I remember seeing Windows 3.0 on a 286 (16MHz with 1M RAM IIRC) and thinking it was a beautiful thing with it's shiny bevelled-looking edges on the buttons. If only I knew then and there that the significant speed hit (compared to DOS) and not-quite bug-free feel was destined to be just as much a long term feature as was the visual appearance...
Microsoft logo'd fridges with start screens on the outside.
A fridge that automatically orders too much food then crashes and spoils all the food.
A new breed of cyber criminal that holds your pantry contents to ransom with malware. Where do I sign up?
Windows isn't designed to work on different hardware without a reinstall, that's not anecdotal.
I have done many, many PC motherboard replacements over the years using both Windows and Linux based machines and the circumstances where Windows DOESN'T need a reinstall of the OS and drivers plus all updates and service packs (and sometimes applications) are rare. On the other hand linux in general (though not always) doesn't require any reinstallation or reconfiguration when switching main boards. The Windows reinstall process usually takes many hours.
"In previous versions of Windows, you could get to this screen by pressing F8 before Windows started up. Windows 8 PCs start up quickly so there's not enough time to press F8."
Yeah right... Win 8 is just so fast it can't read a keypress at startup any more. Sounds like they get their marketing people to write the troubleshooting documentation.
My guess is that they officially abandoned the F8 startup key concept (even though they didn't) at the same time as they decided none of us need a real keyboard or mouse any more. This may also account for the mouse issues with the 8.1 update. Apparently everyone should be using a tablet by now so keyboard and mouse QA takes a back seat.
Seriously though, how do they manage to break something as basic as mouse operation?
Except that (in my opinion) OS X is a pleasure to use but using Windows 8 on a desktop is best described as "not that bad once you get used to it".
Before you pointed them out I had not consciously recognised the similarities between the Dock/Taskbar and Launchpad/Start screen, possibly because (in the case of the Dock anyway) the Microsoft offerings are pale imitations. I don't use noob-oriented Launchpad on OS X and don't know anyone who does because there is no reason to do so. I'm glad OS X does not force me to use lauchpad the way Win8 does with it's Start screen.
Why would you want to punish them like that? Serious question. If the product is not good enough for your own country why inflict it onto a third world country who could make even less use of it than you can? Shipping off old or otherwise useless tech to third world countries is just a sly way to get around the e-waste disposal problem.
Pardon my ignorance but what significance is there in being the first company to create such 'a long list of products and services'? Being first to market does not ensure commercial success, nor does it indicate the product is any good, desirable or capable of capturing market share.
I'm genuinely interested to see this 'long list' or yours because the only product Microsoft have ever made that I genuinely liked (and didn't later hate for one reason or another) is the original style Microsoft Mouse (the curvy type when there was only one model available).
The benefit of computers in education is completely dependent on the use of appropriate software and/or teachers having some sort of clue about how to use them. Unfortunately most schools fall short on both counts. I have worked in IT support for several schools for several years and can testify that they are mostly used to run a web browser, and play games, and in this context the overheads required to keep Windows-based computer labs working exceed the benefit when a simpler locked down device could be used instead. Maintaining Windows on laptops that kids take home is a nightmare. Having said that I would not propose any sort of tablet is a good replacement for 'real' computing tasks like programming or photo/video editing if such things are taught in the school. Also if I was buying iPads for a school I'd be bolting them to the desks because I can't see one lasting more than a day without being dropped or stolen.
... these were not iPad fanatics, but people who bought iPad because they didn't know any better. They weren't invested in the product or ecosystem, so switching was easy. They saw my tablet and liked the feature set more, so they switched.
I suggest that if what you say about the iPad to Surface RT switchers is true then their experiences are not indicative of those enjoyed by typical iPad buyers. You say they made their iPad purchases because they 'didn't know any better' so the logical conclusion from that statement is that they switched only after you educated them to the superiority of the Surface RT. There doesn't seem to be anyone other than yourself who thinks Surface RT is a better than iPad for those who want the iPad type of experience (which I assume means more tablet oriented than laptop oriented) as per one of your previous posts, so the scenario you describe is unlikely to occur very often. I don't know of anyone who has purchased Surface RT so even if it was a superior product there's nobody around here to 'educate' those poor fools who buy iPads. The local retailers certainly don't know how to sell them other than to 'slash' the price. Harvey Norman (Australian retailer) is currently advertising $100 off Surface RT and it looks like a permanent price drop rather than a time limited special price. Maybe they are selling so well the retailers have dropped the price as some form of community service?
