“Microsoft today announced the global availability of its popular Windows operating system, Windows 8. Beginning Friday, Oct. 26, consumers and businesses worldwide will be able to experience all that Windows 8 has to offer, including a beautiful new user interface and a wide range of applications with the grand opening of the Windows Store.” I’m still not clear on what ’12:01 AM local time’ means, but if it means it goes on sale in every country on 12:01 AM, I’ll be buying in a bit over an hour!
Microsoft today announced the global availability of its popular Windows operating system, Windows 8.
That’s absurd. How can something just announced by popular? It can be popular in the future.
it sounds almost like it was edited it down from: “announced the latest version of its popular Windows operating system, Windows 8”
Same with the “First Annual”s type of events. It’s only annual if it happens again next year.
From august to now, did they fixed all buggy Metro applications?
there is a cumulative update that you should take when you install it.
Nope[1].
[1] Windows fanboys please take note that I have an MSDN account and hate this piece of shit called Windows 8. I could list in detail the Metro applications that are still broken but you are better off taking my word on it.
I guess i should be thankful i installed the Windows7 upgrade from MSDN, that prevents the Windows8 from MSDN from working. Better luck with Windows9 MS!
My Server 2012 key will also remain unused because of metro.
Microsoft will not only lose desktop upgrades over this crap but also on the server. Mixed shops will be using more Linux which also means less SQL Server. Ballmer you f&*&(@ dumbass go look at your books sometime and take a good long look at how much profit you guys make from your enterprise products.
Some very large companies will turn off the money spigot over this crap. Then what? Talk about how Windows 8 is the future? Yea you blab about future tablet sales while Apple actually sells them.
you are nuts. Server 2012 is possibly the best Server operating system MS has ever produced.
You know you can have 2012 launch directly to the desktop.
Windows 8 is by far the most incoherent OS of all time.
Look…its a WinPhone, okay? That’s all it is, its a Hail Mary from Ballmer and Sinofsky because they spent on average $450 on advertising for every lousy $50 Lumia contract that got signed and they STILL couldn’t give ’em away, so they have this crazy idea that if they force the desktop and laptop users into this Zune/WinPhone GUI that they’ll “get used to it” and buy WinPhones and WinTabs, that’s all.
Look, we ALL know it sucks, we ALL know its gonna bomb, its not exactly a big secret, hell I’ve had it running in my shop since Feb for customers to try and NOBODY liked the damn thing, but Ballmer has to try SOMETHING because X86 has been flatline for a couple of years now and smartphones are selling, nobody wants WinPhones so…yeah, there you have it, from the mind that brought you a Feces brown Zune that “squirted” here comes Win 8…sigh.
I’ll just be glad when his fat behind gets out of the big chair and somebody with a brain can take over the company, because it really has been a “lost decade” at MSFT and frankly the only bright spot they’ve had was Win 7, which if rumors are true that was only because Ballmer was too busy with Zune to care, even when he has a hit like the X360 he flubs it, like how he made them rush the X360 without enough cooling so they ended up smoky bacon flavored…sigh.
If you want to get a phone or a tablet and want Windows? meh, it’ll be alright, although its seriously lacking in apps and I doubt the devs are gonna jump on board, but if you have a desktop or laptop? just skip it. I’m gonna buy one of the $40 copies just so I’ll have it for testing in a VM, but run it day to day? No thanks, i like having my sanity and win 8 is hair pulling stupid when it comes to design.
“but if it means it goes on sale in every country on 12:01 AM, I’ll be buying in a bit over an hour!”
Wow, I had no idea that this kind of fanboy can exist for WINDOWS.
Those kinds of fanboys exist for linux, ios, android, you name it. There’s no shortage of cheerleaders in the os world.
Ugh, I expected better of Thom. He does a great job here on OSNews reporting the endless abuses of the patent system by Microsoft and Apple. Which makes it hard for me to understand his willingness to financially support beasts like Microsoft and Apple whenever they release a new product.
Well, from a pragmatic standpoint whether or not he buys their products won’t change anything regarding patents. Academia, large corporations, and how much money goes to whose pockets are the things that can change that, and Thom obviously just ain’t an influential character enough.
I think it’s called “having integrity” when you actually do what you say.
What’s he gonna do, chisel the articles on stone? I hate to break the news to ya but we are down to 3 megacorps and they ALL suck. You have Apple and the Walled garden, MSFT under Ballmer trying to be an Ersatz Apple, and Google is in bed with the NSA and want to know what you had for breakfast.
And PLEASE don’t start with the “just use Linux!” meme as many of us have better things to do with our time off than Google for fixes because some dev got an itch and boned an entire subsystem. Hell if anything Linux is WORSE than it was 5 years ago, now you got Pulse falling down, wireless is like a bad joke, and just when gnome 2 and KDE were getting really rock solid and stable the devs went “Oh no, things am stable and people am happy! Quick bizarro devs, we must throw out all the good code and make things crashy again! That will make am miserable!”…sigh.
