Ok I've actually sat down for 12 hours with Windows 8 now both on a 1998 ThinkPad T61 and a 2011 Sony VPCJ1 multitouch desktop.
Firstly some background - I've been using Windows since 1992. I've spent 15 years now developing software on the platform, both desktop and web applications in C++ and C#. I also have a Windows Phone.
I actually don't understand why people are complaining about metro and the use cases as I think they are fine.
The way a Windows machine tends to get used these days is that you drag all the apps you want to the taskbar and that is it. Occasionally, you would benefit from some desktop gadgets such as weather etc and occasionally you use global search. If I look at my taskbar, I have:
Windows Explorer, RDP, IE, Firefox, Zune, Excel, Word, VS2010, sticky notes, PuTTY.
What I do on my phone is simply: Messaging, occasionally web browsing and checking the weather.
After 12 hours of Windows 8, I've settled into the following usage pattern that I actually find satisfying:
1. Metro has: weather, news, music on it.
2. Desktop has: everything else.
I spend a lot of time at (2) but switch to (1) if I want a quick status update of the world, which is simply a press of the windows key away and is just there! Also if i want to search for something, I use metro.
Otherwise I use it just like Windows 7.
The intended use case is not to throw metro at the desktop users - it's to augment it.
I don't get all the complaining! I actually like it.
I think you are right. Microsoft seem to occupy the land of the damned if you do and damned if you don't. If this was apple, I get the feeling that people would be gushing all over it.
This article makes a great point which I think more people should understand: "[...] when a platform makes a major transition, people are forced to stop and reconsider their purchase. They're going to have to learn something new anyway, so for a brief moment they are open to possibly switching to something else. The more relearning people have to do, the more willing they are to switch".
This is exactly right. I'd love to switch to a Mac instead of my Windows, mostly because so many people do it and enjoy it, and their hardware is better.
But I've got so many customizations and so much history with my Windows, that it will literally take me months of work converting everything, and there are some things I'm not even sure can be converted.
But if Windows 8 will break half the things anyway, I'll really have no reason not to change to a new OS.
I've had Macs around the house for personal stuff for a few years now. We have a Mac mini hooked up to the TV for watching stuff, and after putting an SSD and bumping up the ram it flies better than when I first bought it. No reason to upgrade, everything I ask it to do it does just fine.
I recently bought a top-end 15" Macbook pro for work and put 16Gb of RAM in it. Despite the positive experience with the Mac mini, I feel like I'm sometimes fighting the MBP to get what I want done. I realise that this is probably me not doing things the Mac way, but it is mildly annoying to say the least.
If Windows 8 is (as expected, and it was when I tested the consumer preview) similarly different, your point is absolutely spot on.
I'll keep the MBP mainly because of the hardware quality, but if I was buying it again I'd definitely reconsider - both against because of the differences, and for because of Windows 8 (and the touchpad).
I switched a couple years ago. I started my switch with hackintoshing my vostro laptop. I did buy a copy of snow-leopard, but even so, it was probably not strictly legal.
Being relatively early in the hackintosh scene, a few things didn't work. Mainly the graphics weren't accelerated so all the nice animations in OSX looked crappy. But it afforded me the opportunity to use it as my main OS for a while before commiting to anything expensive.
I rather liked the OS and had started iPhone developing. As my vostro laptop got long in the tooth, I chose to upgrade to a MacBook Pro.
Still using that laptop today, in spite of two or three newer generations of apple laptops coming out. It's been very nice, for 32 months, no hardware issues. Last week, I've had a weird glitch where it switches to optical output when I remove headphones, and this has been annoying. I'll take it into the genius bar this weekend maybe.
Probably the nicest thing about it is that it hasn't felt it's age. In my daily usage, I doubt the experience would be any better on newer hardware than mine is now. Gaming would probably be another matter, but I generally just do casual gaming.
