Do you not realize what's going on? The businesses are being squeezed by the government! If you only knew how many certifications, and mandatory courses, and paperwork, and bullshit, and red tape that the simplest business has to deal with, it would blow your mind. Stop blaming business, and start blaming the GOVERNMENT, who are the source of 90% of America's problems today.
If this is true, with the business-friendly Bush administration getting two-terms in office, rolling back environmental and regulatory protections on business, the load should have decreased significantly -- leaving free capital to compensate hard-working Americans.
If cable companies can't compete in a tight economy then it's THEIR problem. It's not your bosses problem. It's not Exxon's problem.
Well it sort of is your boss's problem. People accept employment at a rate of pay because that rate of pay is enough to cover their cost of living expenses with extra left for recreation (and savings for retirement). Cost-of-living raises are meant to be an adjustment to your compensation to account for inflation. Without adjustments like this employees will eventually find that the rate of pay they are receiving is less than they can agree to do the work for, because the pay has less buying power than it did when they originally took the job. The employment position will becomes underpaid and not retain/attract quality employees without keeping pace with the market value of the work (which is partially dictated by cost-of-living expenses in the area).
Now cable TV is a luxury really, I agree with that. But the OP already framed it as a necessity by relating it to what people are getting for cost-of-living increases. My point is simply that it's not the cost-of-living that is supposed to adjust to meet the raises. The COL changes as the markets see fit. The raises are supposed to be a response to them. To say otherwise is the tail wagging the dog.
And I disagree on the mention on Exxon. Gas for a vehicle is a necessity of life, simply because it isn't possible for everyone to get jobs within close proximity of their homes. Public transportation infrastructure is not advanced enough in most areas to do without a car of your own because we've spent the last 50 years building our cities on the idea there would be cheap gas forever. No gas = no work = no paycheck for everything else.
These are kids he was talking about. Political talk shows are out.
As for sports, that is the only real thing holding back a lot of guys I know from switching.
That being said, Cable Companies keep raising the costs year after year above and beyond what people are receiving in cost-of-living raises . ESPN, especially. They can go fuck themselves.
I would agree with this but it's not the cable companies that are the problem -- it's the employers. You can replace the phrase "cable companies" with any number of other groups, "grocery store chains" and "oil companies" being the first that come to mind. The real issue is the "cost-of-living raises" people are getting (don't know who this is btw, I haven't gotten a raise in over four years) aren't meeting the actual increase in said costs. It's supposed to be a reactionary adjustment to compensation. The result is everyone is actually taking pay cuts but the employers can still say "we're paying you just as much/more than we were last year."
As long as people don't collectively stop putting up with it, it will continue.
I was reading another story earlier today and saw this comment and it reminded me of our discussion.
There's not a big reason all three couldn't exist, though.
But they do! Again we're taken back to the point of this article, that you can replace the start menu. In fact with classic shell you can replace it with the classic start menu or the windows vista/7 style start menu. People seem to be clamoring for a Microsoft sanctioned solution, even though odds are Microsoft's solution (if any) would implement the Windows 7 start menu, leaving all you Classic Start menu people still angry.
While it's all good and well for the users this "cottage industry" exists/is appearing, the problem with utilities that change operating system behavior is they can have unpredictable behavior with other software and your system becomes an "unsupported platform" or warranty-void situation. A Microsoft-sanctioned solution means it's still Windows(TM).
Doesn't this feel slightly backwards, though? The search should be for items you only have a vague idea of the name of and don't want to spend a bunch of time looking for all similarly named things.
Yeah, after I read what I wrote, I realized it is silly.
If it's any consolation I do this on iTunes all the time; I know a specific song I want to play and I start typing the title into the search box instead of drilling down to the artist (and album if need be) which I very well know to locate it. But then the search on iTunes is find-as-you-type, so I can actually pull the song up faster that way instead of having to hit a search button to begin looking and having the churning though a 1 TB drive of media files as part of its looking.
as the search isn't smart enough to find the query "That program I installed last month and used a couple times to encode some media."
Filetype: exe Last modified: within one month
As for following the breadcrumbs, yes that works. In the case of Firefox, it's installed in the folder Mozilla Firefox. The the procedure in the start menu is to scan an alphabetical list first for Firefox.... okay not there, where could it be?
This is one of my pet-peeves about Windows UI standards. The application is supposed to be in the Start menu in a folder named for the company that produces it. So in this case a strict following of the rules would have given us a "Mozilla" folder where Firefox and Thunderbird would both live. It's a very marketing-centric approach and is written purely to reinforce corporate branding, regardless that users often don't know who makes the software they use and don't care. In fact, I remember reading minutes of a meeting (or maybe it was a bugtracker discussion) where the Mozilla staff debated about what to do about the Start menu folders to make them "correct" but easy to recognize years ago.
There isn't a real place for readme's and other files that normally lived in Program folders to be kept and accessible simultaneously in this new interface setup.
For now this place is the all apps list. Maybe it's not the best solution, but for now I don't feel it's any worse than what was presented with the start menu. I agree your proposed solution is better.
It's better now. In the Developer's Preview they weren't on an All Apps screen and lived on the regular launcher.
