Next from Microsoft: 'Blue', the Windows 8 they hope you don't hate Windows Blue - the supposedly leaked sequel to Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system - will apparently look a lot more like Windows Phone 8 and allow users to further personalise their computers. Copies of what appears to be build 9364 of Windows Blue are circulating on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks; once the alpha-grade …
Nobody wants? are you sure you can vouch for every single member of the human race?
Guess what, tastes vary. Not everyone likes One Direction despite them being very popular. So I guess because so many people do like them all the other people who don't should be forced to listen to it and stop choosing to listen to something else?
I didn't install Windows 8, I haven't seen a tile since the Consumer Preview.
Microsoft presumably would like to sell their product. Unless/until I have the option, without messing about with 3rd party add ons, to have a "classic" mode (or whatever you want to call it) then I will continue to not buy it*. It's pretty clear I'm not alone in this.
*I may well not buy it even then, of course. Win 7 continues to be working just fine here, and next time I need to update my work hardware it will quite likely be a Linux + VM for when I need Windows. Nevertheless, as things stand right now it's a guaranteed lost sale.
On my xp box I have 382 files in 144 folders. How any serious user could migrate to windows 8 without a decent start menu is a sign of micrisoft's insanity
As it is I have to waste time removing useless tiles every time I install anything on my touchy feel slab.
And those 144 folders all end up in your "start" menu? Wow - talk about unusable/deep structure. IIRC the "last used" popup is a Win7 (maybe Vista) feature.
My start menu never had more than the programs in it (< 72) and the rest was done through them. If I really need documents - I pin them on the desktop. Easier now than ever since my programs are pinned on the seperat Modern screen.
I agree with hahnchen, the mouse does NOT work in Windows 8. Here's the proof - I insert a CD, and get a pop-up on the screen that says
"DVD Drive (D:) OFFICE11
Tap to choose what happens with this disc"
So I tap the screen with my mouse, but get no response. Nothing. Tap again. Still nothing. Tap twice quickly, but no difference. It's not until I CLICK that I get a response. Tapping does not work, so at least part of the mouse interface for Windows 8 DOES NOT WORK WHEN YOU DO EXACTLY WHAT THE FUCKING SCREEN TELLS YOU TO DO.
"Every version of Windows should have a 'Classic' UI option emulating Win 95. This would remove 99% of the complaints... "
Well that, and a decent file manager. As a li'l sidenote, I'll add that the WinXP Windows Explorer qualifies as a "decent file manager" only in comparison to all succeeding versions of Windows Explorer in subsequent Windows releases.
It will only be a "decent file manager" when it manages to stop occasionally crashing for no apparent reason (as it has done since Windows 95) and they give us the option to turn off the stupid "jump down the screen 2 seconds later*" that they added in Windows 7. Classic Shell can sometimes fix the latter but often only after you call up the CS settings and OK them again.
* this is what I mean: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/windows-explorer-expands-folders-inappropriately/50a81b05-da98-4d55-821d-55ffbbd0e998
A decent file explorer?
Is this a reference to the old two-pane file explorer that disappeared at the same time MS tried to claim Internet Explorer was an integral part of the OS in a bid to avoid an anti-trust ruling?
I get on okay with Windows explorer on 7... it doesn't crash too often, and the Win7 'Snap to half screen' feature makes it easier to recreate the old two-pane functionality.
> Every version of Windows should have a 'Classic' UI option
Maybe users would want that, but it would fail to meet Microsoft's future plans. MS's mobile market share has decreased from 42% of the US smartphone to less than 3%. Eventually this would impact on desktops as users move to Android, ChromeOS and OS/X or even Linux as being more familiar to them than the archaic Win95 derived UI.
In order to make Metro UI familiar MS needs to force it down users throats until they love it. Then they will demand that UI on phones and tablets. Making it optional it not an option.
W7 explorer was far better than XP explorer IMHO. The fact that it wouldnt tank large file copies due to one file being iffy was the biggest bonus. Various copy/rename functions and a proper "just remember what I chose the first time dammit!" options were good too.
Cant say ive had it crash many times, if it does then unless it is a hard blue screen error then it picks itself up again neatly.
When will they learn that I don't want to spend hours rearranging / resizing tiles? I have work / games / etc to do. It's one of the main reasons I dislike TIFKAM. I want an unobtrusive system that automatically arranges itself into alphabetical order like, oh I don't know, the start menu in Win7!
As for the advanced feature that allows you to have two whole windows on the screen at once!!! Wow how did they think of that. I currently have 4 windows open on one screen and 3 on another in Win7. Multiple windows are part of my workflow. Hell even my phone can do two windows at once!
