Windows 8 Is Ready

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Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 1, 2012 @05:53AM from the stick-a-fork-in-it dept.

New submitter drinkydoh writes "In an announcement today, Microsoft has finally said that Windows 8 is now complete. Microsoft has begun delivering RTM versions to manufacturers and the general availability of the tablets and computers using Windows 8 will be on October 26th. 'Microsoft's final milestone concludes almost two years of development for its new Metro-inspired Windows 8 software and marks the beginning of the release phase. Microsoft says MSDN and TechNet customers will be able to download it from August 15th. Windows Store will go live on August 15th. Developers will be able to access the final tools and submission process for Metro style apps at the Windows Dev Center later this month.'"

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Let the bitching begin.... by jmorris42 · 2012-08-01 05:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

Microsoft seems to repeat mistakes don't they? DOS 4.0, Bob, ME, Vista; the public reaction to all should have been predictable enough that somebody in a corporation their size should have been able to see it coming and delay or abort the release of those turds. But no, they dropped em all and took the abuse and ridicule while apparently learning nothing. Now comes Windows 8.
Maybe they will have time to get Windows 9 right, maybe not. That is what has changed, before they were an unstoppable monopoly and now? We shall see. They have offended their OEM partners with the Surface tablet, the Developers, Developers, Developers! with the knifing of Silverlight and apparently the beginning of the end for both Win32 and .NET and I'm not convinced customers are going to be all that happy with what is about to be rammed down their thoat. All at a time when their monopoly is threatened like never before. The desktop PC itself is being questioned for most users, Office is threatened by Cloud apps and even the long standing stranglehold of Blackberry + Exchange is not looking very healthy about now.
Netcraft hasn't confirmed it yet but Microsoft just might be dying. And after hating on them for decades I'm not entirely sure I'm going to applaud when they exit the stage. The PC is likely to go with them, by which I mean the open platform anyone can write programs for and create add on hardware, etc. The post Microsoft future looks like a grim world of sealed media consumption devices for most and a return to 'workstations' for the select who can afford machines costing as much as a car.
Few will question anymore that Apple is a dark force of DRM and lockin. And the release of the Nexus 7 shows Google to be fast getting in touch with their Evil side. The only major difference (other than a model years' worth of hardware refresh) between it and the equally sealed up Amazon Fire is which app/media ecosystem it is bundled to.

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1. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by skaag · 2012-08-01 05:57 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  PC era gone? but wait... Steam is coming to Linux! We're saved!
  
