If I can't run the same apps on my ARM version of Windows as on my x86 version, why do I want the ARM version of Windows to begin with?
Same reason people have a desktop and a tablet that both run different incompatible OSes, except that in this case there will be a level of cross-compatibility in that any Metro or.Net apps will run on both x86 and ARM, but native apps won't.
Let's step back....is this more of a problem for Adobe Flash or Windows? If I'm a normal person with the choice of buying an Android or Windows tablet, am I going to buy the one that plays Flash or the one that doesn't?
Well lets look at the current tablet landscape, if you're an average person buying a tablet are you going to buy the one that plays flash or the one that doesn't? Statistically you'd buy the one that doesn't, given the marketshare of the iPad.
The real thing that should concern us is that it won't support *ANY* plug-in.
Except that's not true, from TFS: Users will still be able to open a traditional browser interface to make use of legacy sites that rely upon plug-ins.
The problem with IE on Windows was that it was so tightly integrated into the OS that you could not uninstall it without some special hacks and tricks. IE was always there. In fact, the Windows Explorer was pretty much IE in many ways.
Why is that a problem? mshtml was a core component of the OS and IE used it, you could delete iexplore.exe if you really didn't want it and there you go, no more internet explorer but even if you left it there was nothing stopping you from using another browser and indeed setting that browser as the default.
I think the Microsoft antitrust case related to including IE was utter bullshit. Even if it's not the browser I want to use, I want my OS to include a browser when it's installed. Things are pretty inconvenient otherwise.
The thing i find most annoying about that is every other OS does it, just because Windows had primary market share all of a sudden they weren't allowed to do it anymore, yet this exact same behavior is acceptable for those who don't have as high a market share. AFAIK on iOS and WP7 (not sure about Android) you can't stop Safari and IE respectively being the default browser, i find that much more anti-competitive than just distributing a browser with the OS.
so microsoft has magically changed because they are pushing HTML5?
They haven't 'magically' changed, this seems to be a pretty un-magical change where they are pushing a standard, rather than their proprietary lock-in, which is a good change.
I'd better forget all of those antitrust cases
You mean the ones from many years ago? What's the point of imposing penalties if you don't expect change?
anti-apple marketing
So it's ok for apple to do it but microsoft can't?
And guess what, you get a licence for those patents when you buy MS Windows. Or when you buy OS X. Or when you buy an Android phone / tablet. Or any other arbitrary media player box. Or if you install Flash player. Or if you install any one of the random commercial H264 players floating around.
Or when you buy a video card from the major manufacturers which all offer hardware accelerated H.264 codecs.
they aren't confident in the codebase being patent free.
And how could they be? By reviewing the 1.5 trillion software patents already on record?
That's the point, people tout VP8 as being so good because it isn't patent-encumbered but the simple fact is that at this point no-one knows whether that is actually true, even google aren't sure it's true.
How many posts are we going to see about Windows 8 on Slashdot?
This is blowing my mind.
How is this "news that matters"?
Well it's a major shakeup for the most dominant operating system in consumer computing with a focus on serious expansion into the tablet space. So for most people involved in technology these significant changes to Windows do matter, whether you're using it, supporting it, writing applications for it or working with a platform that could capitalize on people's natural urge to resist drastic change. But of course you could just avoid these stories if it's not something that interests you or matters to you, though given the volume of comments it clearly matters to plenty of people.
Re:Not only be screwed by local problems!
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Windows 8 Roundup
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· Score: 2
Not that I use Windows for anything than gaming, and even there it sucks.
Windows sucks for gaming?
Re:BSODs are very often hardware related
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Windows 8 Roundup
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· Score: 1
So when things go screwy with the driver it is a kernel level fault and often knocks the whole OS down. It was a poor design
And how would you have designed it at the time to get adequate performance? Why do you think pretty much all major OSes do the same thing?
Isn't that a tad obvious? The fact that MS takes away a perfect good Window manager (Aero) and replaces it with this crap.
They haven't taken away the window manager, it's still there, it's just that it's decoupled from the core system now (which is good because you can have a desktop GUI on desktop/laptops, a touch-oriented GUI on touch devices and no GUI at all on servers) and you launch it if you need it or applications that need it launch it automatically (like VS does in the preview).
without a start menu isn't a window manager since you can't simply start programs with it
Since when does a window manager require a start menu?
