Windows 8.1 Update Released, With Improvements For Non-Touch Hardware

DroidJason1 (3589319) writes "Microsoft has released the highly anticipated Windows 8.1 Update, adding numerous improvements for non-touch consumers based on feedback. It is also a required update for Windows 8.1, otherwise consumers will no get any future security updates after May 2014. Most of the changes in the update are designed to appease non-touch users, with options to show apps on the desktop taskbar, the ability to see show the taskbar above apps, and a new title bar at the top of apps with options to minimize, close, or snap apps."

Comments

It's a start

[lgw]

Well, it's a start. I doubt I'm unique in that I won't be happy until I get a proper, Win 7 Start menu back, at least as an option. Live tiles on my desktop would be nice too.

Basically, give me back the Win 7 UI with the ability to put live tiles on the desktop, and run apps in a windows. Remember "windows"? Call be weird, but I'd like a version of Windows with, you know, windows.

Re:It's a start

[roc97007]

There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough.

Re:It's a start

[BLToday]

"There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough."

Or useful enough. Remember there was Konfabulator (Yahoo bought them), Google Desktop (widgets, discontinued). Only one left and barely alive is Apple's Dashboard.

Re:It's a start

[maugle]

A menu that's actually usable, that doesn't throw you into the awful metro interface, is considered by Microsoft to be "exciting near-future stuff".

...That's just goddamn depressing.

Re:It's a start

[YrWrstNtmr]

They killed those off because they were major security holes. Little bits of random HTML.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/gadgets

Re:It's a start

[Joce640k]

"Most of the changes in the update are designed to appease non-touch users"

Do they exist? Really????

How out of touch can a company be?

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

There used to be this thing called Windows Gadgets. But I guess that wasn't cool and trendy enough.

Well, they were memory hogs, and completely insecure.

In other words, they might have been a good idea at the time, but I stopped using them after a few days because they used up so much damned memory. Seriously guys, a clock widget doesn't take 200+ MB of RAM. Or, at least, it shouldn't in any sane world.

And, from the sounds of it, Microsoft didn't make a framework which was secure or safe.

A little single-purpose widget should be a small, lightweight thing that does one thing. But even the ones Microsoft shipped were overly bloated things which shouldn't have existed.

I don't think "cool and trendy" were what defined the failure of those. Bloated and insecure, but not cool and trendy.

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

Do they exist? Really????

How out of touch can a company be?

LOL, you can have my 23" Acer flat panel (with no touch, thank you very much) when you pry it from my cold dead hands (or it suffers failure).

We don' need no steenkin' touch screens.

For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.

Re:It's a start

[TheRealMindChild]

Windows gadgets were essentially borderless IE windows that ran in the local zone. This means they could CreateObject(...) ActiveX libraries via scripting that could do, well, anything to your system. The sandbox didn't matter at that point.

Re:It's a start

[flyingfsck]

...and the granddaddy of them all: Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs on DOS. I'm getting old, sorry...

Re:It's a start

[93 Escort Wagon]

You can have my TopView when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.

Re:It's a start

[gstoddart]

I remember doing that stuff ... it was kind of fun in its own way. I guess I'm "really old" ... :)

LOL, here I'm using "really old" in such a way as to mean "my age or older".

Was talking to someone the other day, and apparently his kid had found his cassette tapes -- he said it took 10 minutes to explain that it used to be for playing music, and another 5 minutes to convince that he wasn't joking.

I can only imagine trying to explain the function of rabbit ears, or how the youngest person in the room was the TV remote. And don't even get me started on black and white TV with 3 stations. ;-)

Re:It's a start

[sproketboy]

Live tiles have new and improved security holes.

Re:It's a start

[vux984]

For my tablet and phone, I like touch. For a desktop? I can't even understand why you would.

I posted in another thread several examples; most of them revolving around a kitchen or living room 'family computer' especially the common scenario where the keyboard and mouse stored in a drawer.

Then for various quick casual interactions, like to check the weather, check twitter/facebook, start a netflix movie, start playing some music... etc you do it all with the screen without even bothering to get out the mouse and keyboard.

When they want to do any real work they pull out the kb and mouse and don't touch the screen.

I know people who have those big desktop all in one touch screens, and that's how they use them.

Is it a critical must have feature? I don't think so, but its convenient, and its not like they paid a lot extra for it vs a non-touchscreen version.

A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[sinij]

You can pry Start Button from my cold blue-screen hands.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

The amazing thing (to me, anyway) is that I always hated the start menu. Never liked having such redundancy... rather than giving me some flexibility in how applications are organized you make this ghetto of delicate "shortcuts", requiring installers for even the most simple binaries.

And yet, what they replaced it with is so much worse that I find myself wishing for it back.

