Windows 8 Metro Theme Created For Rooted Android Tablets

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Windows 8 Metro Theme Created For Rooted Android Tablets

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday April 9, 2012 @07:01PM from the all-the-good-none-of-the-evil dept.

MikeatWired writes "Now here's a cool one for you tablet users that like to tweak the appearance of your UI! XDA member BroBot175 has created a Metro UI theme for all tablets running Honeycomb or ICS! The theme is a fully functioning replica of Windows 8 that allows you to create your own tiles, and organize them however you want."

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in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 19:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

Microsoft will probably not like this one bit.
1. Re:in b4 lawsuit by game+kid · 2012-04-09 19:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Indeed. They'll say "People actually want to copy Metro?"
  
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2. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 19:20 · Score: 1
  
  shhhh.... it's a move to confuse microsoft so they don't notice when we make the windows 8 tablets dual boot ICS
3. Re:in b4 lawsuit by PC_THE_GREAT · 2012-04-09 19:33 · Score: 1
  
  Well how stupid Microsoft can be, using UI as its horse for war :p, that was naive, with something as customizable as android, its normal that people are bound to make themes that does the same [or better].
4. Re:in b4 lawsuit by wmac1 · 2012-04-09 19:39 · Score: 1
  
  They will love it. It familiarizes android user with Win8 environment and eventually some of the users will prefer to use the real thing.
5. Re:in b4 lawsuit by wvmarle · 2012-04-09 20:18 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I know you're joking (at least trying to) but well that's the question I also have. But then on a more serious note.
  A problem that I see with iOS vs Android is, for as far as I have played with iOS, the basic UI is the same. No significant difference. Less difference than between OS-X and Windows even. It's basically iOS and Android all along, and with major brands like Samsung doing their best to look as much like iOS as they can get away with (including the design of the hardware) the real amount of choice we have is actually diminishing.
  For better or for worse, Microsoft tries something totally different, and that's interesting. What is good about Metro, what is bad? What can we learn about UIs from their attempt? Which bits can we copy and put into other UIs?
  I have never had a chance to play with Metro, never even seen it in action even. I actually don't see MS's offering to take off anytime soon, which I think is a pity in a way as a third serious competitor can only be good for the overall market. And besides MS I can't think of any software house to be able to put a viable competitor in this market.
6. Re:in b4 lawsuit by miffo.swe · 2012-04-09 20:18 · Score: 2
  
  Except, that's not how it works. The only people who like the horrible UI mess that is Metro is the true believers. The Yesmen that would be happy with a brick with "Turn Over!" written on both sides, but only if it was a new game from Microsoft.
  
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7. Re:in b4 lawsuit by CaptSlaq · 2012-04-09 21:34 · Score: 1
  
  Except, that's not how it works. The only people who like the horrible UI mess that is Metro is the true believers. The Yesmen that would be happy with a brick with "Turn Over!" written on both sides, but only if it was a new game from Microsoft.
  Why is Metro a "Horrible UI mess"? I see this posted a lot of places and have yet to see someone come back with something that doesn't boil down to "it's not my flavor".
8. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 22:02 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, because your own personal opinion is actually a fact that everybody believes and nobody could possibly want anything different than what you want.
9. Re:in b4 lawsuit by realityimpaired · 2012-04-09 22:39 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  As a tablet or smartphone UI, actually it's pretty good. I still prefer Android, but I can understand why people would like Metro. A lot of the texting, e-mail, etc. widgets that people use on Android would not be necessary on Metro, because of the way it presents the tile for an app. (basically, no icons, everything is a widget).
  As a desktop UI, you have to ask what the hell they were smoking. Something designed for touchscreen input on a 4" device does *not* scale to a 24" screen with a keyboard/mouse. While it's usable, it would be very counter-productive to anybody who's comfortable with the mouse, because they would have to scroll through pages of tiles to find the one they want. I don't think it's going to be the unmitigated disaster that everybody says it's going to be, but I do think that "how to turn Metro off" will replace porn as the number 1 Google search for a while after it launches.
10. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 22:47 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  That's kinda not the point, a theme is a theme, you can make it look like anything, it's still Android underneath. The draw was the unified UI on both the Tablet and Desktop version of Windows 8, and beyond just appearance. It's kinda retarded when you think of it, it's like when people though skinning KDE/Gnome to look like OS X magically made it OS X.
  Microsoft's war horse is that it's Windows through and through, on any device, on any architecture. It's nor iOS -> OS X, or Android Linux, but precisely the same OS, with the same apps (where Metro is concerned, at least - and this is the draw of Metro) on any device.
  Just as skinning the Desktop to look like OS X didn't accomplish or change anything, making ICS look like Win8 isn't going to magically make it provide Windows' functionality or run Windows apps, not even the Metro apps.
  Or we can ignore that and pretend Microsoft is run by complete amateurs and banked the next 4-5 years of their business on a theme, and derp and herp about how superior we are because replicated the aesthetics and now they're doomed.
11. Re:in b4 lawsuit by jones_supa · 2012-04-09 23:05 · Score: 1
  
  It might even become a standard procedure after installation to use some hack which disables Metro and puts the Start button back.
12. Re:in b4 lawsuit by game+kid · 2012-04-09 23:11 · Score: 1
  
  The UI of the few Metro apps I could bring myself to try in the Developer Preview in VirtualBox (I couldn't get Consumer Preview to even consistently boot there so I pretty much stopped trying Windows 8 at that point 'cause it was clear MS was slipping hard) is simply less functional and intuitive than that of the usual windowed ones.
  It's harder to know how other apps ("Classic" or not) are running because the Metro ones are generally fullscreen (as are many pre-Metro games, but that's expected and usually adjustable anyway), and it's not obvious how to shrink them to those small side panes. With Classic programs, you (usually) know when you can close a window or not. I needed the Task Manager to actually close (not just hide) even simple Metro games, which means the Example Hypothetical Grandma and even some moderately good PC users will need more memory as things slow to crawl (more RAM collusion?). It is nowhere near obvious where the (many) hidden app or Start screen menus are without a manual, and sometimes less obvious what each option does.
  It is a horrible UI mess, and a general unnecessary misadventure (I'll be calling it the "Massive Metro Misadventure" pretty often) that I hope they backtrack from and apologize for. Windows 7 had it right: keep the UI mouseable, make the Vista min-max-close buttons a bit larger, and add a few things to help tablet users (like draggable menus from taskbar icons and the IE9 address bar). 8 just tries to force the mouse into obsolescence and people into tablet stores by making it an awful experience to use a mouse--it's not worth the tablet-functionality improvements, and along with central app stores will only help drag us into a new, damn dark age of restricted and cumbersome computing. (Also the whole Shift+F8-or-add-a-new-boot-item thing for safe mode--that change was even less necessary.)
  Windows remains my primary OS. My current foray into Arch Linux was due to Flash game crashes that seemed to happen more in Windows than Linux, but seem to have been bad RAM; but if MS doesn't turn around by Windows 7's end-of-life then I guess I've gotten a new primary.
  
