Windows 8.1: So it's, er, half-speed ahead for Microsoft's Plan A Following approximately one year after the release to manufacturing of Windows 8.0, which incorporated some radical changes, based around a new tablet platform running alongside the traditional desktop environment, Windows 8.1 is a critical release. Most Windows users have not warmed to the platform variously called Metro, …
..or 4 versions of visual studio, each complete with half a dozen links named the same for the most part. Well except if you started with "v", you lost because although the folder and all other links might start with "visual studio", the main IDE itself is named "microsoft visual studio XXXX".
Searching for apps can be done in Windows 7. it's the stupid tiles and lack/waste of space that's the issue with me. With Windows 7, there's enough space to display the whole program name (even in a 5cm wide menu) . In Win 8, you only get to see the first few chars worth of the app name. Take Photoshop for example. There's "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64bit)" and "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (32bit)" You can't tell which one is which on Windows 8 because there's not enough space to display the entire name.
Ironically, I have a bunch of 'search' programs that I have in a folder on Windows 7. They're all slightly different and depending on what I'm looking for I use a different app. On windows 7, I simply whiz down to 'All Programs' > tools > 'Text Search' or 'All Programs' > tools > 'Image Search' and there they all are, all with unrememberable names like astrogrep, sedawkgui, wingrep, etc. Alongside them are a few batch scripts for more complex searches. If I pick the wrong one, the alternative is next on the list. Try doing that with 'search'.
Also, Windows 8 doesn't let me have hierarchical structure so I whilst can group my tools into folders, I can't put folders within folders. In Windows 8, my various tools folders are all on the same level as my main apps folders. My apps finder screen now stretches to 30 odd pages which makes app location even more difficult, because it's forcing me to wade through all my apps, not just my search tools. Before they were all tucked away, out of sight until needed under 'Tools'.
Only works if
The actual .exe is remotely the same as the name of the application
What about multiple versions of the same app then? (I have at least 9 copies of Eclipse on my desktop PC)
If MS would introduce a 'mega geek/power user' mode which returned eveything to Win 7 (with QuickLaunch) AND kept all of those annoying MS, 'I'm trying to help you' things out of the way then I for one would be happy. I'd expect that it would also make many of the commentators here happy as well.
Sadly this is as likely as Balmer getting his Pink Slip anytime soon.
> "A lot quicker typing a few characters..."
just like the BASH shell?
Same problem too, If I don't remember the name of the executable, how do I find it?
Let's face it, "search" has the same purpose as Firefox's "Awsome Bar". It's not there to help YOU, it's there to provide statistics for targeted ads and steer you where they want you to go.
"I prefer remembering where I left things". Agree! If its as badly worked out as the search from XP to Win7, then the OS will often fail to find files you've just created, copied or worked-on because the indexer hasn't caught up. I see this all the time, and it amazes me users don't shout about it.
Win 7 did add some very useful features, like being able to type in multiple extensions and exclusions in the search box etc. But having to use something like system.filename~="--" to find business or lab files that don't begin with conventional numbers or letters is beyond many users IMHO...
Search is now the primary means of navigation so that MS/NSA can know what we're looking for ... search for "big bad-ass bomb" too often and they will be knocking on your door. What, you doubt me? Didn't you see The Matrix? It will be here sooner than you think.
Sorry but it is Metro 1.1. This isn't the start menu of old for the PC. Metro works fine on a table or a phone but it is a pain in the ass for me on the PC. While I will have to continue using Classic Shell to have my start button and menus the way I like MS will continue to fail in the Enterprise market with this crap.
Really just putting the button in and making it take you back to the Metro UI is just a big Fuck You to the customer.
Just out of interest, had Microsoft kept the Start Menu and still released Windows for touch-enabled devices like tablets...would you be complaining about the fact the Start Menu is really fiddly to use with a finger?
Or does everyone expect them to increase the menu to twice it's size so it looks ridiculous on the screen and you can just mash it with four digits to drill-down three levels to get the program you need?
No. I expect them to have different user interfaces for touch and mouse/keyboard. Its not that radical an idea: see iOS / OS X. It wouldn't be so bad if they had pulled off windows is windows wherever, but nope. We have 3 different operating systems for 3 different device classes and thats that. Why foist the same user interface on all of them. Microsoft need to get their heads around the fact that a mouse is not a finger and a finger is not a mouse.
P.S. I have a windows phone and the UI works really well on it, so tried win 8... and went back to win 7 after a week of suffering.
> Microsoft need to get their heads around the fact that a mouse is not a finger and a finger is not a mouse.
