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."

Comments

Re:You'll learn to like it.

[ozmanjusri]

Almost.

They'll hold your hard work hostage in the guise of proprietary application and data formats instead.

Peak?

[Gaygirlie]

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.

Or else??

[composer777]

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.

Re:Or else??

[bertok]

It's ok that they go on this track for consumers of things; but for god sake, make something for the rest of us that are producers of things.

The sad thing is that they actually have done that, but then layered the stupid mobile crap on top, hiding the productivity-enhancing goodness underneath!

For example, PowerShell 3.0 is a pretty big step forward. I've been using the CTP and now the RTM build on Windows 7, and I love it.

The guts of Windows Server 2012 are better than the previous versions, but it's all hidden behind the new Server Manager that has been re-authored to have the "formerly known as Metro style, but not a really a Metro app, because Metro can't actually be used to... do things." The result is a hideous application that doesn't look like anything else in the operating system, and has a terrible control layout that's both confusing and slow. For example, after you open a "menu", you see about three items. About two seconds later, more items appear in the menu. That's just about the worst GUI design failure I've seen since I've had the misfortune of having to use X11 applications, where some buttons perform their command when the mouse button is depressed, and some perform the command when the mouse button is released.

The core: better than ever, better even than UNIX/Linux in many areas, including the command-line!

The skin: worse than ever, worse even than the inconsistency than UNIX/Linux is sometimes bashed for, but all within one operating system that I assume follows some sort of "design guidelines".

Considering that there are standard data formats

[dbIII]

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.

Re:It's improductive

[humanrev]

Its a bit more distracting that it goes full screen, but thats about it, and as a result I'm motivated to pin more apps so i use it pretty rarely.

Wouldn't that suggest that the new Start screen is a failure then? The fact you have to pin more apps than normal sounds very much like a workaround for deficiencies which didn't exist in Windows 7. Heck, I have about half of my Superbar in Windows 7 full pinned apps already - the rest I launch from the "recently launched" area of the Start menu (and the remainder via search of course). Does the Windows 8 Start screen have a recently launched area at least?

Re:Can /. also post some possitive Win8 articles?

[Toreo asesino]

No, this site is about what people with an anti-Microsoft bias tend to think. To be honest I don't know why I'm complaining; I might as well ask Fox News to write about something good Obama's done.

As for the rest of your post; I read it, but yet couldn't find any actual information. Yes, I think that about best describes it.

Re:Like he said

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had a single complaint about it.

Quickly: I need to check the routing headers of an e-mail I've rececived in Outlook.

Without looking or checking, explain where I'd find that option on the Ribbon.

Remember, the Ribbon is semantic. So I'd want to VIEW the HEADERS.

Proceed.