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13. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Paradigma11 · 2012-04-09 23:38 · Score: 1
  
  And what is the advantage of the start-button to metro. i have window 8 running on a laptop and i see(if i see it at all) as a glorified start menue. since the tiles are self actualizing it might also make a good screen saver. One advantage of metro is the availability of web apps and a centralized store. there are many js libraries that dont have a comparable .net equivalent (invoviz...). if you don't like it hit the windows key and poof gone.
14. Re:in b4 lawsuit by nschubach · 2012-04-09 23:42 · Score: 1
  
  IMHO, Microsoft would have been smart to make Metro Desktop a small series of "tiles" along the bottom (top/side, whatever) of the screen instead of directly scaling it up to full screen. You can still have your weather app and whatnot in a small tile along the edge of the screen and when you click on one of the tiles, it expands it to full screen pushing the other tiles to the edge. You could even provide a virtual hover button in the top right that allows a person to maximize/minimize the tile like Windows currently.
  
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15. Re:in b4 lawsuit by miffo.swe · 2012-04-09 23:53 · Score: 2
  
  Metro is a mess because its nothing but widgets called "Tiles" and hyped as something groundbreaking and special. It sucked back when Sony Ericsson did it on the SE X1 mobile phone, and it sucks just as much now that Microsoft "borrowed" it.
  I could drill down into specifics, but why would i do that? Its not like there aren't more than enough people inside Microsoft that hates the UI and has long lists of things they think should be changed.
  
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16. Re:in b4 lawsuit by DrXym · 2012-04-09 23:58 · Score: 1
  
  Metro is a horrible UI mess for desktop PCs. This can be seen in the consumer preview simply by enabling administrative programs from the settings. The result is you get a messing of 15 odd drab brown admin icons stinking up metro. They consume a lot of space, are a pain to scroll through with a mouse, and are really hard to organize e.g. there is no ability to rubber band select to move them, or sort functionality, or way to group them in an expanding folder or somesuch, and the two column flow of each group means it's easier (i.e. not easy) to manually sort them in reverse order bottom to top than top to bottom. Now multiply 15 admin icons by the 100-200 that a desktop user will typically have after installing a bunch of programs and you have a big mess of indistinct icons sprawled horizontally over miles of real estate. This compared to the start menu in W7 which occupies about 1/8th of the screen. It highlights to me that metro needs a lot of work yet to function adequately on the desktop.
  I think on tablets in the absence of "classic" Windows it will be perfectly adequate albeit quite bland. People will have less tiles, less apps, they'll be able to swipe/flick to scroll and so on. It'll work pretty well. So I think that Windows 8 may will debut on tablet devices and I would not be surprised if a desktop edition gets pushed out until they can fix it.
  I have no idea why Android users would ever wish to have metro on tablets, but if they did then one the beauty of Android is you can swap the default launcher activity for something else and get it. That's all the likes of HTC do with their Sense UI.
17. Re:in b4 lawsuit by DrXym · 2012-04-10 00:11 · Score: 1
  
  I expect most people wanting start menu wouldn't be averse to metro if it offered a functionally equivalent replacement, The problem is it doesn't.
  I think a) The desktop start button must be reinstated. Something that is discoverable and people can click on. Shoving the mouse into a corner and clicking is not discoverable b) Metro should appear as an overlay over the desktop, not a seperate screen. Of if it is a different screen at least give it some context back to the desktop such showing scaled windows the way the activities screen in GNOME 3 does. c) Metro needs expanding groups and compact, vertical, sorted lists of icons to adequately reproduce the hierarchical programs / groups of Windows "classic". d) Minimize mouse travel - the UI fails if a user is forced to scroll through pages of horizontal icons, e) allow users to zoom out to a level of their choosing rather than showing arbitrarily large tiles.
  Reinstating the start menu would be a lazy cop out and wouldn't fix the underlying issue.
18. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 00:19 · Score: 0
  
  For better or for worse, Microsoft tries something totally different, and that's interesting. What is good about Metro, what is bad? What can we learn about UIs from their attempt? Which bits can we copy and put into other UIs?
  I have never had a chance to play with Metro, never even seen it in action even.
  
  That's odd because, never having seen it in action, you've concluded that it's totally different to Android and iOS. I've never seen it either, and I don't know what makes it totally different or whether it actually is totally different. Is it? Why?
19. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 00:20 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Fool! Don't you know how much hatred of the users the user unfriendly division put into that design? Why poo flinging monkeys being personally sent to each individual home couldn't show THAT level of uncaring!
  
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20. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 00:48 · Score: 1, Flamebait
  
  Hi there Microsoft shill! tell me, how's the dental plan? Do you get a 401k?
  If you actually watched their last presentation you would see why windows 8 is written in fail, they mention TOUCHSCREENS like 30 times! they even came up with ever more absurd scenarios of people getting touchscreens, buying touchscreen laptops (ignoring that the form factor is NOT touch friendly and that laptops are completely cutthroat and it would add a good $100+ to the cost) touchscreens for their desktops (when a 17 inch touchscreen is $300 and a 24 inch non touch is $145) and the final bust a gut moment was when he talked about how real time traders would be buying 3 screens...with a touchscreen in the middle! because when every second counts and one wrong trade can fuck your life up you WANT to you life to hinge on whether your greasy fingers hits the right spot LOL!
  Lets cut the bullshit and be honest, okay? we're geeks right? we know there is a REASON why Apple doesn't run iOS on their macbooks...its because the cell phone UI sucks ass on large non touch screens! So why would a company like MSFT do such a dumbshit move? Its actually very simple and two fold...1.-MSFT knows that PCs will NEVER be a massive growth market again, because they passed 'good enough" at dual cores and are a mature tech, whereas cell phones and tablets are hot so this is a Hail Mary pass trying to get them into that market. 2.- Every developer should be insulted because they are betting you are REALLY stupid, we are talking retarded scrote here. You see they think they can bullshit you into believing "Well if i just write for Windows 8 herp derp i can write once and have the desktop AND cell phones!" while ignoring either your program has the sophistication of a fart app and thus shits all over the power you have on X86 desktops and laptops OR you end up with something that will suck the living shit out of a cell phone battery and get the users hating your guts. Great choice huh?
  But those of us with brains know what the truth is and it is thus...people buy Windows for WINDOWS PROGRAMS, those bazillion and one programs that run on X86 Windows, be it Quickbooks/Quicken, photoshop, games, or one of the literally millions of programs written for Windows over the years, which thanks to backwards compatibility mostly still run after all these years. There is NO POINT in WOA because it doesn't run Windows programs and never will! ARM and X86 is like the difference between a Yugo and a Mac truck, one is all about power saving and the other is power incarnate. But MSFT refuses to accept they are the new IBM and move on so instead of doing something smart, like say spinning off the mobile division so they can just call themselves Metro OS or something and sink or swim on their own, nope instead you have them royally shitting all over their sacred cow to try to force themselves into a market that has done moved on without them.
  It won't work, it WILL fail, and all it will do is give them a shitpile of Win 8 discs to go with the Vista pile while folks just stick with Win 7. Just like IBM and the mainframe Windows desktops won't go away but they won't be replaced every 3 years like they were during the MHz wars. The only good thing that may come from win 8 is I doubt the board will put up with another Ballmer failfest, i don't care if he IS Gates' little buddy. hopefully he'll get a pink slip than they can put one of the office guys at the helm who will again focus on what they do best, which is build desktops for business and consumer PCs. And sorry about the length but this Dilbert-ish move really pisses me off and frankly all these anon shills MSFT has put out in force to try to make the shit smell of Win 8 into roses is frankly a little sickening. like we all haven't tried Win 8 CP already!
  
