To each his own. I've been using it for several months, and I continue to miss the start menu sorely. The Metro way seems clunky and slow to me.
I've been avoiding installing a replacement start menu, just to give things a chance, but I'm giving up and installing one. And avoiding Windows 8 as much as I possibly can.
But the C-64, Atari 400l, and the Apple II were machines that were extremely well documented. You could know all there was to know about them. That's not true with Raspberry PI, and is the heart of the objection.
You mean that the cost of advertising isn't built into the price being charged for the thing? Clearly, it must be, so ads do in fact affect price.
Ads don't create privacy issues unless the information that you submit is linked to personally-identifiable information.
As all, or nearly all, online ads are. Ad agencies and their clients love to say things like "we don't use personally-identifiable information", but they're playing word games. All usage information discloses some degree of PII, and there are quite a lot of things that are clearly PII but that companies don't count (like Apple saying that your location or your phone's ID number isn't PII).
Charging a price for Ubuntu is, IMO, a more serious violation of FOSS than ads are regarding privacy.
Huh? In what sense if charging for software even remotely a violation of FOSS? Remember, "free as in speech, not as in beer". That said, I also don't think that inclusion of ads violated FOSS. I won't use ad-supported software, but that doesn't mean it goes against FOSS principles.
I don't. I think it's apples & oranges. That I may trust them not to spy on my secretly doesn't affect whether or not I trust them enough to willingly hand my personal data over to them.
If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it?
I can't speak for you, but for me, I don't want a third party to be involved in what was a simple transaction between me and the people selling it. Especially not the producers of my OS. It doesn't matter if they're Apple, Microsoft, or Canonical, what I'm looking for and buying is None Of Their Business.
This is even more important when we're talking about searching my own computer. Using the lens, Canonical will now know every search you perform, even if you're only searching locally.
It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.
Assuming that's what you're looking for. If I'm searching locally and get results from Amazon, then those results are ads and do not benefit me one bit. If I want to be shopping, I know how to get to Amazon.
At one corner we have premium OS like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows and at another corner we have free ad-supported lite OS like Ubuntu and Chrome OS.
Pay for Windows? Never. If I'm going to pay for an OS, I'd want something that suits my needs better. I'd pay for Debian, though.
Except for people like me who would leave if we had to interact with "MonkeyFucker-69" and the rest of their ilk. Some of us like the higher level of civility that results from real names.
You do realize that G+ right now is full of anonymous people, right? The only thing that Google stops (or can stop) is people using anonymous identifiers that don't sound like real names.
This scenario helps their revenue stream while allowing for users to be anonymous on the Internet. Just not anonymous to Google or those government institutions issuing search warrants to Google.
So, in other words, it doesn't allow you to be anonymous on the internet.
I see words like "jarring" thrown around with respect to opening the start screen, and after using Windows 8 for months I think that kind of language is vastly overstating the issue.
I don't. I've been using it daily since the first preview, and it's still jarring to me.
I used to see the same kind of complaints about window animations and aero glass transparency. After a while, you largely don't notice it anymore.
Well, I don't notice those things, you're right -- because I have them turned off. And this is the crux of the issue... why isn't Metro configurable? It should be possible to disable it entirely and have everything work solely in desktop mode.
For most people on this forum, accessing the start screen would be a rare event. There are only two reasons to do so: to quickly read live tiles or to launch a metro app.
Or to launch a non-Metro app when you don't remember what it's called.
Members of this forum would probably have no want or need for either.
Funny, I have to access the Metro page all the freaking time.
Reorienting yourself in the start screen takes a fraction of a second, since the tiles are so large and differentiated enough to encourage quick recognition. This is an improvement over the standard start menu
A fraction of a second can still be quite irritating and even jarring. The large tiles are not a good thing in the setting of a desktop -- the traditional start menu is a much better way to go in that environment. The density of relevant information (the apps that are available) is much higher, and that's a good thing.
where all the icons are the same (a folder)
All your icons are the same? Mine aren't. The icons reflect what the document or folder contains.
The complaints are not about usability, but familiarity.
Actually, most of the complaints I hear (including my own) from people who've used Metro are about usability. Metro is not the most user-friendly interface for any but very simple tasks.
For certain uses, this is perfect. For use in a general purpose computing device, it's the opposite of perfect. And replacing the start menu with Metro makes it even worse. I would not be irritated if I could just work in the desktop and never have to even look at the Metro screen. But I can't -- there are certain things, like the now-absent Start button, that throw me back into Metro Madness. This really is jarring, therefore irritating, and requires extra work from me to get back to the appropriate environment.
No, nerds hate change when it's just for the sake of change . Metro on the desktop gives no advantages and several disadvantages. That's the sort of change nerds tend to dislike.