I would not have thought this was possible.

Re:A patch closer to usability, few more to go

[MightyYar]

I like the start menu for what it is: a comprehensive tree of everything I have installed

But that's not quite what it is - it's a tree of everything that decided to put stuff there. If you manually dragged an exe to Program Files, no show. If some uninstaller didn't remember the shortcut, you have a dead link. Worse, it's an idea decidedly rooted in a single-user machine, so exterminating an entry means looking in a few different places that they added to accommodate multiple users.

I really do like Windows 7 as well. Still not sold on the Start Menu :) At least in 7 it rarely bothers me. Frequent programs I have pinned to the task bar so that I can use the "pinned" feature in the right-click menu. Less-frequently accessed stuff can be accessed with a quick tap of the Windows button and a few letters from the name. I was quite shocked when I moved to Windows 8. I gave it a year and still hated it. When the hard drive died and I found out how horrid Windows 8 backup is, I moved back to 7.

Re:What version are they changing?

[WilliamGeorge]

Windows 8.1 Update 1 - then next they will do Windows 8.1 Update 1 Service Pack 1 ;)

Re:Fascinating release date timing

[MightyMartian]

A long long time ago,
I can still remember how that NT kernel made me smile.
And I knew that if I had my chance,
I'd write a helluva lot cool VB 6 apps.
And maybe my manager would be happy for a while.

But April made me shiver,
With each Win 8 PC I'd deliver.
Bad news in the staffroom steps.
And I couldn't take one more step.

I can't remember if I cried,
When I read about some XP user heaved a sigh.
But something touched me deep inside.
The day Windows XP died.

So bye bye Windows XP has died.
Rode my Segway to the to the levy,
But the levy was dry.
And good ol' sysadmins were drinking coffee and Sprite,
Singing "This is the day Windows XP has died,
This is the day Windows XP has died."

Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[iampiti]

It's probably the refusal of many corporations to upgrade to Windows 8 that got Microsoft to make these changes but it's still a win for everyone.
When designing Windows 8 the new Start screen looked a perfect plan to get the masses to buy apps through their store and thus getting more revenue from Windows. It'd also get them used to the UI shared by Windows Phone which would surely get the fledging smartphone platform many more users.
So when so many people refused to use Win 8 they must've thought "If we backtrack a bit we'll get many people to change to Windows 8, if we don't, we'll get fewer". It's also good to see that Microsoft no longer has near infinite power on the PC world. I'm currently starting to fear Google much more (they know so much about us...) but that's another topic

Re:Happy that costumer pressure has an effect

[MightyMartian]

Worse, it means retraining, it means loss of productivity, at least in the short term and it brings absolutely no advantage at all to the business workstation. Windows 7 was still part of an evolution from Windows 95. Much smoother and better done, but still, someone coming from XP could, after a few minutes, work in full swing.

Whether the Metro UI is better or not by some subjective, or heck, even objective standard is irrelevant. What is relevant is familiarity. QWERTY may not be the best keyboard layout, VHS may not have been better than Beta, and English spelling rules are a nightmare, but all three were familiar and dominant, and even some technical superiority of alternatives couldn't overcome the level of penetration that they enjoyed.

To my mind, it looks as if Metro will simply become another iteration of the old Active Desktop/Gadgets paradigm, and will likely be ignored by the bulk of PC users.

The Post-PC era

[TomClowers]

So, we're just gonna start calling it "non-touch" hardware now?

Re:Win 8.1 is just fine

[Lendrick]

I like Win 8.1. It's fast and reliable. I don't think it has ever crashed.

I can do everything I want pretty easily: edit videos, produce music, play games, run Steam, run overclocked hardware.

Yes, I'm sure you can do all that stuff that the cool kids are doing. I don't see anyone here questioning Windows 8's capabilities; people are complaining about the fact that it's a tablet interface that's been shoehorned into a desktop, and everything about it is designed to push you back to the tablet interface (which, conveniently for Microsoft, is a walled garden that they control).

At any rate, Windows 7 does all that cool kid stuff too, and the interface is sensible for desktop users.

Re:What version are they changing?

[lgw]

I maintain my stance that Windows 9.5 will be the version that changes everything, with Windows 9.8 mostly getting it right.

Re:Windows 8... no more

[nashv]

Pretty much agree with what you said. If you're looking for a Notepad++ replacement, you might be pleased by Sublime Text or any of the other alternatives.

Re:hoping that Windows 8 is like Vista,....

