively than a traditional desktop app. Before you start creating a Metro style app, we recommend that you read about the design philosophy of the new model. You can find more info at Designing Metro style apps.

Here, we introduce essential code and concepts to help you use C++ to develop a Metro style app that has a UI that's defined in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML).

If you'd rather use another programming language, see:

Create your first Metro style app using JavaScript

Create your first Metro style app using C# or Visual Basic

Objectives
Before we start coding, let's look at some of the features and design principles that you can use to build a Metro style app with C++. It will also be helpful to look at how Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8 supports the design and development work. And it's important to understand how and when to use the Visual C++ component extensions (C++/CX) to simplify the work of coding against the Windows Runtime. Our example app is a blog reader that downloads and displays data from an RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0 feed.

This article is designed so that you can follow the steps to create the app yourself. By the time you complete this tutorial, you'll be prepared to build your own Metro style app by using XAML and C++.

Comparing C++ desktop apps to Metro style apps
If you're coming from a background in Windows desktop programming with C++, you'll probably find some aspects of Metro style app programming to be very familiar, and other aspects that require some learning.

What's the same?
You're still coding in C++, and you can access the STL, the CRT, and any other C++ libraries, except that you can't invoke certain functions directly, such as those related to file I/O.

If you're used to visual designers, you can still use them. If you're used to coding UI by hand, you can hand-code your XAML.

You're still creating apps that use Windows operating system types and your own custom types.

You're still using the Visual Studio debugger, profiler, and other development tools.

You're still creating apps that are compiled to native machine code by the Visual C++ compiler. Metro style apps in C++ don't execute in a managed runtime environment.

What's new?
The design principles for Metro style apps are very different from those for desktop apps. Window borders, labels, dialog boxes, and so on, are de-emphasized. Content is foremost. Great Metro style apps incorporate these principles from the very beginning of the planning stage. For more info, see Planning Your App.

You're using XAML to define the entire UI. The separation between UI and core program logic is much clearer in a Metro style app than in an MFC or Win32 app. Other people can work on the appearance of the UI in the XAML file while you're working on the behavior in the code file.

You're primarily programming against a new, easy-to-navigate, object-oriented API, the Windows Runtime, although Win32 is still available for some functionality.

When you use Windows Runtime objects, you're (typically) using C++/CX, which provides special syntax to create and access Windows Runtime objects in a way that enables C++ exception handling, delegates, events, and automatic reference counting of dynamically created objects. When you use C++/CX, the details of the underlying COM and Windows architecture are almost completely hidden from your app code. But if you prefer, you can program directly against the COM interfaces by using the Windows Runtime C++ Temp

Re:Create your first Metro style app using C++

[Suddenly_Dead]

Does anyone read those articles? That thing is usually only up for a moment before I've opened the project I actually care about.

Re:Create your first Metro style app using C++

[flimflammer]

So why exactly did the past that in here?

big touch screens

[roc97007]

Parenthetically, why don't you ever see in Star Trek someone cleaning the fingerprints and accumulated grunge off all those touch screen displays? There must be a janitorial service just to do that.

Oh, because it's fiction, that's why.

Now that I think of it, that might make the basis of a story. A janitor forgets to lock out the navigation console, juices up his rag, and sends the ship Where No One Wants To Go.

Re:big touch screens

[Xenolith]

It is the future, do you think they may have developed self-cleaning/self-sterilizing displays?

Re:big touch screens

[roc97007]

....it helps to just go with the joke...

But ok mister serious-pants, we have self-cleaning items now -- digital camera sensors, for instance -- but even assuming that, the debris must go somewhere. Self-cleaning is usually accompanied by making the materials non-sticky to the materials with which they're likely to come in contact, and inducing a periodic vibration to shake off the particles that do adhere. I bet it doesn't work with peanut butter.

Seems to me this is an unexplored source of plot points. "Arming photon... ah crap, who's been eating at the weapons console?"

"Mister Chekhov, could you please tell us why we exited Spacedock at Warp 5?"

"Um, captain, I sneezed on the console, and um, tried to wipe it off. Sir."

Re:big touch screens

[PCM2]

Parenthetically, why don't you ever see in Star Trek someone cleaning the fingerprints and accumulated grunge off all those touch screen displays? There must be a janitorial service just to do that.

Seriously. Nobody ever uses my Android tablet but me, yet whenever I look at it with the backlight off, my first thought is, "petri dish."

Re:big touch screens

[xswl0931]

It's easier to clean a screen than a keyboard or mouse

Re:big touch screens

[roc97007]

Dunno about you, but I don't ever clean my keyboard or mouse. Other than turning the keyboard upside down occasionally and bumping it to get the crumbs out.

Besides, in this day of commodity computer parts, new keyboards are about $15, new mice are about $9, and new touchscreens... still pretty pricey.

Re:big touch screens

[roc97007]

Someone left their sense of humor in their other pants.

Re:big touch screens

[PCM2]

Yet my keyboard never seems to be covered with slime. Which makes some sense; I don't smear my fingers across my keyboard, I just tap. Maybe studies have shown there is a lot of bacteria on keyboards. I'll buy that. They just don't seem as gross.

Also, have you noticed how many office workers eat at their desks? Imagine using a touch UI while you eat a sandwich.

Re:big touch screens

[steelfood]

sends the ship Where No One Wants To Go.