True, but we have been using invisible UI elements for a long time and people have been getting along fine. As long as they are educated about what to use, people will get along. For instance, right click context menus are a point of contention for beginners. They don't know when to right click on something, as there are no visual cues, and the menu that appears is always different.... sometimes it's hard to understand for a new user what exactly will happen when you right click on something. Also, operations like double click to open and click drag have no visual cues.
I was going to make the argument that most past invisible UI elements have been based on real-world metaphors, like swiping to change pages on a Kindle touch for example, but I'm having trouble thinking of any at this time of night. It does occur to me part of the reason Apple chose the one-button mouse design was because of right-click confusion. A single button gets operated by a single finger often, and then using it becomes more analogous to pointing. I'd say part of the issue with right-click contextual menus is there isn't much consistency in the targets themselves. In one program you might be able to right-click an element like an icon or its text label to get the same contextual menu, while in another you might have to click the icon itself.
Part of what bugs me with Windows 8's UI is it has features that seem questionable in their very premise. While I was just typing that last paragraph I started right clicking around the edge of my screen to see what else was hidden and I noticed the pointer changing to a hand at the top edge. I can drag down from there and my entire screen shrinks down to an unreadable size on a colored background I can drag around. That pops back out to full size when I release. What is the point of this? Oh, I can dock the windows into a list on the left or right size (the borders appeared when I got near them). 'Course I can't figure out what I can do with the rest of the screen now that I've cleared all this space. Choosing a window from the list just takes me to that window back on the Desktop. Lots of clicking for something I can alt-tab to do, or hover over the Taskbar tab and choose the window I want from the thumbnails without leaving the desktop. I could have dragged the whole screen to the bottom and gone back to the Start screen, too -- just like if I hit the Windows key on my keyboard, or clicked the lower left corner. These changes don't feel like they're being made in a way to be helpful. It's like having a single ceiling light wired to 20 different switches in the room. Yes, an extra switch by door on the other side of the room might be useful, but after a point the extra controls feel really redundant and, like the shutdown command in the settings sidebar, like they don't really belong in places I find them.
It becomes features for features sake, or a chance to show off eye-candy transitions. Didn't Aero Glass get removed from the RTM version because Microsoft was trying to "simplify" the user interface and depreciate graphics and battery-chewing nonsense?
The Developer's Preview and Release Preview have both been available to the public should they wish to try them, and Microsoft has even encouraged them to in the latter.
Right, but I think you'll agree with me that the majority of Microsoft's customers haven't downloaded and installed it, and given their opinion. Still only the opinion of the vocal minority is before us, and we have yet to see what general consumers will say.
I don't hang out on Windows forums to really see what the (realative) Joe Sixpack does, but I get the impression most people are so lost on really understanding their computers they're scared to do anything like try a beta OS version. The not-really-tech blogs like ZDNet/CNet are the closest you're going to get to uneducated people trying it out. And most of those articles I've read aren't really glowing eith
Charms menu gives you search, share, devices, start, settings. Literally anything you want to do to manage your computer can be accessed there, sort of like the start menu, but they made the layout and controls more consistent and accessible no matter where you are in the OS.
It's more consistent, but with no visual cues you can completely miss functionality. Nothing like making your OS features invisible to make people develop a bad opinion of it, eh?
Yes, and it seems to be the majority opinion.
I'm interested how you can gauge the majority opinion when Windows 8 hasn't even been released to the general public.
The Developer's Preview and Release Preview have both been available to the public should they wish to try them, and Microsoft has even encouraged them to in the latter. Yes, stuff has been changed, but the "joys" of using the new Metro desktop have always been part of it.
Tech blogs like slashdot have certainly taken advantage of easily riled geeks who are set in their ways by publishing inflammatory articles, sure, but this hardly represents the majority opinion. Metro arguably was made with common users in mind, who in my experience so far appreciate the simplicity of the metro interface. But any assertion as to the opinion of the majority remains to be seen.
That is true, but much as you lambaste my statements as my feeling much of your reply is subjective comments as well. "Common users" don't operate their desktop or even laptop PCs with touch screens, which the Metro interface is clearly made for. A mouse is a precise enough pointing device we don't need tile-sized targets. And even if we are a little poor in eye sight or shaky of hand, the larger sized icons available in recent OSes covers that fine. Are controls really subjectively "more consistent and accessible" when they now literally hide from the user in five different places, compared to before when they were in a single trigger-always-visible branching menu?
For instance, my weather widget did not open up to a full fledged app, but simply linked to weather.com for more info. My stocks app and my news app likewise linked to websites.
Is a full featured app really necessary to find out the weather, or stocks? A dedicated news reader app I can understand, but the other two sound like things that should be taken care of soundly with a full-featured website. A solution in search of a problem here.
As for other advantages of live tiles: they conform to a strict API, which assures security and power management. Live tiles are only for metro apps, which are sandboxed and certified. They also only use CPU when you're viewing them and otherwise use low bandwidth and cpu for pushing notifications if enabled, with a centralized location for managing these notifications. This is in contrast to some widgets, which constantly suck CPU, bandwidth, and can be a security nightmare.
None of this has to do with the format for tile display or the flexibility of tiles vs. widgets. It reminds me of that OSX article a few weeks back were some guy said the Mac App Store exists because otherwise we would have to give up Sandboxing of OSX apps.
