'Dated and cheesy' Aero ripped from Windows 8
Microsoft must really love Windows 8, or hate its legacy install base. The Aero interface introduced with the hated Windows Vista and perpetuated with the loved Windows 7 is being canned from Windows 8, the company has revealed. In another achingly long Windows 8 blog post, Microsoft called the Aero interface it once championed …
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Vista better than XP?
Did you ever try to copy a folder containing 15 Gb of photographs to a thumb-drive on the original Vista?
It was still in progress the next DAY!
@ac: "alternate good/bad releases"
The alternate release thing actually started back with Win3.1, after the legally crippled Win2 debacle. It's been pretty damn accurate since then with only a little fudging the release order. Vista fit the pattern far too well but didn't start it.
[Although I personally don't find Win7 much of an improvement on Vista, I find it painful to use every time I have to fix someone's PC install]
Re: Vista better than XP?
>>Did you ever try to copy a folder containing 15 Gb of photographs to a thumb-drive on the original Vista?
Ah yes, the standard measure of how good an OS is.
I beg to disagree - there was nothing good about Windows 3.1, It was slow and buggy.
Re: Vista better than XP?
Usability does seem to be a reasonable yardstick for measuring the worth of an OS.
Re: Vista better than XP?
What do you mean "original"? Is there a pirated version that can do that before the heat death of the universe? .... the patched version of Vista is about that level of performance.
The funny thing is that when doing the same operation through X on Cygwin, yet another fat'ish layer on top of Win32, the copy goes as fast as expected. The trick seems to be to avoid the GUI.
Re: Vista better than XP?
By original, he means minus Service Packs
Re: Vista better than XP?
It is not that it is a bit broken and have bugs, no, Vista is on another level entirely: It is blatantly broken *right in yer .!.. face* at a level where even my old Aunt Oda would see the brokenness!!
When they left such a visible bug in there, then scary, negative, thoughts emerge:
The developers, do they actually give a shit about their work? Did anyone actually test this stuff, like, At All? Did MS lose the source code before testing so it cannot be fixed (and it wasn't)? Is this deliberate so the next version looks better? If they left this in, more must be wrong?
And: How can MS fail to see this is a problem, are they blind, retarded, going senile, overdosing on their own marketing - Doesn't Anybody There give a shit?
Re: Vista better than XP?
"Doesn't Anybody There give a shit?"
Why should they? You're not going to use anything else are you?
Microsoft's drive to bring about the mythical year of the Linux desktop seems to be progressing nicely.
Despite ...
Despite the great efforts being made by Gnome to frustrate this intent.
Actually i think Gnome do have a decent UI on their hands. The trick is in the keyboard shortcuts
Personally I think windows from vista onwards has been great and I am really looking forward to this next one.
All the reviews have almost tempted me to actually go back to back to using a windows OS just so I can have a good moan too.
Metro is a disgrace. Maybe Ballmer or Gates sex friends designed Metro UI ?
And I mean, really.
There is no other possible explanation of committing such a clear financial and marketing suicide killing Windows8 with such an awful interface as Metro UI really is.
Such a bad design not even a little kid could have come up with.
Metro UI is being forced by Microsoft everywhere, not only Windows8 consumer/desktop editions but even on server edtions! THAT IS ABSOLUTELY INSANE.
They even tried pushing Metro UI lame concepts inside the upcoming new Visual Studio!
Metro UI sucks on Windows Phone already, that is the main reason why Microsoft is non gaining any market percentage.
Pushing such an awful badly engineered interface that Metro is everywhere it's going to be a huge disaster for Microsoft.
Only people paid by Microsoft would tell you that Metro is cool. Otherwise anyone using their PCs or mobile or servers for work first but even for gaming would tell you that it sucks. Because it sucks. It's just that simple. Metro UI sucks. It doesn't work. it's flawed at the core. There is nothing to fix. Only fix is getting rid of Metro UI.
Metro [...is...] going to be a huge disaster for Microsoft.
problem?
My thoughts
I tried out Windows 8 as a virtual machine on my MacBook. It is certainly faster than Windows 7, and about the same speed as XP, which is what I usually use When I need to run a Windows-only prog.
But, the start menu replacement just doesn't work for me. Having to scroll through hundreds of icons to find the program you want to run, with no way to organise them in a logical fashion is no good. Having to find the relevant pixels to click to get the dammed thing to appear is frustrating, and pretty much impossible if you are running it in a window, either a VM window or as a remote desktop session, or if you have set up OSX to use that corner of the screen as an active corner to activate a screensaver or similar.
For a fondleslab, it might be an improvement on the current start menu, but it is like iOS before they introduced App folders that you can organise things into.
It looks like...
...there's going to be a good market for 3rd party desktop replacements a-l. WinBlinds.
