Windows Metro Maoist cadres reach desktop, pound it flat The revolutionary dogma of Metro is sweeping through the old Windows desktop, too, a new leak of Window 8 confirms. The leaked build, newer than the public release of a fortnight ago, abandons the 3D design elements introduced into Windows in 1990 for a resolutely two-dimensional world. The 'legacy' desktop in Windows 8 is …
That they are forcing this on the desktop makes me wonder what on earth they are thinking.
Congratulations Microsoft, you have just pissed off the vast majority of your customer base in the vain hope to gain a puny market shart share in the world of Phones and Tablets.
Is anybody taking bets on how long after the launch of WIn 8 Ballmer has to pack his bags?
No, this isn't really aimed at the corporate desktop, Microsoft will bring along a corporate aligned version very soon as is evident by the release candidate of Windows Server 2012 I've just finished installing.... hang on..... oh dear, that can't be right, ummm... nope, they're fucked!
A good user interface is all about delivering content to the user, and the entire UI design team at Microsoft enthusiastically agrees that Metro provides a truly superior user experience. With regard to enterprise use, usability experts point out that productivity is impaired by trying to work on more than one thing at a time, and Metro is intended to prevent you from doing just that. 3D effects and the like simply distract from the app content, and aren't necessary when all applications run full-screen.
Remember, Windows 8 and Metro were designed by Microsoft, the true experts in computing. While some users may initially complain about having to learn a better way to do things, Metro is poised to usher in a shiny new age of computing, merging the demands of content providers and enterprise managers.
Holy sh*t! In the darkness behind my LCD display, the rotating funnel of the near-marketing experience suddenly opened up and I could dimly see in its near-infinite depth, illuminated by the red color of glowing embers, a squamous yet ruguous arm, dressed in Armani, beckoning me on. Then I panicked and by utter force of will command my soul to return to base reality!!!
I am afraid to go to sleep.
WHEW! You almost had me there. Of course you weren't serious were you MonkeyBoyFan, you gotta be smarter than that. Perhaps the MS UI designers are frustrated GNOME 3.0 UI devs. It is so obviously a mistake to think that we came all this way, multiple windows, perhaps on multiple screens, just to return to one screen, one task.
Recreated Program Manager? More like took a few steps back from Program Manager. At least Program Manager supported grouping icons into categories. I don't see it happening with Metro.
That said, without all the 3D bling, at least systems will run cooler and be able to put more juice into the programs running. I personally shunned Aero and still use Classic in the face of 7, because it frees up GPU cycles which I can then put towards getting more FPS out of the running game. Plus, I'm using 64-bit Windows. There's a nasty exploit that targets Aero on x64 platforms that MS wasn't arsed to fix.
Are you complete novice? Hitting the shutdown button on the machine doesn't turn the machine off, it just triggers a normal shutdown as if you'd clicked the shutdown option anyway.
Don't talk while the adults are talking little one, you'll keep embarrassing yourself. You and the idiots who up-voted you.
Oh dear, would you like to try writing that again, after you've first learned some manners, and then refreshed your memory of the Windows control panel. Specifically that part of it which allows the user to control what a short-press on the power button translates into... clue, it won't always behave the way you seem to think it will.
@ChrisC
Power button = ordered shutdown since 1995(ish). Only Vista machines (pre-SP2) put the machine to sleep rather than power down when you hit the tit. MS did this during the early days of Vista when they had inadvisedly told everyone that Vista would boot faster than XP on the same hardware, then found this was actually impossible.
They corrected this fail in Windows 7. tbh, any Reg readers who don't as a matter of course check their power settings (and those of family members, etc) to ensure they work as expected really deserve the extra effort to have to hunt for a UI shutdown option!
Because it saves time and effort the next time you boot Windows, especially if it was expecting to have been shut down correctly in order to finish installing the latest round of updates...
Umm, you are aware that a short press of that button starts a normal shutdown by almost any modern OS unless you manually reconfigure that behaviour? Holding it in longer will indeed simply nuke the power, with all the consequences for any system that doesn't use a journaling file system..
Never mind whether you like Aero or not. What about all the extra hardware and crap that people were forced into getting just to "enjoy the Aero experience"'?
The only real irony I can find is that Microsoft have finally admitted defeat in their effort to emulate such transparent effects as existed in such environments as KDE, Apple iOS and so forth.