Making Win8 even more like WinPho is not the way to fix it.
The raspberry pi uses a "toy" ARM processor and manages to run a normal desktop OS. That's *probably* because 2013's "toys" have more oomph than anything you could buy in previous years, but it *might* also have something to do with the OS not being a bloated steaming pile.
Sorry but that's BS. The tile UI is about supporting touch screens well.
When Microsoft released XP tablet edition people moaned they couldn't use the whole OS with touch. So they produce a fully touch capable OS and people are now complaining that their desktop is gone.
I think you'll notice that you made your own statement redundant
"XP tablet edition"
See that little word in the middle there, that word, tablet, you know, for small touch screen machines.
As I sit here reclined in my sofa my monitor (tv screen) is a good 3 meters away from me, so yeah, I couldn't give a fuck about touch, also all my computers have normal stand up monitors and only an idiot would think touch screen was anything but an RSI/Health and Safety law suite waiting to happen.
So argue the pro's of metro as much as you like, but don't bother talking about its touch capabilities on a normal desktop or laptop pc.
Actually the "tablet" in XP Tablet edition refered to 10-14'' tablets WITHOUT any touch - pen only WACOM or NTRIG digitizers back then. Even today they have the option "disable smear mode" as part of the control panel - and many users do.
And once you have a penable - it beats a notebook in truely mobile use AND can still be one on a desk (BT keyboard/mouse) even with adjustable distance between keyboard and screen for the "pure" tablets (Convertibles/Hybrids are like notebooks)
When Microsoft released XP tablet edition people moaned they couldn't use the whole OS with touch. So they produce a fully touch capable OS and people are now complaining that their desktop is gone.
Why do we have to have one or the other exclusively? We could have, I don't know, two versions, so they could offer both a desktop version, for those who want to use big monitors, mouse and keyboard, and a tablet version, for use with touch screen devices. You, know, something called choice, that radical concept where you get the privilege of making decisions about what kind of interface you prefer to use to do a particular job?
How many versions are really needed, regular win8 already has both and works fine here, they gave choice and the majority of people cant handle the choice!! as proven by the number of crackhead comments here how windows 8 sucks so badly because you switch between metro ui and desktop ohhh noooz
And a pi is - NOT a tablet! Currently all ARM tablets run castrates OOB - be they iOS, Fragmentdroid or Win/RT. The only ARM tablet in production that barely qualified for "tablet pc" is the Note series. Barely since the software is at best WinXP quality in the critical areas like Handwriting, often not even that
As soon as I get to non-mobile devices the small benefit an ARM may have in power consumption is lost and the Atoms, even the aging CTrails, win hands down.
"How many programs can a ARM toy tablet run at the same time?"
Why should your cheap, battery dependent, small screened, input deficient ARM toy dictate the behaviour of my high end, hex core, multimonitor, mains powered PC?
Microsoft cross promotional marketing requirements is not an acceptable answer.
When Xerox-PARC let Apple engineers view it's GUI work, the Apple guys mistakenly thought they had seen overlapping windows. They then clean sheeted designed that into the Lisa OS. Guess MS needs to send some of their Win8 guys over to Xerox. Or maybe just as far as the Win7 area?
Hours? Try minutes. Ask yourself honestly how many programs do you use regularly. Less than 80 most likely including games. And those fit nicely on the Modern start screen. The "rarely used" are quickly launched through the very powerful search.
As for the "multiple windows" - where is the problem? Your "workflow" will use classic applications and those work like they did in Win7. The "multi windows" only applies to Modern apps
I too hate server 2012 but I do like the VM licencing changes saving me money so thats why I used it. W8 got downgraded to W7 until there is a robust cheaply licensed (multiple PCs) start menu widget I can supplant into W8.
On a second note, I did (for shit n giggles) backup and restore to hyperV VM from 2008R2 to 2012 to see if it would actually work. It did! I never thought it would have been possible but it did work.
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"I need to spend more time learning how to make 2012 work for me, but at the moment 2008 R2 remains my server platform of choice."
You need to get with the 21st Century. The normal method "to make 2012 work" is install using the defaults (no GUI), enable remote management, install management tools on your PC. Job done.
The trick to 2012 is learning which control panel apps you need and then make shortcuts on the desktop to the .CPL files. That'll make it almost bearable (as well as shortcuts to needed .MSC files). For instance, to get to the screen that lists your network connections, make a shortcut that runs
control.exe ncpa.cpl
And to get "My Computer" functionality back, add a shortcut that runs
explorer.exe ""
the two double quotes start it where it shows all of your drives.
