Amidst all the WikiLeaks hoopla, there’s also actual regular news going on. Windows 7 is barely out the door, and we’re already dealing with Windows 8, which is indeed being worked on but will not arrive for at least two years. There’s some rumours from an Italian website which state that the 64bit version of Windows 8 will have a completely new interface called Wind. Right.
My Italian is… Problematic, so while I understand some of it, I have to rely on others to fully grasp what they’re saying. Before we get going, though, let me state that I have very little confidence in the validity of these rumours, and the only reason I’m reporting on them is because I think it’s completely idiotic for Microsoft to do what these rumours claim.
The Italian website claims that the 64bit version of Windows will come with a new interface called Wind, which won’t be available on 32bit installations. It will supposedly be very heavy on the graphics card, requiring 170MB of graphics memory and a dedicated video card. This seems like a complete and utter reversal of all the work done with Windows 7, which massively reduced the memory footprint of the graphics user interface.
What does this ‘Wind’ need all this memory for? Supposedly, it can run on 3D displays (but doesn’t require them), and the interface will be fully dynamic, adapting to the user’s daily operations, changing shortcuts and icons to fit the user’s needs. This seems like a disaster waiting to happen – “where the heck did my shortcuts go?”.
These rumours the exact opposite of what Windows 7 has achieved. Windows 7 is lighter on resources than Windows Vista, and that process of optimisation was far from complete, Microsoft said. It seems like a very stupid idea to come up with an entirely new, resource-heavy interface users will have to adapt to. Also – 3D monitors? I can has 3D input device first plskthnxbi?
I think what we’re dealing with here is simply design studies by Microsoft – you know, like concept cars, cars that embody the future design direction of a car company in the extremes in order to highlight them. I’m sure Microsoft is working on some way for the interface to benefit from 3D monitors, but one designed around it within two years?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: sure, and I have a unicorn.
There’s also more reasonable stuff in there, like a fast hibernation system (old rumour, I believe), and better SSD support.
I wonder how often developers break wind during the
development process. A massive UI like that cannot
be easy to make.
Actually I think this is the best code name windows
has ever come up with. The others kinda stink.
News flash!!! Windows 7 was barely out the door …. over a year ago ….
And how is it doing in competition with WinXP still?
The sentiment is correct considering that XP is gonna be with us for at least another 10 years making the OS lifespan something like 20 years
Problem is old people and including old computer geeks get stuck in their ways and dont want to make the effort to learn any thing new and beneficial.
Yeah, many people still uses le venerable Unix ! Let’s switch of OS every couple of years, swipping our knowledge, behaviors and habits. That’s more productive for sure !
And with SP1 (final) around the corner…
I call BS on most of these rumors for the following 2 reasons.
2012 is too soon.
3d interface has no business value right now
microsoft have never forced consumers to make any types of hardware changes
http://www.windows8update.com
But no
New releases of Windows always drive an upgrade cycle.
Windows 7 maybe not so much because Windows 7 is really a premium Vista service pack.
Look at a non-os related example
PC gaming for instance. Slumped.
2007 was the last great year for must upgrade graphic cards with Crysis and Oblivion 4 before that.
Now that $100 graphics cards works just fine.
You can play all games with that. I do.
Hardware partners/vendors are not happy. Studio’s is developing games for Xbox’s and PS3 with a PC port. Not the other way around. This games is thus designed to be played on a 256mb videocard.
High End graphics cards upgrades has become..sort of driven by foolishnes, sorry to say.
But hey it’s your money.
Microsoft is trying to keep hardware vendors happy and a rumoured game from Microsoft studio is in the works to drive very high end graphics cards.
Windows follow this analogy.
Edited 2010-12-10 10:06 UTC
Last interview with a game development house that I read actually discussed the “pc gaming is dead” claims. This rumour gets kicked around year after year yet the game company interviewed has increased profits year over year.
“PC gaming is dead” seems more an excuse used by companies that have already decided not to produce a PC build of their latest title.
I agree with.
I said slumped, and not dead.
My argument revolved more around the hardware side.
But anyway who can argue consoles has not affected PC games:-(
Some developer totally skip the platform.
Dont take me wrong, I’m no console fanboy.
I only play pc games. That’s how I roll.
What limits “ohh, shiny!” is, at least in large part, astronomical cost of art & content creation beyond certain level of quality. Yes, procedural/etc. might be a way around this – but, funnily enough, consoles tended to use it sooner precisely because of their limited resources.
Then there’s how GFX might be in the level of “good enough” for a lot of people – considering how the most popular forms of PC gaming are most likely Solitaire/Peggle/Farmville? (plus – I keep hearing “PC games are most shiny!” and “PC games, which I play, are deep“…so which one is it?) One nice side effect of mature stage in console cycle: gameplay matters.
But anyway who can argue PCs have not affected console games? It was largely (inevitable probably) a process of hybridization. Do not think those hybrids are representative of classic console games… (oh, yes, and also some developers totally skip the platform)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m just occasionally a gamer.
I only play good games, on whatever platform at hand. That’s how I roll.
Edited 2010-12-12 13:00 UTC
But only the gameplay that the average gamer likes. They like to have gameplay that 90% of people kind of like. They hate gameplay that 10% of people really love.
So the PC would be the king of niche games ?
I must admit, I just can’t picture myself something like Myst being released on a console…
Well, except maybe the Nintendo DS because its stylus interface is just perfect for point and click games no matter what else Nintendo wants to do with it.
Edited 2010-12-12 18:26 UTC
Warhammer: Dark Omen (and Shadow of the Hornet Rat) are decently close to Myst, and were on PS1. Overall there are tons of tactical games (usually with some RPG elements) beginning mostly from the SNES era. Most of them weren’t given a chance in the West, sure, but if anything that’s because of the approach of the area to more serious gaming throughout most of that time.
BTW, UI paradigm revolving around pointing at things is not the only one for a strategy. Nested/scrollable menu and “jumping” between objects on the map is another.
Uh ? Are we really talking about the same Myst ? A brain-shattering point and click from the 90s where the user is alone on a group of islands linked together by books, with obfuscated puzzles everywhere that must all be solved in order to see the ending – and where you have two chances out of three to get the bad ending the first time you play the game ?
About alternative interfaces, well… The original Phoenix Wright for the GBA and iMyst show that there are alternatives to styluses and mouses for playing point-and-click games, but they often turn out to be less intuitive or to let the user discover things too easily.
Edited 2010-12-12 19:59 UTC
Oh, right…for some reason it clicked in me with what the Myth games were; too many years I guess ;p
As for UIs – see how you’re talking about “alternative” interfaces for point’n’click adventures, games which were built around…pointing at things. That’s not the only way to create an adventure game – another is, also, nested/scrollable menu-based UI (Snatcher, not sure about Policenauts). Even partly point’n’click UI (at least some games from Clock Tower series; here’s a bit Myst-like example ;p ) doesn’t have to be bad; those games aren’t exactly “fast”, and after an interaction with the scene it’s time for menu; plus pixel hunting was a characteristic of bad ones(*) – considering how point’n’click adventures tended sometimes to highlight or “snap” the cursor a bit to active items, it could as well be dealt with, basically, also by “scrolling”/jumping through items on screen; not only in the menu.
(*)Arguably the whole point’n’click adventure paradigm was a bit flawed – why would it mostly pass otherwise? Or at least used for wrong reasons – because, funnily enough, in many of those games visuals were the best part; story and, especially, “logic” often were simply obscene (one would think that’s what “adventure” should be about…). But for a long time FPS games are the way to show off any visual prowess, ever since realtime GFX generation started giving good results… that’s where the “pointing at stuff” game mechanics mostly lives now (in the past also PC RTS or hack’n’slash games)
On the other hand – in Japan adventure games are actually dominating on the PC. But it’s their flavour – mostly a visual novel; and even if released mostly on the platform where using a mouse is the rule, UIs are menu-driven.
Yes, if we take adventure games as a whole, I’m sure that consoles can make some pretty good titles.
As an example, on the PS3, Heavy Rain sounds very interesting, and so does Uncharted 2. GTA4 can even be considered an adventure game to some extent, and Hitman certainly fits that category. Rayman 2 was not ported to consoles afaik, but nothing would have prevented that technically speaking.
