Have you missed the posts where someone states an opinion, and folks tell them they are wrong for having that opinion? Then go on to use misleading metrics to support their assertion that said opinion is wrong?
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If Windows 8 fails...
- Thread starter AndreRio
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wonderfield
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You didn't like the way this post read the first time?
Eman D. Rahym
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Oh brother. I've seen that same reaction from folks in Chinese restaurants the first time they were confronted by chopsticks. Does that mean chopsticks are bad? That you can't eat with chopsticks? Never mind that a billion or more people do that very thing every day. The fact that some people are confused and uncomfortable with them the first time they encounter them means that they must be bad!
Chopsticks are bad I tell you, bad, bad, bad! Why can't you understand my position?
The funny thing is - that is the same reaction all the people I've shown it to had. Seems about right to me.
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Eman D. Rahym
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Actually, that was my first reaction to Windows 8 as well. I remember sitting there thinking "how on earth do you shut the thing down?!?"
But you know what? I got over it. I figured out where the power widget was and how to use the hot corners and screen edges. That's called "learning," which I guess is a process more painful for some of us than others. Now I don't even have to think to call up the power widget, I've already got the gesture memorized.
Oddly enough, I've never had that reaction from anyone I've shown Windows 8. That's because I spend a few minutes with them, and it's never more than a few minutes, showing them how it works. There's no consternation or heartburn from the users I've worked with.
heatlesssun
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That's really the issue. I've not seen Windows 8 advocates ever say that average person without any kind of training whatsoever is going to instantly pick up Windows 8. But if you give people a decent 10 minute overview most should be able to get enough basics to work pretty well.
If the issue is that Microsoft can't change Windows and has to forever and always keep a nearly 20 year old UI to keep people from having learn anything then Windows is doomed anyway especially in the consumer space as people move to newer, more mobile and more interesting devices.
Eman D. Rahym
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It's as if Microsoft has been selling cars for years. While you can buy a shiny new '11 Microsoft today, the last time they redesigned the dashboard was in 1995. Sure, the dashboard has been tweaked and fiddled with since then, but it's still the same basic layout that you saw back in '95. The good news is that you could jump into an '11 Microsoft and drive it around without even looking at the manual. Despite all the upgrades it was still pretty much the same thing you've used for years. The bad news is that more and more gadgets are included with the '11s than were available back in '95. The old '95 design is getting increasingly cluttered and creaky. Heck, Microsoft's own research shows that the vast majority of drivers hardly use many of the features on the dash.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's market share has been stagnant for years. It's stock hasn't risen noticeably for years either. It's arch competitor, one it had to bail out with a stock purchase 15 years ago has grown into a Goliath and is frankly kicking Microsoft's butt. Microsoft has to do something or see itself fade into oblivion.
Microsoft decides for the 2012 model to break with 17 years of tradition and revamp the old dashboard into something modern and fresh. Gone are the old sliders and knobs for the HVAC controls. The old, push button AM/FM radio is now a thing of the past. These have all been replaced by a cool new touchscreen DVD/Nav system. At last Microsoft has a dashboard that looks like it belongs in the 21st Century.
This is good news, right? Well it's not all good. You see, as capable as the new touchscreen DVD/Nav system is, however thoroughly it spanks the old push button AM/FM radio, people were used to the old push buttons and are not sure what to do with the new touchscreen. For the new models you can't just jump in and drive them off the lot. You actually have to <Gasp!> look at the manual! Now mind you, the manual is less than a page long, but you do actually have to know what is in it to use the new, 2012 Microsoft.
Sorry folks. For this model year, if you want to be driving one of the '12 Microsofts, you'll actually have to knuckle down and learn something new. You probably won't have to for next year's model, or for the next few years after that, but this year you're going to have to bite the bullet. The good news is you will be able to get through the process in less than ten minutes, but that is some time you're going to have to invest. However, once done you'll have an experience that is much more flexible and advanced and capable than anything you've seen out of Microsoft before.
