However there was more to the criticism than looks. XP was a security nightmare; Vista was very buggy. UAC was annoying as hell. Drivers were non-existent when it was released.
Quite true, all of it! Which is most interesting to me, because I've seen it thrown around here that Windows 8 is even worse than Vista, perhaps even worse than Windows ME! Yet for all the hate on Windows 8, nearly 100% of it focuses on the UI. You don't hear about how unstable, insecure, or incompatible Windows 8 is on Slashdot. There are no stories about terrible performance, or massive driver-related issues. There's no talk about how Windows 8 barely runs on hardware you just purchased. It's the lightest, fastest, most secure, most stable OS Microsoft has released in decades. And yet it's being branded here as the worst OS in decades due to the UI, which you can replace in two clicks and customize to your liking.
"If only you could choose to use the start menu. Then there would be no problem," they say. Nope, not buying it. You can already choose not to use any metro elements, and install any shell or UI replacement you like. Isn't that the remedy in the Ubuntu Unity threads? Shut up and install KDE, or Cinnamon? You have a choice, exercise it. Yet the complaining continues to ensue.
In the case of Metro, it's not just about the looks. MS has created a hybrid tablet/desktop OS with more emphasis on the tablet all the while ignoring lessons learned in UIs.
More emphasis on the tablet? I don't know, it depends. There's an entire desktop which has many keyboard and mouse friendly elements to it. The explorer shell is still very keyboard/touch centric. And there have been a great number of improvements made on explorer and the desktop. There's no denying the metro side isn't touch friendly, but that doesn't preclude it from having mouse/keyboard emphasis.
As a keyboard junkie, I'm happier using Windows 8 using just the keyboard than any other Windows version. There are more keyboard shortcuts than ever before. The "all apps" menu in Windows 8 is faster to access and easier to browse with a keyboard than "all programs" in the start menu. On the laptop side, with the new gestures the track pad is more usable than ever before... much easier to access and browse the start screen with just the track pad than browsing the start menu. This is thanks in large part to the ample targets provided by tiles, conforming with Fitts' Law. The mouse benefits from this as well. In weighing all the UI improvements made for each input device, it's not so cut and dry to conclude that more emphasis has been put on touch.
My opinion is that another case of MS copying Apple but learning the wrong lessons. Apple these days is pushing towards minimalism.
Apple is just as guilty as MS of the UI "atrocities" they are being accused of. The original iPhone was so barebones simple: tap an app to open, press the home button to close. But since then, more and more functionality has been added and hidden from the user. Press hold to remove apps. Press hold drag to create folders. Double tap home for switcher. Press hold home for Siri. Drag down from top for notification center. But now a whole generation of people are growing up using these devices and hidden UI elements.
You and I grew up with our own set of hidden UI elements, such as drag and drop, right click context menus, etc. They're so obvious and ubiquitous to us now, that they no longer seem hidden. Just look at the OSX side; hotcorners have been a staple there for many years now. It's something OSX users are used to, and use daily with no problem. Windows users will learn to use them as well. Over time, these new UI elements will turn into conventions, and then there will be no more complaining.
Apple is incorporating more iOS features into OS X; however, they are keeping the two separate.
I would have a lot more sympathy for you if the ribbon weren't completely customizable. All you point out a variety of idiosyncrasies with the way things are arranged. I can go through a menu system and point out just as many. Like how about in Open Office, something as simple and common as changing page orientation is buried in Format > Page > Page > Orientation. Or what about bibliographies? That's a mess. The bibliography database is under tools > bibliography database, but the actual bibliography tools are under insert > indexes and tables > bibliography entry. In the ribbon it's all centralized under the obvious tab: references. I could go on and on.
This isn't a problem inherent with the menu or the ribbon, but a difficulty in organizing disparate functions into an arbitrary hierarchy. But that's why, since Office 2010, you can organize and change the ribbon exactly to your liking. You could never do this with the menus in Office 2003 and prior.
the ribbon auto flips back to Home... OK, Ive got my boxes, now I want to color some of them in, click on a box - OH NO, now its taking me back to the Home tab again..what?
I do not witness this behavior in Word 2013. Perhaps it's been fixed.
The simple fact is, tool bars did serve their purpose quite well and there has been no rational reason put forth to remove them completely.
They have not been removed completely. Most of the functionality you would want in a toolbar is taken care of by the quick access toolbar. You can pin anything you like there for one click, always visible access.
If the ribbon was an option then there would be NO PROBLEM - but the ribbon is mandatory and for some people it is a regressive step.
Mandatory? Who exactly is forcing anyone to use Office 2007+? You never had to move away from 2003. Microsoft even released a compatibility pack for Office XP and 2003 to open and save files in the new format. Or you can still use menus and toolbars in Libre Office or Open Office. That right there is your option to avoid the ribbon. So where's the problem?
If you're somehow forced to do so for work, I suggest seriously considering customizing the default interface and adding your own ribbon with your most commonly used functions on it. It's much more flexible than you're making it out to be.
But that's the point isn't it? I cannot see a way in which my current work environment benefits from touch. I also cannot fathom how my work environment could be improved to work with touch and still get my work done in a convenient fashion.
And that's fine. Maybe you have the optimal tools for your job right now in front of you. But that doesn't mean someone else could use the tools touch provides for their job, or that someone else might think of a way to use touch for your particular job. Just because you personally can't imagine it means nothing.
