"right down to embedded devices such as life-support systems."
Is that something that El Reg interpolated, or were Microsoft actually insane enough to suggest that and beg for an endless stream of jokes about it?
Microsoft has shown off Windows 10, and described it as a blend of Windows 7 and 8. Redmond thinks the new operating system is so revolutionary, it skipped over version 9 and went straight to double digits. "We will carry forward all that is good in Windows," Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the operating systems …
This is not about hospital systems or "real" life support microcontrollers, but the LCD display panel which is about as life-critical as the speedo on a car. It is neat because it means they're going to go though the certification process.. which means there'll be Smart-Watch that does something that's actually medically useful.
The bit about XBOX running winten means that the Kenetic control from the xbox will be integrated into the OS and the dump "chimes" gesture will actually be useful
If they don't f3ck it up, could be the first "post-touch" (as in no more greasy fingers on PC display) OS
"Windows for warheads anyone?"
There actually *is* a "Windows for Warships", as implemented by (I believe) UK military contractor 'Billions Above Estimate' (BAE) on that reassuringly expensive whatzitcalled? UK boat.
According to the TV documentary I watched, Windows For Warships (the entire network) crashed within about a minute of starting its first war training exercise.
I did once receive a support email showing a screenshot from something developed using a UI/Graphics library I worked on with "Warhead" and "Target" where you'd normally expect the "File" and "Edit" menus.
Anon since I'm not sure we should even have seen a screen-shot of that particular piece of software.
""right down to embedded devices such as life-support systems."
Is that something that El Reg interpolated, or were Microsoft actually insane enough to suggest that and beg for an endless stream of jokes about it?"
Most medical devices already run Windows or Windows CE, so nothing new here.
"...a single operating system that will run on everything from the largest screens – 80 inches in size ..."
What a stupid thing to say. I've seen any-old Windows projected onto huge screens at an IMAX theatre. Way bigger than 80 inches. So where did "80 inches" come from? Will Win 10 not work when 84 inch screens are released next month? Stupid.
Let me translate - I think they were referring to the presumably astronomical resolution of such a larger display (but that's not what they said, agreed). Thing is, try reading anything in the standard 10 point font on a eleventy-billion pixel screen; even full HD monitors become problematic unless one cranks up the windows font size - at which point hilarity ensues with lots of apps that were designed / laid out for one and exactly one font size (the default). What the new Windows intends to do about it I dunno - my hunch is poor apps will still look poor, they'll just pay better attention to system stuff working at least...
dB "Let me translate..."
But 80-inch screens are typical 1080p. Perhaps 4K sometime soon.
Are you suggesting that they were claiming that the OS could handle 80-inch retinal displays? ~400 dots per inch, for an 80-inch display? Nice try, but that proposed explanation fails the sanity test.
Thus leaving my point intact. Thanks for trying.
Not only that --- Windows runs on many, many Point of Sale terminals (think Target, Inc.) and ATM machines....and cars too. They run it on hospital machines too......so why do you think they constantly release security patches????? Thank your local terrorist Russian hacker.......
Apparently, yes.
And it's not even new News, this was announced back in 2013!
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2613504/microsoft-windows/microsoft-skips--too-good--windows-9--jumps-to-windows-10.html
'Tis a sad day when an April Fools joke becomes Microsoft's plan for the future.
"Nope. Microsoft still delusional that they think people care about their too little, too late, too confused offerings."
I really disliked W8's metro look, but this (W10) I really like. I like W7's ability to slideshow my favorite photos as my desktop background. I did like the functionality of W8's Live Tiles, but not enough to lose the desktop slideshow. So, W10's presumed ability to give me the same W7 desktop, but then throwing in the ability to just hit my Windows key (finally making that key relevant!) to quickly browse my Live Tiles for relevant updates, is absolutely fantastic. Comfort and convenience, who can ask for more?
And while I still like Windows XP, I do have several machines at home with more modern CPUs that could really use an upgrade to a 64-bit OS.
"I did like the functionality of W8's Live Tiles, but not enough to lose the desktop slideshow."
Slide-show is a cosmetic feature. I'm more disappointed that no version of Windows later than XP natively supports desktop stretching across multiple monitors. If you are running Windows later than XP you have to shell out for a Quadro card that supports Mosaic to get that functionality.
"And while I still like Windows XP, I do have several machines at home with more modern CPUs that could really use an upgrade to a 64-bit OS."
You know there is such a thing as 64-bit XP, right?
Grammar/Spelling Pedant Alert.....
Loose = slack, spare eg "He's playing fast and loose"
Lose = opposite of 'gain' - get beaten in a game, mislay something etc etc.