However, the infamous Walled Garden has been encroaching on the OSX space. That is something to give serious consideration to. It gives me pause. I've been thinking about giving linux a go again. Ubuntu has been giving me grief in vmware, but I'm going to see about dual booting.
> However, the infamous Walled Garden has been encroaching on the OSX space. That is something to give serious consideration to. It gives me pause. I've been thinking about giving linux a go again. Ubuntu has been giving me grief in vmware, but I'm going to see about dual booting.
You can have the best of both worlds and run Linux on your MBP. You're in luck, too, since the new Fedora release supports EFI booting directly from both DVDs and USB disks. Since your MBP is 32 months old, all your hardware will most likely work out of the box with Linux.
Early this year I bought an MBP exclusively for running Arch. Things have been absolutely wonderful. Top notch Apple hardware + an amazing selection FOSS software. What else can a geek ask for?
Just in case you ever have to turn off someone's Windows 8 computer - best memorize this ...
"In the Metro interface, hover your mouse over the Zoom icon that appears in the lower right corner of the screen. The Charms bar should then pop up displaying several icons. Moving your mouse up the screen will reveal the names of each icon, including Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings. Click the Settings icon and then the Power Icon. You should see three options: Sleep, Restart, and Shut down. Clicking Shut down will close Windows 8 and turn off your PC."
Yep, Microsoft buried the shutdown option in the settings menu!
When you see one of these at your local retailer, for a laugh ask the sales clerk to shut it off.
To be entirely fair, the normal way of shutting the computer down now is to use the start menu. Of course, everybody is used to it, but they did have to get used to it at some point. And they did. So it isn't entirely impossible.
When I used OS X for the first time, I couldn't figure out how to do basic things either. In fact, as it stands now, I am not entirely certain how to shut off an OS X computer either.
Happily I'm on Linux and everything makes sense :).
Of course, everybody is used to it, but they did have to get used to it at some point
Not really. Think back to your first encounter with Windows 95. What was the first thing you noticed, the first time you opened the Start menu? The fact that the bottom-most line read "Shut down" is probably high on your list. That was all you needed to know, and you certainly didn't have to "get used to it."
Interfaces need to be highly intuitive, or else highly discoverable. It doesn't sound as if Metro qualifies as either.
Happily I'm on Linux and everything makes sense :)
Unless you're running Gnome 3, where you have to log out then shut down, since there's no shutdown button while logged in. That's one thing Unity has over Gnome 3.
Also, I was being a little bit facetious. The reason everything makes sense is because I've customized everything, so I'm the one who placed the shutdown button where it is.
Even so, I'm lazy so I use reboot/halt from the command line instead of the buttons anyhow.
> I am not entirely certain how to shut off an OS X computer either.
Open up the terminal and type:
sudo halt
(NOTE: In Linux, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD, the man pages state that 'halt -p' should be used for a power off, but the OS X man page states that it's just 'halt' with no -p tag available.)
Yes, that would work. That's actually how I sometimes shut down my Linux machine, although it doesn't even require sudo.
I was talking from the UI/mouse-driven perspective. I'm not entirely sure where the shutdown option/menu on OS X is. Of course, I regularly don't use macs, so it shouldn't be a surprise--it's not like I have a computer which I just don't know how to shut down!
If they bothered to remove the Start button, why are they still keeping the same UX paradigm...especially in Metro? It makes no sense. The whole UI and UX actually looks like a mess to me, and it's very inconsistent and much more complex than it should be.
Yes. They should have saved the start button and tried to keep familiar concepts that they could then later slowly phase out in future releases.
One way that they could have gradually introduced Metro in a way that would keep familiarity of use to old users and almost total backwards compatibility would have been to replace the desktop with Metro (i.e. the wallpaper and desktop icons). They could have then kept the start menu and panel[1] at the bottom (and perhaps default it to have auto-hide on). They could have even allowed windows to open up over the metro tiles, and then the familiar 'Show Desktop' button on the panel would be how you get back to the full metro screen.