For all you diehards who say you cannot live without your push button AM/FM radios, well, sometimes life is hard. I guess you could try to pick up an '11 Microsoft for cheap. Or go to a third party shop and have them install a Brand X push button AM/FM radio into your new '12 Microsoft. Or, maybe, you could expand your view of the world just a little bit and learn to use the new touchscreen DVD/Nav system. It really can do pretty much everything the old push button AM/FM radio did, and many more things besides.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's market share has been stagnant for years. It's stock hasn't risen noticeably for years either. It's arch competitor, one it had to bail out with a stock purchase 15 years ago has grown into a Goliath and is frankly kicking Microsoft's butt. Microsoft has to do something or see itself fade into oblivion.
Microsoft decides for the 2012 model to break with 17 years of tradition and revamp the old dashboard into something modern and fresh. Gone are the old sliders and knobs for the HVAC controls. The old, push button AM/FM radio is now a thing of the past. These have all been replaced by a cool new touchscreen DVD/Nav system. At last Microsoft has a dashboard that looks like it belongs in the 21st Century.
This is good news, right? Well it's not all good. You see, as capable as the new touchscreen DVD/Nav system is, however thoroughly it spanks the old push button AM/FM radio, people were used to the old push buttons and are not sure what to do with the new touchscreen. For the new models you can't just jump in and drive them off the lot. You actually have to <Gasp!> look at the manual! Now mind you, the manual is less than a page long, but you do actually have to know what is in it to use the new, 2012 Microsoft.
Sorry folks. For this model year, if you want to be driving one of the '12 Microsofts, you'll actually have to knuckle down and learn something new. You probably won't have to for next year's model, or for the next few years after that, but this year you're going to have to bite the bullet. The good news is you will be able to get through the process in less than ten minutes, but that is some time you're going to have to invest. However, once done you'll have an experience that is much more flexible and advanced and capable than anything you've seen out of Microsoft before.
For all you diehards who say you cannot live without your push button AM/FM radios, well, sometimes life is hard. I guess you could try to pick up an '11 Microsoft for cheap. Or go to a third party shop and have them install a Brand X push button AM/FM radio into your new '12 Microsoft. Or, maybe, you could expand your view of the world just a little bit and learn to use the new touchscreen DVD/Nav system. It really can do pretty much everything the old push button AM/FM radio did, and many more things besides.
Amen.
YeuEmMaiMai
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Keep swinging on dem dere nuts.......
That's ok though MS wants to be more like Apple and this bastardation of an OS shows just how far they are willing to go to be like Apple... aka the walled garden.
So what is wrong with clicking on start and then seeing your program list there?
How is it faster to click on the lower right corner, power, and then shutdown vs start -> shutdown? My media PC happens to be tucked behind a cabnet so physical access is not something easily done.
How exactly is it useful to have this new start menu that does not function anything like the old one that has been so successfull since Win 95 with nice logical improvements?
How is it better to login to the PC and then have to launch your desktop instead of logging in and arriving straight to your desktop with the OPTION to launch metro?
heatlesssun
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It's not so much that Microsoft is trying to be like Apple, its that the walled garden has become a very popular platform for apps. And people with mobile devices have come to expect walled garden app stores.
What's so different about that compared to click in the corner? But it's hidden! Sure, but once you know to do it, it's no longer hidden.
Windows 8 is a hybrid, and the power options are not easy to access via touch.
The vast bulk of what people do in the Start Menu or Start Screen is launch apps, so the function for both isn't all that different a large amount of the time. And the Start Screen is also a notification center.
Why does this even matter? When a machine boots you see a Start Screen and then you click on a title to launch an app. What's on the desktop? Links to start apps. And really, this is only when a machine boots. If one is booting a machine so much where this behavior is seen much has more issues than the Start Screen at boot anyway.
Eman D. Rahym
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Keep on tilting at windmills...
Funny, I can still run all my old Windows programs just fine.
??? Isn't that what Windows 8 does? There is a nice, big tile for each program. How could you possibly miss them?
Whoa. An entire extra mouse click each day! Just how seldom do you click your mouse for this to be an issue? Are you really losing sleep over this?