Hell even Canonical has sold everyone out to Amazon, although frankly i’m betting they’ll still not get enough revenue to keep the doors open past 2 years…so you got Apple, MSFT and Google, and only Apple and MSFT in the desktop/laptop space…pick your poison, its 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.
He’s been doing that just fine up until now without Windows 8.
Besides, Thom is clearly competent enough to use an alternative OS to post articles, if he should so desire.
Yeah, I got tired of that and stopped using Windows…
[…snip same old tired rants that got old a long time ago…]
I already picked mine and it’s neither.
Miss his 2 page long rant about just switching to a chat window while running a video caused X11 to crap itself and take out his desktop?
I’ll get crap for speaking the truth and not drinking the koolaid, but I’m honestly too old to care…wanna know what Linux is? its an old 75 Dodge sitting in a field rusting. IF you spend the time to fix it up and IF you learn all its quirks and IF you don’t mind spending your weekends under the hood? You can make it a nice car, a hot rod even. But there is a REASON why most people don’t head straight to the nearest junkyard to buy a car, its because we have better things to do than mess with the car all damned weekend so we would rather pay to have something that WORKS, and Linux? DON’T.
I draw your eyes to this article, BTW please note its the 2012 edition, they have been putting it out every year for nearly 5 years now and the list NEVER gets smaller, ONLY bigger..
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.c…
Makes you wonder when will we have it like in Syndicate or Syndicate Wars? …and is that why Google wants augmented glasses, soon implants? (vide intro screenshots in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicate_Wars#Plot )
I agree, his articles seem to be quite hypocritical lately…
Your retardedness (and the retardedness of others) continue to show no bounds.
Perhaps the purpose of buying it is to get a chance to use it for reviewing? Some people like to have some kind of journalistic standard and review a proper release of a product rather than beta or RC versions. Some people also like not to be accused of being anti-MS all the time. Some people also like to be a thinking human being and not hate things out of reflex and dogmatism.
People like you are hypocritical all the time, not just lately.
What is your fascination with purposely coming in and bitching about every single post I make and calling me a retard every chance you get? Seriously, do you get off on it or something? Did you really get that devastated when I mocked and simply pointed out that your Apple vs. Microsoft argument was overdone, pointless and just plain stupid? Are you really so upset and immature that you have to come reply to every post I make just to say that I’m a retard? Does it honestly make you feel better about yourself?
Really, how about you leave me alone? It seems that you’ve been targeting me since that argument you started in the “Ballmer to shareholders: MS faces “fundamental shift” comments section and you have yet to leave me alone since–you’re like a poltergeist. What are you, some kind of stalker?
Now that that’s out of the way, could a moderator delete both this post and kwan_e’s previous post that this is in direct reply to, look at his previous post history and interactions with me starting earlier this month, and do something about his tendency to just pop in at random to topics just to throw the “retard” word around? It’s really getting annoying. This guy just seems to want to start flame wars with no substance for fun.
Edited 2012-10-26 05:37 UTC
I can only recall this interaction and the previous interaction we had, and I’ve not commented on a whole bunch of other post you’ve made in between. That’s hardly “every chance”.
What IS “every chance” is people like you who must always find a way to bitch about bias and balance and hypocrisy and pro-this and anti-that and general whinging. For those posts, yes, I do tend to criticize the people making them because they’re more annoying than OSNews’ supposed bias towards one company and not another.
It seems that a few of us regular commenters here end up with a stalker from time to time. I had one myself not too long ago, who would comment in opposition to anything I posted, even if it was ludicrous to do so.
Consider it a badge of honor and just ignore him/her.
Well it is OSNews which means he needs to try a variety of operating systems but I did find his Apple purchase a bit strange after all the Samsung/Apple rants. I’m surprised he didn’t buy a hackintosh actually.
I have ranted about Windows 8 and I’m sure as hell not giving Microsoft any money this year. I believe in voting with your wallet and if I buy a new laptop next year it will be on ebay. I almost bought a Windows 7 netbook before Windows 8 but then I decided I didn’t even want to add $20 to their quarterly income. Will it make a difference? Yes it makes me feel better and I have a feeling that I won’t be the only person doing some wallet voting this year.
Sigh. It wasn’t always this way.
Windows fans are like Yankees fans but somehow more annoying and obnoxious.
Oh comon, Windows 7 was the first Windows OS that had a fan club.
Edited 2012-10-26 08:13 UTC
Maybe that was true here on OSNews, but I distinctly recall Windows 2000 being lauded as the best software to ever hit a PC back in its heyday. In fact, the current “Windows 7 is awesome, Windows 8 sucks balls” attitude that is frequently displayed here and elsewhere mirrors the “2000 vs XP” attitude back in those days.
