There is a huge misconception on this. I don't know who came up with this "Immersive experience" BS, but I've never heard Microsoft refer to it as that, and it's not the point of it all.
First, understand that Metro apps are designed to run in 3 environments, Desktops, Tablets, and Phones. All current Tablets and Smart Phones have single app per screen interfaces.
The original reason for this was so that app developers did not have to worry about different devices with different resolutions. That ship has long since sailed, but the app format persists.
The biggest reason, however, is that dragging windows around does not work well with touch interfaces. So making them full screen, with "sliding" windows based on gestures and taps is a lot easier to manipulate. This is the primary reason this interface is still the norm for touch devices.
This is also why they have large icons and buttons, because tiny menus just don't work with touch. Microsoft already tried that, several times, and it didn't work. Apple's approach took off wildly, and has been a great success.
So, Metro apps are designed to be used by both Desktops with keyboards and mice, and touch devices (some of which are also desktops).
FYI, Metro allows you to run two apps, using the Metro snap feature.
Remember, this is a 1.0 OS (yes, Metro.. also known as WinRT is an entire new OS running alongside Win32) and as with all 1.0 products, if you waited to release it until you had every feature you wanted, it would never get released.
Expect the next version to significantly improve multi-tasking ability.
You're right. Windows Phone 7.x phones didn't sell well. We're not talking about Windows Phone 7 phones though.
We're talking about Windows Phone 8 phones, and those are totally different devices.
Absolutely, the 7.x adopters were burned. But then, most phones are typically not that upgradeable anyways. You're lucky these days if you get one minor revision of the OS in Android phones. I've been waiting for Jellybean for months on my Galaxy SIII, and that's top of the line.
If you phone Is more than a year old, it's unlikely to be upgraded, although in many cases you can burn your own roms to them.
Windows phone 7 devices just didn't have enough hardware to run Windows Phone 8.
The limited shelf space is due to Microsoft's rollout schedule, not anything related to stores. They've had the Surface for sale exclusively at their Windows Stores. No other brick and mortar store has been allowed to have them.
No, Windows Phone 7 phones have no bearing on Windows Phone 8.
There are a number of reasons for this. First, it's a totally different OS (it's based on the Windows 8 RT OS, not the old CE based OS. RT is the same code base as desktop Windows 8, just recompiled for ARM.)
Second, the previous generation of Windows Phones had largely substandard, low-end hardware that nobody wanted. The exception was the Lumia, but even that was not up to phones like the Galaxy SIII. The new phones are actually using quality hardware, with specs similar to high end android phones. For instance, the Samsung Ativ is essentially identical to the Galaxy SIII.
Third, Apps can now be shared between Phone, Tablet, and Desktop OS's, so you only have to uby it once and can use it in all three. Again, thanks to them sharing the same OS.
Nokia is not dead. Certainly, they took a hit, but they were dying anyways. They knew what was coming down the pike and they knew it would take time for the strategy to evolve.
Windows Phone 8 was announced on October 29th, but the phones didn't actually go on sale until November 2nd, which was 12 days ago. Almost 2 weeks, but not quite.
You seriously consider a review to be "Honest" when it claims that tablet and phone users don't want touch?
You're talking about previous versions of Windows Phone. Windows Phone 8 is a different OS, and the phones are actually decent now (hardware wise, on par with top android phones).
Windows Phone 8 has only been on sale a few days, so there is no possible way you could be confident in that.
The article is a huge sham, and makes all kinds of claims that it simply can't back up.
For example, the claim that Windows phones aren't selling. They've only been on the market for a couple of days, and 3 phones are on the market, and only one vendor has them. There is absolutely NO way to know whether or not Windows phones are going to be popular or not.
Based on initial reaction, however, and long lines outside ATT stores, it looks like they're off to a good start.
Likewise, the Surface tablets are only available online and in a few dozen stores so far. So there's no possible way to judge how well they will do overall once they're available everywhere. Plus, the more powerful Surface Pro's aren't even on the market yet, and many of the third party devices (like Sony's new models) have yet to ship.
Finally, we can see tell-tale signs of bias in the writing. "Unwanted touch interface"? Really? Who doesn't want a touch interface in a tablet? or Phone? And lots of people seem very keen on having a touch interface in their desktops.
There is an interesting class of internet troll that loves to find any outlet they can to claim that Touch in windows is unwanted, and this seems to be the case here.