It also goes beyond touch. Metro is basically one full screen application... so basically WordPerfect 5.1 or Lotus 1-2-3.
I wasn't really talking about metro specifically, but touch screens in general. But since you brought it up, as it stands, the desktop is still there for you. I don't know how metro will evolve in the future, but already it's well beyond Lotus 1-2-3 functionality, in terms of having apps side by side and running in the background. I imagine app management will change in future versions, but in the mean time that's why the desktop is still there.
How is this better than the mouse that is FAR closer than my screen (being right next to my keyboard)?
Answer: it's not. Solution: use the mouse. What you've done here is created a situation where touch is inconvenient, then used it to prove that touch is inconvenient. Likewise with your second paragraph.
It's like saying "typing is very inconvenient with a mouse. Why type with my mouse when I can just use a keyboard?" Your entire post is the exact strawman I alluded to in my post. I'm not saying use touch when a keyboard or a mouse is more efficient. What I'm saying is use touch when it makes MORE sense. Try this with your keyboard or mouse: move two objects apart from each other at the same time. Can't do it with keyboard and mouse, can do with touch. Touch can do things mouse and keyboard can't, therefore touch has applications which aren't even being explored with our current UIs.
I don't want the user interface deciding what is and isn't important to me in such a broad feature set. That's my decision.
And that is a valid point. I personally only want the relevant toolbars available for me. If I'm working on a chart, I want chart toolbars available, and when I'm not working on a chart, I want them gone. I see no point in having them there in front of me, simply grayed out since the functions are only available in certain contexts. Same goes for drawing tools, tables, equation tools, etc.
But again, I don't see how the ribbon and menu+toolbar are any different in this respect. Open Office for instance still has context sensitive menus. Or go the opposite way and Word lets you pin these context sensitive menu items in your own permanent ribbon.
And again - in the space used by the ribbon, about 3-5 times as many commands can be fitted with the Office 2003 layout scheme. I know this, because again, in 2003 I easily fit styling, file, drawing and reviewing toolbars into the same space occupied by "the Ribbon" which only managed to fit a mangled subset of styling and file management.
I would really like to know exactly how many objects you're pinning, and which ones. In a custom ribbon in a 1920x1080 resolution, you can add literally 200 functions to a single ribbon before overflow kicks in. Technically if you wanted you could combine all the default ribbons into a single ribbon and still have room to spare. Are you telling me you had 600 - 1000 functions on your toolbar in Office 2003?
If you could put your computer monitor less than 12 inches from your face, gorilla arm probably wouldn't be as much of a problem (though I can't say the same about eyesight).
And you absolutely can. There already exist monitor arms that can do this. If touch becomes a common UI for desktops, why wouldn't the workspace adapt to the input much in the same way desks added keyboard trays when PCs became popular? Saying that touch is bad because my workspace isn't set up for touch is begging the question; your workspace isn't set up for touch because you're not using touch.
you have PC sales down 13% over the same 4th quarter year before last, even though the economy was worse which clearly indicates the reason that sales are plummeting is Win 8 is a DO NOT WANT.
PC sales may be down, but pinning it on Windows 8 is wrong. Let's take a look at what NPD has to say about holiday sales of consumer electronics:
+Overall sales declined 7 percent
+Windows notebook holiday unit sales dropped 11 percent
+Notebook computers and flat-panel TVs both exceeded $2 billion in total dollars sales, while no other single segment accounted for over $1 billion in revenue.
+Sales of Windows notebooks under $500 fell by 16 percent while notebooks priced above $500 increased 4 percent.
+Macbook sales dropped 6 percent while the ASPs rose almost $100 to $1419.
So what can we infer? Sales were down across the board, yet notebooks were still in the top 2 earners. Further, while cheap Windows notebook sales were down, expensive notebook sales went up. Same thing happened over on the mac side, where macbook sales fell, but average selling price rose. People are buying more expensive notebooks. The culprit? The move to tablets and ditching the netbook. People just aren't buying netbooks and cheap laptops; they're buying tablets instead. Is Windows 8 to blame for this? Not on its own (iPad and Android are moving this trend, probably moreso), but the fact Windows 8 is available on tablets and is very tablet friendly it's certainly isn't convincing people to not buy tablets.
So is Windows 8 the do not want megaflop bomb, as you put it? Yeah when you skew the facts as you have, sure it is. Add in some more context above like I have and it's hard to arrive at that conclusion. But let's add in some more data. According to statcounter, Windows 8 market share is growing at the same exact rate Windows 7 was growing in the months leading up to the Win 8 launch; Windows 7 market share has been declining since then. Or that last month according to Hitslink, Windows as a whole gained market share for this first time since May, thanks in large part to Windows 8. Or that according to Valve, gamers are adopting Windows 8 at an even faster pace that will set it up as the second most popular desktop gaming platform by the spring.
The computing landscape is more varied and diverse than ever. For this reason I think it's very difficult to simply dismiss Windows 8 out of hand, as you are with your hyperbolic rhetoric.
The same effort you spend customizing the toolbars in Word 2003 can be spent customizing the ribbon in Word 2010/2013. You can customize the default ribbons or create your very own ribbon with all the tools you use most frequently.