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21. Re:in b4 lawsuit by lilfields · 2012-04-10 01:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  "Capital letters, exclamation points, and anti-Microsoft... this is very insightful!" - Some mod reading your post.
22. Re:in b4 lawsuit by CaptSlaq · 2012-04-10 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  As a tablet or smartphone UI, actually it's pretty good. I still prefer Android, but I can understand why people would like Metro. A lot of the texting, e-mail, etc. widgets that people use on Android would not be necessary on Metro, because of the way it presents the tile for an app. (basically, no icons, everything is a widget).
  As a desktop UI, you have to ask what the hell they were smoking. Something designed for touchscreen input on a 4" device does *not* scale to a 24" screen with a keyboard/mouse. While it's usable, it would be very counter-productive to anybody who's comfortable with the mouse, because they would have to scroll through pages of tiles to find the one they want. I don't think it's going to be the unmitigated disaster that everybody says it's going to be, but I do think that "how to turn Metro off" will replace porn as the number 1 Google search for a while after it launches.
  While I agree that contextually it doesn't work well with a mouse, on something like this it does make some sense. Perhaps someone at Microsoft thinks the mouse is a dead end UI wise?
  This could be something that points to the fact that they think that Surface will start to make some inroads at some point as well. Metro makes some sense for it in the same manner it does for the HP piece above, and all the tablet stuff.
  This then introduces the idea that Microsoft is embracing the tablet as the desktop replacement, which leads down to a whole different list of interesting conversations.
23. Re:in b4 lawsuit by CaptSlaq · 2012-04-10 02:35 · Score: 1
  
  Metro is a mess because its nothing but widgets called "Tiles" and hyped as something groundbreaking and special. It sucked back when Sony Ericsson did it on the SE X1 mobile phone, and it sucks just as much now that Microsoft "borrowed" it.
  I could drill down into specifics, but why would i do that? Its not like there aren't more than enough people inside Microsoft that hates the UI and has long lists of things they think should be changed.
  So in your opinion, it doesn't work anywhere, or just not for the desktop?
24. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 03:15 · Score: 0
  
  blah blah blah, I hate touchscreens blah blah
  Evidently, they see touchscreens being the way of the future and they gearing up to make it happen. Don't worry though, lots of people had the same reaction when Gates said he wanted to put a computer in every household.
  As far as the price is concerned, your short-sightedness is at least somewhat amusing. If MS is right about touchscreens, the prices will drop as production is ramped up and streamlined to meet demand. Sony did this with DVD players and Blu-Ray, by the way, when they crammed them into the PS2 and 3, respectively. They also got the same kind of reaction initially.
  For the record, I use a multi-touch tablet as my primary mouse daily. I wash and dry my hands routinely, and I also don't eat at my desk, haven't had "greasy fingers" issues. Perhaps you should mind your hygene?
  
  Lets cut the bullshit and be honest, okay? we're geeks right? we know there is a REASON why Apple doesn't run iOS on their macbooks...its because the cell phone UI sucks ass on large non touch screens!
  Let's be honest. We both know OS X proper wasn't made to run on such underpowered hardware, and they didn't bother porting it to ARM. And we both know that what they did instead, was scale down OS X and make that available for their Phones, and later for their tablets. The reason they don't chuck OS X proper out the window on non-touch devices in favour or iOS has zero to do with UI (the UI is easily changed, and you'll note that Metro is not the sole UI on Win8) is because there's no reason to replaces OS X. And there's the whole backward compatibility nightmare of vendors having to rewrite their applications to target the OS change (also why Metro isn't the only UI on Win8).
  
  blah blah baseless assumptions
  The PC market isn't going anywhere, and let's face it, it hasn't been a "massive growth" market for well over a decade, it's all pretty pointless, either way, since at 90% control of the market, they just won't see much growth in that area, regardless.
  Also, perhaps it's less a case of them insulting people's intelligence, and more one of you overstating yours - they're not doing away with the existing UI and APIs, they're just making a touch UI available. "blind hail mary pass" to get into a market they've been in for years makes zero sense either, since Win8 proper is about targeting both Tablets and Desktops. There's no hail mary anything, it's calculated, they believe touch screens will be everywhere, and they're trying to make it happen. Phones don't even enter the equation here.
  
  There is NO POINT in WOA because it doesn't run Windows programs and never will! ARM and X86 is like the difference between a Yugo and a Mac truck, one is all about power saving and the other is power incarnate.
  Clearly. What baffles the mind, however, is how you fail to anticipate anyone possibly liking the idea of running apps they have on their tablet on their desktop as well, even more so is the implied reasoning that tablets are killing desktops, and those have touch screens, but having a touch screen on a desktop is a bad idea? Not my cup of tea, personally, but I can see it catching on.
  Funny you mention Photoshop, ever heard of Wacom's Cintiq product line? Now imagine it working directly on the screen, without a $3-4,000 devices attached to it. Creative software will benefit the most from, and possibly be the driving factor behind touch screens catching on in the way MS seems to envision.
  
  Just like IBM and the mainframe Windows desktops won't go away but they won't be replaced every 3 years like they were during the MHz wars
  You realize that mainframes were always intended to last for decades, right? You've made a lot of phenomenally stupid comparisons today, but this one is in a league of its own. Also twice you imply that dual cores will be around forever, think for a moment how short
25. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Niomosy · 2012-04-10 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  There was an article that was showing the Metro UI after a number of apps were installed. It started to become quite a mess. The Start menu was a bit easier to deal with for me, particularly since you could just start typing in what you wanted and Win7 would get you pertinent results.
26. Re:in b4 lawsuit by DragonWriter · 2012-04-10 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  The only people who like the horrible UI mess that is Metro is the true believers.
  
  I'm not at all an MS fan, but Metro seems to be a good direction in UIs, and not just for mobile devices. The pile-of-papers metaphor of traditional windowing UIs is really a horrible mess when you think about it, and recent trend in adding 3D and transparency features to it doesn't really address the problem.
  The Metro approach is an approach that really has a lot going for it. I'm not saying the implementation is necessarily great, but the concepts, starting from content-not-chrome, are good and I expect that UIs will continue to evolve in the direction Metro is pointing.
27. Re:in b4 lawsuit by DragonWriter · 2012-04-10 05:06 · Score: 1
  
  As a desktop UI, you have to ask what the hell they were smoking. Something designed for touchscreen input on a 4" device does *not* scale to a 24" screen with a keyboard/mouse. While it's usable, it would be very counter-productive to anybody who's comfortable with the mouse, because they would have to scroll through pages of tiles to find the one they want.
  