Windows 8: zip my mouse cursor to the hot spot and click. Ah! All these easy to see tiles that I've organized into labeled groups. Zip my mouse cursor over to the tile for the program I want and click. Done.
Windows 7: Click on the Start Button, wait for the Start Menu to pop up. Click on "All Programs" and wait for the pop up menu to appear. Inch the mouse cursor over onto the pop up menu, try to remember the name of the folder I'm looking for and squint at the tiny text to see where it is. Inch the mouse cursor up to the folder, click on it and wait for the next pop up menu to appear and squint at more tiny text. Repeat until I've drilled down to where ever the program has been squirreled away, or realize I'm in the wrong folder and go back and start over.
Oh my gosh! Another extra mouse click! Oh, the humanity! Unless, you know, instead of clicking on the desktop icon you click on the tile for the program you want open whereupon the PC flips straight to the desktop (if you picked a desktop program) and launches it automatically. Congratulations! You just got that extra mouse click back! I know that will be a real relief for you.
I don't understand how so many otherwise intelligent and rational people can have such an irrational hate on for something that is so obviously a huge step forward over what came before it. There are legitimate problems with the design of windows 8, but start screen isn't one of them. Take the current start menu, I have a screen that for the time it was initially designed would be considered enormous, both in size and resolution (27" 1920/1200) at that time the size and shape of the start menu made a lot of sense. But on modern screens it takes up well under 15% of your typical monitors screen space, because of that if I need something that isn't in the top "10" list or one of the pinned things I have to do a substantial amount of scrolling to find it. The start screen on the other hand, requires substantially less scrolling because it shows many more things on screen at once. The only even remote downside to the start screen is the fact you can't see what underneath it, but I can't for the life of me think of a time where that would even matter.
Now like I said there are some legitimate bad parts to Windows 8, hot corners work really well for a single monitor but they fall apart pretty quickly with multi monitor setups because it can be hard to hit them without overshooting. Not an unsolvable problem though. Metro apps is another sore point for me, I love the idea of compatibility with rt and wp8 apps, but there just aren't that many apps i use that i deem being worthy of fullscreen, or even split screen, not to mention that again they don't play well with multi monitors. But then metro apps aren't even remotely a requirement, I can happily live my life never having the need to use them, if i find some cool ones that don't bother me too much then all the better if not, that's cool too.
Now like I said there are some legitimate bad parts to Windows 8, hot corners work really well for a single monitor but they fall apart pretty quickly with multi monitor setups because it can be hard to hit them without overshooting. Not an unsolvable problem though. Metro apps is another sore point for me, I love the idea of compatibility with rt and wp8 apps, but there just aren't that many apps i use that i deem being worthy of fullscreen, or even split screen, not to mention that again they don't play well with multi monitors. But then metro apps aren't even remotely a requirement, I can happily live my life never having the need to use them, if i find some cool ones that don't bother me too much then all the better if not, that's cool too.
IMO MS should have tried to replicate the frequently used program list in the Start Screen. A lot more people depend on that than you think. And it would have been easy enough to do, just dedicate a column in Start to frequently used apps, which would then populate based on usage.
Instead they are fixated on the idea that every single tile needs to be fixed so that users remember where it is, when the fact is almost no one is going to click tiles based on muscle memory. So now we lose an important function that has no equivalent.
Another thing they could've done is add an option to extend Metro to multiple monitors, so e.g. I could have Start show up on a 2nd monitor while I have a fullscreen metro app (e.g. Netflix) playing on monitor #1.
These are trivial things to implement if anyone had bothered to think of the OS as a desktop OS as well. Instead, all Metro apps are confined to 1 monitor, because the usage model is for a phone/tablet, which don't have multiple screens. And I'm sure someone is going to defend this with the 'they'll improve this in the next version'.
Instead they are fixated on the idea that every single tile needs to be fixed so that users remember where it is, when the fact is almost no one is going to click tiles based on muscle memory. So now we lose an important function that has no equivalent.
Another thing they could've done is add an option to extend Metro to multiple monitors, so e.g. I could have Start show up on a 2nd monitor while I have a fullscreen metro app (e.g. Netflix) playing on monitor #1.