My guess is that someone very high-up is making these bad decisions and everyone under him is too scared to voice dissent, or too effectively silenced.
They can pull back from the brink as long as we can choose to buy Windows 7. (Just as continued availability of XP saved them from Vista, although that was only bugridden not completely brain-dead). If they withdraw 7 so it's "8 or nothing", it'll be the beginning of the end of Microsoft.
Desktops like OSX are so 1990. The WIndows 8 decisions are being made by a very talented design team who are not afraid to shake up the misconception that the Apple Lisa had the right idea about user interfaces. That team is enthusiastically supported by management, who realizes that every new Microsoft release is a tide that lifts all boats in the computing community, and that even users who are initially afraid to try new ideas will eventually embrace the new paradigm.
That must be some strong skunk you are smoking there or you are just being a cynical ass :)
Me thinks they are trying to be the kind of boat that gets lifted up and broken in two by an iceberg, after ramming it because the captain is stoned or otherwise mentally compromised.
The solution is sack Balmer and his yes men, and get someone in who actually knows what they are doing, and please not that found out bluffer developer and financial investment moron Bilge Gates.
Unlikely, while a small number of users will switch to Mac or Linux, the vast majority of users are either completely locked in, or are unaware that any alternatives exist... People will begrudgingly buy into the latest that MS shoves at them and eventually get used to it and accept it as normal.
MS are very good at beating people down and lowering their expectations... Average people today think that computers are buggy unreliable junk that's always riddled with malware and gaping security holes, all thanks to MS.
The Windows folks at MS have completely lost it, haven't they? Taking a UI metaphor from the one-foreground-task-at-a-time environment on a phone where it kind of works, and applying it to a many-windowed desktop environment, where it patently doesn't. Of course, we already know that they don't want us using the legacy desktop in Windows 8, they want us to do everything in Metro, with one, or sort of two windows at most open. So maybe the desktop is supposed to be unpleasant.
Run multiple Windows 8 Virtual Machines on your still multiple window-capable LINUX UI, there, fixed that for ya.
Caveat: Anyone doing this will have to purchase multiple copies of Windows 8 to run them in multiple virtual machine windows, so it could be a little on the expensive side, but I'm sure MS won't mind the extra revenue.
MetroUI is a failure already with WindowsPhone having got around 2 to 3% of market share so far.
Windows8 on tablets, phones and desktop/servers with MetroUI is going to be the demise of Microsoft. They don't have a clue what disaster they are causing to themselves.
They are selling the most retarded nonsense interface ever created and it's 2012 not 1980 !
> MetroUI is a failure already
Microsoft eventually saw that iPad was not just a short term fashion and had predictions that desktop was falling and mobile was the future of all computing.
They had failed with their own pen and tablet products and saw WP7 failing. Redoing the same thing would fail again. They needed to create their own new future products. Copying Apple and Android would make them also-rans. They needed different and had spent millions on graphics consultants and UI specialists to get WP7. They saw the only problem as lack of familiarity.
The solution was to make Metro "the most familiar UI" (as said by MS). The way to do that is to leverage the desktop monopoly and force Metro down users throats until they like it. Then they will _demand_ that their tablets and phones have the same UI and not that 'rubbishy old-fashioned Asomething junk'.
Of course they forgot that making Windows 8 did not automatically update all the 7 an XP users, but a compulsory high-security urgent update will do that. SP8 will not be avoided, even if you have updates off and no internet access.
You _will_ like it, by order.
The semi-official explanation for this travesty is they want to de-emphasis and minimise the chrome, to reduce distractions. They've sure de-emphasised it, to the point of making it harder to use. Not seeing any sign they've minimised its use of space though, just acres of empty space where controls used to be.
They really are determined to cripple desktop mode so Metro looks irresistible :(
All that gratuitous Aero shit deserves to go, pointless distraction. I can cope with a meh UI like XP. Not a chance in hell I'm putting up with this fugly mound of excrement.
This looks worse than GEM on my Atari ST back in the 80's, where at least the edges of windows stood out and all the chrome was consistent. Hell, I had better windowed GUIs than this in C64 games.