Uranus?

Children's Toys

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Why are all my computer interfaces being transformed into children's toys?

Why are my menu bars, tables, and text boxes being replaced by coloured icons dancing around the screen. Am I expected to just intuitively "feel" where all the programs and options are now?

This isn't just an OS problem. It happening across the program spectrum and I blame the influence of smartphones and similar touch oriented devices.Speaking as someone who has never owed a smart phone I have always found them restrictive and confusing. Using one is like navigating a theme park without a map. Eventually you'll want to just find a place to sit down but you'll only get more lost among the theme rides and hot dog stands.

If this nonsense gets rolled out onto computers that people are supposed to be working on, it will either precipitate a recession or an injunction by employers groups. Either way, I'm sticking to menubars.

Re:Children's Toys

[painandgreed]

Why are all my computer interfaces being transformed into children's toys?

Because to the vast number of users out there, the person at home, the secretary in an office, that's all computers are and need to be. I do desktop support and there are still plenty of users out there, young and old, who come in, click on the two or three icons they use to do work (usually all IE links these days but they don't understand what that means), and have no idea about the rest of the computer and don't want to have any idea about it. Literally, the Start menu is too much for them. Every day more and more people like that are getting computers and outnumbering more technical users even more.

All we're asking for...

[omganton]

All I want is an option in the Control Panel that says "Completely disable Metro UI. I understand this will prevent me from installing, launching or utilizing Metro Apps. This will enable the classic Start Menu and will make the Classic Desktop your only operating environment." Problem solved. Just fucking humor us.

Re:All we're asking for...

[ChunderDownunder]

There used to be a registry key for the 'Shell'. Standard that's historically been set to explorer.exe. Is it the same on Windows 8, or is there some metroui.exe or similar in its place?

Re:All we're asking for...

[jez9999]

That option exists, they just decided to call it "Windows 7".

Re:All we're asking for...

[just_a_monkey]

No.

It's the same as with the ribbOn. If we allow people to continue using their old ways, they will never Bother with our nEw things. Therefore, theY must not be given the choice.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[geekoid]

" I have with Metro is that it's so hard to organize things."

what? You will be able to organize things.

Like A lot of MS item in the last 5 years, there pretty good..but MS doesn't utilize them well. Like pinning everything to the start

it's not just resisting change

[hedrick]

OK, I resist change just like everyone else. But that's not what is going on here.

Monitors are getting bigger. I'm doing more things at once. I want better ways of managing that. But Metro just gives me one thing at a time. Sorry, that's not a solution to the problem. That's going back to the original Macintosh.

Apple isn't perfect, but at least they've been trying some new ideas. I don't think the new ideas on screen management have been all that successful, but at least they're attacking the right problem.

At the moment, nobody has a better idea for a smart phone or a tablet than to show one app at a time. The only way W8 makes sense is if they're adding a piece for portable devices, and said "while we're at it, let's let desktop guys use it too." Fine. But only if they realize that the desktop systems still need new ideas as well. And if I were doing a ground-up redesign, I'd consider whether we might be ready for a better approach with tablets as well. The new iPad has more pixels than many monitors. I'm not sure one app at a time should be the only way to use it.

ill tell you want my problem is with it

[chaos4u]

The problem is
it is devoid of functionality and reeks of lets make everything stupid. ideology that has become the keystone of this decade.

yes these words are polarizing but the whole interface is polarizing. im not just talking windows here im talking all smart devices and its "thinking behind its poor design"

remove functionality .

remove options.

apply bare minimum usability.

when you come from robust desktop apps that give the users control of their programs , it is a slap in the face to use a so called smart app. and if you want to close the app ? forget it buddy the all knowing software engineer has removed the "confusing" close app functionality and gently suspends the application in the back ground . so if it glitches, it remains glitched until you reboot the device .

We have taken leaps backwards in the progress made in user interface in the last 20 years . instead of having things available to you with a few short clicks you are now bombarded with hundreds of lil shiny buttons across multiple virtual desktops that you have to examine to see what they are . (oh press the wrong one no problem well just suspend it into the background until you need it again !!)

Also the new interfaces are designed with the mindset that are to be only presented not used . so screw copy, screw paste, screw edit, and screw select all you dont need it !! just look at the pretty pictures and post your short expressions of glee on facebook.

so yeah dont expect those of us who actually use our computers be enamored with a another dumb user interface . just because it is touch touchy touchy does not mean it is gaining more functionality . in fact in most cases we are loosing a majority of progress that was made in application useability .

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[medcalf]

Wow, that's one more adjective than I've ever seen that apostrophe substituting for. But get on with your bad self, anonymous grammar cop. And everyone remember, punctuation is critical. "Let's eat, Grandma" is not the same as "Let's eat Grandma."

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[PCM2]

If there are no on screen visuals I'm lost.

This is very true. It's a problem with a lot of touch-centric UIs: There are no onscreen hints or anything to explain to you how to use the UI.

Anyone who has ever used a word processor can sit down with Microsoft Word and write a letter. There will probably be things you don't know how to do, so you'll end up searching the Ribbon to find them. But that's just it -- you can find them. There will be icons there and the icons will have labels that say things like "Insert Date/Time."