You'll notice, the ads are all on MSN related pages (Weather, Finance, News, etc..). This is because they link to the website (which has ads). Msn does not earn its paycheck from sales of Windows 8, they get their paycheck from ad revenue, so MSN is just trying to get their services paid for.
So you're saying that under EU law, every contractor a company uses must be listed in a privacy policy and TOS? I would think that would require them to be updated almost minutely for some companies... that seems very unworkable.
What does this have to do with Skype being proprietary? An open source company could just as easily handed information over, assuming they ran a service which required payment.
In any event, if you read the article.. It turns out that the security firm was employed by both paypal and Skype, which would mean that the firm would fall under each companies privacy policies and would be allowed to access the data legally.
The security company, however, should not have given the information to the police without an order, although it's a bit fuzzy as to whether they are legally bound by the privacy policy of their employer.
Both of those questions are ridiculous, but for different reasons.
The first one is highly dependent upon language. I not you're not declaring any static typing, so we don't know if the variables are mutable or not. We also don't know if they are floating point, decimal, or integers (and it can make a difference in some languages).
The second one is ridiculous because, in 25 years of software development, I've never had to write my own sorting algorithm. It's nice to know if someone understands some basics, and can choose the right algorithm for the job.. but asking them to come up with an algorithm on the spot is just asking how good their memory is from college (which might have been decades ago).
Instead, you should ask them to explain different kinds of sorting algorithms and why you might choose one or another.
Surface is RT, but not all RT's are Surface. Lots of third party RT's with various connectors. Some with docks, some with proprietary, some with mini-hdmi, etc..
And again, some RT's will have styluses with digitizers.
The white pages do not suggest that the people on it are tax cheats, nor does it list the value of their bank accounts. That's private information. That's why this is a privacy issue.
I acknowledge I have not read the article, but they can couch it in all the words they want, the implication is that people on the list are tax cheats.
Again, you are going away from the point that the journalist illegally published private information.. Whether or not anyone on the list has been arrested may be a very important issue to you, but it has nothing to do with whether or not the journalist is guilty of the crime he is accused of. Those are two different issues (though they are of course related)
I'm also flabbergasted that the "proof" that people are tax cheats is that they closed their bank accounts after the bank told them their privacy was breached. I don't know about you, but I would close any bank account with a bank that told me that, and i'm doing nothing illegal.
I'm sorry, your rambling, incoherent stream of consciousness thought dump makes no sense to me.
The government can do things normal people can't. So whatever the Greek IRS does has no bearing on whether or not a private individual is guilty of privacy violations for publishing an un-vetted list of people and claiming they're all tax cheats.
Politicians saying they have a list isn't illegal either. Why would they be detained for something that isn't illegal? I really don't understand what point you're trying to make.
The journalist broke the law. Regardless of what anyone else may or may not have done wrong, that doesn't excuse the journalist from his crime.
There are many laws that are unpopular. That doesn't make them shams. Many of them are for the good of the population at large who would, left to their own devices, create havoc for everyone else.
Most free societies respect the Rule of Law, which says that the law should apply equally to everyone. If you let journalists break the law just because you are envious of rich people hiding their money, then that completely throws the rule of law out the window.
Wow, we're in irony overload now. Someone ironically criticizes someone elses use of the word irony using an ironic reference from a movie filled with irony.
I'm not sure why it's news that someone was arrested for violating the law. Just because they're a journalist doesn't mean they can violate privacy laws on a whim.
I'm sure not everyone on the list is guilty of evading taxes, yet the journalist painted everyone with the same brush.
No, I do not. Because you insist on confusing a service pack with a collection of security updates and hotfixes.
A service pack is *NOT* just a collection of patches. That's what a rollup is.
A service pack includes those fixes, but also includes other things and potentially new functionality.
Service packs can often change the way something works, which is why they reserve those kinds of changes for SP's so that people don't get functionality changes they don't want when applying hotfixes.
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There is a huge misconception on this. I don't know who came up with this "Immersive experience" BS, but I've never heard Microsoft refer to it as that, and it's not the point of it all.
First, understand that Metro apps are designed to run in 3 environments, Desktops, Tablets, and Phones. All current Tablets and Smart Phones have single app per screen interfaces.
The original reason for this was so that app developers did not have to worry about different devices with different resolutions. That ship has long since sailed, but the app format persists.
