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Microsoft Co-founder Dings Windows 8 As 'Puzzling, Confusing'
CWmike writes "Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has called Windows 8 'puzzling' and 'confusing initially,' but assured users that they would eventually learn to like the new OS. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, left the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. In a post to his personal blog on Tuesday, Allen said he has been running Windows 8 Release Preview — the public sneak peak Microsoft shipped May 31 — on both a traditional desktop as well as on a Samsung 700T tablet, designed for Windows 7. 'I did encounter some puzzling aspects of Windows 8,' Allen wrote, and said the dual, and dueling user interfaces (UIs), were confusing. 'The bimodal user experience can introduce confusion, especially when two versions of the same application — such as Internet Explorer — can be opened and run simultaneously,' Allen said."
Or we'll fucking kill you!!
Users will like it in the end. Just like people like Ribbon now, even if they were confused first.
Still not as good as a linux desktop or a pure android tablet
I see this mistake being made all the damn time and, well, it's STILL "sneak peek." A peak is e.g. the top of a mountain or a sudden, high jump in a graph whereas peek is about taking a quick look at something.
For me it's quite simple Windows 8 interface doesn't make me more productive.
Looking at my physical desktop, I don't have fancy clocks, tons of post-its, shinny gadgets... No, just a couple of books, some papers. I don't want distractions. I want to be focused on my work.
I'll leave Windows, I'll return to GNU/Linux now that it's more matured, tons of great applications an a solid OS.
I find it pretty sad that even Allen is finding problems with it. I can't say I understand the necessity of making a workstation OS easy-to-use on a phone. They should have been focusing on making it work better on, you know, workstations. For example, I have 3960x1600 pixels of resolution on my current workstation, and windows is a complete dog in terms of window management. How exactly does Windows 8 address this? It doesn't, but gee, it works great on a cellphone/tablet, which maybe I'd care about if I actually ran Visual Studio on a fucking cell phone. As it stands, this UI is an inconsistent piece of garbage, whose sole purpose seems to be to force me to waste my time learning how to use their mobile UI, in the hopes that maybe I'll be more likely to buy one of their tablets.
But at least Windows allows you to switch back to the old style interface...
Right now, the great majority of people don't have a choice. Corporations need Windows, and when MS says "jump", they fucking JUMP. But they're tired of it.
Google, with a beefed-up ChromeOS, could truly disrupt the status quo - include WINE so that it can run a select few Win32 apps - notably MS Office -, make it manageable remotely, and a lot of desktops will migrate to ChromeOS.
Not easy, but Google is the only who can pull it off. And should - since Win 8 is a walled garden environment, about to shut the others out.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Considering that there are standard data formats readable today that date back to the 1960s - they are so old that they have EBCDIC headers instead of ASCII - Microsoft really have no excuse for their hidden, shifting then obsolete data formats. When you can't even open a file with the newer version of the software it was written on that is a bit bit of a kick in the nuts of your previous customers.
Rodger Ramjet in one episode had to fly to Betternot Peak :)
Maybe the Linux community will get an influx of people that are fed up.
Illiteracy still rules at Slashdot under new management.
Return your geekcard as it has been rendered null and void, you blithering idiot.
If a geek like Paul Allen finds it confusing, I can imagine the plight of the layman user who upgrades from Windows 7 to 8.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Android runs excellently as a desktop OS. If you want a sneak peak, take a mouse and one of those OTG cables and plug it into a smart phone, or a tablet. You suddenly have a mouse cursor. Grab a Galaxy Note and then you have multiple windows too. Only it all works with touch, sensors, GPS, always on, the tablet features.
I don't think Corps will give up Windows, certainly not for Chrome. I think that more and more devices will be Android and the focus will shift until it reaches a tipping point.
We went through this with Open Office, the cost of MS Office was just too much, the ribbon nobody liked, a few people switched, then a few more, then management wanted cost savings, and we all switched.
Visual Studio we switched from to Eclipse because we needed to do more development in Java, that was because Android runs Java and server side we always used Java. So it made sense to switch. Personally I don't like Eclipse, it's messy, confused, typical IBM crud, but it is better for Java. No magic decision, no big brave choice, we just needed to use Eclipse more and Visual Studio use is fading away, mainly for maintenance of non-Java code now.
We'll probably keep Windows on the desktop, at least for the next iteration, but the hardware guys say we don't get a new PC this cycle, they'd prefer to spend the budget on tablets and smartphones. So I wonder what a few years will bring in the desktop market too.
