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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."
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)
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 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.
There's literally a fucking tutorial that shows you how to access most of what you mentioned
How are new users of Windows 8 expected to discover that this tutorial exists before they end up accidentally opening weather and not knowing how to make it go away?
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......
If an average computer user needs a tutorial to figure out how to navigate the 'desktop', it means your UI is not very discoverable.
An undiscoverable UI is a horrible UI.
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!
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,
Yes, people are amazingly adaptable.
That doesn't mean what they adapt to is any good. You can create the most horrible UI of all times, intentionally, and if you force them then people will learn to use it. Having to use it because of work or because you know nothing else is a kind of force.
I haven't used W8 yet, so I don't have an opinion. But I have used most other versions of windows, and the UI is pretty stupid, inconsistent and basically cobbled together. Always has been. Don't see why W8 would be any different all of a sudden.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
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?
"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!
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.
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?
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
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?
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.
.
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
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.
"But I have used most other versions of windows, and the UI is pretty stupid, inconsistent and basically cobbled together. Always has been. Don't see why W8 would be any different all of a sudden."
Prepare to be surprised and blown away, and not in a good way.
It kind of reminds me of people on here when Slashdot first launched.
"I've just installed Red Hat 3 on my machine, and it can't find my CD drive despite the fact I installed it from a CD /dev/cdrom /mount/cdrom . You must be a complete idiot if you can't figure that out."
"That's really easy. You just fire up xterm, type su, enter your root password, then type mount -t iso9660
A bit later
"Great, that works. However I can't get the CD out of the drive now
"You need to unmount it first you idiot"
Linux has moved on since those days. It has improved, and is much more user friendly now. Windows 8 is a major step backwards.
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?
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.
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?