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2. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by garcia · 2012-08-01 06:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  According to The Ed Bott Report on ZDNet, Microsoft is turning over an entirely new leaf in its history by taking cues from Apple and developing its own hardware/software "ecosystem" (I hate that term) and alienating its OEMs which have been just as slow and lackluster as Microsoft has been over the last few years.
  If we accept Bott's analysis as at least somewhat valid, Microsoft may be on the road to recovery--at least if they develop and release products that people desire.
  They're already copying Apple and Google's consistent theme (copying "Metro" UI elements to their rebranded Hotmail, outlook.com) and they're developing software and hardware together. Perhaps he's right and this will bode well for Microsoft in the future.
  However, there is the part of me that says that those people who want that sort of thing had already jumped ship to Apple's own "ecosystem" and everyone else was just fine staying with Microsoft because of whatever reason (cost, support, application support, familiarity, etc).
  Personally I think the Metro UI (and the other unified design deals) is ridiculous and meaningless for me to get my work done and it's not going to make me move away from other products I've been using more recently. However, perhaps it will work and their demise as stated by you may be averted for another few years.
3. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by gbjbaanb · 2012-08-01 06:08 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I don't think they're killing it off, but it the "new VB". MS has rediscovered native code, so WinRT is entirely unmanaged, the .NET libs have been reworked to simply pass-through to the WinRT functionality and some minor parts removed.
  All native and cloud development is moving towards C++ again, so .NET is left as a desktop development environment. Given the performance fixes are not making it back into the desktop versions of the old libs and I doubt any additional features will be ported there (except security), and that the concept is that your Metro code for the PC can also run on a table or a phone, and the native push for those environments, I think you can see how .NET development is now a 'you can, but...' partner, not the primary focus for development.
4. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by DAldredge · 2012-08-01 06:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  See I know you know better then what you are saying so it makes me wonder why you are deliberately spreading information that is wrong and so easily verifiable as not correct. http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/TOOL-531T "And you have your choice of world-class development tools and languages. JavaScript, C#, VB, C++, C, HTML, CSS, XAML, all for X86-64 and ARM." "This is an extremely important point: If you go and build your Metro style app in JavaScript and HTML, in C# or in XAML, that app will just run when there's ARM hardware available. So, you donâ(TM)t have to worry about that. Just write your application in HTML5, JavaScript and C# and XAML and your application runs across all the hardware that Windows 8 supports." http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/ssinofsky/2011/09-13BUILD.aspx
5. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by HerculesMO · 2012-08-01 06:19 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Too bad the only games that will follow onto the Linux steam platform are games you've already beaten 5 or 6 years ago on the PC.
  Best of luck getting Valve to convince other dev studios to port games to Linux at a huge expense, when the audience simply isn't there. Linux on the desktop is dead. It's linux on the "device" that has a chance. I know why Valve is pushing towards Linux because the Windows 8 App store will eat their lunch, but realistically nothing is going to change. Windows 8 has gotten more idiot proof than usual, and that's what draws in people that don't already somehow have a PC.
  
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6. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by jmorris42 · 2012-08-01 06:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Before they had a monopoly. OEMs had no choice, neither did customers. You ran Windows, whether this year's version sucked or not. If you were an enterprise you had the option to get your new machines licensed with the non-sucking version but end users just sucked it up.
  That is what is now in doubt. Will people just sigh and buy that PC with the Win8 turd on the drive anyway, because they still feel they have no other choice, or do they go ahead and move to a tablet. Cut total boxes shipped in half and the economies of scale come into question in a world where even flat sales is considered a disaster by the stock market. AMD will certainly be dead leaving Intel to carry the workstation CPU flag forward alone. Dell would survive but HP probably dies. Enough of the chop shops and builders leave and the flood of generic 'PC' motherboard and other parts start to dry up. That is the phones/tablets/consoles vs workstation future I worry about.
  
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7. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by man_of_mr_e · 2012-08-01 06:25 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The .NET libs have always passed through to the native code, At some point native code must be called in order to function.
  
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8. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by man_of_mr_e · 2012-08-01 06:59 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  First, Microsoft usually doesn't view much of anything as a total failure. Like many, they view their mistakes as market research. When they do something really wrong, they learn from it.
  Bob may have been a failure, but they learned a lot from it, and it lead to other products like the (also abhorred but largely successful) MS Agent technology (aka clippy, fido, etc..)
  Neither ME or Vista were failures per se. ME was never intended to be anything other than a stopgap. MS had intended to transition Windows 9x users to Windows 2000, but when that got pushed back to XP, MS had to come up with a stopgap for OEM's to provide new hardware support. It was held together with chewing gum and twine, to try and extend the life for just a few months more...
  Vista, likewise, was not a failure either, in that it was never intended to be a success. It was a "hatchet man", that was put out in order to get ISV's and OEM's to follow the new security rules. It was also intended to be really annoying so that vendors would fix their software to be UAC friendly. MS knew Windows 7 would come along and replace it, and by then the issues would be solved both in vendors and software.
  DOS 4 was just a huge steaming pile, though.
  
