MS Windows 8 Consumer Beta

[commodorejohn]

Hey, we can all have a good laugh at the days of front-panel switches, but at least with the Altair there wasn't a third party controlling every software installation...

[kolla]

Linux Unity

There's no such thing.

[DaBest]

Well....I installed it. Then removed it. Don't need it. They must be really bored.

[psxphill]

My problem is that while the user interfaces are being dumbed-down to match a massive untapped user base, technically-savvy users are being shat on and told they have to dumb-down.

Windows 8 isn't dumbed down, at least on x86/x64 platforms. It's just different.
 
There are many improvements unrelated to metro, which is why they allow you to install on a machine that doesn't meet the resolution requirements of metro. Task manager & the file copy progress are much better for instance.

[SysAdmin]

Is Windows 8 Metro failing even at Microsoft?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-windows-8-metro-failing-even-at-microsoft/10311

[commodorejohn]

Windows 8 isn't dumbed down, at least on x86/x64 platforms. It's just different.
 
There are many improvements unrelated to metro, which is why they allow you to install on a machine that doesn't meet the resolution requirements of metro. Task manager & the file copy progress are much better for instance.

It may indeed have tons of architectural improvements under the hood - by all accounts it's quite snappy, which is always nice (and a rare pleasure for any version of Windows at launch.) However, the Metro UI absolutely is dumbed down - there's the inherent dumbness in trying to push a tablet/phone UI on a desktop/laptop environment, however nice of a tablet/phone UI it might be, but by many accounts there are things that are just plain stupid (they tried to kill Alt+Tab. They didn't succeed, because of all the screaming, but the mere fact that they tried should point to how wrong-headed they're being about serving the needs of Windows users. And the "Start screen" is quite frankly a massive, pointless waste of space in a desktop environment, but they're not giving you the option to get rid of it.)

I have no problem whatsoever with performance improvements - in fact, I am all for anything that makes Windows lighter and faster. I am less pleased at the attempt to move away from native code and the Win32 API and onto Microsoft's proprietary VM (primarily because any VM is a waste, but also because backwards compatibility is half the reason I use Windows in the first place,) but for the moment they haven't ditched it, so I'll leave that argument until its proper time. What I cannot tolerate is a bunch of upstart "designers" telling me that I need to just get used to them changing things on me because they need a prominent place to display their little art project, so that people will appreciate it as is their due. Yeah, here's your appreciation, Metro Team: I'm not buying it. Not unless someone in management reins you in and makes your tablet OS entirely 100% optional on my non-tablet. Period.

[Duce]

Metro (tile) UI is optional, and the desktop interface is not much different than Win 7 once you get past the changes to start button.  Your run command, cmd line and similar are still there...

However, there is a lot to be said for the "who wants/needs this?" critics - and I am one of those critics, and also a person that works in supporting MS products as a MCSE/MSCA for a living.  Win 8 is snappy, runs well, but Metro brings nothing to me over Windows 7, really.  I won't shell out good money for a "new" OS, just to have to revert it to a familiar GUI desktop via settings or group policy.  I see no real way I could use the Metro UI in a productive manner in the ways I currently use computers, and many others - a vast majority of serious computer users in fact, likely feel the same.  All the good intentions of MS and others to "appify" the desktop on traditional computers is a real, real hard sell.  I fail to see value in such an interface on a serious level on the desktop if said interface is merely a way to launch programs into traditional desktop modes for productivity purposes.  It comes off as a hacky skinned interface to me, for how I use a computer anyways.

I have zero intentions of ever owning a W8 tablet, but for some there *might* be some appeal in the "Apple" sense of using a more tablet-like interface on a desktop.  The Metro UI might be very nice to use with an input device similar to the Apple magic trackpad and gestures, but for me W8/Metro is a complete nightmare to try and use via traditional input methods with that Metro UI.

But you also have to bear in mind that people 1 year from now will simply have this OS on the machines they buy off the store shelves, so it's forced adoption in a wide sense.  A strategy that may prove to be entirely worthless if it turns out that 95% of the users of Windows 8 are simply running it with Metro entirely turned off.  I suspect that will be the case for many users.

[persia]

The problem in IT has always been forecasting the future.  It's an industry younger than a lot of the people in it.  Personal computers started out in people's garages and a plaything of geeks and have become a household appliance.

What percentage of people prefer a touch or touch like interface?  The tablet marketplace is exploding while laptop and desktop sales stagnate.  If I were a manufacturer I could easily read that as the market demanding more touch devices.  The click the windows ball and have all your programs listed is an outdated paradigm, most people just pin their favourite apps to the non-dock dock bar at the bottom and never touch the "start" ball.  The question is what makes the most sense to replace it with.  Would metro make more sense if your computer had a kinect connected to it?

[runequester]

Well eh. It's been how many months since windows 7 came out? Time for people to pay the piper again (and again for the undoubtedly accompanying version of office)

[commodorejohn]

The problem in IT has always been forecasting the future.  It's an industry younger than a lot of the people in it.  Personal computers started out in people's garages and a plaything of geeks and have become a household appliance.

