Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI Microsoft says it is 100 per cent committed to its new user interface (UI) design principles, as embodied in Windows 8, even though it still hasn't come up with a meaningful name for them. Speaking at the annual Build developer conference in Redmond this week, Microsoft Principal User Experience Advisor Will Tschumy said the …
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Am I destined never to get credit for that? :( cf. 14 August 2012
Studley, you do indeed seem to have coined TIFKAM 9 days before I used it in this yarn http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/23/classic_shell_gives_windows_8_a_start_button/
You'll have to take my word on this, but this was a Newton/Leibniz simultaneous co-invention-without-prior-Knowledge thing, but I am happy to cede the honours.
I am happy to cede the honours
Careful, he may want a fee for each usage :-)
(Brings to mind the Newspaper Licensing Agency, a body that's trying to charge for using quotes from reviews published by a newspaper - see the current issue of Private Eye for details).
'research and development' Is all that profit should be spent on. (Especially when you've got a cash pile the size of Microsoft to cover rainy days)
I don't know about that, especially since it seems like Microsoft is going to have a lot of rainy days ahead of them that they'll need that cash pile to cover. I mean lets face it-- corporations are stubbornly sticking with Windows XP or are at best in the middle of their upgrade cycle with Windows 7, so I doubt that Windows 8 and the programs being released with it such as Office 2013 are going to enjoy much corporate love. Add to that Windows 8's mixed reviews, the slowing growth of the PC market, and strong competition from Apple, Android, and even Windows 7 in the consumer market, and I have a feeling that Microsoft's "rainy day fund" is going to start shrinking rather rapidly...
This is probably the sum they spent on all R&D each year. That in itself is a total bullshit figure, because in the software biz, writing software counts as "R&D". If you get together a team of 10 new hires you pay $100K a year and tell them to rewrite Notepad.exe as a Metro app, you just spent $1 million on "R&D".
As a result it is rather difficult to tell what any company that does a lot of software (Microsoft, Apple, Google, et al) actually spends on what we think of as R&D - investigating some new product ideas, reinventing an extra product category, or doing the kind of basic research that led to the transistor. If Microsoft increases its R&D budget by 50% does it mean there should be some innovative new products coming in a few years? Or does it just mean they've increased the size of the Windows and Office dev teams by 50%? We have no idea.
It might be easier if you think of IT research as the development of new building blocks. Thus porting notepad to a new although pre-developed UI is not research. Example of research would be a notepad app, where you can type without using the keyboard.
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My understanding is that it was Metro AG, Germany's largest retailer and the fifth largest in the world. A very large company indeed, but a company that does not operate in the US, probably due to the strength of Wal-Mart. Microsoft didn't do their due diligence before choosing the name in the first place, I would tend to think.
"The Microsoft design principles are the overall set of principles that are driving the Windows 8 Store applications."
A more bizarre and meaningless phrase couldn't be uttered by a lifelong scholar of Hegelian Dialectic Materialism As Applied To Marxism/Leninism who needs to say exactly what needs to be said lest he be put on the passenger list of a train to a re-education institution.
Maybe ms were worried all those Silicon Valley devs (maybe a few hundreds among thousands) who used The Metro to find some grope and ping intimacy would sully their product? Seems to come to mind that some people had to be careful when saying, "Hey, i read something interesting in The Metro last night..." and heads would swivel, some smiling, hahaha.
So, ms probably do not want to read of "SEXTRO" articles, me thinks...
Vista was, in actuality, monumentally crap - but it wasn't so much its technical issues that did it in but the in-your-face failings in it's UI that destroyed it's reputation before it even got any traction.
Microsoft can bang on from now to the heat death of the universe about how much better Win8 is from any OS they've put out before. And that may be true.
Doesn't matter. Win8 is going to go down the u-bend because the majority of the population of this planet are going to take one look at Metro and take their new PCs back to the store and complain that it doesn't have Windows installed.
You can experiment with smartphone UIs all you like - but normal sane individuals who aren't techies are not going to be interested in "defining new paradigms in how to interact with information technology" (or whatever other whalesong and bong-inspired nonsense got Metro built) on their PCs.
They (and myself when I'm not working) just want to be able to simply fire up a browser, download and play videos/music, play games and edit the occasional document.
"Live tiles" on a desktop PC are about as useful and interesting as the long forgotten and unlamented "Active Desktop".
Vista'd - why bother with it?
Yes, you do! From my (admittedly limited) experience of Win8 it, along with Gnome3 & Unity, they all blow goats to varying degrees.
As a rule New != Better in GUIs design because the muppets who force their abominations on an already suffering world don't seem to grasp the fact that most people just want to *use* the PC to do stuff, and having to spend days of hunt-the-function because said muppet decided to hide it God-knows-where is an irritating waste of one's short life.
How about calling it..... "The UI", which stands for The Unimaginative Interface.
Or we could call it "the most boring product Microsoft has put out to date, that wasn't Windows XP or Windows 7".
Whatever Microsoft wants to call it, it's the ugliest UI I've ever laid my eyes on. I wish Microsoft wouldn't cram crap tablet/phone UI's down desktop users throats. If I actually wanted a serious change from Windows 7 or XP, I'd switch back to Linux.
Panes
Placement active node entry system.
As we all know windows have to have panes......
It's raining and my windows are crying
You're out somewhere and I sit here dying
Only your mem'ries remain
Even windows have pains cause they cry when it rains
MARTY ROBBINS - WINDOWS HAVE PAINS LYRICS
>Will Tschumy said the company has been investing heavily in design since 2003, to the tune of $20bn per year.
>Those efforts resulted in the Office 2007 and 2010 revamps, he said,
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
p.s. I also happen to think he is talking out of his nethers when it comes to the amount, but still...
