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30 Days Is Too Long: Animated Rant About Windows 8
First time accepted submitter Funksaw writes "Back in 2007, I wrote three articles on Ubuntu 6, Mac OS X 10.4, and Windows Vista, which were all featured on Slashdot.
Now, with the release of Windows 8, I took a different tactic and produced an animated video.
Those expecting me to bust out the performance tests and in-depth use of the OS are going to be disappointed. While that was my intention coming into the project, I couldn't even use Windows 8 long enough to get to the in-depth technical tests. In my opinion, Windows 8 is so horribly broken that it should be recalled."
" Windows 8 is so horribly broken that it should be recalled."
Now, forgive me, but you can totally enter into windows 8 from a standard windows interface (as I understand it). That and, data shows, people are becoming familiar with it. Put that onto anecdotal evidence that younger individuals pick up the interface just fine and I'm inclined to think you knew what you thought before ever using windows 8.
Eat sleep die
Hey just because its easier to brainwash a child does not mean we should be attempting to brainwash ourselves.
Also 3 is way to young to be allowed electronics or access to IT/telecommunications. Not until 5 yrs old and only with supervision and seriously protective software installed (I want my kids to be expert A+ hackers, not 2cnd rate script kiddies)
This video shows that you just can't copy Yahtzee Croshaw without his motor mouth rambling, it just doesn't feel right :D
Captcha: copied :D
Not conviced. From both design and functionality standpoints it's utterly horrible, and a kid isn't going to fix that.
Yeah, the author's attitude is more than a little arrogant. You expect reasonable people to give your video a chance after speaking like that?
Yes I have used Windows 8, and while I am one of the hoards who loves the old start menu, apart from that change Win 8 is simply better. 7 was excellent, 8 has a few improvements over that.
I just finished building a budget pc to replace a dinosaur. I put the XP SP3 on and did a clean 'upgrade' to 8 Pro. After three days, I have to say I quite like it. I mostly use the desktop but flipflop to the metro stuff now and then too. Still a bit put off by lack of start button but I've not really gone too deep into the whole Win8 thing to find out all the short cuts and other features (I've not had to). BTW, my other OS on the machine is FreeBSD so hardly a rah rah MSFT guy. But I do think much of the hyperobole against it is misplaced.
It seems a bit over the top for the context, but it is well-done.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
3 year old
five year old
I would expect them to be better at it. It was designed for them.
It's getting old. This shill account might be pretty old (879048), yet just check the posting history. Not a single post not related to Microsoft.
The ribbon is a horrible UI design. At least with menu (bars) you can SEE ALL your choices. WIth the ribbon if your window width is too small you don't. It also completely sucks that you can't customize it like you could with a REAL tool bar.
With that said I actually like the Ribbon on OS X Office because I have BOTH -- menu bars AND ribbon. Forcing users to only work ONE way tells me the UI designer was an retard who doesn't understand HOW people use computers.
The problem is not that it's difficult to learn (though it is a bit of a shock at first); the problem is that some people just don't like it. You might be perfectly content with a touch-first tablet interface on your desktop, but Windows 8 will never touch any of my personal machines. That being said, I am still interested to try it out on a tablet device where many of the design decisions might actually make sense.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
I've been using it. I don't like the metro UI, so I installed a tiny program I found on ninite.com called Classic Start, self-explanatory. It works, I don't interact with metro, everything behaves as expected. Before that I classified it as a minor annoyance. They made some poor design decisions, but I don't understand the tantrums and hyperbole, I do all my work in the browser or in programs and there's no change there. And the desktop is virtually identical to windows 7. MMC, powershell, command line, control panel are the same. It might be because I've always used keyboard shortcuts to navigate windows, I just don't understand the vitriol.
Why would I want to use an interface designed for a 3 year old? Hmm? Come on.
