Windows 8.1 May Restore Boot-To-Desktop, Start Button

New submitter geekoid writes "According to media reports about leaked Windows 8.1 code, the next incarnation of Microsoft's flagship operating system will have an option to boot directly to the desktop. People have discovered 'references to a "CanSuppressStartScreen" option in early builds of the Windows 8.1 registry.' There is also speculation that Microsoft will be re-implementing the Start button, though the claims come from nebulous 'sources,' rather than the leaked code. In light of recent reporting about the general distaste and design flaws of Windows 8's user interface, will Microsoft's updates be dynamic enough to stop the current Windows exodus?"

Comments

Too little too late

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The real problem is that the innovator who really stole all their ideas from other people, has failed to realize that their own User Interface has become a mature technology, as familiar to most people as "gas on the right, brake on the left" in a car.

Re:Too little too late

[GrumpySteen]

I can't tell whether you're an incredibly subtle troll or you're just dumb.

Re:Too little too late

[millertym]

I agree - and really their greatest folly with Windows 8 adoption was with trying to create a single UI for all platforms. That just doesn't make sense from a user standpoint at all. Phones are going to have different UI needs than tablets. Tablets are going to have different UI needs than PCs. Each specific family of hardware needs a UI created for use on that particular hardware type, due to each hardware type having it's own nuances in user input. I don't know why their designers thought otherwise.

Re:Too little too late

[GrumpySteen]

Windows predates Linux. The actual 'theft' would be from Xerox PARC, Apple and others who predate Windows.

But the ideas aren't stolen. They were freely available for everyone to use because they were developed before we reached the level of intellectual property idiocy that allows rounded corners and other moronically simple design elements to be patented and copyrighted.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

No the real problem is that there isn't a real problem. Yes, 8 was another Vista/Me experience but writers and commentators keep tying this back to the "global PC market collapse" which may or may not be due to Windows 8 as the story guys. The subby wasn't much better with his "exodus" comment, the simple fact is Windows 8 isn't bad by any means from a UI stand point if, ya know, you actually use it. It's start up time and performance on computers is at least on par with 7 and to me feels a little more spry. The real issue is that PC hardware has been good enough for years, my 07/08 Dell laptop died a couple weeks ago, and surprise surpise I'm on an 07 Vaio to tide me over until I purchase and guess what? It works for everything but games and Adobe Lightroom (which is still 'passable'). Keeping that in mind this 'collapse' may very well be happening as far as new PC sales go, but it has no merit when it comes to PC usage. Show me a person that has truly gone mobile and left the PC behind and I'll show you someone desperate for clicks. No all that is happening is that people are buying other devices while their PC keeps on plugging along year after year and the sheer amount of hyperbole and linkbaiting surrounding this issue is absolutely ridiculous.

Re: Too little too late

[UnknowingFool]

I think Ballmer and MS knows that different hardware require different UI. I think MS wanted to foist their tablet/smartphone UI on desktop users to get them used to it so if/when they bought a tablet/smartphone they were already family with Metro. Basically they couldn't compete on the merits of the UI alone so they had to leverage their monopoly.

Re:Too little too late

[Tarlus]

They're on the right track, but their implementation is still too blurry. Right at the first boot (or during the installation) of Windows 8 the question should be asked before the user can do anything else: "Do you want to use this as a desktop or as a tablet?"

Choose "Desktop" and you are presented with the same familiar UI you would expect in Windows, and no full-screen Metro. If you want to use the built-in Metro apps, launch them from the Start menu they just appear in their own self-contained, manageable windows.

Choose "Tablet" and it'll default to its current behavior, with the full-screen touch-friendly interface and Desktop mode accessible as its own tile.

Stick an option in the control panel where people can change this setting if needed later on down the road. One OS to develop, both usage cases covered.

Re:Too little too late

[JSombra]

Except it did not work,it actually backfired and many warned them it would.

Windows 8 on phones and tablets is actually pretty good, but the negativity/bad press generated by windows 8 on the pc has spilled over and affected peoples view of the phones and tablets.

If they had not forced metro on the pc and left it optional, not only would windows 8 pc sales have done a lot better, but also probably the phone and tablet sales would have been better as well.

Re:Too little too late

[Tarlus]

You can give +1's to AC's. The purpose of modpoints is to promote constructive posts, not to reward registered users.