Metro, on the other hand, has a few clever icons, but they don't necessarily mean anything to someone who has never seen them before. Some of the other functions involve gestures or moving the cursor to just the right part of the screen to activate a feature. I found I had to stumble around awhile before I knew how some of the most basic navigational controls worked.

Note: I didn't say search around, as you'd have to do with the Ribbon. I said stumble around, meaning I had to try mouse movements and push icons without knowing what they were actually going to do. Inevitably that meant I'd end up activating controls I hadn't meant to. I might luck out and find the thing I want, or I might immediately think "Undo, Undo, Undo" ... but of course, Undo might have been the thing I was looking for in the first place. This is a lousy way to learn a UI. It's a step back from what we've grown accustomed to.

Yeah, right.

[kheldan]

..and absolutely great

At my job I'm already working with Win8 a little, and I don't think it's so damned great. It holds your hand like you're a silly child and hides even more from you than any version of Windows I've ever seen. I suppose if you're looking for the OS for the most dumbed-down generation ever then it's great, but for those of us who want something functional and powerful, I think it's a huge flop.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[Vanders]

The designers have taken over. We will never the see the likes of Douglas Engelbart again.

I remember the push back I had back in the early 00's when I had the temerity to suggest that icons in a toolbar should have a descriptive text placed below them, on the basis that it makes the icons discoverable. Most of the objections were because "it looked ugly".

Just looking at the Chrome instance I'm typing this in I see users are supposed to know that a grey spanner means "Settings". Ho hum.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[negRo_slim]

Just looking at the Chrome instance I'm typing this in I see users are supposed to know that a grey spanner means "Settings". Ho hum.

And maybe they should be expected to have a little common knowledge? I don't recall seeing very many text labels for the windshield wipers or headlights on a car lately.

Really trying.

[javascriptjunkie]

I'm really trying to work with this. Other than Metro, Windows 8 isn't bad. It's actually a marked improvement over Windows 7. The biggest change is the number of windows I can manage and keep open with 4 gigs of RAM. Memory seems to be cycling by itself with no third party software, registry hacks, or manual optimization. Silverlight is better on my 2gb Gforce card. Netflix is clean, and looking great. On Windows 7, the picture was muddier. So in terms of the things I care about (lots of open windows and netflix) Windows 8 is a boom.

What I'm not impressed with is the way Metro is locked down. I downloaded Visual Studio 11 beta so I could start writing Metro apps, and was immediately reminded that Microsoft will be approving any and all Metro apps, but they're letting me run my own stuff out of the kindness of their ever loving little hearts. That annoyed me, and it made me question my motivation for wanting to write Metro apps in the first place.

I mean, I can write an Android app today, compile it into an APK, and it'll run on any Android device within the scheme I compile for. Google doesn't and shouldn't care about the apps I write, and I like it that way. I don't really see the point of building something in the first place when someone who has nothing to do with anything can control my ability to publish it. If there's any chance of rejection at all, why should I bother to begin with?

I'm not learning new platforms because I like new platforms (well, I am, kina), I'm doing it because I want to have viable programs that I can do things with.
Screwing with my ability to publish my work is not a way to launch a new product.

I'm sorry. It's totally unacceptable.

Re:Really trying.

[just_a_monkey]

But, the children! What if someone built an app that was inappropriate for children? Would you want your children to be able to run that?

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[Vanders]

Except cars have standardised. If you get in any car, the gas is on the right and pushing the left stalk up indicates right.

Computers are nowhere near as standard as a car. Just how, in the world of Sundays, does a simplified representation of a dark grey spanner mean "Settings"?

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[Jeremi]

But are you retarded? You can't remember the name of something but you can recognize thousands of icons designed for 16x16 display?

You don't have to be retarded to be slowed down by a less-than-optimal interface. Every brain cycle you have to burn figuring out a sub-optimal GUI is one less brain cycle available for actually getting your work done.

Little things like this might seem trivial, and they are, but the cumulative effect can build up to the point where your productivity is significantly less than it could have been.

Re:Clue/New NEWS/NewsFlash

[nurb432]

No, they are not. Idiot. Go back and hide in your cubicle, you don't belong out in the real world interfacing with your customers.

Build in PDF reader, email should not be full scre

[Joe_Dragon]

Build in PDF reader, email should not be full screen metro apps.

Too much hate..

[loneDreamer]

Wow, this is like a full dinner of pure hate. I don't get it, really.
What is all the noise with the touchscreens? Don't want it? Don't buy one. I certainly wont. That simple. A mouse will work as it always does.

As I see it, Windows8 does bring an interface that is good for tablets, but from the desktop point of view, this is what I read:

- We'll make it easy to use things full screen (nice, I always do, I personally hate moving windows around, re-sizing them, etc.)
- If you need to see two things at the time, you can and we'll put a nice separator that will allow you to resize both at the same time.
- We'll make the menu use the whole screen, and you can customize it much more, even placing other things in it that you might want to look at from time to time.
- We don't think you need to have some artificial place behind everything, so we'll be done with this desktop analogy (fine by me, as a avoid at all costs having things there that end up being just a huge mess full of icons for most people, to a point that I don't use it at all). - But hey, if you really like it, we'll keep that desktop working for you.

The whole things seems to me to be moving away from moving windows and more into full-screen and/or docks, much as IDEs, Photoshop and many other programs have been doings with much improvement of user experience IMHO.