  Having enough top-level options that you have to scroll through them to find the one you want is bad no matter the form factor. While I don't know if the existing Metro implementation lets you do this, having tiles for groups of options that explode-on-hover (reducing the old list to a single tile that you can return to) would seem to be consistent with the Metro UI design principles and be a good approach for a keyboard-and-mouse interface.
  The Metro implementation may currently suck for lots of uses, but the UI principles its built in I think are good UI principals that ought to get more attention in UI design.
28. Re:in b4 lawsuit by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-04-10 06:12 · Score: 1
  
  There is a launcher for Android phones that mimics WP7 (Metro) UI. It's been out there for over a year now, and it's still up.
29. Re:in b4 lawsuit by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-04-10 06:15 · Score: 2
  
  The Start menu was a bit easier to deal with for me, particularly since you could just start typing in what you wanted and Win7 would get you pertinent results.
  The "start typing to search" feature is still there in Metro (indeed, it is the only way to use it efficiently to wade through all the non-Metro apps). The main annoyance with it compared to Start menu is that Metro is fullscreen, which is rather distracting when all you want is to launch an app.
30. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 08:48 · Score: 0
  
  Have YOU tried the CP? Can you name a SINGLE thing I said that was false? hell read the Anon shill that posted right below you, he even pushes the same "everything will be touchscreens!" horseshit! and to the retarded shill which i actually feel sorry for, pushing touchscreens, here is a fact...its not about like or dislike of touchscreens, okay shill? its about accepting the fact that ONE FORM FACTOR DOESN'T WORK EVERYWHERE you dumbshit! I mean i like motorbikes so why wouldn't i replace the steering wheel in my truck with a bike handlebars huh? because it would be STUPID, pointless, and wouldn't work nearly as good as the tech that has been there for ages, aka the steering wheel.
  And if you don't like the occasional cap sorry, blame /. since their new format doesn't seem to allow italics nor bold like in the old format. When I get a chance i'll switch back to the old format and use italics, would that be more pleasing to you?
  And for all the "the future is teh touchy feely" tards try this....hold your arm out straight for 4 minutes, that's all, just 4 little minutes. You can do that right? oh you can't? it hurts? Well no shit moron! that is why nobody wants a god damned touchscreen on the desktop, because desktops are a VERTICAL screen and it is UNPLEASANT to keep your damned arm straight all day! Seriously i thought Slashdot was for nerds, do I REALLY have to point this out? Or is Microsoft paying so damned many shills that there are more shills than real users? Because on no less than 4 different websites i have seen WORD FOR WORD exactly what the anon posted, both above and below, complete with the entire touchscreen is the future rant. Seriously Microsoft you are a fucking billion dollar company, do you REALLY have to give them only a couple of scripts? hell with your money you ought to hire the writers from 30 Rock or something!
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
31. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 11:49 · Score: 0
  
  If you are that intellectually inept that you can't make your point without having to resort to the frankly pathetic tactic of labeling people as 'shills' then naturally no one is really going to take your point of view seriously. It just shows a rabid irrational hatred of Microsoft when you can't help yourself in using terms like 'shill' in an attempt to bolster your point, it makes it sound a lot more like you tried to get a job there but they knocked you back and now you're all bitter about it.
  
  So here's a hint: Grow up enough to make your point without the argumentum ad hominem and you might get taken seriously.
  
  Oh and don't lie:
  I ignore ACs
  hell read the Anon shill that posted right below you
32. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 12:03 · Score: 1
  
  Since switching to Dragon from Pale moon my greasemonkey scripts no longer works Mr Shill so i can't block them anymore. if someone will post a script that works in Chromium that blocks ACs? i'll be happy to block them again. oh and how's that straw man? don't mind the match...WHOOSH! Notice how you fail to acknowledge what i pointed out in that you can take ENTIRE PIECES of their rants and post it into ANY search engine and find its a fucking script! Or are you REALLY gonna tell me that ALL these ACs just so happen to post THE EXACT SAME THING word for word over dozens of sites!
  Calling someone a shill when they just like or dislike a product IS wrong, but when they are posting word for word across dozens of sites! there is fair and then there is being a retard and sorry for you Mr Shill but I'm not some tarded scrote that will buy that you keep posting the EXACT SAME TEXT complete with spelling and punctuation errors, across every tech site in the western world. its a fucking script, at least have the balls to admit it!
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
33. Re:in b4 lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 12:17 · Score: 0
  
  Since switching to Dragon from Pale moon my greasemonkey scripts no longer works Mr Shill so i can't block them anymore.
  lol...there you go again, you really do not have the mental capacity to stop yourself from calling someone a 'shill' do you? not only that but it's hilarious that you also lack the mental capacity to 'ignore' AC posts even when you say you are, what an angry little man you are.
  
  oh and how's that straw man?
  bahahahahaha! clearly don't know what a 'strawman' is.
  
  Notice how you fail to acknowledge what i pointed out in that you can take ENTIRE PIECES of their rants and post it into ANY search engine and find its a fucking script!
  what pieces can you find that are in a script and where are these scripts?
  
  Or are you REALLY gonna tell me that ALL these ACs just so happen to post THE EXACT SAME THING word for word over dozens of sites!
  certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence to show that they do that at all.
  
  when they are posting word for word across dozens of sites!
  show me dozens of sites with the same posts word-for-word. oh that's right, you can't.
  
  Mr Shill
  whoops there you go again...lol :D
  
  its a fucking script, at least have the balls to admit it!
  where's the script then? oh that's right there isn't any, just you posting poor butthurt rants hahahaha! and still far too weak-minded to restrain your mental tick causing you to call people shills :P
34. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 12:19 · Score: 1
  
  If you are serious here is your answer, or even better try the CP as it is free. here is an average user on windows 8 and i myself have done the exact same experiement and can tell you that is 100% accurate. Hand a user Windows 8 and they are lost, they are confused, nothing works, it doesn't even follow cell phone UI conventions sadly.
  You can tell, oh and feel free to check YouTube as there are dozens of videos just like it, just in case you think his nana is thick, that show that the user played no part in their thoughts when it came to win 8. it was simple 'ZOMFG Android and Apple own the smartphones! We want the smartphones! Quick turn Win 8 into a smartphone!" its so obvious there are already hilarious parodies pointing this out. Hell watch the MSFT preview videos and count how many times he says "touchscreens". i quit at like 30. Do YOU have a touchscreen laptop? How about a touchscreen desktop? Are you willing to throw ALL your previous machines away for touchscreens?
  And I'm so fucking sick of the shills saying 'Oh he must hate teh touchscreens!" no shills, i'm not tarded. just as you wouldn't take bike handlebars and mount them in your truck even though they are perfectly great on bikes, so too does touchscreens NOT MAKE SENSE in a vertical application! Why do I even have to explain this? you hold a tablet in your hand, so that the motion is similar to writing, its smooth and natural. you hold a laptop with its screen in a VERTICAL layout, this is NOT comfortable or natural for touch screen application and causes fatigue quickly. this is even worse in a desktop where you have a large screen with MUCH larger ranges of motion...why must I explain this? Do people have such a stiffie for the iPad that they can't see turning a 24 inch screen into a giant ipad would NOT be a good thing? and of course this doesn't count the nearly 50% markup you pay for touch, check out the price of touch laptops and compare for yourself!
  What is sad is you sound like an ordinary person friend, one that simply hasn't tried the product. that's okay, all fine and good. but sadly if your answer isn't 'Supergigantic smartphones are the way of the future!" you WILL be buried alive by the MSFT shills. Hell you can take the text from over 1/3rd of the AC posts here and put them into Google and find the exact. same. text. has been placed on literally hundreds of sites. i don't even wanna know how much they are paying the shills, it must be millions. But in the end just as you wouldn't want to drive your car using a smartphone UI, no matter how much you like your smartphone, so too does the smartphone UI simply not work in the desktop and laptop form factor. that is WHY we have tablets after all.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
35. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 12:52 · Score: 1
  