Yes I use the command line and the function keys and I can fly around the thing when I have to. Doesnt change the fact it's just about the worst interface imaginable, and confuzzles the regular users to no end, resulting in them constantly calling me to figure out how to do the simplest of things. I am not saying previous windows interfaces were all that great, but in general people had gotten to the point of being accustomed to them at least. Breaking things for the sake of breaking things does not a good product make.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Tens of millions of licenses have been sold because there's no choice. One buys a PC with an operating system to view and edit files, and a lot of industries have standardized on file formats exclusive to applications that are in turn exclusive to Windows. Windows 8 is the only thing that sort of reliably runs these applications that Microsoft still sells for bundling with a new PC. If Windows 7 were still widely available, tens of millions of Windows 7 licenses would be sold instead. If application publishers made a point of supporting Wine, at least millions (if not tens of millions) of Xubuntu licenses would be sold instead.
No...what recoiledsnake means is this:
If you use a computer like a 3 year old, then Windows 8 is perfect. That includes splashy, bright coloured interfaces, and chunky buttons big enough that someone lacking good fine motor control can still click on them.
For anybody who actually uses a computer like an adult, though, it sucks rocks.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Some of us started on paper tape and punch cards. Windows 8, Unity, whatever. It's not going to stay the same forever. Cry me a river!
So removing windowing, and requiring all programs to be full screen, so only able to run one program at a time, is an improvement to you?
This is Windows 1.01 level technology, not an improvement on Windows 7.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I'm holding it wrong?
My three year old got on my computer and sold my car, bought some drugs, and posted nude photos of herself on Facebook. But seriously, what's with the FUD over electronics and children? Get over yourself.
If you can avoid metro, it's pretty usable.
But metro intrudes at annoying times for various routine tasks. Frustrating indeed. Showing how a child can perform cherry-picked tasks doesn't change this.
It's the primary interface because they will collect a 30% fee of the retail sales price of every program written for it. So obviously they want to coerce people into using it.
You can pretty much use Windows 8 just like Windows 7, just the "start menu" is now fullscreen.
Which is exactly the problem. You lose conveyance: there's no obvious way to discover how to open the Start menu with the mouse. And you lose context: opening the Start menu completely covers up the application you're using,
too bad Windows 8 does exactly none of that.
Until you accidentally swipe the wrong way, and your desktop disappears and is replaced by a full-screen weather application.
Coming from someone who has had a deep and long dislike of Microsoft, Windows 8 is not that bad. Metro is half baked and feels like it was tossed in at the last moment. Other than that, I have had less issues with Windows 8 than its predecessors.
Now then, what were they thinking with Metro? I have no idea. It feels half assed, and adds no value. The screen looks like someone's idea for webcasting push technology from the late 1990's.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Just out of interest, I walked into a PC World store to check out the new touch-screen PCs running Windows 8.
I timed myself: I was sitting there trying to work out how to do the gesture to get the Start screen. 90 seconds later, I simply gave up.
Windows 8, even on high-spec hardware with multitouch displays is completely unintuitive, completely undiscoverable, clunky, and amateur-looking.
I am GOBSMACKED, that Microsoft claimed that they've put a million user-hours into usability testing.
It'll snow in Hell before I put my hand in my pocket to upgrade.
Microsoft needs to destroy Android or they will lose their monopoly pricing power, and the only way to do that is with pushing Windows Phone and it's Metro application stack. If the users see desktop first there's no reason for Metro apps to be developed, and with no applications, no reason to by WinPho.
There's inevitably going to be fans for any OS, even windows ME.
Since we have a Windows 7 slate that I really wanted to upgrade (read: make usable, as 7 is pants on a slate) daughter and I went to an Office Despot that had Win8 running on a big touch screen monitor, and I tried to get it to do stuff. Never touched Win8 before, but had worked on most previous Windows operating systems, (starting with 3.1, 3.51, 95, 98 SE, NT 4, 2000, ME (shudder), XP (still using it) and 7, plus experience with server 2000 and 2008) how hard could it be?
I massaged the screen for about ten minutes and couldn't get it to do anything useful. Oh, you can touch a tile and something happens, but it's easy to get into a mode where it's not at all obvious how to get out. GUIs, especially touch GUIs, should have visual cues on how to navigate, or at very least do things in consistent ways.
After awhile, daughter pushed me aside, as she has experience with Windows 7, Android and iOS on touchscreen, she wanted to take a crack at it. She figured out how to get out from where I had gotten stuck, but not much else after another ten minutes of pawing at the thing. Like 7, there seems to be little cabalistic gestures one has to learn to perform certain actions in 8, and they don't seem to be similar to what you had to do in 7. We finally gave up.