I agree with you that the start menu should remain, and i really hope that it does in the final release, let's not forget this is a developer preview, not even close to final.
I'm finding it anything but; but then, I am running it in a VM without a touchscreen or proper hardware acceleration.
Yes that's expected and the reason for that is that you can't install the vmware tools, or virtualbox extensions or whatever your environment calls them.
How do you go back to the previous screen? How do you close it? Do I right click this or left click that? It's inconsistent, and it's all frustrating to the point that I'm begging for it to stop, but I'm forcing myself to stick with it to see if it grows on me.
To some degree im finding the same thing, it's not effective with a mouse and keyboard. The windows key takes you back to the start screen but if you just want to go and grab the application back you need to move the mouse to the left edge of the screen and pull the app back, great for a swipe on a touchscreen, not so great with a mouse. This is compounded on a VM because you have to find the edge without the VM losing mouse focus, which is quite hard.
I would prefer it to work without having to see the metro interface at all, so if you chose to you could load up straight to the desktop app and work from there, that would be better for mouse/keyboard setups.
If only these 'clouds' or 'cloud services' actually had effective redundancy like they claim to and we didn't have so many 'clear sky' moments where they go down.
HA - Windows support is not enough for this ancient architecture?
Well Windows is branching out to supporting ARM in the mainstream with the new version so it makes sense for Intel to get serious about other operating systems too.
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maybe a computer is simply a medium for running a program.
It always has been, when have you ever used a computer but not used any software? That's all a computer is good for.
If I can't run the same apps on my ARM version of Windows as on my x86 version, why do I want the ARM version of Windows to begin with?
Same reason people have a desktop and a tablet that both run different incompatible OSes, except that in this case there will be a level of cross-compatibility in that any Metro or .Net apps will run on both x86 and ARM, but native apps won't.
...that just killed my desire for Windows 8 on a tablet. Thanks anyway, Microsoft.
So up until now you were actually thinking x86 software would run on ARM? They are completely different instruction sets.
Let's step back....is this more of a problem for Adobe Flash or Windows? If I'm a normal person with the choice of buying an Android or Windows tablet, am I going to buy the one that plays Flash or the one that doesn't?
Well lets look at the current tablet landscape, if you're an average person buying a tablet are you going to buy the one that plays flash or the one that doesn't? Statistically you'd buy the one that doesn't, given the marketshare of the iPad.
Yes, basically it's just saying Microsoft is making it's tablets/phones like the iPhone in not supporting Flash
No, any devices running Windows 8 can use IE either through Metro (which won't support plugins) or through Desktop (which will support plugins).
The real thing that should concern us is that it won't support *ANY* plug-in.
Except that's not true, from TFS:
Users will still be able to open a traditional browser interface to make use of legacy sites that rely upon plug-ins.
The problem with IE on Windows was that it was so tightly integrated into the OS that you could not uninstall it without some special hacks and tricks. IE was always there. In fact, the Windows Explorer was pretty much IE in many ways.
Why is that a problem? mshtml was a core component of the OS and IE used it, you could delete iexplore.exe if you really didn't want it and there you go, no more internet explorer but even if you left it there was nothing stopping you from using another browser and indeed setting that browser as the default.
I think the Microsoft antitrust case related to including IE was utter bullshit. Even if it's not the browser I want to use, I want my OS to include a browser when it's installed. Things are pretty inconvenient otherwise.
The thing i find most annoying about that is every other OS does it, just because Windows had primary market share all of a sudden they weren't allowed to do it anymore, yet this exact same behavior is acceptable for those who don't have as high a market share. AFAIK on iOS and WP7 (not sure about Android) you can't stop Safari and IE respectively being the default browser, i find that much more anti-competitive than just distributing a browser with the OS.
so microsoft has magically changed because they are pushing HTML5?
They haven't 'magically' changed, this seems to be a pretty un-magical change where they are pushing a standard, rather than their proprietary lock-in, which is a good change.
I'd better forget all of those antitrust cases
You mean the ones from many years ago? What's the point of imposing penalties if you don't expect change?
anti-apple marketing
So it's ok for apple to do it but microsoft can't?