Looser = something that is relatively slacker (such as your ability to speeka de lingo)
Loser = someone who didn't pay attention during english/spelling lessons at age 9 and still posts stuff with basic errors in it.
The term "your mileage may vary" came to mind as I heard the mention of "reworking the charms bar". Yes, they have brought a reasonable attempt at a start menu back but they are foolish to believe that this was the only niggle that people had about W8 and the "charms bar" was certainly one of these niggles.
In fact the biggest niggle of all was really the whole swiping business. Swiping from the various edges was what got them into trouble in the first place, especially as these gestures were far from intuitive. Redesigning is a good start but they need to make sure that they have addressed all the necessary points (context, continuity etc.) or they will just end up with the same mess they had when W8 came out.
A re-badge of "10" isn't necessarily going to work if the product is inferior (just look what happened to the XBone) and trying to persist with a combination of one system for many platforms needs to be weighed against the end result on each. As was rightly said in the article, W8 was seen to be unfairly angled at a small sector of the market that Microsoft had no real presence in at the expense of a market with many millions of users.
There's a reason why Windows XP still persists with some people and why Windows 7 was such a big seller and still dominates the market (and why Vista and W8.x was such a flop) and unless Microsoft can produce something that ticks all the same boxes (cringe - I HATE using phrases like that!) and stops trying to be something that it isn't, Windows 10 is doomed to failure.
But these are early days. Let's wait and see whether they produce the next best thing or crap it all up again.
Exactly what I was going to say. I can't see anything even slightly revolutionary about it (other than MS backing down a little bit perhaps) - they're clearly distancing themselves from the Windows 8 disaster as much as possible.
I had thought they might go for another non-numerical name in an exact reverse of the way they went back to numbers to distance themselves from Vista...
If it genuinely runs across all form factors, without forcing the same UI on all of them, that would be something neat. Writing one application with separate UI interfaces depending if you're running it on phone, tablet or desktop for instance... MVC architecture making a big come-back!
"they went back to numbers to distance themselves from Vista..."
Even though Windows 7 reports that it's version 6.1, and Windows 8 reports 6.3. I wonder if Windows "10" will report that it's version 6.4? Incremental versions mean incremental changes, though! Tweaks! No radical changes, move along...
@P Lee -
True, but neither OSX nor Linux ask you to pay for those incremental releases - or any others.
Err, unless I misunderstand your point, that could barely be more wrong with respect to OSX.
Don't confuse 'free' with 'at no additional charge' - it's a common mistake which marketers love to exploit. You can only install the software on Apple hardware, OSX isn't free of charge - you buy Apple hardware which comes with OSX included at no additional charge and Apple may (or may not) charge for upgrades to the software. That is definitely NOT free (as in beer).
In fact, I'm not sure whay you think that Apple doesn't charge for an incremental release to OSX. In the last five releases Apple charged a fee for upgrading to Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion. In fact, as far as I can see, the only release of OSX Apple haven't charged for is the most recent, Mavericks. But, again, even that is in no way to be confused with 'free'.
In fact the kernel may be quite different but the version number was kept at 6.x for compatibility. Some developers make their software perform prerequisite checks based on the NT kernel number. It was left at 6 after vists to help compatibility with such software.
This is an old issue. Some 32 bit apps wouldn't install in XP 64 bit because they checked for kernel version 5.1 and 64 bit used 5.2.
It's a mistake in Chinese ... 9 is one of the few lucky odd numbers in Chinese numerology ...
This is partly owing to the fact that the number 9 has traditionally been associated with the emperor (viz. the number of rooms in the Forbidden City) and partly owing to the fact that the sound byte for "nine" is close to that for the word "longlasting"
So Windows 10 won't be with us for particularly long and it won't be taking over the world.
The very early build shown off by Myerson, and Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of the OS group, is going to be a single operating system that will run on everything from the largest screens – 80 inches in size – right down to embedded devices such as life-support systems. That's the dream, anyway.
Is it just me or have they been down that route before (apart from the life support systems - no frigging way is THAT ever going to come near me)? Didn't work out so well last time, because it's built on the myth that a desktop OS with plenty of hardware around it has the same needs as an embedded platform that has to run on an as economic as possible scale, and (to make life really, really difficult for an outfit like MS) not crash too often, preferably never at all. The former can handle your average memory leak, the latter is, well, not really compatible with Microsoft's approach to coding. It would be too costly in hardware needs just to keep up with the patching.
No doubt it will sell because they still have enough OEMs they can twist arms of (as there is really no other game in the PC world, let's be honest) but let's just say I have my doubts. Massively so.