Now, the main thing is that there is no universal user interface that will be best for absolutely everybody. So they provide options but they don't stagnate trying to go forth with newer ideas. I think it's perfectly reasonable. Sure, they might not get if 100% right right away, but that's way better than total stagnation.

Re:Too much hate..

[loneDreamer]

Ah, almost forgot. What would be great now is to include a powerful an universal method for switching between applications/tabs. In current OS there is just too much incompatibility. Ctrl + -> to move to the next desktop, than alt + tab to change to the other program, then the mouse to select the browser tab or the file I'm editing. tabs were a quick fix that never really solved the problem...

Tired of this train.

[Trax3001BBS]

I said I'd never goto Win7, but using it now as the games I play use DX11.
I use the run command or CMD window more than non desktop Icons, so can't see sliding blocks around to get somewhere.

I'm an old Amgia user who purchased a 500, 2000, and 3000 to play games with (gasp!).
I also ran an 8 line chat board (Cnet software) while playing those games. That's the type of system I like.

I like the PC games over console games. The bottom line for me is I'll go where the games go
and hope I have the same versatility and abilities on the PC as I have now.

And those damns kids are ruining my lawn!

[bigsexyjoe]

I agree! These failed designers are ruining the UIs, just like these kids who think they are "athletes" are ruining my lawn by playing ball on it.

Around the time that Firefox 3 came out I had a perfectly manicured lawn that I invested good time and money into. But by the time FF 4, my whole lawn had been trampled and matted by these lousy kids.

The only appropriate thing to do is shake your fist at these people. No matter what they are doing, shake your fists at them and tell them to get off your lawn. Don't let them on your lawn or in your yard at all, especially when your lawn is impacted.

Searching...

[jones_supa]

What I don't get is the obsession for "search" in new desktops. Must I now use search to find my apps too?

I never use the file search tools either, as my files are nicely enough organized in directories. Well, maybe the unix "find" command is nice sometimes.

Re:Searching...

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't get is the obsession for "search" in new desktops.

I think I do. Every day I work with collections of information that are too large to be efficiently accessed through a traditional organizational method. I do consulting with one company that has 12 years of project documentation stored in hierarchical folders on a file server. It's all too frequent that I see those folks driving around almost aimlessly through the server file system trying to find the project in which solution X was used for problem Y, or in what project technology Z was considered and abandoned. There's plenty of more meaningful examples. Searching through 50K emails: when did I talk to Frank last year about that contact with Acme Motors? Searching through 10K pictures: which trip to the zoo did little Billy's hat get stolen by the monkey?

Of course desktop search as I've seen it implemented today has limited utility, and may be the wrong approach to solve the larger problem.

Must I now use search to find my apps too?

Actually, if done right this can be a tremendously useful feature for power users. I use Gnome DO on my desktop computer (synapse looks like a promising improvement). To launch any application, it's one hot-key combo and a few letters of the app name. This is far faster and more ergonomic that moving the hand to the mouse, digging through the menus to launch the app, then returning the hand to the keyboard and re-finding the home row.

Metro is an entertainment device

[Animats]

It's an entertainment device. Look at what's in the example tiles. They're all either entertainment, shopping, or ads. Those are all output-mostly applications. It's a boob tube for the desktop.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[MisterSquid]

"Let's eat, Grandma" is not the same as "Let's eat Grandma."

In the name of all that's good, please don't do that again.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[WaffleMonster]

Major change prompts resistance! News at 11!

New UIs always get resisted because no one actually *likes* changes to their personal process of doing things unless the benefits are immediately apparent. Give it a year and no one will even remember what Win7 looked like, and those that do will be telling epic tales about the slaying of the monsters that inhabited it's Start Menu.

As the same argument can just as easily be used to justify any change even changes that are clearly backwards and counterproductive I'm not sure this argument by itself actually conveys any useful information.

You speak of benefits but don't elaborate on what you mean. What do you see as the benefits of the new UI concept over windows 7?

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[whoever57]

You can't remember the name of something but you can recognize thousands of icons designed for 16x16 display?

Have you noticed that some banks present a picture for you to verify after giving your user name but before you enter your password? That is because our brains are wired to recognize visual patterns very well. Hence recognizing an icon while not being able to remember the name is very likely to happen.

not the UI

[Tom]

It's not the UI.

It's the way MS treats its users. The main difference between MS (who couldn't get rid of the "Start" menu for close to 15 years even though their final user testing prior to launching windows 95 revealed that it was a horrible, broken idea) and Apple (who can seemingly come up with a new paradigm for the iPhone/iPad and have it accepted) is in how they think.

MS thinks like developers. So when they have an idea they like, they force it on the users. And if the users don't accept it, they force it some more.

Apple thinks like designers. If they have an idea, they test it out and refine it until the users love it.

And that's why this would have worked if the one Steve had come up with the idea, but it'll be an epic fail in the hands of the other Steve.

Re:Windows where?

[narcc]

The one thing I was hoping that Windows could do for a tablet is make multi-tasking not suck!

Try WebOS or PlayBook OS if you want to see a great UI for multi-tasking on a tablet.

Re: Big Icons

[TaoPhoenix]

The only way Metro will work is if they made a "Customize your Metro" feature like they finally did for Office 2010's Ribbon. And I mean "Customize".