There's no reason Widgets couldn't continue in the form they are in now but be subject to stricter execution and security standards. Microsoft simply has to make it so, that's what the operating system is there for, to facilitate application usage of hardware resources and keep programs in line behavior-wise. Make current widgets undergo a "re-certification" process to be allowed to run under Windows 8 and change will come.
1. You should specify a screen size when making statements like this.
My laptop screen is 1600x900. However, the start menu has roughly the same capacity no matter the screen size, since it doesn't scale up v
Start Screen + All Apps + Search + Charms = start menu. That's the problem with the start menu; it has become a swiss army knife of functionality over time with so much functionality in such small an area.
It became cluttered, but the good side to having a monolithic control menu is if you're trying to find something you always know where to start (pun not intended) looking.
I talked to someone on a forum elsewhere and he was complaining about the multi-step process needed to shut down the machine in Windows 8 verses earlier versions. He didn't know it can be done in three steps using the Charms menu. Is it intuitive at all to add a shutdown command to what is supposed to be a settings sidebar?
Obviously it does not need to be intuitive,
It does if you want to get away with not including a thick manual. Ok, ok. Being intuitive isn't a requirement, but it helps quite a bit. Just ask Apple.
as the unintuitive location of the shutdown command in the start menu works; you just need to be taught where it is.
Yes, and it was a stupid place to put it then. The only reason it became acceptable is because the interface hasn't been changed in so long it's pretty much common knowledge now. Do you think Microsoft will go that long without a major upheaval again?
BTW, I do end-user support. It's surprising how many computers out there don't have a "fake" power button on the front but a real one that actually just cuts it right off without a proper shutdown sequence, or just puts the computer to sleep instead because the OEM changed the button's function.
if I want to open the Control Panels (the full list, not the limited Metro-fied collection) I have to open an Explorer window and use a Ribbon command.
That's one way.... or there's a shortcut in the desktop settings charm. Or the easiest way, the WinX menu (win key + x or right click lower left corner).
Thanks. Although I can't help but feel I could have used this thing another 6-12 months and never realized there even was a Win-X keyboard shortcut. Like I said, needs to be more intuitive if you're not gonna include a manual. Also: most end users don't even know the basic universal keyboard shortcuts (cut, copy, paste, select all, etc), so adding a huge number of keyboard shortcuts in place of clickable menus just doesn't cut it.
It doesn't really do anything to improve the experience for the user as far as actually using their computer.
That's your opinion.
Yes, and it seems to be the majority opinion.
The start screen allows for large content-drive live tiles, something that would never fit in the small start menu. I appreciate the at-a-glace information the start screen provides in the various tiles.
So did everyone else. Years ago when they were called widgets or gadgets.
It doesn't have to fit in the Start menu, because the Start menu is something that only stays up for however long you need it. How are content-driven live tiles any different that the old widgets systems? The widget systems were superior because they were more flexible in size and shape and could be moved anywhere the user wanted because they didn't have to conform to some mosaic metaphor. Hey, you could have a Word document open on your screen and type while occasionally glancing at a widget on the open desktop space beside the window.
Can you work in an app and view a live tile at the same time -- without any extra mouse movements or keyboard shortcuts?
There's also room for more tiles displayed at once. I have space for about 40 tiles on my screen. On the start menu you get about 10 large icons, and then everything else is buried at least 2 clicks away in a list of folders.
I know there were lots of jokes about going to the Start menu to shutdown the computer when Windows 95 came out, but today it's what people have come to expect. I talked to someone on a forum elsewhere and he was complaining about the multi-step process needed to shut down the machine in Windows 8 verses earlier versions. He didn't know it can be done in three steps using the Charms menu. Is it intuitive at all to add a shutdown command to what is supposed to be a settings sidebar?
Even at this point, if I want to open the Control Panels (the full list, not the limited Metro-fied collection) I have to open an Explorer window and use a Ribbon command.
The new Start Screen is made to do three things: 1. Get people used to a Microsoft tablet interface, hopefully influencing them to buy a Windows tablet instead of an iPad. 2. Depreciate the non-Metrofied apps and steer people into spending money at Microsoft's app store. 3. Look different enough that folks would see it as a "new" operating system they needed to upgrade to when what they had was working fine still.
It doesn't really do anything to improve the experience for the user as far as actually using their computer.
They don't have to buy a new machine. They could also change to a Linux distribution that is suited to their hardware performance-wise and still runs current versions of those plugins (not that I think anyone really needs Silverlight).
I don't know why the consumer market would be excited for it, though. The main use of WiFi is networking of devices in separate room/floors of a house without having to go to the expense of running actual Cat5 all around. According to Wikipedia these waves would be line-of-sight only. And if everything's in the same room unless it's a portable device my feeling is I might as well just use ethernet and get a more reliable, lower latency connection instead.
Did they show it because they thought the guy would just stop the car and surrender, or because they hoped for some nice crashes (where you could pretend that nobody died) that they should over and over again, spinning it off into some Fox reality show?
Hey, that sounds catchy.
They could call it World's Scariest Police Chases and have Peter Coyote host it, and then make it a special pilot for a series called World's Wildest Police Videos.
