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Windows Blue Is Officially Windows 8.1, Free For Existing Users
Several readers sent word that Microsoft has officially dubbed the upcoming revision to its flagship operating system "Windows 8.1," retiring the code-name "Windows Blue." They also said the update would be freely available to anybody with Windows 8. It will be available through the Windows Store. "Reller declined to provide an exact release date for Windows 8.1, but said that Microsoft is 'very sensitive to the timing of the holidays.' Ideally, Microsoft will be able to provide devices with Windows 8.1 pre-loaded in time for the holiday 2013 season, Reller said, but those who purchase a Windows 8 device later this year will be able to easily upgrade to 8.1."
So, then it is the unofficial return of the service packs.
As long as it's a closed development ecosystem where you have to pay to play, and MS gets to profit from your work, all I have to say is FUCK MICROSOFT. I'm sticking with my MBP.
Stop saddling me with your damn phone interface and we'll see.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Running Windows 8 at home has been an exercise in asking "How did that get though testing?" questions.
I have observed a number of bugs in the current Windows 8 that cause me to seriously doubt Microsoft's Quality control processes. My running favorite issue is how the Parental controls are exceptionally easy to bypass (just a mouse click at the right time and my son has unlimited time despite how the system is configured.. ) Come on Microsoft... Windows 8 was mostly a GUI adjustment to that metro aka touch screen interface... No real kernel changes from Windows 7.. You need to test a bit better kids.
Windows 8 was not properly tested prior to release, I'm guessing because they rushed it to market. Hopefully 8.1 won't be as rushed and they will actually TEST some of this stuff a bit better this time.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Showing something is better...
When I showed someone how to do it with win 8 they looked at me and said "how do I know I should do that?!"
They seemed to have forgot one of their early lessons with the 'start' button.
http://www.irintech.com/x1/co/3586/1347415399000
I'd still wait for Windows 8.11 for workgroups. Maybe they'll add a proper command line and support x forwarding natively.
I seriously can't know how people can be comfortable with the Win8 Start screen. Here's a picture of my Start menu in Win7. Everything is nicely pinned right there (no moving mouse around the screen), the search functionality works the same and there is direct access to things like Control Panel. It does not steal the attention with a full screen jumbled mess of harshly colored icons.
Personally, I'm going to wait for Windows 8.1 for Workgroups...
__
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
They can't just dump Metro - there's a complete ecosystem of apps dependent on it. It's very small, but it's not like they can abandon it. That would be like Apple just discontinuing the entire iOS line and saying "Sorry, your iDevices are useless."
It is far more likely than you think, they have already killed zune, they killed all of those windows phone 7's saying to their customers "yeah our bad you won't be able to update the phone you just bought sucks to be you." Oh and then there was the playforsure debacle. They pushed silverlight and have now nearly abandoned development of it. So Microsoft could throw framework/interface formally known as metro to the wolves on a whim at anytime they want and it would just be par for the course.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
The lack of visual clues is appalling. My roommate has Win 8 and she asked me how she should change a setting. Well it was in the Control Panel but there is no apparent way to get to the Control Panel anymore. We had to look it up on the Internet. She had to find the one hot corner that showed her "Settings". There's no visual clue that's what she should do. It's also not a matter of getting used to change; there was no obvious clue that a specific corner shows you Settings.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If you want to consider how the engineers inside Microsoft think of the code base, I'd suggest considering how they internally number the versions. I think it's very insightful. The windows API has a self-identification function that returns the internal version numbering.
Windows NT 4.0 self-identified as NT4.0
Windows 2000 self-identified as NT5.0
Windows XP self-identified as NT5.1
Windows Vista self-identified as NT6.0
Windows 7 self-identified as NT6.1
Windows 8 self-identified as NT6.2
This is a boring sig
Made me think of the Mitch Hedburg one-liner. "I used to do drugs. I *still* do, but I used to, too."
Windows Blue. It *still* blows, but it blue, too.
I seriously can't know how people can be comfortable with the Win7 Start screen. Here's a picture of my Program Manager in Win3.11. Everything is nicely pinned right there (no moving mouse around the screen), the search functionality works the same and there is direct access to things like Control Panel. It does not steal the attention with a full screen jumbled mess of harshly colored squares with uncolored icons.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Might want to fix that image... before anyone realizes you use IE instead of.... anything else.
Collector's Edition
When your UI is so undiscoverable that people need to use search to get anything done, then you know you have a lousy UI.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm counting among the people who gave Windows 8 a chance rather than going in hating it already. I ended up going back to Windows 7 (as I said), but I don't think 8 is the disaster that so many people claim it to be.
People treat it like a house with a cracked foundation and rotting trusses when it really just needs new siding and maybe a few non-structural walls moved.
[sarcasm]Yes because Windows key + "Control Panel" is so obvious to a user using a mouse.[/sarcasm]. That like saying searching in emacs has always been Ctrl-S [Return] string [Return]. [sarcasm] I means why would anyone need to Google that?[/sarcasm]
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is: if your UI is so discoverable that all you have to do is hit one key and then type whatever you're looking for and *boom* there it is, you know you have a great UI.
DOS was even better. You didn't even have to 'hit one key' before you could type the command you were looking for.
Back in the real world, if your GRAPHICAL User Interface requires you to type the name of a program to start it, it's a lousy UI.
That's your problem... You are assuming power users. Do you know how many people I know who still go to the edit menu to select COPY and PASTE rather than using keyboard shortcuts or even right clicking?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I tried changing the wallpaper on my brother-in-law's Windows 8 laptop the other day. So I downloaded a picture, and opened it after it finished downloading. The picture loaded in the OS' default image viewer. I saw the picture appear, full-screened, and with no interface. I tried right-clicking the picture. That didn't give me a menu, but an interface did fade into appearance. I promptly saw an option to "Set as."
I clicked it, thinking: "Surely this will let me set the image as the wallpaper", but I was given just two options: set as lockscreen (IT'S A LAPTOP!), and set as 'app tile'
I immediately closed the window since the option I wanted wasn't there--no wait, actually I didn't close it. There was no UI option to close this fullscreen picture. I alt-tabbed back to the desktop. I found the picture again, right clicked it, and went to the "open with" option. There were like 5 image viewers that came with Windows to choose from. I chose the old "Windows Photo Viewer" and set it as the default so this madness won't happen again.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
There is a good technical reason for numbering the versions that way. A lot of badly written software was checking the major version number. Installers were especially prone to this. As such Microsoft only increments the major number when they deliberately want to break compatibility with such software and force sysadmins who really need to get it running to turn on compatibility mode.
2000 had some new UI stuff and various APIs ported over from Windows 98/ME. Vista had the biggest changes in Window's entire history. On the other hand any OS with the same major version number tends to be fairly similar from an API point of view.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC