As you may have seen, David’s been taking care of OSNews for a few days because I’m quite busy with work. Still, there’s one thing I’d like to talk about: the desktop mode in Windows 8. I wish I could’ve added this to the first impressions article, but I only arrived at this conclusion yesterday: desktop mode in Windows 8 is Microsoft’s equivalent of Mac OS X’s Classic mode.
When Apple released Mac OS X 10.0, the operating system was virtually unusable, and not at all ready for prime time. Since Apple realised it would take them a few releases before Mac OS X was ready for general use (I’d say they hit it at 10.3), and because it would take developers a while before they had adapted to the new developer tools and paradigms, Apple included the Classic Environment.
Classic was a software layer which used a MacOS 9 system folder and a New World ROM to run OS9 applications within Mac OS X. I’ll admit I’m not entirely familiar with exactly how it worked on a technical level, but it felt very similar to the ‘coherence’ features that would pop up in tools like Parallels and VMware years later. Classic met its maker when Apple shifted to Intel.
The desktop in Windows 8 serves the same function. Microsoft knows Metro isn’t ready yet for general use, and that developers will need time to adapt to Metro and the WinRT programming model. In addition, it’s clear Metro is still in flux, with features still being added and, in my view, a general lack of ‘compatibility’ with larger displays. Heck, it’s not entirely clear how large, complex applications are going to work in Metro (Office, Photoshop, and so on).
The desktop is Microsoft’s temporary answer, much like Classic was for Apple. It allows users to run ‘classic’ applications in a way that, despite the jarring Metro-to-desktop switch, is still more seamless than Classic in Mac OS X (which required an entire boot-up of OS9 before applications could be launched). Until Metro has the features – in whatever forms – and applications users need, the desktop will be there as a fall-back.
As John Gruber notes in a reply to my tweet, a lot will depend on if users will actually demand native (i.e., Metro) applications. In other words, will they like Metro, and thus demand Metro applications, or will they hate it, and stick with the classic desktop as much as possible?
For Microsoft, this is the perfect moment to attempt such a massive transition to a wholly new environment. Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system, and will be able to serve the more conservative parts of the market for years and years to come. Your business not ready for Windows 8? Here, have a Windows 7 license instead.
A lot is riding on Metro in Windows 8. Millions and millions of users will be confronted with it come late 2012, whether they want to or not. And, if they actually like it, it will, quite possibly, lead to more Windows Phone sales as well. Interestingly enough, this is a variation of how Windows became popular in the first place: people wanted to use the same software at home as they were using at work.
Redmond is betting the company on Metro. I’m incredibly curious to find out if the gamble pays off. Coincidentally, I haven’t had the need to boot back into Windows 7 on my laptop just yet.
A lot is riding on Metro in Windows 8.
A losing bet unless it is their intention to force the corporate client base into Linux while catering to the non-technical user, serious development, be it software, hardware or any other kind of engineering will not be possible on Windows 8 without a major loss of productivity.
Windows 7. No significant amount of people are going to switch to Linux because of Windows 8. Vista didn’t either. If they don’t like 8, they’ll use 7.
This meme really needs to stop. People don’t want Linux. Deal with it. They want Windows or Mac OS X. Harsh and sad, but that’s the reality supported by the facts.
That, and many of the corporate desktops are still running XP. It’s only been in the last six months or so that any of my customers have expressed interest in Windows 7…
People are sheep who go with whatever’s installed on their drive when they buy their computer. Always have been, always will be. If a Linux distro were to get the marketing right it could very well gain momentum.
Not that I lament their not moving en masse to some form of Linux one bit.
The market has spoken. Move on already.
You miss the part where I don’t give a rats ass what “the market” uses. People switching to a variant of Linux or not ranks somewhere between what Kobe Bryant ate for breakfast and Rush Limbaugh’s opinion on… well anything really on the don’t-care-0-meter. That’s because it has *zero* effect on me whatsoever.
What is interesting is why people go out of their way to defend the status quo.
Must be pretty important if you’re taking the time to write about how much you don’t care!
How’s the view from your ivory tower?
No more or less important than anything else that’s been said on these posts. I do have a certain… aversion to being misconstrued as a *nix fanboy though.
As for ivory towers, leave them to the Eloi. I’m quite comfy in my cave with the rest of the morlocks.
Sometimes people talk about the market like if it was a person.
For example, millions of dollars are spent in marketing to make people buy a product and not the other.
Yes, a company, instead of spending their money to make a better product, they spend it in marketing, and they sell more products then. 🙁
Later they say that if the product sells more, it must be because it’s better. McDonald’s sells more food than some restaurants that you know, but that doesn’t mean that they are the best and that “The market has spoken. Move on” 🙁
people are sheep and every open source distro sucks. you got one thing right.
Wait for it ….
Jackpot!
“Hey, I’d really like to see Linux make it big, if they just could get the marketing right. But the invasion of Noobs is on the other hand a frightening image. I stay with my carefully cultivated exclusivity, thank you very much. We don’t need a frakkin’ mass market!”
Schizophrenia at its best.
Things change, During the Vista débâcle we saw the rise of Apple, Windows 7 allowed MS to recover somewhat, during this time Linux has grown slowly on the Desktop. However, it has made in roads in other areas and Desktop Linux has slowly improved. If some of Canonicals plans come together we will see Ubuntu take off in various new areas, and this may well renew interest in the Desktop.
One problem with Desktop Linux has been the willingness of a big player to take the plunge this may change.
Edit I do hate mouse taps on laptop tracker pads – forgot to turn it off on this new install of 12.04
Edited 2012-03-07 09:42 UTC
Folks who dislike Metro sure as hell won’t embrace Unity, HUD and global menu with open arms, I can tell you that. Linux failed to grab any significant market share from the disaster that was Vista, and nothing will change in that regard with Win8.
They’ll just keep running Win7 for the next 5 or so years (and since MS recently announced the extension of lifecycle support, there will hardly be any major impetus for an OS change).
IMO Metro on desktop will most likely fail (not that windows based tablets will be a resounding success – iPad cornered that market a year ago), thereby forcing MS to keep extending Win7 support for a far longer amount of time than they wanted. Or perhaps they make a “classic” edition of Win9 or something similar, and keep the current desktop metaphor alive.