... I have no idea how they are going to beat Bing. Bing is the ne-plus-ultra of porn search. It's amazing.
That's good news for Microsoft. Ever since the demise of the Zune they've been looking for another use for that trademark for "squirting" in relation to social networking.
Who would even buy a Kindle from WalMart or Target in the first place? That's a purchase for an electronic appliance store like a Future shop or perhaps one of the many bookstores that carry them.
Why would you want to buy one from FutureShop or a bookstore? It's not like the quality of the device is different if you get it from Target or from Fry's. A Kindle is a Kindle. The sales staff at all the retailers will be equally clueless, and as a geek you don't care about that anyway because you already know more about the product than they do. You're not there to shop and decide. You're there to buy.
The only difference is the price and return/exchange policy. Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart, the price will be lower there. You can return/exchange an item at any other Wal-Mart with your receipt, and there are a lot more Wal-Marts than FutureShops.
So yeah, who would even buy a Kindle from WalMart or Target in the first place?
OCAD is a very well known and respected school in Ontario. The school itself is not a scam. Having a textbook custom created by a company (Prentice Hall) is very expensive.
And was it really necessary to have a custom-created Art History textbook?
Those two core Art History classes (covering pre-history to around the year 1400, and the second covering 1400 to 1945) are a requirement for literally everyone who studies Art, regardless of major or if they're pursuing a BA or BFA, painting, sculpture, or graphic design, etc. It's not like there weren't oodles of candidate textbooks for their curriculum to choose from.
The joke of this story is that the Art History department actually went along with Prentice Hall on this scam, instead of turning right around and looking elsewhere.
Because an app can't operate in a sandbox unless it's sold through some draconian app store.
Ok, I can't make my mind if you are being ironic here, or confused by some marketing team... But the fact is that you can have your apps operating in a sandbox (complete, with access anouncements, permission controls, and everything that CianomodGen's sandbox has, even the things that are lacking at plain Android) withoud any app store.
I was being sarcastic. The person I was repling to was implying we can't let people download apps from anywhere because we need sandboxing, as thought the two things are related. The sentences I wrote following the one you quoted make this clear.
Yeah who needs security or sandboxes or any of that complicated stuff?
Because an app can't operate in a sandbox unless it's sold through some draconian app store. You may think this is great, But did your ever consider they could just make the fucking mobile OS itself enforce this rule? Then it wouldn't matter if you got the app from the iPhone store or not. But that doesn't work in the real world on desktop PCs because it would be too restrictive for lots of the most popular apps. Which is why you wont see lots of the most popular apps on the Mac app store. Ever. The iPhone is a different ball of wax because there's no legacy methods and the apps are more limited to start with.
Just throw all the apps in a directory and let them sort things out for themselves.
DUH we just spent the last 20 years figuring out through HORRIBLE SECURITY NIGHTMARES that your approach is just WRONG.
If there's no app store people will have to decide for themselves if they want to trust the author of the app -- kinda like how we've been doing on desktop PCs for last forty years. Do you really think having a stranger at a corporation tell them it's "safe" is a better approach? I suppose those individuals would never become corrupt themselves and let in malicious apps for money on the side, and the corporation would always have the users' best interests at heart. They wouldn't allow apps to do things like sniff through people's phones and upload their address books or read their web browsing history when it's not related to their functionality and without requiring explicit permission, right? And they wouldn't restrict what you can or cannot run for reasons beyond safety of your phone and maybe security of the cell carrier's network. So they wouldn't remove apps for reasons that ultimately boil down to "the reviewer has a political axe to grind" or "we don't like competition", right?
It uses standards so should be resistant to patent infringement suits,
You'll be surprised what's patentable lately. And whether something is a standard or not has little to do with it.
it will fit on featurephone-grade hardware,
Running and running well are two different things. I'm skeptical until handsets are actually in the wild.
and it will run HTML5 apps without the restriction of native apps in an app store.
This is how "apps" were done on the original iPhone. There were Apple's apps, and there were 3rd party AJAX applets that generally ran from within Safari. And people complained because the quality of the user experience was hobbled by them not being native apps. The restrictions have nothing to do with whether they're native apps or HTML5 doohickeys. You can make native apps and not have an app store at all. Just let people load them to their phone direct from web downloads anywhere on the web or uploaded from flash memory card or USB sticks, kinda like how actual PCs work (for now).
In other words, it's aiming for the next 2 billion smartphone users, people who can't afford the iPhone/Android model.
Considering the iPhone 4 can be had for free now plus the iPhone has been available on prepaid for years, you could buy an older does-not-support the latest iOS iPhone pretty cheap now unlocked on Craigslist and avoid even the required Data Plan stupidity. If you can't afford one now you probably have things you should be focusing your money on instead (like food).
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Do you not realize what's going on? The businesses are being squeezed by the government! If you only knew how many certifications, and mandatory courses, and paperwork, and bullshit, and red tape that the simplest business has to deal with, it would blow your mind. Stop blaming business, and start blaming the GOVERNMENT, who are the source of 90% of America's problems today.
If this is true, with the business-friendly Bush administration getting two-terms in office, rolling back environmental and regulatory protections on business, the load should have decreased significantly -- leaving free capital to compensate hard-working Americans.