Re:Too little too late

[Type44Q]

Windows predates Linux.

Windows predates Linux; the operating system known as Windows most certainly does not.

Windows was nothing more than an application running on top of DOS (the actual OS in the equation) in those days.

Pedantic nitpicking, perhaps - but technically accurate nonetheless. :p

Re:Too little too late

[itsdapead]

There's no reason to assume the whole vehicle isn't mirrored.

If they were then, at the typical international airport, you'd notice the large ring of car wrecks around the rental garage. Moving the steering wheel is a helpful hint to remind you to drive on the other side of the road. Swapping the brake and accelerator pedals would be a recipe for unpleasantness.

Re:Too little too late

[itsdapead]

The real problem is that the innovator who really stole all their ideas from other people, has failed to realize that their own User Interface has become a mature technology.

However, its worth remembering that Microsoft are not the only ones to jump on the tabletization bandwagon whether their users like it or not.

Gnome 3, Ubuntu Unity have had similar castigation for their new 'post PC' interfaces. However, what with Linux being open source and not having the GUI joined at the hip to the rest of the OS this is less of a problem for Linux users.

Apple have also received flak for the fairly limited tabletization that they've done with OS X.

Problem is, we're in a tablet bubble, coming at a time when everybody who wants a regular PC already has one and PC specs are no longer rising fast enough to make them obsolete after 18 months. I like tablets, think they raise some interesting new possibilities and are great for some uses - but the current attitude is "the solution is mobile technology - now, what was the problem again?".

Re:Too little too late

[Wookact]

It was in the prelim releases. They removed it. They did it for one reason, get people used to the new UI and they will be comfortable picking up a win 8 tablet. The entire thing was an attempt to strong arm the consumer into getting used to something. There was no reason to remove the start button, BUT THEY REMOVED IT.

Windows 7

[Todd Knarr]

Suggestion to MS: just put the Windows 7 UI back on. Oh, and while you're at it, tweak Office to honor the UI theme instead of implementing it's own.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you have a crappy PC.

Windows is not disappearing anytime soon

[ZeroPly]

From an enterprise viewpoint this looks very different. Right now I am in the middle of our Windows XP to Windows 7 migration. We skipped Vista entirely - when users asked for it, we told them "we don't have the time".

Same thing all over again. It's great that your aunt has a new smartphone that does everything, and she thinks that's the wave of the future. But I have legacy code, ODBC connections, custom written drivers, and automated patching to worry about. Not to even mention bare metal imaging, inventory agents, or the thousands of lines of old batch files that glue things together. About 90% of the enterprise IT guys have told Microsoft "we'll wait for the next bus". What they're doing right now is putting together the next bus. I'm certainly in no hurry, it will be 2014 before we even think of how we're going to implement Win8.

I can cruise on Win7 until 2017. Microsoft is still getting our software assurance money if we upgrade or stay with WinXP. No one's in any hurry right now.

Re:No

[Seumas]

Microsoft cannot stop the exodus. And it is only going to speed up once smart phone docking stations become ubiquitous.

My smart phone has almost as much horsepower as my PC.

Unless your PC is extremely crappy, then it really doesn't.

There's no reason in the world why I should not be able to hook up my IBM Model M, a mouse, and a couple of large monitors to it for the purposes of media creation. Once this happens commonly, it's all over for Microsoft.

Sure. I bet you'll have no problem pumping out enough pixels for a 7680x1600 display (or even 2560x1600, with a single monitor) to play games on or create and render video content on. Why, I bet that's just around the corner.

Of course, then what desktops can do by that point will be far greater than they are now and the standard will have shifted.

Your $200 pocket phone can do a lot of things that it couldn't do a decade ago, but it will always trail behind what is possible with more dedicated hardware and is a very long time off from being able to do everything you need to a satisfactory degree such that you don't need any other form of computing. It can't even compete with a standalone digital camera, yet (unless your needs are very minimal -- just for snapping pictures of your drunk idiot friends at a frat party or something).

That said, I have no doubt that Microsoft would be willing to just dump the whole market and dedicate themselves to mobile, because -- by sheer numbers -- that's going to end up more profitable the same way it's more profitable to make a mediocre show that ten million people watch than an award-winning highly revered show that only four million people watch.

