“Microsoft has been furiously ripping out legacy code in Windows 8 that would have enabled third parties to bring back the Start button, Start Menu, and other software bits that could have made this new OS look and work like its predecessor. In fact, I’ve seen that several well-known UI hacks that worked fine with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview are no longer functional in the coming Release Preview. And those with hopes that Microsoft would allow businesses, at least, to boot directly to the desktop should prepare for disappointment. That feature not only isn’t happening, it’s being removed from Windows Server 12 (Windows 8’s stable mate) as well.” When you buy a new machine later this year, you will use Metro, an environment wholly inferior, incomplete, and not at all ready to replace the traditional desktop in any way, shape, or form. Whether you like it or not.
Can’t wait to see what productivity will be like with Windows8 and the suites of Office and dev. tools. I’m asssuming down the drain like Unity. Horrible scenario.
Hard to see what this has to do with Unity.
I also find it hard to see how Unity damages productivity, I use it multitasking and find it productive easy to swap between applications etc. Also Unity doesn’t effect what Linux applications you can use – I believe Metro will not run older Windows Apps.
Also if you don’t Like Unity it is trivially easy to install a different DM (although you are loosing out in my opinion), I believe this also isn’t the case with Windows.
If Metro is as good as Unity MS has little to worry about.
The only way I could see Unity, GNOME Shell and Metro not harming your productivity is if you’re not very productive with a computer to begin with.
If your productive computer user you’ll be productive with any system.
That’s just naive.
Besides, even if you were productive with any system whatsoever it wouldn’t mean you’re equally productive; you’ll always be more productive on a system that suits you than on a system that doesn’t.
I don’t believe it is, I’ve seen people produce great work on many different OSes. The ability to be productive is more dependent on the users ability to solve problems and put in the effort.
I’m not saying the OS is unimportant but other things are more important, I did an lot of work on Vista and that was awful.
I would say, if the proper tools are available then this is true.
Problem is, not all the time are such tools available.
Lets see you saw something with a hammer. And snap to it you unproductive douche, I don’t have all day.
The fact you are defending garabage like Unity and Gnome3 along with Metro shows who is the real loser here…
Doubtful as I’m betting most stick with 7, just as they stuck with XP over Vista. this will of course cause OEM sales to plummet so they will demand (and get) downgrade rights just as they did with Vista so everyone will buy a “Win 8” PC that is just Win 7 with a DVD you’ll promptly toss.
This will let Ballmer try to save face by claiming that every sale is a “Win 8” sale but I don’t know how much longer the investors is gonna put up with him. In my own back of the napkin figuring Ballmer has blown about 5 billion so far with NO return on investment, no matter how big MSFT is they can’t just continue to bleed money like that.
But talking with my customers nobody is in any hurry to switch to Win 8, most finally got Win 7 rolled out and aren’t likely to bother with Win 8 so I figure its another Vista fail. The UI is terrible, its timing is awful,businesses don’t want it, and the consumers I’ve shown it too all hate it, yeah i figure its DOA.
Seems that some of the anti-Metro crowd are now claiming that Metro is anti-business, that only the desktop mode is business friendly. That’s just silly, and ignores some very nice business Metro UIs that Microsoft has demonstrated. Businesses can adjust to Metro, even if it’s just the start screen at first.
One point that he makes that has some validity is that a lot of businesses have just upgraded to Win7, and so Win8 will probably be skipped by the standard business upgrade cycle. That makes it a good time for MS to change things, since it will give business time to adjust before the next cycle comes around.
In many ways this is just like Vista. A lot of people thought that Vista sucked, and skipped it. However, the changes that people complained about in Vista carried over to the acclaimed Win7; people had time to adjust to those changes, and saw that they were good for us.
I think the same thing is going to happen with Win8. Hopefully the process will be in better sync with the business upgrade cycle than Vista was.
Uh, this is an article by Thurrot… You can call him many things, but anti-Metro he ain’t.
Sometimes I download Paul Thurrot’s windows podcast and he’s constantly saying that metro sucks and isn’t usable for power users
Nice spin.
People did not think Vista sucked ; Vista sucked, period.
People acclaimed Win7 not because the poor little things had had time to adapt, but because MS rewrote enough of the PoS named Vista to make it run decently.
The problem here did not lie with the user. It is dishonest to rewrite history that way to put all the blame on shitty users, when they were in fact fed an unpolished turd.
And history repeats itself, with now an unpolished turd with pointy corners.
Vista only sucked because there was no decent third party driver support but if you run Vista now it’s almost the same as Windows 7.
Windows 7 is just Vista second edition, not a new OS.
Windows 8 is gonna suck a whole lot more than Vista did.
Exactly this. I’m running Vista on my work laptop and windows 7 at home. Hardly see any difference in day to day use.
Yeah, after you updated it to the latest.
Now is a service pack or two later in Vista’s life cycle. Have you tried running an unpatched Vista lately? Off the net, of course.
I don’t understand why people think this.
I have been using W8 since February as my primary machine/OS and am loving it. I adapted to the start screen within a week or so and now I don’t even think about it/notice it.
My biggest beef is with bugs, which I am hoping they will work out. We’ll see how RP does.
[edit]
How I use W8:
I am a software engineer. I also use it for gaming.
Edited 2012-05-31 16:50 UTC
Well, Vista did suck, yes, but that was in the beginning only; there simply were so many drivers missing and Vista was buggy and an insane resource-hog. SP1 fixed a lot of those issues and SP2 improved it some more.
In other words, Vista sucked in the beginning but it doesn’t really suck anymore, ergo the comparison is a very poor one.
