Since Windows 7, Microsoft has found themselves in the uncomfortable position between a downmarket competitor (Android) with which they can't be price-competitive, and a high-end, aspirational consumer brand (Apple) with non price-sensitive customers.
Among all this, the teams who worked on this product (including several close friends) really busted ass to get it right. I think this will be the best version of Windows ever, and might be the first operating system that gets a touch/keyboard+mouse hybrid UI right.
I think this is a very simplistic summation: the problem with Microsoft isn't price, it's the lower perceived value. For a long time, even more expensive Windows systems - particularly laptops - simply felt cheaper than Macs: the clumsy Windows system UI coupled with vendors bundling crapware or saving a few dollars with flimsy plastic parts to fit a very tight price-point, etc. Saving $5 with a screen hinge makes the entire system feel worse but for a long time it's been the rule thanks to the prevalent design-by-spreadsheet mindset.
There are some people who simply won't consider buying a Windows system but I think there is a much larger group of customers who would be quite open to a high-quality system — I'm just not sure that this will happen without Microsoft getting a good industrial designer in charge of the entire product. I'm also hoping that either Windows 8 has either improved a lot since the betas, interacts horribly with VMware, or a service pack will spread the Metro design around more completely because the betas were something of a disaster once you left Metro.
I think there's an interesting lesson in here about perception of value in technology. I used to work at Microsoft but currently use exclusively Apple products, mostly because they're unix machines and are more familiar. That said, I know I'm in the tiny little epsilon of the general population that cares about whether it's unix underneath.
At bottom, I have no idea why people buy Apple products.
Also, FWIW, I'm totally price-insensitive when it comes to computer purchases; I keep these thing for 3-5 years so paying $1000 more just doesn't matter over that span.
> At bottom, I have no idea why people buy Apple products.
Fit and finish. Only a few Sony/Samsung products I've seen on the market recently are really designed tightly and I've never had to use them so don't know how Win7 works on those compared to a Mac.
The problem in the PC/Windows world is that even if you make an Apple-quality product - hardware, drivers, testing, mandating component quality - you will be "disrupted" by another PC manufacturer that steals your design just enough to confuse consumers. Meanwhile the large Windows license costs require razor thin margins unless you price your end product above what Apple offers. This is a no-mans land.
To me Apple is in a weird place also as far as Mac sales go because Macs fill two niches: (1) people like you (and me) who like to run OSX because its the most stable way to run a modern UNIX system, and (2) people who want a computer that "just works" and looks pretty and are willing to pay for it.
This results in some weirdness for the techies because you're constantly having to fight Apple's "user friendly" features in order to get the system to behave the way you want, but you don't really have an alternative except jumping to Linux and all the issues that entails.
Don't know what you mean by "interacts horribly with VMware" but people who care about that is probably a small demographic given the target market of Windows.
Also the cheaper feel of laptops was a valid argument a few years ago but since then quite a few ultrabooks have been available that are quite sleek.
On the subject of ultrabooks: I've seen plenty which look sleek. I have yet to find one which combines equivalent quality fit and finish, screen, keyboard, and battery life at any meaningful cost savings.
Even if such a product exists, the other side of that is hardware / software integration: does the vendor not install a bunch of crap which needs to be removed / disabled, did Microsoft provide a single, simple place to configure and interact with the system (hint: maybe for Windows 9), etc. None of these are unworkable but I've heard them mentioned over and over by people who've switched from PCs to Macs over the last decade[1] enough that it feels like the sharp decline of the traditional PC industry is more due to some local-minima revenue decisions than anything else.
1. That describes me as well but I'm excluding my own experience as unrepresentative & sticking to more normal users
Those ultra books haven't been around for a "few years" yet so pc laptop reputation is still in the gutter. I have yet to experience a decent pc laptop personally, I've heard they exist, but our IT department hasn't short listed them yet. I hope this changes soon.
I just meant that I tried the Windows 8 preview VM and found the UI quite hard to use from a simple interaction perspective. I think some native input hardware would go a long way towards making things like the invisible side navigation easier to access.
I'm not sure you can get a touch UI 'right' on a desktop PC. Even if there was some theoretical way to add a fully-functional touch layer to a desktop OS without obscuring or limiting access to the OS's functionality, you'd still end up having to support two distinct and unrelated interface conventions for everything, which means that in practice, every interface paradigm will likely be suboptimal.