I have sixty five things on my desktop, many of them folders with sixty more things each in them. That's what a desktop is to me. So if Metro has the Office 2010's thematic "select from ALL items on your ENTIRE computer to put on your desktop", then okay. But as long as it's a dumb 10 items that MS picks, 8 of which I don't use, then it's Fail.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[roothog]

Anyone who has ever used a word processor can sit down with Microsoft Word and write a letter. There will probably be things you don't know how to do, so you'll end up searching the Ribbon to find them. But that's just it -- you can find them.

Find undo.

Re:still haven't moved off XP

[TaoPhoenix]

I still haven't moved off XP either.

I have lots of hobby apps that I'm not sure are being developed anymore, so even if Win7 scrapesby and loads them, I'm suspicious of Win8 Metro.

But you know what the bigger problem is? Something half-baked about Metro feels like all the other half-baked MS pushes:
PlaysForSure -> Zune -> nothing,
____ -> Windows Live -> Nothing,
Windows Mobile -> Windows Phone 7 -> Something.

I saved my time and mental energy skipping all of those, because they would have left me as a user (not a consumer!) in the lurch with an abused loyalty.

So a long time ago (about 2006) I had a friend build me a rock solid XP machine hopefully sturdy enough to last another five years until all this hoopla shakes out. It's 50 50 if Metro becomes the next Vista. Or at least if they get the concept right in Windows 9/Something, then that's FOUR generations of info to see where the landscape is going, and then make an intelligent migration decision. But not now. It's "too hot", and it feels so wrong.

Re:Didn't we just go over this?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Try driving a Nissan pickup in Japan, Thailand, or Malaysia - push up on the left stalk and the wipers will go. Pedals are in the same order, but stalks off the steering column are reversed, for the right-hand driving position of the vehicles.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Open Word 2010. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Icon number 3. First is the Word icon. Second is File Save. Third? That is Undo. So AMAZINGLY difficult to find - literally the SECOND action shown in the window!

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[flimflammer]

Really is it that hard for you to find? It's literally right next to the save icon.

Yep I saw it

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm a massive Stardock fanboy, been a supporter or theirs for a long time. I've no worries that if MS fucks up and drops the ball someone, Stardock certainly and probably others, will pick it up.

However I'd rather they didn't. I don't want to be having to tell users to get 3rd party software to make their OS not suck. I don't want to have to customize an enterprise environment to be non-standard.

The thing is if MS makes it suck realistically what'll happen is people will just stick with Windows 7. Windows 8's largest competitor will be 7. 7 is a really good OS. It is solid, easy to use, and so on. People aren't sitting here going "Man I need a new OS, this one is crap," they are happy with what they have.

So Windows 8 needs to be better to woo people over. Now I think some of the ideas they had were better. As I said, the ability to run Metro apps is a great one. See an app on a phone you'd like on the desktop? No problem, just grab that shit from the store and it works. Brilliant. However if they fuck the interface up badly so people have to fight to use it, they'll give it a miss and stick with 7.

That makes me angry because supporting old versions of software sucks. Now while Windows 7 is still new, it'll create a 7 rut. People will decide 7 is the One True OS(tm) and refuse to upgrade. So 10 years later I'll be forcing people off of it because it is going out of support and Windows 9 or 10 or whatever WILL be a good OS but they won't want to change because they are convinced 7 was the last good OS EVAR.

Or multiple displays

[Sycraft-fu]

That is the shit shit these days. I think I have to be the only person who isn't totally enamored with the idea and I still like it at work. I have only 1 big display at home, but 2 at work and 2 is the norm. EVERYONE at work has 2 (or sometimes more) displays. Our students, the secretaries, the accountants, everyone. It isn't a high end user thing, it is a normal thing. Getting normal at home too. Most of my friends run two displays, my mom runs two displays, etc.

Well what do you do with fullscreen apps and two monitors? I've yet to see their answer.

They just seem to be over focused on tablets and phones. Yes, I agree, it is a massive market and it is one to be in. However that doesn't mean fucking over the desktop/laptop market and trying to force it to be something it isn't. Smart devices are not going to kill the desktop/laptop market, just as they didn't kill the mainframe market (there are more mainframes in use now than when they were the only computers you could get). They'll eclipse them (if they haven't already) but not kill them.

It only takes a little bit of playing with a tablet or phone and trying to do real work, like actually type something out, to gain a real appreciation for a big screen and dedicated keyboard. Tablets are fine toys and there's nothing wrong with that but we aren't going to replace our desktops with them. That means we are going to need a good desktop OS to run them.

Also with regards to touch monitors

[Sycraft-fu]

Here's a simple test for you: Take a pen or pencil in your hand, hold it out at arms length. See how long you can hold it before your arm gets real tired. My bet is less than a minute. It is nor natural or comfortable to hold your arms up in front of you (said test was something I'd have musicians do to see that being a conductor took practice too). I don't wanna hold my arms up to use a touchscreen. I want them on the keyboard.

Flip side of that is I don't want the monitor on the table. I don't want to have to hunch over to see what I'm done and have my hands in the way. I want to sit in a chair, head up, hands down, in a position that is comfortable and give me a good view of my work.

People seem to forget that touchscreens on phones and tablets are NOT because it is a better method of input. We've had touchscreens for decades. It is because there is little space. You need the screen to double as the input device so the input device isn't taking up more room. Fair enough, but when you DO have space, it is undesirable. If you have your mitts on the screen, you are blocking part of the screen.

