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Windows Blue 9364 Screenshots Show Feature Enhancements
An anonymous reader writes "As expected, a new pre-public version of Windows Blue (build 9364) has leaked online and it reveals a handful of features that are coming in the next big Microsoft Windows 8 update." Several sites have screenshots from the build; Hot Hardware says "Assuming this is all completely legitimate, the most obvious change pertains to the Metro UI, including greater flexibility in sizing Live Tiles and customizing the Start screen, particularly as the Personalize setting (among others, including Devices and Share) is now under the Settings charm. The Name Group feature for the Start menu looks a little more polished, too."
Christ almighty! Would someone please tell Microsoft that Windows 8 is a content consumption platform whereas the corporate world needs a multi-tasking UI. This is fucking bullshit!
Life is not for the lazy.
I can sort of see what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8. The idea is not theirs, nor is it a new idea. It actually goes back a long, long time. When GUIs were born designers wanted to implement direct-manipulation as much as possible. The user had to be able to grab anything, drag and drop and click and whatnot it. This included the windows used by programs, if the user wanted to have that giant word processor in a 50x50 pixel window overlapped by a dozen other windows then they should be able to.
Now that GUIs are old hat, all that direct manipulation is getting a bit long in the tooth. Shuffling windows around, organizing them 'just' so is just as inefficient as doing the same to text in a word processor. Why not leave all that repetitive work to the computer? That is what machines are for, after all? In short, Microsoft has discovered the advantages of tiling window managers.
The sad part is that they seem to have forgotten to study the subject before designing Windows 8. All they had to do was install one of the many available existing tiling window managers on a unix of choice and give it a whir. Xmonad or dwm or any of the others do an infinitely better job of it than Windows 8 does. They work with the user, not against him/her.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Not lost per se, but only because I had to endure a bit of a tour (my last employer was a Microsoft Premier/Platinum/Perpetual/etc partner - they drink the koolaid by the tankerload.)
All I can say is, thanks to a recent layoff and job search, I was able to quickly winnow out the intelligent IT departments from the flaming morons. The ones with intelligence are holding off on W8 until either Microsoft fixes that Metro garbage into usability, or a decent 3rd-party enterprise-ready UI bolt-on comes into play. Their explanations as to why ranged from the standard 'wait-forever-before bothering', to some very reasoned responses that made perfect sense (mostly revolving around training costs, incompatibilities, and etc) The one prospective employer I avoided with haste is busy trialing W8 among their IT folk for a push out to their users starting at the end of this quarter, but with little regard to testing with users outside their IT department.
In-depth grilling into how they think and react as a department is a must if you can do it. It reveals a lot about what you're walking into, but the trick is to blow past the buzzwords and get them to really explain it.
(My views may be a bit biased though - I'm finally going back into Linux administration with a kick-ass new employer...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yes, the Chromebook hardware looks great, if it ran a proper OS I'd be interested.
LOL. It's not ironic. It's imaginary. There's no significant move towards Google Chrome or Google anything else for that matter in the OS space. There are three players, and only three: Microsoft, Apple, and linux. Apple's got the ball right now, as their machines can run all three OS's, all at once, legally and legitimately. If you're worried about movement, worry about Apple. Google? No chance.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I keep getting suckered into this articles just to see if the failing PC market has finally forced them to pull their heads out of their *sses and reinstate the desktop by default and the start button...
It may be my aging eyes.
But I have left the Start menu behind with no regrets and I very much like the look and feel of the best Metro/Modern Apps.
No touch screen. No touch mouse. No problems.
their only choices other than Windows is Apple
Which decade are you living in? The #1 OS in the world right now is Android... so linux. This is a trend that will continue. Unless Microsoft makes windows absolutely free, they are dead to the world. I think Windows 9 or whatever they will call it will be their last hurrah. My company, who still uses Winxp and never trys anything new is test bedding several linux distros with some users for the first time ever. I was shocked, but the trial is going fantastically... I never thought it would happen in my lifetime but Linux may just beat Microsoft yet.
...but loves the hardware.
https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd L "I'm still running ChromeOS on this thing, which is good enough for testing out some of my normal work habits (ie reading and writing email), but I expect to install a real distro on this soon enough. For a laptop to be useful to me, I need to not just read and write email, I need to be able to do compiles, have my own git repositories etc..
"
I have been using 8 since the 1st preview and I have come to really like it. A LOT. I did NOT like it in the early days as I was die hard windows 7 user and it is a great OS. But 8 is 7 after a couple more years of refinement. Do I like Metro? nope. Do I want a touch screen? nope. I hate fingerprints on my screens! But thanks to apps like Start8 I don't even have to know there is a metro ui. [though there are a few nice apps there].
There just are so many refinements in 8 that I could never consider going back to 7.
Is it perfect? nope. But the parts that irk me are few and far between.
It really is fast, it really is rock solid stable, and it get's out of my way and lets me actually get work done.
I'm sure I am going to be modded to hell for this but it is a great OS. I'm not a shill, nor do I have a gun pointed at my head to say this. I just am a old fart who likes my PC and I really do like 8.
TIFKAM, which MSFT has said repeatedly "is the future" as in "the desktop is on borrowed time" is NOT DESIGNED for multitasking, the best it can do is one program taking 3/4s of the screen and the other stuffed in a strip. The reason for this is simple..TIFKAM is a bad design which not only doesn't follow tablet or cellphone conventions frankly it doesn't follow ANY conventions that I can see, unless "try to piss off the user" is a convention I've never heard of.
I used WinME for nearly 8 months, used Vista for over a year, Win 8 frankly had me ready to pull my hair out at barely the two month mark. When I got rid of Win 8 for Win 7 it was like a weight lifting off my chest, and I honestly wouldn't take that OS if you paid me. In fact as buggy as it was I'd take Vista over Win 8 because at least with Vista with enough tweaking you could get it to behave, no matter what you do Win 8 is always gonna suck, suck more resources, suck more cycles, just plain suck period because its not designed for desktops and laptops, its designed for cellphones and tablets. Nobody else is stupid enough to stick a cellphone UI on their desktop, gotta at least give MSFT credit for that "innovation". Still doesn't make it any less stupid.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.