Nope, that didn't happen.
Cuts both ways, don't it?
If cable companies can't compete in a tight economy then it's THEIR problem. It's not your bosses problem. It's not Exxon's problem.
Well it sort of is your boss's problem. People accept employment at a rate of pay because that rate of pay is enough to cover their cost of living expenses with extra left for recreation (and savings for retirement). Cost-of-living raises are meant to be an adjustment to your compensation to account for inflation. Without adjustments like this employees will eventually find that the rate of pay they are receiving is less than they can agree to do the work for, because the pay has less buying power than it did when they originally took the job. The employment position will becomes underpaid and not retain/attract quality employees without keeping pace with the market value of the work (which is partially dictated by cost-of-living expenses in the area).
Now cable TV is a luxury really, I agree with that. But the OP already framed it as a necessity by relating it to what people are getting for cost-of-living increases. My point is simply that it's not the cost-of-living that is supposed to adjust to meet the raises. The COL changes as the markets see fit. The raises are supposed to be a response to them. To say otherwise is the tail wagging the dog.
And I disagree on the mention on Exxon. Gas for a vehicle is a necessity of life, simply because it isn't possible for everyone to get jobs within close proximity of their homes. Public transportation infrastructure is not advanced enough in most areas to do without a car of your own because we've spent the last 50 years building our cities on the idea there would be cheap gas forever. No gas = no work = no paycheck for everything else.
These are kids he was talking about. Political talk shows are out.
As for sports, that is the only real thing holding back a lot of guys I know from switching.
That being said, Cable Companies keep raising the costs year after year above and beyond what people are receiving in cost-of-living raises . ESPN, especially. They can go fuck themselves.
I would agree with this but it's not the cable companies that are the problem -- it's the employers. You can replace the phrase "cable companies" with any number of other groups, "grocery store chains" and "oil companies" being the first that come to mind. The real issue is the "cost-of-living raises" people are getting (don't know who this is btw, I haven't gotten a raise in over four years) aren't meeting the actual increase in said costs. It's supposed to be a reactionary adjustment to compensation. The result is everyone is actually taking pay cuts but the employers can still say "we're paying you just as much/more than we were last year."
As long as people don't collectively stop putting up with it, it will continue.
I personally heard a loud whip-snapping noise in my head when I read that line.
I was reading another story earlier today and saw this comment and it reminded me of our discussion.
There's not a big reason all three couldn't exist, though.
But they do! Again we're taken back to the point of this article, that you can replace the start menu. In fact with classic shell you can replace it with the classic start menu or the windows vista/7 style start menu. People seem to be clamoring for a Microsoft sanctioned solution, even though odds are Microsoft's solution (if any) would implement the Windows 7 start menu, leaving all you Classic Start menu people still angry.
While it's all good and well for the users this "cottage industry" exists/is appearing, the problem with utilities that change operating system behavior is they can have unpredictable behavior with other software and your system becomes an "unsupported platform" or warranty-void situation. A Microsoft-sanctioned solution means it's still Windows(TM).
Doesn't this feel slightly backwards, though? The search should be for items you only have a vague idea of the name of and don't want to spend a bunch of time looking for all similarly named things.
Yeah, after I read what I wrote, I realized it is silly.
If it's any consolation I do this on iTunes all the time; I know a specific song I want to play and I start typing the title into the search box instead of drilling down to the artist (and album if need be) which I very well know to locate it. But then the search on iTunes is find-as-you-type, so I can actually pull the song up faster that way instead of having to hit a search button to begin looking and having the churning though a 1 TB drive of media files as part of its looking.
as the search isn't smart enough to find the query "That program I installed last month and used a couple times to encode some media."
Filetype: exe
Last modified: within one month
As for following the breadcrumbs, yes that works. In the case of Firefox, it's installed in the folder Mozilla Firefox. The the procedure in the start menu is to scan an alphabetical list first for Firefox.... okay not there, where could it be?
This is one of my pet-peeves about Windows UI standards. The application is supposed to be in the Start menu in a folder named for the company that produces it. So in this case a strict following of the rules would have given us a "Mozilla" folder where Firefox and Thunderbird would both live. It's a very marketing-centric approach and is written purely to reinforce corporate branding, regardless that users often don't know who makes the software they use and don't care. In fact, I remember reading minutes of a meeting (or maybe it was a bugtracker discussion) where the Mozilla staff debated about what to do about the Start menu folders to make them "correct" but easy to recognize years ago.
There isn't a real place for readme's and other files that normally lived in Program folders to be kept and accessible simultaneously in this new interface setup.
For now this place is the all apps list. Maybe it's not the best solution, but for now I don't feel it's any worse than what was presented with the start menu. I agree your proposed solution is better.
It's better now. In the Developer's Preview they weren't on an All Apps screen and lived on the regular launcher.
Wouldn't switching Ubuntu to either of those desktop environments been redundant since there's already Kubuntu and Xubuntu for folks who want them?
True, but we have been using invisible UI elements for a long time and people have been getting along fine. As long as they are educated about what to use, people will get along. For instance, right click context menus are a point of contention for beginners. They don't know when to right click on something, as there are no visual cues, and the menu that appears is always different.... sometimes it's hard to understand for a new user what exactly will happen when you right click on something. Also, operations like double click to open and click drag have no visual cues.