What about KDE4, with a “normal” task bar and start menu? In a way, it’s a more conservative choice than Win8, Lion, Union or Gnome3.
Not that I think it will get any massive amounts of new users, but I don’t think it’s going to lose too many either.
Yeah, I would agree that KDE4 represents the most conservative (also, most sane) approach to the desktop right now.
Alas, Win7 is just too popular with the crowd (right now at around 40% of the market share and growing as more and more XP holdouts upgrade their systems) and will keep serving the needs of the ordinary Joes, so I really have a hard time seeing even a 5% exodus from Winworld to Linux.
Sure, MacOS will pick up some Metro refugees but high price barrier will never allow Macs to command any substantial piece of the market.
Remember, Macs don’t come with carrier subsidies like iPhones or iPads do, so many people are unable to justify dishing that much cash upfront for a Mac, however user-friendly and works-out-of-the-box it may be (especially in the non-American markets where Macs are insultingly overpriced and almost always 6-9 months behind the US models).
Edited 2012-03-07 16:17 UTC
The Mac works-out-of-the-box?! Hardly. It is hostile for foreigners and only works one way, the Steve Jobs way.
Consider that a fully localized Hebrew version of Windows exists since Win98. As far as I know MS has probably the best support for i18n and l13n among professional software. Macs till this day do not properly support Hebrew and require tinkering with 3rd party tools.
Two points
1 HUD is basically non existent in 12.04 it’s a feature you can try if you wish. However, when fully up and running it might be good, certainly better than having to Google where something is on the ribbon.
2 People may use a Unity Desktop if they used to using it on there TVs etc.
It’s a dangerous thing to look into the future an predict what will happen.
Thom you can’t see a possible scenario in the near future where Linux might take off on the desktop?
Let me paint a picture of how it could *possibly* happen.
1 – Windows 8 is a disaster, loss of desktop functionality leads to frustration with the operating system. MS bleeds a lot of customers
2 – Apple continues to turn OS X into iOS and starts pushing mac computers with ARM processors and locks the user to the appstore for all software needs. People called you crazy when you proposed this will happen but I fully believe it is just a matter of time. I’m in your camp on this one.
I can def see Linux on the desktop becoming popular. We hear a lot about the ‘war on general computing’ and you have posted about it yourself. There is a war. As more people start waking up to the *freedoms* they are losing linux will start looking a whole lot better than ever.
You’re making a terribly enormous assumption that most Windows 7 users _are_ going to switch to Windows 8. I can’t think of a single person I’ve heard say they’ll make that switch, and I can’t count how many people said they’re going to skip Windows 8 completely.
It would be interesting to see how many Apple users would care if this happened or not. The app store seems to be fully accepted by the vast majority so I’d bet the only ones who would protest would be a small handful.
In your scenario the only way Linux becomes popular is with the complete failure of everything else. That doesn’t speak very highly of Linux.
I take another position. I do not see Linux becoming a popular desktop solution, ever, and it has nothing to do with the ‘competition’ at all. I come to my conclusion based on all the ailments Linux has as a desktop, and it’s total inability to do so in many many many years of availability. Not to mention it’s failure to gain support by companies in key areas, gaming for example.
I also don’t believe the vast majority believes in or gives a damn about any ‘war on computing’. As long as they’re able to do what they want to do, which is basically use the web, email, socialize, and media playback, they couldn’t care less. When was the last time you heard an average user complain about feeling oppressed and his non-existent ‘computer rights’ being taken from him? Never, or damn close to it.
I understand some people have a serious bromance going with Linux, but with any issues you _might_ solve by switching to it, you’re introducing a whole host of others. Linux has it’s place in the computer world, but it’s not as a solid desktop alternative.
I suppose now I’ll wait for someone to list off the email clients, web browsers, and media players for Linux like that is somehow supposed to make everything I just said disappear.
People don’t just suddenly decide to upgrade to Win8. They use whatever their machines come with and if the machines come with Win8 and they don’t like it they’ll just take the machine back and demand something else, at which point they’ll be offered either a Mac or Win7.
Of course this will happen, but people will still use Macs anyway.
You’re WAY out of touch with the rest of the world there. The general populace does not see things like that, they do not think what “rights” or “freedoms” they have or don’t have as long as they get their carrot-on-a-stick. Access to Apple App Store and iTunes for example is one such carrot and it works just fine. The tactics is simple; have people focus on one thing while you’re doing your thing behind their backs, then just say “No, it cannot do that, you must buy this-and-that” and people will do so.
People don’t tend to worry too much about freedom until its gone.
I’d call this very shortsighted.
With the advent of streaming and provisioned desktops, the end device is getting dumber and could easily be replaced with a Linux client. In fact, I already have plenty of Linux devices (thin clients) that are Citrix endpoints.
Thin clients are getting more powerful, and soon, they’ll essentially be desktops. They have GPUs that can decode HD video and render Aero and other compositing, they have gigabit NICs and dual core processors.
Seeing Linux as a capable desktop is definitely possible in my mind.
Thom, I don’t know why Linux is that horrible.
KDE 4 and GNOME 3, plus severe shortage of good apps, I know.
Personally, being the admin of one of the largest Mac forums out there. it is only normal that I prefer OS X.
But in the past (that is now several years ago) I’d often prefer Linux to Windows.
The Linux golden age has already come and gone, alas.
While I’m not Thom — obviously — I do have to agree with him. I used Linux for almost ten years on the desktop and I still use it as a server OS, but eventually I dropped it and went full-time with Win7. Why? Because there’s always something that breaks without any good reason, always this or that feature missing, things are often even more inconsistent than they are on Windows(!), and very, very often there are issues with hardware not being supported at all, or atleast some major feature not being supported.
Oh, and it sucks for gaming.
As a server OS it is exceedingly good, though, and I do wish I could use it also as my desktop. But I simply do not want that headache anymore.
OT: I doubt I’ll be using Win8 either. I do not like Metro and I especially do not like that I cannot freely move and resize windows how I like. Undoubtedly more and more software will automatically start using Metro if running on Win8 and as such the afore-mentioned feature will be stripped away from me. But alas, we do not have Win8 Final yet, it remains to be seen if Microsoft will amend some of my primary issues or not.