But that wasn't my point. The idea is the default interface has more functions available in less clicks. I can access 90% of Words' functionality 3 clicks. The space it takes up is used intelligently, as the items are scalable based on resolution, so that functions are only hidden when absolutely necessary. This also allows for things like style previews, which are harder to accomplish in a small toolbar. Further, you get large icons instead of a list of small text with the menu interface. Finally, every function has a shortcut combination, which is easily learnable, so keyboard users should be happier. This is not the case with the menu interface, where some menu items have no keyboard shortcut at all.
And since you mentioned space, the ribbon is easily hidden if you feel it's taking up too much room. It can be retrieved with a single click. How do you hide all your toolbars and retrieve them in a single click?
Tell her what exactly? I completely 100% agree that if you hold your arms out extended for long period of time it's not a good idea, and it's no surprise your mother got injured doing so. But explain to me exactly what unique aspect of a touch screen UI *necessitates* this behavior. There is none. Just like there is no aspect of a text-based UI that *necessitates* you type in a way where you end up with carpel tunnel syndrome.
Algorithms and heuristics can be used to detect the palm and not register it as a touch point. Otherwise, if you're using a sylus, you can disable the capacitive touch sensor when the stylus is in range of the digitizer. My Dell Latitude XT from 2008 did this, and worked great when writing directly on the display.
Your entire post is correct, but here is where your logic breaks down:
We simply aren't built to hold our arms out horizontally for long periods of time. That is why metro-type GUI's will never replace more traditional desktop environments.
The second statement does not follow logically from the first, because using a touch based GUI does not require you to hold out your arm horizontally for long periods of time. Think less "zombie" and more "teacher."
Teachers interact with a vertical touch UI, known as a "blackboard" and "chalk", for hours on end every day. They even do so standing. How is this possible, given what you just wrote above? Well they aren't standing there in front of the board like a zombie; they are putting their arms down when they aren't drawing on the board. That's the correct behavior to picture: interact with the interface, move away from it.
Things are made even easier on the computer, because we have a variety of input methods. Want to type something? Don't use the on screen keyboard, use the physical one right in front of you. Want to browse a web page and click links? Use the mouse right in front of you. All the while, your arms aren't in front of you like a zombie. Want to zoom in on a picture or google earth? Okay, now reach your hands up, perform a pinch gesture, and put them back down. Incredible, no gorilla arm.
Really? ZERO thought? What about this monitor from Dell, which can rotate from vertical to completely horizontal. Sounds like you could slope it at exactly the same angle as a drafting table to reduce "gorilla arm."
But again, that's assuming that using a touch interface for hours and hours on end is any reasonable or expected behavior. It's the equivalent of saying "Keyboards are terrible because if you type for 5 hours straight at 100 WPM without a break you get carpel tunnel." or "Mice are terrible because if you constantly move the cursor and click for 5 hours your arm and finger fall off." Gorilla arm is a straw man. Yes, it sucks when you hold your arms out in front of you for 5 hours, but NO ONE wants to do that.
This. The is the first and easiest thing criticized with every Windows release. Windows XP was called "fisher-price" relentlessly on Slashdot and other tech forums, even though it had an easily selectable classic theme. Yet in 2006 XP was elevated to some sort of status of what an OS should be. Aero glass was pretty well criticized as well. You would hear people saying it's a distraction and eye candy, what's with all the shadows, I don't want to use my precious resources on transparent windows borders, etc. Again, mostly among the tech sphere. Now we see the Metro UI is criticized as cartoonish, childish, Fisher Price 2.0, etc. Yeah, it's a big change, and the bigger the change, the more criticism. But the reactions I've seen from normal people, not tech blogs and forum junkies, is overwhelmingly positive. They like the colors, they like the animations, they like the large tiles... pretty much everything despised by tech bloggers.
Moral of the story? You can't please 1 billion people with one UI. But that's why there's third party utilities and skins to fill in the gaps.
So you're saying that "change for the sake of change" is no longer in practice? That people no longer believe "the newest is the best"?
No, that's not what he's saying at all. People still change for the sake of change, and still believe the newest is the best. It's just that now, the newest is tablets, and not the next big desktop or the next big laptop. I've seen people typing papers on an iPad with a little bluetooth keyboard when they've got a full-size laptop sitting right next to them. Talk about change for the sake of change, rather than using the right tool for the right job.
Each input does have a different interface. The keyboard has more shortcuts than ever. For exclusive keyboard users, Win8 is the best windows yet. The mouse has hot corners and large target areas which take advantage of Fitts' law, making the new start screen more efficient than the old one. With the new start screen, more items can fit on screen at once, so you don't have to click through small menus opening folders and sub-folders to get to the shortcut you want. Track pads have a variety of multi touch gestures that mirror touch gestures. In Windows 7, the touch pad was mostly just a stand-in for the mouse, even though they both have different strengths and weaknesses. Windows 8 is much more flexible as to the type of input you choose than Windows 7.
Ribbon takes a layout which can fit a wide range of tools, and shrinks the total usable space, in the interest of - for some mysterious reason - drawing attention to the most common set of features which everyone uses, despite the fact that everyone already used them.
No, the purpose of the ribbon is to bring more functionality to within 2 clicks. The number of features that are up front and visible to the user is drastically increased from Office 2003. I've had people tell me they like the new features in Word 2007 like bibliographies, various layout tools, footnotes, captions, etc. Those features have been in Word for a long time, but buried in menus. The quality of documents I've seen over the years has increased as a result.