And if you don't like the ribbon interface in Notepad/Wordpad/MSPaint, you can copy the EXE's from a 2003 server and they'll run fine under 2012 and give you the good old menu trees back.
And learn to reboot by running "shutdown -r -t 0" and shutdown with "shutdown -s -t 0" (you may also use forward slashes instead of dashes, but as a Linux admin, the dashes are more natural to me)
I haven't yet found a way to change colors for things like Active Title Bar, Inactive Title Bar, etc. Yeah, I know that's niggling, but in the MOST EXPENSIVE and NEWEST version of Windows, why can't I change the color of the fucking title bars? It's all down to that horrible aero-lite interface that 2012 uses, and I think it requries editing the aero-lite resource files, but that's too much of a PITA compared to the old days when we had easy access via the Desktop Settings control panel.
I've spent the past month investigating how to make 2012 usable, as we are planning to migrate away from Novell this summer an go to Windows. It's sad, as Netware has worked so well for the past 16 years, but times move on and I don't really care much for OES2/3/whatever.
It was taken as a given that Microsoft was willing to lose out on enterprise upgrades to push their Windows 8 agenda. I doubt your 100 workstation shop will bother them over much. Anyway, even if Windows 8 did have the start menu wouldn't Windows 7 still be the upgrade path? You don't hear about upgrades to the latest OS, comparatively just out the door, very often.
Read my lips are you too freaking dumb to be able to move a mouse to where the start menu used to be in order to open itttttttttttt.
your the retarded bean counter dumb***
I pity the people on your network because you probably force them to use classic view on windows xp because your so afraid to change.
I heard that they figured out how to get two, count them TWO, apps to be on the screen at the same time. It sure is a magical time we live in.
/sarcasim
Look here Microsoft, you know what we want, now give us back our GODDAMN start-menu. We aren't buying into your freaking App Store business model, The End. It ain't going to happen. Give us want we want, or your stock price gets it!
Oh I did. And unlike others I am even able to distinguish between Modern and Desktop programs. Blue will be able to run two Modern "Apps" in a 50/50 split. And as many Desktop Applikations as you want/your memory allows. So using a toy breed tablet like the Acer W510 I would be able to fingerprint two Modern apps instead of one. Using a tablet pc - I just use Modern as a start menu and run desktop programs with a stylus and no fingerprints
You could already get two apps on a screen at once before, the refinement in Blue is that you can have them share the screen equally vis a 75/25 split. On a tablet it's very nice and stable, certainly helps for concentration and focus. But I'm not sure I could ever use Win8's App UI for development/actual work. It does seem sort of tempting, though... might cut down on my ADD, and with a multiple-monitor setup it could probably work out. To be honest it's a bit tempting.
Most people's complaints seem to be that Microsoft's choices mean that users will have to change how they work to suit the OS. Fair complaint, but that happens with progress and is fairly inevitable. Switch to desktop if you want desktop-style functionality, use apps if you want to - the OS has plenty of choice built in, but until Blue there hasn't been much attempt by Microsoft to teach users how to exploit the full potential of the OS. 30 minutes of blog articles and tutorials is well spent, though, and that's not much work for learning to use a new tool.
So what. The idiots at MS are going to bludeon me and everyone until we get it. Oddly, we aren't getting it (see 8 sales vs Vista..)
I noted the comment that 100 workstations means nothing. Thats true. If its just 100 workstations. But its not. That guy is saying something echoing across the windows world. And wether he says it or not isn;t changing the fact that our user base is moving to IOS and Android. (I'm a PC fan, and I have been for a very long time, but Windows 8 might be a very big nail in the coffin.) - and whatever anyone tells you, you can bank this. Where a user base goes, the business will (in some cases wether it likes it or not...) follow.
I can fit my own start menu, and in fact some engineering under the bonnet of WinH8 is quite good. But this isn't enough. Metro in fact has to die. The sooner MS simply accept this, the better. They can keep shipping it on ARM/RT - but on the PC it needs to be terminated like a vista wrong turn. In actual fact I think its too late. I think 8 has wrecked the landscape to an unfixable degree. Business and people are no longer working in old tired models, and MS no longer has the grip it once held. If I *want* or if I am told.. Most (not all, but give it time) of our userbase can live on IOS or Android - or Linux for that matter. And the more that do, the more it shatters whatever grip there was.
If MS ship a platform that can't be setup/controlled from AD and GPO - I need no real education in seeing that they have lost their way totally. And they have.
> Where a user base goes, the business will follow.
