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Microsoft: Windows 8 To RTM In August
nk497 writes "Microsoft has confirmed Windows 8 will RTM the first week of August, with general availability in late October. Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year — spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices. From the article: 'Tami Reller, chief financial officer and chief marketing officer of the Windows and Windows Live division, confirmed the release date at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto today, as she showed off a host of Windows 8 devices created by the software giant's manufacturing partners.'"
Were journalists allowed to touch any of them this time?
Question: is there any reason for PC users to consider this OS, or is it only for tablets?
Microsoft has announced that the release date will be pushed out to Friday, December 21, 2012
1. Windows 8 was well tested by the masses. And I consistently saw the same complaints from most news shops and users.
2. Microsoft is still releasing Windows 8 on time rather than listening to any of the criticism levied during testing.
3. They have slashed the price really low. I do think they heard the criticism and know that consumers don't want Windows 8, but maybe if it is really cheap, people will buy it anyway.
Here's the problem. Why should I pay money to make my OS worse? Microsoft should listen to the criticism from testing and improve their product and then sell it for full price.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Microsoft has confirmed Windows 8 will RTM the first week of August
So we do not have to read the manual ourselves? That's most cool.
The beginning. The year of the Linux desktop. Not
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
1000+ posts on how it sucks, how it's a failure.
Perhaps a few dozen saying otherwise.
10,000 posts attacking the "shills"
Oh, and throw in a few spam comments for good measure, and maybe a few libertarian anarchists proclaiming how this wouldn't happen if we had a free market.
Released to WTF sounds more appropriate.
Four stories after a submission asking if grammar matters any more, we find this gem of a sentence in the summary:
Steve Ballmer suggested Microsoft expected Surface to sell "millions" of the 375m Windows 8 PCs expected to sell in the next year â" spending much of the keynote talking about partners' devices.
Comparing Win8 to ME or Vista is unfair to Win8.
The really sad part about Win8 is Metro. There is a LOT to like about the underlying OS (password unmask, much better taskmanager, and many other small improvements), and I have no reason to think that the OS itself will be unstable like ME or Vista.
If Microsoft would fix Metro on the desktop (It may be fine for tablets and phones), Win8 would be something I would like. However, as it currently stands, I won't "upgrade" until I have a good, stable way to disable Metro and use the other features of the OS.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Windows 8 will RTM the first week of August, with general availability in late October.
Why does it take two months? I'm assuming they mean "release to manufacturing" not something like "register trademark" or "remember the milk" (a shopping list app, maybe it'll be released on winderz 8 then, I donno)
Do they mean general availability as in boxes printed in China on shelves in the US which means they're cheaping out on the shipping which at least makes sense, or general availability as in manufacturers gold copy chock full of bloatware is ready to be shoveled out / I mean imaged onto new device hard/flash drives, in which case 2 months is pretty pitiful, or ready for download from .torrent sites in October (oh wait, I think they'll do better than that)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
finally someone will Read The Manual
... a wonderful bag a bugs!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
... of the discussion. You're as predictable as everyone else.
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/09/upcoming-windows-milestones-shared-with-partners-at-wpc.aspx/
If people can't seem to let go of XP, and Win 7 is still relatively new and quite stable, what reason is there to get Win 8? Mind, if I want a tablet, i'm probably going with Android or iOS not the 4th or 5th player to the game (after blackberry and web os and others).
I mean who uses the GUI to do much work in Windows anyway? Pfffft , cmd.exe is all I need!
I mean really. People get Windows on their PC's because the have no choice. In the tablet market they do. Why would anyone choose to be under Microsoft's oppressive thumb if they didn't have to be?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I suspect if Apple could find a way to ship a sub 600 dollar MacBook they'd own the traditional PC market inside of 2 years. Entry level products and pricing in that area is the biggest thing holding them back. Of course, they'd have to build less expensively and accept a lower absolute margin but they'd kill MS in the consumer sector.