Re:Don't get people's love of the Start Menu

[Attila Dimedici]

Oh yeah search is a GREAT way to find that program I use every six months that lets me put some of my pictures together to create a collage for those posters I make twice a year. I think it was called "Blue Pixie". /s
Except that it was called "Green Pyxel" and started with an executable named "grnpxlUI.exe".

A bet too far

[onyxruby]

The problem is that Microsoft didn't bet their company on their attempts to force a paradigm shift in how people interact with and use Windows. They bet the entire desktop computer industry along with them. By way of point on how bad things are Windows Vista wasn't released at Christmas like Windows 8 was and Windows Vista saw much higher deployment rates (not sales rates) than Windows 8 has for the same months after release. The net result was an almost epic level collapse of the industry that followed with a record drop in PC sales, however all of the offered excuses fall flat when you look at them with a touch of logic:

The economy. It's actually better now than it has been for the last several years and unemployment has been starting to decrease.
Tablets. Tablets started becoming popular a few years ago, the slump in PC sales is directly timed with the release of Windows 8.
People already having a computer. Since the Mhz wars petered out a several years back speed has had a little to do with new computer sales. Again, nothing new here.
Smart Phones. Smart Phones started taking off en mass about 3-4 years ago and there is nothing particularly expansive related to the last 6 months there.

The bottom line is that Microsoft started causing severe economic damage to the PC industry with their attempt to force a UI change on the market. If they hurt the industry enough, the industry while feel compelled to look for alternatives to Microsoft to distribute their products. Microsoft knows that this can and has happened with smart phones and tablets and industry simply couldn't take any more pain without risk of simply no longer being dependent on Microsoft.

The secondary reason is that the enterprise market has made adamantly clear that they absolutely will not deploy Windows 8 until the start button and boot to desktop interface issues are resolved. Microsoft saw enterprises stick it to them with XP for a decade and realizes that enterprise is not about to put up with another Vista experience. Microsoft has to make these changes, or they risk losing their distribution chain to their competition.

Re:A bet too far

[roman_mir]

The economy. It's actually better now than it has been for the last several years and unemployment has been starting to decrease.

- a random wrong thing in the mix.

Unemployment only 'decreased' because half a million of people who were on unemployment moved off of it to other things, like disability and welfare, basically gave up searching for work. Economy is worse than it was even a few years back, you may be confusing the economy with irrelevant asset price indicators in the stock market. The economy (as in money management of the entire system) is more in impossible to pay debt, ever growing inflation and government mode. That's not a good thing at all.

Microsoft will not learn

[ravenswood1000]

Microsoft will never learn no matter how much thier customer base screams and will alway assume they are doing things correctly and everyone else is wrong. Yes, they need to settle in on windows 7 and give up for a bit becase they can't do it right. Wouldn't hurt to fire some guy by the name of Ballmar either.

Windows exodus? Really?

[sshirley]

I know that we Slashdotters would love to believe there is a Windows exodus because of Windows 8. But in reality, that will never happen. Are you saying that Grandma or Joe Blow, as pissed off as they are with the Win8 UI, are going to switch to Linux? Most "average" people might have heard the name but have no idea what it is. And forget about learning to use it. Mac OS have a better chance at getting people to jump ship. To most people "Windows" is synonymous with "Computer". They don't know there are other OS's out there. People will be pissed off and not buy more more Microsoft products. People will vote with their dollars, not their choice of OS.

Re:No

[Hatta]

Your $200 pocket phone can do a lot of things that it couldn't do a decade ago

A $200 pocket phone can do a lot of things a full desktop PC couldn't do a decade ago.

it will always trail behind what is possible with more dedicated hardware

If commodity hardware does everything I need, why do I care what is possible with dedicated hardware?

It can't even compete with a standalone digital camera, yet (unless your needs are very minimal -- just for snapping pictures of your drunk idiot friends at a frat party or something).

Most people have very minimal needs.

Re:No

[Kjella]

Or just a sufficient PC... A modern smartphone has a gigahertz processor, a gigabyte of RAM and for plain 2D it can do a full desktop no problem. The question is do you really have a horsepower problem or do you have an interface problem? Yes, if you're doing 300 DPI poster layouts you'll need more but a lot of people today do "media creation" that'll be a part of a 2MP web page, they just need to be able to see it up close and manipulate it. Also note that a docked cell phone can run at whatever speed the cooling solution can handle, it's no longer limited to energy saving modes to keep it working all day. If most smart phones were x86 I think it'd already have happened, but the only two who can produce x86 chips don't want to kill the PC market.