IT has been a full-fledged industry since the '50s. And forecasting the future is always tricky, but one consistent lesson from those 60-odd years has been that change for change's sake is going to be derided, disliked, and usually ultimately ignored. Technologies that don't offer concrete improvements don't tend to stick around.

(Even technologies that do offer improvements have to justify the cost of the transition in time and effort - which is why the US still uses the imperial measurement system and not metric. Moving to an entirely different UI paradigm on a device not even designed for it is likely to be a hell of a transition cost.)

What percentage of people prefer a touch or touch like interface?  The tablet marketplace is exploding while laptop and desktop sales stagnate.  If I were a manufacturer I could easily read that as the market demanding more touch devices.

And thus we see the folly of making all decisions based on sales-driven market research. If Microsoft had bothered to look further into the question, they might've realized that people aren't not using laptops and desktops just because they aren't buying new ones as often. And if they paid more attention to use instead of sales, those countless fleets of XP workstations out in the field might tell them something...

"You can't invent a customer to fit your research." It's a lesson that somehow we keep failing to learn.

The click the windows ball and have all your programs listed is an outdated paradigm, most people just pin their favourite apps to the non-dock dock bar at the bottom and never touch the "start" ball.  The question is what makes the most sense to replace it with.

The question is whether it needs replacing at all, and the answer is "no." "Outdated" as a slur in UI design is a warning sign that you're entering change-for-change's-sake territory, and UI is the absolute worst place for that kind of thinking. The Start menu has survived from 1995-present by being a useful feature, even if not everybody uses it all the time. It doesn't need to be changed just because it's old. I'm older than the Start menu, and I might guess that you are - should we be thrown out and be replaced with vapid stand-ins simply for being "outdated?"

Would metro make more sense if your computer had a kinect connected to it?

No.

[persia]

Have you ever heard one Mac user say "Gee, what we need is a round ball that you click that lists the contents of your applications folder?"?  But of course we do need to be sure that what we replace it with is better from a UI perspective.  I agree with you that we aren't to the touch pad, kinect, touch screen phase in the PC world yet and it's not clear that will end up the direction.  The Metro developers clearly believe that it is the direction, but for the operating system to lead rather than follow is dangerous.

Apple is moving iOS and OS X back together, but they are doing it in steps, making sure that the hardware & software work together in a logical way.  Microsoft seems bound and determined to skip all those steps in between and plunk a fully developed unified desktop/tablet OS down this year.

[commodorejohn]

Have you ever heard one Mac user say "Gee, what we need is a round ball that you click that lists the contents of your applications folder?"?

No, I have not, but here's the thing:

A. Mac is not Windows, and their users do not expect either to be the other. It would be generally unreasonable of them to. (Any given user probably has a few behaviors they'd like to see carried over, but if they were really unhappy with one they'd probably switch.) Windows users do expect Windows to be Windows, though, and rightfully so.

And B. Mac OS has actually had equivalent functionality for a long time (since its inception? At least since System 6.) In classic Mac OS, you can add program shortcuts (or even programs, period) to the Apple menu simply by placing them in the Apple menu folder, exactly like the Start menu - in later versions, it even supports sub-folders. OS X moves this functionality to the Dock, but the end result is roughly the same. (Minus the sub-folders, annoyingly, but that's details.)

Having an application-shortcuts menu is a tremendously useful thing - note how many implementations of this functionality are available on Aminet, for instance. Even Microsoft isn't trying to ditch it entirely, because that would be stupid even by Metro standards - they're just trying to make it waste enormous amounts of screen space and cover up everything you're doing every time you want to launch a program.

[psxphill]

(they tried to kill Alt+Tab. They didn't succeed, because of all the screaming, but the mere fact that they tried should point to how wrong-headed they're being about serving the needs of Windows users.

Both the consumer & developer preview have alt+tab, I don't think there was ever a chance it would disappear.
 
Windows 8 is ambitious but it is not finished yet. Screaming is unlikely to have any positive effect. Everyone at Microsoft should be running the preview by now & they are Windows users too.

[commodorejohn]

"Ambitious" is only a positive if the aims are good. Windows 8 with Metro is a retrogression to the attempts at operating systems for the computer-illiterate of the 1990s, like Microsoft Bob and Packard Bell Navigator. It's ambitious in the sense that Smith & Wesson switching all their product lines to Nerf guns is ambitious - ballsy, yes, but a completely terrible idea in every other respect.

(Also, I don't know how "unfinished" it can possibly be, when they're talking about rolling it out this fall...)

(According to the previously-mentioned Register article, the developer preview attempted to ditch Alt+Tab, but as I haven't used that I'll defer to those who have.)

[Duce]

Well eh. It's been how many months since windows 7 came out? Time for people to pay the piper again (and again for the undoubtedly accompanying version of office)

Uhh, Win 7 has been out for well over 2 years.  RTM was in July, 2009 - retail in October, 2009.

[runequester]

Uhh, Win 7 has been out for well over 2 years.  RTM was in July, 2009 - retail in October, 2009.

well, then you are well overdue to cough up another 100 bucks.