Nice list, and if all those things are important to you on a tablet then I'm sure you will continue to enjoy your Surface RT.
I'm not interested in squabbling over which products are better for what reason but I would suggest that most of those things you've listed are not important to most tablet users, particularly non-computer enthusiasts. Over time we will see which products are most successful.
For anyone interested in why I personally do not rate any of the above reasons to buy Surface RT over Apple iPad as particularly significant, read on.
Ability to simultaneously display more than one app: Windows 8 is not exactly the poster boy for multiple app windows since the whole split screen thing is pretty gumby and it is one of the things I hate most about Metro, but that's just me, and I digress. I have never felt the need to display two iPad apps on screen simultaneously. I have worked in IT for many years and note that a large proportion of the average user population do not 'get' the concept of opening multiple programs simultaneously even when running the Windows Operating system. If you truly have switched four iPad owners over to Surface for this feature alone then I suggest they are not typical users. I know lots of people with iPads and I've literally never heard anyone say they want the ability to display more than one app at a time. I'm not saying it's a useless feature but I don't see it as significant to most users.
Multiple user accounts: Actually it would be nice to see multiple user accounts on the iPad so a single device could be shared with a number of users while keeping their data private. This would be extremely handy in a family environment for example. I'll give you that one but this feature alone would not be sufficient for me to want to switch to Surface though.
Flash support: Lack of flash has not really impacted me as I rarely rely on flash-only sites (we do not have Hulu here) and I can access sites that require flash on my laptop if necessary. If you feel this is a cop-out then I'll give you credit for that point as well, but lack of flash is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned.
Built in ports: I thought I might miss lack of USB for data transfer reasons but I haven't (admittedly mainly due to dropbox). Video out is available by plugin dongle but I prefer to use airplay instead as it works very well without relying on plugging in anything. You do need an Apple TV for airplay though.
An actual file manager, task manager and multitasking: honestly I am not impacted by these at all. The scenario you describe is all well and good but I have never desired to that on the iPad.
Mouse & external display support : I have no desire to try to turn my iPad into a laptop substitute. I have a laptop for that. External display support for giving presentations from iPad works fine. I hooked up a bluetooth keyboard to the iPad just to try it out and it worked great but I disconnected it after a few minutes simply because I don'y do any keyboard intensive work on the iPad.
Peripheral support: apart from occasionally wanting to print I have no need to access the peripherals you list from the iPad. You can airprint directly to many modern printers or do what I do and airprint to a printer shared by another computer.
Price: Apple commands a premium for quality and ease of use and this does not suit everyone. However in my experience a significant amount of people who are initially drawn to particular products based on cheap prices later regret buying cheap when the device doesn't live up to their expectations. The value for money equation is more significant than absolute price, but 'value' is subjective to personal taste and expectations. I personally would not buy Surface RT at any price because I don't see it's intrinsic value, let alone it's value at a particular price.
Live tiles and customisation: personally I rate the ability to pretty up your display with photos and animation at approximately negative infinit
Microsoft really gets a a hard time trying to change anything. When Apple dropped OS9 support when moving to OSX, or when they dropped PowerPC support moving to X86, or when they created a tablet that wasn't compatible with their desktop operating system, nobody did this much complaining.
When Apple dropped Mac OS 9 it was after around five years of providing the ability to run OS 9 applications via the 'Classic Environment' emulation layer on OS X 10.0 through to 10.4. When they dropped Power PC support you could continue to run PPC OS X applications on Intel OS X via Rosetta for around six years (10.4 through to 10.6). Although such architecture changes were not seamless there were quite lengthy transitional phases to lessen the impact on end users and developers.
When Apple created the iPad it was specifically designed for the Apple ecosystem to work along side existing products. The concept of iOS being 'incompatible' with OS X does not apply because they power two complimentary products families running on distinctly different hardware platforms, used for distinctly different purposes.
