In the article on Windows 8, I already mentioned that in order to demonstrate the viability of Metro for something other than Facebook and Twitter, Microsoft should come up with a Metro interface for Microsoft Office - one that doesn't leave out 90% of Office's features. Well, Microsoft has hinted that they are, indeed, working on Metro Office. In addition, it turns out Microsoft isn't entirely sure to how to address the issue if legacy applications on ARM.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
So what? Metro, Gnome 3 (and KDE 4 for that matter) all belong to the same kind of crap: change just for the sake of it.
Imagine that applied to cars or houses, all of a sudden crazy designs with no thought to usability: how many do you think they would sell?
Member since:2005-11-09
Member since:2006-11-19
Earlier, I said the Metro/Gnome3 haters were afraid of change, perhaps thats true, but consider this.
You have one group of interfaces that are all fundamentally Windows95 UI clones, this include Win2000/XP/Vista/7/KDE/Gnome2.x and to an extent OS/2 Warp4. I'll bet the people who really like this set of interfaces are people who's first computer experience was Windows 95. We tend to like what we first learn.
Now, whilst I may be in the minority here, I never liked Win95, in fact, I despised it. At the time (1995) I had an Amiga at home, and used a NeXTs and Suns at school. That might explain why I'm a huge Amiga/NeXT/BeOS and to an extent Mac fan, and why I liked Gnome 1.x but not Gnome 2.x.
Anyway, as I see it, we have the Windows95 based interfaces and non-Windows95 based interfaces. Metro/Gnome3 haters might just be fans of Windows 95 UIs and Metro/Gnome3 fans might never have cared for Windows95.
I for one am glad that FINALLY Windows95 is perhaps no longer the gold standard of user interfaces.
Edited 2011-09-17 23:31 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Where would you put people who believe that OS X is the best OS?
OS X is certainly not comparable to Metro or Gnome3.
And in which family of operating systems would you put OS X?
BTW I never used Windows 95, at the time I was refusing to use computers, I found them glorified typewriters.
Edited 2011-09-18 00:20 UTC
Member since:2011-01-28
MacMan,
I don't know why metro sympathizers (many who've never even tried it), keep coming back to "afraid of change" and "it DOES NOT LOOK LIKE WIN95!"? These statements attack the critic, but don't address the criticisms.
A single application interface could work very well for many people who don't use a computer for more than one task at a time...that includes my own parents. However the metro interface shown here is unnecessarily confusing and difficult to use on it's own terms. This has nothing to do with "win95", though there are a number of compatibility issues metro introduced quite unnecessarily. It's a garbage implementation of a potentially good idea.
Edit: Maybe they will fix metro based on all the negative feedback they get, however there is a lot not to like about metro as it stands. Maybe they won't fix it and just try to force it onto all of us instead. With microsoft, this isn't unheard of.
I find that functionally, but not aesthetically, metro seems to be a very distance descendant of the old DOSShell, which had the ability to switch between full screen dos programs (text and graphic) in much the same way metro does.
Edited 2011-09-18 03:24 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Member since:
2006-11-19
I bet the same kind of person is bitching about Metro as those bitching about Gnome 3.
All these people bitch about "dumbed down" "dumbed down", well....
maybe its just DIFFERENT! maybe it DOES NOT LOOK LIKE WIN95!
So, you actually have to think about interacting with your machine differently than you did with Win95 and all the Win95 interface clones like Win2000/WinXP/Vista/7/KDE/Gnome2.x...
The impression I get of all these Metro / Gnome3 haters is that they are just afraid of change.
Now, I have not tried Metro, but I do like Win7 Phone, and I hugely like Gnome 3.1, in fact I like Gnome 3.1 a lot better than Lion, and I now pretty much use Gnome 3.1 as my full time desktop.
Edited 2011-09-17 21:26 UTC