If it wasn't for Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop I'd be heading for Linux, so it looks like I'll be getting a few more years out of Windows 7.
That's assuming...
that Microsoft allows those kind of apps on Windows 8
Just bring back the windows XP UI on proper desktops.
The post is required, and must contain letters.
Wow! I agree with Microsoft
Well, only about Aero looking cheesy. On the visual appearance of Metro, a little conflicted. It does look nice and crisp, but also kind of harsh. Of course there are serious usability problems that that outweigh the good or bad or the aesthetic, so I won't be using it anyway.
I wonder what skin they'll be using for traditional desktop applications in Win8. The could probably turn the 95/98 style skin into something very Metro-y with very little effort if the wanted.
Please, for the love of mike
tell me they're not dropping hardware compositing (offloading Z orders, drawing uncovered parts of a window etc. onto the GPU) allong with Aero. It was one of the few useful bits they added (and only then in Windows 7, Aero in Vista was broken beyond belief).
Re: Please, for the love of mike
As far as I know its just the chrome that changes, API, compositing etc. remains the same.
Channeling Canonical and Ubuntu then. Sounds like the usual 'it'd be a great place to work if it weren't for the *&^%%^ customers.'
Wait, what?
Did I read that right? Metro is going to be the only interface choice for Windows 8? I must have misread something, because the only way that could happen is if Microsoft wanted the age of the Windows desktop to end. It's not a bad interface for mobile, but it's terrible on a PC. What the hell are they thinking?
Re: Wait, what?
No. Desktop is alive and well in Windows 8. Also, some twit used the term 'legacy app' to describe windowed multi-tasking applications and poor communication from Microsoft added to the fire and stirred up all this nonsense.
Same Old
I think Metro looks modern and decent, frankly - in terms of visual appearance. Obviously, it's an ergonomic nightmare and inconsistent mess for using with a keyboard/mouse or with traditional desktop software. Should be very nice on ARM tablets though, where it's restricted to Metro apps only.
People have moaned about every new version of Windows since the dawn of time, in this case it's probably a bit more justified, but still. At the end of the day it'll be sold on all new PCs regardless and most people will put up with it until Windows 9 comes around and we repeat the process all over again. I actually think Microsoft might well have sorted out most of the issues in Windows 8 for whatever version comes after it, as they did moving from Vista to Windows 7.
Metro
Just feels like driving a car with two steering wheels.
I'd just like the option to uninstall one of them.
Re: Metro
Two steering wheels ... one for reversing, and the other for going sideways. Good-oh.
Awww..
I like aero. Reason being it works much better than classic (xp style) interface when you are doing CG stuff, because it uses the much faster GPU instead of the CPU.
This has to do with how the framebuffer is used/accessed. Compare doing "playblast"s on Maya with it on and off, and you will see. Aero on Win7 causes less artifacts and works faster.
From a design standpoint I don't care either way. As long as the UI has fewer steps to accomplish my goals (and can be made to be in dark somber colors) I'm game.
I don't care about the (potential) battery hit at all. I'm using a dual CPU with multiple HDDs config anyway.
Re: Awww..
"I don't care about the (potential) battery hit at all. "
Me either, I'm plugged in to the mains ;)
New and intuitive
Personally I'm ready to welcome the new smartphone metaphor
There area couple of 1000 commands in one of the 3D modeling programs I use - it takes forever to find a little used function in the menus or toolbars.
Now that there will be a single intuitive and obvious touch gesture to select between optimising hole placement by tool path as opposed to tool change time my life will be much easier
Re: New and intuitive
I completely agree, but why anonymous? The one I use, there's an option somewhere to optimise by shavings dispersion. It really matters when the shavings are Plutonium.
(note to MI5 - this is a joke)
Re: New and intuitive
No doubt the most often used gesture will be the one involving the raised index and middle fingers.
It's the new Coke but not as we know it!
Remember the new Coke recipe - After the public uprising against it Coca Cola went back to the original recipe....and sales actually rose better than any ad campaign they'd ever done. I think Microsoft will also revert *but* I think heads will roll at MS and the long term damage will already have been done. Developers are already cheesed off with the way MS keep changing the technological ball every few years and so maybe this will accelerate their looking at other technologies more WEB centric. Long live HTML 5 :-)
Another reason why I use eComStation
I've been an OS/2 user since 1990 or so. The Workplace Shell (the "desktop" in Windowsspeak) is funtionally the same interface now as it was when Warp 4 was released in '96 or so, with enhancements added over time. Thus, once I got past the initial learning curve (and my other users did), we coyld focus on more important things, such as RUNNING THE SOFTWARE.
Aero is hideuous, and Explorer is hardly object-oriented (whereas the Workplace Shell was designe from the ground up to be an OOUI and not a GUI).