In any case, if so many people still use XP after 10 years, I don’t see why the ones who use Windows 7 now can’t keep using it for several years.
As to me, it is OS X 90% (or more) of the time.
People like and want OS X, but many can’t afford a Mac.
I gotta agree, nobody is gonna deal with all the hassles and the “busted toilets” as i call them, the bugs that simply never get fixed like serious driver issues, lack of complete docs, lack of good regression testing and QA in Linux just to get rid of Windows, not when Windows 7 is supported until 2020 at the earliest and more likely if Win 8 doesn’t pan out may get an XP style extension until they come up with another winner.
I’d say the bigger problem with Win 8 is metro is obviously a touch OS when touch is by far the minority interface and frankly won’t be changing. Sure iPads are nice but how many people want to poke their greasy fingers at their monitor or laptop all day? I’d say less than 1% of the x86/x64 units being sold are touch enabled and when you take out kiosks and POS machines the numbers are so tiny to be worthless as a target audience.
IMHO what MSFT should have done was REALLY rip off Apple instead of just going halfway, I mean you don’t see Apple trying to run vanilla iOS on the new macbooks do you? of course not. they should have left WinTab just that, an OS for tablets, and kept Windows what it was, which is an OS for desktops and laptops. Instead with the incredible stupidity that can only come from the mind of Ballmer you’ll have Win 8 ARM which will be a Windows that doesn’t actually run Windows programs….now think about that for a minute. Your average Windows buyer doesn’t know ARM from an Xbox so what do you THINK will happen? i can answer that as i saw it first hand last Xmas season when a local retailer was selling “Windows tablets!” with a little CE in the corner. All people knew was it LOOKED like WinXP yet when they got it home none of their Windows programs would run! They brought it back en masse and they ended up covering the Win logo on the boxes and selling them at a loss.
Mark my words unless they seriously change the name and marketing strategy you are gonna see the end of MSBob jokes as those will be replaced with Win 8 jokes. When people see the name Windows they expect to be able to run Windows programs, this WILL be the case in x86 but won’t be the case in ARM. Now most folks can’t even tell you if they have 32 bits or 64, you expect them to know how to tell identical looking Windows versions by knowing the arch? I don’t care if metro is the sweetest thing your eyes have ever beheld Mr Holwerda you have to admit that is full of fail.
I expect we might get a dedicated/forced way to enter a “fallback” or “classic” mode, for corporate use or people who don’t want to use Metro.
If not, there will be third-party apps to do this (Stardock already released one called Start8 – they claim it took only one day to code it).
You gave a faulty assumption, so your syllogism fell apart. Classic fallacy
I would really like to know what intrinsic property of windows 8 makes “serious” development impossible. I think there is huge potential for developers with windows 8 because of the live tiles.
I have been using it on my laptop for over a week and my biggest problem with it is that I do not have more metro apps.
I don’t exactly agree with you on this, but I modded you back up as there was nothing wrong with what you said. There does seem to be some serious Windows/Metro hate in this thread though.
I really don’t like Metro on the desktop just yet. It’s cool and flashy and familiar thanks to my phone and game console, but even on my relatively high resolution screen it feels like I’m on a kid’s computer. The fonts, chrome and buttons are way too big. It actually looks clean and nice, but it’s just too jumbo sized to be even close to efficient for me. It does suit the laptop just fine in other ways though; the speed increase alone was worth some broken stuff that I don’t use anyway (i.e. Flash Player is broken in Metro IE but fine in Classic IE; I use Firefox and hate Flash so it’s a non issue for me).
I really hope I’m not the only one who sees it this way, and that Microsoft takes note and attempts some realistic scaling for hi-res displays.
And I do hope you’re right, that we end up with some great programmers who will write (or port) great software to Metro the right way. I have a feeling Windows 8 will never be my first choice on the desktop, but I could see a Windows 8 tablet in my future, sometime next year.
Thom. Do you really qualify Windows 7 as fantastic? I can say it is good, but fantastic?
Are we going to start seeing MS banners on OSNews.com? ;P
It is pretty solid OS, whatever you say … I certainly think it the best OS I have used.
Also this “Microsoft $hilling” nonsense gets old.
Shame
Not really I don’t like using an Operating system that the fundamental concept is passing text streams around between hacky scripts.
Well, I confess I prefer openSUSE 11.4 with KDE 4.8. It has lots of things I love to use. Activities with virtual desktops are just quasi-perfect to work with and almost everything can be automated on linux, even on desktop side.
However, there is always the last mile, the polish to make (almost) everything just work out of box. An this has been the Achilles heel of linux on desktop for how long? And what is tragic about that is that when a group went to try to tackle this, an infighting started immediately inside the “community”.
Had Linux camp come with everything rounded, it still would be an herculean task to convince people to switch. Regular people are used to Windows way of doing things, MS Office and the plethora of some good, some not so good, software they are familiarized with. Most developers just want to use the complex tools they expended a lot of time mastering. For many it means MS Visual Studio on its many incarnations.
To not stay only on words, I will cite an experience I had. Assembled a new workstation for me. Nice, everything working properly on Linux and Windows 7. Decided to retire my old one and, of course, set multiple monitors on the new one. Bought a cheap dual head card from nvidia stuck it inside and boot on Windows 7. All my three monitors were recognized, installed the drivers from CD and I could expand the desktop briskly. Now, time to boot on linux. At first, only my onboard video was working, KDE control center detected nothing. Downloaded the drivers from nvidia sparkled the installer. New boot and the monitors attached to nvidia were working in twinview mode. The desktop could be expanded to two monitors but not to the one attached to the onboard graphics. Now, I had this kind of old computer where I had two monitors attached and remembered that had to, at that time, edit xorg.conf to get them working. Two desktops, nvidia with two monitors and one with intel integrated. Hum, forgot the xinerama settings. New boot. Many years later I had to do the same thing. I really don’t think that most of developers would care to edit xorg.conf to get things working. They probably would go back to Windows and to theirs known workflow. The same can be applied, even though less troublesome, to wireless connection.
Now, on servers, the unix way of doing things shows its strength. But as a workstation, the user needs a commitment. That is why I see so many using Macs or Windows for development, I guess.