And so, my point is still valid: people hated Vista not because “people are whiny crybabies who hate change”, but because Vista was bad – at first but not anymore, ok, whatever, that is not the point.
I agree; I use Vista on my HTPC and it’s a much better experience now than it was three years ago. That said, I still find the occasional bug or issue that I wouldn’t have if I were using Windows 7, but I prefer to keep that on my main PC alongside Arch.
Too many shills on here for sure, I had a coworker who once worked at Microsoft, told me they have an entire department that works all day posting online.
Businesses can change office hours from 11 PM to 7 AM and adjust to that but that doesn’t mean it’s good or they should do that.
Windows 8 will be a disaster, even more than Vista was and I expect Windows 9 to arrive somewhere in 2013 with the return of the normal Windows Desktop.
You can’t force people to use something that they don’t like or don’t want to use, even MS can’t.
I also expect Ubuntu and GNOME to do the same sometime down the line. Let’s face it, these “new” interface designs that are being thrown at us are just experiments gone wrong. The desktop computer will always be needed and have it’s place.
I agree with Metro, I’m not so sure about Unity and GNOME.
My brother and our common friend both run Unity quite happily (both switched from Win7) and, aside from needing some patches (like the experimental “put the menu bars back on the windows” one Canonical was poking around with), it seems like something I could get comfortable with too.
(Were I not running LXDE because it does everything I want in a much leaner package)
Don’t conflate systems like Unity or Gnome Shell with Metro. Those interfaces are flashy, but fundamentally, they’re just a minor evolution of the traditional desktops that we’ve been using for a couple of decades. They’re still all about application windows, menu bars, icons, etc – ultimately, they’re both just fancy window managers.
Windows 8 / Metro, on the other hand… that *is* different. *Very* different.
I do, as someone who has something of a passion for UI design find Metro very interesting and it challenges to me take a fresh look at UIs. I can imagine it working quite well on phones and tablets. I have tried, but just cannot see it working well for general computing (as opposed to just consuming information) and business usage.
I have never seen these “very nice business Metro UIs” you talk about. If you mean the Dynamics example: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/20/2886608/microsoft-metro-dynamics-… Thats still just showing some data, I have not seen any Metro apps with serious data entry.
In real life most people using ERP software like Dynamics stare at boring datagrids all day and enter data in them. The old desktop style is far better for that than Metro.
All Metro apps I have seen so far are dashboard style and simple RSS feed readers with news or stocks.
Furthermore Metro absolutely kills multitasking. I have tried the latest Windows 8 preview and all you can do is snap another Metro app to the side. So that’s at most two apps open at the same time. Even then, because of Metros massive waste of screen real estate the second app is at best usable as a reference. Switching between apps just takes too long and breaks concentration.
Edited 2012-05-31 14:35 UTC
The users where I work are very used to a certain way of working. They don’t like change. They will be confused by the new Metro interface. The cost to the company to retrain 3,000+ employees will be astronomical. And, nobody wants it. Even if productivity increases later, it won’t be worth it, especially when things work OK the way they are.
I don’t believe businesses will upgrade. Personally, I don’t know if the interface will be more or less productive. I might even find that I like it. I know that I like Gnome 3 and most people don’t seem to like it. So, this is not a reflection on Metro’s usability. It’s just that it is too radical of a change.
I use Vi. It’s far more productive than any other editor. But, its learning curve is also very steep. This prevents many people from using it. Same thing will happen with Metro/Windows 8.
If Microsoft sticks by their guns, eventually enough people will be using it at home that training at the office will be less of an ordeal. At that point, businesses might slowly fall in line. Until then, *IT WILL NOT BE ADOPTED BY BUSINESSES — THEY DON’T LIKE CUTE — THEY LIKE PRODUCTIVITY*, period.
It’s embarrassing that people actually downgraded the parent post into hidden status. There was nothing offensive about the comment.
I’m sorry but you are wrong, and here is why: Vista was buuuuuugggggy! Oh lord was it buggy! I personally got bit by the “media playing slows network” bug which considering i like to have music playing was a show stopper, and the “Vista loses network shares” bug which considering I have a nettop I use for a file server that too was a show stopper. This is why I went back to XP X64 until Win 7 came out, which surprise! Didn’t have any real show stoppers, at least for me.
As for Win 8 I’ve had a CP box set up in my shop for nearly a month and have YET to get a compliment by a customer, or find one that said they would buy Win 8. Win 7 frankly was an easy sale, even Vista wasn’t hard until UAC started popping up constantly and irritating them, but Win 8’s UI is just a mess. Everyone who tried it in the shop had a comment along the lines of “its a cell phone” which is pretty much Win 8 in a nutshell.
Finally what I find most telling is watch Sinofsky’s conference talks on win 8 and count how many times the man says ‘touchscreen”. I quit counting at 30 on the last one I saw. tell me friend, do YOU have a touchscreen desktop and laptop? Even one or the other? I sure don’t, in fact i actually don’t know anyone that does. Last figures i saw had touchscreen X86 units at less than 4% of the market. Does MSFT and Sinofsky REALLY think that is gonna change between now and Oct? Again last numbers I saw had a 17 inch touch at $300 and a 27 inch at $275, does he REALLY think people would rather poke a 17 inch screen than have a 27 inch beauty?
Sorry friend but its a failwhale, its MSFT’s Hail Mary pass to try to get into a mobile market that doesn’t want them, because they seem to refuse to accept nobody runs Windows because they like MSFT, they run it for third party X86 programs that won’t be on WinRT. Its gonna be DOA, mark my words.
The last 4 words in the quote is exactly why he is not wrong. Vista, and this goes for any OS, is absolutely a YMMV experience. Vista was buggy for you. Vista was not buggy for me, it worked fine.
Then you got lucky friend, because a LOT of people got bit by those two bugs. feel free to Google them and see how many hits you get! Also look at how many “how to turn off UAC” posts you find, because MSFT made UAC so damned irritating nobody could stand the stupid thing.
In the end though surely you accept that Vista bombed, yes? do you HONESTLY think it was simply a problem with perception? Because i can tell you I was rolling in cash for about a year and a half after the release of Vista simply from people wanting me to remove it like it was a virus. that wasn’t a perception problem, that was people being driven nuts by bugs.
And in either case that won’t change the fact that Win 8 WILL be a bigger bomb than Vista. I have had over 250 customers at the shop try it so far, young and old, business and layman and NONE like it. they all said “it feels like a cell phone” and that isn’t the feeling the majority want from their laptops. mark my words, win 8 DOA.
Being in the IT world its something im going to force myself to use, i have a laptop ready, im going to bung on the Release Preview and use it for a month to see the in’s and outs. I don’t expect to come out the other end smiling but im not going to be rigid about it either as i want to get an understanding and a proper personal opinion of it.
One thing i don’t like is the argument that if you don’t like Metro you don’t like change, it’s nonsense, i switched from Windows to a Mac as my primary home environment, it was different but i adapted, however where i think the argument is nonsense is the millions of people happily using various smart phones, if they couldn’t adapt to change then the smart phones would all be running PocketPC. I think for the majority and myself included we welcome change when it brings benefits. Personally from the previews ive used so far im not convinced and feel that my productivity is going to go down using Windows 8. I feel that a full screen start menu is rather jaring and completely not needed, im sure they could have come up with a compromise and shifted further with Windows 9.
From what ive used, the start menu gets incredibly cluttered very quickly when installing my apps as loads of readme files etc.. are added, Visual Studio and Delphi completely devistate the start menu and requires me to go through and unpin loads of apps that i dont use but take up quite a bit of screen estate.
The part which annoys me the most is that UI aside this looks to be one of the best versions of Windows yet, the underhood changes are incredibly good. The storage pools, disconnect/sleep resume copying, the new copy dialogs and limiters, hyper-v in the client, i could go on and on, i would like to dump the ui of Win7 on top of the Win8 base as personally i think that Windows 7 has one of the best Windows UI’s to date, im very productive, it looks clean/good and doesn’t get in the way of me getting work done.
Sorry for the long rant, but after the excellent release of Windows 7, i had really high hopes under steve sinofsky that Windows was having a second renaissance.
Ditto. I actually really like Metro – just not when I have to do real work (80% of my computer time). That is all.
Agreed, I like the Metro interface and I find all technology MS is implementing behind the scenes to support it just fascinating, but sadly, Windows 8 turns your computer into a glorified iPad.
Dunno if win8 will be accepted or not by the community, but my guess is that people will move their eyes to more mature technologies (Mountain Lion comes to my mind: They also are merging their tablet technology with their desktop OS, but the resulting OS seems to be more mature and “pro”).
Fair comment. I have found that once I adapted to using my windows key and the start screen it was business as usual. In fact I have come to like the start screen… I have everything arranged the way I like it and can find my primary/secondary apps quickly, visually.
I really can’t see going back to a start menu button at this point. It has all become second nature to me.
I could use Windows 8 and its new, but I wouldn’t be getting any actual benefit from using it.
For one I do not have any use whatsoever for small tiles with miniscule amounts of content which I cannot even modify but which still consume more space than simple icons and which serve as visual distractions.
Secondly, I simply juggle between a whole bunch of open windows constantly and often I have to see 4 windows simultaneously, ie. Metro simply wouldn’t work at all for my needs.
Thirdly, as long as I can just pin all my most-used apps on the taskbar I wouldn’t even see the Start-screen most of the time. But when I need something that isn’t pinned it’s much faster and less visually-and-conceptionally jarring to just pick it from a menu that covers barely 1/5th of the screen than from a screen that takes over the whole desktop.
That’s mostly the issue I see: there is no gain in using the new screen. If there is no gain why can’t I be allowed to skip it altogether?
I don’t understand this:
“Secondly, I simply juggle between a whole bunch of open windows constantly and often I have to see 4 windows simultaneously, ie. Metro simply wouldn’t work at all for my needs.”
How is it any different with W8? I have up to 15 windows open at a time… Eclipse, server window, SQL Developer, MYSQL Workbench, other editors, etc.
It’s no different from W7?
Those 15 windows are in what is essentially a virtual operating system instance, but without any ‘coherence’ mode to integrate those into Metro. In other words, when you inevitably end up in Metro, you can’t go straight to the window you want – you first need to switch to the desktop, and then find the window you want.
This is NOT, I repeat, THIS IS NOT the same as Windows 7. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
On top of that, the desktop is on its way out, quite clearly, even though Metro has lightyears to go before it’s even 50% as functional as the desktop is now.
Edited 2012-05-31 17:25 UTC
Thom. You hit W-key, click the app you want, it starts and gets focus.
Start menu, you click the app you want, it starts, it gets focus.
I really must be missing something to your point. What is it you are doing that is so special, so customized that it requires the start menu to function properly? Once in the desktop it is the same.
Help me understand how I am wrong/missing your point.
I don’t work with applications. I work with documents. I don’t want to switch to Word – I want to switch to document_to_translate.docx. Or document_to_translate.NL.docx. Or termlist.xlsx. Or termlist_UPDATED.xlsx.