Hmm, I never considered stipulating in my 'Living Will' the software used in the medical equipment used to treat me when unconscious. I just figured I'd leave it to testing by the regulatory authorities and the medical professionals treating me.
More seriously, I'm not sure that the cost of hardware is the limitation it once was for having a Windows-based embedded system. There may well be other reasons to not use Windows, but these days hardware is pretty cheap.
"Is it just me or have they been down that route before (apart from the life support systems - no frigging way is THAT ever going to come near me)? "
I seriously doubt that, if you're ever in a situation where you need a life support system, you'll be in any condition to ask the surgeon "does that monitor, blood-pressure gauge, ventilator, IV system, run Windows 10? If it does, I don't want it near me!"
Dave126 got there first :-)
Colin
I seriously doubt that, if you're ever in a situation where you need a life support system, you'll be in any condition to ask the surgeon "does that monitor, blood-pressure gauge, ventilator, IV system, run Windows 10? If it does, I don't want it near me!"
No, but I'd like to ask you and Dave126 what you would do if a relative died due to a BSOD in a critical piece of kit. Not only would that company and its directors spend the rest of its days in court, I would also find out who the idiot was who took that decision in the first place and go after him/her.
>> single operating system that will run on everything from the largest screens – 80 inches in size – right down to embedded devices
> Didn't work out so well last time
One of the most serious points here. Apple recognised that if you don't make things different for mobile, you get badly ported apps which are unsuited for the environment (battery, wifi+LTE etc) and form-factor. Make devs build specifically for mobile and you get a better mobile software.
So MS are still trying to leverage their desktop into mobile. It still won't work. Of course, their mobile OS is currently different (different APIs) and they get slated for that too. It turns out that lazy devs and hardware/OS manufacturers have conflicting wishes. Apple got around this by not leveraging their desktop and creating the market from scratch. MS need to stand up to their devs and make sure they have a better system, not just an easy one. TIFKAM (confusing desktop and mobile) is going to be a very costly mistake I think. Their only way out is the 2-in-1 laptop/tablet device where the company pays for the desktop OS and the tablet comes for free. It's a long game of attrition, but MS can afford to play it and it should work. The question will be whether there is any money in it by the time MS get there and whether the terrible security practises that come with mobile will be at all welcome on the corporate desktop.
If you properly modularize it, you can install on each system only the required modules, to keep the OS footprint and resource consuptpion low enough. That's why, for example, Linux can be adapted to run on different devices. And meawhile even embedded systems became much more powerful and with far more resources.
If you ever gave a look to XP Embedded or 7 Embedded, you would have found something alike already. You believe that "Microsoft's approach to coding" never changes - but they are not so dumb as you like to believe. After all, Windows Phone is already far less resource hungry than Android...
After all, Windows Phone is already far less resource hungry than Android...
To be honest, that would rather surprise me unless its with a massively reduced API. Do you have any evidence to back that up? MS has a corporate tradition of inefficient coding - you could already see that in the days of Win 3.1 when Borland as well as IBM both ended up with faster and more compact versions by simply using their own compilers instead of Microsoft's.
Right. So your argument is that under stress-testing video, fewer apps (because obviously, Android users install every single available app and keep them on the phone and running at all times) and less desire to stress test it by running video makes for better battery life.
You're a fucking idiot.
"Do you have any evidence to back that up"
They recently released the exact same phone with the latest Android and Windows Phone as different options - and Windows Phone has much longer battery life and much faster bench marks than the Android version.
Hardly surprising - Windows 8.1 outperforms the latest Ubuntu in most benchmarks too.
Embedded XP or CE is still going to come near you every time you use a point of sale system or ATM in the near future. It HAS been for almost 20 years.
Have fun waiting in the teller line.
Personally I'd rather have an embedded version of Win 10 or Win 10 RT running an ATM console any day. Win98 and XP had way more memory leakage than Win 7 or 8 have, and expect 10 will be better. I don't remember ever seeing an ATM down except for being out of cash or not having a phone connection.
The fact that MS are even trying to make a single OS do multiple types of equipment is commendable. There are lots of bits of Windows that don't have to be present to make the OS work so it can be smaller than the desktop version when applied to a phone or tablet.
Give some credit where it's due instead of spreading more FUD about Microsoft.
Give Canonical credit where it's due, they've been working on a version of Ubuntu that scales on the fly from a mobile form factor to a full blown desktop, using the same kernel and packages (just a different UI) for a few years now. Including plugging the phone into an MHL link and running a full desktop from the phone - Hence Mir, they needed the extra flexibility of a custom display manager, X was too restrictive by far, and Wayland wasn't going in the direction they believed they needed to be going in.