MS's stated intention was to have a consistent UI across phones, tablets, and desktops. This strikes me as an utterly absurd notion: different products call for different interfaces, each designed to maximize the unique benefits of that particular product. Phones, tablets, and PCs are not generally substitute goods; each of them has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and a common UI just obscures them beneath a lowest-common-denominator facade.
When computers transitioned from command line to GUI, it seemed odd too. Too many times you were required to type commands to start gui programs and were pretty much working inside the command shell to get any real work done. But that changed in a few years as most things transitioned to UI and now there's barely any reason to use a command shell.
If you see the current metro implementation, it is similar. The whole desktop is treated just as an app along with the rest of the metro apps (like command shell was in gui). This is the first version of metro and dismissing the current approach is a little premature.
Except people transitioned to GUI interfaces because they added additional utility: program functions became discoverable within the interface; multitasking became easy and uncomplicated; integration of workflow among multiple applications became more intuitive and easier.
Metro is a step backward in all of these areas: it makes functions less discoverable, it makes multitasking more cumbersome, and it makes workflow more difficult. Full-screen applications with inconsistent UIs and limited integration with other programs make me feel like I'm using DOS.
What are the benefits to ease of use, productivity, and functional sophistication offered by a desktop touch UI? I can't think of any, just more limitations: in addition to the retrograde utility specific to Metro, with any touch UI you've got the problem of slower, more burdensome text entry, and having your hands obscure the stuff you're looking at and leaving smudges on the screen.
I still don't understand what problem desktop touch is meant to solve.
Metro is a very primitive tiling window manager. There are many people (developers mostly) who love tiling WMs and find them to be the most productive. Metro isn't nearly as good as dwm or xmonad yet, but if they continue in this direction it could be a good system on desktop.
Metro is not even out for desktop in its final form and you seem to have accumulated a lot of opinions on it already. :) It is different than what people are used to so people are bound to have polarizing views on it.
If you have been following the posts on the building windows blog then you will be able to understand the reasoning behind the design. Please do it. As a software engineer, understanding the design process behind one of the most used pieces of software is very educating.
I've seen plenty of the Metro interface that's out in the Win8 betas, and I'm expressing an opinion of what I've already seen. I doubt that the final version will likely be different.
There seems to be a general trend toward a "sparse, haphazard 2D grid of elements of varying size and shape" UI paradigm, not just in Metro, but on websites and elsewhere, and apart from the more detailed criticisms of what we've seen in Metro, I think this paradigm just doesn't work - it prioritizes static aesthetics over interactive functionality - and Metro, being an instance of this, is essentially broken in concept, not just in implementation.
Two distinct interfaces in one OS is right? Why not simply a single interface that would adapt? Something like resposive web sites (google.com looks differently on mobile, tablet and desktop).
The higher-end Surface will ship with a full Windows 8 build that supports the traditional desktop. It's meant for legacy customers with big investments in traditional line-of-business stuff (banks, insurance, traders) who run .NET apps on the desktop. This device is intended to compete with computers.
The lower-end surface will be for consumers. It will run Windows RT (previously called WOA, "Windows-on-ARM"), and support Metro (touch) apps exclusively. Main expected software distribution channel is the Windows app store. This device is positioned against the iPad; it's an Apple-style "shrinkwrap" experience that resets everything for the sake of this version, which wouldn't ever fly in the business world.
I've been studying this extensively because my company (Crittercism) will have a build of our mobile crash instrumentation on Windows RT from the day it launches. Email me at david@crittercism.com if you want access to the beta.
There may very well be one interface to rule them all, but it's not going to be the windows desktop that we all know and love. Removing that completely is going to be difficult to matter how great the alternative is, so if they want to have a touch interface it'll have to be as a distinct UI.
I've installed Windows 8 on my desktop and so far I find it infuriating to use. I get the feeling that the "computer as a tool" notion has been deprecated with this release, and yet the world is full of people who still need to use their computers as tools on a daily basis. Windows keeps forcing me to use metro, but all the apps I need to use throw me back to the desktop. I was constantly having to switch context throughout a normal working day.
Also, I'm annoyed that the app store is Metro only. As a result its full of junk toy apps that are again designed to take me out of the context of the desktop. The fact that you can't purchase and install MS Office through their own app store shows how worthless it is.
How? I've been using Windows 8 for weeks and only see Metro when I'm launching an app I don't have pinned. And even then only for a very brief moment while I'm typing, a moment which is hardly disruptive.