I'll stick with what I know and with what works.
Icons and GUIs
Anyone want to speculate on which version of Windows will be preceded by a MSDN blog post saying that whilst the text-only paradigm of Metro is absolutely wonderful, research has showed that people often find it easier to identify coloured images at a glance quicker and more easily than monochrome text, and MS now feel it's time to evolve Metro into the next generation of user interfaces by introducing a revolutionary new concept - Icons!
From now on, there will be little colourful images on many of the buttons and toolbars, which can be clicked just like old-style Metro text buttons!!
Then, before the next version of Windows after that, there'll be another blog post saying that the feedback on the new coloured icons was so overwhelmingly positive that MS intends to continue evolving the concept by making all the toolbars and other chrome/widgets all colourful and tactile, with lots of gradients and 3D styling.
Some hardcore nerd will leave a single comment under this blog post saying "But this is exactly what Windows XP looked like decades ago!?", but no one will notice it. In fact, it'll probably get a load of down-thumbs for being so nerdy and mentioning Windows XP, whatever that was. QED dictates that anything from the last century surely existed in black and white, was primitively rubbish, took three hours to start up due to slow single core processors and RAM literally measured in mere MEGAbytes, and was operated by people in top hats who spoke like Noel Coward...
Re: anyone want to speculate
Er, 9? It's hard, because one never knows what the marketroids will decide to call it. (The Win8 consumer preview is actually 6.2 as far as the API is concerned, emphasising the fact that nothing of significance has been done at the OS level.)
Aero interface
Theres me using Vista and the W7, and did not know I had an Aero interface. I thought Aero was a chocolate bar with bubbles in it.
Maybe bubbles are banned in Win8, along with the start button. All the corporates I have spoken to have said that they are not prepared to pay the mega bucks needed to retrain to use Win8, which means it may have the same uptake as Vista
Therefore replacing the windows flag, well-known for over two decades...
With the very first windows logo, which nobody knows or remembers, skewed "to give it perspective".
That's top work from top marketing agencies right there.
Re: Therefore replacing the windows flag, well-known for over two decades...
reminds me somewhat of an ancient Dilbert cartoon..
A door labelled with "Marketing department" with the banner "Two drink minimum" over the top.
Not Clausewitz?
OK, I'm a pedant, but I always thought that quote was from von Moltke, rather than Clausewitz, even though it probably encapsulates Clausewitz's ideas?
Reverse psychology at work?
I mean on the surface, they are trying to make people NOT want Windows 8, and as every week goes by, they just fuck things up even worse for the product. MetroUI is horrendous abortion of a mobile phone tailored UI for your 24in monitor. And now they are making you use it by making the old one intentionally shit.
I wonder if they are trying to psych us out?
Microsoft has a long track record of making things so shit, you can't resist them. Xbox360 for example. I must buy myself one of them, I really can't believe it's THAT bad.
STOP IT
STOP CHANGING MY INTERFACE. I'M SICK OF IT.
I'M STILL USING OFFICE 2003.
I'D STILL BE USING XP IF YOU SUPPORTED IT.
STOP MESSING WITH US OLDER GENERATION, YOUNG TARDS AT MICROSOFT.
Re: STOP IT
being of an older generation doesn't mean you can SHOUT at everyone ;)
Being of an older generation myself I fully remember the arguments from people complaining about the move to the start menu, saying its slow and inefficient, the interesting thing is that they were correct it is slow and inefficient. Win 8 appears to be moving back to the more efficient method but we shall have to wait and see where it goes as its going to require some rethinking of the way you use your computer.
As for your sticking with the old idea. Good luck with that, when your colleagues send you an office 2016 document and you cant open it.
XP is still supported? so presumably you've upgraded, or more likely bought a new computer with win 7 or vista on it? in which case what are you complaining about? it was your choice to update, unless of course you did it because low and behold you couldn't get a new Win XP laptop with your newer hardware requirements in mind? ;)
If you had upgraded yourself, then again that's your own fault, XP will not suddenly stop working, if you wanted to live in the past then that's fine, you can still get some AV and security software which will continue to update for a few more years, an you'll probably need it with XP. I suppose the only good reason for doing this is that if you are the last windows XP user out there then apart from saving money from not being able to buy anything new for your PC at all, you will have the luxury of using an OS that no one will try an exploit any more either, and thus you wont need your AV software any more :)
@dazzza
But being of an older generation probably left the guy a little hard-hearing. That tends to cause some shouting too ;-)
Preview version...
I tried in. I want to call it an incomprehensible mess. But that would be unfair to other incomprehensible messes. What that on earth are microsoft thinking. it's just an awful mess, how can they possibly be thinking of releasing this
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