You’re pretending that Metro is a replacement for the Start menu. It isn’t. It’s a replacement for the Explorer shell – with the old Explorer shell turned into an isolated application, with ZERO integration with Metro – i.e., you can’t properly manage your desktop applications from within Metro. Metro does nothing but add additional clicks and hoop-jumping to make things more complicated.
Like I said – I like Metro, just not when I need to do something more complex than check Twitter or the weather.
Edited 2012-05-31 17:36 UTC
Thom, see my response to werecat below, I think it applies to you as well.
(Rehash in case you don’t want to browse down: I see what you are saying now. Also, I guess it just doesn’t worry me – yet – since I have some meager faith that it will be resolved somehow).
I prefer the document-centric model myself, but we lost that battle. Apple dictates the direction of the market now, and iOS is app-centric, not document-centric, and the public has embraced that model, and that’s where the industry will follow.
And frankly, the common non-techy users never really got the document-centric model.
Thankfully, those of us who have document-centric and/or workflow-centric mindsets still have plenty of choice among the various interfaces for GNU/Linux and the BSDs. Even though most *nix desktops and WMs aren’t necessarily document/workflow-centric, many can be made so with a little tweaking. Hell, even Windows 7 is amenable, and Mac OS X has so far retained a ton of really great workflow-centric features.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is waging a war on those OSes (including their own Windows 7 and earlier) via the secure boot nonsense, and it will only be a matter of time before general purpose x86/64 hardware is all locked down to Windows 8+ from the factory. Add to that Apple’s continuous path towards iOS on the desktop and the entire x86/64 sphere will soon become closed off and sterilized.
The future for those of us who wish to retain control over our computers might just be with devices like the Raspberry Pi and similar ARM boards that are open to experimentation.
FUD.
It’s ok, you need not worry. Bare bones systems and components aren’t going to vanish at the introduction of Windows 8 systems. People will still be able to build their own pc using whatever parts they like for the foreseeable future. The sky is not falling.
How about a well thought out, rational counterpoint instead of an overused acronym? Because honestly, every time I see that term thrown about, I picture someone sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “nah nah nahhh I can’t hear you!!”. Please, tell me why you feel that it’s “FUD”.
Oh, I’m not worried at all. If you had actually read my post before replying you would understand the very point of it, that those of us who do more than check Facebook and play video games already have viable alternatives going forward.
I never claimed they would, so please stop projecting your own fears onto me. In my opinion (bolded for your reading comprehension), Windows 8 is the gateway to a closed-by-default desktop experience. You can shout from the rooftops that it isn’t coming all day long, but Microsoft has already affirmed publicly that it is indeed coming. As I’ve said before on this subject, there will still be x86/64 motherboards available for a few years without secure boot, for those who are replacing failed hardware or upgrading legacy systems. But one day the door will close, once the manufacturers all enter into agreements with Microsoft or else risk being shut out of the Windows OS.
I never said otherwise, I’m not sure why you are claiming so. All I’m saying is that there will be a shift at some future point to ARM being the OS tinkerer’s friend, just as x86/64 is now. Let me try explaining it in simple terms so you can be sure to understand me this time: I never said existing hardware will magically vanish off the face of the earth, only that at some point new hardware will have secure boot on by default and will be unable to run alternative OSes.
And yet again, I never said it was. You certainly are attributing a ton of quotes to me that I never said, just to make your point.
Perhaps you have mistaken me for a Microsoft hater. While I do hold them in contempt for several of their business practices, I don’t hate them and I certainly wouldn’t make shit up about them as you seemed to accuse with the first three letters you threw at me. Indeed, I own and use a WP 7 phone because I feel it is the best mobile phone OS I’ve used in years. I run Windows 7 on my desktop side by side with Arch Linux because it’s an excellent OS that was worth what I paid for it and then some.
Now, if you have a substantial, rational response free from false attributions and single-acronym arguments, I’m all ears.
Regarding FUD… Oh. Why it’s FUD is simple — reality doesn’t support the claims.
I did, and I do.
I have no fear on this subject what-so-ever and it seems I’m in the minority at times by not predicting or believing we are seeing the beginning of the downfall of free, open, or independent computing.
It’s nice you think you can predict the future but people who tend to do so, also tend to be wrong a lot of the time.
I understand that’s your view. Do you understand it is not yet reality and very well may never be?
Why are you going on about quotes? I didn’t claim the comments to be quotes and they were not presented as such.
That’s nice. I’m a daily Windows 7 and Linux users as well.
Apparently I wasn’t sent the memo that we here are to follow your posting guidelines. I suppose I should add an acknowledgment that you did not make that claim. It’s nothing more than slight sarcasm meant to put emphasis on some of the ridiculousness.
Someone commented in your “Whats wrong with Win8” piece that alt-tab allows one to go directly to a particular window within the desktop, even from metro. So you don’t have to first switch to the desktop, then switch to the desired window within the desktop.
As I said, I was talking about Metro, ie. if the applications I used were Metro-applications. That is again in relation to the usefulness of Metro as a new concept: it doesn’t provide me any benefit, only hindrance, and thus I’ll be sticking to the “regular old desktop.”
I’m not lambasting Windows 8 per se, I’m only questioning the usefulness of forcing Metro on people even when the old-style desktop would suit them better.
Ah! I get it now. Basically Metro, at this stage, is rather useless and desktop app integration is lacking.
Now I understand where you are coming from. I just wasn’t clear on what you were concerned about.
Still… OS’s are changing. I started out on VT-52’s and VT-100’s… then X-Windows, Motif, Mac OS, Windows v1… things have changed a LOT since then. Tho’ in many ways nothing has changed.