I was going to make the argument that most past invisible UI elements have been based on real-world metaphors, like swiping to change pages on a Kindle touch for example, but I'm having trouble thinking of any at this time of night. It does occur to me part of the reason Apple chose the one-button mouse design was because of right-click confusion. A single button gets operated by a single finger often, and then using it becomes more analogous to pointing. I'd say part of the issue with right-click contextual menus is there isn't much consistency in the targets themselves. In one program you might be able to right-click an element like an icon or its text label to get the same contextual menu, while in another you might have to click the icon itself.
Part of what bugs me with Windows 8's UI is it has features that seem questionable in their very premise. While I was just typing that last paragraph I started right clicking around the edge of my screen to see what else was hidden and I noticed the pointer changing to a hand at the top edge. I can drag down from there and my entire screen shrinks down to an unreadable size on a colored background I can drag around. That pops back out to full size when I release. What is the point of this? Oh, I can dock the windows into a list on the left or right size (the borders appeared when I got near them). 'Course I can't figure out what I can do with the rest of the screen now that I've cleared all this space. Choosing a window from the list just takes me to that window back on the Desktop. Lots of clicking for something I can alt-tab to do, or hover over the Taskbar tab and choose the window I want from the thumbnails without leaving the desktop. I could have dragged the whole screen to the bottom and gone back to the Start screen, too -- just like if I hit the Windows key on my keyboard, or clicked the lower left corner. These changes don't feel like they're being made in a way to be helpful. It's like having a single ceiling light wired to 20 different switches in the room. Yes, an extra switch by door on the other side of the room might be useful, but after a point the extra controls feel really redundant and, like the shutdown command in the settings sidebar, like they don't really belong in places I find them.
It becomes features for features sake, or a chance to show off eye-candy transitions. Didn't Aero Glass get removed from the RTM version because Microsoft was trying to "simplify" the user interface and depreciate graphics and battery-chewing nonsense?
The Developer's Preview and Release Preview have both been available to the public should they wish to try them, and Microsoft has even encouraged them to in the latter.
Right, but I think you'll agree with me that the majority of Microsoft's customers haven't downloaded and installed it, and given their opinion. Still only the opinion of the vocal minority is before us, and we have yet to see what general consumers will say.
I don't hang out on Windows forums to really see what the (realative) Joe Sixpack does, but I get the impression most people are so lost on really understanding their computers they're scared to do anything like try a beta OS version. The not-really-tech blogs like ZDNet/CNet are the closest you're going to get to uneducated people trying it out. And most of those articles I've read aren't really glowing eith
Charms menu gives you search, share, devices, start, settings. Literally anything you want to do to manage your computer can be accessed there, sort of like the start menu, but they made the layout and controls more consistent and accessible no matter where you are in the OS.
It's more consistent, but with no visual cues you can completely miss functionality.
Nothing like making your OS features invisible to make people develop a bad opinion of it, eh?
Yes, and it seems to be the majority opinion.
I'm interested how you can gauge the majority opinion when Windows 8 hasn't even been released to the general public.
The Developer's Preview and Release Preview have both been available to the public should they wish to try them, and Microsoft has even encouraged them to in the latter. Yes, stuff has been changed, but the "joys" of using the new Metro desktop have always been part of it.
Tech blogs like slashdot have certainly taken advantage of easily riled geeks who are set in their ways by publishing inflammatory articles, sure, but this hardly represents the majority opinion. Metro arguably was made with common users in mind, who in my experience so far appreciate the simplicity of the metro interface. But any assertion as to the opinion of the majority remains to be seen.
That is true, but much as you lambaste my statements as my feeling much of your reply is subjective comments as well. "Common users" don't operate their desktop or even laptop PCs with touch screens, which the Metro interface is clearly made for. A mouse is a precise enough pointing device we don't need tile-sized targets. And even if we are a little poor in eye sight or shaky of hand, the larger sized icons available in recent OSes covers that fine. Are controls really subjectively "more consistent and accessible" when they now literally hide from the user in five different places, compared to before when they were in a single trigger-always-visible branching menu?
For instance, my weather widget did not open up to a full fledged app, but simply linked to weather.com for more info. My stocks app and my news app likewise linked to websites.
Is a full featured app really necessary to find out the weather, or stocks? A dedicated news reader app I can understand, but the other two sound like things that should be taken care of soundly with a full-featured website. A solution in search of a problem here.
As for other advantages of live tiles: they conform to a strict API, which assures security and power management. Live tiles are only for metro apps, which are sandboxed and certified. They also only use CPU when you're viewing them and otherwise use low bandwidth and cpu for pushing notifications if enabled, with a centralized location for managing these notifications. This is in contrast to some widgets, which constantly suck CPU, bandwidth, and can be a security nightmare.
None of this has to do with the format for tile display or the flexibility of tiles vs. widgets. It reminds me of that OSX article a few weeks back were some guy said the Mac App Store exists because otherwise we would have to give up Sandboxing of OSX apps.