If I don’t recall it wrong, Mac OS X’s Classic mode, was more like an virtual machine of Mac OS 9 inside Mac OS X.
When you loaded a MacOS 8 o 9 app on OS X you will had to wait for a while for the classic mode to run.
And the reason for that was Apple implemented it in such a way as to provide an incentive for development and/or porting to OS X APIs.
MS is doing something similar. All the bitching about the desktop not being integrated well is to push users to demand a better windows 8 experience from their applications and to push developers to use the new WinRT system APIs.
Just like UAC made the users demand developers stop making software that asked for admin privileges? That was the theory behind it’s creation you know.
Must agree with you, how is win7 fantastic? I think it suck in almost every way..
filesystem used
ram usage
configurability
looks and functionality (although much better than xp and vista)
scalability (well not made to be a versatile server.. but still sucks bigtime here)
security
registry (.conf files, yes please)
cost
Built in DRM etc
how installing programs is managed.. (becomes better with new appstore I guess and hope)
++
While there are a few filesystems I’d like to be able to use I have to ask you one question here: how does Microsoft’s choice of filesystem affect you? Are there some things you cannot do with it but you can do with e.g. ext4? Have you found a performance-regression that no one else is aware of?
Or are you just lambasting it for the sake of lambasting it, without any actual real-world scenario behind it to justify such?
Do clarify, what is wrong with Win7’s RAM usage?
Tell that to application developers. There is nothing stopping them from using .conf – files.
Also, are you similarly against e.g. gconf2 which is in practice the same thing as Windows registry?
May Metro die a quick death on the desktop. It may be great for tablets, but it’s a huge step back for the desktop. I really hope that Microsoft gets some nasty backlash over it and stops trying to use it for desktop applications. The thought that Microsoft intends to switch everything over to Metro in the long run is truly horrifying.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Windows 8 did more to help Apple than Microsoft as far as desktops go, but so many people just use Windows without even considering the alternatives, that it probably won’t make enough of a dent to matter. Best case, people refuse to switch, and a large enough group of people insist on Windows 7 over 8 that Windows 8 is a complete flop. But with the number of people who just buy a computer and use whatever comes on it, I suspect that that’s not all that likely outside of the corporate world. And they wouldn’t be switching even if Windows 8 were made of pixie dust, since they hate upgrading, and many of them have barely upgraded to 7 (with many still on XP).
It is great on laptops. It will be great for 24″ and smaller screens. Mouse and Keyboard input is just as functional as touch. It isn’t going anywhere.
Smaller? Maybe. 24? No, it isn’t. It’s quite annoying. Everything fullscreen on 1900×1200 is crazy and proper multitasking (I’m talking user, not OS – the latter is in itself another level of pain for metro apps) is a pain. Yet, most of those “people” everyone is talking about will probably go along with it, and happily. They always do.
What are you on about, Classic Apps can still be tiled like before.
I would add I’ve shown it to nearly 200 customers now and NOT A SINGLE ONE liked the metro UI, not even when i let them play with the test unit. they ALL hated it. in fact the closest i got to a “compliment” for the “Metro way” was this exchange with a little old lady named Ms Pipkin:
“Why that’s a nice looking cell phone screen, is that Android? i heard that it was quite nice….what do you mean its Windows? Windows what? why that’s just stupid! why would I want a cell phone for my computer?”
And from the mouths of the average consumer, wisdom. lets be honest folks, and cut the BS…Metro is a Cell phone UI made to compete with iOS and Android, you know this, i know this, does anyone truly believe that if iPhone and Android hadn’t pimp slapped Microsoft around we’d be looking at this on a desktop? Of course not.
So lets call a spade a spade. Ballmer is scared to death because everything they’ve tried in mobile has been a giant flop, winMo, kin, winPhone, so he is throwing a Hail Mary in the hopes he can prove developers are stupid and he can trick them into developing for WinARM. There is a REASON why he’s pushing metro folks, the same tech you use to make metro apps will let them run on WinARM and that is ALL he cares about because PC sales are dropping (I’d argue they aren’t dropping because people are switching but because PCs have been “good enough” for years now but that’s another story) and he figures he has enough of a lock on the desktop he can just throw it under a bus and people will take it.
But obviously the man has forgotten about Vista and what a debacle that was. my prediction is that users will NOT take Metro on non touch UI devices, which of course is the vast majority of desktops and laptops and this in turn will cause the OEMs to demand downgrade rights like with Vista. Win 8 might sell a few tablets but will otherwise be pretty much a flop, and if we are lucky Ballmer will be canned and one of the office guys brought in to right the ship. I can see what they are trying to do but its the wrong way and just the flip side of making winMo look like a tinyXP and just as full of fail. they should spin off their mobile so they can truly innovate without the “legacy” of Windows and lock in on their backs but going about it this way will just make Win 8 another Vista.
I’m just glad I’ve switched the last of my users onto Win 7 so we can just ride this one out like we did vista. Good luck Microsoft, you’re gonna need it.
Oh, to be able to +1 a comment after posting in a thread.
You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Metro on the desktop is nothing more than an attempt to force development of Metro apps that can be used on the tablet versions of Windows 8.
Thanks but what really amazes me is that NOBODY seems to be catching onto this, or at least they aren’t saying anything. both Google and Apple enjoy these huge app markets while WinMo has always been…meh, and ballmer finally figured out ITS THE APPS STUPID so instead of shelling out hundreds of millions to hire app development companies he thinks developers are so stupid they’ll go “If I switch to Windows 8 development, why I can write just one app and cover everything herp derp!”
But lets cut through the BS and talk turkey, x86 and ARM are about as different as a Caddy and a Kia. ARM is power usage above all, their IPC is incredibly low when compared even to Bobcat or Atom, and the RAM and storage compared to desktops and laptops is like something out of 15 years ago. if you try to write anything more complex than a fart ap without optimizing for the platform it WILL suck hard simply because the two arches are as different as different can be, and that doesn’t even figure in the fact that ARM is pretty much where PCs were in the early 80s, with everyone building their own proprietary take on the ARM formula while X86 has been backwards compatible for ages.