There's a small problem in the way of Microsoft having success with their tablet: Apple.
Since when "RTM" has become a verb?
Was it that difficult to write " Windows 8 will be Ready To Market the first week of August"?
Release to market... didn't even think of that one. I assumed it meant release to manufacturing. A kind of crucial distinction.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well I sure didn't like it. What the hell were they thinking with that interface?
Having dropped the Start Menu in the initial release, and cluttered the desktop with boring tiles, the first Windows 8 maintenance service pack will replace those tiles with a host of animated sprites. Click on the Pearly "Gates" to access the Cloud. Click on the lie detector sprite to verify your CD has been paid for using the Microsoft Trusted Customer Media Player. Click on the flying chair to register a bug report.
I suspect if Apple could find a way to ship a sub 600 dollar MacBook
Called the ipad with a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse? Its not that farfetched of a lifestyle. I use my (old?) ipad-1 with a bluetooth keyboard and a ssh app all the time at home.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Hmm... I always thought RTM = Release to manufacturing. Or minimally that the 'R' is release, even if the 'M' is market.
Fear is the mind killer.
I like it despite the interface, for the power of things like automator, working 3d support, working audio out of the box, a touchpad that is actually awesome, etc.
The UI is my least favorite part of OS X, but its still better than the mish-mash of buggy desktop apps you get with KDE or Gnome (which I still frequently check out).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
No one I know wants Windows 8. No one I know is even talking about it. I don't want Windows 8. I don't want Windows RT. I don't care about Microsoft products anymore. No one I know does. The last time I paid for an MS product was a promotional copy of Windows 7 Ultimate for $30 from one of their retail partners I worked at. I got a copy of Office 2007 from my University for $10. I will never purchase another MS product at full price. The only way they could get me to upgrade is by knocking 90% off the retail price.
I have decided to stop giving them my money, and I've switched almost entirely to Apple. I'd much rather use Mac or Linux, since nowadays there is more support than ever for comparable programs to run on those platforms.
MSFT will slowly fade into obscurity. Consumers, and even businesses, don't care about them anymore. The only people who will buy their products are big businesses, OEMs and college students who can already get the software for 90% off. And heck I don't even know any big businesses who have upgraded their systems from Windows XP. I know a small handful who have gone to Windows 7.
Ballmer is a clueless prick, and he doesn't care about providing good products so much as he cares about playing political games with Microsoft employees. Plus, he's an egomaniac, who refuses to believe that MS ever does anything wrong.
Metro is the result of a few "powerful" interests at MS protecting their collective asses. It's easier for them to just shove Metro out there, and then start pointing fingers when everyone hates it, than it is to risk the wrath of idiot managers like Ballmer and his cronies.
Ballmer needs to be replaced if MS wants to be relevant in the future.
Anyone else reading that as "Windows Millstones"? Just you, me, and all their "partners", I suspect.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I agree, but they don't do cheap. Give it a couple of years though and the ipad will take care of that. No, the tablet won't evolve itself so much, more that the apps that normal people actually want to use will. Grandma and Grandpa want to do their banking, shopping, organise their photos / videos, talk to their kids and read things on the internet. A tablet will do all that and more.
People/apps just haven't caught up yet - the vast majority of end users who want a cheap laptop would actually be better served by a locked-down (as in, secure) tablet, they just don't know it yet.
Sure, there's a niche of tech savvy users who want more for less money, but that market segment isn't statistically significant, imho.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I have been testing Windows 8 on my tablet PC for months now, and it's been a horrible experience. The interface is very cumbersome. It's difficult to find your programs and settings without a real Start Menu, and why have two different browsers (Metro and Desktop)? Also, any computer with an Intel Chipset of 865-965 is not fully supported (most PC's from a few years ago). Startup is fast, but some applications will not work properly unless you do a full restart. Oh, and the stylus keyboard only shows up when using the Metro Apps, you have to manually bring up the keyboad when using the desktop apps. And who thought of making it so hard to access the shutdown menu? What were they thinking?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Around Windows 7, Microsoft said it would speed up the pace of releasing OSes (so you wouldn't get 10 years of silence like after XP), but I'm not sure it was a good decision. It seems the point of Windows 8 is just to release something for release sake. Maybe it would instead have made more sense to milk Windows 7 longer and hold next release until you have something cool to bring on the table. Instead of a clunky and ugly tablet interface with some Explorer tweaks. :)
Ur... yeah, I misread that. The actual article is much less useful.