The biggest reason, however, is that dragging windows around does not work well with touch interfaces. So making them full screen, with "sliding" windows based on gestures and taps is a lot easier to manipulate. This is the primary reason this interface is still the norm for touch devices.
This is also why they have large icons and buttons, because tiny menus just don't work with touch. Microsoft already tried that, several times, and it didn't work. Apple's approach took off wildly, and has been a great success.
So, Metro apps are designed to be used by both Desktops with keyboards and mice, and touch devices (some of which are also desktops).
FYI, Metro allows you to run two apps, using the Metro snap feature.
Remember, this is a 1.0 OS (yes, Metro.. also known as WinRT is an entire new OS running alongside Win32) and as with all 1.0 products, if you waited to release it until you had every feature you wanted, it would never get released.
Expect the next version to significantly improve multi-tasking ability.
You're right. Windows Phone 7.x phones didn't sell well. We're not talking about Windows Phone 7 phones though.
We're talking about Windows Phone 8 phones, and those are totally different devices.
Absolutely, the 7.x adopters were burned. But then, most phones are typically not that upgradeable anyways. You're lucky these days if you get one minor revision of the OS in Android phones. I've been waiting for Jellybean for months on my Galaxy SIII, and that's top of the line.
If you phone Is more than a year old, it's unlikely to be upgraded, although in many cases you can burn your own roms to them.
Windows phone 7 devices just didn't have enough hardware to run Windows Phone 8.
The limited shelf space is due to Microsoft's rollout schedule, not anything related to stores. They've had the Surface for sale exclusively at their Windows Stores. No other brick and mortar store has been allowed to have them.
No, Windows Phone 7 phones have no bearing on Windows Phone 8.
There are a number of reasons for this. First, it's a totally different OS (it's based on the Windows 8 RT OS, not the old CE based OS. RT is the same code base as desktop Windows 8, just recompiled for ARM.)
Second, the previous generation of Windows Phones had largely substandard, low-end hardware that nobody wanted. The exception was the Lumia, but even that was not up to phones like the Galaxy SIII. The new phones are actually using quality hardware, with specs similar to high end android phones. For instance, the Samsung Ativ is essentially identical to the Galaxy SIII.
Third, Apps can now be shared between Phone, Tablet, and Desktop OS's, so you only have to uby it once and can use it in all three. Again, thanks to them sharing the same OS.
Nokia is not dead. Certainly, they took a hit, but they were dying anyways. They knew what was coming down the pike and they knew it would take time for the strategy to evolve.
Windows Phone 8 was announced on October 29th, but the phones didn't actually go on sale until November 2nd, which was 12 days ago. Almost 2 weeks, but not quite.
You seriously consider a review to be "Honest" when it claims that tablet and phone users don't want touch?
You're talking about previous versions of Windows Phone. Windows Phone 8 is a different OS, and the phones are actually decent now (hardware wise, on par with top android phones).
Windows Phone 8 has only been on sale a few days, so there is no possible way you could be confident in that.
Why would there be lines several days AFTER the phones went on sale?
The article is a huge sham, and makes all kinds of claims that it simply can't back up.
For example, the claim that Windows phones aren't selling. They've only been on the market for a couple of days, and 3 phones are on the market, and only one vendor has them. There is absolutely NO way to know whether or not Windows phones are going to be popular or not.
Based on initial reaction, however, and long lines outside ATT stores, it looks like they're off to a good start.
Likewise, the Surface tablets are only available online and in a few dozen stores so far. So there's no possible way to judge how well they will do overall once they're available everywhere. Plus, the more powerful Surface Pro's aren't even on the market yet, and many of the third party devices (like Sony's new models) have yet to ship.
Finally, we can see tell-tale signs of bias in the writing. "Unwanted touch interface"? Really? Who doesn't want a touch interface in a tablet? or Phone? And lots of people seem very keen on having a touch interface in their desktops.
There is an interesting class of internet troll that loves to find any outlet they can to claim that Touch in windows is unwanted, and this seems to be the case here.
You don't have to get a new computer or update your OS just because something new has come out.
NOW you tell me.
I doubt it. I was merely explaining the reasons for the ads here. Anything MSN or XBOX based has ads, while nothing else does.
If you don't like the ads, don't use those apps.
You'll notice, the ads are all on MSN related pages (Weather, Finance, News, etc..). This is because they link to the website (which has ads). Msn does not earn its paycheck from sales of Windows 8, they get their paycheck from ad revenue, so MSN is just trying to get their services paid for.