Whether you love or hate Apple you cannot accuse them of forcing rapid change on their customers as Microsoft has done with Surface RT/Win8/Metro/Windows store and it's associated limitations, incompatibilities, inconveniences and plain old butt-ugliness.
There are plenty of Windows 8 tablets out there that do exactly this. Windows RT is for people who want an iPad analogue. i.e. they have no want or need to install legacy applications on their tablet.
Except that people who want an iPad analogue just buy an iPad because they want to run iPad apps. You don't buy a product because of it's lack of compatibility with Windows.
It seems we are seeing a trend here:
1. Create an undesirable product designed to extract as much money as possible from your customers.
2. Act all surprised when they complain about it.
3. Pretend you are doing them a favour when you are forced to backpeddle.
I'm no brain surgeon but I have trouble equating this formula with sensible business practice.
I'd like to see a shift in thinking away from perpetuating dependance on proprietary file formats (particularly Microsoft Office document formats) where there there's no business case for such dependance. There is definitely a lot more cross-platform support for popular software these days.
Unfortunately it seems to me that a lot of IT people use the "Microsoft = Industry Standard = only option" mantra mostly due to ignorance or rhe desire to take what they believe is the path of least pain (to implement and support). I say short term gain = long term pain.
A small portion of people who do a single task all day or for long periods of time *will* be more productive. They could always have one window only open before.
So they are used to having only one window open all day and now they can ONLY have one window open all day. How does Metro make them more productive?
In fact in many cases such people will be less productive by being forced into using Metro apps due to the severely reduced functionality associated with using dumbed-down-for-touch apps on a desktop rather than a traditional full featured desktop app.
Here's the thing.
Metro UI sucks just as much as the window system Ubuntu and many other linux distributions have 'glommed' onto. It's all Mac like and I personally don't like it.
What part of Metro is even remotely "Mac like"? You make it sound like Microsoft copied the OS X and Ubuntu GUIs to produce Metro. I use all three side by side and I can assure you Metro has no resemblance to any other desktop user interface. It very obviously resembles Android and iOS phone interfaces though.
If you have first hand knowledge of all three systems then I am curious as to what you mean by this statement because I find OS X and Ubuntu Unity both very usable as a desktop GUIs and they have never lost functionality over successive iterations. We no doubt agree on the Metro fail but why hate on OS X and Unity when they aren't remotely related to the way Metro looks or works? Neither OS X or Unity have a preference for reduced functionality apps or single full screen app operation, they both have the same full functionality programs and multi-tasking, multi-window environment they've always had.
Oh wow, I'm actually mentally handicapped! Thanks for pointing that out to me. And thanks for that easy to understand analogy too, I sure would not understand anything about computers without comparing them to cars. So let me get this straight: Ford Focus=Windows 8 desktop and Jeep=Metro yeah? I never knew you could buy a Ford Focus with a built in Jeep. Pardon my ignorance but you know how dumb I am. For the sake of your analogy I will also pretend Ford currently owns the Jeep brand.
So I want to buy a new Ford because my old one is clapped out - it breaks down a lot, has trouble keeping up in traffic, and seems to attract car jackers at an alarming rate. I go to the local Ford dealer and he shows me the brand new model Ford Focus that for some reason now has a Jeep bolted to the side of it like a siamese twin. Occupants can sit in and move freely between either side of the twin but they can only enter the car via the Jeep side. The car salesman says "When you want to drive to work you drive from the Focus side and when you want to go camping you drive from the Jeep side". I notice that there is a steering wheel and pedals in each of the two cars but to access either drivers seat I have to get in the door on the Jeep side. The Focus side doesn't have a drivers door at all! This twin car seems really odd but I buy it anyway because Ford no longer sells the Focus without the attached Jeep, I've always bought Fords, and everybody tells me I should buy a Ford because thats what everyone else buys, and therefore every other car brand is a piece of crap.
When I go to drive the car to work I find I can only start the car from the Jeep side because there's no ignition key on the Focus side. So I have to first start it from the Jeep drivers seat, then shimmy over to the Focus drivers seat to drive to work.