What Microsoft didn't get

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Your customer's knowledge of your interface is a monetizable asset. Changing interfaces without a very compelling reason doesn't just inconvenience customers, it affects the bottom line.

This principal works the same for Bob's whiz-dang word processor as it does for an operating system UI. The easiest interface to use is ALWAYS the one you already know.

Bottom line? If you don't have to change it, don't.

Apple gets it. Apple has been using this fact since the Lisa hit the shelves in the 80s and continues to use it in phones, pads, etc.

Re:No

[Mashiki]

Or just a sufficient PC... A modern smartphone has a gigahertz processor, a gigabyte of RAM and for plain 2D it can do a full desktop no problem.

Uh...if sufficient you mean a PC from 2001, then I guess so.

Re:Seriously, are MS devs really using Win8?

[The MAZZTer]

I actually think MS greatly improved the start menu with the new start screen. The problem lies mostly that people hate the Metro that came with it, but everything else is great.

For starters, nested folders are gone. In All Apps, shortcuts are grouped based on a single folder, and everything is in one view. The stupid Company Name > Program Name > Program hierarchy is gone.

MS has been telling companies to stop adding Uninstall links and other garbage (link to your website? Put it in your app, not in the start menu) to the start menu for a while but no one listens of course. MS has solved this problem by allowing you to remove shortcuts from the start screen, but still leaving them available in All Apps.

Re:No

[Joce640k]

Or just a sufficient PC...

Or he doesn't really do any work on it.

Re:Sources?

[wierd_w]

There really *was* an option to disable metro and ribbon UIs in the win8 release candidate.

Microsoft said "bend over and squeal with delight!" When they removed it from the final, and kept pounding away, ignoring the protests of their users, instead making grunting noisesof their own that users will "get used to it", and "you'll like it, I promise!"

There's a lesson here, and it isn't exactly Microsoft that needs to learn it, because the *exact same* bullshit has happened 2 other places in Gnome3 and Unity.

That lesson? If you are a UI "designer", DON'T FORCE YOUR "VISION" ON USERS. In business, the *customer* is always right, not your personal sense of aesthetic bliss.

Gnome's hamfisted refusal to accept that is why most of their userbase flew the coop. Unity on Ubuntu is why many users fled to Mint. And on win32, Metro is why users refuse to migrate to 8.

The lesson here applies all around. If people want tacky, they want tacky. If somebody orders a double cheeseburger, don't try to force them to eat caviar, while insisting it's classier. It isn't what they want, and they won't come back.

Caviar is nice as an option, but don't force the issue. Your* personal foibles about seeing tacky UIs only matter to YOU. Wear the shoe on the other foot, and imagine a world where only BBQ and cheeseburgers exist, and are what get enforced, preventing you from even trying caviar. That is what you do to people when you deny them the options they want. People don't need a reason to have a preference, and some prefer the tacky UI paradigms. Respect that preference, and keep your userbase.

*this is meant to sound confrontational, but does not apply to any specific person. If you are a UI designer, and try the BS cited, it applies to you. If you are not, naturally, it does not.

Deck chairs on the Titanic

[EmperorOfCanada]

What has MS done for me in years?

I hear Visual Studio is pretty good but I haven't touched since VS 2008. But what completely put me off from MS products was the relentless flogging of their other products. You would choose one product and they would try and shove their other products down your throat. Then there is the religious zealotry of MSDN shops. I have seen company after company where they have an MSDN certified IT head and that is it, Microsoft everything. Can't afford another SQL license then develop it in Access. And office is the worst; I sense within MS that they shove Office even down the throats of people there. If you develop something at MS it seems to be mandatory that somehow it will have some aspect that will exist to promote Office. XBox seems to be a huge exception to this rule and I suspect it was not due to lack of trying on the part of the Office mandarins.

But in the world of programming there are all kinds of tools that exist on their own. They have no agenda beyond being a good product. Python exists for people to make cool things. Boost exists to make C++ better. MySQL went a bit off the rails so MariaDB sprung into existence to serve up the data of zillions of people. Github exists for people to work on code together. This is where Visual Basic/Visual Studio were many eons ago. About the only product VB VS promoted was Windows which was fine at the time because the choices were DOS or Windows. But now we have many choices of Platform and OS. If MS doesn't want to become irrelevant they need to expand their horizons. Office needs to go on all the platforms. People will buy it. Visual Studio needs to allow development for all the platforms. People will love it.