How do you feel forced to use Metro when everything you do is on the desktop?
Install and launch an application - Gotta go through metro
Hit close on a fullscreen window - Metro sidebar shows up.
Doubleclick a video file, where does it take you? Metro
Need to look at pdf or image real quick, where are you going? Metro
Wanna use a one off app like Notepad or Calculator? You have to go through Metro, then right-click to pull up the bottom bar, hit All Apps and then finally find your app. Dear God.
For media, you don't have to use Metro. When I open a video it opens MPC. When I open a picture it opens Windows Photo Viewer (not the Photos app). When I open a PDF, it opens Chrome or Foxit.
Hell, I want to use Metro but my workflow keeps me in in the desktop 95% of the time. The other 5% is just to open a program I don't have pinned. In that case, just type the application name.
"Installing Metro apps from the Store then sure it's metro. Installing a desktop app doesn't go through metro at all."
I just downloaded and installed a program from the web, the shortcut to launch that program only exists in the Metro UI unless I either pin that to the desktop launchbar, or I add a shortcut to my desktop
At least the Start Menu looks like the rest of Windows and doesn't steal the entire screen. To me, Metro replacing the Start Menu is as jarring as it would have been if they had replaced it with a DOS based application launcher.
What's the difference between "stealing the screen" and clicking All Programs which then fills up a major part of the screen while you hunt down which folder you're looking for, then try to find the application that exists in that folder?
Either way, you're going to lose focus of whatever was on the screen to begin with.
Try viewing an image, watching a video, or opening a PDF; if you don't custom configure your helper applications, you are thrown into metro each time you open these files. I've been careful to configure my helpers to avoid metro apps and just use Chrome instead, but I'm still encountering some content types that I forgot about that have metro viewers.
Is that so terrible of a solution though? I'd wager to say that most Win 8 devices will be touch devices (my bet is people aren't going to flock to upgrading their Win 7 machines). So the people who don't have touch machines are the only ones that don't want metro apps running their media. Is it that hard to set the helpers accordingly and then never worry about it again?
The whole point is to have devices in the near future which act as a tablet and then can convert into a laptop or even desktop if it gets docked to a large monitor and keyboard.
Metro mainly for touch, desktop mainly for mouse/keyboard. One device, 3 scenarios.
The big question is whether there's more similarity (today) between tablet and laptop than tablet and phone. Microsoft has bet on the tablet-laptop combo while Apple and Android have taken the tablet-phone route.
If Apple does indeed release a 7" iPad then this further cements the tablet-phone approach. Microsoft will have difficulties competing here immediately because Win8's UI is not made to scale down that small and it would be awkward to release 7" devices running WP8 (2 different tablet OSes!).
Most people agree that there needs to be more continuity between desktop and mobile and Microsoft is setting themselves up decently with Windows Phone 8 (based on the Win8 core and WinRT).
My concern with Windows 8 is that it took a cheap route to extend to tablet UIs (the second shell, Metro), resulting in 3 UI platforms- desktop (classic shell), tablet (Metro), phone (WP8), rather than 2.
I got over unattainable concept design porn years ago. My childlike wonder now requires actual shipping product.
Attention to detail matters - sometimes more than the grand vision. Microsoft needs to get down to brass tacks - show success stories and tell us how the tablet/laptop scenario would specifically work with Windows8.
Nah, if it's technically capable of running Metro applications, then no sense in making them unavailable to people who are running it on PCs.
I just remain unconvinced that the integration was as smooth as it could have been. And, let's admit it, it's going to be a while before I forgive MS for killing off the start menu mere moments after they finally figured out how to make it really good. The Metro replacement looks great, and I'm sure that approach will work as well on tablets as it does on smartphones. . . but for computers, the Windows 7 version was really pretty good, and its replacement just isn't doing it for me.
> Sometimes I wonder if MS would have been better served offering two version
No, they want to leverage the power of the desktop Windows to get a foothold in mobile, which they werent able to achieve on their own.
Now everybody who develops for desktop windows also kinda develops for mobile windows and strenghtens the weak windows mobile ecosystem. That was the goal. One step back in the desktop, two steps forward in mobile.
Thios force-bundling of ecosystems will work out if developers arent so disgusted by Metro to decide to leave the Microsoftian ecosystem alltogether.
> Now everybody who develops for desktop windows also kinda develops for mobile windows and strenghtens the weak windows mobile ecosystem...