I was thinking about the point-and-click subgenre specifically in the context of the “can niche games exist outside of the PC world” interrogation. Myst, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island… They are *based* on insane thinking and an extreme attention to details. This is why they certainly won’t please anyone, all players are not masochist enough to play them. But being difficult is not necessary a bad thing.
Edited 2010-12-13 14:42 UTC
So, you’re saying that average gamer likes average games? (which are by no means the only ones) That’s a shocker…
From where does this obsessions “most games must be what we, the elite, likes” come from? I’m happy with small portion (I haven’t researched it, but almost certainly less than 1%) of the total – that’s still enough for my lifetime (this thing I’m pretty sure of), even if limiting myself only to games already released.
Most corps have skipped Windows Vista and are going to move from XP to 7.
Secondly Windows 7 is not a Vista with a service pack slapped on. http://www.osnews.com/story/22501/Microsoft_Kernel_Engineers_Talk_A…
Considering Microsoft actually removed features and gave the UI the biggest overhaul since Windows XP, I think that is a pretty significant change.
Compared to Win7 Vista feels like a beta. It just isn’t finished. I never had that feeling with win95-98. But I had the same feeling with Winxp and Winxp sp2. Compared to sp2 winxp feels like a beta.
I like this bit:
“The interface of Windows NT will be abandoned.”
(translated via Google)
Considering how much still exists in 7 without change, and how much 7’s interface is an evolution of it, it makes little sense to just abandon it in favor of a completely new UI design.
Remember: Microsoft has always support old, old stuff in Windows. Even Win98 (and perhaps later versions?) still had progman.exe available.
I agree, they obviously done a hell of a lot of user testing in Windows 7 and a lot of the features they added were stuff that was there in either XP or Vista however they were improved over time.
e.g. Vertical tiling existed in XP and Vista and I use it a lot (SQL Server Management Studio Next to Visual Studio or the T-SQL docs). The Aero Snap (or whatever it is called) just makes it easier to tile two windows.
Also Windows grouping was done since XP, however it was rubbish until they had fixed it in 7, can’t remember what it was like in Vista tbh, but I remember there being the live window priview being there.
What NT interface exists in Windows 7 please quantify???
Considering Windows 7 is NT, all of it.
Well, there’s some differences, mainly the original explorer windows are finally gone, and the classic start menu is gone, but the rest is there.
It still uses a start menu, just different. You can have window labels displayed on the task bar, and windows don’t have to be grouped. Plus, you can always use the classic Windows 9x/NT window look, instead of Aero.
Icons on the desktop, etc etc.
I currently don’t have convenient access to a windows install right now, so I can’t check to see how much you can have the classic explorer windows, but the essential stuff is still there.
I don’t think you know what concept cars really are.
They don’t represent an idea taken to an extreme. You make it sound like they’re purely to demonstrate extravagance of design.
Concept cars serve a much more real purpose: they are essentially real-life working models that internal design and focus testing say, along with a strong business case, that a particular new car design should be made as the successor.
Concept cars cost a significant amount of money so they are made only when necessary. I’ve heard some over 10 times the price to a consumer when finally selling the car to the public.
To conclude, the goal is to illicit a response from the world on what they (the actual customers) say, because no amount of focus groups and internal design meetings can fully predict what a customer may like.
Some are. Many, however, are purely speculative, or even artistic – there have been more than a few concept cars that look stunning, but would be impractical to produce owing to things like the lack of room for an engine.
This morning Kroc posted an article titled “Politics Affect Operating Systems Too”
Where did this article go?????
Why was it removed???
Politics Affect Operating Systems Too?
Edited 2010-12-10 06:40 UTC
Yes, other people have asked the same question. This is the first time I’ve seen a story removed/deleted/unavailable/etc or have I not been around here for long enough?
The intent was obviously good as I perceived it as an attempt to reconcile the community after the 4chan story. The content was also totally worthy of this website. So yes, crew, what happened?
They possibly had a call off a US government official telling them to remove it!
I suspect the removal was delibrate, so we would ask the very same questions that you have asked.
i.e. the removal was a stunt.
It was badly written and disorganised and will go back up once I’ve had time to reconcile it.
-or-
The American Government pressured us to remove it because it sounded too much like free speech, and that’s bad ummkay.
Didn’t you move it to the free speech zone?