Mind you, I'm sure it's possible to learn Windows 8. The point is, it's not at all obvious how to use it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
treat the Start screen like a full-screen version of the Start menu
And because it's full-screen, it all but encourages the user to forget what he's working on. Ever have amnesia as you go through a doorway? The fact that the Start screen is full-screen is like that.
You don't need a Start orb to click on -- just hit the Windows key.
How are users who have been opening the Start menu with the mouse for a decade and a half expected to discover the Windows key?
I can't really see the benefit of Windows 8 over 7 at the moment though so I'm considering going back.
Why even bother going back? Just install a start menu replacement (one of dozens available), and you'll have a machine that looks and acts like Windows 7. You'll never even have to touch metro, as they disable hot corners and boot to desktop. Then you retain the performance, security, and new features in Windows 8, with all the benefits of Windows 7.
"Tens of millions of licenses have been forced down the throats of new pc and laptop buyers...."
FTFY
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My Model M doesn't have a Windows key, you insensitive clod!
So you're ignoring half the OS, and you've installed a 3rd party application to make the part you aren't ignoring actually usable?
Basically, he discusses the four c's: control, conveyance, continuity, and context, and gives examples about why all of these are horribly back-leveled from earlier Windows versions. Most damningly, he points to reduced control by the user...which is a trend that seems to have permeated through Windows since Windows 95. He summarizes by referring to someone else who observed that Windows 8 was really designed for content consumption by the user rather than content creation as personal computer devices were originally intended for. Content consumption is probably the main purpose of a tablet but we will still need content creation equipment and Windows 8 appears poorly suited for that, while not offering any alternative due to ending sales of Windows 7. His most damning comment is that Windows 8 is "user hostile." The best thing about his comments is that they will (hopefully) start the discussion about what capabilities need to be retained in future personal computers and future Windows versions.
It's not. You need very intricate mouse control to use the charms bar for example.
You know why I say Fuck You? Because your links are like boasting how easy it is to bypass an AES128 encrypted file by watching a fucking youtube video that shows you the key. If you don't know something, I don't care how short a video is if I shouldn't have to watch it in the first place. So, fuck you.
How is a person supposed to know what to type to find a thing that isn't listed? This has frustrated me at times in Ubuntu also. Why the menu hate?
And I replied to the wrong dude. Even quoted the wrong dude. gj me! high fives all-around, no more eggnog while on the internet.
That is sort of the point. You aren't using it like Windows 8 you are using it like Windows 7 with a 3rd party application to make it MORE like Windows 7.
The complaint is Windows 8 out of the box is junk.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
on the Princess Bride? INCONCEIVABLE!
I'll just copy my reply to another similar post... So you're ignoring half the OS, and you've installed a 3rd party application to make the part you aren't ignoring actually usable?
I think you'll find that over the next couple of versions, that the 'classic' interface disappears or has reduced functionality. Anyone think this is not gong to happen? Apple set the precedent, now Microsoft is going to try cashing in on the same lock-in. Buying or using Windows 8 is funding the loss of your ability to actually 'own' your own hardware, same as iOS.
Yes, a few:
Start8: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
ViStart: http://www.lee-soft.com/vistart/
Classic Shell (has the benefit of being FOSS): http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
Pokki: https://www.pokki.com/windows-8-start-menu
There is no discoverability within Windows 8, it's the worst aspect about it. A note on the Metro apps: you aren't "supposed" to close them, and in the early DP versions there wasn't a way to close them at all. They have their own memory-management/PLM processes, and when they haven't been used for a set time - they Suspend and close in the background.
There are two fundamental problem with the "just install XYZ add-on and it becomes tolerable" perspective.
1) Every time you have to use the computer of someone not savvy enough to want/install such a thing, you're stuck with the horrible stock configuration.
2) Every time you have to use a locked-down/policy-controlled computer, you're stuck with the horrible stock configuration.
#1 kinda reminds me of having to use the Gentoo or Ubuntu machine of someone who has different command-line needs from install-to-that-point.