I don't see this happening. You're talking about the intersection of Windows apps and their corresponding developers which:
a) Haven't already migrated to the web. Discounting Microsoft's own products, the revenues for web "applications" have to dwarf desktop commercial software by several orders of magnitude. Remember when Encarta was a viable product? Or a recipe database? Mapping? Finance? You name something "ordinary people" used to do with boxed software and it's almost all being done online.
b) Are suitable for a Metro/Touch-style interface and can leverage it to be cross-device easily (Games are out, so likely are IDEs, pro tools like Photoshop...). Whole classes of applications are going to keep being written against the non-Metro Win32 APIs and under the assumption that you've got a 12"+ screen and a keyboard/mouse.
c) Are popular enough to go through the bother of a rewrite (and presumably popular enough to make a difference to Windows Phone or the Surface). Much of what's left when you exclude a) and b) is vertical market stuff or internally written line-of-business applications that will never be worth a radical WinRT rewrite.
That's not to say Metro and Windows Phone won't be successful. I just think they're not going to be successful because the folks still writing desktop Windows software will wake up one morning and realize, "Oops, I guess I wrote a Windows Phone application, might as well ship that, too!"
The Windows Metro SDK and Windows Phone SDK are not the same.
Windows Phone has already gotten pretty good developer support. I believe for a while it was the fastest growing platform in apps. But you hit a wall where users matter. They're not going to catch up to iOS and Android in apps without also having users. The two must grow together.
> Now everybody who develops for desktop windows also kinda develops for mobile windows
Not quite. I am sure not everyone will port their apps to Metro. There is also the format thing - a keyboard/mouse desktop app will require a lot of adaptation before it works as expected on a small mobile device.
True. There is no better word than "schizophrenic" for how it feels to operate a Windows 8 machine. I can see their reason for it. Pushing desktop paradigm into mobiles didn't work (Older Windows Mobile editions with start menu and all that wasn't easy to use) but now they are trying to tabletize the pc and tablet interface is not as same as a desktop. I felt my mouse was inadequate. The interface expects a sliding gesture, not a mouse click.
Oh maybe with the release of Microsoft Surface it would be more useful. But with the run of the mill pc's it won't be so easy to convince the users to buy W8.
My predictions:
Developers download it on August 15th and we'll see many reviews like we've seen about the RP. Some will hate it, some will love it. The fact that it's going to be much less buggy than RP will help a lot.
Then on October 26th, all of the new touch devices will launch. At that point, we'll actually see why they focused on a touch interface, and things will make more sense. Some reviewers should install this on a touchscreen device and give it a proper review before that date though, it'd be nice to get some insight.
My predictions are that the Surface with Windows RT will still be buggy, and will have very little software support at launch, leading to poor reviews and sales. Surface Pro will have good reviews when that comes out three months later, and that will truly showcase the design of Windows 8. Unfortunately, the bad press from the Surface and relatively high price compared to an entry-level iPad will hurt sales. For many potential desktop and laptop customers, however, Windows 8 will be frustrating, plagued with poor reviews, and there will be a huge market for computers preloaded with Windows 7 for many years to come.
Here's a review of the touch aspects of Windows 8, btw:
I don't know why that's so surprising. Android tablets have only gotten any attention since the Kindle Fire came out. Windows 8 was announced before that, in September. Even if Windows tablets completely bomb, there's still going to be millions of PCs with Metro on them and the Windows Store staring in their face. And even though Metro apps are (somewhat) less useful on a PC, sheer number of users tells you that there is some market there. Whereas before the Kindle there wasn't much of an Android tablet market. And the Kindle really only got developers to stick their toes in the water, Nexus 7 is what solidifies it as a platform worth developing on. So in my mind, Windows 8/RT has had developer support longer than Android tablets.
Windows RT is Windows for the ARM processor. Software for Windows RT must be compiled specifically for the platform, and software for Windows 8, whether Metro or not, will not run in Windows RT.
Why would a developer spend time working on Windows RT software when there are zero customers for it, rather than for iOS or Android? Those Nexus 7 tablets you mention are flying off the shelves faster than Acer or Asus or whoever can make them. You can't even get a Windows RT device to test your software on yet.
This isn't correct. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRT
"Programs can be written using Windows Runtime that will run on both the X86 and ARM editions of Windows 8 without modification."