It does this at the cost of being able to keep multiple features on screen at once - with Ribbon I can't have styling and fonts, drawing, and reviewing all on screen at the same time whereas in Office 2003 I could and it worked perfectly well.
You can do this in the ribbon as well. Either pin your favorite functions to the quick launch menu or make your own custom ribbon.
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know.
Oh, and I forgot to add this source: According to http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121203PD208.html”>Acer’s own research, “a consumer, after controlling a touchscreen product for more than 20 minutes, would want to use his or her fingers to touch any display he or she sees.” Pretty much backs up exactly my experience.
It hurts like hell to use a touch screen for hours.
It sure does! But this whole idea of gorilla arm is a complete strawman. Yes, of course if you hold your arms out in front of you for hours it's going to be painful. Just like if you type for hours it will hurt your wrist, or if you use a game controller for hours your fingers hurt, or if you write with a pencil for hours your hand gets stiff. There's nothing surprising or unique about this "gorilla arm" term, except for the fact that it's being used to categorically disqualify touch on desktops.
It seems to me, this theory is being perpetuated by people who both a) never used touch on a desktop or laptop and b) lack the imagination necessary to recognize the usefulness of touch on a desktop or laptop. I've owned a variety of touch screen notebooks since 2008. Personally, I never held my arm our for hours because there is no need; I have a keyboard and a mouse for when they make sense, and touch for when it make sense. Sometimes it's more convenient to pinch-zoom. Sometimes it's more convenient to flick scroll. Sometimes targeting small buttons and controls is difficult with a track pad, and faster with touch. Dragging objects like windows is easier with touch than track pad. Rotating pictures is a simple gesture with touch.
Gorilla arm is a myth. It's a complete misrepresentation of how touch screens are designed to be used, and how they fit into the overall landscape of UI inputs. Touch is supposed to be used when touch makes more sense. You're not supposed to type on your touchscreen when you have a keyboard right in front of you. That is stupid. Just like you won't use a mouse for multitouch input operations, you will use a touch screen when it is more convenient and makes sense, not for hours on end resulting in "Gorilla Arm."
That still doesn't tell me if you're using MTP or USB mass storage, which was my question.
Honestly, before this discussion I didn't know the difference; all I knew was I plug in my phone and I get a directory I can copy files into. Upon further inspection it appears as if the protocol is MTP. So I apologize as I was conflating the concepts of MTP and USB mass storage.
Besides, despite WP8 now being apparently usable with Linux, what else has changed? Can you modify that idiotic search button so that it will show google instead of bing? Can you select folders to auto-sync in dropbox, box, or minus? Because you can't do any of these in WP7.
You cannot modify the hardware search button but you can modify the default search engine in the browser and set it to Google. I don't know about any of your other questions since I don't use those services. I wasn't implying that any of those were factual errors, as I quoted specifically what I was replying to. I just don't know what the current state of those services are.
I didn't call you a shill. I just noticed on your postings that you are a Microsoft fan and are usually quote/defend Microsoft, so I made that jab.
I get this sentiment a lot, which is interesting to me since the products I spend the most time disparaging on this forum are Windows 7 and Windows XP. I hardly have anything negative to say about OSX, Google, Android, iOS, iPhone, iPad (although my gen 1 iPad is really showing its age), or any other competing service. But thank you for your apology.
Seriously? You're going to turn a common grammatical error, on the internet no less, into a reflection of my ability as an engineer?
First, what makes you think my native language is English? Second, even if it were, I still managed to communicate my thoughts perfectly with the use of the word "less," which means same thing as the word "fewer" in this context: a smaller amount. I've never actually considered this difference much, but through looking into it I found that "less" was historically used in place of "fewer," the use of which is relatively recent (ref). From the Wikipedia article:
The Cambridge Guide to English Usage notes that the "pressure to substitute fewer for less seems to have developed out of all proportion to the ambiguity it may provide in noun phrases like less promising results". It describes conformance with this pressure as a shibboleth and the choice "between the more formal fewer and the more spontaneous less" as a stylistic choice.
Emphasis mine. So thanks, to you and the other two Grammar Nazis, for derailing this thread for what amounts to a stylistic choice.
The funny thing about Grammar Nazis like you is that you get so anally retentive about a de facto set of rules, constantly in flux, which is not formally defined anywhere by any formal regulatory body. If there's one thing I've learned about robots, it's that the exact wrong way to program them is to prescribe a series of actions and reactions. This works for about 10 seconds in a lab, but put them in a real, changing world and they fail completely. That's the great thing about humans; we can adapt and understand things like intent and meaning through inference, even though actions may fall outside the boundaries of some formal set of rules, like grammar. Maybe you and your fellow Grammar Nazis should be a little less robot-like in this sense.
Actually, if you go down the list of professors at *any* college and look at where they graduated, they're mostly from ivy league schools or otherwise top schools in their discipline. The reason for this is simple: competition for faculty positions is fierce, so they end up taking the best of the best candidates.... i.e. the ivy leaguers. If you have a slot open in your Electrical Engineering department are you going to fill it with a MIT doctor or some low tier state school doctor?
Yes, this is typical in my experience. I did research at CMU in my undergraduate, as did many (but not all) of my cohort. In graduate school, we often picked a couple undergrads to help with some of the research. Sometimes we were mean and gave them grunt work, but in the end I think they got a lot of experience of out it.