The quality of Apple's touchpads have done more to sell me on their stuff than anything else. The discrete models work excellently on Android as well enabling all the multi-touch goodness and the smoothness stomps anything else even the touchpad on my brother's Transformer Prime.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Release to marketing would sure explain why we get Metro after all.
Apples claim that they do not get virus/trojan/whatever was not supported by facts, but instead was supported by history. Apple has changed their marketing, but not their products.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The Windows 8 UI is atrocious and probably will kill Microsoft, as well as Microsofts announcements they are going to screw over users from upgrading from older versions of Windows by deleting their settings. I think people would have to be insane to consider upgrading to Windows 8 considering the UI is unuseable and a disaster and so on. Microsoft is really committing suicide with this and is basically telling its users "fuck you" and deterring users who would actually buy an upgrade.
I would like to say Linux is a better choice, but Ubuntu has the same problems with its atrocious Unity interface. Yes, it can be disabled, but that sort of misses the point that Ubuntu is supposed to be user friendly, most users when encountering Unity will just give up on Linux right away as this is what they will think Linux is like, its those first impressions.
The start menu and task bar model "just works", is easy to use, makes sense, etc. It is clear, it is simple, it is not too obtrusive, it is categorized and easy to find things and so on. There are just things which you cannot improve on, where things have gotten to such a point of perfection that messing with it can only make it worse. I think start menu and task bar is such a point of perfection and trying to mess with it invariably makes things worse. Both Microsoft and Ubuntu appear obsessed with novelty, for change for the sake of change, which is very bad design motivation. They are more concerned with trying to be edgy than they are about being concerned with what the users need.
Return The Mayonnaise?
Rent To Muslims?
Run Towards Montana?
They're still immune to "pc viruses".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
But I thought they said the PC was dead. Assuming "tens of millions" would have been stated, had it been the case, that's 1 tablet-like device for every 37 PCs. I guess even they don't believe their idiotic predicitions.
By the way, much more importantly (since Win8 is Vista 2.0 or even ME 3.0) how long will Windows 7 be available and from where? Anyone know?
No, its actually got 3x the battery life, less weight than the notebook, doesn't have some cheesy as shit feeling keyboard and doesn't run Windows. It has a library of software that is totally sandboxed with no DLL cross compatibility issues, no viruses, and transparent cloud backup. Lose your device? Log into a new one, job done.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
English has been outsourced.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They thought they wrote TFM years ago.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think Linux's problems with being suitable for users at this point boils down to hardware support issues, and as well the compability issues with applications they use on Windows, and the fact that the more Ubuntu's developers try to make user interface user friendly, the more user unfriendly it becomes because they do not understand that removing features and customizability, and whacked out user interface design does not make things easier to use. The more Ubuntu morons have tried to mess with the user interface, the worse it has become, Unity is as bad as Windows 8, it is a jumbled confusing mess.
The huge mistake of some in the Linux community is that if they make a user interface so idiotic only an idiot can use it, it will make Linux popular, is a huge mistake. Instead what we end up with a user interface which is totally unuseable and infexible for everyone. In fact the more people such as Ubuntu have tried to mess around with the user interfaces, the worst, the more perplexing and unuseable they have become. The Obsession with minimalism is a disease and it has made it so even I cannot figure out easily how things work, its as if it has become sort of a puzzle. The fact is for a user interface to be useable it needs to be very feature rich, very flexible with lots of settings and features. The useability is in layout, in puting the more frequently used features up front, in categorization and in putting more advanced things in advanced screens and so on. What we have ended up with on Unity is an utterly confusion and unuseable, inflexible user interface that is basically useless because it assumes users are idiots, added to the dismal hardware support on Linux and the inability of users to run many Windows applications. The result is an operating system that is very user unfriendly.