There wouldn't be two modes and they'd still have a very similar appearance to what Windows 8 actually looks like today without having to confuse people used to the old way of doing things. The tablet and mobile version would then not have the start menu and panel, but everything else would look and feel the same.
They could even have implemented it in a similar way to their ancient 'Active Desktop' technology, except fullscreen and without the traditional icons.[2]
[1] I'm using the Linux term here. I really have no clue what they call the bar at the bottom because I haven't used Windows regularly for many years.
I can definitely see some benefits of keeping the taskbar/panel on screen, but I think they were primarily motivated by the belief that designing the interface around apps being fullscreen would be more attractive to developers. The bottom edge is pretty important screen real estate both for touch (appbar) and mouse (scrollbar, zoom).
The start menu had to go because Windows 8 is Microsoft's big gamble to jump into the tablet market. A start menu doesn't make much design sense on a tablet or smartphone and they're clearly trying to out-design Apple with Windows 8.
I shutdown my MacBook Pro about once a month (mostly for OS updates). Simply closing the screen puts the laptop into sleep and opening flawlessly brings up the OS multiple times per day. Perhaps MS is aiming for a similar os/hardware symbiosis with their next OS iteration which would justify hiding shutdown option.
> Yep, Microsoft buried the shutdown option in the settings menu!
I never shut down my phone or my tablet. They are always connected and always ready to go. Both of those are computers. That's what Microsoft is going for. If they can break the "shutdown habit", this will be a positive development for them.
I don't recall when I last used the start menu to turn off the computer. I have a button on my laptop and pressing it hibernates the computer. Very handy.
Putting it in Settings is a bit odd, but I would point out that the whole first three and a half sentences of those instructions become one quick continuous motion once you've done it a few times. (It's more like "swing the mouse pointer around a right hand corner and click Settings")
You can also find the power button by signing out. Swipe up again to see the login screen and the power button is at the bottom right. It's still not as easy to find as before and I ended up finding it by accident. An accidental right-click swiped the screen up and there it was.
Totally ignoring all the specific changes which are very debatable I think the biggest challenge Microsoft has is a significant number of PC owners are already on the fence about buying another PC. The one they have works OK and they have shifted a lot of their day-to-day computing to SmartPhones. Quite a few of them are already at least casually interested in the iPad instead of a new PC. When they look at Windows 8 they have to decide if it's worth investing the time to learn something new in an era when they are using their PC less than ever. It's kind of the perfect storm with a higher barrier of entry and a lower value proposition to the consumer in the end. Tablets are a different situation though I think it's also a huge uphill battle for different reasons.
The scary part is they have unintentionally interweaved the fate of all their different platforms together. If Windows 8 is a huge flop on the desktop who's going to buy a Windows 8 tablet or a Windows Phone? The Metro UI is unique enough that the taint of failure will stick to it. Metro could become the new Clippy. The mere sight of it could make people recoil in horror. No one could exactly tell you why they hated MS Bob, Clippy or Windows Vista. They just knew you were supposed to hate it because everyone hates it. If that happens with Metro Microsoft is looking at another 2-3 year 'reboot' and I just don't think they have that much slack left to work with.
The scary part is they have unintentionally interweaved the fate of all their different platforms together
Scary, but completely intentional.
Windows 8 is Microsoft's last chance to effectively leverage their large PC marketshare into the "post-PC" world of smartphones and tablets. They must aggressively push Metro onto their Desktop users, and hope that once Windows users make a significant investment in the Metro environment on their desktop, they'll naturally choose Metro Tablets and eventually Metro Phones.
And they obviously feel that they do not have the luxury of time. We've never seen them push so much change in so little time.
But if Windows users hate Metro, the word "Metro" will become as toxic as Vista and Zune in the minds of the public. And as we saw with Vista, it really doesn't take much for Microsoft's traditionally conservative Windows users to turn hostile. The transition from XP to Vista was a baby step compared to Metro.