These are trivial things to implement if anyone had bothered to think of the OS as a desktop OS as well. Instead, all Metro apps are confined to 1 monitor, because the usage model is for a phone/tablet, which don't have multiple screens. And I'm sure someone is going to defend this with the 'they'll improve this in the next version'.
heatlesssun
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Many people who like Windows 8 have mentioned the shortcomings of Metro on multiple monitors and Microsoft has mentioned the issue as well in its Windows 8 blog posts. So yes it's an issue. If it were trivial to address however they probably would have addressed it in this release.
So yes, it's an issue and will probably be addressed in the next year. That's not a defense but a statement of fact and what will likely happen.
Tsumi
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First implementation is almost never perfect. Heck, Apple didn't even get the ipod touch/iphone right the first time, it was the jailbreak community.
I'm pretty sure Metro on multiple monitors got postponed because they figure, correctly, that most people will use it only on tablets/touch laptops. It can't be that hard to implement, but the real cost of many such features lies in the testing and validation, which is a lot easier with just 1 monitor.
marcusj3000
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We have a winner!!!!!
Windows XP will last until 2020 possibly. They learned like a doctor that if you keep the patient(computer) well for too long you don't make money. Microsoft makes money if you get fed up with their last operating system crashing every second. If the operating system isn't crashing and all is well then why switch. This is why XP is still alive 
Inate8
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The tiles for "non-app" short cuts are abso-fucking-lutely ugly and tiny and make using the Modern UI even worse.
If your start menu takes time to "pop up" then you have issues setting up a computer...
PS. I'm a full time user of W8 because I enjoy the slight performance gains I've seen by using it. Just wanted to comment because your post makes you look like a fucking retard who doesn't know how to optimize your PC usage.
I currently have Windows 7 on my computers. Windows 8 doesn't appear to be providing anything I particularly need at present so I don't see the necessity in spending money to upgrade.
Likely the next time I get a new operating system is when I buy a new computer. Most likely in another 3-4 years. Linux and OS X aren't likely options. I do a lot of computer gaming, primarily on big-name titles that aren't likely to be found on either OS. Perhaps by the time I go to buy a new computer, that will have changed, but I'll have to wait and see.
Likely the next time I get a new operating system is when I buy a new computer. Most likely in another 3-4 years. Linux and OS X aren't likely options. I do a lot of computer gaming, primarily on big-name titles that aren't likely to be found on either OS. Perhaps by the time I go to buy a new computer, that will have changed, but I'll have to wait and see.
Eman D. Rahym
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How do you know I'm not a fucking retard who doesn't know how to optimize my PC usage and not just someone who looks like one? I mean, I actually like the new Start Screen and have configured mine so that it's more useful to me than the Start Menu was. That's got to count against me, right?
However, fairness does force me to admit that YOU ARE CORRECT and that I WAS WRONG about the Start Menu taking time to pop up when I mouse over it. It's been months since I was on my Windows 7 partition and I was going by the behavior of a toolbar I made that points at my Start Menu folder. For some reason that toolbar does take a second or so to populate the pop up windows in it when I mouse over them, at least initially. I rebooted into my Windows 7 partition (and boy, was there a backlog of Windows updates clamoring to be installed) and when using the Start Menu the response is nearly instantaneous. My mistake. Again, YOU WERE CORRECT AND I WAS WRONG. Feel better now? If so, I'll go back to looking like a fucking retard. (Not that I ever stopped.)
Eman D. Rahym
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I'm not even really thinking about getting a Windows 8 tablet, but I have to admit that I thought this ad for the Surface was pretty cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8mSckyoAMHg
heatlesssun
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This came a few days ago, seems like Walt Mossberg actually likes Windows 8 overall and I have to admit that he seems to have a very fair view of it, his criticisms I think are valid: http://allthingsd.com/20121016/windows-pushes-into-the-tablet-age/
Are you kidding?
Horrible drivel. How about showing us the functions not a fucking dance video.
Apple sure as hell can advertise better the Microsoft.
Such a creative insult, of course you could call anybody a nut swinger for X, it's nothing but a generic, vapid comment.