The entire point of WinRT (read: Metro-style apps) is the you can code it once, and it will run on either platform.
> Why would a developer spend time working on Windows RT software
Because they don't have to spend any extra time over writing the same application for x86-based Windows 8
Ah, thanks for the correction. Apparently it is possible to support both x86 and ARM if you write Metro apps using Windows Runtime, or WinRT, not to be confused with Windows RT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT). The wording ("can be written") seems like a qualifier to me however, with potential gotchas. I guess the question would be whether existing Metro software is in fact compatible with Windows RT. Then there's the fact that there simply isn't much Metro software available in the first place.
The link I gave was just my lazy attempt at citing something. Wikipedia is hardly reliable source No. 1.
In reality, it is my understanding the Windows RT (the OS), can only run applications designed for Metro/WinRT (the runtime). That is, any Metro application out there should be compatible with both Windows 8 and Windows RT (the OS).
(There may well be gotchas around reusing some native libraries, but I suspect these would be few and far between).
So to your earlier 'bet' you went against...
> ...Windows RT will have more apps at launch than Android tablet currently exist.
Well Windows RT (the OS) should have the same number of (Metro-style) apps as Windows 8, given my understanding from above. I'd expect this to be a pretty high number once the devices hit, given that Developer Preview (and therefore the tools to make these apps) have been out for nearly a year now.
Counting the number of Android tablet apps is more difficult. I wouldn't count the full total of Android apps, only ones optimised for a larger screen. First you have to define it. On Google Play's store, I could only find one list of apps for Tablets, which only has around 250 apps:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/tablet_feature...
(Given that I was able to get to the 11th page).
If betting the number of Windows RT apps against 250, I know which I'd put my money on.
Of course, there may well be more than 250. How on earth does one find them though?
Windows Store has 100 apps in the "All Stars" section, so I'm assuming the total number is greater than that (by how much I don't know). Also, registration is currently invite-only, so I would suspect there are many people like myself developing apps but are unable to submit them.
No, they are exactly the same. Just a separate build. My point was that by writing software for Metro you are writing it for every future PC purchase, and although a lot of those won't be using Metro much, the sheer number of people who can use Metro is going to eclipse even the iPad. So the potential is obviously great.
I understand the logic, and there's something to be said for being a big fish in a small pond, and the exposure of being one of the first to support the platform. But in the face of exploding iPad and Nexus 7 sales, I must admit I'd be pretty nervous investing heavily in touch-focused software for Windows, in the hopes that a market pans out.
If supporting Metro without leaving mouse and keyboard users behind is possible, then it might seem more viable to me. The choice between dropping support for Windows 7- and maintaining two code bases raises the stakes for many developers. My understanding is that the only way to support Windows 7- and 8 in a single app is to make it non-Metro. So most developers must then choose between supporting Windows 7 and Windows RT, with the latter unproven.
1. There isn't a lot of good (in my opinion) touchscreen hardware out there [yet] which can run Windows 8.
2. I do all of my programming and productivity work on a desktop/laptop using software which would likely never benefit from touch UI (e.g. programming and systems administration).
agree with you on (1), hence surface rt launching same day I guess.
as for (2), I imagine everyone who does any sort of work on a pc is in the same boat on this. but I’ve found (been using the previews for a while now) that metro has a lot to offer beyond being a touch-optimized ui..
essentially, in using windows 8, the entire desktop has turned into a ‘work’ app (as well as ‘file manager’ and ‘advanced settings’ apps). I still can do everything I could before on the desktop, and still do when it comes to work-related tasks, but much of my other use has shifted to metro. things like casual web browsing, email, messaging, and music have all become metro experiences for me, and all those experiences have become markedly better (the interface just lends itself better to consumption-related tasks). in addition, it’s also pretty nice to have the ability to play a casual game here-and-there, and checking-in on news via apps is much more enjoyable then the web.
that’s just my take on it. I think when people stop thinking about it as windows with metro tacked-on, and rather as a whole new experience + a very powerful ‘app’ that holds all functionality of classic windows one click away, they can better appreciate it. I think this will become more apparent once it's been out in the market and more apps are added so that people can spend more time in the metro environment.
While Windows 8 desktop is pretty much identical to Windows 7 desktop, the rest of Windows 8 offers quite a lot. Metro works really well as a consumption interface - I was using it the other day to look at sports (looking for Olympic news), and I wished that there was an Olympics metro app. Trying to view olympic news through a browser on nbc.com feels so awkward compared to the sports metro app.