Windows 8 is a crossroads for Microsoft. Do they follow Apple and become an important force in consumer computing and technology, or do they follow IBM and become a profitable but largely invisible business software vendor?
I started off agreeing with you and then things kind of veered off in the other direction.
Yes, the "post-PC" world is what Microsoft is betting on right now. Though I think it should be kept in mind that the launch window between Windows 8 and the Windows 8 tablet isn't going to be very large and while the there will plenty of rancor in the tech industry over the transition, a large percentage of (and maybe even the majority) of casual PC users' first experience with Metro and Windows 8 will most likely be on a tablet (just so we're clear, casual users are people who use computers to mostly go on the internet, check email, do non-tech related small business work like word processing, listen to music and game). It feels to me that this is a very important distinction.
Those who have been afraid to make the jump to an iPad due to the unfamiliarity of the concept will now have a mid-ground to bridge that gap. They have a familiarity with Windows bridged by a new "tablet-like" interface. These people didn't do much work under-the-hood work on their computers, even in the simplest terms, so the lack of familiar control panel mechanisms won't be an issue. So long as the tablet version works, they'll be cool with it.
I also want to add that Microsoft can't follow what Apple has done because they aren't a hardware company. Apple has become what they are based purely on the merits of their hardware manufacturing capabilities, methods, models and the genius/lucky vision of a handful of men. Microsoft doesn't have this luxury and really that is the greatest risk facing Windows 8, because they're going to have a hard time putting together a tablet that's financially competitive with the iPad. Especially with the iPad 2's rumored price drop for the holiday season.
"Post-PC" doesn't mean "sans-PC". PCs will be around for years to come. So if MS wants a big chunk of the future why not building Metro specifically for non-PC units like smartphones, tablets or even TVs and keep Windows for the PC.
Apple did the same thing, they didn't force iOS down the Mac users throat.
> Quite a few of them are already at least casually interested in the iPad
Keep in mind, though, that the median household income in the US is roughly $50k. Apple doesn't make blue collar products. iPads are on the spendy side for a typical family, and they're probably less likely to buy one than a fully functional computer.
Many families have computing needs that are completely satisfied by an ipad, especially if they are in a lower income bracket (that are less likely to be doing PC-required tasks). They are still likely to get a cheap laptop since chatting is much easier with a real keyboard, but something like a Transformer begins to look very good.
MS really screwed up with vista and hardware, now they will do the same damn thing with software, which will piss people off IMMENSELY and cause people to stay with win 7 or xp. There are still quite a few small businesses who are running XP and office 2003 or 7 and office 2007. What is Joe in accounting going to do when he is confronted with metro and its shocking minimalism, office is undoubtedly re-designed AGAIN, there isn't any start menu, and when he is used to old style MS office and XP or in the first place...
There are many, many people out there who stare at excel/word/outlook/powerpoint all day as the main function of their job. Not having to re-learn any of the interface is a damn good thing, and OSX is not too widely used in most places outside the usa/1st world. If MS keeps at it we might actually see a worthwhile migration to LibreOffice. IMO Office and enterprise-consulting and possibly gaming are the pillars holding MS up these days. With Metro they are doing a good job of trying to royally piss off business customers/it. Remember that most users are too lazy or stupid to go to addons in firefox or chrome and type in "adblock plus" or similar to completely remove ads, which would destroy the vast majority of web companies including Google/FB/Yahoo.
The only other avenue is college students and younger getting hooked on new MS Metro offerings and deciding that MS cloud office of MS metro office will be the new standard that the expect when they get jobs. This isn't going to happen tho, because appple already has the non-ms market and actually has MS office on the Mac already.
