Betting the Company on Windows 8

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41

I used Windows 8 for awhile and found it horrendous on the desktop and am surprised Jeff is so excited about it.

  1. Why would I prefer a single tasking environment (only one window, or at best a window and a narrow sliver of another window on my screen) to a multi tasking environment. Even if I usually work with a maximized window I still need to view a few windows next to each other every now and then.

  2. Why get rid of the task bar? Why should I have to take action to view running apps in order switch between them or to view a list of tabs in IE? I mean I have large screen on my desk with plenty of room for this. Iā€™d rather just click on the ā€œotherā€ app in the task bar, then start swiping all over the place to find it.

  3. Similar to the above, but why is it better to not see the clock,volume,network statusā€¦ at all times at the bottom of the screen? Why should I go the home screen to see the time? or wifi status?

  4. You can ONLY install Metro apps from the app store. no side loading. I know how much you hate Appleā€™s control over iOS apps. You wrote ā€œKind of absurdly scarily ascendant, actuallyā€ about Apple. Well, now you can have the same absurd scary control from MS. So, in Windows 9, when they get rid of the ā€œlegacyā€ desktop, you can forget about doing what you want on your PC. Only what MS wants (Or Apple on your iOS)

Windows 8 feels claustrophobic and barren. I want more information at my fingertips, not less!

42

Interesting article.

I considered Microsoft Windows 2000 as an innovation making the Windows NT operating system nice to use and develop systems on. I was continuously following Microsoft and getting their Betas and Candidate Releases and Preview Release for Microsoft Windows 2000 and it runs as a nice Virtual Machine :).

Iā€™ll still get a copy anyway to run as a VM on my MacbookPRO. I still have useful apps that only run on MS-Windows and I am a regular MS-Access user.

43

I liked the new file transfer dialog so much I wrote a similar WPF ā€˜Rate Barā€™ control :slight_smile:

http://wrightdev.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/wpf-ratebar/

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I must be in a parallel universe if windows 95 is considered innovative. I know it was very successful, but innovative? I donā€™t think so. There is a reason that Mac users referred to windows 95 as Mac 87, it was lifted wholesale from apple, nothing changes.

But I gotta say, the metro stuff does seem new and interesting, I have never used the metro UI, but at first glance I think the ā€œIā€ word does apply here, this is very unusual for microsoft and I wish them well.

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youā€™re the first person Iā€™ve seen to write a positive review of windows 8. It seems like if youā€™re using a touch interface, you should be using a tablet, which is the way things are headed as far as personal computers are going.
I have no idea how this will be useful in an office environment though. Are we going to be stuck with windows 7 for was long as we were stuck with XP? What am I saying, Iā€™m typing this at work on my PC running XP X(

46

It will be kind of cool to have the same experience whether you are using your PC, Phone, or Tablet. (Assuming you use Windows 8, Windows Phone and the Surface tablet) There wonā€™t be any need to learn one OS for your PC and one OS for your phone.

I think itā€™s a good idea. After all, if Iā€™m using Windows 8 at home and it comes time to buy a new phone, I would be much more open to buying a Windows Phone. Because with a Windows Phone it would seem like I was able to have that same desktop experience even on the go. Personally, I like the idea of having the same/similiar user experience across devices.

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Does windows 8 still have the command prompt available so you have all three. UI options.

I still use it when creating ebooks with kindlegen.

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Iā€™ll echo the previous comments about innovation in the UI vs. actual innovation in the OS and add this observation:

Every single version of Windows post-95 has had a one-click option to return the default UI to what the last version looked like. Every. Single. One. Itā€™s already been reported that the registry key that controls this is in the Windows 8 consumer preview and works as one would expect.

The Metro UI is for tablets and touch screens, period. If youā€™re running Win8 on a desktop, just turn it off.

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ā€œIt took a little longer than originally anticipated, but whatā€™s 17 years between friends?ā€

Actually, that should be ā€œ17 years and countingā€. Microsoft hasnā€™t released anything yet, as far as the Surface tablet is concerned. No one was allowed to touch the clever keyboard cover, and no one had a real hands-on session with one. Compare this to the Google Nexus 7, which was handed out to 6,000 beta testers a couple of weeks ago, and will be in the store by the end of the month.

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They seem to have forgotten that some people multitask.
I frequently have a video or stream playing on one monitor, browser open in anotherā€¦ and chat open in the background or on a third.

Also, they failed to learn the important lesson from apple. Keep your mobile and desktop interfaces separate. iOS sucks in my opinion, I hate it with a passion, but it isnā€™t OS X. The apple desktop is a desktop, it isnā€™t on their phone or tablet, it is tailored to its users. Windows 8 is a bastard of both desktop and mobile, one that feels broken and disjointed.