Microsoft deserve no credit for this at all, because it's not new, and their idea of 'cross platform' involves either crippled functionality (check out the size of the Windows RT API stack vs Windows 8) or having three code sources in one EXE, launching a different one depending on what hardware it detects - which I don't believe they've done yet, but which is about the only way you'll get an Office-class application (IE not a cut down 'metro version') running on a phone, tablet and desktop in any meaningful way on an NT6.x kernel.
Microsoft need to tear the NT6 kernel to shreds, and start from scratch, using virtualistaion for backwards compatability - it's the only way it'll work.
Steven R
And I bet it's infested with all sorts of cloud and proprietary ecosystem junk and animated crap for YOU the web 2.0 content consumer who is scared of files, options and settings!
Still, the day my Win7's draws its last breath I may now at least have a viable alternative besides Linux.
There's a youtube video doing the round of a leaked build where you can remove all the Start Menu tiles.
Here we go. Obviously, we don't know if that made it into the Preview build or not but it seems likely, given that's how tiles work in Win8.
The way I hear it... Microsoft (discovered with Vista) that they can never again use a "x.0" version number, because too many apps used brain-dead version detection of the form:
if (majorVersion >= 5 && minorVersion >= 1) { run } else { forgetaboutit }
... which is why Win 7 is numbered 6.1, 8.0 is 6.2, etc.
Seems to me it wouldn't be too rocket-sciency to include a "compatibility mode" that just pretends to be a working version of Windows when running apps like that, but what do I know.
I, too, was unable to imagine what that was.
Natural result of the two key features of their highly successful business model: (1) Ignore actual users and sell only to makers who foist the OS onto the actual users. (2) Disclaim ALL liability for any mistake, no matter egregious and no matter how large the damages, making acceptance of that disclaimer a prior condition before you can use (not own) the OS.
What part of "highly successful" has any relationship to good or ethical?
I had predicted in another thread that MS would call it "WinOS9" but who knew they'd skip over 9 altogether. So ... WinOSX it is.
Apple has used all the kitty names for their versions, so that leaves what ... canine names? Will it be WinOSX "Poodle" or ... heaven help us, WinOSX "Pit Bull" ?
Laying under the table, licking its balls?
"There's the same task bar on the bottom of the screen with a Start button, but when you click on that the Windows 8 input becomes apparent".
Tifkam needs to be off by default, with an option to turn it on if you have a touch screen and want it on !
This is yet another opportunity for M$ to do things such as to show file extensions as default, rather than have folks blindly clicking on an icon with no idea what it is or what it could do ! File name.jpg.exe is not an image file, dragging and dropping a section of txt from office to your desktop does not mean that the .shs file that is made is a virus, but downloading "mypic.shs" probably will be :(
Hiding file extensions is a major obstruction to educating users :(
While it is true that "Silver Surfers" are of the age that pioneered the Internet but most of them did not, more users are becoming tech savvy via school and do not need the dumbing down of Windows !
Nice intro to Microsoft OSX. It seems to me there's more to be said later down the line about this OS when it's closer to release. More details. Sort of the other shoe dropping perhaps or perhaps not. Ultimately we wont know if this is a viable replacement for Windows 7 or even how usable it will actually be until more people get it on their PC's and other devices and report their experiences.
As much as I hate saying...it appears this may be a step in the right direction so far for a company that has, over the years, been more adversary than ally to some of it's user base/customers. I hope they fixed things up well enough to carry on. That said I still don't trust in a single release that a whole company suddenly changes character. Only time will tell.
Edit. @Iain Thomson, I also got a laugh at the "Windows Seven ate Nine" and the "NEIN" references in the articles tittle. You actually read our comments? LOL.
Except they aren't doing service packs anymore. They announced a while ago that Win 8.1 Service Pack 2 would never happen and instead what they will do is incrementally release new features using what was once called "patch tuesday'.
So eventually, every tuesday you'll have to look real hard and see if you are being patched for a security vulnerability or a new windows feature.
Anonymous Hero,
Well, all I can say, is Windows 9 must have been the crappiest of crap OS releases Microsoft has ever put on a drawing board, if they feel so compelled to "jump over" their own naming convention, and shoot straight to Windows10. Why would they fall into a mason jar with Apple and produce a version 10? Probably because they weren't ballsy enough to actually call it Windows X and seem like a bunch of Steve Jobs fanboi's.
Windows 9 would have also kept them in line with their ODD versions ROCK, even versions SUKBALLZ dogma.