When I was in college they still had punch card machines.
The real problem here is that it isn’t a case of “at this stage”. It appears as if MS is declared the desktop obsolete and will not do anything else to further integrate the two.
There are loads of obvious ways that they could have better integrated the two, but instead chose not to. This clearly indicates their direction..
Sure, I see. But we don’t know everything MS will do in the future, yet. So I wouldn’t worry about it TOO much until we are absolutely sure about how it will pan out. You’re just going to age more quickly doing that.
And if it turns out to be our worst nightmare… well, you WON’T be the only one to jump ship and something else will come along that will meet people’s needs.
“I could use Windows 8 and its new, but I wouldn’t be getting any actual benefit from using it.”
Based on your comments, there is no actual LOSS either. It’s just… different. (Not picking a fight with you… I was skeptical at first as well, and during the first week or so of using it I was put off. But I kept using it and suddenly it wasn’t an issue anymore.)
[edit]
Scratch this. I responded above that I now understand what you are saying.
Edited 2012-05-31 17:39 UTC
I think Metro’s Start Screen makes a pretty nifty Start Menu replacement. What worries me about Metro is that Microsoft clearly intend it to be much more than a fancy app launcher and optional tablet interface.
For now it’ll be easy to ignore Metro apps, but that won’t necessarily be true in a few years time. Even if major productivity applications stick with the traditional desktop, I can see things like small utilities, media players and document viewers moving to Metro.
Yes, that is how I am looking at it right now. They want something that will be useful to different device types with varying degrees of power/complexity. I wish I KNEW what they were REALLY planning for the future, but I have to hope, and I know we’ve all seen MS fail before… but I have to hope they have an inclusive plan that will meet current computing needs for all types of users as well as future device needs.
Does that mean that Start8 and/or ViStart no longer work? That would be really bad.
Update: I can confirm that Start8 WORKS in the Release Preview.
Phew
If they rip all that code out of Server 12 then they must be planning their own funeral on 2013/14
Just when they’d allowed us to install Server without a GUI they do this.
The only bit of light I can see at the end of this tunnel (apart from increased revenues for RedHat etc) is that journalists don’t always get it right now do they?
Wow…so I get the desktop’s sh*tty interface staring at me when I log into a server? Brilliant! Do I get the 8-bit Duplo color scheme too while I’m searching for Admin Tools for 15 minutes? Because…..you know, touch interfaces on a server desktop make soooo much sense. They’re really going all-in on this pig, aren’t they?
Whoever made the analogy of “being forced to use Metro for Windows, is akin to being forced into using Dashboard for the Mac” is absolutely right.
History doesn’t bode well for ramming new interfaces down the throats of users. OS/2 didn’t fly for the masses because it was too different and way to complex. Canonical in my opinion doesn’t fare any better with Unity in Ubuntu. I tend to stick with “traditional” UI’s so that my learning curve is lower. After all, my PC is for WORK. Metro is most definitely not a conducive environment for work.
Microsoft never learns this lesson. NEVER. Ubuntu apparently doesn’t get it either. And there are those who defend such changes for the sake of productivity or new shiny buttons, but whatever. Also: “cloud” is a bullshit marketing buzzword not innovation; the “desktop” is forever, in fact it will have a longer life than the “television”, maybe even as long as “AM radio”. “The ribbon” is an idiotic hodgepodge of gunk, unity is crap, Facebook and Twitter are worthless, get off my lawn, * delete internet *.
It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. It’s getting worse with each preview release…
I cannot get my head around why they seem so hell-bent on destroying the desktop.
Edited 2012-05-31 14:44 UTC
Ultimatebadass,
“I cannot get my head around why they seem so hell-bent on destroying the desktop.”
We called it a while back, in order to coerce users into a restricted walled garden that nobody wants, they need to make using the windows desktop a gnashing experience for everyday use. Well, all the MS R&D is finally paying off; mission accomplished! How about it folks, let’s give microsoft a well deserved round of applause.
To me it seems like management at Microsoft is panicking because of their inability so far to compete in the tablet and phone market. While these devices do eat away considerable market share from general computing devices like PCs and laptops their number will remain massive and many people do not want to abandon them. So they are mistaken to destroy the desktop which is still by far their biggest income source.
Tablets will not go away anymore as they are useful for passively consuming information. But the hype will diminish somewhat in the future in my opinion as creating stuff will remain important and that absolutely sucks on tablets and Windows 8 Metro interface.
That is simple friend, you see for the vast majority X86 has gone from “good enough” to “insanely overpowered’ so there is no reason to replace an X86 desktop or lap until it dies, whereas ARM is having a mini MHz War and units get tossed as soon as the contract is up. that translates into more sales…if only someone wanted WinPhone.
For nearly a decade we saw MSFT turn smartphones into teeny tiny desktops, completely with itty bitty start buttons…it failed horribly. So now Ballmer has it in his head if he does it backwards, if he makes the Zune/WinPhone UI the desktop that he can ‘force” the consumer to learn to like WinPhone…won’t work. the desktop is a completely different animal than a cell phone, and trying to shoehorn a cell phone UI onto a desktop is just as big a fail as squeezing itty bitty desktops onto smart phones.
at least on the systems that I need to run windows on. I forsee a lot of future OEM PC systems being sold that are purchased with windows 8 and downgrade rights so that Companies can avoid the headaches related to Metro.
