Nokia made a big mistake, in deep sh*t

[partycentralpartygirl]

Does any of this have anything to do with Amiga's?

No, luckily it is "Other Operating Systems" though, so it's okay.


Though the Amiga did have AmigaBASIC which was Microsoft BASIC.

[partycentralpartygirl]

They had something going with MeeGo+Qt, but Microsoft had to screw it up like they do with everything else in the industry.  Well, now Nokia is burning because they went with WP7, and Microsoft has outright stated that WP7 is not upgradeable to WP8.  So much for the 'burning platform' eh?

slaapliedje

To be honest I personally think that Windows 8 and WP8 will be successful products. I haven't tried developer preview yet (nor will I) but my understanding is that the APPS will be cross platform when based on the Metro Interface.

The reasoning behind thinking that this platform will be a success is because of the integration between the phone and the desktop. Now it will of course be useful to work on something in an APP and then head home for the day and work on it on the subway on a Win8 tablet or Win8 phone. This would be great to be able to just blast through stuff without having to worry about transferring files from one device to another.

This will not be the reason for it's success. If Windows8 is to be a success it will be because people are able to play "Draw Something" on their desktop, and then pick up the game on their phone after when they are waiting for their food at the restaurant. If Win8 is able to allow people to play their stupid games on a desktop platform, and then allow them to play the same game with the same account on another device the platform will succeed hands down, no problem. The only thing people care about are silly flash/HTML5/java games.

Think of the popularity of Angry Birds and Farmville. Letting people do this EASILY  will be the only selling feature that Windows needs. Stupid but it is likely to be the case.

[partycentralpartygirl]

Microsoft will not lose corporate customers because of Win8, as there is no realistic alternative to Windows.

But what about Linux? Or MacOS? Or ChromeBook?

Well I run a business, what is my opinion?

The software I need only runs on Windows. My POS system, inventory management system are Windows only. If I wanted Linux POS software I would need to go open source. Not really an option as the solutions are garbage pre alpha software that is unusable in the real world.

Maybe Win8 will not appeal to businesses like Vista did not. No matter they will buy Win7. Anyone who has used Win7 will see that it is a fine OS. I was surprised at how good it was to be honest. Strange that a MS OS is so good.

As for the market competition and such. MS already has won the console wars against Sony and Nintendo. I love my Wii but the 360 is a better unit, disregarding early RROD problems (I have the slim). Hardcore console gamers will buy the next XBOX as well, Kinect is better than the Wii & PS move anyways. So if MS can win the console wars it is not impossible to imagine they will have success in the phone industry. Perhaps the premium phones will be Apple and Android but the entry level phones will probably start to be Win phones, and to be honest my parents and grandmother would be better served with a Win7 phone than Android or iPhone due to it's ease of use.

This is my take on the matter. Geeks/power users will get Android phones, hipsters, 20-30 year old women and iSheeple will get iPhones, 12 year olds and tech un-savy 50+ year olds will get Win8 phones. In fact MS/Nokia should just go ahead and start bundling the phone with free software like they do with the XBOX, buy this phone and get Free Angry Birds Premium & Draw Something. People really are dumb enough to buy something based on that.

[partycentralpartygirl]

Could someone confirm or deny this? Everything I've read says you don't have to use Metro software and can switch to a loosely desktop-ish environment, but you're still stuck with the Start screen and the desktop in general's been nerfed.

The desktop is there, the start menu has been replaced with a start screen however. Here is the start screen that you bring up by moving the mouse to the corner where the start button used to be. http://i.imgur.com/DGQsa.png

You can pin apps to the taskbar that are frequently used and never have to use the metro interface other than to use in-frequently used programs.

I am not a fan of losing the start button, I predict there will be a skin or utility released seconds after the win8 launch to put the start menu back.

Metro is kind of silly, I hope serious applications do not use it. I know that the software I use will not transition to metro since the software is written (and still being maintained surprisingly) with 14 year old IDE. Though I do not get the updates, the old software still works.

[partycentralpartygirl]

There already has been for the Developer Preview, but Microsoft disabled it for the Consumer Preview. Says a lot, really.

To be fair they probably disabled it because they want people to try out the new system, to get feedback. I suppose the feedback is get rid of this stupidness from tech savvy folk.

People do not like change, I am a person and I do not like change either. Apparently people are mad at MS for changing the XBOX360 GUI into Metro like. I have not used an XBOX in a while and can't remember what the old system looked like so I can't judge whether or not it is worse than the old system. As someone who has only used the new interface I must say that it is very intuitive, to me at least. I can launch Apps I want in seconds (I don't play many games, mostly I use it to watch online video) and my 3 year old daughter is able to start Netflix by herself if I take too long to do it for her. So I'd say an interface that can be used by children and a 30 something year old woman with relative ease is not thaaat bad.

The only problem I ever had with windows was that I run a slew of applications. My start menu in XP has ~90 entries, it will not necessarily be a bad thing to sort them out, which is basically what metro does.

That being said I will probably install the Start Menu hack/theme/utility because like I said I do not like change. On my children's computer I will leave it alone, my unit will have a Windows 2000 theme.