  As someone who has run both the DP and CP I will be happy to list where metro would work great and where it would suck balls. Works great..1.-Smartphones, 2.-Tablets, 3.-Kitchen PCs, 4.-Kiosks, 5.-With parental controls and a 17 inch touchscreen it would also make a great "my first PC" kinda thing.
  Where Win 8 sucks balls, 1.-Desktops, 2.-laptops, 3.-netbooks. Now you would think "hey they got 5 good and only 3 bad, that's good right?" wrong that's bad because the three that suck balls are the biggest sources of revenue for MSFT by a pretty damned wide margin.
  What I don't understand is how in the fuck is MSFT of all people pulling an RDF over so many, surely to God they can't have hired THAT many shills, can they? Not saying one has to hate metro, quite the contrary if you have one of the 5 good uses its a wonderful smartphone OS, I'd rank it right there beside Android.
  No the RDF is all these people that just swear to the almighty that we are gonna all run out and buy these overpriced touchscreens for jobs that make no fucking sense and the world is just gonna be "supergigantic smartphones" with desktops just being smartphones you can't carry. does that make ANY sense? Can you picture trying to do a complicated shopping by poking it with your finger? Spend two hours doing your taxes by poking? How about play Call of Duty whatever by poking at the bad guys?
  If MSFT were to make Metro and easy to turn off option? be 110% behind them, they could have only one codebase and you could turn it on for touchscreens and off for everything else, THAT makes sense. But desktops and laptops aren't "supergigantic smartphones" and will NEVER work with a cell phone UI model worth a shit, vertical screens simply aren't good for touch, and nobody is gonna want to get a crick in their neck by laying that 24 inch monitor flat and looking down all damned day. its stupid, pointless, and if WinPhone 7 wouldn't have flopped MSFT would have never tried this stunt, why is that so hard to see. has all the UX guys taken a holiday?
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
36. Re:in b4 lawsuit by wvmarle · 2012-04-10 15:56 · Score: 1
  
  This video shows exactly my problem with the latest Ubuntu interface, Unity. I'm sure it's nice on touch screens or on small screens like netbooks, but it sucks on even my small-for-today's-measures 15" monitor. Small and big screens need different way of doing stuff.
  The difference is that Unity is navigable, it didn't made me lose my way by hiding all those important controls, just was very irritating to deal with. Everything full screen, only most-used icons visible and the rest hidden, etc.
  But then I was more interested in MS's offering for actual tablets/phones - the environment those tiles are designed for. It's new, quite innovative, and that makes it interesting (but not necessarily good, of course).
37. Re:in b4 lawsuit by hairyfeet · 2012-04-11 03:18 · Score: 1
  
  Oh don't get me wrong, Metro is a wonderful phone and tablet UI but that is the problem. the tablet UI simply doesn't work on the desktop nor the laptop as a vertical screen is literally painful to poke all day. it would be like being stuck in front of a kiosk all damned day expected to keep your arm out there poking.
  Oh and you missed the biggest fail friend, that Metro UI? well guess what you can't turn it off so even if you instantly switch to the classic desktop Metro is running 24/7 sucking up your RAM and CPU cycles for all those damned smartphone "apps" that are constantly updating. Does that sound like a good thing to you? What do you think that is gonna do for battery life on laptops, which is outselling desktops by 2 to 1 and has been for over 3 years now?
  The reason so many of us are hating metro is NOT because its new, i will be the first to say its a really nice tablet/smartphone OS. the reason we all hate it is a PC or laptop is NOT a "supergigantic smartphone" and treating it as such is stupid, its pointless, and it sucks. what works on a 4 inch screen simply doesn't work on a 24 inch screen and have every screen on the planet be a touchscreen (which again watch the preview videos and count how many times he says touchscreen) is beyond retarded. Tell me friend would YOU want to spend the day poking the desktop screen? how about your laptop, would you want to try poking at it all damned day?
  Metro isn't the problem, its companies like MSFT and Canonical trying to make desktops and laptops into supergigantic smartphones that is the problem. the whole damned reason we HAVE tablets and smartphones is that certain forms and functions simply works well together!
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
meh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 19:15 · Score: 0

meh who needs this fancy schmancy Windows Phone touch app widget crap give me a commandline any day
1. Re:meh by narcc · 2012-04-09 20:00 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see why we couldn't have both. How convenient would it be to have a single line text box to dump commands into in the task tray?
  I'm thinking something like Lotus HAL could work really well for beginners and advanced users alike.
  
  --
  Required reading for internet skeptics
Who cares? by gweihir · 2012-04-09 19:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

Win 8 is a non-event, except insofar as MS is continuing to demonstrate bad engineering and bad design. Why people get riled up over this continuation of past behavior is beyond me.

--
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
1. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 19:58 · Score: 0
  
  I'd also point out that it would take a bunch of javascript kiddies about a day to recreate the "metro" interface.
  I installed windows 8 customer preview on a separate partition - man they need to just put the windows 7 interface back on it. Sure, let the windows key bring up a fancy overlay; that is fine, but make the damn thing like windows 7...
2. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 21:01 · Score: 0
  
  Do you realize you can also use more traditional GUI in Windows 8? That you don't even have to use Metro?
  I guess you don't.
3. Re:Who cares? by Elbart · 2012-04-09 21:08 · Score: 1
  
  That you don't even have to use Metro?
  Win8 boots right into Metro, if you like it or not. So yes, you have to use it.
4. Re:Who cares? by Kawahee · 2012-04-09 21:16 · Score: 2
  
  I've been using Windows 8 as my primary desktop operating system for the past few weeks. You can pretty much avoid Metro after logging in, just hit WINKEY + D to take yourself to the desktop. From there it's pretty much Windows 7 with better multi-monitor support.
  There's a handful of areas where it could be more polished, but you can't complain about them in the context (preview release).
  You can't avoid seeing Metro entirely, but it's not something you have to work with. In Windows 7, if I have to launch something that's not pinned to my taskbar my workflow is WINKEY + Type the program name + ENTER. Windows 8 preserves this workflow. You'll be typing the program name into a Metro search bar, but at the end of the day the same program starts up on the Windows 8 desktop.
  