Microsoft decided quite some time ago that they were going to get rid of a number of the legacy UI aspects of Windows in Win 8. Like a lot of people out there, I think it would have been better if MS gave us the option to have them around, but given that MS has decided to kill off them off, this move makes perfect sense – why would they keep around code for features they want to get rid of? It’s quite simple – if MS thought there was some merit in having these features, they would let users access them as normal. Otherwise, they should clear their code base out of un-needed code for maintainability purposes.
Basically what I’m saying is, the battle was lost when MS decided that the option to use these features should not be provided to the user, which happened quite a few months ago. Irrespective of how much/little sense that choice was, this particular move is the logical thing to do in light of that decision. Relying on deprecated code and third party hacks was never really going to be a satisfactory solution, especially for businesses.
Edited 2012-05-31 15:21 UTC
I suspect some devs will create a start menu from scratch, one that doesn’t rely on Microsoft’s deprecated code. And you’re right, any development strategy that relies on on the ability to hack deprecated code is folly.
“When you buy a new machine later this year, you will use Metro, an environment wholly inferior, incomplete, and not at all ready to replace the traditional desktop in any way, shape, or form. Whether you like it or not.”
I’ll get my laptops and computers at Hettes, preloaded with Linux. For me, my wife and my daughters. Only a small premium price compared to the cheapest web shops, well worth it, in my opinion.
Of course, all of us have been using Linux for over a decade, so Metro isn’t the reason, but I’m not _forced_ to use Metro on a new machine.
When I buy one, it will come without an OS installed, no Microsoft tax. Plenty of vendors will sell you barebones machines, want Microsoft to comply with your demands, deny them the revenue.
Why would I want one on my desktop and laptop?
I wonder whether they’ve made their decision on downgrade right. Will a user be able to downgrade to, say, Windows 7 on a newly purchased machine that comes with Windows 8 pre-installed?
Taking into account their new UEFI Boot policy, would I be wrong to guess the answer is no?
Exactly, I feel Win8 is a downgrade from Win7.
Instead of running sophisticated applications (Photoshop, Office, Visual Studio, etc.); you will have your Start screen full of tiny apps that show you the weather, the last apocalyptic comment from your favorite religion, the day of month king sized and a lot of unuseful apps. Turning your computer into a big tablet does not make any sense for me.
“Whether you like it or not.”
This last line of the article gives perfect perspective on the whole closed-source ecosystem.
I find it pretty hilarious and outraging in the same time. I would be mad as their customer, but – thankfuly – I switched to FLOSS years ago.
The real, multi environmental problem emerges from the fact that Microsoft pays hardware vendors to implement their closed-source crap, which usually makes FLOSS world’s life a little bit harder.
However – due to its open nature FLOSS will succeed in most cases. In fact, we have some early initiatives like Open Hardware, which means that the revolution has already started …
It’s like a teenager going through puberty. They might not initially like the changes, but sooner or later, they don’t really have much choice but to accept it.
Yeah, like the average user has any say on what Ubuntu does. What, you think the average user is going to fork Ubuntu or GNOME or KDE or Unity if he/she doesn’t like it? Open source’s “openness” is largely theoretical. As a practical matter, the typical user is stuck with whatever the devs decide to do as much as with closed source.
And spare me the “we have early initiatives … the revolution has started” nonsense. OSS devs spend so much time just copying what the closed source devs do, that it’s hilarious for them to claim some sort of technical supremacy.
You have plenty of choice…
Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint, Fedora… Don’t like one distro? use another. MS don’t give you this option.
And XP is good until 2014, Vista until 2017, and Win 7 until 2020, so you have choices there too. me and my family will skip Win 8 and if Win 9 isn’t as nice as Win 7 we’ll skip it too. maybe when the OEMs have bled enough cash and start threatening to go to Linux again Ballmer will wake up and smell the fail.
People who want tablets with walled gardens are already using iOS, and app developers are already coding for it. There’s little sense in making an iOS clone with a different UI which, while completely different and arguably superior under the hood, is how Windows 8 is going to be perceived by anyone with more than a single functioning brain cell. Metro is reactionary. It’s a Microsoft “me too” statement without much forethought put into it.
Yes it’s “reactionary”. Apple drives the market these days. But to say there’s no “forethought” is absurd.
Sadly the forethought is Ballmer’s. His “vision” of one Windows running on phones up to desktops and servers is just screwy. Tablets that drop to a desktop depending on the app you run, desktop machines that force huge (and I think ugly, but that’s just my view) box icons onto the screen and split apps into full-screen vs. windowed categories.
It’s really impressive to see it all come together so poorly, particularly when full-screen could have been done nicely (look at Apple’s Lion on laptops – full screen apps are really beautifully integrated into the virtual desktop system) and when Metro would have been fine as just a phone/tablet interface since it was optimized for that.
But hey, one Windows! Unless you run on ARM… in which case you get no legacy apps anyway plus a desktop that still needs stylus/mouse/keyboard to work. It’s a lack of foresight – or just a really bad vision.
First, I don’t see anything wrong with businesses skipping Windows 8 until Microsoft gets Metro fully fleshed and ready for productive prime time. And I think Microsoft can enhance Metro enough to make it productive, but I don’t see that happening until Windows 9 or in the best case, Windows 8 SP 2.
I still remember the people’s resistance when Windows 95 came in. I also remember similar resistance when Windows XP was first released with the cheesiest UI ever to come out in an operating system. So yes, resistance to Metro is totally normal (and expected by Microsoft). I for once am not a big fan of tabletizing my desktop but I know Microsoft can pull this one off, even if it takes up to Windows 9 to get a fully-productive and more customizable Metro environment. In the meantime, the old desktop is still there to run data entry and other complex applications that don’t fit with Metro in its current form.