So clearly this is a monumental mistake. I agree with the article, this is what Windows 8 should have been 2 years ago. Sad it took 2 yrs and enterprises treating it like the Black Plague for the numbskulls in Redmon to finally figure out despite their world dominance of PC OS's they still can't force something crappy down our throats.
I'll do like 90% of people will do when they get their hands on it, turn off all the "metro crap" and make it look and feel as much like Windows 7 as I can. Enough said.
So long as this is one of the supported apps I'll be able to get back to my Win2K lookalike screen via XP classic mode/theme. I'll take familiarity over innovation almost any day.
Hopefully the latest incarnation of Windows explorer will be a bit more reliable than the Win 7 offering.
"...a single operating system that will run on everything from the largest screens – 80 inches in size – right down to embedded devices such as life-support systems..."
That would be the Linux OS wouldn't it? Already used everywhere from phones (Android), routers and the Raspbery Pi all the way up through servers and cloud providers (e.g. Amazon) to the largest supercomputers.
Just saying......
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo thank you.
What's the betting that you get all that crap in Server 2015 as well.
sorry Microsoft you have really lost the plot (again).
Sigh, I bet the copiers (sorry GUI developers) in Canonical are already hard at work already.
Boy am I glad that I'm close to retiring.
I keep saying this, but having actually used server 2012 in anger since it was released, Modern UI on Server 2012 really isn't a problem. It's quite handy in some cases.
Winkey>ADUC (I think just typing ACT will do it)>return = Active Directory Users and Computers - which previously was three levels deep in nested menus, or found (along with half a dozen other MMCs) as shortcuts on the desktop.
It doesn't get in the way one jot, simple as that.
But then, I have actually used Server 2012, so, you know, I might actually have a fucking clue what I'm talking about.
Steven "Linux sysadmin" R.
The last couple of major Windows releases - both server and desktop - have had much lower vulnerability counts than competing OSs like OS-X, SUSE or Redhat - so maybe not.
Because you're including the entire collection of supporting software that comes with the OS. "Windows" is just the OS. SUSE and Redhat are distributions of 1000's of packages.
Perhaps we should take a look at the number of reported vulnerabilities in IE, PDF and Java plug-ins, Outlook, not to mention all the crap bundled with other "free" software, or pre-installed.
I also dread to think what could be found if the source code for any of this was released/leaked...
"Because you're including the entire collection of supporting software that comes with the OS"
It's still true with a feature matched Linux install. See the extensive work on the subject by Jeff Jones.
"Perhaps we should take a look at the number of reported vulnerabilities in IE"
Far fewer than say Chrome
"PDF and Java plug-ins"
Not part of Windows.
"Outlook"
Zero vulnerabilities to date in Outlook 2013. 1 ever in Outlook 2010.
> As a happy Windows 7 user, I can't see anything attractive enough about it to make me want to pay a large amount of money and go through the pain of reinstalling everything
It isn't aimed at you, its aimed at businesses who will have to upgrade their Exchange servers to keep in support, which means they'll need the new Outlook client which only runs on OS-X.
...in 2020
They've well and truly missed the boat re XP emigration.
Stop Fing about with the GUI and focus on delivering security, stability and compatibility/emulation. If windows could run anything/everything easily business would fall back in love with it. The hardware has got to the point where this is absolutely possible. The thing about "clouds" is that they drop this wet stuff on you and sometimes kill you with electricity. A return to client side applications may well happen. And they may well be iOS or android apps. How good would it be if windows could just run these "natively"? And we don't need them to be full screen... there's this concept that's been around for a while now where you run stuff in little "windows"...
So they're unifying desktop and touch by using two related GUIs that automatically adapt themselves to the form factor? They're "unifying" desktop and touch? Perhaps instead of Windows 10, they could have emphasized that aspect and called it something like say, "Windows Unity".
Now all they need to do is to rotate the bottom bar 90 degrees and move it to the left hand side of the screen and make the icons actively update with new status. That would make better use of modern desktop monitors, which tend to be much wider than they are high.
Wait a minute, this is starting to sound vaguely familiar ....
For me the key word in the article may have been "Mint", in the top right corner of the Start screen shown in the first photo. It may have denoted the financial services Web site from Intuit, but it's also the name of the Linux distro I think I'm now even closer to switching to.
I do love the Reg commentards! "No way MS is coming near me!" Well what runs the tills in supermarkets? What runs most ATMs? What runs the controllers on quite a few SAN systems from well known manufacturers? Sure they're Not life critical I agree and I'm not a massive MS fan, and yes Windows is not bad but not great, but I do love seeing the fox in the "El Reg" coop, always guaranteed to shake things up for a laugh!
What runs most ATMs etc., ? Windows XP embedded, I think.