The question is, will 8 be like XP and evolve into a useful OS over time?
Windows 2000 was one of my favorites for quite a while. Especially since I almost always built my own 2 CPU SMP boxes and my other choice was NT or Linux.
I did dual boot and run Linux quite a bit, but there were hardly any games and Office compatibility was not good at all.
I went out and bought a full install copy of 2000 the second day it was out. CompUSA if I remember the place right.
I miss CompUSA 🙁
You’re not serious right?
Remember when Vista came out, XP suddenly became the most loved OS of all time amongst the Windows fans.
I remember 95 coming out, and 98. I remember even though XP was panned much like Win8 is, it was still the favoured child by quite a few.
There are fanbois for all the big OS’s, Win, Linux and OS X. If you sit on one side of the fence, then you’ll notice the other fans more, that’s just how it is.
Linux and MS fans find Apple fans more annoying because they simply don’t agree with them, that’s all. It works the other ways too.
I find Linux fans just as annoying as Apple fans because both groups won’t stop trying to ram it down peoples throats.
At least Apple fans have a platform that can actualy be used in a large market….Linux fans pretend that they have such an OS.
All of this is meaningless anyway since Mobil computing is the future and only mobile OSs can “take over the world”….Thanks to Google, Linux has broken out…too bad you can’t tell it is Linux.
Thom is an operating systems fanboy. That could be actually the OS news professional title
.
I think the term fanboy has been overused lately. I’d rather call him an OS enthusiast.
Probably most of us here are.
We have our preferred systems, Thom loves his Amiga and BeOS…
We probably wouldn’t be here if we are only going to thing about one OS and not check out what everyone else is doing…
Having said that, I was surprised at Thoms enthusiasm with Win 8 all of a sudden, maybe I missed something, but it seemed to be he didn’t like it. I can’t take the argument that he wants to buy it just for review reasons, I mean, who would take his review that seriously anyway, esp. with sites like Ars out there to do the job (not just Ars, that’s an example)…
Um, Thom writes about OSes. I would hope he doesn’t put blinders on and only report about free OSes. Unless proprietary OSes are sending him free versions of latest upgrades, he has to spend *a lot* of money on reporting all this to us. So, yes, he should be buying it as soon as it is on sale.
Microsoft decided to fix what isn’t broken by introducing Metro.
Only true problem with original start menu was that explorer was too heavy because of all the legacy code hanging out in the background.
MS decided to build for the future so its OS does not get left in the dustbin as computer users move to devices….get over it.
Not quite true, Metro is microsofts advance into the territory of touch applications so not really trying to fix what wasn’t broken. what ISN’T good about metro is that it isn’t at this point in time really well suited to large or multi-monitor desktop configurations. If you use it on a tablet, for which metro was intended, it’s fine.
I dispute the ” If you use it on a tablet, for which metro was intended, it’s fine.” Admittedly, what I assumed after being taken aback by what a kludge it was on the desktop but after tinkering with ‘Metro’ I quickly found it half-baked and not ready. The few apps are really piss-poor and although I expect it to improve it really shouldn’t be brought to market yet.
Luckily, it easy enough to install a classic start menu and just about ignore ‘Metro’ on the desktop. Still, it’s really only a worthwhile service pack to 7 or if this is what a new OS is then for all the time and monies expended you wonder why they bothered. Not exactly a must have update…wouldn’t even consider if it wasn’t on ‘offer’…suppose a cheap way to upgrade from XP but otherwise a damp squib.
I’d agree with that. “Modern UI” is fundamentally decent as a tablet interface, and should be a pretty good platform once the apps are mature, but they really aren’t up to scratch right now.
Unfortunately, as someone who’s primarily a desktop user, I think it’s a lot less likely that “Modern” will ever stop being such kludge ridden crippleware on a large screen PC.
Personally, I won’t be upgrading to Windows 8, and I’ll be buying a copy of Windows 7 for my next PC build too. To me buying a copy of Windows 8 is one vote to devalue the “legacy” desktop in favour of a tablet focussed UI and app store. Thankfully Windows 7 is good enough that I’m not missing out on much.
Or it could mean that you’d rather use an OS that runs faster, boots faster, and is more memory efficient than Windows 7. Not to mention sporting some other features like native USB 3 support, a much improve task manager, hyper-V virtualization, native mounting of ISO files, taskbars on multiple monitors, etc.
The nice thing about Metro is that it is completely optional to use. The one possible exception is the Start Screen, which really doesn’t suck as bad as people thing it does. IMHO, it’s actually an improvement over the old Start menu, and I find it the one aspect of Metro that is tolerable to use. You can pin desktop apps and bookmarks there. So hit the Windows key, and it’s basically the same as the start menu. You can install Metro apps like Wikipedia if you want and search those right on the Start screen. You can size app tiles and sort them into groups. So don’t decide you hate it until you spend some time getting acclimated with it.