Then I find the controls are a bit funny. The windscreen wipers only work from the Focus side and the parking brake only works from the Jeep side, but fortunately the turn signals can be operated from either side. Then I find there are two completely independent stereo systems, one in each car. The Focus stereo is identical to the one in my old car so I have no trouble using it at all but the one in the Jeep only seems to have one button on it and it only plays some radio stations. Same with the dashboard. The Focus dashboard has most of the usual dials, switches and knobs but the Jeep dashboard is so weird I may as well be flying a spaceship. Fortunately I can work out how to do things by pressing random controls or asking the neighbour (who also owns a Focus/Jeep twin) how to do things. So I find the new twin car is a bit quirky, but yeah I can drive it ok by trial and error, practice my front seat shimmying skills, and ask the neighbour a lot of questions. Seems like a lot of trouble but I'm willing to give it a go.
Unfortunately after a few months of driving the twin car I decide I really don't like using the Jeep side at all because I don't need it, it looks ugly, it's weird to operate, and it doesn't drive very well. I'm tired of all the seat shimmying shenanigans and I just want to drive a normal car again.
So now you tell me I just need to do bit of simple home panel beating to cut a driver access hole into the side of the Focus, and I can add an extra set of wiper and parking brake controls and restore whatever other functionality is missing from the Focus side by using a few simple parts from the local Auto accessory store. With these simple modifications I can operate my Focus/Jeep twin as if it is just a Focus. Yay! So I can have what I wanted all along - just a Focus? Well maybe a Focus with a great lump of redundant steel bolted to the side of it.
But what about those rumours I've heard that Ford are planning to drop the Focus side of the Focus/Jeep twin in next years model because they make so much money selling official Jeep accessories through the Jeep shop. I hear the Focus/Jeep twin is just a transitional model designed to get all Focus owners used to buying Jeep accessor
I agree power management was much improved with windows 7 but my experience in full time tech support leaves me uneasy about never rebooting windows. Weather that be due to power management or memory leak issues or bad hardware or just bad drivers is irrelevant. I'm sure win8 is much better now since it is targeted at always-on hardware but i found when I ran it 24/7 for 4 months as my main work pc (a dell desktop) that I was forced to reboot it about once a week to wake it up from some zombie-like mode where the start screen or a particular app would become unresponsive and I could not kill it through task manager. I would be interested to know if others experienced a similar problem.
After my Win8 learning experience was up I gladly went back to OS X as my main work machine. Windows is endurable but Mac OS X is a pleasure to use.
The problem is not the lack of a Start menu or whether it's replacement is easy to use or not - it is the brainlessness of the Metro* apps that is going to hold the platform back. Sure you can force Win8 to stay in the desktop environment for now (and possibly for the short term future) however MS have made it abundantly clear that Metro-based apps delivered via their store is their vision for the future. Unfortunately the Metro UI (at least on a non-touch enabled PC) does not lend itself well to 'serious' apps (even the Office 2013 still requires the desktop interface) so I struggle to see how they have even thought this through. It would have made a lot more sense to keep Metro as a secondary UI on desktops and laptops, keeping it for compatibility with phones and tablets but not pushing it as the future for productivity apps. Can you imagine how a Metro version of Photoshop could possibly work?
* I know it's no longer called Metro but there's no way I'm going to call it Modern UI or Microsoft design language or whatever. The fact that they bumbled the name of their new interface does not bode well for the competence of the design team.
Actually if Windows could 100% reliably sleep/hibernate AND 100% reliably wakeup then boot times are irrelevant. One of the significant attractions for me to move to using a Mac laptop is that I never have to turn it off - closing the lid sleeps instantly and wakeup is almost as fast and 100% reliable. It also has a practical (long enough) battery life to not be tied to the AC power supply, and in the event that the battery does run flat when asleep it will hibernate automatically. After many years using several different laptop brands and Windows versions I never got to the point where I could trust a Windows laptop to sleep and re-awake with 100% reliability, so I never took the risk. (I did use hibernate reliably on some machines but always invoked it manually). If power management on laptops works correctly in Win8 (the only Windows version I have not used on a laptop) then who cares about boot time?
Slashdot Mirror
"We also heard that unexpected reboots are disruptive if they happen at the wrong time." These guys really know their stuff.