Slashdot Mirror
However there was more to the criticism than looks. XP was a security nightmare; Vista was very buggy. UAC was annoying as hell. Drivers were non-existent when it was released.
Quite true, all of it! Which is most interesting to me, because I've seen it thrown around here that Windows 8 is even worse than Vista, perhaps even worse than Windows ME! Yet for all the hate on Windows 8, nearly 100% of it focuses on the UI. You don't hear about how unstable, insecure, or incompatible Windows 8 is on Slashdot. There are no stories about terrible performance, or massive driver-related issues. There's no talk about how Windows 8 barely runs on hardware you just purchased. It's the lightest, fastest, most secure, most stable OS Microsoft has released in decades. And yet it's being branded here as the worst OS in decades due to the UI, which you can replace in two clicks and customize to your liking.
"If only you could choose to use the start menu. Then there would be no problem," they say. Nope, not buying it. You can already choose not to use any metro elements, and install any shell or UI replacement you like. Isn't that the remedy in the Ubuntu Unity threads? Shut up and install KDE, or Cinnamon? You have a choice, exercise it. Yet the complaining continues to ensue.
In the case of Metro, it's not just about the looks. MS has created a hybrid tablet/desktop OS with more emphasis on the tablet all the while ignoring lessons learned in UIs.
More emphasis on the tablet? I don't know, it depends. There's an entire desktop which has many keyboard and mouse friendly elements to it. The explorer shell is still very keyboard/touch centric. And there have been a great number of improvements made on explorer and the desktop. There's no denying the metro side isn't touch friendly, but that doesn't preclude it from having mouse/keyboard emphasis.
As a keyboard junkie, I'm happier using Windows 8 using just the keyboard than any other Windows version. There are more keyboard shortcuts than ever before. The "all apps" menu in Windows 8 is faster to access and easier to browse with a keyboard than "all programs" in the start menu. On the laptop side, with the new gestures the track pad is more usable than ever before... much easier to access and browse the start screen with just the track pad than browsing the start menu. This is thanks in large part to the ample targets provided by tiles, conforming with Fitts' Law. The mouse benefits from this as well. In weighing all the UI improvements made for each input device, it's not so cut and dry to conclude that more emphasis has been put on touch.
My opinion is that another case of MS copying Apple but learning the wrong lessons. Apple these days is pushing towards minimalism.
Apple is just as guilty as MS of the UI "atrocities" they are being accused of. The original iPhone was so barebones simple: tap an app to open, press the home button to close. But since then, more and more functionality has been added and hidden from the user. Press hold to remove apps. Press hold drag to create folders. Double tap home for switcher. Press hold home for Siri. Drag down from top for notification center. But now a whole generation of people are growing up using these devices and hidden UI elements.
You and I grew up with our own set of hidden UI elements, such as drag and drop, right click context menus, etc. They're so obvious and ubiquitous to us now, that they no longer seem hidden. Just look at the OSX side; hotcorners have been a staple there for many years now. It's something OSX users are used to, and use daily with no problem. Windows users will learn to use them as well. Over time, these new UI elements will turn into conventions, and then there will be no more complaining.
Apple is incorporating more iOS features into OS X; however, they are keeping the two separate.
And Microsoft is not? I thought one of the majo
This isn't a problem inherent with the menu or the ribbon, but a difficulty in organizing disparate functions into an arbitrary hierarchy. But that's why, since Office 2010, you can organize and change the ribbon exactly to your liking. You could never do this with the menus in Office 2003 and prior.
the ribbon auto flips back to Home... OK, Ive got my boxes, now I want to color some of them in, click on a box - OH NO, now its taking me back to the Home tab again..what?
I do not witness this behavior in Word 2013. Perhaps it's been fixed.
The simple fact is, tool bars did serve their purpose quite well and there has been no rational reason put forth to remove them completely.
They have not been removed completely. Most of the functionality you would want in a toolbar is taken care of by the quick access toolbar. You can pin anything you like there for one click, always visible access.
If the ribbon was an option then there would be NO PROBLEM - but the ribbon is mandatory and for some people it is a regressive step.
Mandatory? Who exactly is forcing anyone to use Office 2007+? You never had to move away from 2003. Microsoft even released a compatibility pack for Office XP and 2003 to open and save files in the new format. Or you can still use menus and toolbars in Libre Office or Open Office. That right there is your option to avoid the ribbon. So where's the problem?
If you're somehow forced to do so for work, I suggest seriously considering customizing the default interface and adding your own ribbon with your most commonly used functions on it. It's much more flexible than you're making it out to be.
But that's the point isn't it? I cannot see a way in which my current work environment benefits from touch. I also cannot fathom how my work environment could be improved to work with touch and still get my work done in a convenient fashion.
And that's fine. Maybe you have the optimal tools for your job right now in front of you. But that doesn't mean someone else could use the tools touch provides for their job, or that someone else might think of a way to use touch for your particular job. Just because you personally can't imagine it means nothing.
It also goes beyond touch. Metro is basically one full screen application... so basically WordPerfect 5.1 or Lotus 1-2-3.
I wasn't really talking about metro specifically, but touch screens in general. But since you brought it up, as it stands, the desktop is still there for you. I don't know how metro will evolve in the future, but already it's well beyond Lotus 1-2-3 functionality, in terms of having apps side by side and running in the background. I imagine app management will change in future versions, but in the mean time that's why the desktop is still there.