#2 is a tad less of a short-term concern, since many of those are just moving from XP to 7, but a serious long-term concern if things aren't fixed in 9.
It is a user problem, Windows 8 also works fine for me. And it seems to work fine for a buddy of mine who I just built a computer for. I gave him the choice of Win7 or Win8. And he took Win 8 and was off doing what he was doing before with minimal difficulty.
Does that mean it's perfect? Hardly, but people stuck in their ways with the UI or have a bug up their ass over it are going to continue to throw a hissy fit no matter what.
Om, nomnomnom...
.
You might have 8 or 10 application menus. Each of these menus might take up 25% of the screen when you display it. Crunching the math you have several whole screens of menu info....jammed into a "ruler" that takes up a fifth or less of the screen. It's a simple math problem.
I've embraced PKZIP since the PKARC and even ARC days, but interface compression is not my thing.
I come here for the love
Seriously, I know several people who actually like Windows 8 better.
Cool story bro.
Watch a couple of videos if you're lazy and learn some shortcuts and it's a better Windows 7 at the worst.
While Windows 7 was a bit annoying when you were trying to find somehting in the new control panel, if you knew Windows XP you could pretty much use it right away, and teach yourself the few things that had changed.
WIndows 8 simply has too steep a learning curve. You need to watch instructional videos to figure it out. I'm sure it's a fine phone OS, and maybe if you're used to a different phone OS it's not that strange, but nothing changed for the better for keyboard/mouse users trying to get work done. Why would I want this on a laptop or desktop?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Ribbon are incredibly intuitive.
Actually that is part of the problem. The Ribbon isn't intuitive. Well more the organization, but I go to the insert menu to insert something. But no that command is on another tab. I go to the data tab to work with some data, again the item is on another tab.
Just because non computer people use them immediately (what else are they supposed to do?) doesn't mean they are better. A ribbon is basically a sticky menu.
So you're saying the changes from Windows 7 to Windows 8 are fine if you use 3rd party software to ... suppress them all and make it just like Windows 7 was? Hardly an endorsement.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Windows 8 is now about giving each application your full attention
Which leads to doorway amnesia, as I pointed out in another comment. I don't want to give attention to an application; I want to give attention to a task that involves the use of several applications.
The Start screen is an overview of everything you have available and live tiles allow them to each give you different types of information allowing you to decide if they are worth your time or not.
So why can't I have this Start screen take up only half the screen, so that the other applications involved in this task remain at least partly visible to retain context in my brain?
The best way to describe what's been done is that windows is now more about flipping through a book
A task may require (and often does require) more than one book.
and less about putting all the pages spread out on your desk.
In other words, as the video points out, it's Microsoft Window, singular, not Microsoft Windows, plural.
I'm sorry, but if a video featuring a child moving pictures around the screen is the best counter-argument Microsoft can come up with, there has to be something seriously wrong with Windows 8.
I recently had the opportunity to try Windows 8 for the first time. I'm a 40-something IT consultant with 20+ years experience, so I'm not your typical user by any stretch of the imagination. I've used DOS, Netware, AIX, SCO Unix, Linux and every Windows version from 3.0, but I've actually never used a tablet and I've never owned a smartphone. I was ready to give Windows 8 a try. I mean, how hard can it be?
Pretty hard, as it turns out. I knew I was in trouble when after staring at the "start" screen for a few minutes, I had no idea how to access settings or navigate the file system to get to, say, my NAS unit or USB stick.
In previous Windows versions, I can remember feeling annoyed over having to search through the system to find settings or applications that Microsoft had decided to move around. In Windows 8, I felt like I did that time my car broke down: I was stuck. There was nowhere to go, and nothing seemed familiar.
I though most of his rant was spot on, and my customers seem to agree. I sold a few laptops with Windows 8 preinstalled, but ended up having to downgrade to Windows 7. I'll be doing that with every laptop from now on (but Microsoft still gets to count them as Windows 8 sales).
I thought in a general sense, as a community, we'd moved past cheering for nerd-rage melodrama.
Windows 8 makes a few gaffes, but they're largely the same problems that Windows 7, Office 2007, and others started introducing. It can be annoying, but it's the same stuff taken to a reasonable next step, as well as UI unification between desktop, laptop, and tablet.