But it's time for GUIs to move on, precisely because manual window management is counterproductive for almost every task. Maybe Metro isn't perfect, but you can't blame MS for trying.
Now that you know (from the other comments) how to do this, what's the argument for Metro on the desktop? What does it improve?
I can't blame MS for trying something new, but I can blame them for actively degrading the UI experience.
I have, pretty extensively. Metro blows on a desktop, as it's a completely inappropriate interface for the form factor. I'm not sure why that's a controversial statement.
Good point. IIRC, that's true for felonies, but not for misdemeanors. I tend to forget that because in many (most?) cases, the right to a jury trial is waived.
You'd better be, because if not, then there is no real privacy for anyone ever.
The legal system doesn't know that he was doing anything illegal until after he's convicted of it. Up until then, he's presumed innocent, but accused of doing something illegal. It may seem like a fine distinction, but it's a critically important one.
To say that someone doesn't get their privacy rights because they're breaking the law is to say that cops get to decide someone's guilt or innocence -- which they don't get to do. Judges get to do that in a court of law. Under existing law, a judge can make this sort of determination during the investigatory phase: it's called "issuing a warrant".
I use KDE 4 more than anything else and I still think it was a horrible mistake. I do plan on switching away from it as soon as I have enough time to do it.
There is this underlying fear by many that if you have a touch screen, someone is going to come in and confiscate your mouse and your going to be forced to hold your arm in front of you 8 hours a day.
Maybe not that so much as a fear that the touchscreen-optimized UI will become standard, and people will have to use that with a mouse instead of an interface designed for use with a mouse.
The reason Microsoft desperately wants Apple-like curated services is that is what consumers want
No, the reason Microsoft desperately wants an Apple-like curated service is because they want a cut of each and every sale of application software, just like Apple.
Yep, the ribbon is easily the worst UI element that Microsoft has introduced yet. Well, was, until Metro came around. (and yes, I've been using Win 8 quite a lot).
I think Google's data collection is very problematic as well. However, the threat google poses is quite a bit lower than the threat that the government poses (theoretically. If google shares it's data with government agencies, then the threat is identical.)
Yes, things like CCTV and license plate readers are a seriously problematic issue, but the deeper problem is the aggregation of all the data. Even if each individual piece is not controversial or particularly sensitive in isolate, when you put them all together, the result couldn't get much more invasive.
Slashdot Mirror
To each his own. I've been using it for several months, and I continue to miss the start menu sorely. The Metro way seems clunky and slow to me.
I've been avoiding installing a replacement start menu, just to give things a chance, but I'm giving up and installing one. And avoiding Windows 8 as much as I possibly can.
But the C-64, Atari 400l, and the Apple II were machines that were extremely well documented. You could know all there was to know about them. That's not true with Raspberry PI, and is the heart of the objection.
Ads don't influence price
You mean that the cost of advertising isn't built into the price being charged for the thing? Clearly, it must be, so ads do in fact affect price.
Ads don't create privacy issues unless the information that you submit is linked to personally-identifiable information.
As all, or nearly all, online ads are. Ad agencies and their clients love to say things like "we don't use personally-identifiable information", but they're playing word games. All usage information discloses some degree of PII, and there are quite a lot of things that are clearly PII but that companies don't count (like Apple saying that your location or your phone's ID number isn't PII).
Huh? In what sense if charging for software even remotely a violation of FOSS? Remember, "free as in speech, not as in beer". That said, I also don't think that inclusion of ads violated FOSS. I won't use ad-supported software, but that doesn't mean it goes against FOSS principles.
I think that's a legitimate point to make.
I don't. I think it's apples & oranges. That I may trust them not to spy on my secretly doesn't affect whether or not I trust them enough to willingly hand my personal data over to them.
All of my personal machines are Linux desktops, and they work better for me than any other OS I use. So, yes, I'm living the dream.
All of the "issues" you mention don't affect me in the slightest. I can do everything I want to do and more.
If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it?
I can't speak for you, but for me, I don't want a third party to be involved in what was a simple transaction between me and the people selling it. Especially not the producers of my OS. It doesn't matter if they're Apple, Microsoft, or Canonical, what I'm looking for and buying is None Of Their Business.
This is even more important when we're talking about searching my own computer. Using the lens, Canonical will now know every search you perform, even if you're only searching locally.
It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.
Assuming that's what you're looking for. If I'm searching locally and get results from Amazon, then those results are ads and do not benefit me one bit. If I want to be shopping, I know how to get to Amazon.
At one corner we have premium OS like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows and at another corner we have free ad-supported lite OS like Ubuntu and Chrome OS.
Pay for Windows? Never. If I'm going to pay for an OS, I'd want something that suits my needs better. I'd pay for Debian, though.