Yea, that's always a possibility. It's also a possibility that that is where the market is going and what the market wants, so MS wants to provide to that market. But who needs intelligent market analysis when we can spam 'nut swinger' and 'copy cat' like 3rd graders.
Takes more clicks to start each application, so what's wrong with clicking the start screen hot spot and seeing all your apps that you can launch in one click (after opening the start screen.)
That is a rare function, not something users are always going to be using throughout their work day, but yes it does take another click. But since when do you care about extra clicks? Anyway, you could always make a short-cut to "shutdown /s" and pin it to your start screen if it's that big of a deal for you.
How is that any kind of useful metric? It does not matter if it's better, it just needs to be like Windows 95 in your opinion? Is that what you think an OS should be like, like forever, with no regards to making it better, just keeping it like Windows 95?
What are you going to do at your desktop? Probably most every user is going to want to launch a program, and the desktop is one click away if you just like to sit and stare at an empty desktop. Geez, this whole thread would be a rich source of 'first world problems' meme material if someone was so inclined...
Eman D. Rahym
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Why so serious?
What's wrong with people having some fun?
Besides, one of the key features of the Surface is the available detachable keyboard/screen cover. Why not make an energetic, memorable, fun to watch video that emphasizes that differentiator? People are going to assume that one tablet can do pretty much what any another tablet can do: take pictures and run apps. The challenge is to show that your tablet can do something useful that the competition can't. In the context of today's market place the clear subtext of that ad is "Let's see the iPad do this!"
TechLarry
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When have customer complaints meant shit to Microsoft ?
TechLarry
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Wow...
How about complaints about Vista resulting in Windows 7? In fact there are so many instances I know of personally without even researching the subject, that it's a ridiculous question, obviously meant to get people more emotional and less logical.
heatlesssun
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So exactly how does one listen to customers? Do exactly what every anonymous post on the Internet says? Furthermore, does every customer actually know exactly what it is they won't. Take the modern UI. Some people have looked at it and said they don't like it and want the old UI back. But we've not seen all the Metro apps and new hardware designs coming.
I think if anyone designed an OS that was exactly what customers said they wanted it would be such a piece of junk that nobody would want it. Sort of like people who design their own houses without any knowledge of design who realize their mistake after it's too late.
Eman D. Rahym
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Thanks! That was very gracious of you, TechLarry!
Does everything.....except address all 4GB of your RAM (assuming you are running 32 bit)
The issue of customer complaints is actually a valid one. MS does listen to feedback, they also just as often completely ignore feedback on blogs, issues with hundreds of requests on TechNet etc. The fact is like any software company, what makes it into a product is going to be decided almost entirely by corporate policy and the product managers. No amount of complaining is going to change the vision of Win 8 as a touch based OS.
The Longhorn reset which resulted in Vista wasn't a result of feedback, it was because MS realized that rewriting the entire OS in .NET wasn't feasible, and the features they aimed for (WinFS) were too ambitious.
The Longhorn reset which resulted in Vista wasn't a result of feedback, it was because MS realized that rewriting the entire OS in .NET wasn't feasible, and the features they aimed for (WinFS) were too ambitious.
dr.stevil
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Both Android and Apple tablets have had detachable keyboard cases/stands for years at this point. I don't see anything new being brought to the table with the surface (unless I'm missing something)
heatlesssun
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Actually there were Windows devices with detachable keyboards long before iOS and Android: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TC1100
And while not applicable to Windows RT, iOS and Android can't natively run desktop software. And at least with Windows RT devices one can use Office just like one would use Office on a regular desktop with a keyboard, mouse and external monitor with multiple instances of Office apps running.
dr.stevil
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exactly. It's all been done before
heatlesssun
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Actually what Windows 8 is attempting to do has never been done before, not in a single OS. And on the high end the hardware that is coming out for Windows 8 again is pretty unique. .5" thick under 2 lbs. Core i5 devices with 5 to 8 hours of battery life and 1080P screens with 10 touch points and digital pens for $1200 like the Samsung Ativ PC Pro? Where has this been done before?