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I think individual consumers will adopt Windows 8, the problem is business users. I know many IT people have trouble helping business users use the current, classic version of Windows.

IT folks are going to look forward to teaching business users a whole new UI. Since they often times old the keys to whether a new operating system will be installed, I think Win8 will take a long time to infiltrate the enterprise.

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Windows in not only the buttons, icons, and menus that you see. The operating system kernel is more important than that, and Iā€™d say that Windows 2000 (or NT if you wish) was more ā€œrevolutionaryā€ than Windows 95ā€“it was the first version that didnā€™t crash like crazy. A robust kernel is underappreciated: if it works, you donā€™t notice itā€™s there. But if it crashes twice a day and it forces you to reboot for silly reasons, you sure do.

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@Greggman, your reply to Scoble is exactly on target. Not a single one of Robertā€™s examples of things that are easy to to on the iPad is a good example of the majority of things that billions of people do with a computer every single day at work.

For the sake of argument, of course, we know that the nature of line-of-business applications can change over time to become iPad (or Surface) friendly, but if it ever happens, itā€™s a change that will take place over a decade or more. Neither Apple nor Microsoft can count on it to move people onto touch computing platforms within the next few years.

All the gushing in the world will not pull the wool over the eyes of everyday computer users, who can generalize from their own experience that, in 2012 and for the near future, the vast majority of interaction with the computer is going to be fasterā€“much fasterā€“with the keyboard and mouse than with a touchscreen.

Where the touchscreen is better, itā€™s pleasantly better than a keyboard and mouse. But where the keyboard and mouse are better, thereā€™s simply no honest comparison.

@Nes Anderson makes a good point re: Metro. People with more than one screen will be vastly disappointed. Metro apps only fire up on your main screen. You cannot move them from one screen to the other, or run them on two screens at the same time.

Itā€™s self-imposed limitations like this that will have otherwise-sane users waiting for the next opportunity to re-introduce Mr. Ballmer to a fresh dozen eggs.

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ā€œHeck, maybe a tablet is better than traditional PCs, because it sidesteps all the accumulated cruft and hacks the PC ecosystem has accreted over the last 30 yearsā€

Bam! Thatā€™s the nail, right there, and you just hit it. In order to truly move forward, you need a clean slate.

The problem for Windows 8 is that it brings the cruft with it. And for a reason, too. For the thousands upon thousands of companies running Windows, they are enslaved to a legacy of thousands of crappy applications.

To break away from our desks, we need to radically re-imagine how we work, how we interact with technology, what tasks we perform and where weā€™ll be when weā€™re doing them.

This is beyond most people. Itā€™s beyond most CIOs and most programmers and IT staff. The majority of people canā€™t imagine a room in a house theyā€™re buying in a different colour, let alone how theyā€™re going to build the apps of the deskless future.

And Iā€™m not just talking about corporate, in-house software. The ISVs themselves usually churn out garbage - the pricier or more niche it is, the worse the software. Even massive, rich technology companies produce crap - you mentioned IBM, but Oracle, too is like a company stuck in 1997.

Iā€™d love to see Microsoft completely reinvent Windows, to a point where the PC architecture could change beneath it. Thatā€™d be amazing. But if a company is faced with having to rebuild or repurchase all their apps again, then theyā€™ll have the opportunity to move away from Windows.

Microsoft are playing a canny game with Windows 8. They need to be revolutionary and conservative. They need to be Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and thatā€™s exactly what you see.

Its also why Visual Studio 2012 Express is WinRT only. They know they need to push people forward, push ISVs forward, push corporations, and I think youā€™ll see more of this.

Corporate IT needs to be coerced into the future. The decision-makers in these companies are usually the dimmest bulbs, detached from reality by their endless meetings, droll budget presentations and empire-building, while their own internet content filter prevents them being part of the conversation - these people are still rolling out VMWare while the kids on the street are trailblazing with HTML5 and 4G.

This is one of the most interesting times to live through since the emergence of the internet. The divergence of tablet and online with cruft and offline, and Windows 8 has a leg on each side of the rift.

Hopefully they wonā€™t fall down the hole.

Luke

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I still think that the best computer shell ever designed was Windows 95 Explorer. It got improvements in the next versions, but the original polished design has also been watered down (i.e the new start menu or Windows 7 dock-like taskbar). I really love this design, and itā€™s painful to see that itā€™s gone in Windows 8. Sure, Metro is good for tablets and touch interaction, but not for the ā€œtraditionalā€ personal computer tasks.