And don’t worry about the ‘classic’ desktop being gone in Windows 9. MS needs to do a lot of work before Metro even becomes a viable replacement so they can port ‘real’ apps to it like Visual Studio. We’re at LEAST 10 years away from that happening.
Edited 2012-10-26 03:37 UTC
“Or it could mean that you’d rather use an OS that runs faster, boots faster, and is more memory efficient than Windows 7. Not to mention sporting some other features like native USB 3 support, a much improve task manager, hyper-V virtualization, native mounting of ISO files, taskbars on multiple monitors, etc. ”
A great description of Linux which has all those features.
Edited 2012-10-26 03:43 UTC
Who cares? Linux as a desktop OS was irrelevant in the 1990’s, is irrelevant now, and will be irrelevant 10 years from now.
Edited 2012-10-26 05:43 UTC
I’m sure the developer of the distro we selected doesn’t think so, 200k machines migrated from Windows at $50 each and on our end no complaints from any of the users. So drink the kool-aid fanbois and continue to dream as more of the enterprise industries along with most Governments switch.
Liar.
Unless every user was using Web Apps which were standards compliant … I don’t believe you.
The abuse of Excel on its own would prove to be too much cost wise to migrate.
Edited 2012-10-26 08:18 UTC
Liar, is one of your famous responses, how much does Microsoft pay you? Actually I just saw your picture when I was searching for a good splash screen sample for C# looks like your are one of theirs, haha
Edited 2012-10-26 09:37 UTC
I have a blog linked in my profile. I work in the gaming industry.
LibreOffice works just as well as MS Office most of the time (in fact back when I was doing freelance work, I found OO Calc to be better than MS Office for working with large CSV datasets).
And for the few cases where MS Office is a must have (not just a preference, but an undeniable requirement), then you can always RDP into a Windows terminal server and use that.
This would be giving users a chance to migrate without hampering production.
You are screwed if you have any VBA macros.
This is possible, but then you still need terminal server licenses for your users.
Possibly, but that number of workstations there would have been a pretty hefty article somewhere about the migration.
I’d already considered VBA and it was actually the reason I mentioned about having terminal access.
Plus most spreadsheets don’t (or at least shouldn’t) have macros. Not least of all because of security issues, but also because it can cause compatibility problems with within different versions of MS Office as well (and I know this from experience).
In fact you’d usually just see VBA in internal documents (eg muppets who configure Excel to work like a database), so with a little help, those macros can be ported to ODF to run on LibreOffice.
Indeed you would, but it would be cheaper than having MS Office, and Windows licences for every PC. Plus you wouldn’t need everyone to have terminal access as not everyone would need it at the same time (ie it’s just there as a fail safe)
Sorry, I don’t get the “but” part.
200,000 workstations … must be a damn bit company to move over to Linux.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be managing that project.
I migrated a couple of departments over to Linux at my current place, but then that was only ~50 work stations and that took me a few weeks. (though I did pretty much end up building a bespoke distro for the purpose).
Which is why I doubt it ever happened because, the praises of this successful move would have been sung from every Linux fan for eternity.
Perhaps. There’s also a chance that it did happen but the company has a strict secrecy policy. Or maybe it did by he rounded the number up, somewhat significantly.
Either way I doubt we’d ever know. However I am inclined to side with you in that it sounds too implausible to be true.
200k, keeping a secret? No way, not even greatest & most important Cold War era secrets would be kept, well, secret for long.
Some people would grumble about that deployment.
Is there anything wrong with preferences?
And I think it would hamper production in virtually every case – the real question is, would it be worth the trouble long-term.
There are people who care. From a developer’s point of view Windows IS worthless. It might run better now and have a different interface, but underneath, it’s the same old thing with the same support and the same insane management decisions that make it impossible to write any software on it.
People have trouble writing apps for the windows store, which right now has 8-9k, while the others have millions. Millions!!!
And yet I get lots of nice euros while developing for Windows platforms
You must be a really horrible developer. You may even want to go (back) to school if you’re having that hard of a time with it.
Yeah … it really hard to develop web, phone desktop applications and games with Windows using Visual Studio</sarcasm>
Even taking the visual studio part of it out, The only platform I can’t think you can’t develop something on Windows with is iOS.
All relatively minor improvements that to me are outweighed by the “Modern UI” kludge.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time with it.
I don’t care about the Start Screen. I don’t think its much of an improvement over the old Start Menu, but I can easily live with it.
It’s the thought of having to use Modern UI apps alongside my desktop software that I have a problem with. No amount of acclimatisation is going to convince me that full screen mobile apps work well on my 30″ 2560×1600 monitor.