In the end the only ones that can’t seem to see the freight train bearing down on MSFT is the reviewers and MSFT themselves. but I work for the common man, i build him computers and sell him services 6 days a week so if i don’t listen then I don’t eat. And after showing Metro to over 200 customers, folks like Suzy the checkout girl, Brian the backhoe operator, Ms Pipkin the sweet LOL, all of these diverse people had ONE thing in common..they HATED metro. not just dislike, but actual HATE, as in they almost found it offensive. for them it was counterintuitive, irritating, and without touch input frustrating. in fact the one question i got the most wasn’t about some feature or tweak or even “what does it do”? like I got with 7, nope what I got was “But you can get something with Windows 7 if I need another one, right?”..that’s just sad, and even worse than i got with Vista which they thought was pretty until they actually tried using it.
It is great on laptops. It will be great for 24″ and smaller screens. Mouse and Keyboard input is just as functional as touch. It isn’t going anywhere.
Yeah we know you are the flagbearer for Metro because of your comments in the various Windows 8 threads. Good for you if you like it.
It’s just a pity for all the people who dislike Metro that MS thinks they can make this horrid thing the new paradigm for the next 2 decades. There are enough things to say about metro that aren’t positive.
For one, the colors are garish. I don’t know which “designer” brought in the fingerpaints of his three year olds for inspiration, but if they don’t change the color palet of it, then Windows XP might be forced to relinquish the title of “Fisher-Price interface”.
Further on the look of it, it is sooooooo horribly flat. It’s nice that MS is dogfooding MS Paint for their designs, but come on. Flat, oversized blocks on an endless strip of “paper”, scrollable from left to right is not innovative design.
When it comes to working the thing. Task switching is painful (with a lot of mousing) or mostly non-discoverable (keyboard shortcuts, which mere mortals never use). All menu entries float in an endless sea and it is not at all efficient to find stuff in there and with every new application installed, it only gets worse. Never mind the slapped in “legacy desktop, which sticks out as a sore thumb in the whole paradigm.
Metro is different, but for me it is absolutely not compelling. I’m not a Windows user, but until the advent of Metro, I always kept the option of switching to Windows open. It wasn’t likely, but it was an open option. with Metro that option is definitely off the list.
My biggest issue with Windows Vista, then 7, and now 8 is the move toward text everywhere.
For instance, on XP, the Control Panel is a nice window full of icons that represent the area to be configured. Then in Vista (and even moreso in 7) they removed the icons by default, and just splattered a bunch of text links on the screen. Even is you switch it to Large Icons, you still have to click on these tiny little text links.
More and more of the interface is going to text only, which works okay on tiny screens where you don’t have enough pixels or dpi to show nice graphical icons everywhere (although Android and iOS do just fine with 45 pixel high icons). But on a 10″, 15″, 20″+ monitor? Clicking on 12pt text is hard, especially compared to a 32×32 icon.
And Metro makes it even worse by putting little text strings into giant empty squares everywhere.
The point of a GUI is that it’s GRAPHICAL. Why the big push for text?
I don’t think many home users are going to have any trouble with WIndows 8, since Metro and the app store is probably going to be more secure and less of a hassle than the ‘classic’ desktop. On the other hand, I’m sure many power and corporate users are going to hate it. Metro is obviously an environment more for grandmas and tech tards than people who need to get real work done.
So I think the article’s premise is right… during the transition from ‘classic’ to Metro, Metro will probably ‘grow up’ during this process, at which time most of the people who hated it in the beginning won’t mind. On the other hand, if it doesn’t catch on like MS hopes, just like with WPF/Silverlight, they could change they’re mind again, decide to scrap Metro, and go with the new Framework of the Month. It’s obvious by now that they’re content to keep throwing shit against the wall until something sticks, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen.
I think it’s time for Microsoft to make a dedicated work-oriented operating system. Of course, Windows 8 doesn’t look work-friendly IMO.
Instead, Windows 8 looks very gamer-friendly.
That’s Windows 7. Which is why a ton of enterprises upgraded to it.
There’s another way to look at this. The desktop, as it currently stands, is a kind of Wild West. Apps pretty much do whatever they want, they jerk focus away from you, when you least want them to. They pop up all kinds of toasts and hook themselves into everything to alter the desktop experience. They’re constantly vying to be topmost window. They are wildly inconsistent wrt UI standards. In other words, the desktop has become really lame. Metro is about restricting the UI paradigm so that the user gets to decide about how apps will get used, not the other way around. Apps can’t just create multiple windows. They can’t take focus away from one another. They get shoved to the background, and they stay there. They can’t call certain APIs. There are restrictions on their privileges. Many geeks will see these things as unnecessary restrictions. But we’ve all seen what happens to the desktop when you let geeks do whatever they want: It turns into a roiling cesspool. The desktop has its place. It’s primarily about content creation — whereas Metro is about content consumption — so there’s nothing which says you have to choose between one or the other. People can simply decide which world they prefer to live in.
Agree with you on this. It’s a transition.
I don’t think so. The iPad has become a very real competitive threat to Microsoft’s laptop market, and it has to make a longterm commitment to this market. I’m sure they will evolve their application model, but it seems unlikely — given the investment in the App Store, etc — that they will scrap it entirely.
Hrm, so, since MS can’t come up with a good window manager, we should remove all window management features from the OS? How’s about if, instead, we improve the window management in Windows, such that these “issues” become non-issues?
Real Work … please define
https://plus.google.com/photos/100905181320262781268/albums/57172822…
:sigh:
Plenty of people use a computer to get work done in ways that don’t include coding.
Edited 2012-03-10 18:51 UTC
your analogy is a stretch.
Um yeah didn’t Apple do that like 13 years ago or so? I mean really. MS again copies Apple then makes it sound like they are doing it better. Really?
Um, no. Apple didn’t “do that”. Apple ran a classic app in its own little standalone, carbonized VM. MS is running two side-by-side environments here.
Classic implies the Desktop is deprecated — soon to be removed.
Microsoft has stated otherwise (I believe Jensen Harris’ BUILD session was one such occasion).
Certain applications (e.g., AutoCad, Maya, Visual Studio, Photoshop [though to a lesser extent perhaps]) derive definite benefits from the Desktop, and will likely continue to be Desktop applications (though could have Metro variants).
More likely — WinRT will grow to include a Desktop application model, fully replacing Win32 (but Win32 won’t be removed for a long time [if ever] for compatibility’s sake).