I remember seeing Windows 3.0 on a 286 (16MHz with 1M RAM IIRC) and thinking it was a beautiful thing with it's shiny bevelled-looking edges on the buttons. If only I knew then and there that the significant speed hit (compared to DOS) and not-quite bug-free feel was destined to be just as much a long term feature as was the visual appearance...
Microsoft logo'd fridges with start screens on the outside.
A fridge that automatically orders too much food then crashes and spoils all the food.
A new breed of cyber criminal that holds your pantry contents to ransom with malware.
Where do I sign up?
Dude, you sound like me! Don't worry, you aren't the only one to think this way, there are at least two of us.
Windows isn't designed to work on different hardware without a reinstall, that's not anecdotal.
I have done many, many PC motherboard replacements over the years using both Windows and Linux based machines and the circumstances where Windows DOESN'T need a reinstall of the OS and drivers plus all updates and service packs (and sometimes applications) are rare. On the other hand linux in general (though not always) doesn't require any reinstallation or reconfiguration when switching main boards. The Windows reinstall process usually takes many hours.
I love the bit that says:
"In previous versions of Windows, you could get to this screen by pressing F8 before Windows started up. Windows 8 PCs start up quickly so there's not enough time to press F8."
Yeah right... Win 8 is just so fast it can't read a keypress at startup any more. Sounds like they get their marketing people to write the troubleshooting documentation.
My guess is that they officially abandoned the F8 startup key concept (even though they didn't) at the same time as they decided none of us need a real keyboard or mouse any more. This may also account for the mouse issues with the 8.1 update. Apparently everyone should be using a tablet by now so keyboard and mouse QA takes a back seat.
Seriously though, how do they manage to break something as basic as mouse operation?
now Windows works more similarly to a Mac.
Except that (in my opinion) OS X is a pleasure to use but using Windows 8 on a desktop is best described as "not that bad once you get used to it".
Before you pointed them out I had not consciously recognised the similarities between the Dock/Taskbar and Launchpad/Start screen, possibly because (in the case of the Dock anyway) the Microsoft offerings are pale imitations. I don't use noob-oriented Launchpad on OS X and don't know anyone who does because there is no reason to do so. I'm glad OS X does not force me to use lauchpad the way Win8 does with it's Start screen.
Why would you want to punish them like that? Serious question. If the product is not good enough for your own country why inflict it onto a third world country who could make even less use of it than you can? Shipping off old or otherwise useless tech to third world countries is just a sly way to get around the e-waste disposal problem.
I wish Balmer was the Kin of CEOs then he'd be gone in a couple of months and completely forgotten about by next year. Alas he is more like clippy.
Pardon my ignorance but what significance is there in being the first company to create such 'a long list of products and services'? Being first to market does not ensure commercial success, nor does it indicate the product is any good, desirable or capable of capturing market share. I'm genuinely interested to see this 'long list' or yours because the only product Microsoft have ever made that I genuinely liked (and didn't later hate for one reason or another) is the original style Microsoft Mouse (the curvy type when there was only one model available).
I think I used to work one of those.
The benefit of computers in education is completely dependent on the use of appropriate software and/or teachers having some sort of clue about how to use them. Unfortunately most schools fall short on both counts. I have worked in IT support for several schools for several years and can testify that they are mostly used to run a web browser, and play games, and in this context the overheads required to keep Windows-based computer labs working exceed the benefit when a simpler locked down device could be used instead. Maintaining Windows on laptops that kids take home is a nightmare. Having said that I would not propose any sort of tablet is a good replacement for 'real' computing tasks like programming or photo/video editing if such things are taught in the school. Also if I was buying iPads for a school I'd be bolting them to the desks because I can't see one lasting more than a day without being dropped or stolen.
... these were not iPad fanatics, but people who bought iPad because they didn't know any better. They weren't invested in the product or ecosystem, so switching was easy. They saw my tablet and liked the feature set more, so they switched.