[ArhcAngel]

Windows 1.0;2.0;2.1: forgettable
Windows 3.0: not bad but definitely not good
Windows 3.1: good
Windows NT 3.1: really bad but has potential
Windows3.11 Windows For Workgroups (WFW): very good
Windows NT 3.5;3.51: really good
Windows 95: meh
Windows NT 4.0: bad
Windows 98;98SE: good
Windows 2000: good
Windows ME: evil
Windows XP: good
Windows Vista: bad
Windows 7:good
Windows 8.x: bad
Windows 9: ???

I always figured it was a marketing strategy on a good day. On a bad day I figure it's a cycle of Lazy -> Oh shit! -> motivated -> relief -> lazy

Re:The new start screen is great

[EvanED]

My take is that the start menu required a "lot" of work to maintain if you actually wanted it to be a useful hierarchy. If you just let stuff install by default and never changed things, then I think it turned into more of an almost-not-hierarchical view of a bunch of crap, personally. It'd be one thing if programs installed an icon or two (or even a submenu) under categories like Games/Productivity/Development/etc. like you get with Linux distros, but that would require cross-vendor cooperation (perhaps enforced by MS); instead you just got programs would install to Start Menu/Programs/My Crappy Company/My Crappy Software/* or, even worse, Start Menu/Programs/My Crappy Software and Start Menu/Programs/Help For My Crappy Software and Start Menu/Programs/Visit My Crappy Website etc.

I hesitate to call that "useful" personally, and it's the main reason that once Vista introduced the search functionality I very rarely actually navigated the start menu itself. On Vista/7 navigating it was actually a lot worse than it was in previous versions IMO because everything got squashed into a very small space as opposed to getting expanded out a bit more; but I was one of those weirdos who used Vista by choice and a lot of that was due to the search feature, because that made up for everything else I saw wrong with it. (I discovered Launchy a bit too late.)

I don't know what to think of 8. Vista/7 got me spoiled with the search feature so that's what I use on 8 (I also use that by choice...), and as a result my day-to-day use is basically identical between 7 and 8, and I basically never use the start screen except via search. I feel like the default program launcher on 8 (what you get when you hit the Windows key/button) requires the same sort of manual maintenance as the start menu "needed", and I haven't bothered to do that. The all programs menu I think works better than the start menu if you left the latter alone. People complain about how the start screen takes over your whole display, but I view that as a virtue -- it means a lot more can be displayed at once and, I think, it's easier to scan. I've also never wanted to see something I had open when I was figuring out what to launch. The down side is that it basically collapses the heirarchy -- but I think that unless you groom the start menu yourself, there's usually very little meaningful hierarchy for it to collapse.

That's my opinion anyway. (And no, I do not and never have had a relationship with MS.)

Re:Why are you using the touch interface with a mo

[Dynedain]

How do you shut down Windows 8 with a mouse?

Let me walk you through the steps as I do them on my test VM (default Win 8.1 install, no added software)

Get the the top level of the Metro UI (I still have not figured out how to do this without hitting the windows key on my keyboard. If you're buried multiple levels deep in something, or running something in desktop mode, there's no intuitive way to do this without a touchscreen)

Move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen. A tiny transparent icon will appear in the very bottom corner that only displays while the mouse is in motion. This icon is the traditional "minimize" icon. Pretty intuitive that I should go interact with it to do something not present on the home screen.

Hover over this icon, but don't click or right-click! Even though every other interactive icon that appears in Metro requires clicking to engage. If you click it, it minimizes. If you right-click, some other weird bar pops up from the bottom of the screen. Hover, but don't click.

A row of icons will slide in. Most seem relatively intuitive. Other than the convoluted way to get them onscreen, I have little complaint about their appearance or overall functions (other than the one with the Windows logo which does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING because I'm already in the Metro home screen). Click on the one for settings. Really.... settings?

A new menu comes in, with some pretty useless options for Start, Tiles and Help a ton of empty space, and a row of buttons at the bottom. Oh, and another option under that, which looks like a label but is actually where all the "real" settings are hidden. Ignore that for now and click on the button labeled power.

A popup menu appears, select "shut down". I've gone through 5 distinctly different interface methods just to do a shutdown.

Meanwhile, Metro is trying to give me helpful hints to swipe in from the edge of the screen. These "hints" overlay the actual menus I'm trying to use, and have no way to dismiss. Metro really wants me to try swiping and won't dismiss these unless I follow the instructions, even though I have no touchscreen.

Why is it so difficult to just shutdown? Everyone has been taught for years that you must do safe shutdowns on Windows, so let's undo that all in swoop by making a safe shutdown exceedingly difficult to get to?

Here's another example. On my default install, I have news, stocks, etc on the main screen of Metro. OK, I don't care for it, but I can live with it. But the only application (outside of IE) that gets a tile for launching is Silverlight? Why in the world would Silverlight ever need a launcher? And why would that launcher ever need to be on the default start screen?