A Serious Proposal To Fix Windows 8

GMGruman writes "Windows 8 is simply not selling, and everyone but Microsoft knows it's a mess of an OS. And the Windows 8.1 'Blue' that Microsoft revealed some details of late last week doesn't address the fundamental flaws. So a team at InfoWorld worked up a serious proposal to rework Windows 8 for both PCs and tablets that fixes those flaws and lets Microsoft's true innovations break free of today's Windows 8, complete with mockups of the proposed Windows 'Red.'"

Comments

Nice objective summary

[dywolf]

Nice objective summary

Re:Nice objective summary

[auric_dude]

Red pill or Blue pill? Sorry, red or blue flavour of Windos.

Re:Nice objective summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice objective summary

Agreed. Despite the writer's obvious bias in saying "everyone but Microsoft knows it's a mess of an OS", the plain truth is that Microsoft knows it's a mess too.

Windows Red looks horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

The suggestions involved are klunky and the idea of splitting it into 3 OSes is going the wrong way. Windows RT is a disaster because it lacks app compatibility. MS needs to retire it and fully embrace x86 now that intel has fixed it with Haswell.

All that needs to be done to "fix" the start menu issue is make it so the task bar never goes away and the desktop background stays persistent but faded out. You click "START" and tada, the tiles appear right on top of your desktop. It is a simple solution, should be easy to present and works equally as well in mobile touchscreens as it does mice.

Re: Windows Red looks horrible

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The problem with Windows RT was naming it Windows.

Had they just called it RT, or Surface or Metro or something other than Windows, the app compatibility wouldn't be a problem. OSX application support or, out of the box anyway, X or Gtk support didn't harm Android or iOS. The whole thing supports the same CLR as Windows so...

I think what's really hurting them is the insular nature of Microsoft. Spreadsheets aren't cool. Using Power Point in ads is more likely to turn off a user than turn one on.

Re:Windows Red looks horrible

[SuricouRaven]

You're got to look at it from a business perspective. Microsoft is a 'traditional' software company: They make a product and sell it. They have no model for continuing to make money from their product post-sale, so they are highly dependent upon keeping customers continually upgrading. An increasingly difficult task - Windows XP remained popular for many years after MS intended it to die. Compare to Apple or Google: They don't just make products, but make an ecosystem around it - iTunes, , the app stores, tie-ins to other services, advertising. Every iPhone and Android device is a revenue stream to Apple or Google well after the initial sale.

Microsoft wants to copy that. It's a great business idea. Not always good for end-users though - the factor that enables the ecosystem business model is device usage restrictions. Apple couldn't make money off the iPhones if people were able to install just anything from anywhere, without the App Store taking a cut.

Re:Windows Red looks horrible

[UnknowingFool]

Apple couldn't make money off the iPhones if people were able to install just anything from anywhere, without the App Store taking a cut.

Apple makes as much or more revenue off iPhone hardware sales ($22B) alone than all of MS according to their quarterly financials. While Apple makes money off of apps and content ($4B before they take their cut), it not as much as what they make on iOS hardware ($30B).

if it doesn't include pushing more to metro

[gl4ss]

then microsoft isn't interested.
the whole point is to get people to use metro apps. to pay for metro apps. to get a cut of metro apps sales.
thus the push towards the metro ecosystem. supposedly it would also fix problems with some malware and so forth, but the real dollar bills would be from getting a cut from everything that is run on the pc. that is a huge pie. unsurprisingly traditional sw makers are asking why the fuck should they bow to that and are moving to subscription models partially as a backup against ms possibly being so stubborn as to force sw to be downloaded from their market sometime in the next 5 years or so.

they could easily do that if metro apps would have started to gain a lot of traction, too bad people don't like metro enough.

the simple fix would be to ship it with possibility to multitask metro apps and to run them in windows as default features, but then people might start asking why bother with metro apps at all. it's not like it's impossible to make touch friendly apps - with esentially the same api's - that aren't constrained to running inside metro vm.

(written on a windows 8, it's so nice that it comes with a pdf reader. too bad you can only run the piece of shit fullscreen and view just one pdf at time! and the fuck does some fucking single player games need my windows account and facebook for? ??).