None of that is necessarily a fun thing, but OSX has been pushing many similar UI changes for longer. A lot of people were unhappy with Lion's increasing similarity and unification with iOS, just in case anybody actually forgot that in less than a year.
The bottom line is, 8 works in the same ways as 7, just with some added complexity. The easiest way to almost entirely remove that complexity? A start menu replacer. People recommend Start8, ViStart, and others. My personal recommendation is "Classic Shell". It works exactly the same as it used to on Vista+, except it adds the "Apps" to the start menu as well.
But even so, why wouldn't somebody be able to figure this out? The video author was squealing about how the start menu "hurt him deeply". Trackpads aren't really supposed to do "touch gestures" by default. It's vendor opt-in. Logitech opted in, and chances are, this guy didn't install whatever WIndows 8 drivers or control panel may or may not be available. Either way, it's a vendor issue. Just like 'no install/repair/recovery/etc' disk is a vendor issue. If you don't want vendor issues, you don't buy things from those vendors.
All of the UIs Windows (95-W8), OSX, KDE, iOS, Android, etc are different. What everything has in common is that there are roughly 6 different things you have to know about each, then consistency covers all of the multi-step operations, or using various applications. Occasionally you get something that breaks out of that a bit (Office 2007+). There are so many "advanced" things, like command line digging, reinstalling from scratch, that the overwhelming majority of people will simply ask a friend for help with or pay a PC repair company. That's pretty much regardless of operating system.
But I digress. The rant is pretty simply over the top drama. It should sell itself as entertainment (if it at least had any humor), not as something relevant to 'tech news'. It's not politically correct to mention, but this guy sounds and acts like the stereotypical nerd, going into a panicky, narcissistic rage about primarily one change that, overall, isn't that significant to day to day use, AND for which there exist free, open source, and easy to use workarounds, while still obtaining benefits of a newer OS.
He himself admits he only tried it for 30 minutes, in a coffee shop, and didn't bother one iota further.
Personally, I've been using it for 4 months (and preview versions before that) with NO issues that would meaningfully impact your average, or above-average user. All of my personal complaints are exceedingly specific and technical, and have mostly been taken care of by various updates.
And, in the interest of disclosure, I'm not the kind of person who likes Windows, or most other OSes, in a general sense.
I prod and patch kernels, have no problems custom-rolling EFI stub-only boot on Linux, etc. What I really miss, is being able to run highly customized FreeBSD and still use ~90% of my Windows games at full speed. That's mostly a hardware/driver/wine(!) issue, though.
So when I say I'm using Windows 8 in the exact same manner as I use Windows 7, I'm not exaggerating. I actually like the availability of some of the W8 new features. I middle click on the start button (or use Shift+Windows) if I want to see live tiles like the weather...just like on OSX, you use F12 to get the Dashboard to pop up a full screen of 'one glance' kinda information. Even before using Classic Start, the only quirk I took issue with, on the 'start screen', is that when typing for programs, it wouldn't search for stuff like control panels "by default". You'd have to move the mouse over to select "settings". Mos
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
879048 is old? Who knew.
No amount of ranting is enough in this matter. Windows 8 is trash.
no, No, NO!!! Windows 8 isn't trash -- VISTA is trash. Vista IS TrAsh. See?
Windows 8 is rubbish, conceived by the marketing droids and PHBs positioning Windows in the touch world for the future. In 4 years when everything has been converted is touch, you'll wonder how you ever managed with a simple "read only" display. (MSTSC.exe's going to have to be re-written for another input device.)
And just think about all of the new market share Microsoft will have after Every Single PC and Laptop has to be completely replaced to become touch-enabled. (Time to sell my mouse-hardware stock.)
Forget cutting spending or raising taxes --- the economy is saved! Windows 8 is going to end up with the largest market share E...V...E...R.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Yes it does. It's the 'metro' interface which has exactly ONE app on screen at any one time (apparently random times too!).
Within the 'metro' UI that is partially true (there is some support for side-by-side apps), but that is not the only UI on Windows 8, as such his assertions are demonstrably false, they didn't remove windowing, they didn't require all programs to be full screen and they didn't remove the ability to run multiple programs at once, that is all still there.