Fingermouse, Fingermouse
The never stop to think a mouse
The always on the brink a mouse
Fingernouse, that's me
I am the mouse called Fingermouse
The mouse with guts and verve
I get past cats so easily with my favourite body swerve
Fingermouse, Fingermouse
I'm a sort of wonder mouse
A hit, a miss, a blunder mouse
Fingermouse, that's me
Won't somebody please think of the children?
The issue is not that they've put in a Start screen for touch-driven devices it's that they've ONLY got that option even for non-touch devices. Had they done what nearly everyone said during the Duplo 8 Consumer Preview and stuck with both the traditional UI but added the touch UI via a toggle a huge amount of issues would have been dealt with at once. Instead they buried their heads in the sand while putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly.
" would you be complaining about the fact the Start Menu is really fiddly to use with a finger?"
Yes. TIFKAM works well for touch and the start menu doesn't. But what is your point?
Have the swipe events bring up TIFKAM and the keyboard or mouse click the start menu. Or have a preference setting where you pick your preferred application launcher. It really isn't a problem that couldn't be solved.
You're missing the point completely. Most sensible people want a desktop interface on the desktop, and a touch interface on their tablet/phone etc.
Neither interface works well in the other system, and no interface yet devized works well in both. Nor is it ever likely to, or all living things would have evolved to be the same optimum size.
All my kit runs Linux, but with different interfaces appropriate to the screen size.
It seems to me that the usefulness of a Windows 8 machine depends on how much you like Bing and Microsoft accounts, of which I have none. Live tiles are a waste of time and once all the stuff that I don't use is removed from the Metro screen I am left with a couple of application icons, which I would normally pin to my taskbar. There is no point in the start screen, it is simply a 'hipster scum' idea to compete aesthetically with MacOS X and it has been rejected by the customer base. Move on Microsoft, we want Windows 9 sans this Metro drivel, if that's not clear enough for you, take a look at Windows 7, rinse and repeat.
No doubt it was the SHRILLS like you that got Edan baned. Personally I thought he pretty much had all your numbers myself. The author of the Article also seems to like his FREE SWAG, and that is just fine. But the "Real World" are asked to pony-up for this Crap, and its been generally agreed that Windows 8 is FAIL!
Just like MicroSofts new XBONE *cough* FailBOX *cough* will also tank. I got flamed for it before, and will enjoy those Down Votes again (I'm sure)...
But, One wonders with the ALWAYS ON! Kinect, ~It only spys on you!~ if Mr. Sonwden will have to face an additional charge of financial terrorism*, when or if he ever gets back home.
*As if MicroSofts original policy on Used Games weren't bad enough, to drive users away. I hope the fact that a Kinected Failbox to the NSA, BND, GHCQ, FBI, RIAA, MPAA, Local Police at-el. Will be enough to drive them away. I certainly have NO FURTHER INTEREST in it whatsoever! And I've been pretty loyal to M$ as far as the XBOX went. But, this is a step to far!
WII-U FTW!!
Bing is an ice cream franchise. That's the first thing that pops up in my mind. Ok, maybe the lame attempt MS did to place their not-Google search engine on the Hawaii 5-0 remake. "Bing it!" (and reading the comments "He said Google wrong!" is hilarious!)
I do have a Hotmail account, but that was mostly used for Messenger ... oh, MS killed that.
They also killed Hotmail, only leaving the addys themselves. Outlook is an anti-brand like Windows these days.
But really, anyone claiming "Microsoft" and "love" in the same sentence is either an MS shill, or has bet the cards on the MS ecosystem, like those devs who only knew .NET and were afraid of the Java switch one of my former employers was planning...
And Daniel B. is - totally wrong again
I LOVE Windows on the client since the days of Win NT4. And I neither work for them (my employer does "software to measure") nor use MS languages for the laste decade (JAVA, C/C++, if forced PHP). But as an engineer I use
+ What the customer wants (Windows on the client, commercial Unix on the Server, MPCs for controlling)
+ What fulfills all my needs and wants with the least amount of systems (Windows)
+ What does the job best if choice exist (Prefering Outlook/Exchange/Sharepoint to Notes/Domino)
If a customer pays for Fortran - I brush up my F77 (last used in 1990 or so) and if he wants .NET - there is a book for that. If one of these days the "best system" is Mach-3 based - I'll get a Mac.
That's funny, I don't think anybody was replying to you. Nor accusing you specifically of anything. You feeling talked to, for some reason?
I have known someone else who claims to have nothing to do with Microsoft while at the same time seeming to profess undying love for them. Except, they work for one of Microsoft's contractors. So while strictly true about not working for Microsoft, this guy knows what side his bread is buttered.