It’s available in Bing’s cache http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=27025879955997950&w=69f6307d,4ffbe…
Edited 2010-12-10 10:58 UTC
Hehe it was interesting in a David Lynch kinda way. I didn’t understand much but I still enjoyed it.
Possibile che dobbiamo sempre farci riconoscere nel mondo per questi bugiardi ?!?! Sono tutte palle !!! Purtroppo avere berlusconi per cosi tanto tempo modifica le nostre abitudini ….
eh, a chi lo dici, veramente deprimente :/
anyways, i don’t see any actual factual “news” on that site (even in the disclaimer of the article he says nothing of that has been verified, in other words, just plain invented :p)
The guys at Microsoft have started talking bad 3D-lingo with the ludicrous-hilarious Win+Tab window stack thing in Vista. Some user just had a dream and, as usual, sort of “escalated” their hopes, someone else picked up on that, amplified it, transmitted it and the cycle repeats… until what we have now. Isn’t it usually the normal process by which rumors and gossip are propagated?
…you have a real unicorn fetish : http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr185/MrHyperborean/UnicornParti…
Kochise
… has become vital for the success of a desktop or handheld system. A shiny, polished surface helps selling a product. And most men — myself included — are mentally still kids. We like to play. We like gimmicks.
And Microsoft Windows is no more the only player on the field. Apple’s OS X and iOS, Gnome or KDE based Linux distributions and Android grow stronger and stronger. As a result Microsoft is more and more forced to also exploit the “sex sells” argument.
Taking these assumptions a “high end” GUI for “high end” PCs makes sense to me.
pica
It’s business as usual: “Evangelism of version X+1 starts, when version X is released”. It’s all very well described in the Vole’s unpopular “Evangelism is War” Memo.
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958
http://tinyurl.com/yzx8ok3
And yes vaporware is business as usual. Anyone remembering “WinFS in Longhorn”?
Wouldn’t surprise me if these rumors are potentially true. Let’s look at Microsoft’s Operating System history.
You can pretty much assume that every other major release (otherwise non server editions) are steaming piles of crap.
Windows 95 was crap, 98 was Okay, ME was crap, 2000 was good (though many would argue this was more like a server OS and was just a stepping stone to XP), XP was Okay, Vista was Crap, and Windows 7 is Okay.
Windows 8 will most likely also be crap.
Unless they finally break the pattern like Star Trek movies did where the Even movies were awesome and the Odd numbered ones were just Okay (though I personally liked 5, most people just thought it was Shattner’s big “look at me!”)
Surprising how many open source operating systems are trying to go for the “older machines still work!” attitude and Microsoft is for “Hey, we require 2GB of memory to run the same amount of apps as you could with 128mb of Ram on an Amiga.”
An Amiga was most likely to have 2Mb of memory (A1200) and was multi-tasking before Windows was, without needs of huge memory footprint. It’s not eCos either, hu…
True, the Amiga uses 2mb of chip ram in the AGA based machines and then (depending on if you have accelerators or zorro slots) you can cram a whole lot more. Actually, from the specs you could actually have a GB of ram, though I’m not quite sure what the purpose of that would be, except to say “I have 1GB of ram in an Amiga.”
It’s really a sad day to know what computers have become. This huge unoptimized pile of crap. The hardware has been getting faster and faster because it needs to, not because we actually get any more speed for doing things.
Well, having a few MB of stack for processes (including kernel) is a good aspect of today’s overpowered desktop computers, because you can say “there’s more than enough, if I use it correctly I don’t care”. 2MB was really small in sense that software had to care a lot about stack usage, and thus limit the use of function calls as an example. This is not the case today.
64MB should be more than enough for simple tasks, though.
Edited 2010-12-13 19:50 UTC
Remember what Geos on Commodore 64 was able to achieve, with JUST 64 KB or RAM !
Kochise
I think my kernel takes around that amount of space on a floppy before being even loaded, and it does not do a lot. So at the time, everything was probably written in hand-crafted and extremely optimized assembly, and I can only thank the gods of computing that it is no longer necessary to go this far
xp will never die.
companies will be using it in 2012 as well
no1 cares about the new crap features in the next win versions until their programs run on xp just fine and right now i couldnt think any which would work better on it…