  --
  I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
5. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 01:48 · Score: 0
  
  You can't avoid seeing Metro entirely, but it's not something you have to work with. In Windows 7, if I have to launch something that's not pinned to my taskbar my workflow is WINKEY + Type the program name + ENTER. Windows 8 preserves this workflow. You'll be typing the program name into a Metro search bar, but at the end of the day the same program starts up on the Windows 8 desktop.
  That's not the same workflow. The fact that something covers the full screen, including the apps you have open, instead of just a small window is quite a bit different. Especially if what you trying to type in the box is something you're reading or basing off other information on the screen. Something I do frequently and Windows 8 just added annoyance. I will avoid it like the plague.
6. Re:Who cares? by ChatHuant · 2012-04-10 08:56 · Score: 1
  
  In Windows 7, if I have to launch something that's not pinned to my taskbar my workflow is WINKEY + Type the program name + ENTER. Windows 8 preserves this workflow. You'll be typing the program name into a Metro search bar, but at the end of the day the same program starts up on the Windows 8 desktop.
  That's true, but I don't remember all the names of all programs I have installed, only the ones I use often enough. In W7 I didn't even need to remember those - they are on the quick launch bar or as shortcuts to the desktop. Moreover, some programs install multiple apps, whose name I don't even know to begin with - the app folder in the start menu lets me see what those are.
  
  Altogether the start button is very useful to me: it's the place where I find all the programs, including newly installed ones, and where I can go to the things I use quickly (Control panel, my download folders, etc). That's where I create my own folders and organize programs based on my particular usage pattern, push things I used less into folders or conversely pop them from their app folders to the top level, or easily create multiple shortcuts letting me start an app with different parameters. The start button menu provides much more information than the stupidly huge Metro tiles (why would I ever want to waste so much good screen space just for a line of text for a program name? I'm not running my desktop on a tiny 3'' phone screen!).
  
  Add the stupid full screen paradigm (why the heck would anybody run a multitasking OS and get a large screen with good resolution, just to be blocked from having multiple things on it? might as well run DOS!) and I see a lot of pain and no gain (at least on the desktop). No, Metro on desktop Windows is a huge and potentially killer mistake - W8 looks like the next Vista to me. Well, W7 is stable and powerful enough, so I'll probably skip this release altogether.
7. Re:Who cares? by gweihir · 2012-04-10 10:01 · Score: 1
  
  I agree on the difficulty level. This is different to be different, not to be better. That nobody else has done it (and there are a lot of different window-managers on Unix and Linux and I bet you could even configure some to replicate Metro pretty accurately, no programming involved) is not due to any technological challenge, but just due to the insight that this design is stupid for a desktop system.
  
  --
  Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
8. Re:Who cares? by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 12:58 · Score: 1
  
  But its STILL running isn't it? Metro and all the tiles are STILL consuming memory and cycles, yes? this is gonna be horribly bad for laptops and netbooks as the last thing you need is an entire second UI running in the background sucking more power. If MSFT gives us a switch, hell I'll even take a GPO I can script, then I'll say metro isn't a problem. but as long as it continues putting a drain on the system like a dead elephant on your back then i'll call it a fail.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Cool? by 1u3hr · 2012-04-09 19:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Now here's a cool one

Mimicking Windows is cool? Not from where I'm sitting.
1. Re:Cool? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 21:44 · Score: 0
  
  Cool? Is NOTHING sacred?
2. Re:Cool? by Idbar · 2012-04-10 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  Since I haven't used the theme yet. I'm yet to realize if it's actually cool. My Galaxy gets pretty hot when I use the GPS, if they can cool it down... that would be great.
  
  Ah... this is just a theme? What an outrage!!
3. Re:Cool? by Beat+The+Odds · 2012-04-10 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  Making Android look like Windoof is about as "cool" as sprinkling dry dogshit on your cappuccino.
  Darn right, everyone knows it's better with the fresh stuff.
4. Re:Cool? by roc97007 · 2012-04-10 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  > Making Android look like Windoof is about as "cool" as sprinkling dry dogshit on your cappuccino.
  ...but see, you rename dry dogshit as something cool sounding that trendy people must have to remain relevant with their friends. Like...
  Ok, I got nuthin.
  
  --
  Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What problem does this solve? by tftp · 2012-04-09 19:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

This whole tile madness is driven by commercial reasons. Since MS can't make a phone to be as capable as the desktop, they want to dumb the desktop down to the level of the phone. Then, they think, if everyone is trained to love the bomb ^W the Metro interface there will be more software for Windows phones, and more money for MS.
A tile (as shown) is nothing but a small application window that can't be arbitrarily resized, and that has no Z ordering. The demo on the linked page is totally confusing - my Galaxy Tab has exactly the same stock configuration of installed applications; the only difference is that all application icons are of the same size (so more fit on each screen.) I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.
1. Re:What problem does this solve? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 21:10 · Score: 0
  
  This whole tile madness is driven by commercial reasons. Since MS can't make a phone to be as capable as the desktop, they want to dumb the desktop down to the level of the phone. Then, they think, if everyone is trained to love the bomb ^W the Metro interface there will be more software for Windows phones, and more money for MS.
  A tile (as shown) is nothing but a small application window that can't be arbitrarily resized, and that has no Z ordering. The demo on the linked page is totally confusing - my Galaxy Tab has exactly the same stock configuration of installed applications; the only difference is that all application icons are of the same size (so more fit on each screen.) I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.
  I haven't tried a Win8 tablet, very few people have as the real hardware for it isn't available yet, but I have played with a new Windows Phone. And you can like or dislike the tiles, but the user experience is definitely markedly different, and in my view adding value, over static icon grid. fx. the weather tile show detailed updated location sensitive weather information without having to launch the weather app at all, you just glance at the default screen (I know some other phones achieve similar with weather as a special case for the home screen, Windows Phone does it with all apps and information you want). Other tiles show you short versions of activity or updates that can help you decide if you want to check it out at this point. A stock app can show you the current status for stocks you are most interested in, etc. Also navigating the tiles on (and in general using) a Windows Phone feels very fluid. And given that they are all single core phones, for once MS is the one not needing over powered hardware to run the OS, which is kind of interesting twist on things.
2. Re:What problem does this solve? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 21:10 · Score: 0
  
  Bunch of idiots. Stop putting Metro down, if you can't be moved to say something nice do not say anything at all...
  Just wait and see it all coming crashing down, we can all rely that if left alone MS soon or later will dig its own grave. Our task is to encourage it to always to eat it own dog food and fall into delusions of how cool it is...
  People should already have learned that by criticizing, creating divergent designs and alternatives what you are doing is permitting not only MS to acquire or replicate them but now with increasingly dangerous frequency even in correcting its ways...
  Its like promoting the easing of copyright law, we should all be pushing for a more logical copyright taxation...
3. Re:What problem does this solve? by progician · 2012-04-09 21:42 · Score: 1
  
  Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't see what is exactly the difference between the metro tiles, and the widgets on the iOS/Android home screens. With a little adjustment, one can enforce a GUI rule over the widgets. Would you imagine that on my android phone, if I get to the weather widget, it show (with animation) the current, updated, location based weather information? The MetroUI offer nothing revolutionary, it's just a skin and a set of constrains for its widgets. And the same goes for HTC Sense, iOS UI etc. The annoying part of this whole business that it should not be game changer at all. If the Microsoft believes that this "UI" is so superior, they should come up with an Android and a iOS version of it. Of course they won't, because they want to make it a signature product, which sells something completely unrelated: the OS.
4. Re:What problem does this solve? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 23:32 · Score: 0
  
  Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't see what is exactly the difference between the metro tiles, and the widgets on the iOS/Android home screens. With a little adjustment, one can enforce a GUI rule over the widgets. Would you imagine that on my android phone, if I get to the weather widget, it show (with animation) the current, updated, location based weather information? The MetroUI offer nothing revolutionary, it's just a skin and a set of constrains for its widgets. And the same goes for HTC Sense, iOS UI etc. The annoying part of this whole business that it should not be game changer at all. If the Microsoft believes that this "UI" is so superior, they should come up with an Android and a iOS version of it. Of course they won't, because they want to make it a signature product, which sells something completely unrelated: the OS.
  I shouldn't have used weather as an example, because many cover that as you correctly point out, but can you easily have 20+ widgets on your (scrolling) home screen, and all are integrated with the app they belong to and can directly activate for more info/interaction (eg. the other way around, all apps offer widget functionality)? I think that is the difference, these are not really widgets but part of the apps. I didn't really get the Metro UI (or design!) from screen shots and descriptions, but trying it out for some time was something different. I like it, and think it is an improvement (for phones, rest is yet to be seen), it is (at least feels) very effective. As for your argument about being available on other platforms, very few do that with their GUI, I don't really see that as a limitation, variance and competition is good (but, this whole post is about it becoming available for Android, if not in an official way)
5. Re:What problem does this solve? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 03:19 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.
  For dashboard tablets, I could see this making life easier for the handful of apps you might want to run in the car.
  Navigate (Waze) / music / Torque / WX.... Icons are tough to stab with a finger; a big square is much easier.
  (All comments regarding teh safety of this notwithstanding...)
Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 19:30 · Score: 5, Informative

Rather than being active as they are in WP7/WP8, the tiles here are just shortcuts. That essentially makes this a metro-looking Android launcher, which isn't really exciting, nor front page-worthy.
1. Re:Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by bartoku · 2012-04-09 21:22 · Score: 1
  
  All the need to do is make the Android "tiles" into widgets, then they can be dynamic.
2. Re:Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by gl4ss · 2012-04-09 22:32 · Score: 2
  
  it's not missing the point, it's metro style. you're missing the point. look at the screenshots. clearly there is live content in several of the tiles.
  animations and active tiles are a late addition to metro anyways, they had to think of something. but they couldn't just make them fully customizable widgets oh no... because having more functionality wouldn't be innovative(the hacky approaches needed to make nice looking custom livetiles for wp is just.. well, teh suck still).
  
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  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
3. Re:Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · 2012-04-09 23:33 · Score: 1
  
  I'm afraid that it's you that's missed the point, check out the video. Watching it, it's pretty clear that the tiles are active.
  Android has had 'active' widget/launchers for years, so I agree this skinning (like Metro itself) is not particularly exciting
  
  --
  There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
4. Re:Not "fully" functioning; missing the point by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-04-10 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  animations and active tiles are a late addition to metro anyways
  Actually, no, it's not - it's been there since WP7 (where Metro first appeared), and has always been the cornerstone of this design.
ugh by slashmydots · 2012-04-09 19:41 · Score: 1

Is this some sort of attempt to raise ill will about that unspeakably awful, unscalable, hellish nightmare of an interface before Windows 8 comes out? Because that's the only logical solution I can see. That interface is a Vista-Millenium Edition hybrid of every-other war crimes that Microsoft puts together and the fundamental design behind has been proven to not even work in betas. I mean the base level of functionality doesn't even perform computing tasks. WHY would anyone want that on their android device?
Who cares ? Well ... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 19:56 · Score: 0

... I see one use case : Windows phone user that willing to get applications by jumping to the android and not willing to loose their way of interracting.
I am still wondering how MS lost the smartphone battle !?! Really ... odd story for a corp that has pioneered the ground. In europe at least, I see no application. Maybe US is a bit different because this is a US corp (like japaneese buy Sony).
I alsot still do not understand Nokia ! Why did missed the Android traint and let the korean and chineese manufacturer alone (ok, +sony) ? There was room for highend smartphone with Nokia savoir-faire (inc. Linux !). Now they are stuck on a platorm without applications and customer. Very odd ...
Why rooted phone? by Therad · 2012-04-09 19:59 · Score: 0

Why do it need to be a rooted phone? Why isn't it just a launcher?
Ummm.... by Johnny+O · 2012-04-09 20:00 · Score: 2

Why?
1. Re:Ummm.... by Threni · 2012-04-09 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  It could have been worse - it could have been a copy of the (ironically titled) Unity interface from Ubuntu.
2. Re:Ummm.... by miffo.swe · 2012-04-09 20:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Unity is actually quite nice on a mobile phone. Its on a Desktop it sucks. The same cant be said about Metro because that baby sucks anywhere.
  
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3. Re:Ummm.... by DarwinSurvivor · 2012-04-09 20:29 · Score: 1
  
  I'll just leave this here...
  http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
4. Re:Ummm.... by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-04-10 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  Did you actually use Metro on a mobile phone?
Euwww! by miffo.swe · 2012-04-09 20:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

The last thing in the world i would want on any phone is Metro. To be frank, it sucks. The UI is clunky, unusable, inflexible and really just a try in making something diffrerent, not better.
The nerd in me says, cool a testament of just how flexible Android is, but why the worst UI in the world?

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1. Re:Euwww! by miffo.swe · 2012-04-09 21:37 · Score: 1
  
  If you talk about Gnome, it has gone to hell lately. Mostly because they took a small-screen touch based interface and tried to meld it onto a desktop. Its as stupid as taking Metro and cramming it ontop of Windows7. Oh wait...Windows 8 right?
  KDE is doing very fine on the other hand, as is LXDE, XFCE and many others that has gotten an influx of activity now that Gnome hit the wall.
  
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2. Re:Euwww! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 22:36 · Score: 0
  
  why is your opinion relevant? are you some UI expert known to create a UI that hundreds of millions of different users use daily?
3. Re:Euwww! by miffo.swe · 2012-04-10 00:02 · Score: 1
  
  You are a fool if you think UI experts have anything to say about how Windows is designed. Metro was stolen off of the Sony Ericsson X1 that was essentially Metro ontop of Windows Mobile 6.5. It is in no way, shape or form created by UI designers. And if you look at Windows 8 its utterly apparent that no UI designer has had any input whatsoever there.
  
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4. Re:Euwww! by dave420 · 2012-04-10 01:18 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's actually very usable. You might not like it, but please remember your likes and dislikes are not necessarily representative of those of others.
5. Re:Euwww! by miffo.swe · 2012-04-10 01:47 · Score: 2
  
  Judging from the high return rate of WP7 phones and their abysmal sales, im not at all alone in thinking it sucks. Seems impossible to sell them even at a loss like Nokia is doing right now.
  
