Windows 8: a 'Christmas Gift For Someone You Hate'

zacharye writes "Microsoft is no stranger to criticism these days, and the company's new Windows 8 platform is once again the target of a scathing review from a high-profile user. Well-known Internet entrepreneur and MIT professor Philip Greenspun handed Windows 8 one of its most damning reviews yet earlier this week, calling the new operating system a 'Christmas gift for someone you hate.' Greenspun panned almost every aspect of Microsoft's new software, noting that Microsoft had four years to study Android and more than five to examine iOS, but still couldn't build a usable tablet experience..."

Comments

How about a direct link to the original article

[MpVpRb]

Not some blog that quotes the article

Re:How about a direct link to the original article

[CanHasDIY]

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/05/christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-windows-8/

Re:How about a direct link to the original article

[hairyfeet]

What is pathetic is that every one of us who did the testing on the DP and CP told MSFT repeatedly this was a BAD move, and if you'd have asked any of us retailers we'd have been happy to point out why. As of this moment less than 2% of the X86 units are touch screens and Win 8 just sucks balls without touch, also the metro UI is so obviously designed for tablets and NOT for desktops that it hurts. For example the left right swipe, which makes sense on a tablet you are holding like a book but its a royal PITA to deal with on a non touch laptop with a touchpad.

In the end I think this little anecdote about my personal experience with Win 8 pretty much says it all. I had Win 8 running in my shop on a NICE AMD mini-tower, we're talking triple core Athlon with 4 Gb of RAM, 500Gb HDD and DVD burner, all wrapped up in this very sharp red and black case with silver accents, just really great looking. For the nearly 7 months I had that unit out on the floor running Win 8? I got not ONE offer to buy the unit, not a single one. When Win 8 RTM was released and I saw they didn't do a damned thing to fix all the points I had been complaining about I wiped it and put Win 7 HP on it...it was sold just 4 days later. Hmmm...7 months with NO sale with Win 8, Win 7 sold 4 days. yeah...really not hard for me as a retailer to see its a turkey.

So just like with Vista this is a Windows OS that won't be getting sold on units in my shop, I'll make sure to buy only Win 7 laptops and all my builds will be Win 7 as well. MSFT may be able to afford to throw sales down the shitter but I can't and the people have spoken. ironically my sales have gone up since Win 8 was released because people come in and say "Have you seen that new Windows? its awful! Can you get me something with the real Windows on it?" and sure enough when they see my systems are running "the real Windows" its another sale for me, thanks MSFT.

Re:How about a direct link to the original article

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Yay, another article telling us a microsoft product is going to murder your children, drive us off the fiscal cliff, bomb Iran, and infect everyone else with AIDS... because it doesn't have a button where you'd want it. The horror.

Arguably, having buttons where you want them, that do what you want them to do, is a UI's purpose in life. If it can't manage that, We Have A Problem.

It's especially problematic because of the relative lack of useful under-the-hood-upgrades. Selling "Windows 7 Compulsory Tablet UI Edition" on devices that don't even have touchscreens is just a bad joke.

Re:How about a direct link to the original article

[WheezyJoe]

What is pathetic is that every one of us who did the testing on the DP and CP told MSFT repeatedly this was a BAD move, and if you'd have asked any of us retailers we'd have been happy to point out why.

So what focus groups were they listening to? And do they listen or do they just make up whatever conclusion they want to hear?

What is most irritating is if you like Windows 7, but have noticed little bugs, UI inconsistencies, or other irritants, well, Windows 8 means you're out of luck. No more Service Packs, no more Desktop Gadgets, Aero, or other Windows 7-type stuff, no more non-critical bug fixes, security updates only, end-of-life has been scheduled.

They did the same thing to XP with Vista. Granted XP was 10 years old, but by SP4 it did what it did really really well. Vista came out and wasn't close to being a reasonable replacement, but with a stranglehold on OEM's and massive PR, Microsoft was set to steamroll over XP. Once again, the focus groups all loved Vista, and you will too! Everybody upgrades, massive profits.

Didn't quite go as planned.

With Windows 7, you would think they learned their lesson. Decent OS, still in its infancy but an honest improvement over XP, seemed to have a decent future up to about a year ago. Imagine regular incremental upgrades for the next 5-7 years, re-establish a solid hold on desktops and laptops (particularly in the work space). But Microsoft is cutting it off to... what? Push developers to create tablet apps? for a late-entry tablet in a market already covered by iOS and Android? How is that a reason to upgrade, except that Windows 7 is now a dead platform just like XP?

Re:How about a direct link to the original article

[Darinbob]

Just read the damn thing instead of a knee jerk defense of a broken product.

What is funny I think is that so many responses to the original article essentially say things like "you'll get used to it after bit" or "here's how to do what you wanted to do", etc. This is analogous to telling someone "oh grow up, prison isn't that bad, you'll get used it it, here let me show you how to make a shiv." In other words so many of those responses are from people that appear hardwired to defend a bad design instead of just coming out and admitting that MS screwed up.

In many articles I've read I've never seen a response that says "I know it's bad and it sucks, but I have figured out how to work around it." Instead they all seem to put some bogus positive slant on it, like "Here's show you're supposed to do it." That's like telling people that they're holding the iPhone wrong.

How can people actually defend the schizoid nature of Windows 8? Does anyone really think that it's better to have the desktop and metro swap places so often? Do they really think that a missing menu bar on the desktop is a positive improvement because they get a half inch of task bar freed up?

The ultimate problem is that Windows 8 is two products mindsets in a single product. It has a smartphone/tablet style designed for passive consumers of media, which is distinct and separate from the desktop intended for active producers and workers. The Metro part is for people who just want to touch things with one finger and think that's enough to do everything they'd ever want to do in life, they'll read documents and scroll through them but that's the closest they'll ever got to working. Metro is for the sorts of drooling people who think an app store full of wannabe programs written by interns is a great idea. Windows 8 metro is every bit the TOY that a smart phone is a TOY. The desktop part is for people to actually do stuff; write documents instead of just reading thing, swap back and forth between different tasks that must work together, interface with other systems, etc. This is fine to have two separate products for two completely separate types of users. But Microsoft screwed it up by crippling those two products when they were forced together; metro without desktop is crippled (at least without some unreleased fixes and apps), and desktop without metro is crippled (at least w/o lots of extra utilities).

but isn't that a somewhat expensive

[HPHatecraft]

way of expressing said sentiment?

I've always found Dog Crap in a Box(TM) to be both economical AND effective at communicate feelings of loathing and hatred. It's really easy to get book rates on the postage, too.

Re:but isn't that a somewhat expensive

[Hatta]

Why bother finding a dog?

Re:but isn't that a somewhat expensive

[pixelpusher220]

They become more stable when you mix them together...

CE
ME
NT

CEMENT!

Expertise does not translate

[Anonymous Coward]

“Suppose that you are an expert user of Windows NT/XP/Vista/7, an expert user of an iPad, and an expert user of an Android phone you will have no idea how to use Windows 8,” Greenspun wrote.

 

“Suppose that you are an expert user of Windows NT/XP/Vista/7, an expert user of Windows 8, and an expert user of an Android phone you will have no idea how to use an iPad,” Greenspun wrote.

Seriouslt, playing around with settings,etc is frustratingly hard in iPhones atleast. The basic stuff is on the surface, the rest is 5 km below the surface

Re:Expertise does not translate

[Joce640k]

Vista wasn't bad by design, only execution.

Windows 8 is a bad design. It should never have made it out off the drawing board.

come on with anti-Windows bias

[mapkinase]

We do not even pretend to be impartial now?

The title obviously should be

> Greenspun: Windows 8: a 'Christmas Gift For Someone You Hate'

Re:Android is NOT a useable tablet experience

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

I've been using an Android tablet after I switched away from the iPad. It was TERRIBLE. Android is definitely the worst of all tablet UIs.
Stop using the 79 dollar chinese made resistive screen tablet you bought a Walgreens last Christmas and try a real android tablet or install Cyanogen Mod on an HP Touchpad. Then get back to me.

Re:The man is right!

[denis-The-menace]

RE: IT wasn't build on marketing

I used to say this years ago.

MS proved that you could sway IT decisions by wining and dining executives of organizations regardless of technical merits of the products.

Soon after, MS products were sold on the lemming effect, alone.

Re:That bad?

[Xacid]

I really wanted to like it and bought into their promo deal to put it onto my laptop (like $40 for a legit copy of Win 8 Upgrade).

But I've run into the same gripes as him regarding the interface. If you were just in the Modern UI 100% of the time on the tablet it wouldn't be a terrible experience. However, it tries to switch back and forth from that interface to the traditional desktop interface and does so very, very poorly. Even on a tablet this transition is godawful. It's worse on a non-touchscreen laptop.

The new "start menu" just adds more work for me and adds very little value to the experience. This isn't a bad format for a tablet, but when you're on a laptop and not in the Modern UI - forcing the use of that new start menu is just absurd.

Now, it does seem to be a bit more responsive than Windows 7 and has a couple of neat features - for example the taskbar now extends across multiple screens and you can set its behavior to a couple of different methods. It seems to integrate nicely w/ the xbox environment but I'm waiting to see what its full potential will be for that.

Overall there are just a lot of things like "are you friggin serious?". In the land of UI the amount of mouse movement, clicks, and typing is how we define "work" and yet for some reason MS has been wanting to add more work to a lot of the user's tasks. This is something I still don't quite understand. (Look at the office ribbon - despite some of its nice features there are quite a few places where it just managed to add more work for the user to accomplish a task).

So yeah, it's that bad. I don't outright hate it but it's because I've modified a lot of it so far to fit what I'm after. I would absolutely recommend against it for a non geek to upgrade to.

Greenspun is not an MIT professor

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not a professor; far from it.
He's an "MIT affiliate" (search People on the MIT home page), which is the loosest form of connection to the Institute.
Note also that the blog he's posted on is at Harvard Law, which says:
"Weblogs at Harvard Law is provided by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University as a free service to the Harvard community. Anyone with an email address at harvard.edu, radcliffe.edu, or hbs.edu can sign up instantly and be blogging in minutes."
If you search his name in the directory at Harvard's home page, there are no hits.