English has been outsourced.
to Martians. Even Italians can write it right.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
But if they don't make some fancy GUI changes, then I'd be willing to bet that a *lot* of people are going to say "what's different about this? Why would I spend money on a new windows that looks the same as the old one"
Sadly, "it runs better" seems to be second-place compared to "fancy eye-candy" for many consumers, but the two are often mutually exclusive when you want it to run well on older machines.
You're forgetting the fact that most Business, Small or Large, require the use of a standard desktop to do their work. Most Businesses are not going to try and adopt the Metro Interface with Touchscreens for all their employees, and somehow make it work with all the special apps they use. It would be an IT Department Nightmare! Microsoft wants to develop a new GUI, fine, just target this new interface for the right platform, don't force everyone to adopt something that won't work for 90% of the people who will use it.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Why not look at this as an opportunity to write your own desktop? MS's failures in the past have served a a chance for smart developers to fill in the holes with anti virus software, disk management software, etc.
Windoze is finally going to RT(F)M? Does this mean they are finally going to learn how to write an operating system?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
RTM does not mean Ready to Market... It either means Release to Manufacturing or Release to Marketing.
No I'm not forgetting that. I remember that exact same argument when DOS based computers came out, AND when Windows PCs came out. Why will it be different this time? What is prohibiting business from migrating to tablets as applications advance? No one is forcing anyone to do anything, it will happen over time, naturally.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
That would be great. Let me know when you get them to support a mouse! :)
We a couple Android tablets that work for remote-desktop because they support a mouse, but to the best of my knowledge apps are not allowed to support a mouse.
Jorgie
I don't really see how people can say Metro is a bad design, it's actually very visually pleasing and modern; Apple pushes together design elements that don't even make sense together, look at their calendar; it looks awful. Where Windows 8 fails is that it forces so much color in the interface with little to no purpose. The idea of a live tile is a good idea, but I think where the divide happens between the good use of Metro and the bad use of it, is that some things don't need live tiles, some things need something more or less...and Microsoft has yet to figure out what the balance is. For all intensive purposes Metro has HUGE potential, and it will be copied, like it or not, not because Microsoft is the key player, but because it's genuinely a beautiful interface if it's done right. Metro apps are far and above better looking than the iOS counterparts, but there is -something- missing from it, and I can't really put my finger on it. It's really that sometimes, it's just too simple. I don't think Microsoft's flaw is Metro, I think it's too undeveloped at this point to know how to make it really stand out. The new start menu is pretty ugly, but then some of the apps are simply amazing to look at. How does Microsoft balance this? I don't know, but saying it's ugly is just stupid; don't judge Metro on the start menu, look at the apps.
Not bugs! Features!
Apple's Mountian Lion Gold Master was released today as well.
http://www.tuaw.com/2012/07/09/apple-releases-mountain-lion-gold-master-to-developers/
It will probably SHIP this month too.
People/apps just haven't caught up yet - the vast majority of end users who want a cheap laptop would actually be better served by a locked-down (as in, secure) tablet, they just don't know it yet.
Right now Siri is beta (and IMHO not quite baked), but in two years, it will be a decent input method that doesn't suck. Do away with the need for the keyboard and tablets will reign supreme, with the iPad squatting on the sweet spot of the price-profit curve.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
No BIOS, no DOS or Windows compatability layers. The amiga, mac and atari ST all used the same processor too, that didn't make them the same platform.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Just hadn't heard of an instance in which Apple had downgraded one of their products.
Always looking to learn something new.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Who cares about Windows 8 ? It's just more bloated garbage from Microsoft - a company that is now becomming increasingly irrelevant in todays IT domain. Google has seen to that.