Excellent point... in the early 1990s this happened with people bringing in their own Windows PCs (or buying them with some quiet corner of a budget) so as to side-step the minicomputer or mainframe controlled centrally by the IT dept - main motivators being "new and shiny", "I understand it - or at least can see/touch it", and "I don't have to fill in forms and wait for months to see whether IT will act on the request".
After years of struggling, IT depts have now managed to get Windows networks to be (nearly) as stable as the AS/400s, HP3000s, and mainframes of years gone by, but only by imposing a similar degree of centralised control... something makes me think history WILL be repeating itself.
Is this supposed to be a joke? I hear "Windows Blue" and the first thing that pops in my head is "Windows Blew"! (yes, yes it does) The 2nd? "Windows Blue (screen)"! Horrible code name for a product that is also bound to be horrible. Windows is DOOMED unless they get rid of the abomination formerly known as Metro!
2 copies of windows 8 pro removed and trying them made me appreciate windows 7 so so much. Now give me a windows 8/9/whatever that has all the under the hood improvements but allows me to use my mouse/trackpad and keyboard in the way that has successfully evolved over decades.
If you wanted to improve the start menu create a way to mass remove selections that I don't click from the start menu on a regular basis silverlight/adobe reader/read me files/uninstall files/folders that advertise the company name/an unnecessary wi fi program that installed with the wi fi driver/intel pro something or other/web site links, and refine it to only be used to load programs that actually require loading.
The reason is has this multiple personality disorder is purely because it needs to support it's legacy apps and the users who cannot be bothered to try and learn something new.
I was sceptical, heavily so, when I saw what was coming through the beta & RC phases but quite frankly my day to day use of my laptop has changed about 2%, in fact there are a lot of features I think Win8 does much better. Win & X takes me to a nifty shortcut menu for many of my most used commands quicker than they do in Win7; Win & I, straight to my app settings, I can pin Netflix to the left side of my screen and carry on whatever else I was doing. Once I spent some time learning the new ways it's actually a lot better.
The reason is has this multiple personality disorder is purely because it needs to support it's legacy apps and the users who cannot be bothered to try and learn something new
That bit in bold, especially, is bollocks. It needs to support a desktop (or, more accurately, windowed) mode because some of us, and this may come as a bit of a shock, don't use software maximised. This has nothing to do with "being bothered to learn something new", it's to do with Getting Stuff Done. Right now I have 6 windows open across 2 screens on my machine - the browser I'm typing this on, my mail client, IM main and chat windows, explorer and Teamviewer. Normally there would be a few more, but it's nearly beer o'clock. I can see what's happening and interact with these windows just by moving my eyes and mouse, without interruption. If I then need to, I can use a small unobtrusive menu to start a new task, without losing the context I have been working in.
It sounds like you would prefer that the desktop was fully deprecated in favour of TIFKAM. Please explain how your brave new "everything fullscreen, oh ok then we'll let you have two apps side by side" world is going to do anything other than make me less productive and more annoyed?
Fullscreen tabletty interfaces are fine, on small screen devices. While I personally find TIFKAM incredibly ugly, I can see that it works on phones & tablets, and probably even netbook sized laptops. But not on a machine where I'm trying to work, thanks.
>> It does all the same Shit as XP did"
> Except run all your games, all your applications, and Office 2013...
Office 2013 does _not_ run on XP. So that is the same as Mint.
Office (2010 or before) can be made to run on Linux, but OpenOffice or LibreOffice does a good job for most users. Sure, a Ferrari may be a great car but something with less performance is better for going to the shops.
"WOW! Must have missed the bit where Metro apps now work on the desktop...
Win8 is a schizophrenic OS and MS will not maintain both halves of it. I have no intention of staying quiet while they let the half I need rot, however many halfwits they hire to shout for Metro."
PATHETIC! I did not say that Metro apps work on the desktop. The implication is that if you do not like Metro, simply go the the desktop for a typical Windows 7 experience.
PATHETIC! Your implication that the desktop is "going to rot" is a pathetically stupid idea. Please explain how this would happen.
It's clear that MS want to kill the "legacy desktop" for several reasons:
Firstly, because they now call it the "legacy desktop".
Secondly, because they castrated it in Win8, removing a lot of the really nice features of the Win7 shell.
Thirdly, because they deliberately made it impossible to stay there without installing a third-party shell. There was clearly no technical reason for this whatsoever, because said 3rd party shells do exist.
This clearly indicates an intention to remove it entirely, and given the features of WinRT, the timescale looks like "the moment Office works in TIFKAM".
It's clear that MS want to kill the "legacy desktop" for several reasons:
"Firstly, because they now call it the "legacy desktop".
Secondly, because they castrated it in Win8, removing a lot of the really nice features of the Win7 shell.