I consume HTML5 video almost daily.
Maybe you should leave some for the rest of us.
And guess what, you get a licence for those patents when you buy MS Windows. Or when you buy OS X. Or when you buy an Android phone / tablet. Or any other arbitrary media player box. Or if you install Flash player. Or if you install any one of the random commercial H264 players floating around.
Or when you buy a video card from the major manufacturers which all offer hardware accelerated H.264 codecs.
they aren't confident in the codebase being patent free.
And how could they be? By reviewing the 1.5 trillion software patents already on record?
That's the point, people tout VP8 as being so good because it isn't patent-encumbered but the simple fact is that at this point no-one knows whether that is actually true, even google aren't sure it's true.
So where is Bob?
Discontinued about 15 years ago.
But how exactly does Windows suck for gaming? I don't see what's bad about it.
How many posts are we going to see about Windows 8 on Slashdot?
This is blowing my mind.
How is this "news that matters"?
Well it's a major shakeup for the most dominant operating system in consumer computing with a focus on serious expansion into the tablet space. So for most people involved in technology these significant changes to Windows do matter, whether you're using it, supporting it, writing applications for it or working with a platform that could capitalize on people's natural urge to resist drastic change. But of course you could just avoid these stories if it's not something that interests you or matters to you, though given the volume of comments it clearly matters to plenty of people.
Not that I use Windows for anything than gaming, and even there it sucks.
Windows sucks for gaming?
So when things go screwy with the driver it is a kernel level fault and often knocks the whole OS down. It was a poor design
And how would you have designed it at the time to get adequate performance? Why do you think pretty much all major OSes do the same thing?
Isn't that a tad obvious? The fact that MS takes away a perfect good Window manager (Aero) and replaces it with this crap.
They haven't taken away the window manager, it's still there, it's just that it's decoupled from the core system now (which is good because you can have a desktop GUI on desktop/laptops, a touch-oriented GUI on touch devices and no GUI at all on servers) and you launch it if you need it or applications that need it launch it automatically (like VS does in the preview).
without a start menu isn't a window manager since you can't simply start programs with it
Since when does a window manager require a start menu?
I agree with you that the start menu should remain, and i really hope that it does in the final release, let's not forget this is a developer preview, not even close to final.
I'm finding it anything but; but then, I am running it in a VM without a touchscreen or proper hardware acceleration.
Yes that's expected and the reason for that is that you can't install the vmware tools, or virtualbox extensions or whatever your environment calls them.
How do you go back to the previous screen? How do you close it? Do I right click this or left click that? It's inconsistent, and it's all frustrating to the point that I'm begging for it to stop, but I'm forcing myself to stick with it to see if it grows on me.
To some degree im finding the same thing, it's not effective with a mouse and keyboard. The windows key takes you back to the start screen but if you just want to go and grab the application back you need to move the mouse to the left edge of the screen and pull the app back, great for a swipe on a touchscreen, not so great with a mouse. This is compounded on a VM because you have to find the edge without the VM losing mouse focus, which is quite hard.
I would prefer it to work without having to see the metro interface at all, so if you chose to you could load up straight to the desktop app and work from there, that would be better for mouse/keyboard setups.
If only these 'clouds' or 'cloud services' actually had effective redundancy like they claim to and we didn't have so many 'clear sky' moments where they go down.
I know several "IT guys" who will be lost if the UI goes away, though.
You aren't going to be able to do much without a UI. The GUI will be optional though.
HA - Windows support is not enough for this ancient architecture?
Well Windows is branching out to supporting ARM in the mainstream with the new version so it makes sense for Intel to get serious about other operating systems too.
the only difference seems to be that azure locks you into visual studio
How so?
but it should be noted that "fast and fluid" is a new Microsoft code phrase that was repeated many times at the BUILD conference sessions.
I think it's a pretty good way to describe it, that's how they termed it and in using it i found that to be pretty true.
Although the guest additions don't work yet, so it doesn't run as well as it could. Thinking I'll make a Windows 8 partition to give it a proper go.
Yes that's correct, so it is a bit jerky at times but obviously it isn't like that when it's running native.