What point are you trying to make?
All that tells me is ATMs haven't been updated for years, there was no real choice at the time, and the users of those terminals don't care, don't see it, and don't have to maintain it.
The banks made a bad move (with the benefit of hindsight), so the rest of us should also?
Given that win8 is a complete turd, especially on the user-end, but that at the same time the hardware is once again changing rapidly, requiring a number of structural changes in the interface, they *could* have kept going with win9. They could have *tried* to rebrand, but the stigma, well to be honest: shitstain, of Win8 would keep haunting them either way.
The reason for "10" is already hinted at in the "Joke": MS considers this their first truly multi-platform OS, and as such the start of a new generation of their product line.
So they'll probably want us to read it as 1dot0. Plenty of headroom for Marketing to play with there...
"This is what Microsoft should have done two years ago with Windows 8."
No it isn't!
Microsoft should have touch-enabled Windows, and/or come out with a mobile OS. NOT crammed a whole new UI, a new programming model, a closed company store, and a new set of totally redundant 'apps' down users' throats.
What's more, Windows 10 doesn't change any of that. Unifying 'Metro' and the desktop only paves the way for even greater confusion, as users try to figure out whether they should be swiping or clicking - or just cruising over to Apple.com to check out Macintosh prices.
....Then I want Aero Flip 3D back! One of the most useful keyboard shortcuts for me and even now, after having been using Windows 8.x since it was released, I still find myself pressing Windows Key + Tab and forgetting. I wonder where I could possibly ask for that back....or if they'd even listen.
Someone apparently has slipped more than a bit of random into the water table in Redmond.
This will end in tears, I think, but Microsoft will long be able to afford--unfortunately--to pay people to be up'n'smiley about whatever-the-fuck they're doing with Windows any given day of the week.
OK, it looks like the rush-job that was Windows 8 has finally been beaten into something that is usable. My first suggestion for W10 is to allow live tiles on the desktop.
The Universal Application API also sounds good. I assume this is only for W10, but if the hints of free upgrades from 8.x to 10 are true then that's good news.
HOWEVER
As a developer the big, huge bonus would be for MS to back-port that universal API to Windows 7 and make that part of Windows 7 SP2. Some of my clients are only going to be completely rid of XP in the next few months (and installing Windows 7).
Our product(s) are targeting Windows 7 (and Server 2K8/R2) as a minimum requirement. That means Win32/.Net which is supported on 7/8.x/10.
Unfortunately we can't migrate to U-API since we must support Windows 7.
What are the chances of U-API being back-ported? Probably nil. This will be MS's final hurdle to clear - the humongous installed base of W7. I suggest that until they "get it" and backport U-API to W7 their app store will continue to flounder.
I've been commenting on the missing back port to Windows 7 ever since 8 was announced, its so blinding obvious. Making it so that WinRT apps could only run on Windows 8 (but not desktop) was an incredibly naïve idea - why would I, as a developer, want to invest in developing for a new API until supporting systems have greater than 10% market share with good growth? Except in niche.
Its hard to believe Microsoft decision makers would be so stupid to make the same mistake again and introduce a Universal API that would be available on fewer than 5% of PCs for over a year when its just a stroke of a pen to approve free updates from 8 to 10.
On the other hand if foc upgrades is the plan why not say so and be done, why prevaricate and wind up users and developers alike to no possible benefit for the company. We can only assume some people in the company are playing corporate games - still not too late to dispose of them in the current round of layoffs Satya.
The average Joe is going to be confused by this name and think that they've missed something with the sudden jump from Windows 8 to 10. Seems a bit of a daft move too when Apple are just releasing the Gold Master of OS X 10.10 and Blackberry are giving a renewed push to their Blackberry 10 OS.
This was a good chance for a clean break for Microsoft, but there doesn't seem to be anything new or compelling here. It just looks like Windows 8 with the start screen cut in half and changed to the more familiar menu.
So they've got Metro UI apps running in Windows within the more traditional Desktop and they hope that this will be the OS that they can scale from Smartwatches / Phones all the way up to Servers...
While it will no doubt be a success in a business environment I think they may be fighting a losing battle when it comes to traditional users.
I've been messing around with running Android Apps in Chrome and it is pretty neat. Once that gets a bit more refinement and a official release they then have the potential to wipe a lot of Microsofts business out.
A Chromebook that can run Android apps, which can become a tablet and use those Android apps and syncs everything with your Android phone will be perfect for a lot of people and the OEMs won't have to pay to use ChromeOS
Running metro Apps on the Desktop just makes me think of running Android apps on the Chromebook, but Microsoft will struggle to get OEMs to compete on price and performance with Chromebooks.