Except for people like me who would leave if we had to interact with "MonkeyFucker-69" and the rest of their ilk. Some of us like the higher level of civility that results from real names.
You do realize that G+ right now is full of anonymous people, right? The only thing that Google stops (or can stop) is people using anonymous identifiers that don't sound like real names.
This scenario helps their revenue stream while allowing for users to be anonymous on the Internet. Just not anonymous to Google or those government institutions issuing search warrants to Google.
So, in other words, it doesn't allow you to be anonymous on the internet.
Not.
The tech community totally gets this. It's one of the problems.
I see words like "jarring" thrown around with respect to opening the start screen, and after using Windows 8 for months I think that kind of language is vastly overstating the issue.
I don't. I've been using it daily since the first preview, and it's still jarring to me.
I used to see the same kind of complaints about window animations and aero glass transparency. After a while, you largely don't notice it anymore.
Well, I don't notice those things, you're right -- because I have them turned off. And this is the crux of the issue... why isn't Metro configurable? It should be possible to disable it entirely and have everything work solely in desktop mode.
For most people on this forum, accessing the start screen would be a rare event. There are only two reasons to do so: to quickly read live tiles or to launch a metro app.
Or to launch a non-Metro app when you don't remember what it's called.
Members of this forum would probably have no want or need for either.
Funny, I have to access the Metro page all the freaking time.
Reorienting yourself in the start screen takes a fraction of a second, since the tiles are so large and differentiated enough to encourage quick recognition. This is an improvement over the standard start menu
A fraction of a second can still be quite irritating and even jarring. The large tiles are not a good thing in the setting of a desktop -- the traditional start menu is a much better way to go in that environment. The density of relevant information (the apps that are available) is much higher, and that's a good thing.
where all the icons are the same (a folder)
All your icons are the same? Mine aren't. The icons reflect what the document or folder contains.
The complaints are not about usability, but familiarity.
Actually, most of the complaints I hear (including my own) from people who've used Metro are about usability. Metro is not the most user-friendly interface for any but very simple tasks.
For certain uses, this is perfect. For use in a general purpose computing device, it's the opposite of perfect. And replacing the start menu with Metro makes it even worse. I would not be irritated if I could just work in the desktop and never have to even look at the Metro screen. But I can't -- there are certain things, like the now-absent Start button, that throw me back into Metro Madness. This really is jarring, therefore irritating, and requires extra work from me to get back to the appropriate environment.
Yes, I know nerds hate change.
No, nerds hate change when it's just for the sake of change . Metro on the desktop gives no advantages and several disadvantages. That's the sort of change nerds tend to dislike.
I have, pretty extensively. Metro blows on a desktop, as it's a completely inappropriate interface for the form factor. I'm not sure why that's a controversial statement.
Good point. IIRC, that's true for felonies, but not for misdemeanors. I tend to forget that because in many (most?) cases, the right to a jury trial is waived.
Tracfone, available at almost every supermarket I set foot in.
You'd better be, because if not, then there is no real privacy for anyone ever.
The legal system doesn't know that he was doing anything illegal until after he's convicted of it. Up until then, he's presumed innocent, but accused of doing something illegal. It may seem like a fine distinction, but it's a critically important one.
To say that someone doesn't get their privacy rights because they're breaking the law is to say that cops get to decide someone's guilt or innocence -- which they don't get to do. Judges get to do that in a court of law. Under existing law, a judge can make this sort of determination during the investigatory phase: it's called "issuing a warrant".
I use KDE 4 more than anything else and I still think it was a horrible mistake. I do plan on switching away from it as soon as I have enough time to do it.
There is this underlying fear by many that if you have a touch screen, someone is going to come in and confiscate your mouse and your going to be forced to hold your arm in front of you 8 hours a day.
Maybe not that so much as a fear that the touchscreen-optimized UI will become standard, and people will have to use that with a mouse instead of an interface designed for use with a mouse.
The reason Microsoft desperately wants Apple-like curated services is that is what consumers want
No, the reason Microsoft desperately wants an Apple-like curated service is because they want a cut of each and every sale of application software, just like Apple.
Yep, the ribbon is easily the worst UI element that Microsoft has introduced yet. Well, was, until Metro came around. (and yes, I've been using Win 8 quite a lot).
I think Google's data collection is very problematic as well. However, the threat google poses is quite a bit lower than the threat that the government poses (theoretically. If google shares it's data with government agencies, then the threat is identical.)
They built the system.
Yes, things like CCTV and license plate readers are a seriously problematic issue, but the deeper problem is the aggregation of all the data. Even if each individual piece is not controversial or particularly sensitive in isolate, when you put them all together, the result couldn't get much more invasive.