There's no reason Widgets couldn't continue in the form they are in now but be subject to stricter execution and security standards. Microsoft simply has to make it so, that's what the operating system is there for, to facilitate application usage of hardware resources and keep programs in line behavior-wise. Make current widgets undergo a "re-certification" process to be allowed to run under Windows 8 and change will come.
1. You should specify a screen size when making statements like this.
My laptop screen is 1600x900. However, the start menu has roughly the same capacity no matter the screen size, since it doesn't scale up v
Start Screen + All Apps + Search + Charms = start menu. That's the problem with the start menu; it has become a swiss army knife of functionality over time with so much functionality in such small an area.
It became cluttered, but the good side to having a monolithic control menu is if you're trying to find something you always know where to start (pun not intended) looking.
I talked to someone on a forum elsewhere and he was complaining about the multi-step process needed to shut down the machine in Windows 8 verses earlier versions. He didn't know it can be done in three steps using the Charms menu. Is it intuitive at all to add a shutdown command to what is supposed to be a settings sidebar?
Obviously it does not need to be intuitive,
It does if you want to get away with not including a thick manual.
Ok, ok. Being intuitive isn't a requirement, but it helps quite a bit. Just ask Apple.
as the unintuitive location of the shutdown command in the start menu works; you just need to be taught where it is.
Yes, and it was a stupid place to put it then. The only reason it became acceptable is because the interface hasn't been changed in so long it's pretty much common knowledge now. Do you think Microsoft will go that long without a major upheaval again?
BTW, I do end-user support. It's surprising how many computers out there don't have a "fake" power button on the front but a real one that actually just cuts it right off without a proper shutdown sequence, or just puts the computer to sleep instead because the OEM changed the button's function.
if I want to open the Control Panels (the full list, not the limited Metro-fied collection) I have to open an Explorer window and use a Ribbon command.
That's one way.... or there's a shortcut in the desktop settings charm. Or the easiest way, the WinX menu (win key + x or right click lower left corner).
Thanks. Although I can't help but feel I could have used this thing another 6-12 months and never realized there even was a Win-X keyboard shortcut. Like I said, needs to be more intuitive if you're not gonna include a manual. Also: most end users don't even know the basic universal keyboard shortcuts (cut, copy, paste, select all, etc), so adding a huge number of keyboard shortcuts in place of clickable menus just doesn't cut it.
It doesn't really do anything to improve the experience for the user as far as actually using their computer.
That's your opinion.
Yes, and it seems to be the majority opinion.
The start screen allows for large content-drive live tiles, something that would never fit in the small start menu. I appreciate the at-a-glace information the start screen provides in the various tiles.
So did everyone else. Years ago when they were called widgets or gadgets.
It doesn't have to fit in the Start menu, because the Start menu is something that only stays up for however long you need it. How are content-driven live tiles any different that the old widgets systems? The widget systems were superior because they were more flexible in size and shape and could be moved anywhere the user wanted because they didn't have to conform to some mosaic metaphor. Hey, you could have a Word document open on your screen and type while occasionally glancing at a widget on the open desktop space beside the window.
Can you work in an app and view a live tile at the same time -- without any extra mouse movements or keyboard shortcuts?
There's also room for more tiles displayed at once. I have space for about 40 tiles on my screen. On the start menu you get about 10 large icons, and then everything else is buried at least 2 clicks away in a list of folders.
1. You should specify
The Start Screen + Charms menu != Start Menu.
I know there were lots of jokes about going to the Start menu to shutdown the computer when Windows 95 came out, but today it's what people have come to expect. I talked to someone on a forum elsewhere and he was complaining about the multi-step process needed to shut down the machine in Windows 8 verses earlier versions. He didn't know it can be done in three steps using the Charms menu. Is it intuitive at all to add a shutdown command to what is supposed to be a settings sidebar?
Even at this point, if I want to open the Control Panels (the full list, not the limited Metro-fied collection) I have to open an Explorer window and use a Ribbon command.
The new Start Screen is made to do three things:
1. Get people used to a Microsoft tablet interface, hopefully influencing them to buy a Windows tablet instead of an iPad.
2. Depreciate the non-Metrofied apps and steer people into spending money at Microsoft's app store.
3. Look different enough that folks would see it as a "new" operating system they needed to upgrade to when what they had was working fine still.
It doesn't really do anything to improve the experience for the user as far as actually using their computer.
They don't have to buy a new machine. They could also change to a Linux distribution that is suited to their hardware performance-wise and still runs current versions of those plugins (not that I think anyone really needs Silverlight).
I don't know why the consumer market would be excited for it, though. The main use of WiFi is networking of devices in separate room/floors of a house without having to go to the expense of running actual Cat5 all around. According to Wikipedia these waves would be line-of-sight only. And if everything's in the same room unless it's a portable device my feeling is I might as well just use ethernet and get a more reliable, lower latency connection instead.
Let's not take too much stock in it. It's possible her Aunt Jemima is trying to frame her.
...is that the government cares more about Google's privacy than our own.
Did they show it because they thought the guy would just stop the car and surrender, or because they hoped for some nice crashes (where you could pretend that nobody died) that they should over and over again, spinning it off into some Fox reality show?
Hey, that sounds catchy.
They could call it World's Scariest Police Chases and have Peter Coyote host it, and then make it a special pilot for a series called World's Wildest Police Videos.