He also said Windows 8 is innovative: "Windows 8 is innovative and sometimes puzzling,"
As Win8 puts emphasis on the Modern UI apps, I have been pondering something. This summer when I dug into the world of creating graphical applications (Qt, GTK), I found out that the price for all the boilerplate code and abstractions was huge. That made me think that maybe HTML5/JS could actually be the nicer way to create complex UIs. Am I right or am I wrong? I have played with the idea of creating an e-mail application myself and, started to think about the option of actually creating the UI using HTML and all the business logic in C++. That approach seems to work relatively OK for apps like Steam, for example.
Not wrong its confusing. I have installed the RTM and I was out at a customers today that just got their first iMac and saying how different and confusing it was. I pulled out my laptop and showed them windows 8. Lets just say they felt a little better.
One hears the argument that a main reason for not switching to linux from Windows is the cost of retraining, especially when it comes to applications. The argument has often puzzled me. I hear tell that some companies are still using Windows XP because of the cost of conversion to other systems. The cost of conversion to Windows 8 will be pretty high, I would suspect. On the other hand, one of the nifty things about linux is that once you get it a you like, it can stay that way for a long time.
Although the underpinnings have changed over time (e.g., I moved from icewm to awesome wm), the "look and feel" of my "desktop" has only changed very incrementally since about 1998. The applications have got snazzier, of course, but, even there, the basic layout hasn't changed.
Best wishes,
Bob
. . . like mold.
"Learn to like" was a poor choice of words, considering the industry prefers phrases like, "Will bedazzle your balls off!" and "This new UI will make you cream in your jeans so often, that you won't need porn any more!" and "Our stuff sucks, use Nokia Maps instead!"
Microsoft is striving to be more like Apple now, with producing hardware, and all. So why don't they also do what Apple did, and bring back the original founder? He's tanned, rested, and ready for a new fight.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Funny. This what respective communities said when they radically change Linux windows managers. KDE, Gnome3, Unity. The UI of any OS changes so people will get used to it. Windows 8 is the way it is because Microsoft is preparing their OS for the touchscreen usage on every device long before any Linux distro is.
I mean there are some people that actually like it and have written so but you wouldn't know it coming here. That is unless we're only interested in hearing bad news.....oh right....
throw new NoSignatureException();
It's called Stockholm syndrome.
No matter how forced, abusive or unwanted, you'll eventually feel a connection.
Sorry Microsoft, I'll pass on this particular PC hostage-taking attempt and wait for better OS. Windows 7 is more than good enough for the next five years.
I was going to write I actually have come to like it but my fingers borked at it and I realised it's not true. I've been using it for weeks now at work and have come to peace with the UI. I have learned how to work my way around its nuisances without circumventing it entirely (I made a concious effort to work within the Windows 8 framework rather than just avoid it altogether as I figured I need to at least know how to use it).
In short, I hate not having a start menu and I hate note being able to just start typing an application name to find it and run it (I know I can press windows+f in Win 8 but it's no where near as easy).
However, I will say this. Windows 8 and more importantly Server 8 is fucking brilliant -under the hood-. The ability to natively team NICs, ReFS, the *enormous* improvement that is SMB3, better clustering, better management of machines from one location, storage spaces, the improvements in Hyper-V etc leave me stunned - compared to Server 2008 it's like comparing Windows 2000 and Windows 98. The underlying tech is miles in front of the old architecture. It's just such a pity they put this bloody interface on at the same time and made it compulsory because a lot of people are going to skip on Win8 and never notice how damn good the underneath tech actually is, this time around.
Surely its no coincidence that after Ubuntu switched to Unity Microsoft is releasing a confusing UI that nobody wants and saying "you will like it, really you will"!
Tell you what - try remote managing a Win7/8 machine purely via the command line (of course you'll have to install sshd since MS don't bother to ship one) then get back to me about how much "better" the windows one is.
You will grow to like it: not a prediction, a directive.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Ripping my Windows key out.
I can just use F1 as a replacement. Nothing uses F1 for anything productive either, just to annoy you.
When I can rip the entirety of that crapfest of a UI out and replace it with my own without the rest of Windows throwing 50 fits/second.
I done the same in XP, you better believe I will do the damn same in Windows 8 if I even waste my time to get it. (games are the only reason I would get it)
You know, I think I might just wait till Win9. That's the next good one after all.
Or that there um Loonexes or what have you, you know that hacker OS all the big bad evil terrorists use.
Anyone got a Linux dealer? Meet me at the statue tomorrow night.
Super Mario Bros 3?
Almost everything MS has done to Windows since 2000 has been a mistake.
First the exceptions: 48Bit HD Addressing, 64 Bit Computing, and Cleartype.
Just off of the top of my head, here are a few things that went wrong with XP and W7.