Am I the only one who has noticed Windows 8 is actually Windows v6.2 (just as Windows 7 is v6.1 and Vista is v6.0). Microsoft really have lost the plot and are going to lose a massive chuck of people who decided now is the time to jump to Mac. And before you Microsoft Gold Partners chip in to say the version number is for compatibility.. one word: bullshit
Amiga Workbench and Kickstart 2.0 with the Gadtools.library introduced 3D of sorts to the desktop interface. Ok no shadows, but windows had a 3D appearance to them, as did the Gadtools gadgets, icons and so forth.
Funny how these things still stick with me after all these years after I owned an A3000 (which allowed me to flip between 1.3 and 2.04)
I was sad that Commodore made such a hash of the Amiga, they really were amazingly innovative machines, both for software and hardware, and way better that the Atari ST junk.
There are still powerful concepts in AmigaDOS which Microsoft can't seem to fathom.
It would have been good if the 680x0 architecture had been more aggressively developed rather than the fugly 80x86 architecture.
I think the ARM proved that that similar ideas in the 6502 were far better than the fugly Z80 which the mediocre Clive Sinclair used.
I hope that ARM eventually wipes out Intels' CPU business with a plain better base architecture.
BTW: I used DirOpus on AmigaDOS and now use it on all instances of Windows I use (money well spent), Windows Explorer is just too annoyingly primitive; even the old AmigaDOS version makes all Microsoft file managers to-date look completely retarded.
"I hope that ARM eventually wipes out Intels' CPU business with a plain better base architecture."
Oh and condemn everyone to being forced to use Microsoft on their ARM machines? In case it has slipped your mind MS have dictated that UEFI will be locked in place on all ARM devices loaded with Windows RT without the possibility of running any other OS.
Beware of what you wish for, they might come true, or do you really look forward to a MS monopoly, gained not through excellence and innovation but by bullying and sheer market muscle?
Yes, I realise that not all ARM devices will come loaded with Win RT but how many non-mobile manufactures will be able to resist Microsoft's diktat?
I still haven't really gotten over the death of the Amiga. It's like when Concorde got decomissioned, technology took a step backwards when that happened. If OS4.0 had been released for x86 10 years ago then things might be a lot different today.
Ah well. Blame Hyperion for burying it.
U............U.........GGGG.........H...........H
U............U......G............G.....H...........H
U............U......G............G.....H...........H
U............U......G....................HHHHHH
U............U......G......GGG.....H...........H
U............U......G............G.....H...........H
..UUUUU...........GGGGG......H...........H
The closer we get to the release date of Windows 8 the deeper MS seems to be burying itself.
Quite frankly I don't get it anymore.
On one side we have people speculating that MS may very well be doing all this deliberately and basically expect the enterprise and business markets to skip Windows 8 and start looking at upgrading at the time Windows 9 or an even later version get released. Which IMO sounds very reasonable.
Yet if that is the case it would also be safe to conclude that MS would then need to try and make Windows 8 as appealing as possible to the consumer market. But how do you do that by taking away all the eye candy ?
Wouldn't that turn Windows 8 into a boring piece of software in the eyes of the common users ?
Heck, even Apple keeps some form of eye candy on their desktops. I don't think they'd be doing that if they thought that it would only scare away people.
The longer this story continues the more do I get the impression that MS is very busy making Windows 8 as unappealing as possible, probably thinking that they're actually doing the opposite.
Getting the disappointment in early.
Then when people start using it they can say - "it's not as bad as I'd heard"
Though this process will only work if it isn't as bad as they heard...
Or perhaps it's just the default is everything nice turned off.
One can but hope. Unfortunately.
So it will run on a tablet.
For years they have been adding flash to keep everyone on the wintel upgrade treadmill.
Now they just want to get in on the iPad gravy and need to strip things to the bones so it will run on cheap hardware. They want tablets so bad they will do anything.
I'm a great fan of the 'classic' look from 95/98 and that ran well enough on pretty cruddy hardware by today's standards so I cannot believe it's simply to make it responsive enough.
I have no idea what Microsoft's thinking is but it seems they are determined to discard everything they've promoted for years and gone back to the barest basics. So much so it looks like a prototype before the 'it will look much better when we finish it' promise. They really do seem to be travelling in reverse.
Maybe it looks good, even feels good, on a tablet or phone, but I can't see many people being impressed with that on their desktop.
One of the upper management types at work has a Dell Latitude ST tablet. It's a $1,000 netbook with no keyboard. Came with Win7 Pro and it's a slug.