When people say, it's a good app, I use the Desktop...they're saying that Win8 isn't good and Win7, which is what the Desktop basically is, is what they prefer to use.
So you are under the impression that the only thing different between Windows 8 and Windows 7 is the 'metro' UI, in that case your post makes more sense, still wrong though.
May I ask, what improvements?
Aside from the new Start Screen / Start Menu, which is controversial at best, the second most important feature I had heard is that 'it boots up faster.'
Ok, so it boots up faster...I am on a SSD, and before that a 7200 RPM hard drive. My boot times are, what, less than a minute? And part of that has to do with my machine having any number of startup programs / drivers for things hanging off of it?
I mean, don't get me wrong, faster boot times are always appreciated, but for that to be the second most taughted feature....I'm having trouble justifying the $40 upgrade from Windows 7, let alone buying OEM or full versions of 8.
And the third feature is, what, the Windows Store? How is that a feature? Why do I need a marketplace on my desktop? It's an Operating System...what new, compelling features are you offering that makes this operating system a must have? Better driver support for exotic devices? Easier mass deployment / imaging routines? A more powerful framework for designing applications / programs that is not arbitrarily limited to the latest version?
Has MS Paint been upgraded to something Photoshop like? Has the Image Viewer been redesigned to have more features / work with more formats? Has the CD / DVD / BluRay software been upgraded to something more useful? How about the creation and extraction of archives? Backup and restore? Has the Media Player been rewritten to be less annoying, something approaching WinAmp in terms of usefulness? How about its support for codecs? Both old ones and new ones. Subtitles. Have they implemented 'Admin Command Line' here as a standard option? How about video transcoding? A PDF viewer that doesn't make people spit tacks?
I am John Hurt.
I don't understand it.
Windows 8 is just Windows 7 PLUS metro.
Surely you could just not use the metro parts and it would be just the same experience as windows 7 (mostly). In fact, I do just that.
I got used to the new start screen - it's not _that_ bad, no worse than hunting through menus to find what you're looking for, and actually better in that you can just start typing the name of a program and it comes up in the search. Or you can type the name of a control panel applet or setting, and that works too.
There are definite improvements over windows 7, even if they are minor. So in general, if all you want is an incremental improvement over windows 7, you can use it just like that.
No one is forcing you to use metro for all your apps.
So yeah, windows 8 is less than ideal in that some settings screens take you to a metro interface (but you could live without them), and metro itself is horrible, but if you use it just like windows 7 and all versions before that, it still works fine.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
The ribbon UI is so awesome, that Visual Studio doesn't have it (thank God) So the people who actually *write Microsoft software* don't like the ribbon.
So there's that.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
He explained exactly what was wrong, and why.
He used the basic principals of GUI design and explained why Windows 8 is a total failure.
Great job. No wonder the MS shills are going crazy.
Two things come to mind:
He is correct that its usability suffers from Metro and the abrupt changes to the UI when it is being pushed so hard. One of many points made in the video was that people who have never used it will find it very confusing because in more ways than one the UI gets in the way. Microsoft trying to have its cake and eat it too is what is causing all this grief. Instead of doing like Apple did with the change from OS9 to OS10 and dropping legacy and backwards compatibility to go with the new paradigm they want to maintain backwards compatibility. This is because Microsoft fears backlash from both its main customers, big businesses and governments, and the developers for those businesses and governments. Worse, they really made it for the tablet market all the while still trying to hold onto the laptop / desktop market with it. The point made in the video of the differences between a mouse / touchpad and touchscreen are valid.
To do it right, Metro should NOT be the default interface if you are installing it to a machine without a touchscreen just as the "classic" should not be the default if you are installing it to a tablet. They are different beasts. A tablet is more for viewing content than it is a great workhorse for making that content no matter what Microsoft or Apple may think. An even better solution is to do two different products. One for the tablets and one for the desktop / laptop and let the consumers choose which they really want for what products. Again, that too was pointed out in this video.