FYI: Vista sucked, not because of the changes in the UI but because it dragged its feet on machines where XP flew and as demonstrated by Windows 7 running much faster than Vista (albeit understandably slower than XP) on the same hardware, Vista’s excessive weight was totally unnecessary.
What worries me about Windows 8 and what doesn’t get me at all excited to adopt it, (I haven’t even bothered downloading the preview), isn’t Metro but the new lock-in tactics employed by Microsoft: blocking dual-booting alternative OS in ARM hardware, only allowing Metro apps in their app store and disallowing application sideloading of Metro apps. That’s the kind of OS jail I don’t want to be trapped in.
Remember NT 3.x? That didn’t hang around long before NT 4 came on the scene.
FYI – Win9 will be Win8 SP2, just like Win7 was Vista SP2. It’s their new release scheme – one release, one service pack, new release. There have been a few exceptions, but that’s there general goal.
Win95 was 100% compatible with Win3.x software.
WinXP was nearly 100% compatible with Win9x/ME software.
Win8 will not be even 50% compatible with existing software. Win8 RT won’t run existing Windows software; and Win8 for x86 will have all kinds of UI gaffes, and hindrances to productivity (oops, accidentally hit the WinKey, back to Metro for you), and more.
But it’s not quite still there – it’s there in a broken form to try to keep some semblance of compatibility while ripping the carpet out from under the user to through them to the new UI.
Win9 will either be the first release in a downward spiral for MS, revert to being more like Win7 to try to regain market share, or never happen. Most likely, it’ll be more like Win7 – but it all depends on how committed MS is to its own demise and push to mobile everything.
Vista didn’t suck – that’s mainly a perception due to the UAC, which was a necessary evil.
Yes, it wasn’t as performant as XP. It also had several massive rewrites in its layers, and a better interactive model between the components. Win7 is Vista optimized, more or less, with a few enhancements.
Agreed.
MS was trying to update the UI (first time you could even have real buffered windows without the ‘classic’ Windows flicker – jeez, took them long enough, but credit is due for them at least finally doing it), did very visible UI updates only halfway (like the “integrated” control panel where you’d click for an option and immediately get an old version of a sub-panel in its own window anyway), updated the internals – in the process replacing them with very un-optimized code (as you say as well), broke their old drivers in the process, and iced the cake with incredibly intrusive UAC.
Unfortunately they also pushed it out the door that way instead of finishing their alpha/beta cycle. I’d have to go with Vista sucking.
MS was trying to update the UI (first time you could even have real buffered windows without the ‘classic’ Windows flicker – jeez, took them long enough, but credit is due for them at least finally doing it), did very visible UI updates only halfway (like the “integrated” control panel where you’d click for an option and immediately get an old version of a sub-panel in its own window anyway), updated the internals – in the process replacing them with very un-optimized code (as you say as well), broke their old drivers in the process, and iced the cake with incredibly intrusive UAC.
Unfortunately they also pushed it out the door that way instead of finishing their alpha/beta cycle. I’d have to go with Vista sucking. [/q]
Microsoft went through quite a bit in the source between XP and Vista. Among them:
– Fixed the circular dependencies between kernel space and user space (yes, NT Kernel was dependent on user space).
– Lowered Dependency tree from 1500+ levels to something smaller (don’t know what)
– Restructured the Headers so that they can be more easily used without having 100’s of other files included.
– Rewrote the Video Driver system for User-Space Video Drivers and (to please MPAA/BlueRay) have “secure” video paths.
– Rewrote the Sound Driver system for User-Space Sound Drivers
– Rewrote the Printer Driver system for User-Space Printer Drivers
– Rewrote the Network Driver system, and IP-Stack for better IPv4 and IPv6 support.
– Internet Explorer as part of Kernel Space was removed; still integrates to user-space components for “Acive Desktop” like stuff, but no longer touches the Kernel Space.
– New Graphics API (Aero) that had better performance, shading, transparency, and more. (Note: XP’s native interface had lower performance than it’s Classic Interface. With Vista, the native interface had better performance than the Classic Interface.)
MinWin was one part of the Vista project; at the time Vista was released they had the foot print down to about 40MB. They continued the project; as of Win7 it’s smaller yet.
For Win7, they reduced the dependency tree even further, and optimized much of what they did for Vista as well; and did more on top of that. I’m sure they’ve continued that effort for Win8.
The rationale is to try to force Metro on users to gain some share in mobile and tablet. So kinda you can turn it off, but I bet this bugger will be sneaking behind reminding users to switch. Once you switch, you are more likely to buy a Windows Phone, since you are accustomed to the interface.
Or so goes the theory, but MS doesn’t understand the reality well enough. People aren’t going to switch from a mature and fairly usable UI of Windows, to a toy OS phone GUI snapped onto their monitor’s screen.
It’s a shame that the Linux desktop has already just done a “Windows 8” gun-shooting-in-the-foot episode with the release of GNOME 3. I’ve tried both Unity on Ubuntu and the GNOME Shell in Fedora and they really are dismal for power users (i.e. those who GNOME 2 was catering well to).
On my Mini 9 netbook, I’m even clinging to Fedora 14, which was the last release of Fedora+GNOME that was suitable for my uses. It’s really sad to see the previously excellent Linux GNOME 2 desktop blow itself up in a stupid way just as it had the chance to grab some Windows 8 defectors.
I’ve played with all the Win 8 previews so far (next one due in a few days!) and they are utterly hopeless for even the average desktop user. I *love* change if it improves things, but Win 8 has no desktop improvements over Win 7 *at all* and arguably is actually worse in that area.