One of those is likely fictional. You choose.
No, the article explicitly says that Skype was one of the security companies clients already.
So you're saying that under EU law, every contractor a company uses must be listed in a privacy policy and TOS? I would think that would require them to be updated almost minutely for some companies... that seems very unworkable.
You're saying that under dutch law an employee of a company isn't legally allowed to access data owned by the company?
I would find that hard to belive
What does this have to do with Skype being proprietary? An open source company could just as easily handed information over, assuming they ran a service which required payment.
In any event, if you read the article.. It turns out that the security firm was employed by both paypal and Skype, which would mean that the firm would fall under each companies privacy policies and would be allowed to access the data legally.
The security company, however, should not have given the information to the police without an order, although it's a bit fuzzy as to whether they are legally bound by the privacy policy of their employer.
Both of those questions are ridiculous, but for different reasons.
The first one is highly dependent upon language. I not you're not declaring any static typing, so we don't know if the variables are mutable or not. We also don't know if they are floating point, decimal, or integers (and it can make a difference in some languages).
The second one is ridiculous because, in 25 years of software development, I've never had to write my own sorting algorithm. It's nice to know if someone understands some basics, and can choose the right algorithm for the job.. but asking them to come up with an algorithm on the spot is just asking how good their memory is from college (which might have been decades ago).
Instead, you should ask them to explain different kinds of sorting algorithms and why you might choose one or another.
Surface is RT, but not all RT's are Surface. Lots of third party RT's with various connectors. Some with docks, some with proprietary, some with mini-hdmi, etc..
And again, some RT's will have styluses with digitizers.
The white pages do not suggest that the people on it are tax cheats, nor does it list the value of their bank accounts. That's private information. That's why this is a privacy issue.
I acknowledge I have not read the article, but they can couch it in all the words they want, the implication is that people on the list are tax cheats.
Again, you are going away from the point that the journalist illegally published private information.. Whether or not anyone on the list has been arrested may be a very important issue to you, but it has nothing to do with whether or not the journalist is guilty of the crime he is accused of. Those are two different issues (though they are of course related)
I'm also flabbergasted that the "proof" that people are tax cheats is that they closed their bank accounts after the bank told them their privacy was breached. I don't know about you, but I would close any bank account with a bank that told me that, and i'm doing nothing illegal.
I'm sorry, your rambling, incoherent stream of consciousness thought dump makes no sense to me.
The government can do things normal people can't. So whatever the Greek IRS does has no bearing on whether or not a private individual is guilty of privacy violations for publishing an un-vetted list of people and claiming they're all tax cheats.
Politicians saying they have a list isn't illegal either. Why would they be detained for something that isn't illegal? I really don't understand what point you're trying to make.
The journalist broke the law. Regardless of what anyone else may or may not have done wrong, that doesn't excuse the journalist from his crime.
There are many laws that are unpopular. That doesn't make them shams. Many of them are for the good of the population at large who would, left to their own devices, create havoc for everyone else.
Most free societies respect the Rule of Law, which says that the law should apply equally to everyone. If you let journalists break the law just because you are envious of rich people hiding their money, then that completely throws the rule of law out the window.
Privacy laws exist for a reason.
Wow, we're in irony overload now. Someone ironically criticizes someone elses use of the word irony using an ironic reference from a movie filled with irony.
I'm not sure why it's news that someone was arrested for violating the law. Just because they're a journalist doesn't mean they can violate privacy laws on a whim.
I'm sure not everyone on the list is guilty of evading taxes, yet the journalist painted everyone with the same brush.
Hey, sounds like a great way to research who you should rob.
So you expect us to take your word for it?
How ironic that you argue against opacity with an opaque claim you can't support.
Sadly, the vast majority of H1b PhD's are from crap universities that we would never accredit.
Such PhD's aren't usually even worth a single Bachelors here. I've met such PhD's that think using exceptions as goto's is a great idea.
No, I do not. Because you insist on confusing a service pack with a collection of security updates and hotfixes.
A service pack is *NOT* just a collection of patches. That's what a rollup is.
A service pack includes those fixes, but also includes other things and potentially new functionality.
Service packs can often change the way something works, which is why they reserve those kinds of changes for SP's so that people don't get functionality changes they don't want when applying hotfixes.