Installed the current Win8 release and it feels a lot faster, if only it had some useful aps it might be useful. Using Excel on it still sucks without a mouse / keyboard.
But even with Windows 8 it's still way too expensive to be anything but a management toy.
Read some tech news... RT is pretty much identical, including the desktop. It is simply compiled for ARM, and therefore can't run any existing Win apps. The whole point of this debacle is that the tablet version is essentially being foisted on desktop users too.
Who the hell is going to custom-pimp their PC with all kinds of liquid-cooled goodness and juicy graphics cards etc, only to shovel a pile of steaming horseshit like this in the top?
Sadly you'll probably be surprised.
On a contrarian note, it might just be the basic, pared to the bone OS that gets you where you want to be i.e. running the latest FPS or whatever without sucking up all those CPU cycles so you are faster on the trigger. Can't see it myself, though MS MUST have a reason for doing all this. Surely it's not some kind of corporate death wish, is it?
"...OS that gets you where you want to be i.e. running the latest FPS or whatever..."
Errrmmm...
FPS and most 3D games are usually played in full screen mode, and the complexity of the desktop's GUI shouldn't affect their performance at all. Other CPU-intensive apps shouldn't * be affected by desktop effects, unless the user is changing-resizing-moving windows at the same time.
* For well designed GUIs, OSs and graphical drivers, if such things exist. Sigh...
I remember feeling proud of my drop shadows when doing a noddy menu system in Mode 4 on a Beeb in the mid-80s - seemed so grown-up & just like the photos I'd seen of a Mac. Ditto the overlapping windows. Unlike Aero these have both been clear & unfussy visual cues to the metaphor being presented on-screen.
Now MS has boldly blazed a trail back to the dawn of Windows - it's as if the design team are using octal and it wrapped around from 7 to null.
Welcome to Windows 3.0
Big tiles to open your applications (Program Manager)
No start button
Flat controls
Though at least back then windows on a phone was something you opened to slide the bit of paper in with your friends phone numbers written in biro. Wonder if they'll copy that next? Windows 8 notepad?
Each new version of Windows was designed to do essentially the same old thing, but to require more and more CPU and graphics processor power. In this way, the consumer could be driven to buy each new generation of hardware. Meanwhile processor wattage went from 10 watts to 100 watts, and graphics cards did the same. This worked for desktops plugged into the mains and for laptops, which most plugged into the mains most of the time (or used in docking station).
But now that computing is being done on portable devices which are expected to be unplugged for days at a time, the software has to adapt to lower power processor and graphics chips.
...then why do Android and IOS both look heaps better than Metro?
Granted I wouldn't want either as a desktop OS, but you're still talking shit. I think more correctly, Microsoft have found an excuse (with Windows on ARM) to ditch the buggy awful shite they've built up as a legacy and invent some new buggy, awful shite that will run faster because at least it's not running atop 7 layers of buggy, awful compatibility layers.
And for consistency, everybody's getting it, even on platforms where it really won't suit. Ho hum, nothing new. Just the other way around from when they tried to shoe-horn Windows CE onto portable devices.
We got forced into Win7 where I work, and the UI is just sluggish.
But I just found the control panel to change it back to "classic windoze" and that took care of a lot of the desktop latency. It isn't great but it sure is better. I'll take the performance over shiny shiny nearly any day. When I tried to turn off the eyecandy items in a different control panel it really hosed up the tray at the bottom and a lot of the notifications... so MS has a ways to go there.
I really like it. It's clean and simple and fresh - all things which a pleasant alternatives to the overload of saccharine candy my eyes have been subjected to since compositing window managers arrived (which, in MS world wasn't that long ago).
I run a similar 'flat' theme on Gnome 3 and it's fine - I can tell which window is the foreground and so on, not a problem. Microsoft - maybe, just maybe - have UI testing labs which this style has done well in. Canonical's Unity interface, which you'd think was utterly despised if all you listened to was comments on the internet, scores really well with everyday non-techie users, I expect this is the same too.
Amazed Windows isn't more themeable though. The people who don't like it could change it.
The teenagers I teach can switch from Windows 7 PC (College computers) to iPad to Blackberry and whatever and just complete the tasks they want to. When I hand out my laptop with Ubuntu/Unity on it they work out how to get on guest wifi and start Firefox straight away; log into Moodle and then download and edit the assignment files and re-upload them.