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If MS rolls out Metro in its full swiss design-language glory it will actually be more different and more difficult to use than OS X or kde/xfce. It doesn't just warp the desktop metaphor like gnome and unity are trying to do, it throws it in the trash and replaces it with a smarthphones home screen. This is unbelievably stupid and we may still see the year of the linux desktop xD. Or more likely is that they will realize that their largest customers including the government/military/accounting firms/everything that actually builds things (coders included) want the desktop metaphor to remain for another ten years, and pull a "downgrade" option.
If you define China as 1st world... Apple is doing very well here (in China), even with its computers. It used to be Macbooks were rare, then they became fashionable but buyers would still put pirated XP on them. Today, most of those buyers are actually running OSX, they just got used to it through their iPhones/iPads. Other non-1st world countries I frequent seem very similar.
This only applies to the middle class, of course, and most people in China are not middle class. At least the kids here aren't getting hooked on google docs like back in the states; the GFW takes care of that!
Windows 8 was planned as a consumer-focused release from the start of the project, due to the expectation that businesses wouldn't be ready for a new version after just moving to 7 anyway. They really aren't counting on widespread enterprise uptake, and never were.
The thing is, consumers live in the browser these days. In all the discussions and debates about Metro, the most important factor of all is being left out: what value does Windows 8 add to applications? How will it reverse the trend that's currently leading toward browser-centric usage patterns?
Even if someone actually wants to run iOS-style weather and stock-price apps on their PC for some reason, they don't need a new OS to do it.
Upgrading to Windows 8 would be like trading your car for a minivan because you want a new radio.
MSFT is a business, and they need new releases to generate revenue.
You look at Metro and it feels like it's change for change's sake.
I wish I could just pay my $100/yr subscription for Windows 7 with minor tweaks here and there vs. MSFT lumping me into "we must win the consumer computing war".
You've already got me MSFT, now leave me alone and don't move my cheese dammit.
Here and there I read, a lot of people talking positively of Metro UI; I watch again and again; I find it so ugly and cheap that I am surprised; am I really too far away from the average taste. In short, I bet Metro will be a catastrophe for MS.
Having diddled around with Windows 8 for work, the interface is not as bad for a keyboard-oriented user as the author makes it out to be.
Examples:
Win + R still brings up Run. From there, all of our familiar .msc adn .cpl are avalable. Run "control" brings up the control panel. Keyboard shortcuts using the Win key haven't changed.
Start menu search functionality is available with the same keypresses as in Windows 7 and Vista. Only the appearance is different. Win key + the first letters of the program brings up a menu on the right side of the screen showing matching programs. Enter key opens, or use up and down arrows to select. A keyboard-oriented user will need to make no changes to their practice.
Shutdown is not complicated at all. Alt-F4 brings up a shutdown/restart/etc. dialog.
I'm an experienced Windows user, the type of person the author believes will have problems, and I had zero difficulty doing what I wanted with Windows 8. For a mouse- or touchpad-oriented user, some difficulty is foreseeable, but for anyone who knows their way around keyboard commands, it's easy.
>Imagine 90% of the world's computer-using population seeing those tiles every day. How long before they click on one of them out of curiosity? And if they like that one, how many more will they try? Picture Microsoft pushing new tiles into Windows 8 whenever it wants to compete with another web service.
That's what the DoJ sued MS for in the 90s - illegal bundling of products (IE) with its legal monopoly (Windows) to gain a monopoly in the other products. I don't know that this is valid strategy for MS to try again.
The main screen is only for launching applications.
Seems like apps are becoming the new files. Why are all these interfaces emphasizing app launching so heavily? Most users spend far more time navigating among running apps than launching new ones. Why are we still, in 2012, so enamored of these artificial data firewalls?
As clunky as Android's intent system can be in practice, the emphasis on tasks rather than apps is absolutely the way forward. Most users barely understand the difference between an "app" and a window on their screen anyway and the app-centric model makes it much harder for them to integrate the chunks of information they need to complete their task.
