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Microsoft Won't Bring Back the Start Menu Until 2015
DroidJason1 (3589319) writes "Microsoft recently announced plans to reintroduce the Start Menu to Windows in an upcoming version of the operating system. While the plan was to roll out an update to Windows 8.1 and offer the Start menu later this year, it seems like this is no longer the case. Now Microsoft is reportedly looking to release the Start Menu with Windows 9, which is expected in April of 2015. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have faced a boat load of criticism and hatred, partly due to the removal of the Start button and Start menu. The restoration of a visible Start button on the taskbar was one of the key features of the Windows 8.1 update, released back in October of 2013."
I received a windows 8 machine at work to fix some compatibility issues with my product. I bitched and moaned about how awful it was for a month. Then i let out a stream of periodic muffled profanities every time some weird unrequested interface took over my laptop from out of nowhere. Then months went by and i realized something:
Windows 8 is not really that bad. I know how to find all the stuffs now. I know how to shut it down. I know how to avoid having intrusive metro apps popping up. I no longer care if the start menu comes back or not. It's all still there. It actually seems to perform quite well. start up and shutdown times are decent. sleep when i close the lid seems to work. I'm through bitching and i just want to get on with my work. At this point, i'd rather it just stay the way it is.
Because those lists are not true. They always conveniently forget a release in between, or describe a release as good/bad even if it actually was the opposite.
Wow, force adoption of an un-popular version of your software by crippling the other versions.
Brilliant strategy! What could possibly go wrong? Just piss off everybody, and then they won't be pissed off about Windows 8.
You, sir, have a brilliant future in PR ahead of you.
What next, brick all of the XBox 360s so people have to buy an XBone?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One thing about Microsoft that I don't understand is its seeming slowness at doing simple things. OK, everyone agrees there has to be a Start Menu, it is not hard to implement (see lots of 3rd party apps doing just that), it will not break any existing Windows functionality, MS has virtually unlimited highly skilled resources, yet this obvious simple improvement takes months (if not years) to release. Let alone the fact that this problem should never have existed in the first place.
And I can't do it without Classic Shell. Classic Shell, making Windows 8 Bearable.
Meet new people, and kill them.
It's not at all bad once you install Classic Shell and disable Metro. It's still totally insane that we need to install a 3rd party tool to make the OS usable, but 8 is far superior to 7 once you install Classic Shell.
Besides all the shiny marketing, they are admittedly designed with usability in mind,
I used to believe this load of bullshit about Mac usability, until I got one. I've been using a Macbook Pro for 6 months now as my primary machine, and I still hate it. Usability my ass... just TRY connecting the damn thing to a projector or second display in a conference room and making it behave in a rational manner. Or try taking a screenshot... what was that obnoxious key combo again? That's right... it makes no sense and can't be remembered by a mere mortal. Let's jump to the beginning of a line with the Home key, or the end of the line with the End key... oh wait, it doesn't have one. They conveniently replaced those with more key combinations that can't be remembered by us mortals. Apparently text entry isn't an important usability case for Apple.
Any time I want to get real work done, I plug in a Windows keyboard and switch over to a Windows VM. Why? Not because I love Microsoft software and Windows so much, it's because it "just fucking works" unlike everything on the Mac.
I partly agree. Windows 8.1 isn't as tragic as it seems at first. But they've forgotten one of the primary goals of a UI: discoverability.
I'm a Linux geek, so I'm used to typing arcane commands into shell prompts. I can find whatever I need in a Google search if I don't know it already. Command line interfaces require you to specify what you are looking for. It's expected that you should know in advance what you want and how to ask for it. This is somewhat less true for the double-tab interface in bash, but still, the basic idea is to specify.
What made Windows and MacOS such a big deal back in the day is that they were "discoverable" - you could figure out what options you had available by reading the menus and picking one, with the basic expectation that, if there was an option or command to run, there'd be a menu entry in a hopefully sensible place to allow it. Thus, anybody could "use" a computer by finding the obvious start button.
Windows 8.x tosses discoverability to the wind. You just have to know in advance which combination of swipes and from which side in order to get what you want. Because of this, it's not discoverable. What makes Windows 8 so damning and frustrating for the new user is that stuff happens and there's no obvious reason why.
With this recent statement, Microsoft has made clear that they're going to try to double down on the Metro Interface, and hope that by promising it at some distant, future date, the haters will shut up long enough for people to get used to the not-discoverable Windows 8 interface.
I have mixed feelings about this.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I completely agree. OSX has a poor user interface. Their "Save screen real estate by only having one pull down menu" made sense when we were running on 320x200 screens. At that resolution, a pull down menu took a significant percentage of the screen real estate, and everyone was using a single screen. Today, screen real estate is abundant, and multiple monitors are common. With the single menu, there is no good visual cue to indicate which of your many open windows the pull down menu will affect. This is a poor UI giving poor usability. Putting removable media in the trash is the movement for ejecting the media? Total brain dead UI.