In other words, he has no significant connection to MIT, doesn't show up at all on Harvard's staff list, and maybe for some reason has a Harvard email address.

The poster was just quoting the blog, which pointed to the original blog, but hey, is 30 seconds worth of fact checking too much to ask?

An Actual MIT Professor.

Re:He admits he's not using a tablet!!!

[bemymonkey]

It's a big honkin 27" all-in-one touch-screen desktop computer... so pretty much a big tablet. If you can't get the full Windows 8 experience on that, you'll never get it on a dinky little tablet.

The most common complaints

[davidbrit2]

It seems like the number one complaint so far is "It's different, and I don't like to think". That's just lazy, and I tend to discount it immediately.

There are two fairly valid criticisms, however. The first is that by moving functions into various gestures and hidden panels, the discoverability is quite poor. I'm constantly forgetting that the search feature is buried in that "charms" bar, and instinctively look for a search field on the screen somewhere. I'm sure the Microsoft knee-jerk approach to "fixing" this will be to print tips and reminders on the display bezel, which of course won't make any sense when the screen is rotated some other way. Going back to the drawing board and completely re-engineering a concept doesn't seem to be their thing.

Second, the weird desktop/tablet UI dichotomy is baffling. Functions that were previously confined to a small number of places - chiefly the Start menu and Control Panel - are now spread across two "control panels", a hidden "charms" bar, a "Settings" button in that charms bar, and many of these functions bounce back and forth between the tablet or desktop UI, or even duplicate features of one another. Key functionality has also been removed entirely. Where does one view, edit, and reorder the entire list of saved wireless connections? Nowhere, unless you want to use the netsh command!

So while I can appreciate making finger-friendly design considerations, the way they've done it is disjointed and nonsensical. If I had to fix it, I'd allow "Metro" apps to run windowed instead of only full-screen, make it easier to scale up UI elements of "desktop" apps for touch use, get the Control Panel consolidated into a single point of access, and put some of the most common features of the old Start menu directly on the new one, without hiding them off-screen or in menus (Control Panel, Devices and Printers, Run, Computer, Documents, etc). If you change the window manager to act more like the Metro mode when a window is maximized, then you've got a reasonably successful marrying of the two concepts.

For traditional desktop use, it's not at all horrible for an advanced user, and does have some nice performance and usability improvements here and there. For casual home users, it will probably be overly confusing, and leave them shopping for iPads even more than they are already.

Re:That bad?

[Just Some Guy]

You felt so strongly that the "cool" Windows 8 UI is the way of the future and that people who prefer the "old, lame way" are "lazy, old dogs" that you just had to register a Slashdot account today to say it. I respect the strength of your convictions.

Re:That bad?

[Vanderhoth]

A simple Windows+D keystroke takes you into desktop mode and you can choose to remain there as long as you wish. I do hate the removal of the windows launcher in Desktop mode, but there are alternative options out there to get back that functionality.

This is what's really bugging me about everything I read that has to do with Windows 8, people are constantly making excuses for it.

Seriously, it became ok to remove a feature that seemed to be essential to the system because we can download a third party module that will fix it? Honestly, If there is such a demand for a feature that people have to download an extension to get the feature back, is that maybe something that shouldn't have been removed in the first place? and it's ok that it starts up in "tablet" mode a.k.a "Metro" on a laptop or PC because all you have to do to start getting work done is press Win+D?

To me this all sounds like utter intolerable insanity. Because people keep making excuses it makes me seriously think there's something else going on there and any positive message concerning Win8 needs to be taken with a mountain of salt.

My bet is the first change they'll tote in Windows 9 is the convenient new start menu where applications can be launched without having to use the metro interface. The next thing will be that it starts up in Desktop mode on Laptops and PCs by default and Metro on tables and phones.

Re:He admits he's not using a tablet!!!

[Just Some Guy]

At the end of his "review" he said he was using Windows 8 on a desktop, not a tablet.

The guy is clearly a dumbass for reviewing Microsoft's latest desktop OS offering on a desktop.

We all knew there were usability issues on the desktop.

So you feel that should make it immune from bad reviews, even though it's the OS now shipping on consumer desktop machines?

I'm More Worried about Server 2012

[selex]

Why for god's sake is Metro UI on Server 2012? I will never install this onto a tablet, and you can't pass tablet gestures through RDP. What the hell were they thinking? Praying that 2012 R2 removes this crap.

Selex

Re:That bad?

[Just Some Guy]

...says the guy who has literally never posted anything other than about how Windows 8, Surface, and IE10 are much better than the competition (and the older products they're replacing).

Free tip to shills (and yes, I'm calling you a shill): mix it up a little. Talk about something funny at work. Mention a local restaurant. Make a car analogy. Just don't come in and make comment after predictable comment saying the exact same thing.

And in the unlikely event that you're not a shill? Get a hobby. Seriously. There is more to life than the most recent software releases of any megacorporation. Explore your other interests a little. It's a big world!