Thirdly, because they deliberately made it impossible to stay there without installing a third-party shell. There was clearly no technical reason for this whatsoever, because said 3rd party shells do exist.
This clearly indicates an intention to remove it entirely, and given the features of WinRT, the timescale looks like "the moment Office works in TIFKAM"."
This is another amazingly stupid interpretation. You've stated that the Desktop will be removed "the moment Office works in TIFKAM". Yea, sure. What about all the hundreds or thousands of programs that you cannot get in the Microsoft/Metro/UI Store? Photoshop/Nero/Acronis Disk& Imaging Programs etc. etc. etc. etc....
What an amazingly stupid interpretation.
Windows Blue - the sexy new operating system from Microsoft!
Get down and dirty with touchy-feely tiles, fondle about in the dark trying to find the desktop and squeal with delight at our new improved USB3 drivers that make inserting a small plug round the back an electrifying experience!
Available for download from microsoft.xxx or grab a physical copy which includes a free bottle of "Clippy Poppers" from all good licensed sex shops!
It's a reasonable position and you're doing nothing wrong. You don't need it, that's fine.
The retards who tell me I'm wrong for using it are the problem and unfortunately some of them work at Microsoft. Taking away features because only a minority use them is barely justifiable, taking them away when there's no need to do so at all is unbelievable.
Taking features away because it serves Microsoft marketing plans is simply abuse.
Clicking both mouse buttons simultaneously brings up a start menu wherever the pointer is, so you don't even have to move the mouse cursor before selection.
Is it really that hard to come up with a new way to do these things, or is 'double buttons clicking once' a patented UI feature or something???
Royalties to .....
Locked down corporate pc's here. We're pretty much a Microsoft shop here (except for those pesky engineers who keep asking for Linux systems. And it's not like they do any real work; just sit around designing new products and such.) and what MS ships is what we get. After repeated requests to IT for Classic Shell or Start8, we've taken to piling up extra meeting room chairs in front of our Win8 test system. Deafining silence from IT has most of us thinking they're waiting for Win9.
/mine's the one with the Mc Mini in the pocket.
Just tried it and as expected, it didn't bring up all the launch shortcuts my Classic Shell menu shows, most significantly it won't show the 'open on screen N' shortcut variants of my media apps.
Metro Start isn't just a deficient UI design, it's functionally inferior to the old Start Menu, which can take a wider variety of link types, is easier to edit and offers more control of launch properties.
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After all that talk about Windows subscription models and such I finally get it...
'Blue' seems nothing more but a continuous set of updates (formerly known as Service Packs) and Microsoft will continue releasing them until the general public finally buys into Windows (8) again.
Something I personally don't see happening any time soon so maybe we'll get lucky and it will also force Microsoft to keep Windows 7 around for a very, very long time (hopefully longer than XP!).
Wow, Eadon is going to be very annoyed that MS have not listened to his comments.
Looks like they have gone the complete opposite way, just to annoy him further.
Seriously though, is MS really going to back track on the whole TIFKAM UI? I dont think so, people hated the ribbon, but it is still there (I hate the ribbon, but from the perspective that I used to be a UX developer and the big bosses wanted the ribbon on everything). Most people can find their way about it with either a little bit of Google or common sense.
TIFKAM is essentially a giant start menu, with a little tile in the bottom left corner called "Desktop". Clicking it gives you the desktop, or - and this is the really technical part - just pressing the Windows key brings you to the desktop.
Even getting to things like Explorer or the command prompt is relatively simple once you figure out that things are more or less in the same place on the desktop, they just need a right click as opposed to a left click.
I wonder how many people would still be enraged if MS had decided to boot straight into the desktop as opposed to the start screen, no idea personally. Did they go too far with TIFKAM? In my opinion yes they did, they got carried away with the sudden Metro love that WinPhone 7 brought and jumped the gun a bit with Windows 8.
I can see the reasoning behind doing it as well, unifying all their UX into one identical method. No idea if it will pay off.
I see a lot of people who seem to be sysads on here stating it will not go on their network because of TIFKAM and I can understand why. There are people out there who can barely navigate Windows 7, let alone 8.
It's good that Windows 8 is getting some usability fixes, but it's still missing the one key feature I care about.
And it's not the Start menu. I'd like that back but if Microsoft wants to take it away, I'll deal. What I NEED back in the next SP for Windows 8 is the Aero Glass theme and the theme-able desktop in general.
I kind of understand why Microsoft took away the themed desktop (force everyone to think of RT and apps first) -- but I can't stand working in the flat, featureless user interface. Things like Server Manager and Visual Studio are a huge pain to use for me...acres of monochrome text and icons with very little standing out. The other thing I'm not a fan of is the flat window controls; on a busy screen it can be hard to find what's actually the active window (and yes, I know the color changes, but Aero to me was much easier to navigate.)