Also, the whole Metro vs Desktop is somewhat misleading since it’s possible to create a Metro Desktop application (e.g., Zune). It was better when MS referred to Metro-styled apps as “Modern” at least when referring to the current, most visible, WinRT app type vs general Desktop applications. Maybe WinRTv1, since I fully expect WinRTvNext to include the Desktop.
It’s also probable that Windows 8’s Desktop gets a Metro theme by Release Candidate stage.
Edited 2012-03-07 03:45 UTC
The clues are already there with the squared corners on windows, the flatter (but still 3D) chrome, and the tweaked transitions. Pretty soon 3D window borders and shadows will fall to the wayside and we’ll have what looks like Metacity from Gnome 2 with the Simplebox or Agata themes, if not a pure Openbox look (only brighter and bluer).
Thom, it was Windows 7 that had the XP mode for backwards compatibility.
But in terms of user impact you are right.
I think a closer comparison would be NTVDM, which allowed 16-bit DOS and Windows apps to run on 32-bit NT versions.
This allowed software using old APIs that didn’t have memory protection or preemptive multitasking to run in an environment that did, via a virtual machine.
Really, the only thing that prevented some XP software from running in Vista was poor programming practices.
VS 2005 never worked right in Windows Vista
The answer is simple: they won’t. MS is only pushing Metro in Widows 8 to ensure than when the new tablets with Win8 are out, the applications are there, and users (at least those who buy a new PC with Windows 8 preinstalled) know how to use it and are comfortable with it.
That’s it. This is no revolution, no paradigm shift. It’s just a rather desperate attempt, loyal desktop users be damned, to take advantage of their dominance on the desktop in order to catch up in the mobile space.
When (if) the whole scheme crashes and burns, wait until Windows 9 puts things right again and leave Metro where it belongs: on mobile devices.
99% of the time a have the windows I’m currently using arranged in tiles, so I have actually wished that Windows had a dedicated tiling mode for a long time. With Win7 I use the snap-to feature all the time and before that used various tools to the same effect.
For complex applications like Visual Studio I like my tool windows docked inside the main window and only on rare occasions do I undock a tool window and have it float free. I hate it when application force free floating tool windows on you, like for instance Paint.Net does (awesome application by the way, except the tool windows). Lightroom also have a nice approach to keeping a lot of complex tools docked inside the main window.
However, if there was a nice clean way for me to have my visual studio tool windows docked on my secondary monitor at something like 25%-33%, witout them overlapping any other window on that monitor that would be great. I could of course do it by resizing windows to line up etc. but I find that very tedious and so I usually keep them docked inside the main window. A solution where I could allocate a tile for my tool windows and dock them as I pleased in there would be very welcome.
The point I am trying to make in my ramblings is this: I want a tiling window manager in Windows. Also if done correctly it could solve floaty tool window hell and make window placement possible with touch, since it it could just snap the window to the tile you dragged it to.
So maybe the question is: Is there a nice tiling solution for win7 today?
Sorry for the rambling, I’m really bad at making a short concise point.
John, yes there are several TWM’s for Windows 7, just a few I’ve tried (in rough order of my liking them):
· <a href=”http://bugn.berlios.de“>bug.n
· <a href=”http://code.google.com/p/python-windows-tiler“>PWT
· <a href=”http://windawesome.codeplex.com“>Windawesome
· <a href=”http://palatialsoftware.com/plumb“>plumb
· <a href=”http://www.winsplit-revolution.com“>Winsplit
I also agree if a TWM were to be integrated in Metro it would make it a lot more bearable as the current UI can only task switch as far as the end user is concerned, in fact this overlaps into even multiple apps on the Windows 8 desktop when ever you need access to some part of Windows 8 thats now been moved to/embedded in Metro — the only option you have is task switching.
In my humble opinion the only real move forward in UI design is a TWM as it’s really the only interface that is really always allowing the Operator to functionally multi-task — seeing, using and accessing multiple applications or data sources concurrently in real-time with vastly less keyboard and mouse input.
Even the windows 7 CWM is primarily a task-switching interface that requires a massive amount of user input just manipulating windows and controls to see what you want to see…
The fact that virtually all mission critical interfaces from aircraft MFDs to industrial control systems, fire control, power management and reactor control, mission or life critical telemetry employ some sort of TWM (or application to achieves the same result) speaks volumes to honest, results oriented, form that follows function.
Unfortunately, there are as yet no ‘glamorous’ TWMs that look new and fancy, and only the few that bother two setup and use an actual Tiling Window Manager on a *nix system, of setup one of the applications like one the above on Windows have the experience to know and appreciate why they’re so great for a Workstation/Desktop OS…
Happy TWMing…
=O)
Edit: no idea why links look like crap, can’t seem to get anything work, but the links themselves…
Edited 2012-03-08 08:17 UTC
Both Microsoft and Apple and to some extend the various open source desktop environments need to get it through their think skulls that Tablets, phones and Desktops/Laptops are DIFFERENT THINGS and DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS lend themselves to the different platforms.
Metro should be a failure on the desktop. Its totally daft. Its great on a tablet, yes, so make it for tablets.
Computer users are not so stupid that we can’t use a different GUI on clearly different devices. STOP THE NONSENSE!
Best of luck to MS and Metro
Doesn’t hold a candle to a Xmonad, though. =P
The desktop mode of Windows 8 isn’t comparable to OSX’s classic mode in any way. Rather, the approach of Microsoft is the complete opposite of Apples approach.
OSX and Classic where two different operating system, metro and “the desktop” are just two different guis based on the same operating system. There were technical reasons why not all programs written for the classic Mac OS could run on OSX. There are no technical reasons why traditional windows apps can’t run on Win8, thats what they do after all.
The separation between metro and desktop programs is arbitrary. Apple tried to soften the technological divide between old and new OS by providing the carbon library, making it easy to write programs which would run on both operating systems. Classic apps didn’t run in a separate desktop, but on the OSX-desktop. And the gui of OSX tried hard to look like Mac OS, all candy optic aside. Just compare it to the gui of Nextstep, thats where it really came from.