Re:if it doesn't include pushing more to metro

[RogueyWon]

The shift to a Metro UI was one of the big late-cycle mistakes that MS made with the Xbox 360 as well. The second-generation 360 UI which they used through the middle years of the cycle was about as good as anybody's managed on a console. For the final few months of its life, it actually worked really well with Kinnect's voice and gesture commands (which, sadly, couldn't be said for any games).

By contrast, the third generation Metro UI was ugly, hard to browse with a controller and almost unusable with voice/gesture controls. It seemed to have been designed with just two purposes; maximising the percentage of the screen given over to adverts and serving as an early push for the whole "Metro" concept.

Metro's ok for a tablet. Not great, but I've seen worse. For anything else - desktop, notebook or games console - it's dreadful.

The whole thing has the stink of the kind of dumb idea that investor relations departments think up as something that can be pushed at less-than-intelligent shareholders. "Look, we may have missed the whole smartphones and tablets thing, but we've got a really great unified UI concept now that will let us take over the world! Honest!."

It would only take a couple of those big institutional shareholders to get a clue and start asking a few pointed questions about the consumer-focussed parts of Microsoft to make life very, very uncomfortable for the company's management.

But I can see no signs that's about to happen.

Re:My solution for fixing Windows 8

[serviscope_minor]

and replace it with what?

DOS 6.22 of course, with Windows 3.11 for workgroups. I suggest also installing Trumpet Winsock in order to be able dial in to what is known as "the internet. Obviously you'll need to buy a modem for that.

the growth of OSX showed that the usual linux trope about there being no possibility for a competing desktop OS to succeed was bollocks

You do realise that (a) MacOS is very old and already had a very well established software base, and (b) Microsoft Office which is at about the 99.9% monopoly level has supported MacOS (X and pre-X) too?

Re:No, it's not.

[wonkey_monkey]

It's done. If you want a Start menu, pay $5 to Stardock.

Why pay anybody anything? Classic Shell is free.

Re:Or simply install Linux

[Merk42]

So in order to solve the issue of a completely different UI, you suggest installing Linux that has a completely different UI (and app incompatibility)?

Re:My solution for fixing Windows 8

[UnknownSoldier]

> - OSX - anybody who tells you that this is somehow a better working environment than ms windows honestly is just lying.

Quit trolling. Do you even _use_ OSX on a daily basis?

I've been using computers since the early 80s and have used a ton of OSes: Apple DOS 3.3, Apple ProDos, DOS 2.x - 6.x, Win3.1 .. Win8 (inclusive), Irix, BeOS. For the past 2 years I've been using OSX as part of my day job.

My thoughts based on _experience_: As a power user OSX is pretty darn good. You can Alt-Tab into & out-of games all day long without _any_ hiccups. On Windows alt-tabbing back INTO the game almost always forces a 1 or 2 second hiccup. The way Windows manages devices & scheduler in Windows is wonky.

+ The UI is good. Clean and (mostly) well designed (although Apple appears to be making more and more bone-headed decisions lately.) The 4 hot-corners of the desktop (Expose) is fantastic. Borders are only 1 pixel thick in OSX in contrast to the fugly 8 pixel width on Win 8. OS also has the advantage that MS Office shows the menu bar ALONG with the stupid ribbon.

+ On the MBP the trackpad blows away any Windows laptop I've tried.

+ BSD under the hood which makes porting to Linux helluva a lot easier for command line apps. XCode is a decent IDE.

- OSX Virtual Memory still stinks (I've been able to completely hard-lock OSX once about every 6 months) on 10.6 and 10.7.

- GPUs have always sucked on the MacBook. TF2 with everything turned down and barely able to get 20+ fps on a 3 yr old 17" MBP.

= When needed the majority run Windows in a VM (Parallels) and we have a few dedicated Windows boxes. A lot of developers (~20) also run Linus inside a VM (VMWare or VirtualBox) (no Plus nor Neg, equal = tie)

We have an office of ~70 people who use OSX on a daily basis and would also basically agree you are completely talking out of your ass. So yes, OSX is _good_ enough for daily use.

Besides, Linux _already_ won on the mobile space.
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs-android/

Re:Or simply install Linux

[Bacon Bits]

Suggesting Linux as an option to fix Windows is like proposing Esperanto to fix English.

Re:No, it's not.

[Toonol]

Lots of people, obviously. Probably millions. Why'd you ask this question about a statement that had a clear answer?