XP's Melted plastic interface.
XP's and forward has different sized windows controls.
Visa/7's has huge memory footprint, too large for a phone, and delayed services.
W7's Computer logs are slow as molasses on my 3.4 2600k, with 16GB ram. It takes a minute to open and check the hardware log. Some logs cannot be cleared by the user through the UI.
The W7 small start button orb is too large for the rest of the bar, but otherwise the bar is good, that's why they will be changing it in W8.
Personal menus were a waste of user time. Menus are faster to use if they don't change.
In W7 many file properties like filesize are more tedious to retrieve.
Vista and W7 take a long time to boot.
Briefcases were a nice idea, but they crashed and were never fixed.
Too much indexing going on in the background. I cannot belief that W7 defaults to reading through every file you have.
Windows update should have never been done in a web browser. What were they training people for?
W7 needlessly removes all but 2 power schemes.
W7 audio is abyssal, with huge lag and delay recording anything with preview.
System restore takes up too much space on large drives. 10% of 3TB is too much. I patch windows to fix it.
Windows 7 updater is so stupid it won't even take the service pack first.
Desktop gadgets failed and died.
The idea that you would separate 32 and 64 bit programs into 2 folders was just plain messy.
Local, Roaming, LocalLow gave too many places to look for stuff.
W7 backpadaled meaning we still have the word "My" in front of everything.
W7 networking is slow out of the box.
In W7 deleting or copying files is slower than XP or 2000.
W7 hangs all the time in odd places, such as when opening "My computer"
They removed Regclean for the sake of registry cleaning companies.
They made the defrag less informative and stopped freespace optimization for the sake of defrag companies.
Anyway, from what I have seen of W8 is W7+W7phone. Windows 8 looks like quite the pigeon-rat. It's too large to be a phone OS and too limited to be a desktop system. I feel bad that I have an expensive CAD program as well as Photoshop, and have only this crap of Apple's walled in garden of weak hardware to choose from. Maybe they will fix Gnome 3, and add the dual pane back into Nautilus. Perhaps they will bring back the minimize button.
I am very disappointed with Microsoft, Apple, Android, Ubuntu, and Gnome, and there is no where else to turn : (
I would think that if Gnome got rid of hot corners, un-dumbed Nautilus, and brought back multi-pane windows, it would be the best of the above.
I am not chattin, texting, and facebooking all day. I write books, whole 110,000 word books, and sometimes, I actually have more than open at once! I edit large photoshops documents, once again, more than one open at once.
The thing of it is: we need to work on these computers!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
he talks like we have no other alternatives than windows these days, he is out of touch
Microstiff's Upgrade Path ....Windows 8 = Vista (Cough, Cough) = Windows Millennium
Yeah, they should have gotten someone important... like why couldn't they find the guy who came up with the company name Micro-Soft or something? I bet he's pretty important!
what is this "microsoft" that everyone keeps blathering on about?
:)
*goes back to bash prompt* - cos he really hates prompt
Given Microsoft's dismal history with mobile platforms, the prospects for Surface's success seem questionable. It's entirely possible that a year or two from now the only significant installed base of Microsoft's tablet interface will be found on PCs, not tablets.
"For example, bookmarks I create in Windows 8 style IE are not available in IE when run from Desktop view. One can hope this will be fixed in a future release."
"it can be quite difficult to position your pointer in the right corner of the screen to display the Charms bar if another monitor is to the right." (This charms thing does not open any other way in desktop, good luck for pixel hunting with multiple monitors)
"I'd like to be able to leave the Start screen up on my primary monitor for use as a dashboard of sorts. But whenever I click a monitor that displays the desktop, the Start screen disappears." (Screw you with multiple monitors, again!)
"Personally, I think it would have been nice to provide some sort of a visual cue indicating that commands are available, and how to invoke them." (Not intuitive!)
"In Windows 8, users will be surprised when they are switched unexpectedly between the desktop and Windows 8 style applications." (You cannot use the desktop mode without the damned W8 mode popping up all the time, great)
"To ensure that URLs always open in Internet Explorer in Desktop view, I opened the Internet Options dialog in Internet Explorer and on the Programs tab specified that links should always open on the desktop." (Default settings force you to w8-mode, you have to configure to get the desktop mode as pervasive)
Honestly who really cares about what Paul Allen thinks? He hasn't been relevant in 30 years.
What am I missing here? You can open 2 versions of IE and that's confusing? When was it ever possible NOT to open more than one version?
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Also, in English, we use the apostrophe character to mark the genitive case in most instances, so either you were out with plural customers who had collectively just bought an iMac, in which case "a" conflicts in number with "customers," or the customer is singular, and you meant "customers."
In one of the more confusing aspects of English it's does mean the genitive case of it, but instead it is a contraction for "it is." Thus, in English, "its confusing" is a gerund that belongs, to either WinXP or osx, your reference is vague, but presumably OSX. One could say "Not wrong, its confusing" followed by a dative or genitive phrase, e.g. "confusing to the users."
Hope that clears up some of the confusion. Next week, why self-serving self-inconsistent anecdotes are weak support for a thesis.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Microsoft really have no excuse for their hidden, shifting then obsolete data formats.
What are you talking about? Can you name any Microsoft data format not covered in: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd208104(PROT.10).aspx? Hell, even the DOC, XLS and PPT formats are documented to the last bit: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313118.aspx Not to mention Office 2013 opens Office 97 documents... Ups, I forgot, this is Slashdot :)
Once upon a time there was this great, new concept for an OS called OS/2 Warp 3 - it was object oriented and really cool; and it completely failed to win the customers over. Because it was initially very confusing until you figured out that you had to do everything, more or less, by copying template objects, IIRC. And of course, Microsoft offered something people felt more familiar with.
I just wonder - isn't this going to be the new Warp 3?
"if you don't like Win 8? Don't buy it and if enough agree with you and don't buy it they'll have to go back to the drawing board or watch the company go down the shitter"
Which means that you don't get what you do want.
"Don't like Gnome Shell or Unity?"
Don't use it and if enough agree with you and don't use it, they'll have to go back to the drawing board or see one of the other DEs take over whilst their poject goes down the shitter.
> they would eventually learn to like the new OS.
Today, Apple launched a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming infringement on their patent on "Telling the Sheep, I mean Userbase, What They Will Like(tm)".
You have completely missed the point, since they are simply using proprietary formats when open ones are available solely to create vendor lock-in and squeeze competition out. Also, you are assuming that those format specs are 100% accurate and always adhered to my Microsoft. Over the course of a products life they change things as handled internally. Once lock-in is achieved they then document one particular state of the "evolution" of the format. You are acting as though they document everything up front, make it available to everyone prior to use, and then adhere to it religiously. The actual fact is that they implement it, change it on the fly, release outdated specs when it is too late for any competitor to use them to create a competing product, and just generally use it to leverage people into a deeper state of lock-in. Furthermore, they make sure their internal guys in the OS side have access to it (and other specifications vice versa) well before anyone else.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Good luck implementing a general-case solution for that problem in Linux,"
The entire unix command line is based around manipulating text amongst other things. Are you seriously suggesting that finding a setting in a text file and updating it without affecting anything else is going to be an issue?
Stop drinking the MS koolaid.
misleading headline is misleading
There Can Be Only One...
I fully expect microsoft to release a patch after outrage of shoving this new interface down people's throats, but there are alternative interfaces out there. I played around with the Classicshell, and it by passes the start screen. However the start screen does flash for about 1 second as it loads.
It goes like this.
I fire up winscp
I get busy, I'm editing, I'm deleting, I'm doin all kinds of shit.
Then I want to make a note. Just of the situation I am doing.
But where is the secret hot key to flip winscp, and bring up notepad ++ on the back side.
When you search FLIP on google you get a fuckin camera, you get some new weird fucked up GUI.
FLIP, means, one side is ztree, the other is libreOffice, do you get it?
Now mixing that fucking metro with UXtheme.dll is a fucking nightmare.
I feel like sure I can do my own theme as long as it's in 16 colors and I am hell of creative.
The themes are killed. Fuck AERO. I hate that fucking transparent shit sticky to the edges, going full screen on my 3nd monitor while trying to pump it to a coax based TV set. (mind you this could be hdmi, if I would toss out my Sony Trinitron--I won't.)
Metro kicks ass, ON MOBILE TOUCHSCREENS.
not on mice and keyboards! jesus tits fix this shit, RTM? I think this is massive fuckup. What else you expect from Microsoft around release time.
Fix the themes, I hate this shit, I want brushed metal, I want PRO LCD! I wan't productivity, not invisible fucking gestures I have to figure out on my own over time.
win 8 has some potential.
Hell it runs my ancient ass micrografx picture perfect 10!
Eh? tat'll drop down the punchload on a 1GB netbook with a fucking 8G SSD.
Win 8 has some bullshit.
it feels like we are getting ready to be tracked to the max. e.g. sign up for that windows store, and tie your passport to your real Identity, and bank, and fucked up OS and location awareness, bla fuckty bla. I'm seriously ready to stuff a fucking XP USB stick on this netbook next. 12 process run.