I don’t think that the desktop will be removed completely in the next version of Windows. Just like support for DOS and Windows 3.1 software, I’m sure it’ll hang around for quite a while in later versions of Windows.
That doesn’t mean that all the software I use will continue to be produced for the desktop. Something like Visual Studio may not be switching any time soon, but what about web browsers, media players, file viewers, utilities, and other relatively simple apps?
Writing for modern UI, developers can create one app that runs on both RT tablets and Windows 8 desktops. I can see that appealing to developers if Windows 8 and its app store are a success. Once apps and utilities that I need start moving to Modern UI it’ll no longer be so optional and easily avoidable.
In my opinion, the longer Windows 7 stays a popular OS, the longer it’ll be before I have to suffer Modern UI apps. Maybe by then Linux will have turned into an OS I can happily use (although I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen).
Well, that was my entire point. The start screen is the only part of Metro you have to interact with in Windows 8 (and not even then if you use a launcher), and even you yourself said the start screen isn’t a big deal. There is a lot of nerd rage about the start screen, and I’m not sure why, since it’s little more than a reskinned start menu with a couple of new bells and whistles. Just hit the win key and select an app, or start typing if you need to search. It’s the same damn thing as before with a different look.
I don’t think I’d pay full price to upgrade to Windows 8, but for $40, why not? I hardly ever use the start menu anyway, so Metro is no big deal to me, since I probably own’t be dealing with it 99% of the time.
As I stated in my original post, keep in mind that the current incarnation of Metro is only a 1.0 release. Unless it flops and MS pulls the plug early, it’s going to get better. The more features they add to it, the easier it’ll be for ‘real’ apps to run on it, and (hopefully) the easier MS will make it to run Metro and desktop apps at the same time. Remember that Windows 7 is little more than an evolution of Windows 1.0, and I’m sure when Windows 1.0 was released, people largely gave it the middle finger and kept using DOS. It wasn’t until Windows 3.x that it really caught on.
By the time the last of the desktop apps are ported over to Metro (like Visual Studio) and the ‘classic’ desktop goes away, most people probably won’t even notice, except for those who want to run legacy apps and games. It’ll be like when they pulled the plug on DOS in 2k/XP.
That’s true right now, but it’ll stop being true when there are Metro/Modern apps that I need to run. That was my point.
Metro/Modern will always be compromised on the desktop by its need to work well on small, finger operated, touch-screen tablets. In user interface design one size definitely doesn’t fit all.
While it may improve in future versions, I see little chance of full desktop functionality being added to this touch/tablet focussed UI. At best I think there’ll be an improved version of ‘snap’, with apps able to be split more flexibly.
I rarely run software full screen. I use multiple windows and the full window management features provided by the traditional desktop. Anything less than that is a major downgrade.
I think those of us who don’t want a restrictive tablet interface running on our large screen desktop PCs will notice too.
Well, you’re certainly not going to be running those on Windows 7
Your refusal not to adopt Windows 8 in hopes that it will just go away won’t make a damn bit of difference. It’ll be like those 5 people who switched to Linux because of Windows XP’s product activation. Wow, that really put the fear of god in MS, didn’t it? 
So, if the other non-Metro features appeal to you, might as well pony up the $40 and make the jump.
As for the rest of your post, it appears that you are looking at this 1.0 release and pre-judging what the UI will look and behave like in 10 years. As Android has already shown us, the apps and UI don’t have to look and behave EXACTLY the same way on a tablet as they do on a phone. Hence, there’s no reason why MS couldn’t build in some additional functionality when you’re running a desktop and/or operating a keyboard and mouse. Already on Android, they’ve got some apps that can ‘float’ above others, so multi-window support is certainly not an impossibility. Besides, there’s no way in hell they could port Visual Studio to an interface like Metro as it is now, and they would HAVE to port it before they could axe the desktop entirely.
Oh just that one exception, the exception being what people hate in the first place.
When people talk about metro they are talking about the start screen. Even after applying a bunch of hacks there are still areas where you are forced to use it. You are also forced to boot into it which causes problems for companies that use complex autologon scripts. But f–k them I guess, which seems to be the overall theme of Windows 8.
Stop defending Microsoft’s decision to artificially remove choice. If Metro in W8 wasn’t a POS then they wouldn’t be trying to force it. Good software can be sold on merit and doesn’t require force along with a fanboy army to defend it. Metro in WP7 makes sense but in Windows 8 it is screen rape. It’s worse than a lot of full screen adware.
Oh and here are customers lining up in droves to get metro on the desktop
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2220288/currys-and-pc-worl…
Wait for more news from retailers over disappointing sales over this goddamn dumb plan called Windows 8. Microsoft fanboys better get over to retail stores to help them move some units to minimize the embarrassment.
Edited 2012-10-26 18:21 UTC
Yes… I vote to devalue legacy.