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6. Re:Euwww! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 01:57 · Score: 0
  
  Vanilla GNOME 3 is a cluster fuck.
  With MGSE added it's pretty nice. Of course MSGE basically undo all the GUI concepts GNOME 3 was trying to push the process... Gotta love open source. If it goes in a direction most people don't like, we have the tools to fix it. Windows 8? Not so much.
7. Re:Euwww! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 02:54 · Score: 0
  
  Judging from the high return rate of WP7 phones and their abysmal sales, im not at all alone in thinking it sucks.
  No, you are not alone believing in myths of immanently high return rate of WP7 phones or their poor sales.
8. Re:Euwww! by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-04-10 06:21 · Score: 1
  
  Judging from the high return rate of WP7 phones and their abysmal sales, im not at all alone in thinking it sucks. Seems impossible to sell them even at a loss like Nokia is doing right now.
  That probably has more to do with mediocre hardware and very limited selection in the app store (which itself is because the SDK is managed code only, and hence does not let you port code from any other mobile platform).
9. Re:Euwww! by RightSaidFred99 · 2012-04-10 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  Lol, if by "essentially" you mean "they both have square boxes". Otherwise it's nothing like the X1. You're a fool if you don't think Microsoft has a Google ridiculously high paid Ph.D experts in UI design. Neckbeard dweebs like you who hate Microsoft will of course not like anything they do, and Microsoft fanboys will like everything they do. People in between are the people Microsoft tries to design for.
10. Re:Euwww! by DAldredge · 2012-04-10 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  I have a Nokia Lumia 900 sitting right in front of me that I use as my main phone so can you please let me know how the UI is clunky, unusable and inflexible because I use it all the time and simply don't see it.
11. Re:Euwww! by hairyfeet · 2012-04-10 13:09 · Score: 1
  
  You are right about the experts friend, please enjoy this presentation by one! And don't forget how how much better users are able to work with Win 8! you tell 'em buddy!
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
12. Re:Euwww! by miffo.swe · 2012-04-11 01:35 · Score: 1
  
  It would be nice if Microsoft released those stats to dispel the "myth". But alas, its not myths but the sad truth.
  
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Re:The summary makes it sound as if by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 20:18 · Score: 0

Copyright? On boxes arranged in a grid? Really?
Who the hell is "Brobot175"? by shiftless · 2012-04-09 20:19 · Score: 2

Maybe this is part of Microsoft's marketing strategy. You know, keeping the image fresh in people's mind, normalizing everyone to the concept of Metro.
Re:The summary makes it sound as if by DarwinSurvivor · 2012-04-09 20:26 · Score: 1

No, but there is a patent.
I got no clue by SmallFurryCreature · 2012-04-09 21:28 · Score: 3, Informative

Metro to me seems idiotic but the one thing that is very noticeable is that whoever drew its design has no love for full color drawing, it is very monochromatic if such a thing exist in color. White icons/text on single color boxes. All very stark and (to my eye) unclear. Mind you, with a lot of icon based interfaces (android, iOS and some PC setups) unclear icons can be just as confusing. As near as I can figure this is politicians logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefor it must be done.
Unclear sea of icons is confusing and something must be done, metro is something, therefor it will fix everything.
It is a new shiny, therefor it is the second coming. Until the next one.

--

MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
1. Re:I got no clue by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 05:14 · Score: 0
  
  http://i.imgur.com/QrrQa.jpg
Cool? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 21:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

You mean fool or tool
Making Android look like Windoof is about as "cool" as sprinkling dry dogshit on your cappuccino.
Next we show you how to make your Ferrari look like a Hyundai. Oh. wow.
What for? Metro sucks. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 21:57 · Score: 0

What for? Metro sucks.
metro? hell no by kobi77 · 2012-04-09 21:58 · Score: 2

Now why on earth would I want my perfectly fine android tablet look like a POS?
Launcher 7 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 23:28 · Score: 1

Has no-one seen Launcher 7. Metro launcher with active tiles capable of holding applications and widgets.
Been using it a few days now without any issues. 4/5
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.tikuwarez.launcher3&hl=en
Microsoft sucks by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-09 23:29 · Score: 0

Fuck metro, that shit is horrible.
Just rooted tablets? by DrXym · 2012-04-09 23:46 · Score: 2

One of the nifty things about Android is you can replace the default activities if you like. So if you install an activity that handles an intent you can make it the default. So why do you need to root a device to use this?
1. Re:Just rooted tablets? by tepples · 2012-04-10 01:08 · Score: 1
  
  So why do you need to root a device to use this?
  To recover the multimegabytes of space occupied by applications that are not handling an intent. A lot of phones sold in the United States come with trialware that companies pay carriers to install in such a way that they cannot be uninstalled.
2. Re:Just rooted tablets? by DrXym · 2012-04-10 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  I realise that but the standard Android compatible device document makes it mandatory that you can override the default activities. Most Android 3/4.x tablets with the exception of the Galaxy Tab are using the standard home launcher anyway so it's not like you'd be able to delete it. It does bug me the amount of crap some devices bake into their firmware though.
Celebrations in Seattle tonight? by nikonian · 2012-04-10 00:42 · Score: 1

After the numerous critical reviews of Metro, the Windows team must be breaking out the champagne on hearing that someone has actually copied their UI!
POS by tepples · 2012-04-10 01:06 · Score: 1

Now why on earth would I want my perfectly fine android tablet look like a POS?
Of course you'd want to make it look like a point of sale terminal if you're going to accept payments using it.
1. Re:POS by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 01:11 · Score: 0
  
  Haha funny? Or do you not know POS = Piece of shit...
2. Re:POS by kobi77 · 2012-04-10 01:52 · Score: 1
  
  Sarcasm?
3. Re:POS by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-10 01:54 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, probably a CMTP.
WTF are you taking your Android backwards? by Lime+Green+Bowler · 2012-04-10 01:50 · Score: 1

The dumbing-down of Windows 8 "Metro" (God, I had that monkier) interface is a huge step backwards. This hinderface (intentional) is a move to further isolate users from their computer and operating system. Yes, you can get back to a semi-explorer-ish desktop on Windows 8, but it's not the real deal. Microsoft is doing this because they want to turn Windows-based devices into appliances that they have further control over. Control over what you can load, what you can do--- unless you are willing to pay for it. Apple calls their attempt the iTunes Store. We don't need more handcuffs limiting what we can do on the devices that WE own. Every other version of Windows is a dogpile, and Windows 8 is one of those. W8 before you Windows 8.
1. Re:WTF are you taking your Android backwards? by aklinux · 2012-04-10 09:15 · Score: 1
  
  I with you. I the sucker wants Metro, he should trade down for a Windows Phone!!
This is some definition of "cool"... by roc97007 · 2012-04-10 06:10 · Score: 1

...of which I am not familiar.

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Let me know when they have Windows 3.1 on Android by roc97007 · 2012-04-10 06:18 · Score: 1

I really miss that interface.

--
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.