I think johnnytruant has a point. The new stripped back interface meets the needs of 90%. The 10% will get stuff in Win9 and from 3rd party devs.
PS: what Gnome 3 theme was that? (posted off a netbook running Xubuntu with Alt-F11 on the Web browser)
PPS: surprise hit of the week, http://www.geogebratube.org/ on an interactive whiteboard. I'll hack a few up over the holidays to match the syllabus.
My GTK/Shell theme is currently Elegant Brit, it's up on Gnome-look somewhere. It's not quite as polished as it could be, but the flatness does make a nice change from rounded corners and shiny FX, which I've been a bit bored of for a while now.
I've noticed techie types are often very protective of their UI. I wonder if it's because we're used to having so much control over our computers, and building up lots of muscle memory about how to do favourite tasks (if I had a pound for every time I've typed ":w" into not-vi...) and then when someone else changes it we feel like our personal space has been violated, and our precious efficiency has been ruined.
For the Normals, computers are just magic boxes. If one day you power it up and the magic looks and works a little differently - who cares? It's not like you can do anything about it anyway, you just hunt around for a vaguely familiar icon or two and click it until the internet or email or photo app or whatever is in front of you.
"For the Normals, computers are just magic boxes. If one day you power it up and the magic looks and works a little differently - who cares? It's not like you can do anything about it anyway, you just hunt around for a vaguely familiar icon or two and click it until the internet or email or photo app or whatever is in front of you."
Social skills of a thermonuclear device, there. You've just labelled every "normal" user of a computer (ie, 90% of the population) as a blithering half-wit.
"You've just labelled every "normal" user of a computer (ie, 90% of the population) as a blithering half-wit."
Interesting interpretation you made there. I've worked in user-level tech support and seen some of the ways people try to get control of their systems - yet I don't think they're stupid, they're just busy. Even the guy who called me out because his mouse wasn't working (it wasn't plugged in) - not stupid, just focussed on something else. He was busy brokering sales/purchases for the company I was working at - a task which, as far as I'm concerned, is high-level voodoo. For him, IT was something which either worked or you called someone to fix it - and how many things do you have like that in your life?
You don't have to understand every aspect of a tool to be a tool user, and not doing so doesn't make you stupid. I don't. I can change a theme on my desktop, I can write a script to do x y or z, but ask me to write assembler or lay out transistors on a cpu die and I'm as lost as nearly everybody else on the planet. We all use magic, because lots of technology is sufficiently advanced these days - and that's perfectly OK.
@ Mr Hagan
Actually, I have to agree with Mr Truant here. Sorry, but it *is* true. Puter nerds are really in the minority, and they (we) are really the only segment of the population who *get* computer. Trust me on this. I spend my life sorting out Joe Public's hardware. It ain't pretty.
Metro's search driven menu is actually very similar to Gnome Shell and Unity, so "hit start button, type, press enter" is pretty much the same operation for all three of them. Last time I used MacOS I ran quicksilver which was the same again. Fiddling around with the mouse just to launch stuff and find files isn't something I've done for quite some time. Obviously other people's milage varies, that's just me.
On desktops - I keep pressing ctrl-alt-downarrow (new virtual desktop shortcut in Gnome) in Win8 to get to a new, empty, desktop and it keeps turning the screen upside down. I can't believe that inverting the screen is such a common operation there's a shortcut key for it.
If Windows users don't like MS's shell, and particularly if they do like Gnome's one, I don't imagine it'll be long before Cairo is ported to Win8. http://cairoshell.github.com/
@johnnytruant
"I can't believe that inverting the screen is such a common operation there's a shortcut key for it."
Inverting or rotating by 180 degrees? I could see the value of rotating for showing a screen to someone sitting across the desk from you.
Well, I rather like that. (Queue auto-downvoting because, god damn it, it's the wrong subjective opinion.)
I have no idea how it will impact usability because I find it's easier to try it rather than just look at pictures. Also, the only picture I can see is of a single window, so I wonder how it will look with several windows in the background.
The moment I first saw the new Windows Phones with their flat look, and the Xbox 360 update with flat tiles too, I wondered if it was so save the effort required to produce the '3d' look and free up horsepower so they can write more bloated bloat-ware.