I'm disappointed, because Win8 and Server 2012 make huge improvements (Client Hyper-V, neat storage stuff in Server 2012) but it's held back by a user interface I don't like using.
Actually tried to use Win8 for a few days it or just parroting what the PFY "IT expert" from your cousin 2nd degrees hairdresses told her? There may be some use cases where Modern does not work but they are rare.
On my dual monitor desktop the "72 most used desktop programs" are always just one WIN-Key press away AND there is still space for News, Weather and a Messenger. Don't even have to take my hands of the keyboard to start them. No more "unmask desktop" or "guess wether this is the start icon or a running instance in the taskbar" games. (You can still play them if you like), taskbar stretching over the monitors ...
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Microsoft is in a very good possition here. They have already hit bottom and survived. All they have to do now is keep tweaking thier OS until everyone is happy. Apple on the other hand is only beginning thier free fall and will be hitting a difficult stretch unless they can find the right visionary to take up the slack. apple needs a visionary leader. Someone who leads the industry in new directions. People like that don't come along every day.
I have to wonder whether Microsoft can come back. Sure, they have plenty of money to burn, but they've gone pretty far down the track of trying to turn the Windows desktop into the iPad. They went out and built their own line of hardware. They developed an entire Windows Store and app ecosystem that emulates Apple's. They even have brick-and-mortar Microsoft stores in prime retail locations next to the Apple Store. (I went in one yesterday and was the only customer on a busy weekend shopping day.)
The problem is whether or not they will be able to take some of this back and say "oops." Not everything they are doing with this model is wrong, but so much of it is just a blatant copy of Apple iDevices and Android phones. I actually like things like the Surface Pro form factor -- it's great to have an almost fully-fledged PC in roughly the same footprint as a tablet. It finally makes things like vertical market applications useful. I agree that PC user interfaces could use a little updating, but IMO the tablet/iOS model isn't the best possible world either.
Nope,
as in 'NO hoPE' - at least not as long as it's being run as a one giant Ballmerian Chimera: it's made up of ~3 different animals (desktop/server/systems, services and apps, mobile & entertainment), resulting in a monster with more than one head, running amok due to the lack of utterly clueless leadership...
...which is the direct result of Gates throwing the reins at the horse, in this case at the angry, bald, chair-throwing one. Let's face it: MS' current CEO wasted a DECADE not doing anything meaningful and I'm being very generous here - he pretty much destroyed its soul - and now it's trying to force-feed us with a bunch of half-baked junk like Windows 8 and, apparently, following it up with trying to put even more lipstick on this pig, using the only (stupid) formula he knows, throwing more and more money at everything, disregarding the more and more diminishing returns...
...BALLMLER MUST GO, urgently, ASAP or it will be very painful for MS.
TL,DR: ut sementem feceris ita metes.
PS: Vanity Fair's excellent piece from last Fall is a mandatory read about Ballmer/MSFT:
"How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer And Corporate America's Most Spectacular Decline"
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer#1
The rot started when Microsoft merged the 95 and NT codebase. They confused merged the codebase with merging the OS experience, and the consumerization of Windows started. Coupled with the rise of Apple and Microsoft's terrible, cloying, embarrassing insecurity when put up against the cool kids, and it all went south.
For some reason -- maybe cos I'm reading a book on the Vietnam War-- the word quagmire springs to mind. Ditch Metro, lose an immense amount of face, and have the stock price take a harsh beating; or grind through to the end, annoy big swathes of people, and lose stock value by attrition. No easy answers. Maybe a Windows Plus! Pack needs to be brought to market that let's people skin it how they like.
Actually they never merged the code bases. The Dos-Externder line ends with Windows ME and was a seperat beast till the end. The only thing that survived (and was thankfully killed in W8) is the looks from the Win95 UI. And even there it is looks not code base. The two where very different under the hood.
The current W8 UI/UX takes some time getting used to but after that - it just works. On EVERY device from a 10'' touchy-toy tablet through penable tablet pc to high powered multi-monitor desktops. It may not be perfect on either of them but you get 90+ percent of what a specialist OS can do on any of them - and just ONE OS, one concept. No more "Telefon is a iThingy so do it that way, Tablet is a Fragmentdroid so this way, Main unit is a Window7 do it another way". Just one way.