Did you see the term “Damp Squib” on I.T. Crowd? We don’t use it here in Australia very much, so much so that I first heard the term on the TV show myself. Must remember to use it more 🙂
I have used Metro on a phone and it was horrid. I’d actually prefer Windows Mobile over anything with Metro on. However given a choice, I’d pick Android, iOS or even Palm/HP webOS over Win8.
Kudos to Redmond for investing in a unique user environment; it’s just a pity it sucks.
As someone who loves the workflow of Metro strictly on Windows Phone 7, I’m curious what it is about it you don’t like?
I agree, though, that Metro on Windows 8 is indeed horrid. I am curious to see what WP 7.8 brings to my phone, and I’d love to at least try out a WP8 phone soon even though I can’t upgrade for several months yet (or ever if Sprint doesn’t get on the ball).
It’s counter-intuitive (or at least to me), doesn’t offer up any clean way to multi-task and feels severely crippled.
As for why I found it counter-intuitive:
* the monochrome glyphs take a bit of guesswork sometimes (I really miss having labels on the icons to help me identify their functions). So I’m often left guessing what I have to tap to perform a specific function.
* notifications are hidden unless you’re at the metro home screen. This is a real pain as if you’re browsing a web page, you can’t just flick and see if you want to read the message or carry on surfing the net.
* tiles take up too much space! I resent having scroll so much to launch applications (actually, as much as I love webOS, the launcher on there grated me a little as well).
* everything is too samey. I mean that’s great if you’re watching someone else use their phone as you can gasp at how pretty everything looks. But as a user, it means I cannot just glance at the screen to spot an application. So I have to analyse the screen detail until it locating stuff becomes memorised.
Most of those issues are just down to getting used to the platform and some might be down to my dyslexia (referring particularly to the “samey” complaint here). But quite frankly, I never had the same difficulties with webOS, iOS nor Android.
Personally I don’t particularly like the aesthetics of Metro either. I think Microsoft have made it too plain. But that’s purely personal preference and I can’t blame anyone who does genuinely like the whole theme.
Multitasking is very clean and easy, at least to me. Hold down the back button and you get “cards” containing your running tasks that you can select from by swiping, and each card has a screenshot of the task. To me that’s cleaner than Apple’s “drag four fingers up the screen and pick a cryptic icon”, and it’s very similar to the method in 4.x versions of Android.
I enjoy the clean, simple glyphs but then I’m a big fan of simplicity and neatness. The lack of text on most tiles is an advantage, and the tiles that do require text do so in a tidy way.
This bugged me too at first, until I discovered that the browser wouldn’t auto-refresh if I hit the home button long enough to glance at my tiles, and even go into another task to read the message. This goes back to the (mostly) intelligent task switching power of the OS. Granted, if you leave the browser for a long time and go back it will probably refresh the page, but that’s true of all the current mobile OSes.
No argument there! I’m really looking forward to 7.8 to address this gross oversight.
Again, I consider this a breath of fresh air. Pick up Android phones from three different manufacturers and you would probably find three completely different paradigms to do the same tasks. iOS is better in this regard, but static icons are a throwback to the 80s and don’t compare in the slightest to live tiles. That said, live tiles aren’t as useful as widgets on Android, but I have a feeling Microsoft will try to make them more interactive in the future.
I also suffer from a very mild case of dyslexia (are you by chance left hand dominant?) but I have had the opposite experience: Metro actually helps me avoid dyslexia-related mistakes.
Indeed, everyone’s tastes are different and one of the greatest things about Android is its extreme customizability.
Thank you for responding and giving me an outside perspective! I often hear people say “Metro sucks” and when asked why they say “’cause it’s Microsoft, duh!”. While I don’t care much for Microsoft, I have no problem enjoying the use of their better creations. It’s the same with Apple; the company disgusts me but I still regard OS X as one of the best OSes on the market today.
Other fixing of unbroken things throughout history:
Mr Ugg Caveman fixed the unbroken process of walking with the wheel.
I guess the lesson we’re trying to teach is never to try different things we never tried before unless we know that it works because no one likes exploration and discovery.
The only people in the world that are divinely allowed to fix what isn’t broken are people dressed in faggy black turtlenecks with anger issues.
So, tell me. What does Modern UI fix on the desktop that needed fixing badly? What is the wow factor of merging (and oversizing of) icons with desktop widgets and displaying these full-screen in a grid? What is so much better about a view-switching, full-screen cluttered program launcher over a non-view-switching but slightly cluttered start menu?
Then we have the sudden fascination with hot corners. Unholy, undiscoverable pixels, that elevate the least exiting screen areas to god like status. Now we will be jamming our pointer into corners for all eternity. Don’t give me the Superkey comeback. Typing to control your computer is CLI and CLI is bad; millions of Windows users said so.