I suggest that if what you say about the iPad to Surface RT switchers is true then their experiences are not indicative of those enjoyed by typical iPad buyers. You say they made their iPad purchases because they 'didn't know any better' so the logical conclusion from that statement is that they switched only after you educated them to the superiority of the Surface RT. There doesn't seem to be anyone other than yourself who thinks Surface RT is a better than iPad for those who want the iPad type of experience (which I assume means more tablet oriented than laptop oriented) as per one of your previous posts, so the scenario you describe is unlikely to occur very often. I don't know of anyone who has purchased Surface RT so even if it was a superior product there's nobody around here to 'educate' those poor fools who buy iPads. The local retailers certainly don't know how to sell them other than to 'slash' the price. Harvey Norman (Australian retailer) is currently advertising $100 off Surface RT and it looks like a permanent price drop rather than a time limited special price. Maybe they are selling so well the retailers have dropped the price as some form of community service?
Nice list, and if all those things are important to you on a tablet then I'm sure you will continue to enjoy your Surface RT.
I'm not interested in squabbling over which products are better for what reason but I would suggest that most of those things you've listed are not important to most tablet users, particularly non-computer enthusiasts. Over time we will see which products are most successful.
For anyone interested in why I personally do not rate any of the above reasons to buy Surface RT over Apple iPad as particularly significant, read on.
Ability to simultaneously display more than one app: Windows 8 is not exactly the poster boy for multiple app windows since the whole split screen thing is pretty gumby and it is one of the things I hate most about Metro, but that's just me, and I digress. I have never felt the need to display two iPad apps on screen simultaneously. I have worked in IT for many years and note that a large proportion of the average user population do not 'get' the concept of opening multiple programs simultaneously even when running the Windows Operating system. If you truly have switched four iPad owners over to Surface for this feature alone then I suggest they are not typical users. I know lots of people with iPads and I've literally never heard anyone say they want the ability to display more than one app at a time. I'm not saying it's a useless feature but I don't see it as significant to most users.
Multiple user accounts: Actually it would be nice to see multiple user accounts on the iPad so a single device could be shared with a number of users while keeping their data private. This would be extremely handy in a family environment for example. I'll give you that one but this feature alone would not be sufficient for me to want to switch to Surface though.
Flash support: Lack of flash has not really impacted me as I rarely rely on flash-only sites (we do not have Hulu here) and I can access sites that require flash on my laptop if necessary. If you feel this is a cop-out then I'll give you credit for that point as well, but lack of flash is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned.
Built in ports: I thought I might miss lack of USB for data transfer reasons but I haven't (admittedly mainly due to dropbox). Video out is available by plugin dongle but I prefer to use airplay instead as it works very well without relying on plugging in anything. You do need an Apple TV for airplay though.
An actual file manager, task manager and multitasking: honestly I am not impacted by these at all. The scenario you describe is all well and good but I have never desired to that on the iPad.
Mouse & external display support : I have no desire to try to turn my iPad into a laptop substitute. I have a laptop for that. External display support for giving presentations from iPad works fine. I hooked up a bluetooth keyboard to the iPad just to try it out and it worked great but I disconnected it after a few minutes simply because I don'y do any keyboard intensive work on the iPad.
Peripheral support: apart from occasionally wanting to print I have no need to access the peripherals you list from the iPad. You can airprint directly to many modern printers or do what I do and airprint to a printer shared by another computer.
Price: Apple commands a premium for quality and ease of use and this does not suit everyone. However in my experience a significant amount of people who are initially drawn to particular products based on cheap prices later regret buying cheap when the device doesn't live up to their expectations. The value for money equation is more significant than absolute price, but 'value' is subjective to personal taste and expectations. I personally would not buy Surface RT at any price because I don't see it's intrinsic value, let alone it's value at a particular price.
Live tiles and customisation: personally I rate the ability to pretty up your display with photos and animation at approximately negative infinit
There are plenty of other reasons to buy a Windows tablet over iPad.
SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!
And remember we are discussing Surface RT here not Pro.
Microsoft really gets a a hard time trying to change anything. When Apple dropped OS9 support when moving to OSX, or when they dropped PowerPC support moving to X86, or when they created a tablet that wasn't compatible with their desktop operating system, nobody did this much complaining.
When Apple dropped Mac OS 9 it was after around five years of providing the ability to run OS 9 applications via the 'Classic Environment' emulation layer on OS X 10.0 through to 10.4. When they dropped Power PC support you could continue to run PPC OS X applications on Intel OS X via Rosetta for around six years (10.4 through to 10.6). Although such architecture changes were not seamless there were quite lengthy transitional phases to lessen the impact on end users and developers.
