Windows Archive

For weeks - if not months - I've been trying to come up with a way to succinctly and accurately explain why, exactly, Windows 8 rubs me the wrong way, usability-wise. I think I finally got it.

"The new changes include several new lock-screen images, the Windows Store tile is now green, and the small magnifying glass in the bottom right corner when you scroll has changed to a simple square. While nothing major, they are representative of the across-the-board tweaks we expect to see when the Release Preview hits the digital shelves in June." So, nothing to address the core issues with Windows 8's mouse/keyboard-hostile environment. Sad.

A long list of new Windows Phone applications Nokia is developing in conjunction with partners (and a few non-Nokia ones). A number of them are going to be Nokia Lumia exclusives - I'm not sure the rest of the Windows Phone OEMs are going to like that. It'll be interesting to see how far Nokia and Microsoft can take this before everything snaps.

Microsoft has detailed some of its new policies to improve the Windows Phone Marketplace, and this one, about possibly sexual content, stood out to me: "We think the right solution is (a) to be transparent about what's acceptable and (b) to show the right merchandise to the right customer in the right place. Our content policies are clearly spelled out: we don't allow apps containing 'sexually suggestive or provocative' images or content. What we do permit is the kind of content you occasionally see on prime-time TV or the pages of a magazine's swimsuit issue." This is one of my major issues with application stores: American values are archaic and puritan compared to where I'm from, but the application stores we use are still subject to them. I wonder if two kissing men are considered to be "sexually suggestive", "provocative", "racy", or "inappropriate" by American standards.

So, Microsoft developer evangelist Nuno Silva, who stated in an interview with a Portuguese website that current Windows Phone devices would be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, has officially retracted his statements about upgradeability. More fuel for the current-devices-will-not-get-WP8 fire.

"At the Microsoft Management Summit today in Las Vegas, Microsoft officially announced that the next version of Windows Server will officially be named Windows Server 2012 - and will be released this calendar year. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson told the audience that 'nothing Microsoft has ever done has ever been as ambitious' as the features being incorporated into Windows Server 2012. Microsoft Principal Product Manager Jeff Woolsey walked through a few of those features, including Server 2012's storage pooling and the boosted capabilities of the Hyper-V virtual machine hypervisor."