Aesthetically we can’t claim objectivity, but I don’t like the simplistic flatness and the garish color schemes of Modern UI one bit. Minimalism done right can be eye pleasing. Personally, I lean more towards Baroque than Bauhaus, but I can appreciate a good, minimal, clean design, even if I’d never pursue it myself. Modern UI looks like it was whipped up by a three year old in MS Paint.
You do realize the fact that you even asked this question of me means you didn’t actually get the point, right?
What did the wheel fix that walking needed to be fixed badly?
What did Charles Babbage’s analytical machine fix that the French automated looms needed fixing badly?
In case you still haven’t understood the obvious, here’s a hint:
Maybe, the person I replied to (and you) are asking a leading question simply by using the word “fix”.
Have a think about that.
Just feel like pointing out that that question actually does the opposite of what you intended: the wheel provided much faster and easier means for people to transport heavy loads as compared to walking and made entirely new avenues possible, and as such it was actually a hugely beneficial “fix.”
It didn’t “fix” anything in the real world at the time, but the “fix” was that it proved that such analytical machines are not only possible but will be entirely viable in time, and therefore proved that it is an area worth researching. Ie. it “fixed” a mentality in scientific circles of the time.
I don’t think either of those can really be compared to Metro. (Or Unity. Or GNOME 3. Or anything the likes.)
Edited 2012-10-26 15:18 UTC
The larger point people keep missing is that you’re all mistaking a semantic game for an argument. By phrasing the question as Metro “fixing” something “broken” completely mischaracterizes why Microsoft thought they needed to go the Metro route.
The fact is, while walking didn’t need to be fixed, it can be improved upon. Did the inventor of the wheel know the full extent of its power? No, but it was worth a try.
In much the same way, the original iPod interface was a bit of a gamble, and many people thought it wasn’t a good idea not to have an unusual interface. Same with the Ribbon interface, which by and large is accepted without much complaint.
No one knew you needed a wheel….so critics would say:
“It take so long to make one of those wheels…and if it breaks half way to the construction site, then what? Might as well just walk….the wheel is just a waste of time”
I wish OSNews would modify its comment system so I could show that I like your post rather than have to post a like a comment when I have already commented in the thread.
That has as much basis in reality as plants needing brawndo.
“including a beautiful new user interface”
Yeah right, thanks for the early morning humor. Metro is like that beautiful woman you see at the bar, once you get a better look and take it for a ride you find she has no substance and less intelligence than a stone.
Agreed. Once you take her home, you find out she’s a tranny whore, just like that Metro kludge. Absolutely disgusting, to say the least!
I wouldn’t mind.
That I do mind.
Well, at least a post-op, transsexual prostitute, knows who she is and how she wants to live her life and all the jigly bits are in the right places. (Assuming you meant a male to female transsexual, but it would equally work with a post-op, female to male gigolo.)
Modern UI is none of the above.
While off-topic I thought I should mention that there are no “jiggly bits” on a post-op. Post-op is the term for someone who has undergone sex reassignment surgery (SRT.)
MtF has it easy when it comes to SRT, but FtM do not: it’s as of yet impossible to construct a working penis artificially. You either end up with total loss of feeling or with all kinds of nasty side-effects, and there is no natural erection; the only way of getting an “erection” is via a pump installed inside your body. As such most FtM people do not undergo SRT, there’s simply way too much to lose and really, really poor prognosis.
Not that anyone cares, I just happen to have friends of both camp and I just felt like enlightening people. Learning something new probably won’t hurt anyone here.
Or if, you know, transsexuals or transvestites weren’t referred to as revolting and disgusting. Or compared to computer UI’s. Or if in the attempt to correct the first bigot’s faulty analogy someone comes along and thinks it is humorous or worthwhile to explain why the bigoted analogy is faulty by exposing its technical incorrectness with an objectifying foray into human anatomy.
“Look at Nokia’s N9 UI and how well it goes with that stunning hardware! It’s like a blissful, successful, heteronormative marriage between a male who has the right jiggly bits and a female who has her own right jiggly bits! Because the first set of jiggly bits fill with blood when the male sees the female’s jiggly bits and become stiffened which allows for the stimulation and internal lubrication of the female’s not-so-jiggly bits, which allow for the entry of the stiff penis into her! What a great UI concept!”
Edited 2012-10-26 23:02 UTC
I don’t get your point. You’re angry because you learned something new?
Not at all, my criticism wasn’t directed toward you, it was for 1c3d0g and r_a_trip but replying to your comment was a reasonable place to make my own. Sorry if I gave you that impression.
Just the opposite, I wish more people knew transsexuals and transvestites personally. Maybe then it would be harder to use them as the intolerant-example-du-jour.
Yeah, I misunderstood that your comment was directed at me. Nevermind then!