What you've said is funny because your words could just as easily have come from a Windows 8 PR release. They love tasks! They're all about them! Have you used Metro? The main screen isn't just for launching applications. Tiles can be simple app-openers, or they can display information, or they can link to "hubs", or they can be file/website shortcuts. And then, within individual apps or hubs, the contracts system allows fluid movement and interaction between different apps and hubs. The Metro model is the very opposite of artificial data firewalls.
Both Google and Apple went a smarter way. They just made two different operating systems, one for touch and one for PC. What Microsoft is doing will confuse people only, the touch OS should have a different name.
I haven't tampered with it in real life yet, but I don't really understand why people think Metro is visually attractive.
It appears to be a grid of icons in two different sizes, laid out at random, with the Microsoft app icons being blocks of unpleasant solid color, with a white image in front of it.
It's great that these icons can display live content, but the immediate appearance is ugly to me.
> It appears to be a grid of icons in two different sizes, laid out at random
You can change the layout. You can also choose icon size based on whether the larger icon is more useful due to 1) increased visibility, and/or 2) increased space for notifications.
Metro is also a lot more than just the start screen. It's a a style that describes the entire platform. It's clean and modern, it's content instead of chrome, it's crisp and legible, and it's free of the pseudo-physical elements (whether leather or glass or metal or whatever) that have become so common in GUIs.
> with the Microsoft app icons being blocks of unpleasant primary color, with a white image in front of it.
Obviously, tastes differ. White on solid color is what basic metro tiles look like, though, and the offenders are the parties who shove their faux-3D logo into the tile without adapting it to the platform. This is no better than app developers who do a half-assed port of an iOS app to Android.
I thought, "this has to be a Microsoft employee", right after I read this:
>It's a a style that describes the entire platform. It's clean and modern, it's content instead of chrome, it's crisp and legible, and it's free of the pseudo-physical elements
It sounds like something straight out of a marketing brochure.
" ... It's clean and modern, it's content instead of chrome, it's crisp and legible ..."
I'm also an MS employee, and I really hate it when I see fellow MS employees talking like this on forums. It's soulless corporate marketing jargon, devoid of content.
The link you posted is good and helpful, but it doesn't matter, because the preceding paragraph marked you as a phony in the eyes of the current audience.
Meh, I think what I said was accurate. I specifically did not throw out the phrases "fast and fluid" or "design language" because I was trying to express how I feel, and not simply repeat the marketing material.
> White on solid color is what basic metro tiles look like, though, and
> the offenders are the parties who shove their faux-3D logo into the
> tile without adapting it to the platform.
Why didn't Microsoft anticipate this and require that icons be plain white silhouettes on top of a solid color when placed on a tile? That way, the third-party applications would match the Microsoft applications in appearance.
Actually, isn't there still time to fix this now that it's apparent that it will mess with the user experience in a major way and degrade the basic aesthetics of the main screen?
If you don't like the app's tile you can unpin it - personally I like having some variety to my start screen.
It would be pretty hard to enforce a lot of visual uniformity considering that live tiles are meant to surface content, including things like photos. You'd have to enforce rules on what people's friends can look like.
Ironically, I struggled to read this article on a mobile device (iPhone) because it hijacks the horizontal swiping which occurs while I scrolled and kept redirecting me to a different article.
This thing sounds like a nightmare. Speaking as a Windows power user, they'll get my Windows 7 when they pry it from my etc etc etc.
(Seriously, people. Windows 7 is generally recognised to be the first decent to good Windows OS in a long, long while. And now MS are junking that? Aargh.)
Looks like it's backup plan time.
What's the landscape like from a "moving to Linux" point of view these days? I'm specifically asking from a 3D animator's POV - historically one of the professions that has the hardest time getting away from Windows. How's support for 3D Studio Max, Maya, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects et al?
> What's the landscape like from a "moving to Linux" point of view these days?