The second observation of your post deals with your contempt for humans. It is those very humans that Microsoft is trying to impress. There is a very, very large segment of the population that are not pleased with the Metro interface that Microsoft really wants to go with. The so called "fix" of downloading a second application to eliminate it as the advice that is often given is proof enough of that dislike. Calling that many people names isn't the way to win over support.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
For me, the bigger the screen, the more useless it is because the touchpad interface requires larger and larger gestures to get at what's needed.. Remember the windows 2k/xp start menu with its crazy long cascaded menus? No one wants to sort through those. Metro 'start' is like that, only worse because the tiles are huge.
Most of the complaints in the video link are right on.. It's jarring and mystifying at the same time. Basic functionality should never, ever be hidden. That includes configuration utilities. The whole concept of having two separate interfaces with separate rules is also beyond stupid. The frustration isn't just in figuring it out, it's having to figure out ways to complete the work I need to that actually take longer than it did on previous operating systems.
What's this trend in attacking 'negativity' as though doing so is a legit argument against what was said? Is this some kind of peer pressure to conform to the head-in-ground masses of ostriches who can't handle reality because they're too weak willed to not take everything personally?
You can shrink the size of the tiles, but I think it would be a disadvantage. I can use a higher mouse sensitivity because I don't have to be anywhere near as precise when I actually click on those tiles. I can completely mitigate the gesture size, and use a mouse sensitivity I like. I see there is also an option to fill my large monitor (settings->show more tiles), which actually gives me an array of 8x12 tiles if I use the smaller setting for each tile - 92 icons I can access without navigating submenus or scrolling on a 2560x1600 monitor. That's actually not bad. I like flat structures, they are fast.
That said, I rarely have to use the start screen. I stay in desktop mode. I've pinned my commonly used applications, about 15 or so, to the taskbar. I never need to open the start screen to access them. It's how I used 7. The start screen comes in to play when I search, and I now access it using win+F intead of just hitting the windows key.
I've seen the actual "start" tiled interface a few times this month because I had something specific to do on it. I'm not even trying to avoid, it's just the way I use windows tends to avoid it. I would still prefer to have the old style search back - flat, and tucked down in the lower left, as it should be. In short, the new start screen is not the end of the world. As for gesture size, I don't care, because it's fairly silly to call an OS bad because of that, especially when a highly efficient type-to-launch system is in place. Win7's start menu needs more precise aim, but I never ran into that limitation because I never used my mouse to find and launch programs.
What I do agree with is that functionality is hidden. The problem with the video is that it claims that the functionality is not there at all first, then says, "actually it's hidden". Hidden is bad, but manageable. All the same shortcut keys work, so for keyboard users like me there's really no difference. The guy didn't even notice that the old windows 7 backup feature is still there, which would have allowed him to restore to an SSD. The video is pretty much completely un-researched, and while it makes one good point - don't hide features - it's a failure in every other sense. The person who made it should be embarrassed. He's also contradicting himself: In the past he claimed Vista was unusable, now he's claiming otherwise.
I got used to the new start screen - it's not _that_ bad, no worse than hunting through menus to find what you're looking for, and actually better in that you can just start typing the name of a program and it comes up in the search. Or you can type the name of a control panel applet or setting, and that works too.
What if you don't remember the name of that control panel applet? What if you don't know the application's name, but would otherwise find it if you could browse through menus?
"Just typing the name" of some computer program or appet can be horribly inconvenient.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I remember when all this was fields....
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Just RTFA, or in this case watch the video and you will see. Actually you may choose one from the dozens of videos about Windows 8 and you will see. Just to cite a few things:
- it more than doubles the number of clicks and moves you have to do to perform normal operations,
- applications (like the weather predictions) keep popping up when you least expect because you made a gesture with your mouse that the horrible horrible UI mistakes as another touch gesture that has nothing to do with what you want to do,
- you simply cannot find configuration features without knowing the specific keywords, because there are no shortcuts that do not involve typing these specific keywords/ This is something they started with the advanced file search in Windows 7, which is much worse than XPs, but went viral on Windows 8
"The guy didn't even notice that"?
A bad user interface doesn't necessarily mean that the option isn't there. If the option exists, but is difficult to discover or presented in such an unintuitive way that people will miss it, that's the fault of the user interface, not the fault of the user for not noticing it.