Well, people have the tendency of using situations/behaviour/attributes they don’t either understand or don’t approve of as such examples. Not much you can do about it except educate people. Also, the whole globalization-thing we’re going through with Internet and the likes is an entirely new phenomenon, meaning that old and new ideologies and cultural backgrounds can and will clash — in a few hundred years when the globalization of ideas, ideologies and cultures isn’t any longer such a new-fangled thing people will likely be somewhat more tolerant of things simply due to being bombarded constantly by new stuff on a daily basis and it being simply way too exhausting getting worked over every new thing.
Actually, one of the reasons why I like OSNews is because the members here seem to be somewhat more mature and experienced than on flashier, trendier tech – sites: you’re still being surrounded by differing backgrounds and viewpoints quite often, but instead everyone going on a tangent and throwing up a personal shield against such people often go the opposite direction, absorbing these things. The occasional troll and, well, a “short-sighted” person is mostly an outlier, not the norm.
LMAO…you win teh Internets for today! 😀
I find it difficult to believe that any reader of OSNews has ever met a beautiful woman in a bar and “taken her for a ride”, much less that they’re picky enough to subsequently regret it when it turns out she doesn’t know C++.
😉
There are outliers in every herd 😉
Been there, done that. Twice, in fact. Don’t recommend it, except as a learning experience.
Come to China for awhile, nerds translate to “high income potential”
Best Reply Ever!
It’s the cute chick that you like at first but then later you find out she has crabs and loves Adam Sandler.
At the point you fantasize about hitting her with a brick you realize that you were better off with the quiet nerd.
I think the point of Metro may be precisely that you didn’t notice the quiet nerd first because she was quiet. You know… the usual marketing stuff that can cause even the best designs to turn into monsters, in a process similar to this : http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
Nah, Metro is more like the loud mouth Jersey girl that won’t stop texting you.
WANT TO HANG OUT NOW?
HOW ABOUT NOW?
Well, my experience with Metro on WP7 is exactly the opposite. It’s quiet, unassuming and stays out of my way, but it’s quick and beautiful in use.
Picking up women, you do it wrong.
Windows 8 stores all details of you in the cloud, and it seemingly stores even many of your actual files there if you’ve created those files in Metro-apps, and there-in lies a problem: Microsoft uses a reversible encryption, ie. if you lose your password you can just request a new one and all your files and details are still useable. Reversible encryption, however, means that Microsoft can peruse your files at any time they feel like, and they can give access to those files to anyone they feel like. This might not be such a wonderful feature, especially if you’re a foreigner and don’t want U.S. government spying on you. It also makes stealing all of your details and impersonating you a lot, lot easier.
Sure, you can use Windows 8 without using the Microsoft – account, but that’s not really mentioned anywhere nor are the privacy implications mentioned anywhere.
That will kill any chance of corporate use. People who work in any regulated industry would not be able to use it.
Edited 2012-10-26 01:37 UTC
just don’t tie your user account to a Microsoft account. It is easy, and in a domain, the default. It’s no big deal at all.
Edited 2012-10-26 10:59 UTC
Sticking with Windows 7 isn’t a big deal either.
That really wasn’t what we were talking about, the op had expressed concern over using Win8 with a MS Live account. Even though you are technically correct, you’re still a troll.
Thanks for your input!
Big deal or not, Microsoft should now better than to use reversible encryption.
Or maybe they know exactly what they’re doing…
That normal users of their OS forget their passwords all the freaking time so they should make sure they hold the keys so they can allow you to forget your password?
as does Apple and Google….shoot…Google even reads your date.
Why does Microsoft refers to it’s own services as friends?
Scroll down to footer http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_WOL_Hero_…
“Visit our friends”
Office
Xbox
Skype
Windows Phone
Bing
Edited 2012-10-25 22:55 UTC
one of those will replace my WHS.
And, sorry Thom, a tablet tomorrow:
http://i.imgur.com/F2Ius.png
http://i.imgur.com/oARFV.jpg
Feels like typing on a rug. lol
Also they delivered a french-canadian keyboard which pleases me. Yet the installer, when user selects french, chooses canadian multilingual.
I’m kinda confused … how do I buy it if I don’t own any other Windows version?
I think MS realized that only Windows users would buy the new Windows… no need to change if you use OSX, iOS, Android, Linux, etc.
They offer a full product as well. The $39.99 product is an “Upgrade”. You can get the full product for $68.88 on Amazon. MSRP is $199.00:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008H3SW4I/ref=s9_simh_gw_p65_d1_i…
Unfortunately, they don’t want to ship this product to my country. In the meantime, I’ve found it at the local retailers for about $130, which kind of sucks.
Edited 2012-10-26 13:55 UTC
Can’t you use a mail forwarder like myus.com? I usually do that if a shop won’t ship something to Russia.
Windows 8 desktop mode has a lot of solid improvements.
I will probably do the upgrade thing.
Running it now on main development machine. Works fine.