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Whatā€™s even more amazing is that Microsoft is actually pricing the upgrade sanely. Can you believe itā€™s only $40 to upgrade from Windows 8 from XP, Vista, or Windows 7? Itā€™s like someone at Microsoft woke up and finally listened to what Iā€™ve desperately been trying to tell them for years.

Sorryā€¦ I beat you to it by several months. :wink:

http://bob.archer.net/content/my-windows-7-49-proposal-microsoft

Windows 8 and the Surface tablet is the only reason I havenā€™t ordered a new MacPro Retina yet. I hope it comes out soon so I can decide.

BOb

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By the way, I have never been less excited about a Windows release. Iā€™m still a PC guy. I owned an iPad and sold it. Now I own an Android tablet, itā€™s somehow better and I use it daily on a regular basis. Butā€¦ overlapping windows? Real multitasking? A big display with the browser next to a text editor next to a dictionary next to a messenger chat? Or a TV window in a corner of the screen (I still happily own a Media Center with a TV tuner in my desktop PC) watching the news while Iā€™m doing something else? Anything of that is possible on a tablet. I donā€™t like the single monotasking of the post-PC era. Iā€™m a PC guy.

59

It is amazing clear to me reading some of the comments in this forum that people love to attack Metro. I guess when I think of RT on my desktop I feel the same. But to act like on your home PC you wont be able to do every single thing on Windows 8 (and more) just shows how little time you spend actually using Windows 8. Yes Windows 8 has a simplified metro cover but you have an improved Windows below. All your apps work - Media Center, Multitasking, Task Bar - umm everyone that says well I still wants these things is a moron. You still have them. I have been using Windows 8 since they have allowed it and it just a better experience once you get over yourself and your inability to change. Yes its you, not Windows 8.

Great Article.

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Windows 95 was not innovative. Windows 1 was because it went from the old command line DOS to the be the first mass market graphical UI. Windows 3 had a bit more style and was more business like than 1. Since then it always been the same windows. Anyone using Windows 3 could use Windows 7 without much trouble, all the UI concepts are the same though some stuff might be done in different ways or in different places but the user will not be lost.

61

Ah yes Windows 8 - ā€œthe El Camino OSā€

I know that youā€™re dedicated to the MSFT stack Jeff but I think youā€™re trying to find answers where there is only questions.

Currently 99.999% of windows users use a ā€œdesktopā€ PC with a keyboard and mouseā€¦ In fact MSFT has spent the better part of 20 years getting us used to doing everything on a PC this way. I canā€™t see a point ever in my life when I would dream of letting anyone (including myself!) put greasy fingers all over my screenā€¦ Never! More importantly Iā€™d lose all the precision of my mouse and the speed of my keyboardā€¦ Which I use constantly for all my real work.

MSFT realized they missed the tablet market completely and decided they needed to competeā€¦ But what could MS bring to the tablet that would provide ā€œValue Addā€ over what other tablets already had? - windows desktop apps! Bingo! Make it so that windows runs too (watch how useless this really is on a tablet in NCIS or on any existing hardware currently on the market)

Ok thatā€™s their business plan and in all honesty they didnā€™t have any better options.

But when they made their touch UI (Metro) which basically steals from their failed mobile phone platform it was a good choice for touch but pointless for desktopsā€¦ And thatā€™s where they blew it.

Now as a user I have to get past the metro UI in order to actually do any workā€¦ Eg use Excel, AutoCAD, Photoshop, Programming, Database, PowerPoint, organize files, edit audio and video etc.

Donā€™t get me wrong - I want the instant boot timeā€¦ I want the task manager and the IE10 browser capabilities (spellcheck a decade late!)ā€¦ On my desktopā€¦ But I donā€™t want metroā€¦ I donā€™t want the compromised browsing experience in Metro IE, I donā€™t want my start bar hidden from view in desktop mode.

Similarly if I was going to buy a windows tablet Iā€™d want the touch UI and ability to access a real filesystem but most of the ā€œwindows 7 portā€ would be useless on such a small device screen without mouse input and a well designed zoom.

And donā€™t even get me started on the failed attempt at ARM based Windows tablets which canā€™t run any of your existing apps in the ā€œreal windows modeā€ thus totally defeating any reason to get a windows tablet! Iā€™m very curious as to how MSFT plans to market them as I expect most customers would be pi$$ed off if they find out that their brand new windows tablet doesnā€™t run their previously purchased apps.

I think windows 8 will be like Vistaā€¦ Iā€™d rather wait till I can upgrade/patch to Windows 9 - Desktop Edition Ultimate.