Maybe I work too much but I rarely find myself in metro. Also, there is no metro version of chrome yet while I'm finding IE10 font rendering hard on my eyes. So metro right now is somewhere I go to launch apps or by accident when I click on some content with a metro helper.
Agreed. The breadth of engineering that goes into a three-year release cycle is staggering. It'll take months for the market to fully digest everything that went in.
i really dont understand why metro apps run full screen on desktop pc. i have a 30" 2560x1600 monitor and metro apps seem ridiculous. i have 4 million pixels but i cannot see three metro apps together. what a silly idea.
I agree that the large displays are suboptimal for metro but the problem is not that you have a high resolution screen but the 30" size of it. I am going to bet that you are in a very small percentage of users who have such a large screen desktop. If you see the kind of devices people are picking up, a laptop is preferred over desktop and those rarely go above 17" and that size itself is too big for a portable device.
I am going to bet that you are in a very small percentage of users who have such a large screen desktop.
Couple of points:
1) Large screens are getting really cheap. Occasionally ridiculously cheap, as in last week's bargain Korean LCD monitor threads. Today's $300 back-alley special is tomorrow's mainstream price point.
2) On the desktop, people with large screens are more valuable customers. They spend money on software and hardware. People with small screens don't. This generalization obviously breaks down when it comes to traditional Windows laptops, but Metro doesn't make any more sense for those than it does for white-box desktop PCs.
Metro is a bet-the-company move, and I'll give Ballmer credit for that much. However, the board should have required him to pee in a cup before placing this particular wager.
I am actually excited with the potential of W8/Surface, a tablet can do real work is a win for me. I like the vision of the original TabletPC, but they failed to execute it. Seems they are getting it right this time based on playing with preview.
I think the hate is a bit reactionary and the popular argument to take because well it's the Internet and seemingly hates change.
The Metro layer is the most useful Start Menu yet and the Explorer / Desktop ui is there as usual, faster than ever. It certainly is a presentation change when you first load it up but I predict that most people will get the hang of it pretty quickly. I did. I don't feel much of a disconnect honestly. It's just a bit different but not in a bad way overall.
It's a OS ready for new / touch devices yet to come and will probably run apps from 1990 if you really need it. Windows 7 was the perfection of Windows 95 and this feels like the progress that comes after that.
I disagree. If there's a reactionary element here, it's the Windows 8 design. It's Microsoft trying to shoehorn mobile elements into their desktop OS because they're not competitive in the mobile market.
Having used W8 for a few months now, the problem is that the end product is half-baked, inconsistent, and confusing.
I suppose you can call that reactionary hate of new UIs, but I'm a guy that used OS X when it was still running on PowerPC, was an early proponent of the UI changes in Vista, always thought the nerd hate for GNOME2 when it first came out was silly and thinks that the current hate for Unity is equally so, still thinks that WebOS was the most usable mobile OS to be released, etc.
I've spent the past decade going out of my way to expose myself to as many new interfaces as I can get my hands on, and I'm generally quite receptive to change. Outside of the improved Explorer, I haven't been able to find very much at all to like about Windows 8.
Microsoft has weathered that storm with Windows 95, though, so they should really tart up the marketing with licensed songs and sitcom actresses. Just really hammer home that this is what the future of the PC is going to be, and hey, Penny from The Big Bang Theory is a PC and loves her some Windows 8. Then once we've all gotten into the groove with Surfaces and touch screen media centers from HP, the criticisms will quiet down some.
The way I see it, the success of Windows 8 is pinned on the success of the tablets and phones. If they're really great products, at the right price, people will want more of the same on their desktop. I don't see this as a straight desktop refresh.
I don't want to put it badly, but I feel like microsoft is really fumbling this by putting 2 months between the software going into circulation and the hardware it's been designed for launching. I'm about in the market for a new laptop or possibly a surface pro, but I have the feeling this is going to leave a bad taste in people's mouthes as Win8 on nontouch hardware isn't anything special, at least what I've seen with the DP.
The time between RTM (release to manufacturing) and GA (general availability) is such because OEMs need 2 months to take the gold image of Windows 8, image it onto the tens of millions of new PCs that will be sold during the Holiday season, and then ship those devices back to all of the retail stores where they will be sold.