3D Aero was the only thing I liked about Vista (which we didn't use for long), and now enjoy on Windows 7.
I know there's a big UGH already posted, but many, like me, just think it's ugly, ugly, ugly.
It all looks so completely insane, it beggars belief that they, such an enormous company, are on this path to flatness, a stupid giant sized tiles interface etc. Have they not taken a moment to reflect, that when iOS and Mac OS upgrades are released, they don't quite attracted the hostility Metro has?
"It all looks so completely insane, it beggars belief that they, such an enormous company, are on this path to flatness,"
Remember the supposed saying of Louis XIV "L'Etat c'est moi" "I am the state."
When you have had almost absolute power for a long time you get to believe that what you say and do is all that matters. In MS case I think that they might come to realise that this is not always true.
Been using *8 for the past couple weeks and the sheen still hasn't worn off my hatred for this crappy update. The Reg calling the experience "Jarring" is bang-on. I've avoided Unity and Gnome 3 on Ubuntu but the same criticisms I have read related to those UIs seems to apply to *8 as well. Why do I have to windows-key-right-click-click-click just to get to what formerly used to be called the "Start" menu? Why do I have to go out to Metro just to start "legacy" apps? It's ugly and migraine-inducing.
After I had downloaded and tried Windows 8 I visited Distrowatch, did a bit of looking around and am now typing this via Firefox on Fedora 17 with KDE. Dual booting with Win 7, whicht I only now use a couple of times a week to play games. It's a few years since I used Linux and the current mainstream distros are brilliant. Thanks Microsoft.
I know the majority won't do this and will swallow the Windows 8 crap, but Microsoft have slapped their core users in the face and they don't deserve any loyalty any more.
I did try Gnome 3 and Unity, they're not my cup of tea, but they're nowhere near as dreadful as Metro.
"Carefull! I said something similar a week or two back and was accused of referring to "5 year olds" when I claimed certain people would expect a magical touch screen transformation :-)"
Five year olds are probably smart enough not to think changing the O/S would turn a monitor into a touch-screen device. Really anyone that ignorant is a walking argument against the theory of evolution.
so shaddup and just accept what we're thrusting down your throat...
... or ...
just keeping using XP/Windows 7 for the next decade.
... or ...
switch to macos / linux
As geeks, we've been here before - well, if your a Linux user you have.
It's Gnome 3 / Unity but on a *massive* scale.
Apple must be rubbing their hands in glee, as they watch Microsoft, with a chair throwing gorilla money-man at the helm let his designers and geeks run wild across the windows landscape, trashing familiarity in some wild gambit to force a touch-screen metro 'catch up with iOS/android' onto windows users via OEM tie-ins.
It's madness, yet microsoft are so desperate to gain a foothold in the mobile market, they are willing to sacrifice the future of the desktop.
It's a long game - lets face it, windows XP still reigns supreme in corporate land - an OS now over a decade old - but Microsoft risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I'd like to believe we'll all be wrong and will run to windows 8 with open arms, but then, I like to believe in unicorns being ridden by naked nympho firm bodied young ladies parading around my front lawn, brandishing kegs of beer and wads of cold hard cash.
... I probably should've left that last bit out ...
I think it looks cool and feels fresh. What's happened is that MS has finally put some people with design sensibilities in control, something Apple did years ago.
All you guys who think Windows should look like 1993 until the end of time, you have nothing to worry about., Just go to Ebay and spend your Social Security checks on some 386s running 3.11, and you'll have your comforting, familiar 3D edges on everything to keep you nice and oriented. Myself, I like what's new and different, just because. By the way, I've been in this since before DOS. Maybe I'm in that 'second childhood' I've been looking forward to.
I hope MS just tunes out all this noise and goes right ahead, and brings in a whole new generation of users who could care less about "Z-order".
Metro on a big screen is quite silly enough - every smartphone platform is hip with the fullscreen approach because generally there's only an itsy-bitsy display, but if when I've shelled out a hatfull of cash for a monitor that fills my field of view then for the love of Pete let my arrange my windows as I see fit and flick between them with my eyeballs - the fastest and deftest positioning system I have.
But that's Metro; a woeful retrograde step for use on big desktop systems. Nobbling the Win desktop environment to make it more Metroesque just seems passive-aggressive. The removal of the full classic Win2K environment in Win7 was justified reasonably well as being the elimination of a whole bunch of old code that was little used and so a testing burden, but as described so far this seems no deeper than themeing.