But as it stands there is no product of MS that makes me go ooooh, got to get me some of that. Windows 8 just sounds more annoying than Windows 7. This whole PCs not booting anything but Windows sounds horrible.

I don't blame Windows 8. Windows 8 is just a clear sign that MS is so completely out of touch that they think that by taking the worst parts of iOS (locked up systems) that they can compete. I remember reading articles in early 2012 that about how MS was going to have 15% of the smart phone market. I saw the metro interface up close in product placements on TV and I said, BS. There is no reason for anyone to even try it. Then when the surface came out people even said that this would take a bite out of the iPad, Nope. These are examples of MS trying to buy reality. Buying reality is costly and doesn't change reality. So if they keep on this path of trying to bend everyone to their will instead of giving people compelling reasons to buy their products I just wonder if MS has one decade left, or less?

Re:Seriously, are MS devs really using Win8?

[Ironhandx]

Why do some fools think nested folders were a bad thing?

Some of the retarded lengths companies went to were bad, but nested folders, on the whole, are a VERY good thing. They allow me to organize everything into categories based on what I might want to do. I don't want to see every installed program thrown at me as soon as I open the start screen, and before you start telling me I can organize them the same way on the start screen: Yes, yes I can. Just in a less convenient, less efficient and tile-filled manner.

Good start

[ErichTheRed]

Dear Microsoft,

I fully understand the reason for switching to the full-screen Start screen. You want a cut of the app revenue like Apple gets, and that only makes sense. I would even be happy with Win8.1 if you could just boot to the desktop and not have the Start button back (but I would REALLY like it back as a bonus...) Here's one thing I can't live with that needs to change:

Put Aero Glass back into the OS as a selectable theme, or even Aero without the glass.

I'm our company's desktop systems architect, and I'm still on Windows 7 for all my personal machines. The main reason is the flat, ugly, hard-to-navigate 2D user interface on the desktop. I really want the client-side improvements Windows has made, I want Client Hyper-V so I don't have to shell out for VMWare Workstation. I definitely want Windows to Go. But I can't use the new flat user interface. Office 2013, Visual Studio and Server Manager are acres and acres of monochrome text and icons with very little to guide your eyes around the screen. I know a lot of people complained about Aero wasting processor cycles, but even the non-transparent version had buttons, text and icons that were colorful, stood out on the screen so you knew where they were instinctively, etc.

I guess I should have left the Customer Experience Improvement Program opt-in checkbox checked all these years...but I can't be the only one who feels this way. So if you want me to upgrade, I need the following:
- Aero Glass available as a theme - you can even leave the 2D screen as the default.
- Start button as a bonus -- If I don't get that I'll be OK, but I'd be happy if I did.

If I upgrade, there's a very good chance 6000+ PCs will upgrade too.

Sincerely, Me

Re:No

[Hatta]

You've got 2 gigs of RAM instead of 1 or even 512mb. You've got hardware accelerated video playback. You've got voice recognition that actually works. You have GPS, accelerometers, and a camera all built in. You have network access through wifi, the cell network, and bluetooth. 2003 wishes it had all that.

Re:Seriously, are MS devs really using Win8?

[QuietLagoon]

For starters, nested folders are gone. In All Apps, shortcuts are grouped based on a single folder, and everything is in one view.

That everything in one view aspect is not an advancement, but a step backwards.

The stupid Company Name > Program Name > Program hierarchy is gone.

If you don't want nested folders, then don't use them.

But why take the ability to use them from people who want to use them?

Re:Mac OS X *not* migrating to iOS

[perpenso]

Apple has chosen to migrate to an all iOS world slowly, subtly. Give them time, it's in the grand plan.

They have a Mac App Store but no one is required to use it,

...Yet

It aint gonna happen. The Mac App Store is fine for small and/or "not well known" vendors. However for the "big guys" who have the resource to have their own stores and digital download infrastructure the Mac App Store has little advantage, certainly nothing worth losing a 30% cut. These big well known vendors don't need to be discovered via the Mac App Store's listings and search capabilities, their potential customers know off the vendor and their products. Not letting these vendors sell direct will just cause them to drop the Mac OS X platform. Good bye Blizzard games, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, etc. It aint gonna happen.