I was expecting more from this version of Windows and while the listening to feedback thing sounds like a good idea in theory it is never going to fly unless Microsoft split their OS business in to 2 as you will have sysadmins / big businesses demanding more powerful features while any average punter who gets roped into to testing this will ask for simplicity and easy of use. Yep a great chance for Microsoft to go in two different directions missed I think and I expect we'll end up with another poor compromise
I've been kicking the tyres of Chrome apps, and I beleive this is the future, for consumers.
The installation, updating, and removal of an app just works, looks the same on every OS, and no more having to download binary blobs, worrying if they contain "potentially(??) unwanted software", discuised as legitimate software just because it has an EULA, apps hijacking your home and search pages, apps installing themselves in every crevice of your computer.
And from a developer point of view (and I have had ~15 years with MSDN), I found their offerings to be very good (almost exciting). If Tesco boost is on this christmas, I'll get one of these chromebooks.
People will not be confused by the numbers jump, years ago Motorola jumped from the 68040 CPU to 68060 CPU's 'cos the 050 CPU was found to have the same floating point bug in it as the Intel Pentiums - but instead of releasing it they just skipped a version. Microsoft have done the same thing here - Windows 8 was a disaster, 9 had planned to be more Windows 8 and more of the things that people hated about 8, and so 10 is admitting they made an error and are starting to listen to people.
I have Windows 8 on my computer and if it hadn't been for Start8 it would have been a disaster for me, totally unworkable on my two big screens, but after adding Start8 it's not too bad. I also have a number of customers who were really confused with Windows 8 when they first got it they kept calling me up, and once I put on Start8 for them the confusion subsided.
Most has already been said, nothing more I can add to some of the already solid given arguments, but there's one thing I'd still like to get off my chest. Aimed towards people who I had some discussions with in the past (some good, some annoying):
Told you so!
The whole start screen had "fail" written all over it, something which most people immediately realized, and here we finally got our proof. Here's not saying the start screen is utter crap mind you. It has potential, it can be made to work, but only in the right place.
I love the Metro environment on my (Windows) phone, it really works excellent there. IMO of course.
But not on my PC; puhlease....
SO, having that off my chest.
Amazing; they now bring an enhanced start menu to Windows 10. Am I the only only one who looked at that and wondered: "Gee, did they look at KDE recently?".
Because that's one of the things which I think KDE did very well: start menu sections (or whatever the official name is). One start menu, several sections which you can click. So basically several start menus rolled into one. I think that's impressive, even though I personally favour using XFCE4.
Has Microsoft been looking at Linux lately? It sure looks that way to me ;)
The changes really don't constitute a 1.0 release bump alone a 2.0, but at least they're moving things in the right direction. The form of the new start menu gels with what I was thinking it would be as well as putting metro apps onto the desktop.
The things I would be most fearful of is what Microsoft don't mention here - things like cloud storage, logon and so forth. We already saw in 8.1 how they aggressively pushed people to logon through their services and I could see that sort of thing expanding a lot with the OS pushing and cajoling people to buy/rent/use Microsoft backend stuff.
No shit!
These are the same genii who thought to designate the first version of Windows NT "version 3.1",* who counted "1, 2, 3, 95, 98 . . ." when designating versions of the original Windows, who followed version 2 of Word for Windows with version 6, and version 1 of Word for Mac with version 3, and so on.
* I've always been told that programmers and computer scientists start counting with zero, but apparently this isn't always the case!
Over on the Beeb they are saying that there's talk of making Windows 10 a subscription based OS. If this is true I assume there will still be a purchase up front option as well for a ludicrous amount of money. Going subscription only would be the thing that finally pushes me over to full time Linux use, to be honest I'd be there already if it was possible to run MS SQL under Linux.
Over all what I've seen of W10 looks ok. I use W8 at the moment and to be fair once I got over the whole "OMG what's happened" of the initial install it's much like using W7. The whole Metro thing is still a PITA but I hardy ever find I need to go in there. I managed to transition my parents over to W8 with no problems so it can't be that bad :-)
I managed to transition my parents over to W8 with no problems so it can't be that bad
I managed to transition most of my non-technical family/friends to Linux Mint or Chromebooks, while at the same time reducing the tech support time I provide to them, so what point are you trying to make?
While I can't do without Windows (due to my career), I found no reason I should inflict it upon those I care about.
Just built a new desktop using W7. I think I'll stick with it until 2020 as W10 looks on the face of it like a half-assed attempt to merge W7 and W8 in a panic response to a predictable user revolt. Why this obsession to do everything with one OS anyway? You just end up with an OS that does lots of things poorly but nothing well, full of lots of obstructions, annoyances and background bloat that I for one don't want. Still, as long as you can consign all those damn tiles to the recycle bin it may have possibilities I suppose.....