Win8 needs some fine tuning, ironically more in the tablet-pc functions like the entry field behaviour (many preferred the Win7 style of auto-show / free positioning drag out to the new "icon in taskbar" style) but OOB it is already better than Win7 on the same hardware both mobile (better power management, faster sleep/wake, better Handwriting/Speech engines - and Win7 was good!) and desktop (better useability for WLAN only desktops, faster boot, better multi-monitor support)
Some old Pink Floyd Lyrics
Astromie Dommie
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound surrounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound surrounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.
Blinding signs flap,
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam. Pow, pow.
Stairway scare, Dan Dare, who's there?
Lime and limpid green, the sounds around
The icy waters under
Lime and limpid green, the sounds around
The icy waters underground.
especially this line
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Syd at his best.
Unfortunately, Shuttleworth has gone the same way as M$ and cursed Ubuntu with the equally ghastly Unity interface. You can choose one of the other 'buntus it feels like being in a backwater with the primary development effort focused on Unity and, I suspect, Umbutu phone (why does that sound familiar). Fortunately there are other distros - Mint is picking up a lot of refugees.
Ubuntu is not the solution. Microsoft are *following* it down the same hole Ubuntu has been digging, copying the same design errors, ignoring the same user complaints. Only ahead on deploying to phones, where Canonical are now chasing Microsoft despite the evidence WP is failing.
Both screwing their existing customer base.
Well seems yet another disaster for Microsoft, but at least its in sequence. Seems from the start versions of Windows came out as good to use then disaster before good to use.
So from recent - XP (good), Vista (disaster), Windows 7 (good to go) then Windows 8 ( glad then it goes).
So, if this sequence holds out, looking forward to the next version of Windows.
But I think Windows 8 is a whole different kind of disaster to Vista.
Microsoft got from Vista to 7 by improving things they started in Vista, and perhaps more importantly, by the time 7 came out, most applications were designed to run with restricted security permissions.
In that respect, Vista was a necessary step on the road to Windows 7.
Windows 8 is a disaster in the same way that Microsoft Bob was, except that at least with Bob, you could delete it and use the proper interface. That isn't so easy with Windows 8.
Microsoft got from Vista to 7 by improving things they started in Vista, and perhaps more importantly, by the time 7 came out, most applications were designed to run with restricted security permissions.
And, I think, they listened to their customers, something they're just not doing with 8.
So some of Windows ME's unloved features that nobody cares about because they've never found them anyway have been "improved". Like that's exciting: "Oh look I can move a tile around and make it a different size, and I can two apps side by side just like Windows 3.1!". Sorry Microsoft, but this is a crock of shit. Same shit, same colour.
There's nothing inherently wrong about designing an OS for touch and keyboard+mouse. If Microsoft let you run touch apps in windows (and easily minimize/maximize them for tablet use) it would be fine. Obviously you would also want your phone touch apps to run on your tablet and PC and vice versa.
But of course Microsoft doesn't let you run touch apps in Windows and the apps designed for phone don't work on tablet/PC or vice versa.
The end result is a huge strategy fail. Probably worse than doing nothing.
From a developer's point of view, there's no way you're going to convince me to develop a phone app for Microsoft if it won't also run on their tablets or Windows PCs, and vice versa.
Seriously, what was the point of making the interfaces look more or less similar if they're not able to run the same software?!
Sorry, but I'm not interested in Windows 8, Windows Blue, or any Windows (or gadget) which insists on using Microsoft's [pathetic and really old, antiquated, ripped-off] tile interface.
There's a really good reason why no-one I know uses Windows 8. Those freakin' ugly tiles.
The hysteria is palpable. Honestly, some of the comments here are absurd.
So you like having 127 applications running simultaneously, snapped side-by-side and visible across all 11 of your 32" monitors? Good for you, nothing in TIKFAM to stop you. Desktop applications work just as they do in Win7.
Once in desktop mode, you have your taskbar. Pin applications to that. Just like Win7.
Tap the Windows key and type the first few letters of the application you're after, and you'll be presented with something closely resembling the start menu. Just like Win7.
If you're still mouse-hunting your way through the Win7 start menu to find and open applications then you're missing out on a great time-saver. And if you're already using the application search functionality in the Win7 start menu, what the hell are you complaining about?
While it's not perfect (some minor tweaks to the start screen are required, and the ability to chose which side of your screen the charms bar lives on would be most welcome), I'm struggling to understand the level of angst here. Surely it can't all stem from the fact that the start screen (which you only need to see for as long as it takes to start an application) is full-screen??
" So you like having 127 applications running simultaneously, snapped side-by-side and visible across all 11 of your 32" monitors? Good for you, nothing in TIKFAM to stop you. Desktop applications work just as they do in Win7.