That's why on smart phones we are always having to have the keyboard appear and disappear. When it is onscreen, there's little room to work to see the app. When it isn't you can't type. So you have to have it come in and out.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[El_Oscuro]

Find "print". The first time I used Office 2007. I asked the sysadmin where it was and he didn't know either. He suggested using the old CTRL-P DOS shortcut. Undo is CTRL-Z. To this day I still use it and the other DOS shortcuts. The work on almost every program on any O/S and I don't have to keep learning new GUI's every day.

Has nothing to do with corporate hostile takeover

[Sycraft-fu]

It is because work implies creation. May not be something that's fun to create, you may be creating TPS report, but it implies making something. That is what tablets, or more generally touch screens, suck at: creation. Yes, yes, I know you can totally find this one article about this one use for them but in general they suck. So a tablet is good if you want to passively browse the web. However if you want to post to a site, a regular computer is better. A tablet is good if you want to just read e-mails, but the moment you want to reply, a regular computer is better. A tablet is a fine way to read a book, but if you want to write a book, you want a regular computer. A tablet if fine to watch a movie (though a TV is much better) but if you want to edit one, a computer is better.

The other side of that is of course that a computer is fine for all those things too. My computer works real well for passively surfing the web AND for writing things. So I might as well use it for both.

So it isn't just about people trying to work 24 hours a day. I sure as hell don't, I'm very much a "leave work at work" kind of guy. However I don't stop creating when I'm off work. I don't want to just be a passive lump the whole weekend. I don't want to say "Sorry I didn't respond to your e-mail Saturday, but my tablet isn't good for it so I waited until I was at work."

I'm not alone in this either. Job related work aside, people like to do other work and tablets tend to suck for it. Some people try to force it, for awhile at least, to convince themselves their expensive toy was necessary, but they end up using a regular computer in the end.

No kidding

[Sycraft-fu]

And I'd contrast it to other changes, that most people did like, which didn't require that. One would be the new task bar in Windows 7. When I saw it, I was angered. Stacking all the windows of a program in to one icon, no names, pinned icons? Grrrr.

Well I didn't have someone have to go off on a big rant as to why I should like it, I was just told "try it". So I did. And I did like it. Justification wasn't needed, so people didn't justify. They just said "Give it a shot, you'll probably like it."

When something is better that is how it goes. You don't have to try and come up with justifications, you just tell people "Give a a shot." Now of course you won't win 100% converts. Some people get set in their ways, or just have very different preferences. Fine, but the majority of people will be won over.

When you have to start justifying, you've lost.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[roothog]

Oh, gotcha. The application's toolbar is in the title bar now. I've never scanned those, as I've always just assumed that titlebar buttons control the window layout. For as many times as I've clicked the Office roundel in 2007, I'd never even noticed the save button to the right. My brain just ignores titlebar buttons when thinking about the application inside the window.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[roothog]

Oh, gotcha. The application's toolbar is in the title bar now. I've never even noticed that toolbar, as I've always just assumed that titlebar buttons control the window layout. For as many times as I've clicked the Office roundel in 2007, I'd never even noticed the save button to the right. My brain just ignores titlebar buttons when thinking about the application inside the window.

Re:Has nothing to do with corporate hostile takeov

[PopeRatzo]

It is because work implies creation.

No, work implies what you have to do to live. Most people do not "create" on their jobs, the just move piles of rocks from here to there because someone else can make a nickel off having those rocks there instead of here.

People are working harder, longer hours, less recompense. This is because of what I call the "corporate hostile takeover of our lives".

Even hunter/gatherers worked only a few hours, maybe not even every day. Somehow, the incredible increase in productivity and efficiency has turned out to mean more working hours instead of less. Now, our ruling class has decided that old people have it just too damn good and need to work five years longer. No more of this retiring at 65, you need to work to 70. Gee, isn't the technological revolution grand?

Job related work aside, people like to do other work and tablets tend to suck for it.

OK, so we agree. Next case!

And the funny thing is they should know it

[Sycraft-fu]

The WHOLE REASON they made the ribbon UI was to make it easier for novices to find things. It is also the reason why the people you heard angered about it the most were the pros, and why many of them are no longer angered. The people who knew what they were doing were fine with things as it stood. They'd learned it and it didn't matter if the design was good or bad, they knew it so no problem.

The idea with the ribbon was to make it easier for newbies to find things. MS did a lot of research on this (real research). Now it seems like they are going the opposite way. The "It'll be easy once you learn how to do it!" idea which is stupid, pretty much anything is easy once you learn how to do it, learning is the hard part.

For example driving a manual clutched car is simple to me. I don't even think about it, I just do. So clearly it is easy! Ummm, no. I have not forgotten the utter frustration it was learning to drive on a manual clutch. Automatics are easier to learn, no question. In actual operation by an expert, either is perfectly easy, but let's not try and play make believe that a manual clutch is "easy" for that reason.

Graphic input for all

[hicksw]

As I sat here clattering away on my Model M (on the top of my desk, between my trackball and my Thinkpad), I wondered:

(1) Has anyone tried putting a trackpoint on a smartphone? It would keep the screen cleaner and keep your fingers out of the line of sight.

(2) Has anyone added a touchpad or a mini-graphics tablet to a desktop PC so desktop users could experience a touchscreen-style interface? If the interface is so great, it should be a seller. MS might even bundle it with Win8^H9.