Know what I mean?
And wrong again. Company has nothing to do with MS and except for a few printing modules we wrote on request of a customer do not need MS products in the tool chain. Pure JAVA shop here, software typically runs on Solaris or AIX with some "everything but iOS/Android" Swing frontends to supplement the web apps.
Wrote : "Bing is an ice cream franchise. That's the first thing that pops up in my mind."
Nah. Its is a Brylcreemed singer with ears like jug handles whose dreary "White Xmas" song is put on endless loop in every shopping centre from October to December every year.
"But really, anyone claiming "Microsoft" and "love" in the same sentence is either an MS shill, or has bet the cards on the MS ecosystem, like those devs who only knew .NET and were afraid of the Java switch one of my former employers was planning..."
Dude, when enterprise shops mainly use Windows on the desktop (by some margin) it makes sense to only use .Net. Java as a front-end on Windows has always been fugly and switching from .Net to Java on windows desktops makes no sense at all.
The switch I mentioned involved the newfangled "web" platform, which only had about 2 or 3 apps at the time, none of them in .NET, but the push involved deprecating the fugly VB6 apps and building 'em new as web apps. One of the few web apps already in use was done in Java, so it did make sense.
Until recently the business model for Microsoft seemed (from my lowly vantage point) to be more or less this:
- with mates like Intel, and OEMs, force a fairly fast product cycle upon consumers and businesses every n years, by releasing a new operating system (Windows) and new business software (Office) which required an upgrade to new, more powerful processors being released at the time.
I'm not saying that functionality and the computing experience in general didn't improve as a result...but the cycles may in some cases have been a little shorter than was strictly necessary for customers and end-users.
This business model made a lot of money for everyone, so nobody could break out of it. And it made Microsoft into a very powerful company.
Now, though, with the advent of Apple (IOS), Google (Android) and more and more variations on Linux + new device types and form factors, it seems that the Microsoft model, which relied on a de facto monopoly, is about to be broken. So maybe they just need to adapt and find a way of continuing to improve people's computing experience...all be it on a more ad-hoc and voluntary basis.
"Further, if you disregard the noise of Start menu debates, there is obvious merit in concepts like sandboxed apps easily deployed from an app store"
What merits would that be? Or better put: apart from the merits for Microsoft themselves, which obviously sits in the middle of the revenue of both customers who might pay to buy software as well as developers who have to pay to sell software...
I don't see much merits for customers, apart from some ease of use. But that ease comes at a hefty price, because which company controls what does and doesn't get into the appstore? Leading up to: Would Microsoft allow Apache to push OpenOffice into their appstore? Let's say during launch of their possibly upcoming own version of an metro stained Office?
There is a dark side to all this, and that goes double if we're talking about desktop usage.
Don't forget that big changes start slow. And I sure would NOT enjoy the moment when we suddenly discover that Windows 12 (to name a random future release) no longer provides any means to install software yourself APART from either using the appstore or an Enterprise environment.
That is the kind of risk I'm seeing here. And as said: it starts slow. An optional app store, what will be the next move though?
There are merits if the Android model is used.
In other words, if the self-contained, sandboxed app can be obtained from any number of competing app stores, or even installed from a local file if the user so desires.
Otherwise, just no. Having a single mandatory source of apps is a huge step backwards, no matter what the associated benefits might be.
@ShelLuser " Leading up to: Would Microsoft allow Apache to push OpenOffice into their appstore? Let's say during launch of their possibly upcoming own version of an metro stained Office?"
Yes, as long as it passes the technical requirements. The process for getting an app in-store is actually remarkably transparent (and far more so than the Apple store). There are already a bunch of OpenOffice training apps in the store today.
On the wider merit of the advantages to the app store model over ease of use (which is a massive benefit). They also provide a lot more confidence that you are getting what you wanted and that you can remove it entirely if you so choose to. Googling for free games and installing them will inevitably get you a PC full of spyware that is hard to get rid of, wheras downloading a bunch of free titles from the store won't because the OS sandboxing just doesn't allow it. And may aspects of the revamped development model make it easier for apps to be more power efficient too, great if your on a mobile device but cost effective even for desktop systems too.
"On the wider merit of the advantages to the app store model over ease of use (which is a massive benefit)"
Irrelevant and usually not a benefit at all, but a misfeature: Registering to the shop is per month- basis expense and huge nuisance before you can even see what is offered.
Googling a download site and pressing download and starting install is _ease of use_: Simple and fast.
Definitely much faster than trying to create an account to MS store with Firefox (good luck for you on that).
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