Once in desktop mode, you have your taskbar. Pin applications to that. Just like Win7. "
Why are you telling others how to work with their own computers? What makes you even want to do that? It's none of your business. Somehow that patented Microsoft arrogance has trickled down to her zealots and cheerleaders.
People all have their own personal work habits which don't concern you. Microsoft has been busy making changes that directly affect these personal work habits and you respond with scorn and ridicule and more MicroMemes of "just do this instead". I've always marveled at creepy busy-bodies that can't help but to insert themselves into the lives of others.
More importantly, your advice is ridiculous. The inevitable result of following your logic ... http://i.imgur.com/F08pKwY.jpg
I swear, MetroTards are the greatest gift to those who really want to see Microsoft complete their suicide. And complete it they will, as long as their brigade of enablers continue to rationalize their every mistake.
Well, I guess I should point out to several MicroBots upthread who parrot the meme: "If you don't like it, install Start8!"
Sorry MicroBots, the leaked Windows Blew has removed, I said *removed*, the necessary resources for several ( perhaps all ) of these utilities to work. They do NOT work any longer.
Link to pertinent discussion in official StartIsBack thread ... http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158666-start-is-back-21-rc0/page__view__findpost__p__1034334
Thanks to Microsoft's nefariously vindictive actions, you're gonna need a new meme to tamp down criticism of Microsoft Tiles.
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" Really? GREAT! Finally, well done MS!
Okay I admit I LOVE the death of AERO and the start menu. "
Now that's just plain creepy. How could that give you any form of satisfaction whatsoever?
You know, there was never anything to prevent YOU from avoiding the Start Menu or Aero. You could always ignore it and cover your desktop with icons in a way that almost looks like Metro. You could always disable glass effects or Aero itself or just change the damn theme. You could have bought Starter Edition which would have done most of it for you. In short, you could have customized it to your preference but instead you apparently want Microsoft to choose your theme and visuals, and furthermore you want them to decide not just for you, but everyone else. Freedom of choice ranks pretty low on your agenda.
~sigh~ How is it possible for Microsoft to have nurtured such a radical brigade of zealots in recent years? I would never have imagined Microsoft gaining a cult following of MetroTards capable of outdoing and embarrassing the legendary Apple or Linux cult followers. Yet here they are, far worse, present in every discussion of Windows 8, insisting that their God is infallible and just. Praise be unto him.
Hint a: Some of us have to use customer pc that we can not change while we show the owner /user some features of the software
Hint b: not all machines ale user configureable
Hint c: In some training situations it must be exactly like the user but
.. then you have a calculator the size of your head. With a keyboard and mouse. Why?
This is the exact problem, and they haven't addressed it. Yes, you could manually then split the application to take up less space, but why not do it BY DEFAULT? windows key>calc>enter then the metro calculator should appear with say a 1/4 split on the right side of your screen, not full screen if it detects you're on a goddamn desktop.
That's another thing, someone will say that only 1/3 splits are possible, and now 1/2 splits, but that's stupid. God, we've moved from arbitrarily resizeable windows to a thickheaded architecture designed for toys.
This is the problem, fundamentally, and EVERYONE told Microsoft this MANY, MANY months in advance of the launch, on their own blog, but they ignored it every single time. Would you look at that? They were wrong to ignore everyone.
<Windows key>,calc,<enter> starts the "desktop" calculator application and not a TIKFAM "calculator the size of your head".
Possibly this is not the case on RT, I don't know, but certainly is the case with Windows 8 Pro running on my laptop.
I use Linux, Unless you pay me then i'll use anything. I took the bate and upgraded a copy of XP to windows 8 for £24.99, all went well untill the reboot and then it totalled my machine, (well it was dual boot with grub) 3 weeks later i found my xp disk and started again 12 hours later i had taken xp thur to sp 3 and then upgraded to 8, I was sore, sore on the eyes sore on the brain and eventually i gave in an installed a 3rd party start bar. I must say they have really fixed the BSOD by simply going going to a power off state with no warning. So after a month or two i inserted a dual channel free view card and put it in the living room, Win 8 makes a great freeview box, it even records, i can actually streem and change channels via an Xbox (a bit usless as they sit next to each other ) and it won't do it to even window 7 media center... but apart for that, best free view box you can get. don't see what all the fuss is.
Isn't this the 21st century? Microsoft continues to celebrate it by going dire retro? Whoopee, lots of colored of flat rectangles. Nothing says 'MODERN!' like spending your time looking at what amounts to a Kiosk from the 19th century. At least a few things are occasionally animated. Otherwise: FAIL deluxe. Sooo boring and anti-functional. I'm looking elsewhere for the future of computing.
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