(2a) Most laptops have a touchpad. How does that experience compare to the touchscreen interface? Are laptop users less dismayed by Metro?

(3) The real future of computer input interfaces probably involves directly tracking your eyeballs. Any bets that Google is not working on this?
--
Law of truly large numbers - almost all numbers are larger than you can imagine.

Programmers vs. Designers

[ElusiveJoe]

What does a programmer think when he creates a GUI?

"I have programmed this functionality. Now I have to make an interface to fit it all"

What does a designer think when he creates a GUI?

"I have invented this cool design. Now I have to choose what functionality I can squeeze into it"

P.S.: I like the first approach more, though the second one is becoming ubiquitous.

Re:Oakgoof, why'd you run?

[oakgrove]

Get help, apk.

Biased to workstations/desktops

[StrayGenius]

I am clearly biased as I hate all touch devices, so this change in the new Win8 OS that defaults to something that would work on a touch device and not on a desktop is completely fail for me. Apple has always believed people are too dumb to use the same machines / workstations they use to make apples, they simplify them to first grade level (as an exmple). Now the move seems to be (by everyone) to go to gadget computers (I like to call them GCs) so they can not only take away the basic computing out of the equation but replace it with a kiosk to an online store. Why do these idiots assume people want to do all their computing on the go, like writing critical heart monitoring software while riding a bus? Workstations will always exist where there is a set environment in which work takes places. GCs can go to hell.

Re:Language

[petit_robert]

>It would be nice if Microsoft and many others would get their feet back on the ground and stop injecting hype language into everything

Ha! but this is one thing that they simply cannot do. The hype is here to justify the existence of the corporate structure.

Without it, everyone will soon realize that there is actually very little improvement going on with management in general, and they'll turn to open source as an advantageous replacement to all that buzz.

Don't wait for them to stop : just use open source software. That will quickly starve buzzword mongers.

Open Letter to Redmond

[DrStoooopid]

Dear Microsoft:

I have tried the interface in Windows 8. I hate it.

I have no option to use "Desktop Only" and this will be extremely prohibitive to my business, and my livelihood.

As a result, I will be drafting letters to Apple and Ubuntu in order to make migrations away from being a Microsoft shop, as well as to proposing to Apple, that if they wish to achieve superiority in the Desktop market, the time is now and they should port their OS to all x86 instruction set capable computers.

For lack of a better word, the "Metro" interface on a desktop machine is utter sh*t....If you intend on forcing this upon your user-base, it's time we all wipe our arses, and move on to something else.

Sincerely,

A 30 year Microsoft User.

Re:I tried it. It fails.

[PCM2]

Find "print". The first time I used Office 2007. I asked the sysadmin where it was and he didn't know either.

Odd. It's under the File tab of the Ribbon, just like it was in the File menu in previous versions. It's the icon of the printer that says "Print" next to it.

The Pri MS Bias here is sickening in this Article

[Liger-Zero]

I am all for honest reporting of tech news, but the bias here of pro Microsoft is sickening!! The author makes this new Metro sounds like thing since the invention of cell phones. Now, I don't mind if it is qualified, but comments like "in my opinion" but this article sounds like it was written by a MIcrosoft rep. (I am not anti-microsoft, I am even a MCITP) Now, I remember when Windows 7 came out and Microsoft came out and said there is no Classic StartMenu and all the Zealots out there telling people "to get on over it" and other more derogatory comments. However, some good programmers delivered Classic Startmenu via Classic Shell (on source forge). Why I am I bringing this out? Because, you know a programmer will be able to deliver both Desktop and Metro to users, just like they did for Classic Menu for Windows 7. What is even more insulting is the way that Microsoft thinks they know better than the user on what interface we want. I am really doubt if they even higher bonafide Human Design Engineers.

Re:Are you freakin kidding me?

[unixisc]

Windows 3.1 may have been ripped off from the Mac. Windows 95 wasn't - it was a completely new UI w/ a lot of usability studies behind it, and had some similarities to OS/2, NEXTSTEP (the recycle bin and the toolbar, except for at the bottom). In fact, all the Windows up to 7 have been some variations of it, sometimes great, sometimes annoying, but all have by & large stuck to it, which is why one is seeing all the howls over MS losing the Start button and replacing it w/ Metro.

Re:Windows 8 = Vista

[unixisc]

Not even close. Actually, Vista sucked in terms of resource consumption, but aside from that, it had more or less the same UI as XP, just prettier - w/ Aero, Sidebars and so on. Even though they replaced the word 'Start' w/ the Windows logo, that button was still there, and could still be invoked by pressing the 'Windows' key on a keyboard. Yeah, some things changed, like the way the Control Panel was organized, but even there, one could opt for the XP arrangement. In fact, there is hardly any difference b/w Vista & 7 in terms of look & feel, aside from the internal plumbing - MS could have simply made Vista SP2 == Windows 7.

8 looked promising @ first due to their reduced resource requirements, but they screwed it all up by forcing Metro on the desktop. If they don't fix this @ launch, they'll have to do so in SP1 or so. Also, will the minimum memory requirements be 2GB, or 4GB? If it's 4GB, then they should only offer Windows 8 as a 64 bit OS (I'm talking about the desktop version, not WOA, since we know that ARM is not yet 64 bit).