How is this better than the mouse that is FAR closer than my screen (being right next to my keyboard)?
Answer: it's not. Solution: use the mouse. What you've done here is created a situation where touch is inconvenient, then used it to prove that touch is inconvenient. Likewise with your second paragraph.
It's like saying "typing is very inconvenient with a mouse. Why type with my mouse when I can just use a keyboard?" Your entire post is the exact strawman I alluded to in my post. I'm not saying use touch when a keyboard or a mouse is more efficient. What I'm saying is use touch when it makes MORE sense. Try this with your keyboard or mouse: move two objects apart from each other at the same time. Can't do it with keyboard and mouse, can do with touch. Touch can do things mouse and keyboard can't, therefore touch has applications which aren't even being explored with our current UIs.
I don't want the user interface deciding what is and isn't important to me in such a broad feature set. That's my decision.
And that is a valid point. I personally only want the relevant toolbars available for me. If I'm working on a chart, I want chart toolbars available, and when I'm not working on a chart, I want them gone. I see no point in having them there in front of me, simply grayed out since the functions are only available in certain contexts. Same goes for drawing tools, tables, equation tools, etc.
But again, I don't see how the ribbon and menu+toolbar are any different in this respect. Open Office for instance still has context sensitive menus. Or go the opposite way and Word lets you pin these context sensitive menu items in your own permanent ribbon.
And again - in the space used by the ribbon, about 3-5 times as many commands can be fitted with the Office 2003 layout scheme. I know this, because again, in 2003 I easily fit styling, file, drawing and reviewing toolbars into the same space occupied by "the Ribbon" which only managed to fit a mangled subset of styling and file management.
I would really like to know exactly how many objects you're pinning, and which ones. In a custom ribbon in a 1920x1080 resolution, you can add literally 200 functions to a single ribbon before overflow kicks in. Technically if you wanted you could combine all the default ribbons into a single ribbon and still have room to spare. Are you telling me you had 600 - 1000 functions on your toolbar in Office 2003?
If you could put your computer monitor less than 12 inches from your face, gorilla arm probably wouldn't be as much of a problem (though I can't say the same about eyesight).
And you absolutely can. There already exist monitor arms that can do this. If touch becomes a common UI for desktops, why wouldn't the workspace adapt to the input much in the same way desks added keyboard trays when PCs became popular? Saying that touch is bad because my workspace isn't set up for touch is begging the question; your workspace isn't set up for touch because you're not using touch.
you have PC sales down 13% over the same 4th quarter year before last, even though the economy was worse which clearly indicates the reason that sales are plummeting is Win 8 is a DO NOT WANT.
PC sales may be down, but pinning it on Windows 8 is wrong. Let's take a look at what NPD has to say about holiday sales of consumer electronics:
+Overall sales declined 7 percent
+Windows notebook holiday unit sales dropped 11 percent
+Notebook computers and flat-panel TVs both exceeded $2 billion in total dollars sales, while no other single segment accounted for over $1 billion in revenue.
+Sales of Windows notebooks under $500 fell by 16 percent while notebooks priced above $500 increased 4 percent.
+Macbook sales dropped 6 percent while the ASPs rose almost $100 to $1419.
So what can we infer? Sales were down across the board, yet notebooks were still in the top 2 earners. Further, while cheap Windows notebook sales were down, expensive notebook sales went up. Same thing happened over on the mac side, where macbook sales fell, but average selling price rose. People are buying more expensive notebooks. The culprit? The move to tablets and ditching the netbook. People just aren't buying netbooks and cheap laptops; they're buying tablets instead. Is Windows 8 to blame for this? Not on its own (iPad and Android are moving this trend, probably moreso), but the fact Windows 8 is available on tablets and is very tablet friendly it's certainly isn't convincing people to not buy tablets.
So is Windows 8 the do not want megaflop bomb, as you put it? Yeah when you skew the facts as you have, sure it is. Add in some more context above like I have and it's hard to arrive at that conclusion. But let's add in some more data. According to statcounter, Windows 8 market share is growing at the same exact rate Windows 7 was growing in the months leading up to the Win 8 launch; Windows 7 market share has been declining since then. Or that last month according to Hitslink, Windows as a whole gained market share for this first time since May, thanks in large part to Windows 8. Or that according to Valve, gamers are adopting Windows 8 at an even faster pace that will set it up as the second most popular desktop gaming platform by the spring.
The computing landscape is more varied and diverse than ever. For this reason I think it's very difficult to simply dismiss Windows 8 out of hand, as you are with your hyperbolic rhetoric.
The same effort you spend customizing the toolbars in Word 2003 can be spent customizing the ribbon in Word 2010/2013. You can customize the default ribbons or create your very own ribbon with all the tools you use most frequently.
But that wasn't my point. The idea is the default interface has more functions available in less clicks. I can access 90% of Words' functionality 3 clicks. The space it takes up is used intelligently, as the items are scalable based on resolution, so that functions are only hidden when absolutely necessary. This also allows for things like style previews, which are harder to accomplish in a small toolbar. Further, you get large icons instead of a list of small text with the menu interface. Finally, every function has a shortcut combination, which is easily learnable, so keyboard users should be happier. This is not the case with the menu interface, where some menu items have no keyboard shortcut at all.