When Apple created the iPad it was specifically designed for the Apple ecosystem to work along side existing products. The concept of iOS being 'incompatible' with OS X does not apply because they power two complimentary products families running on distinctly different hardware platforms, used for distinctly different purposes. Whether you love or hate Apple you cannot accuse them of forcing rapid change on their customers as Microsoft has done with Surface RT/Win8/Metro/Windows store and it's associated limitations, incompatibilities, inconveniences and plain old butt-ugliness.
There are plenty of Windows 8 tablets out there that do exactly this. Windows RT is for people who want an iPad analogue. i.e. they have no want or need to install legacy applications on their tablet.
Except that people who want an iPad analogue just buy an iPad because they want to run iPad apps. You don't buy a product because of it's lack of compatibility with Windows.
It seems we are seeing a trend here: 1. Create an undesirable product designed to extract as much money as possible from your customers. 2. Act all surprised when they complain about it. 3. Pretend you are doing them a favour when you are forced to backpeddle. I'm no brain surgeon but I have trouble equating this formula with sensible business practice.
I'd like to see a shift in thinking away from perpetuating dependance on proprietary file formats (particularly Microsoft Office document formats) where there there's no business case for such dependance. There is definitely a lot more cross-platform support for popular software these days. Unfortunately it seems to me that a lot of IT people use the "Microsoft = Industry Standard = only option" mantra mostly due to ignorance or rhe desire to take what they believe is the path of least pain (to implement and support). I say short term gain = long term pain.
A small portion of people who do a single task all day or for long periods of time *will* be more productive. They could always have one window only open before.
So they are used to having only one window open all day and now they can ONLY have one window open all day. How does Metro make them more productive? In fact in many cases such people will be less productive by being forced into using Metro apps due to the severely reduced functionality associated with using dumbed-down-for-touch apps on a desktop rather than a traditional full featured desktop app.
Here's the thing. Metro UI sucks just as much as the window system Ubuntu and many other linux distributions have 'glommed' onto. It's all Mac like and I personally don't like it.
What part of Metro is even remotely "Mac like"? You make it sound like Microsoft copied the OS X and Ubuntu GUIs to produce Metro. I use all three side by side and I can assure you Metro has no resemblance to any other desktop user interface. It very obviously resembles Android and iOS phone interfaces though.
If you have first hand knowledge of all three systems then I am curious as to what you mean by this statement because I find OS X and Ubuntu Unity both very usable as a desktop GUIs and they have never lost functionality over successive iterations. We no doubt agree on the Metro fail but why hate on OS X and Unity when they aren't remotely related to the way Metro looks or works? Neither OS X or Unity have a preference for reduced functionality apps or single full screen app operation, they both have the same full functionality programs and multi-tasking, multi-window environment they've always had.
Oh wow, I'm actually mentally handicapped! Thanks for pointing that out to me. And thanks for that easy to understand analogy too, I sure would not understand anything about computers without comparing them to cars. So let me get this straight: Ford Focus=Windows 8 desktop and Jeep=Metro yeah? I never knew you could buy a Ford Focus with a built in Jeep. Pardon my ignorance but you know how dumb I am. For the sake of your analogy I will also pretend Ford currently owns the Jeep brand.
So I want to buy a new Ford because my old one is clapped out - it breaks down a lot, has trouble keeping up in traffic, and seems to attract car jackers at an alarming rate. I go to the local Ford dealer and he shows me the brand new model Ford Focus that for some reason now has a Jeep bolted to the side of it like a siamese twin. Occupants can sit in and move freely between either side of the twin but they can only enter the car via the Jeep side. The car salesman says "When you want to drive to work you drive from the Focus side and when you want to go camping you drive from the Jeep side". I notice that there is a steering wheel and pedals in each of the two cars but to access either drivers seat I have to get in the door on the Jeep side. The Focus side doesn't have a drivers door at all! This twin car seems really odd but I buy it anyway because Ford no longer sells the Focus without the attached Jeep, I've always bought Fords, and everybody tells me I should buy a Ford because thats what everyone else buys, and therefore every other car brand is a piece of crap.