It really depends on the applications you need. There are studios out there that run everything on Linux. Maya works fine on Linux, but Adobe products do not run at all.
Maya works fine on Linux, but Adobe products do not run at all.
Gotta wonder if that's about to change. Adobe needs more friends these days. If there's even the slightest indication that Windows 8 is going to prompt any sort of migration to "Linux on the desktop," then smart ISVs will have people working 24/7 on the ports.
Sample size of one here, but if I could reasonably easily get the Adobe Production Suite, 3DSMax, and a couple of other pieces of unique 3D software to run on Linux, I'd probably move as and when Windows 8 became otherwise inevitable.
Yes, I actually hate Windows, but have a Windows 7 machine on my desk (along with Ubuntu 12.04 and Mac OSX 10.8), and I find I actually prefer the Windows box for everything except sysadminning. I am kind of amazed at how good Windows 7 is.
I assume corporate and power users (of desktops) will stay with Windows 7, and then Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Windows 7 SP n will merge in 3-4 years into the real next Windows.
Yeah, I've definitely felt odd about saying this for a long while, but Windows 7 really is, actually, a good OS. It's not quite a shiny as OSX or as configurable as Linux, but it does what I need an OS to do - it Just F---ing Works.
Didn't Microsoft see the elephant in the room? The Metro interface will never work with desktop PCs equipped with (vertical) touchscreens: it's very fatiguing. From WikiPedia: "the human arm held in an unsupported horizontal position rapidly becomes fatigued and painful, the so-called 'gorilla arm'"
Also quoted from there:
"It is often cited as a prima facie example of what not to do in ergonomics. Vertical touchscreens still dominate in applications such as ATMs and data kiosks in which the usage is too brief to be an ergonomic problem."
I've used and supported Windows PC's and Macintosh's since DOS 3.1 and Apple DOS so I do have some experience.
I tried W8 Consumer and W8 Pre-release and I still don't get it. Microsoft's fanatical effort to hide things from users borders on the psychotic. It's why OS X is superior - everything is right in front of you - apps and files.
Using W8 is like being schizophrenic - every switch from W7 to Metro is like being hit on the head with a hammer. Just trying to find the secret hidden spot on the desktop to pop-up W8 options is an effort I don't want to expend.
Just look at the example of OS X and the Dashboard. Initially it was hyped and promoted by Apple as the next amazing innovation where widgets would be the way people would interact with services. Although it's still there in Lion and even upcoming Mountain Lion, it's slowing dying on the vine, hardly mentioned any longer and widget development is just a whisper. Why is this - well IMHO it's because Dashboard isn't visible to the user - it's a mode that has to be toggled to be used. The lesson I take here is that the features of a UI have to be visible, exposed and easily accessed in order to be used.
To me, W8 flies in the face of decades of experience showing that a consistent and visible UI model is best for users.
Microsoft has such a huge installed base and such a grip on PC makers, all they really have to do to win is create an OS that doesn't suck so much that people who buy new PC's feel that they have to remove it before they can use them.
The lesson from Vista was all of the users trying to downgrade back to XP. Windows 7 was good enough that people just used it.
They don't have to make something great, or even good really. Just good enough.
And that's exactly why I think Windows 8 will fail to get traction. In my opinion it's worse than Vista for "normal PC users". It's even worse than Ubuntu for that matter, UI and UX wise, for a Windows user that is used to the Windows XP-7 UI paradigm.
It's not even the Windows XP-7 UI paradigm. Cosmetically, the look has been updated over the years, but the same fundamental elements have always been there: a start menu; a panel at the bottom with a start button, a clock, a place for minimized applications, etc.; a desktop where you can choose your own background and put shortcut icons; overlapping windows of familiar applications that have mostly stayed the same in their functions, such as Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office; and many other familiar features.