There's design sensibility in that microsoft have copious amounts of cash to throw at the UI.
Alas, it's the UX where it all falls down - forcing a mobile interface upon desktop users is... dumb.
But, hey, youngster, you hit them books a bit, go around the block a few times then come back to chat with the old fellas - one day, you may (if your lucky), grok it.
Every week brings even uglier peeks into Win8, probably culminating in a mock execution delivered personally to your cube - but the final release will actually be tolerable and the user base will overreact, sobbing with relief, and doubtless join them Patty Hearst-style on the next hijack of some worthier company or technology.
Just a comment to +1 on liking Aero too. I really can't comprehend just how f*cked up Microsoft's ideas are at the moment, it seems they've chosen to alienate their core customers, the businesses (big and small). First it was Windows Phone 7 with no proper business version and no local sync for Outlook or full Exchange intergration. Then Windows 8 with Metro getting in the way on the desktop and being practially useless when remoting in. Then also Metro on Server 2012 (WTF?!). Now it's flattening out the desktop UI, dropping everything that made W7 feel a delightful and dare I say it, 'pretty' UI to look at. I sincerely hope Ballmer and Sinofsky get the boot because of these stupid ideas, and are replaced with people with a few brain cells to knit together!
I have to say I've also got to like Aero, if only because I'm able to have terminals running processes in the background and watch what's happening while doing something with another terminal over them.
This, on the other hand, is pure nonsense, someone thought it was a good idea to make high-contrast the only colour scheme and theme available and there's a time and a place for high-contrast which is if you're partially blind. Other people either have found a productive use for Aero or just quite like their eye candy. And others don't want any of this Aero nonsense and set it to Classic.
The desktop has always been about choice because desktop machines are powerful enough to offer it. If you take it away and you won't get people to upgrade and when they finally do get another computer, instead they'll go with one doesn't look like it was something knocked up by the programmer for use in testing until the real UI design came out.
Ah don't you just love commentards here?
Microsoft introduces 500 layers of shiny crap that slows shit down:
Micro$shit is bad. Linux happening, rabble rabble rabble rabble]
Microsoft goes back to more standard design without the 500 layer of shiney crap.
Micro$shit is bad. Linux happening, rabble rabble rabble rabble *Dies of stupidly and being a twat*
Reading the comments on this website all follow the same sad pattern.
Big company <X> is bad and terrible due to <badly thought out Y involving actually living in the real world>. Everyone will switch over to <Badly maintained and impossible to use open source program that nobody knows of> This honestly isn't a cry for help down to a crushing envy due to me dying alone and never having accomplished anything that amounts to even a 1/100th of worth that these companies have. Rabble rabble I'll get my coat.
AmigaOS versions 2/3 at least made some attempt at pseudo-3d, buttons and icons were given borders to make it look like they were sticking out, and clicking them reversed the border to make it look like they had been pressed in...
It was 1.x that had a totally 2d interface, and a yellow/blue colour scheme that was designed to provide maximum contrast on poor screens (ie old/cheap tv sets as opposed to proper monitors).
Not quite sure what the fuss about the start menu is ....most users I work with don't notice it exists. If the outlook shortcut gets deleted I get calls with "Email has gone Missing" - they don't actually look for it in the start menu.
MS have done a lot of metric analysis and probably saw that about 1% of users actually use it ......and most of those post on El Reg from what I can see.
Well that's funny, because I know people with a similar attitude toward computers. Main difference is that if they can't find it after clicking the big "Windows" button and going through the menu or typing the name of the program in, then it's obviously not there.
Myself, I detest the tendency of software to automatically assume you want a desktop icon, or a quicklaunch icon. I've seen too many computers with no room left anywhere because every available inch of desktop real estate is covered in icons. Usually owned by the same people who use the start menu because it's a damn sight easier than trying to scan through a desktop full of crap or a quicklaunch area that needs to be extended to ten times its normal size to see all the icons.
Myself, I have one or two icons on the desktop, and a couple of choice apps in the quicklaunch area, which I've tweaked to work properly, and not like Windows 7's awful pinning-icons-so-you-can't-tell-the-difference-between-icons-and-running-programs shite.