Only if

[shiftless]

What the hell are you on about? Your premise is all wrong. Businesses do not start with the question "How can we use this new technology?!", they start from "How can we best solve this problem?"

Only if they are creatively bankrupt morons with zero vision, who can expect to be overtaken and surpassed (with executives no doubt left wondering "WOW, what just HAPPENED?") by the first company who DOES look forward to emerging technology to see how it can be applied to improve its business.

Space Quest

[shiftless]

Maybe a new Space Quest episode. For Android devices, of course.

Re:Desktop OS?

[mikechant]

Refutation: Mint

"640K ought to be enough for anyone"

[shiftless]

[complex functionality] .... that cannot be simply boiled down into a single self-contained app.

Oh yes it can :)

Re: Big Icons

[mcswell]

I'm not arguing with you about Metro, I think you're right on--I can't imagine why I would want to interact with the OS in that way, when I have two 27" monitors and a keyboard.

But I will take issue with you on whether the Office 2010 Ribbon is customizable. It will be customizable when I can remove *any* item (not just a ribbon or a "tab"); when I can get rid of all the distracting hieroglyphic icons, leaving just good old words written in alphabetic characters; and when I can assign my own shortcut keys to menu items. Like the menu used to be. Now *that* was customizable.

Re: Customize Office

[TaoPhoenix]

Not sure about the keyboard commands part.

But instead of "remove" anything, leave it all there. Just build your own tab brand new from scratch. With a little work I discovered I only used about 30 features heavy duty, so I put them all on a new Ribbon. And they all have words.

It's actually faster. My best example is (Rightclick) (Paste-Special-Values followed by (Rightclick) Paste-Special-Formats.
6 clicks down to two plus simpler structure.

ONLY if you have the total access to "All Commands" does this work though. That's the key. It wasn't there in Office 2007.

Really? Wow.

[geekprime]

Metro, the same interface that makes everyone hate the windows phone? On the desktop, Ya, that'll go over like a lead balloon.

Everyone at microsoft that thought that was a GOOD idea, needs to be the first group laid off.

You don't succeed by taking an annoying failure and making it bigger and more annoying, it's time to shake up the management at microsoft and start listening to new idea people instead of retreading the same old crap with a new frontpage.

VERY CONFUSED

[drwhat99]

I really have no idea why there is such a crazy hate for the new UI. Seriously. Very VERY confused. I know that the internet was basically invented for bitching about shit to an audience of other people who mostly do the same, but it's quite odd, don't you think? Please consider these following: New UIs sometime ask us to learn how to do something new. Did all of you haters complain about the invention of the mouse, double clicking, and the Start Menu? Probably, but you got used to it. Remember the comments like "What sort of IDIOT would instinctively press START to shut down their computer! IT"S LUNACY!" Now everyone is asking for it to come back. People fear change, it's pretty much involuntary; google it. Being aware of your mental limitations helps you be a better person. And perhaps less reactionary when something new comes along. The Windows 8 desktop is largely unchanged from Windows 7; it takes ONE additional click only at startup to get there. The way people talk here this is like the worst thing on earth! #FirstWorldProblems If you think the desktop is going away, you overreacting. It's there in full force in Windows 8. They have no plans to get rid of it. It works the same. Better actually, as they finally support multi-monitors with their own taskbars, something only available with 3rd party software before. MS built this whole new UI on a lot of user feedback data. And they blogged about it. If you claim otherwise, you have not been paying attention. Also, Windows 8 is not out yet. That's the whole point of the Consumer Preview - to gather data. Sadly the commentary has largely been "WAAA! IT'S NEW! I DON'T LIKE IT!" which is largely useless feedback. (This is why they look at usage data, as that doesn't lie.) The people who comment here at slashdot are mostly power users. Give a Windows 8 tablet or PC to your grandmother and I will almost guarantee they will like it and find it mostly intuitive and improved over Windows 7. And they'll be really happy to be rid of that clunky desktop thing. Who needs those small windowed things? Reading the last two lines, Windows 8 has something for everyone. A super-OS with very little cost to each to have the other. It seems that some of you think Windows 8 purchases comes with a microsoft agent who storms your house and takes your mouse and forces you to buy a touch screen. I have not read the official word, but I believe this is probably not true. Use the mouse all you want! Up is still up and down is still down. I'm pretty sure. I get the "overshooting the corner" argument for multiple monitor users. I would fully expect them to fix that in the final release (IF you're running in a VM, that's more a failing of the VM, not the OS.) Visual Studio, DBA "apps" or any other large complicated tool will never be a metro app; why would anyone assume that it would? Sure there is a mobile version of Photoshop now, but it doesn't come close to doing what the desktop version does, nor will it. They have not tried, and they don't need to try because desktop is not going anywhere. At the same time, why WOULDN'T any simple consumer application NOT be made into the modern, easily distributable "app" on a phone, tablet, or now PC. Easy distribution and free marketing of your app to the masses. I don't need to provide my own download server, or instructions, or optimize my google search rank. Sounds great to me. This sort of polarization that is evident here is very immature, and is also sadly reflected in current U.S. politics. It's easy to throw stones to anonymous folk on the internet but using hyperbole to get a point across becomes the norm and the hyperbole needs to become more extreme and all of a sudden there is no middle opinion anymore. STOP IT. You're all better than that.