And since you mentioned space, the ribbon is easily hidden if you feel it's taking up too much room. It can be retrieved with a single click. How do you hide all your toolbars and retrieve them in a single click?
Tell her what exactly? I completely 100% agree that if you hold your arms out extended for long period of time it's not a good idea, and it's no surprise your mother got injured doing so. But explain to me exactly what unique aspect of a touch screen UI *necessitates* this behavior. There is none. Just like there is no aspect of a text-based UI that *necessitates* you type in a way where you end up with carpel tunnel syndrome.
Algorithms and heuristics can be used to detect the palm and not register it as a touch point. Otherwise, if you're using a sylus, you can disable the capacitive touch sensor when the stylus is in range of the digitizer. My Dell Latitude XT from 2008 did this, and worked great when writing directly on the display.
It's been the same since 2007.
We simply aren't built to hold our arms out horizontally for long periods of time. That is why metro-type GUI's will never replace more traditional desktop environments.
The second statement does not follow logically from the first, because using a touch based GUI does not require you to hold out your arm horizontally for long periods of time. Think less "zombie" and more "teacher."
Teachers interact with a vertical touch UI, known as a "blackboard" and "chalk", for hours on end every day. They even do so standing. How is this possible, given what you just wrote above? Well they aren't standing there in front of the board like a zombie; they are putting their arms down when they aren't drawing on the board. That's the correct behavior to picture: interact with the interface, move away from it.
Things are made even easier on the computer, because we have a variety of input methods. Want to type something? Don't use the on screen keyboard, use the physical one right in front of you. Want to browse a web page and click links? Use the mouse right in front of you. All the while, your arms aren't in front of you like a zombie. Want to zoom in on a picture or google earth? Okay, now reach your hands up, perform a pinch gesture, and put them back down. Incredible, no gorilla arm.
Really? ZERO thought? What about this monitor from Dell, which can rotate from vertical to completely horizontal. Sounds like you could slope it at exactly the same angle as a drafting table to reduce "gorilla arm."
But again, that's assuming that using a touch interface for hours and hours on end is any reasonable or expected behavior. It's the equivalent of saying "Keyboards are terrible because if you type for 5 hours straight at 100 WPM without a break you get carpel tunnel." or "Mice are terrible because if you constantly move the cursor and click for 5 hours your arm and finger fall off." Gorilla arm is a straw man. Yes, it sucks when you hold your arms out in front of you for 5 hours, but NO ONE wants to do that.
This. The is the first and easiest thing criticized with every Windows release. Windows XP was called "fisher-price" relentlessly on Slashdot and other tech forums, even though it had an easily selectable classic theme. Yet in 2006 XP was elevated to some sort of status of what an OS should be. Aero glass was pretty well criticized as well. You would hear people saying it's a distraction and eye candy, what's with all the shadows, I don't want to use my precious resources on transparent windows borders, etc. Again, mostly among the tech sphere. Now we see the Metro UI is criticized as cartoonish, childish, Fisher Price 2.0, etc. Yeah, it's a big change, and the bigger the change, the more criticism. But the reactions I've seen from normal people, not tech blogs and forum junkies, is overwhelmingly positive. They like the colors, they like the animations, they like the large tiles... pretty much everything despised by tech bloggers.
Moral of the story? You can't please 1 billion people with one UI. But that's why there's third party utilities and skins to fill in the gaps.
So you're saying that "change for the sake of change" is no longer in practice? That people no longer believe "the newest is the best"?
No, that's not what he's saying at all. People still change for the sake of change, and still believe the newest is the best. It's just that now, the newest is tablets, and not the next big desktop or the next big laptop. I've seen people typing papers on an iPad with a little bluetooth keyboard when they've got a full-size laptop sitting right next to them. Talk about change for the sake of change, rather than using the right tool for the right job.
Each input does have a different interface. The keyboard has more shortcuts than ever. For exclusive keyboard users, Win8 is the best windows yet. The mouse has hot corners and large target areas which take advantage of Fitts' law, making the new start screen more efficient than the old one. With the new start screen, more items can fit on screen at once, so you don't have to click through small menus opening folders and sub-folders to get to the shortcut you want. Track pads have a variety of multi touch gestures that mirror touch gestures. In Windows 7, the touch pad was mostly just a stand-in for the mouse, even though they both have different strengths and weaknesses. Windows 8 is much more flexible as to the type of input you choose than Windows 7.
Ribbon takes a layout which can fit a wide range of tools, and shrinks the total usable space, in the interest of - for some mysterious reason - drawing attention to the most common set of features which everyone uses, despite the fact that everyone already used them.
No, the purpose of the ribbon is to bring more functionality to within 2 clicks. The number of features that are up front and visible to the user is drastically increased from Office 2003. I've had people tell me they like the new features in Word 2007 like bibliographies, various layout tools, footnotes, captions, etc. Those features have been in Word for a long time, but buried in menus. The quality of documents I've seen over the years has increased as a result.
It does this at the cost of being able to keep multiple features on screen at once - with Ribbon I can't have styling and fonts, drawing, and reviewing all on screen at the same time whereas in Office 2003 I could and it worked perfectly well.
You can do this in the ribbon as well. Either pin your favorite functions to the quick launch menu or make your own custom ribbon.
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know.
What features exactly are harder to access?