"Why this obsession to do everything with one OS anyway? You just end up with an OS that does lots of things poorly but nothing well, full of lots of obstructions, annoyances and background bloat that I for one don't want."
I have to agree with this. Although I get Microsoft's reasoning, It seems to me MS can be setting itself up for trouble here. You know the saying, "Jack of All Trades, Master of None".
The question that Microsoft have failed to answer pretty much ever since Windows XP is: Why should an enterprise upgrade?
So Windows XP died and enterprises reluctantly rolled out Windows 7 which is, I believe, a worthy successor but still cost enterprises tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. So - why would they want to do that again for Windows 10 were it not for planned obsolescence?
And is Redmond's strategy really just to keep pumping out that same kernel with a few tweaks to the UI?
What was wrong with the Win95 interface ?
Sensible start menu, file manager and apps that all had a similar menu along the top, they even had a popup command line interface.
They could have spent the last 20 years fixing the BSOD and optimising the kernel, by now it would be light quick and portable.
Again...no Object Store? No metadata management for data objects stored under the file system? Are we still using...gasp....raw files?
What is it about current OS releases that really seem to just be ever more incremental updates on UIs, with few real changes in core functionality and usage? When do we get a proper 21st century desktop operating system that actually embodies computer science concepts that have been talked about for years to make OSes more modern, but have not been delivered?
This is particularly galling on the data storage side - with HBase, HDFS, and even MongoDB showing off alternative methods to store files, data, and objects, why is such functionality not native to the OS, and exposed directly to all apps via standard APIs? Instead...we get yet more 1960s file technology. We should be far angrier at that than whether or not there are tiles on the desktop...
I'm on Win 10 as I write with an underpowered Win8 Tablet I have moved on from (for a Surface - which blows away the toy iPad). Microsoft finally has it right. It's already remarkably stable for a first release of a preview. The OS is the best of Windows that you knew through 7 while keeping the best parts of 8. You want a tablet with actual computing power (not to mention a pen - you can WRITE notes) you got it. You want your familiar desktop, you got it. Use the keyboard, toss it away and the pen is still something Steve Jobs never got. So laugh now, while you can. The final trick is for MS can get the Core processor into the weight and form factor of the iPad and long imagined Dyno-Book is here. You might want to try this thing before you dog it - and PS I'm no MS fan but every few releases they get it right and this looks like it will be thee most right.
Windows 10 looks nice, but will those of us that were scammed by Microsoft into buying Windows 8 might be offered either a free or cheaper upgrade option.
That multiple desktops idea looks great too although why do I seem to recall that same feature being used in Puppy many years go.
The number skip from 8 to 10 has been done many times before in computing - Motorola went from the 68040 CPU's to the 68060's when they found the same floating point fault in the 68050's that Intel had in their pentiums (only difference was Intel tried to cover it up, where as Motorola fixed it).
Boy MS just can't let go of the fact that people see tiles as a complete waste of space. That and the enterprise doesn't want live tiles nor does it want the "Store" option anywhere near employee's in any way shape or form. On a desktop tiles just get in the way. On a tablet yeah sure maybe tiles are ok and on a phone sure but not on a desktop.
Windows 7 and it's start menu still looks better than Windows 10.
Also has anyone noticed that 802.1x authentication doesn't seem to work right in Windows 10? I'm just not getting it to work correctly with user authentication.
"When the screen is detached to become a tablet, a prompt pops up asking the user if they want to switch to tablet mode."
Brilliant. And I suppose if I were to click on the Yes button, would a prompt pop up to ask me if I want to click the Yes button? And if I move the mouse to click that second Yes button, will another prompt pop up to ask me if I want to use the mouse?
I really hope so cos I can't get used to these computer thangs without all these popups asking me to do what I already appear to be doing. I'm already quite confused about how there isn't a popup asking me if I want to post this comment. Alt-Y.
Windows 10? I've been using it for quite some time. Windows 8 with freeware Classic Start Menu and some minor tweaking of Microsoft's atrocious program menu groups, and Voila! All the functionality of Windows 10 with all the tried & true performance of Windows 7, plus the speed & reliability increases of Windows 8.
Without, I might add, all the irritating, unneeded, performance-dwindling "Flair" created for the mindless.
That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. At least until Microsoft, Apple, Linux, etc., can make their computers as reliable and simple to use as mine is.
Now, excuse me while I cross over to my other monitors and manipulate the 14 programs I've got running.