They've had this similar UI with minor, incremental changes for: Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
Yes, the familiar user interface that people are used to since August 1995 is going to suddenly change. If you're afraid of change, then it's been mostly comfortable for 17 years with Vista as the most radical makeover. Yes, there are now people who are adults who have used essentially the same graphical interface to their PC's OS for basically their entire life.
People didn't like Vista because it brought fairly radical change to many things, but to the average user who largely judges an application by its appearance, this is basically a completely different thing. It's basically Windows in name only to them. Microsoft might have had more success if they chose a different name and promoted it as a brand new OS to the average end user.
This is one massive psychology experiment done by Microsoft as to how far an average user can tolerate radical change. We'll see how it plays out. Based on some recent transitions in similar software with smaller user bases (e.g. the GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 transition), it probably isn't going to be pretty.
One of the inconsistencies that bothered me when I was testing it out was that you use a swipe motion to get to the login screen, but after that you're forced to use a scrollbar. I kept trying to drag the screen to get to the other apps and nothing would happen.
Your link is to blogspot.ca, this link is to blogspot.com.ar. To HN's software, they seem like two entirely different websites even though the content is identical.
There are a couple of big risks with Windows 8, I think.
On the one hand, they could easily alienate power users, who are not just important for their business but also for their influence. When the CTO of a big, tech savvy company decides he doesn't want Windows 8 on his or her own desktop, how will that influence their decisions with regards to the whole company? For myself, if Metro were out of the equation Windows 8 would be a sure purchase. There are lots of awesome features in there, like Hyper-V in the workstation OS (something they should have enabled in Win7) and lots of other cool stuff. But with Metro being shoved down my throat I might just wait and see.
Another big problem is that they are rebranding instead of creating a new brand. They are trying to drag the Windows architecture and brand onto the tablet platform. I think there's a very real risk that this will tarnish that attempt. One of the big reasons people have gravitated towards tablets is because they are so fundamentally different and lack all the traditional hassles of old style operating systems. I think there's a very real risk that the public perception of Windows 8 based tablets is that it's just new skin on old bones. That risk is heightened by the fact that such an assessment is substantially correct.
And by putting all of their eggs in one unified Metro basket (a classic "strategy tax" mistake) they risk failure on one leg dooming the other. If, hypothetically, Windows 8 tablet sales were very weak that could color people's impressions of the quality of Windows 8 as a desktop OS.
Unless they screw it up with more iOS UI "improvements" inside Mac OS. I don't think that many liked the new "improvements" in Mac Lion, and most just learned to live with it.
It's an absolute botch. It's Vista times 1000, and if Microsoft stays on this road it's downhill permanently.
The most important users are those who don't like childish interfaces. If you want a tablet-style skin, pay one of your developers 16 hours of overtime to make it, allow it as an option for mobile users, the end. You don't have to completely change everything for a damn skin.
Firstly some background - I've been using Windows since 1992. I've spent 15 years now developing software on the platform, both desktop and web applications in C++ and C#. I also have a Windows Phone.
I actually don't understand why people are complaining about metro and the use cases as I think they are fine.
The way a Windows machine tends to get used these days is that you drag all the apps you want to the taskbar and that is it. Occasionally, you would benefit from some desktop gadgets such as weather etc and occasionally you use global search. If I look at my taskbar, I have:
Windows Explorer, RDP, IE, Firefox, Zune, Excel, Word, VS2010, sticky notes, PuTTY.
What I do on my phone is simply: Messaging, occasionally web browsing and checking the weather.
After 12 hours of Windows 8, I've settled into the following usage pattern that I actually find satisfying:
1. Metro has: weather, news, music on it.
2. Desktop has: everything else.
I spend a lot of time at (2) but switch to (1) if I want a quick status update of the world, which is simply a press of the windows key away and is just there! Also if i want to search for something, I use metro.
Otherwise I use it just like Windows 7.
The intended use case is not to throw metro at the desktop users - it's to augment it.
I don't get all the complaining! I actually like it.