So Apple tried to make the switch as easy and seamless as possible, while Microsoft tries to kick all old style programs out. Maybe they can allow to do that, Apple was down to barely more than 1% market share and had to be nice to their clients and developers.
…Carbon.
In OS X there was a path forward for existing source code to be migrated to the new environment. In Metro, the input devices are different, the APIs are different, the environment is different. Existing source code would be much harder to migrate.
Whereas OS X lent itself to a “migration”, Win8 lends itself towards parallel universes – some code will only be Metro, some code will never be Metro, and the user will be left having to interact with two environments.
For that reason, if the desktop is viewed as a “penalty box”, that will be a very bad outcome for Win8.
Depends a lot of APIs aren’t massively different than .NET.
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/09/WinRT-API
Edited 2012-03-07 13:32 UTC
Plus a subset of Win32 is supported for Metro-style apps, so you can have hybrid apps.
I am not a desktop developer, but I use ASP.NET and PHP on IIS … Thanks though for clearing that up.
I think this makes my point nicely.
IIS isn’t able to run in Metro. It can’t – the environment is different, and IIS doesn’t want to find itself killed or suspended randomly. The class of applications you’re writing are permanently scoped to the non-Metro world, with no path into it.
So let’s hope the “legacy” desktop isn’t pure legacy, lest this (and all other server-side code) wouldn’t be feasible to run on Windows. This is very different to OS 9 -> OS X where server code could be migrated, and native server code worked much better on OS X than it ever did on OS 9 due to the improved platform functionality. In time OS 9 could be removed wholesale. That’s just not what’s happening here.
What nonsense are you talking about?
IIS runs a service and has nothing to do with Metro.
HTML 5 and JS apps run using whats sounds like Trident, C# and VB apps can be used with XAML can use the same APIs as C++ apps.
Edited 2012-03-08 12:25 UTC
There are many things that are interrelated here. Metro is a UI. WinRT is an API for Metro. The Desktop is a UI, and Win32 is an API for the Desktop. IIS uses Win32, even though it runs as a service. Although it exposes no direct UI, it exists in a desktop world by virtue of the API it is using, and the environment that the API lives in prevents it moving to an alternate API.
My original post was trying to point out that the API difference here is the key part. The WinRT API just doesn’t support the kind of things Win32 does. It doesn’t support things like services. It doesn’t support long lived multitasking things. It doesn’t support common IPC mechanisms. The kind of things IIS needs are absent. It is not a successor technology, it is a parallel universe with heavy restrictions. For everything that can’t live with those restrictions, Win32 (and all of the layers that eventually call it) is the only game in town. This is very different to OS 9/OS X, where OS 9 technologies had an equivalent on OS X, and a decent abstraction layer to make porting possible.
IIS for a while will just Win32 and Some point they will either just have another API for services.
I was really excited about Windows 8 Metro, so much so I bought a tablet to run it. Samsung Series 7 Tablet, I got it on ebay for 700 bucks which was a steal. I’m not a big fan of Windows in general so the first thing I did was install Fedora 16. A Debian user I thought Gnome 3 would be a better tablet OS until Windows 8 was released. Well I’m loving it, a lot. Gnome 3 is the true professional tablet OS, so when Microsoft released it’s consumer preview I of course installed it but new it would have big shoes to fill.
Windows 8 is a failure, like I said before I don’t like the past versions of Windows, it’s just to ugly and flimsy for my taste. Metro is great for a tablet, I want Metro and only Metro but with Windows 8 I’m forced to use both classic and Metro for the conceivable future. Not only do you have to use the classic desktop but you get bounced back and forth so much from Metro to classic, Metro to classic that I get a headache just thinking about it. It truly sucks and I don’t see many people thinking that this is the best thing since sliced bread. I foresee Windows 7 being the defacto OS for Windows for at least another 3 years until Windows 9 is released. Hopefully by then we will get an all Metro system, then I’ll upgrade.
Until then, very, very happy with Fedora 16 on my Samsung Tablet. Powerful, sexy, can run all the Windows programs threw Wine that I need like Photoshop and Office 10 with no problems.
I could very well live with Windows 8 — if MS were to bring back the classic start menu as an option. Switching back and forth between classic desktop and Metro all the time is simply ridiculous. I hope they realise that in time.
sphere2k,
“Switching back and forth between classic desktop and Metro all the time is simply ridiculous. I hope they realise that in time.”
MS know this too, and though this might sound silly, part of their goal is to make the traditional desktop as annoying to use as possible to convert people to metro. The windows desktop has a long term marketing problem in that it forces microsoft to compete with it’s older windows versions. The more mature and “rounded” multiwindow interfaces have become, the less MS can justify making people upgrade to new “better” versions every 3 years when by far and large the previous versions would work just great with bug fixes. It’s already apparent that people are holding back in droves.
So, microsoft’s top brass came up with a plan to kill the desktop, and generate longer term review streams. What they came up with is metro, and what will become an app store with exclusive distribution rights so microsoft can take a cut of 3rd party software instead of being so dependent upon “upgrades”. Of course they want to make metro good, but they also need to make the desktop bad, which is fairly apparent with these win8 previews. Many people are aghast at how poorly the integration is taking shape in the previews, but it’s likely a deliberate strategy rather than an accident.
Very good analysis.
We OS X users are lucky, in a sense. Apple makes its money from hardware and gadgets, so it can’t afford to disappoint its users with a poor OS.
If only they could sell their computers at more reasonable prices, MS would lose a very large share of their users in no time.
I completely disagree. I have yet to see a long line of Windows users saying they would switch were Apple to offer their stuff at better prices. My observation is that Windows users by and large know how to use it, are content, and not interested in having to learn a new system.
That being said, I think you have a case of Apple-user-wishful-thinking.
How do you explain that there are millions (yes, literally millions, I should know) who want to install OS X on their PC? The reason is almost always the same: “I have had enough of Windows”.
Where are these millions of people you think want to install OSX on their pc? If people wanted to run OSX so bad, they would buy a Mac. The prices are not that outrageous and out-of-reach for the average Joe. The fact that Apple has done quite well selling laptops and desktops proves it. The vast majority of people who want Apple, buy Apple.
I agree that if Apple computers were cheaper, they would see more sales. But I completely disagree when you suggest they would gain a massive market share away from pc. There’s simply no evidence to support that big of a claim.