Re:Works for tablets

[PPH]

but it works realy well for tablets and touch-enabled devices.

How nice for you. But some of us need a desktop to actually get some work done. And there, it sucks.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Windows on the hoof

[StoneyMahoney]

[OT]
An American, an Australian and a German walk into a bar. The American greets the bartender and says "I'll have a Budweiser please." The Australian says "I'll have a pint of Fosters, mate." The German considers things for a moment and says "I think I will have a mint tea, if you have any." The American and the Australian question the German's judgement, and in reply he simply shrugs and says "well, it's not like you're having a beer".

Re:My solution for fixing Windows 8

[Coolhand2120]

I've recently been made to switch from a Win8 machine to a brand new OSX machine. The Win8 machine has three monitors, 256ssd, 16bg ram, i7. The OSX machine is a Macbook Pro Retina i7 256ssd, 16bg ram with two external monitors. There are some cool things about OSX but there are many stupid things about OSX. And they're not stupid like "this is different" stupid, they're stupid like "this shit is stupid". Because I'm feeling verbose I'll list the really stupid low hanging fruit. And at the end I'll list what I really enjoy about it.

OSX

• * I have to sign up for iTunes to keep my computer updated!?
• * I HAVE TO GIVE ITUNES MY CC# TO KEEP MY COMPUTER UPDATED!?
• * I have to restart my computer to keep it updated? I thought this was Unix?

Keyboard (external mac? keyboard)

• * Why is the keyboard all fucked up? Two keys labeled delete? Is there some aversion to calling a backspace key a backspace key?
• * Where the fuck did insert go!? You know some people actually use insert!
• * For that matter where is num lock and scroll lock? Again, I use those keys!
• * Why redesign the num pad into a Apple(TM) num pad and move all the keys around?
• * The behavior of the home and end key is stupid! They jump to the end and beginging of the document instead of the end and begining of the line! What gives them the right?!
• * They remove essential keys like insert but I have F1-F19!? And an eject key on a system that doesn't even have an optical drive? (not that they knew that about my system, so a small pass there.)
• * Seriously? No Alt key? WTF, I thought this was UNIX! How the fuck am I supposed to use EMACS!?

OSX Windows

• * WIndows present resize mouse cursors on some windows edges that cannot be resized! Inexcusable! I should be able to resize the window from any edge. And for god sakes, if I can't resize it from that edge don't show me a fucking resize cursor and make me think I'm losing my mind.
• * What the hell is up with this full screen arrow. Useless shit. It removes all the windows from my other screens and throws up a lame gray background. Lame.

• * Is this green control box maximize or what!? It seems like sometimes it wants to maximize height and width, and other times it will only maximize height. Be consistant. No, actually, always maximize both!

• * I would be so happy if when I resize the top edge of the window to the top of the screen if the bottom would snap to the bottom of the screen like win7/8. I'm not saying this makes all the difference in the world, but when you make it difficult to resize (my first point on windows) this is even more important.
• * More customization of color and style would be nice, but I'm not going to cry about too long about that.

• OSX Finder

  • * Seriously? This is the worst piece of shit file manager I've ever seen. Apple has a lot of talented people, money and has had plenty of time to make something wonderful and they made this? As quickly as I could I replaced it, I'm using nuCommander now. Get your shit together Apple.
  • * I can't remove this POS from my dock without doing some serous surgery to the OS. Even if I do get it removed, it'll come back and stick there until I restart if I open it somehow. Grow up finder, not everyone should be forced to use you. But then, this is Apple, home of "we force you to use shit" so I shouldn't be surprised.
  • * I can't type a path in here? Fuck that! That alone makes this program trash. Really, a lot of the "finder replacements" are trash for the same reason. Are people afraid to have a path bar you can type in?

  Apple Magic Mouse

  • * RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON!!!! Oh my god! I can't click this right mouse button like 90% of the time. Oh there's a right mouse button, but when you try and click it, it produces a left mouse click. You have to remove y

Re:Windows 8 IS a success!!!

[0123456]

I believe you'll find OEMs are buying Windows 8 licenses and 'downgrading' their machines to Windows 7 instead. Everyone I know who's bought a PC in the last few months has bought one with Windows 7 because Windows 8 is an utter disaster.