"But the really cool thing about all of this is that Microsoft is 90,000 people or so, so the fact that we're all behind this and we're all pushing down these design principles is something that's tremendously exciting."
Pretty much sums up everything wrong with the picture. Spend more time outside of the campus and don't waste those precious moments at hermetic MS events; perhaps this disastrous self-hypnosis wouldn't happen so often.
"But the really cool thing about all of this is that Microsoft is 90,000 people or so, so the fact that we're all behind this and we're all pushing down these design principles is something that's tremendously exciting."
Ms want our love, and they wanna spin right round like a record, hahahaha.
They need a new spin doctor, or spin doctor writer...,
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the way the tiled interface and its apps work at the moment. For example, why does a messaging app need to be full screen? It doesn't.
However, the new style and the new 'pizazz' in this new style is actually pretty good. Just look at the effort that's been put into their Minesweeper app! Or the weather app. Amazing compared to what they used to produce.
So, I'm persevering, as it is the first iteration of this design style and as with everything, it will change and improve.
Metro->city
City->blocks (also seen on-screen)
"Blocks" != enables
Also, just a brief look at Prince's squiggle, I assume that its supposed to be a combination of ♂ and ♀ and a bit of something else. How very metro-sexual (I feel dirty just using that non-word).
Perhaps we should call the UI "Prince", though I feel TIFKAM would be equally appropriate in that context.
They're not tiles.
They're not subway trains.
They're Window Panes!
Right that's the name sussed. Now just make it optional to enable the task bar to appear when mouse cursor (but not finger) hits bottom of screen. Allow old style desktop windows to appear on top of the new Window Panes® UI and hey presto, Windows 8 SP n, or as with the finally fixed Vista lets call it the next Windows version. Of course in reality Microsofts next Windows probably will no longer have windows. Now there is a naming dilemma!
"Windows 8 Store Apps" may be official, but even speakers at the BUILD Conference reverted frequently to the shorter "Windows Store Apps", as does Microsoft's own Dev Center. Those forced to say it repeatedly will, as people tend to do, shorten it further to WinStoreApps or others of that ilk.
Microsoft knows this, of course, but has seemingly failed to provide an alternative to the original, reasonably snappy, 'Metro'.
Don't believe it for a minute. After all, haven't they stuck basically to "Windows Store Apps" for months now? A term with an obvious - even prophetic - acronym neatly built in? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Surely I can't be the only person who looked at the phrase "Windows Store Apps" and immediately thought, "What the... WISTA?!"
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Rally, people, rally, for we're in the fight of our lives. The Wista UI is the VVista UI. VV for VVengeance.
VISTA II
Rejected it, did you? Thought Microsoft had swallowed its defeat gracefully, as it did the crushing of ME? Made peace with Apple, talked nice about Open Source? Fools! Can't you see what's right in front of you? Wista UI is nothing more than its alter pronunciation and ego "VVista We", promising an experience multitudinously worse than ME (plus the additional drama of lawsuits from Nintendo).
Laugh at the WUI if you dare, but brace yourself against the "WuoooooooooooEEE!" braying through the halls of techdom as Windows' latest incarnation calls you to the upgrade trough.
Yet the horror of Vista reincarnated pales beside the appalling prospect the Wista UI might spread to older versions of WIndows, even to other OS's.
You scoff. I see. Tell me, do you really think Microsoft hasn't already locked and loaded a titillating taste of Tiles, aimed at the unwashed masses unwilling to upgrade? The myriad mockers of the Micro$oft way? Even the Fruity and Sphenisciform challengers of The One True OS?
Does a Ballmer sweat in the woods?
Mark my words. No WIndows OS is safe from the risk of being retroactively overlaid with the Wista UI; the threat of such potential abominations as WINTSTA, XP SPWISTA and - I shudder to think of it - Vista Wista.
(I'll get my co. . . Oh. How convenient. The contents of my closet are already on the lawn.)
Microsoft: Ok everyone checkout our new UI - it's called Metro *fanfare followed by disappointment*
Metro France: Hey you can't call it Metro without giving us lots of money
Microsoft: Fine. It's no longer called Metro then. We weren't even going to call it Metro anyway, so we're no longer going to say Metro. Metro.
Everyone: So what's it called now then?
Microsoft: ...Well it's not called Metro - that's for sure!
Everyone: Fine, we'll carry on calling it Metro then.
Metro France: ....Can we have some money now please?
Microsoft: But it's not even called Metro! *cue manic laughing and Balmer throws another iPhone*
"We at Microsoft 90000 or so, are all behind this" - or we get sacked.
"No one mutters the M word anymore" - What about F words?
"20 billion a year on design." - To end up with the ribbon and metro.
You could buy another country for that, or get a working aircraft carrier or three, or perhaps clear out third world debt for a small country and then ask some PHD people to create a better front end experienc for the cost of living expenses.
"Nonetheless, Tschumy said Microsoft's new design principles were 'the exclusive language for our experiences,' adding that customers would see UIs based on the same ideas across all of the devices Microsoft touches, including PCs, phones, tablets, and even Xbox consoles."
But failing to add that customers would not see UIs based on the same ideas on any other platform because MS will sue the skin off the back of anyone who tries. At least, that's how I interpret the word "exclusive", particularly since we have Apple's example to follow.
Which raises the question, why would a device that currently has no market share and wants to see widespread adoption choose a "UI language" that currently has no speakers and for which there is a penalty if anyone else even tries to speak it?
As a previous commenter said, this is the "Hubris UI". It has "fail" written all over it, but no-one can actually read that yet.
Yes, and that name has the same problems as "The New iPad". What happens when "Modern" UI isn't so modern and we have something newer to replace it?
Personally, this so-called "modern" interface is so reminiscent of old DOS graphical applications it's not funny.
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