As happy as you are with your Mac, there are literally hundreds of millions of satisfied pc & Windows users.
The prices, contrary to what the whining fanboys will say, aren’t the problem. The “problem” is that Apple unapologetically caters only to specific market niches. If you’re not in the niches they cater to, you’re not going to find an Apple computer to be worth your time at *any* price and Apple quite frankly doesn’t give a damn. They’re quite happy mostly dominating the niches they do serve.
There’s a fairly huge amount of people who’d be nominally interested in OS X if Apple decided to go against their own best interests and transition into being a software company. The amount of interest in the Hackintosh projects should clue you in to that. Apple just doesn’t find that worth throwing their highly lucrative core business (hardware sales) under the bus for.
Anonymous Penguin,
“If only they could sell their computers at more reasonable prices, MS would lose a very large share of their users in no time.”
Yep, clearly more people would buy apple at a lower price point. I think the key question is whether the additional market size makes up for a lower unit price. It’d be interesting to see a market breakdown analysis. Maybe apple enjoys being priced for “exclusivity”?
For me personally, I prefer to build my own systems using my choice of hardware, so there’s zero chance of my getting a Mac. But if OSX were sold unbundled, I’d probably pick up a copy and even start writing software for it (as long as the platform remains genuinely unrestricted).
I disagree … First, Mac OS “classic” vs. OS X is not a valid comparison to this. Desktop to Desktop? It would be more like OS X to iOS interface… but the problem is (as an example) that sometimes having multiple windows open and visible at the same time (for reference sake) is necessary. I am a software engineer and I have SQL tools, editors, browsers all open at the same time AND visible so I can cross-reference them as I work.
I don’t see how full-screen apps can ever replace that.
Windows 8 is the first product I actually want to fail. So that in doing so they get their sanity back.
It works fine … Cheap shots at Microsoft are the George Bush Jokes of the Tech world and are the jokes that stupid people make.
This from a leftist who is so open minded his brains fell out.
I see that you watched the same thing
Whoever is reading this has got to be wondering what your political opinions (half witted as they may be) have to do with Windows 8.
George Bush Jokes weren’t ever that funny, pretty the same with really “witty” Microsoft Jokes … it just isn’t funny unless you are an utter saddo.
so… cutting all other comments and OS takes…
I installed windows 8 (in a VM running it fullscreen) and started the weather program ( gadget?)
Result: 30″ screen filled with the weather instead of a little lets say 2 by 1 inch little window in the top-right… while I have the rest of the screen left to see other stuff.
For sale: 30″ monitor… looking for a 9″ instead like my MacSE in 1995
nuff said
TomUK
Basically you used Windows 8, then made some judgement after two minutes of using it and decided you hated it …
Well done you are a moron.
this Moron has been using Windows in all sorts of versions since 3.0, Linux since it was 0.99 (slackware)… Mac OS since 6.0… been playing with the Windows 8 dev preview since September 2011 and fiddling with the new JDK… of course based on a single post YOU who have no doubt super-judging skills are free ro call me a moron… I probably am even paying attention.
Yours
MoronUK
PS: anyone else .. please tell me why I need to see all apps maximised on 30″ ?
Familiarity != Competence.
You are like the 5th monkey
http://www.27bslash6.com/timesheets.html
Microsoft’s long term intent seems to be killing their classic WIMP environment in favor of Metro.
I still don’t get why they insist on having it all in one OS. While I prefer OS X myself, Windows 7 is an absolute excellent operating system. Why can’t it live along side Metro as a first class citizen? Maybe the future lives in touch, but I think there is still room to evolve and improve WIMP-based operating systems.
I also think Metro looks great, but makes absolutely no sense with a mouse and keyboard. The fact that Microsoft are jamming both into the same OS makes me think that Microsoft are hedging there bets, that they really don’t have the confidence to push both hard in their respective arenas.
Regardless of all this, I gotta say: Microsoft has been doing some seriously interesting stuff the last few years. They have really stepped their game up. It’s really fun to watch all these tech companies trying out all these interesting ideas in computing.
…to see how this evolves over the next 6 months. I am certain there will be tweaks and changes based on consumer feedback.
I installed the Start 8 app from Stardock so I could have a start-menu-like interface instead of the full screen. But I flip it back and forth (there is a toggle so you can revert to full-screen mode easily) and I think I am slowly coming to the conclusion that this isn’t too disconcerting.
I actually find that I miss the visual cues of the live tiles, despite the fact I run Trillian and can get all the same updates on my desktop – just in a different format.
The tool should be structured around the work, not the other way around.
I have no reservations that the business world will reject Metro and stick with Win 7. The only other thing that I can think of is MS will have a Desktop for the Enterprise editions.
Let’s see what will happen
First of all, the Metro ‘desktop’ screen could be another shell, selectable by an option in the control panel. The desktop versions of Windows would come with the windows explorer as the default shell; the tablet version of windows would come with the ‘Metro’ screen as the default shell. The user could then change the shell, by the control panel option.
Secondly, the Metro shell or Windows Explorer shell should be available as an application too, runnable at the user’s will. This would allow developers to test their Metro applications very easily, just by launching the Metro shell and then running the specific application.
Thirdly, Microsoft shouldn’t deprecate Win32. There is a huge amount of software based on it, either directly using Win32 or indirectly through 3rd party applications. Win32 and Metro should run side-by-side, on top of a new graphical subsystem that can accommodate all needs.
Why shouldn’t Microsoft deprecate Win32? why not develop WinRT further so that desktop and metro applications can be based up on it? why not allow traditional desktop applications be written using XAML for the front end and C++/C/C#/etc for the backend?
couldn’t agree more – that would be the sensible thing to do and would allow a fair check .. and longer term “whats best”
as to Win32… considering the future was once COM.. then COM+ … then .NET (with winforms, later with another gui thing (sorry – forget) )… now back to some COM derivate… its hard to follow MS as to what should be followed if you get what I mean :/
ta
Tom
PS: also known as a moron to some
Well, this is what I said a few days ago here:
And lo and behold, at least a menu comes to life: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/
Hehh, we got Start
Surely more to follow. I’m waiting for the first usable W7 shell replacement for W8 and we’ll be fine.
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