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9. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by jmorris42 · 2012-08-01 07:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I can see where Microsoft is coming from actually. Dell, HP, etc. add almost nothing anymore. They all just rebadge stuff made in the same Chinese factories Apple, the phone makers, etc. gets their stuff from. So why leave the profits currently going to Dell and friends on the table? Cut out the middleman AND gain agility to innovate. The downside of course that with that vast 'PC' ecosystem out there competing it ensures that one lame batch of designers can't kill off the PC as a platform. And Microsoft has never been known as a 'innovator' or even particularly creative. They ain't no Apple. Heck, they have never been known to even play at the level of a Sony or Samsung. They better get really good, really fast because they have pretty much declared open season on the OEM partners.
  
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10. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by jmorris42 · 2012-08-01 07:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  > I really wish Valve would do a general App store, beyond games...
  You don't get it do you. Value does, which is why they are prepared to run a Hail Mary pass; their balls are in a vise and they know it.
  Once the Microsoft Market takes over there is no place for a third party store. The App stores aren't about the improved customer experience. They aren't about security. The whole point of the App Store model is everyone saw Apple rake off thirty thick juicy points from each and every sale and Microsoft wants in. If they don't do it today, they will do it next version; only App Store purchased apps will run and any 'in app' purchases will be required to be fulfilled through the app store, exactly the same rules as Apple so no possibility of an Anti-Trust action cranking up.
  Steam on WIndows will be as impotent as Amazon is on iProducts.
  And yes Apple will also eventually pull the trigger on OS X apps being required to come from the App Store, and for the same reason. To them the question is "Do we want 30% of the sticker price on Adobe's Creative Suite and all those high priced plugins, fonts, etc?" And if you ask that question the only possible answer is pretty obvious, isn't it?
  
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11. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by mcgrew · 2012-08-01 07:49 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Although I agree that W8 is a clusterfuck of epic proportions, a lot of what you say just doesn't hold water.
  That is what has changed, before they were an unstoppable monopoly and now?
  They're still an unstoppable monopoly; try buying a PC with a different OS.
  I'm not convinced customers are going to be all that happy with what is about to be rammed down their thoat.
  Their customers are OEMs and enterprises, not you or me. I'm not their customer, Acer is; I'm Acer's customer. Enterprise customers are likely to skip 8 like they did Vista, we'll see whether or not OEMs start shipping Linux desktops (I, for one, would be happy if they did).
  All at a time when their monopoly is threatened like never before.
  Their monopoly is in desktop operating systems and office software, where is the threat?
  The desktop PC itself is being questioned for most users
  For every home computer, there are ten in the workplace, the tablet may replace PCs in most homes, but I wouldn't bet too much money on it.
  Office is threatened by Cloud apps
  Pure marketing hype. "The cloud" is unlikely to gain traction among enterprise users, even very many home users.
  "The post Microsoft future looks like" Mark Twain, who said "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". Mocrosoft isn't even in the doctor's office, let alone the grave. And if Microsoft went away, OEMs would just use Linux or Android or BSD. Computers aren't going away any time soon.
  
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12. Re:Let the bitching begin.... by jamstar7 · 2012-08-01 08:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Windows 8 has gotten more idiot proof than usual, and that's what draws in people that don't already somehow have a PC.
  Thing is, make something idiot proof, the universe evolves a better class of idiots.
  
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This can only mean one thing by l0ungeb0y · 2012-08-01 05:55 · Score: 5, Funny

Lotus wont run!
Nor much of anything else for that matter.
Brace yourselves by Rinikusu · 2012-08-01 05:57 · Score: 5, Funny

Everyone on slashdot is about to become a UI expert.

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1. Re:Brace yourselves by Sir_Sri · 2012-08-01 06:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  After using windows 8 for an hour you'll at least know what not to do.
2. Re:Brace yourselves by gmuslera · 2012-08-01 06:02 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  start using it?
3. Re:Brace yourselves by slashmydots · 2012-08-01 06:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Well I actually am a UI designer (.NET even) and Metro is a crime against computing. Whoever invented it should be shot. No sub directories? The whole thing turns microscopic if you install too many things? Apps mixed in with what you're actually looking for? Ugh.
4. Re:Brace yourselves by zlives · 2012-08-01 06:15 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  thats because you are viewing it in 2d only... its optimized for immersive 3d display technology on a 80 inch screen. just put on your 3d glasses and it will all make sense.
5. Re:Brace yourselves by NatasRevol · 2012-08-01 06:34 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  How? There's no Start button. 20 years of memory mapping, down the toilet.
  