And Microsoft's answer to this is... to remove the start menu and replace with a bloody big cluttered desktop full of icons. Then make them look like Fisher Price designed it all, as if they didn't learn from XP. Then make it so apps are stuck in full-screen or 66/33 mode, because obviously my bloody big monitor can't fit more than two program windows at once on it!
Wow. Thanks guys. That's really appreciated. I suppose at least I have a Linux partition so I can escape from some of this madness.
Windows 8, from the people that brought you EDLIN.
Slight detour: EDLIN was still supplied with Windows XP, I stopped checking after that (mainly because Vista was just too much and I finally fled elsewhere). Anyone an idea when they finally gave up on this?
Windows Classic Desktop. As fast as you can get it. Faster and faster as hardware improves.
I don't want aero, I definitely don't want ribbons of stupid little pictures that mean nothing, I want menus
I don't want stuff which checks content I own.
I don't want loads of shiny tools which diagnose connections
I want an up button.
I need to have multiple windows open.
When selecting other stuff, I want to be able to see what's there.
I want it faster, and cheaper, and faster, and longer running, and faster, and longer running on batteries, and I want it faster, and cheaper.
That's all I want.
I've been using Win 8 as my sole OS since the RC. Its OK...now that I've installed that stardock or whatever its called (forces a Win7 style start menu button).
Still annoys me that I have to shut down by mousing to the top right of the screen, waiting for a brief moment while the worthless animation takes place, bringing out the side bar, sliding down, making sure to keep to the right, then clicking 'settings' (is SHUTDOWN really a fucking setting???), and finally POWER -> SHUTDOWN.
That fudges me off something rotten.
I use a mouse setting of high speed, zero acceleration. Mainly so I have total control of the mouse, and it doesn't whizz about unexpectedly. Acceleration is a dick. To shut down windows, takes me from the bottom left corner (where I inevitably click - my mistake admittedly), 4 mouse swooshes (to make sure I am in the top right corner)....a pause......a rigid grip and slide down, settings/power.
Absolute dump.
Time for a Stella. 4.8% would you believe. Can't even consider that 'Wife Beater' these days....
there are a lot of nay sayers about hte GUI for windows 8, but to be fair, I do applaud some of the changes.....
First of all, I have been running windows 8 on my netbook for a couple of weeks now, and find it not too hideous...
one of the things I do as soon as I install windows on any of my computers is switch off the eye candy... the shadows, the 3d effects... I would sooner have all those wasted resources go to good use.
the other thing, the start screen, or metro, or whatever its called... I quite like having a space showing the most common apps or shortcuts that I use ready for me....
power up and shut down speeds are very quick, and its stable. !!
its not all bad !
where's me keys? where's me phone?
I think, as a delighted and indeed enlightened, I may add (Sorry, Mr. Fry) Linux Mint 13/MATE user, I've attained that level of spirituality that few other fanbois and windows users have.
In short, I haven't a fuc*k what the article is about (nothing derogatory about the article itself), nor why over 150 commentards think a windows interface deems a mention. Metro? Retro? Huh??
Wonderful feeling.
All you guys who want to barricade yourselves in your garages with XP and a shotgun are completely missing the point, which is that in a very short time 80% of the public won't even use the word "desktop" anymore and will be getting rid of that old tower PC sitting unused in the den. Everyone will be using tablets for everyday "computing" tasks and the Metro UI will suit them just fine. Having accepted that reality, MS knows there's nothing to be gained by forking this most massive of source bases and trying to maintain a historical "desktop" version. At some point they may have to appease corporate IT by giving them a way to boot to the traditional UI, but development no longer proceeds down that path.
So you can spend £500 on this ickle diddy fondleslab that runs a few apps and lets you play Angry Birds...
...or £500 on this beast of a machine that lets you play Angry Birds, and Crysis, and lets you actually do some work as well. And print it out! And share it with people who have a different device to you! And use software that hasn't been pre-approved by the censors!
Yeah, I can see the pirate-bay-loving, porn-reading, games-playing, working-for-a-living public ditching their desktops, honest!
The window is almost black and it fills the whole screen. All the text is greyish-white. The cursor is a big flashing square thing. When you press a key it makes a loud click noise. When you move the mouse nothing happens.
For Windows 9 Home, the interface is called VT52. If you're prepared to spend the extra money you can have the Professional interface, called VT100.
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