Oh, and I forgot to add this source: According to http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121203PD208.html”>Acer’s own research, “a consumer, after controlling a touchscreen product for more than 20 minutes, would want to use his or her fingers to touch any display he or she sees.” Pretty much backs up exactly my experience.
It hurts like hell to use a touch screen for hours.
It sure does! But this whole idea of gorilla arm is a complete strawman. Yes, of course if you hold your arms out in front of you for hours it's going to be painful. Just like if you type for hours it will hurt your wrist, or if you use a game controller for hours your fingers hurt, or if you write with a pencil for hours your hand gets stiff. There's nothing surprising or unique about this "gorilla arm" term, except for the fact that it's being used to categorically disqualify touch on desktops.
It seems to me, this theory is being perpetuated by people who both a) never used touch on a desktop or laptop and b) lack the imagination necessary to recognize the usefulness of touch on a desktop or laptop. I've owned a variety of touch screen notebooks since 2008. Personally, I never held my arm our for hours because there is no need; I have a keyboard and a mouse for when they make sense, and touch for when it make sense. Sometimes it's more convenient to pinch-zoom. Sometimes it's more convenient to flick scroll. Sometimes targeting small buttons and controls is difficult with a track pad, and faster with touch. Dragging objects like windows is easier with touch than track pad. Rotating pictures is a simple gesture with touch.
The funny part is, after I let people use my various touch notebooks, they confess to me they end up touching their own notebook screens instinctively. It's just a natural input method. Now you have various sources backing up my own experience. The Verge recently covered this with their article Surprisingly, touchscreen laptops don't suck: How Windows 8 challenged the 'gorilla arm' — and won. Analysts are claiming touch screen PC demand is strong.
Gorilla arm is a myth. It's a complete misrepresentation of how touch screens are designed to be used, and how they fit into the overall landscape of UI inputs. Touch is supposed to be used when touch makes more sense. You're not supposed to type on your touchscreen when you have a keyboard right in front of you. That is stupid. Just like you won't use a mouse for multitouch input operations, you will use a touch screen when it is more convenient and makes sense, not for hours on end resulting in "Gorilla Arm."
That still doesn't tell me if you're using MTP or USB mass storage, which was my question.
Honestly, before this discussion I didn't know the difference; all I knew was I plug in my phone and I get a directory I can copy files into. Upon further inspection it appears as if the protocol is MTP. So I apologize as I was conflating the concepts of MTP and USB mass storage.
Besides, despite WP8 now being apparently usable with Linux, what else has changed? Can you modify that idiotic search button so that it will show google instead of bing? Can you select folders to auto-sync in dropbox, box, or minus? Because you can't do any of these in WP7.
You cannot modify the hardware search button but you can modify the default search engine in the browser and set it to Google. I don't know about any of your other questions since I don't use those services. I wasn't implying that any of those were factual errors, as I quoted specifically what I was replying to. I just don't know what the current state of those services are.
I didn't call you a shill. I just noticed on your postings that you are a Microsoft fan and are usually quote/defend Microsoft, so I made that jab.
I get this sentiment a lot, which is interesting to me since the products I spend the most time disparaging on this forum are Windows 7 and Windows XP. I hardly have anything negative to say about OSX, Google, Android, iOS, iPhone, iPad (although my gen 1 iPad is really showing its age), or any other competing service. But thank you for your apology.
First, what makes you think my native language is English? Second, even if it were, I still managed to communicate my thoughts perfectly with the use of the word "less," which means same thing as the word "fewer" in this context: a smaller amount. I've never actually considered this difference much, but through looking into it I found that "less" was historically used in place of "fewer," the use of which is relatively recent (ref). From the Wikipedia article:
The Cambridge Guide to English Usage notes that the "pressure to substitute fewer for less seems to have developed out of all proportion to the ambiguity it may provide in noun phrases like less promising results". It describes conformance with this pressure as a shibboleth and the choice "between the more formal fewer and the more spontaneous less" as a stylistic choice.
Emphasis mine. So thanks, to you and the other two Grammar Nazis, for derailing this thread for what amounts to a stylistic choice.
The funny thing about Grammar Nazis like you is that you get so anally retentive about a de facto set of rules, constantly in flux, which is not formally defined anywhere by any formal regulatory body. If there's one thing I've learned about robots, it's that the exact wrong way to program them is to prescribe a series of actions and reactions. This works for about 10 seconds in a lab, but put them in a real, changing world and they fail completely. That's the great thing about humans; we can adapt and understand things like intent and meaning through inference, even though actions may fall outside the boundaries of some formal set of rules, like grammar. Maybe you and your fellow Grammar Nazis should be a little less robot-like in this sense.
Actually, if you go down the list of professors at *any* college and look at where they graduated, they're mostly from ivy league schools or otherwise top schools in their discipline. The reason for this is simple: competition for faculty positions is fierce, so they end up taking the best of the best candidates.... i.e. the ivy leaguers. If you have a slot open in your Electrical Engineering department are you going to fill it with a MIT doctor or some low tier state school doctor?
I would be remiss not to point out that a semicolon or period is more appropriate in place of the comma you used. ;)
They taught me how to build robots, not grammar.
Yes, this is typical in my experience. I did research at CMU in my undergraduate, as did many (but not all) of my cohort. In graduate school, we often picked a couple undergrads to help with some of the research. Sometimes we were mean and gave them grunt work, but in the end I think they got a lot of experience of out it.