But it's not 1997 anymore.
... I have no idea how they are going to beat Bing. Bing is the ne-plus-ultra of porn search. It's amazing.
That's good news for Microsoft. Ever since the demise of the Zune they've been looking for another use for that trademark for "squirting" in relation to social networking.
Drat! If only there was someone on the scene with a smartphone with a really good camera and fast data connection!
A bright head with a trail behind it, but then the object exploded, spraying material in all directions and burned out very quickly.
That's what she said.
Who would even buy a Kindle from WalMart or Target in the first place? That's a purchase for an electronic appliance store like a Future shop or perhaps one of the many bookstores that carry them.
Why would you want to buy one from FutureShop or a bookstore? It's not like the quality of the device is different if you get it from Target or from Fry's. A Kindle is a Kindle. The sales staff at all the retailers will be equally clueless, and as a geek you don't care about that anyway because you already know more about the product than they do. You're not there to shop and decide. You're there to buy.
The only difference is the price and return/exchange policy. Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart, the price will be lower there. You can return/exchange an item at any other Wal-Mart with your receipt, and there are a lot more Wal-Marts than FutureShops.
So yeah, who would even buy a Kindle from WalMart or Target in the first place?
OCAD is a very well known and respected school in Ontario. The school itself is not a scam. Having a textbook custom created by a company (Prentice Hall) is very expensive.
And was it really necessary to have a custom-created Art History textbook?
Those two core Art History classes (covering pre-history to around the year 1400, and the second covering 1400 to 1945) are a requirement for literally everyone who studies Art, regardless of major or if they're pursuing a BA or BFA, painting, sculpture, or graphic design, etc. It's not like there weren't oodles of candidate textbooks for their curriculum to choose from.
The joke of this story is that the Art History department actually went along with Prentice Hall on this scam, instead of turning right around and looking elsewhere.
Finally, a story I can tag "morehumanthanhuman" and have the tag be a literal statement.
Ok, I can't make my mind if you are being ironic here, or confused by some marketing team... But the fact is that you can have your apps operating in a sandbox (complete, with access anouncements, permission controls, and everything that CianomodGen's sandbox has, even the things that are lacking at plain Android) withoud any app store.
I was being sarcastic. The person I was repling to was implying we can't let people download apps from anywhere because we need sandboxing, as thought the two things are related. The sentences I wrote following the one you quoted make this clear.
Yeah who needs security or sandboxes or any of that complicated stuff?
Because an app can't operate in a sandbox unless it's sold through some draconian app store. You may think this is great, But did your ever consider they could just make the fucking mobile OS itself enforce this rule? Then it wouldn't matter if you got the app from the iPhone store or not. But that doesn't work in the real world on desktop PCs because it would be too restrictive for lots of the most popular apps. Which is why you wont see lots of the most popular apps on the Mac app store. Ever. The iPhone is a different ball of wax because there's no legacy methods and the apps are more limited to start with.
Just throw all the apps in a directory and let them sort things out for themselves.
DUH we just spent the last 20 years figuring out through HORRIBLE SECURITY NIGHTMARES that your approach is just WRONG.
If there's no app store people will have to decide for themselves if they want to trust the author of the app -- kinda like how we've been doing on desktop PCs for last forty years. Do you really think having a stranger at a corporation tell them it's "safe" is a better approach? I suppose those individuals would never become corrupt themselves and let in malicious apps for money on the side, and the corporation would always have the users' best interests at heart. They wouldn't allow apps to do things like sniff through people's phones and upload their address books or read their web browsing history when it's not related to their functionality and without requiring explicit permission, right? And they wouldn't restrict what you can or cannot run for reasons beyond safety of your phone and maybe security of the cell carrier's network. So they wouldn't remove apps for reasons that ultimately boil down to "the reviewer has a political axe to grind" or "we don't like competition", right?
You didn't think your reply through very well.
It uses standards so should be resistant to patent infringement suits,
You'll be surprised what's patentable lately. And whether something is a standard or not has little to do with it.
it will fit on featurephone-grade hardware,
Running and running well are two different things. I'm skeptical until handsets are actually in the wild.
and it will run HTML5 apps without the restriction of native apps in an app store.
This is how "apps" were done on the original iPhone. There were Apple's apps, and there were 3rd party AJAX applets that generally ran from within Safari. And people complained because the quality of the user experience was hobbled by them not being native apps. The restrictions have nothing to do with whether they're native apps or HTML5 doohickeys. You can make native apps and not have an app store at all. Just let people load them to their phone direct from web downloads anywhere on the web or uploaded from flash memory card or USB sticks, kinda like how actual PCs work (for now).
In other words, it's aiming for the next 2 billion smartphone users, people who can't afford the iPhone/Android model.
Considering the iPhone 4 can be had for free now plus the iPhone has been available on prepaid for years, you could buy an older does-not-support the latest iOS iPhone pretty cheap now unlocked on Craigslist and avoid even the required Data Plan stupidity. If you can't afford one now you probably have things you should be focusing your money on instead (like food).
When the US starts paying what other countries pay for fossil fuel (as any European could say), then maybe solar power research will skyrocket.
So why isn't this research a hot field in Europe?