Microsoft are betting on a huge uptake of ARM or Intel tablets running Win 8 – Metro might have a better chance there, but I see a lot of users skipping Win 8, though inevitably new desktop PCs will be forced to include it (I still can’t believe that no major OEM will offer either no OS or a non-MS OS!), so it will eventually cling like the nasty mess it is.
Oh and as for Vista, the bad rep it got was from too many people trying to upgrade to it on their ancient XP machines and dissing its heavier resource usage. I bought a fresh Dell Vostro PC (no crapware and a proper Vista install DVD!) with Vista within a year of its launch and it was a pretty sweet setup I must say (much, much better than XP). Linux was still far better on that Vostro, but that goes without saying 🙂
Fedora 14 has been unsupported since December. You really don’t want to use Fedora if you don’t really like the latest and greatest.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases
Long life xfce4!
I downloaded the release preview for windows 8 and installed it in a VM for testing purposes. I wanted to advise that vistart http://lee-soft.com/vistart/ still works to add a start button to the desktop option in the metro start screen.
Edited 2012-05-31 21:29 UTC
Thanks for the tip, that is good to know!
A war with own customers is the best way out of business. I switched to mac a year ago, expecting that move. Linux is an option too. Anything, but Metro.
Microsoft knows exactly where they are going.
For this first release they don’t give a crap about the “business” users / heavy content creators. These are a small part of the overall market. Business users aren’t early adopters anyway, in general.
As Apple has shown, there is a HUGE market for content-consuming low-creation users. i.e. the grandma’s of the world.
Let Win8 get consumer acceptance first and then let it trickle into business as the product matures.
Same route as the iPhone/iPad has taken – in through the back door.
Edited 2012-05-31 22:30 UTC
They’re merely disabling their own legacy start menu code. Folks can still make Start Menus, but will have to do it from scratch, rather than trying to invoke MS’s legacy code.
Hope no one else mentioned this, but why, if they are trying so hard to get rid of the “Desktop” did they spend time improving (or just changing in some peoples mind) explorer at all?
I can think of two examples… 1 They gave Directory Windows the ribbon interface (I actually like the ribbon), another was they improved the interface for when you copy files from one folder to another… They essentially made 1 form to work across multiple cut/copies, and gave us a nice little graph to go with it…
These features I would love to have in Win7, but why if the desktop is legacy, did they bother to make these changes at all?
There was a whole video about these things that they were doing to improve Explorer in Windows 8…
I wonder if there will be a way toget these features working in Win7….
Which applications are you using that you expect to move to a Metro only UI? Chrome and Firefox have Metro versions but won’t be deserting the desktop. I can’t imagine any development tools or web design tools moving to Metro only can you?
Metro is there for the eejits and the desktop can be used by power users.
What a bunch of bitter, small minded bastards post here.
Neither can I and many other people but that is exactly Microsofts stated intent. The desktop is legacy in Windows 8.
Yes, they just need to be coded as full screen applications.
Now, if they will be properly done is another matter.
Talk about over-dramatization and sensationalism on Thurott’s part. lol
What does it even mean to “furiously rip out code” that’s different from “calmly disabling code”? The use of the term “furiously rip out” is editorializing to put some weird deragatory spin on it. But that’s the state of “journalism” these days.
“When you buy a new machine later this year, you will use Metro, an environment wholly inferior, incomplete, and not at all ready to replace the traditional desktop in any way, shape, or form. Whether you like it or not.”
Only if that machine is a Metro box and/or you don’t install another OS instead.
Ballmer FTW! As always.
I am more likely to run CP/M than I am to run Windows 8! This OS is a disaster! I will NOT be buying apps through an app store on the desktop! I reject Microsoft’s walled garden! I reject the Fisher Price UI, and I don’t care how much better or faster Win8 is supposed to be.
Sure, I’d like to see that one…
Just like many described Vista – and a short time later, almost all of them were delighted about Win7, which is really just VistaSE + driver makers catching up.
Nobody really forces you. But it’s a welcome thing for many …kinda like repositories, finally, but also including closed, pay software.
Funny, many people described XP in exactly the same way …and a few years later, they swore by it.
So, doesn’t matter how much better it becomes, you will still reject it …that’s a great attitude.
I feel the most onerous limitation of Windows 8 and it’s server iteration Windows Server 2012 will be the single view, single task limitations Metro confers on the GUI.
This has only been obliquely discussed and casually mentioned, but for many Enterprise and Production applications of both operating systems this won’t be just a ‘deal breaker’ but could literally escalate to ‘life and death’…
I won’t belabor all the roles an OS can be deployed that are mission critical in industry, government, and public service, where the system Operator must be able to concurrently keep an eye on tasks in real time that can not be interrupted by other tasks.
Many features of the Metro UI force the User to use single task parts of Metro interrupting and obfuscating other work that’s being monitored and performed completely — this is not acceptable OS design that can even be tolerated in these roles.
Similarly in production environments where interruptions can cost millions a minute (or more) this sort of thing just won’t work. Paul Thurrott may be correct in his May 29 essay in that Microsoft may have literally ‘Give’n Up’ on Windows 8 for businesses — and any serious use of the OS over and above passive consumption…
OK, as of now, the StartMenu “hacks” still work on the release preview build, according to http://www.neowin.net/news/start-menu-apps-still-work-in-windows-8-…
Looking at the pictures in that article, it seems to me that Stardock’s start menu will work even without MS code, since they don’t just invoke MS legacy code, they create a Metro-styled Start Menu.
The other two solutions look like they might invoke MS legacy code (particularly ViStart), so those might be in some trouble when Windows 8 hits RTM.