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6. Re:Brace yourselves by turkeyfeathers · 2012-08-01 06:35 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Apparently, what is hard is coming up with a sucky GUI... I hear it took Microsoft two years.
7. Re:Brace yourselves by vux984 · 2012-08-01 08:11 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No sub directories? The whole thing turns microscopic if you install too many things?
  Uh... no... it pages.
  Apps mixed in with what you're actually looking for? Ugh.
  Uh... no... search results are categorized.
  I don't dispute that you are a UI designer, but I seriously question whether you've actually used Windows 8 yet.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product by jmorris42 · 2012-08-01 05:57 · Score: 5, Informative

Says the account with exactly three posts, all posted today and all praising Windows 8.

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They are ready to hit... by sinij · 2012-08-01 06:00 · Score: 4, Funny

MS is ready to hit START BUTTON with Win8 production.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product by zlives · 2012-08-01 06:02 · Score: 4, Funny

at first i was like.. shill? but then i was like... douche?
Re:TERRIBLE! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-01 06:09 · Score: 4, Informative

For the RC^HP it was optional, but not that obvious (like a cop and reading your rights). In RTM you MUST use an e-mail account to install the non-enterprise OSes. You can make it all up but you will regret it.
Re:I can't not wait. by tetrahedrassface · 2012-08-01 06:09 · Score: 4, Funny

Yeah I like you... Is that bad?
Killing the Start Button... by jdastrup · 2012-08-01 06:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

Killing the Start Button is like building a house without a front door. Sure, I use the garage door 99% of the time. According to Microsoft, this is reason to get rid of the front door.
What matters is the kernel by MSRedfox · 2012-08-01 06:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Everyone complains about the new Metro interface. I've been running Win8 preview for a while now and while I've adapted to the new interface, it does still bugs me. But complaining about it is like arguing about KDE vs Gnome; you can castrate the Metro interface to look like Win7 with 3rd party software. What really matters is the kernel. It may break some applications and for those people Win8 is a bad choice. But from my experience, the new kernel is runs better than Win7 (which is saying a lot given how much better 7 was than Vista). Several games I tested got a nice frame-per-second boost (or at least performed equally) under Win8 vs Win7. So for me it's worth it to upgrade but I suppose your mileage may vary and as benchmarks come out we can see more about how the kernel performs on different systems.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product by konaya · 2012-08-01 06:16 · Score: 5, Informative

It's not Windows hatred per se, although that certainly is a healthy attitude. It's just that everytime a Microsoft-related article pops up, a brand new user starts blindly praising whatever Microsoft's been doing this time around. It's getting old, Microsoft.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product by smittyoneeach · 2012-08-01 06:19 · Score: 5, Funny

And then Freddie Mercury came on and I was like. . .scaramouche?

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Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product by nukenerd · 2012-08-01 06:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

It is downvoted because his post is almost certainly a plant by the /. management to wind us up and get us going. First post for a longish piece of writing, with good grammar and spelling, by someone with only three posts ever to his account? I don't believe it.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product by BenLeeImp · 2012-08-01 06:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

You use a subscriber account to read the articles early, but use a different account to post shill. Just keep mashing F5 on the main page with your text ready in notepad. That way you avoid the karma hit and recognition as a shill poster. Just make a new one when it outlives its usefulness.
I'm not sure how it can be fixed off the top of my head. Maybe prevent new accounts from getting top post until they've made X other posts?
Re:TERRIBLE! by camperdave · 2012-08-01 10:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

So yeah, you still press Start to Stop your PC.
What is people's beef with starting a shutdown process?

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