Shit good luck getting 29 on win 8. I been killing services and got it down some but it's still too many processes on process hacker to be watching for bullshit at a glance like on XP.
I'm gettin ready to run XP until 2050 motherfuckers.
What's your 64 bit tracked OS going to do?
Of course I could also run debian on the cock sucker.
win 8 will be just fine on a mobile.
for a workstation, it's a productivity bullshit nightmare. RTM.. I can't believe this shit. They better patch it up and put a Touchscreen vs mouse switch, jesus tits.
Boot speed. bout the same as every other fucking OS.
Its stricktly a matter of deciding WHICH os I want to run to get work done.
Don't get me wrong METRO is genius. Just fucking fucked up genius with mouse and keyboard. Hows ur horizontal search workin bitchez?
If this is the best they can do in a fucked up economy due to oath breakers screwing the monetary system, I predict Microsoft is in trouble, not as bad as RIM mind you, but in trouble all the same.
Win 8 is an Everything OS.. it runs on damn near everything. All the weird ass bullshit. Why fuck with an ARM os when you can fuck with an NANO?
nevermind, I had too many beers and not enough sleep.
-=[ 0I812 ]=-
Sauce?
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Users could learn to like it?! Not gonna happen here! With most things I go with my first instinct . I have not seen Win8 in person nor used it, so I cannot say if I like it or not, but my impressions from what I have read about it tell me probably not.
I usually stay away from things that I don't like. My experience is that when I am told that I will learn to like something, I will not "learn to like" that thing. I do not like crab legs for example. People keep trying to get me to eat them (alone or in various dishes). I will try them, but to date I still do not like them!
Same with WinME, and Vista. Pepole kept telling me how "great" they were. I gave them a fair trial, but did not buy into them.
What did he say about W8?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It seems obvious to me that Windows hate is designed to take advantage of the app paradigm that Apple has implemented so well, Android, RIM, and Nokia has tried to replicate, and that people are starting to accept. They are also embracing The ever ethereal Cloud. You may not be able to bring up a command prompt or control panel on your phone, but you can see the same desktop and background and access much of the same data from any device by default. Like ME and Vista, they want their users to play in their little sandbox. They may potentially upset Facecrook as data mining king, since they require you to create or use an existing MSN/Hotmail account which often has a great deal of information about you. I don't think they're going to allow the on premises control needed in a SMB/Enterprise environment while allowing for a linear guided MS controlled user experience with any eficacy. They'll probably need to release another product extending XP/Win7/Server2008 tech. All of the bloat and ineffeciency and unused functionality lurking there in wait doesn't point to a good user experience. They're making software for themselves now.
Mashed Potatoes?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
...over how someone can think that "puzzling" and "confusing" are two different things.
Seriously? You're linking to a computerworld blog post that discusses the actual blog post ?
just out of curiosity. Did the test pass?
"What are you talking about? Can you name any Microsoft data format not covered .. even the DOC, XLS and PPT formats are documented to the last bit"
Do you seriously expect us to believe that, using those links, anyone could construct a fully compatible Word Processor. These specifications don't cover the hidden schemas in the msOffice binaries. I recall reading where someone unziped a DOCX file edited one of the tags, zipped it back up again, and msWord refused to read it.
AccountKiller
XLSX is hardly a "hidden, shifting" format. Open them with any unzip application, and then open the resulting files in notepad. It really is just XML.
Not a formats guy so I dont know how well documented it is, but to act like its no different today than the old 2003 binary formats is just ignorant. And Im pretty sure its ASCII, not EBCDIC....
Not even MS Office97 opened all MS Office97 documents due to a revision between the first release and a bugfix release. I, and a few other post-graduate students, had to reinstall it on an entire university engineering department's worth of MS Windows computers.
I think you've just failed the turing test :( I can't tell the difference between you and a bot that just throws out releated phrases when it hits key words with an amusing loss of context.
The example from the 1960s (segd) uses EBCDIC in the header but is still readable with this years software despite that. Old MS documents on the other hand are not always readable even with their own software.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has called Windows 8 'puzzling' and 'confusing
I wonder what he'd say about the new Charter Cable pricing plan. Charter recently decided they'd never get their non-DVR cable box to work as it should, and said if I wanted a box that worked I should upgrade it to a DVR. Four different reps gave me three different prices:
The first said $25 extra per month. The second said $10 per month. The third said there'd be no extra monthly charge. And the fourth said $10 per month. $10 per month is what they finally ended up billing me when I okayed the swap. I should probably leave Charter behind as I left Microsoft behind, but they've got the only reasonable speed Internet connection available in my neck of the woods.