When I go to drive the car to work I find I can only start the car from the Jeep side because there's no ignition key on the Focus side. So I have to first start it from the Jeep drivers seat, then shimmy over to the Focus drivers seat to drive to work. Then I find the controls are a bit funny. The windscreen wipers only work from the Focus side and the parking brake only works from the Jeep side, but fortunately the turn signals can be operated from either side. Then I find there are two completely independent stereo systems, one in each car. The Focus stereo is identical to the one in my old car so I have no trouble using it at all but the one in the Jeep only seems to have one button on it and it only plays some radio stations. Same with the dashboard. The Focus dashboard has most of the usual dials, switches and knobs but the Jeep dashboard is so weird I may as well be flying a spaceship. Fortunately I can work out how to do things by pressing random controls or asking the neighbour (who also owns a Focus/Jeep twin) how to do things. So I find the new twin car is a bit quirky, but yeah I can drive it ok by trial and error, practice my front seat shimmying skills, and ask the neighbour a lot of questions. Seems like a lot of trouble but I'm willing to give it a go.
Unfortunately after a few months of driving the twin car I decide I really don't like using the Jeep side at all because I don't need it, it looks ugly, it's weird to operate, and it doesn't drive very well. I'm tired of all the seat shimmying shenanigans and I just want to drive a normal car again.
So now you tell me I just need to do bit of simple home panel beating to cut a driver access hole into the side of the Focus, and I can add an extra set of wiper and parking brake controls and restore whatever other functionality is missing from the Focus side by using a few simple parts from the local Auto accessory store. With these simple modifications I can operate my Focus/Jeep twin as if it is just a Focus. Yay! So I can have what I wanted all along - just a Focus? Well maybe a Focus with a great lump of redundant steel bolted to the side of it.
But what about those rumours I've heard that Ford are planning to drop the Focus side of the Focus/Jeep twin in next years model because they make so much money selling official Jeep accessories through the Jeep shop. I hear the Focus/Jeep twin is just a transitional model designed to get all Focus owners used to buying Jeep accessor
I agree power management was much improved with windows 7 but my experience in full time tech support leaves me uneasy about never rebooting windows. Weather that be due to power management or memory leak issues or bad hardware or just bad drivers is irrelevant. I'm sure win8 is much better now since it is targeted at always-on hardware but i found when I ran it 24/7 for 4 months as my main work pc (a dell desktop) that I was forced to reboot it about once a week to wake it up from some zombie-like mode where the start screen or a particular app would become unresponsive and I could not kill it through task manager. I would be interested to know if others experienced a similar problem. After my Win8 learning experience was up I gladly went back to OS X as my main work machine. Windows is endurable but Mac OS X is a pleasure to use.
The problem is not the lack of a Start menu or whether it's replacement is easy to use or not - it is the brainlessness of the Metro* apps that is going to hold the platform back. Sure you can force Win8 to stay in the desktop environment for now (and possibly for the short term future) however MS have made it abundantly clear that Metro-based apps delivered via their store is their vision for the future. Unfortunately the Metro UI (at least on a non-touch enabled PC) does not lend itself well to 'serious' apps (even the Office 2013 still requires the desktop interface) so I struggle to see how they have even thought this through. It would have made a lot more sense to keep Metro as a secondary UI on desktops and laptops, keeping it for compatibility with phones and tablets but not pushing it as the future for productivity apps. Can you imagine how a Metro version of Photoshop could possibly work? * I know it's no longer called Metro but there's no way I'm going to call it Modern UI or Microsoft design language or whatever. The fact that they bumbled the name of their new interface does not bode well for the competence of the design team.
Actually if Windows could 100% reliably sleep/hibernate AND 100% reliably wakeup then boot times are irrelevant. One of the significant attractions for me to move to using a Mac laptop is that I never have to turn it off - closing the lid sleeps instantly and wakeup is almost as fast and 100% reliable. It also has a practical (long enough) battery life to not be tied to the AC power supply, and in the event that the battery does run flat when asleep it will hibernate automatically. After many years using several different laptop brands and Windows versions I never got to the point where I could trust a Windows laptop to sleep and re-awake with 100% reliability, so I never took the risk. (I did use hibernate reliably on some machines but always invoked it manually). If power management on laptops works correctly in Win8 (the only Windows version I have not used on a laptop) then who cares about boot time?