The October 26th date effectively acts as an embargo to make sure that all of the OEMs get enough time to get their devices into market and can start selling at the same time. It would make the press / sales cycle extremely difficult to manage if the devices were available only from a few faster moving OEMs in a smaller number of markets, versus having everything everywhere at once.
It's completely unrealistic to give an OS drop to an OEM and expect them to start shipping hardware tomorrow. "RTM" was always more of an industry thing than something consumers care about, because it meant the final build of the OS that would ship en masse has been delivered to hardware vendors.
Normal consumers can't get their hands on it until October. But developers, system administrators, and OEMs can download the final bits starting later this month: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive.... This is so that they can be ready with applications and hardware for the official consumer launch in October.
I've been using Windows 8 for months, and while I've initially had the same reaction about that bloody schizophrenic UI, it's not hard to configure everything to look and feel almost exactly like Windows 7.
What actual users will say about the new WinRT/WinDesktop model is beyond me. I imagine that the Windows Store will quickly fill with plenty of useful apps, so that the pain of living exclusively in WinRT will lessen somewhat.
I've been using Windows 8 for months, and while I've initially had the same reaction about that bloody schizophrenic UI, it's not hard to configure everything to look and feel almost exactly like Windows 7.
So are you saying there are two horrible things, and only one is even usable?
Maybe I should have expanded a little. What I meant was that while the WinRT environment is horrible to use on a touchless desktop environment (for me, at least), Windows 8 can easily be changed to feel almost exactly like Windows 7 (which I can use very efficiently).
At the same time, whenever I have a touch-based device I can still make use of all the WinRT features.
Long story short, Windows 8 may look like a UI disaster at first, but for devs at least it's almost irrelevant because you can change pretty much everything, and get used to or ignore the rest.
Like I said earlier though, I'm not sure how much reconfiguration the mainstream user wants to do, or how easily they'll get used to WinRT.
Given the fact that many interface functions in the Windows 8 UI are undiscoverable from within the UI, and require advance knowledge of mouse gestures, etc., this isn't quite so far off from the truth.
Did people have trouble figuring this out on their iPad when they first got it? It's pretty much the same deal. Press the Windows key on the front of the tablet/keyboard.
I'll give you an example from this morning. Guy in my office wanted to print a PDF from within Windows Reader. Know where the print button in Windows Reader is? Nowhere. You have to press Ctrl+P to bring up the print dialog.
How, exactly, is that going to work on a tablet?
Also, since when did we have to think about how a tablet (with one button, and hence, limited options) would handle a task, when GUIs have been handling the same task the same way for decades?
Has Microsoft ever shipped an OS without a tutorial? Also, how easy/intuitive is it to print from an iPad?
Also, since when did we have to think about how a tablet would handle a task?
Since people started buying iPads. Microsoft could continue to cater specifically to you then go out of business, or they could cater to both markets and give you the option of using a desktop with all your traditional printer options. Both of these things exist.
All of the examples given are discoverable, even with a mouse and keyboard IMHO - particularly given that all of the keyboard shortcuts (such as the Windows key for the start screen and Alt + F4 for closing an app) all still work.
The thing most desktop-oriented criticisms of Win8 overlook is that the overwhelming majority of computers that are going to ship with Win8 installed WILL HAVE TOUCH. Comparing the experience on an existing PC and extrapolating that to how the experience will feel on devices that are sold starting in October is Apples to Oranges.
The thing most desktop-oriented criticisms of Win8 overlook is that the overwhelming majority of computers that are going to ship with Win8 installed WILL HAVE TOUCH.
What? Why would that be? Most non-touch desktop and laptop models will continue to be non-touch but will start to come with Windows 8. These non-touch Windows devices will continue to vastly outnumber the Windows 8 tablets that are shipped, unless Surface or Windows Phone 8 devices are runaway successes beyond anybody's dreams...
Because OEMs aren't going to want to sell devices that are awkward to use with Windows 8, and this gives them a good ability to differentiate and incentivize upgrades from Win7 / Vista machines. Why do you think Microsoft announced Surface when they did?
Expect more laptops and notebooks to ship with touch screens.
That market is so price competitive (and so based on differentiation within each manufacturer's product line), that I'll be surprised if we see a huge shift toward touch screens as an "expected" feature. No doubt there will be more than there are today, of course. Guess we'll see!
Unfortunately, that's exactly how it seems to be working, with the post getting flagged and ranking way below the page and below other posts with less upvotes and posted earlier. Typical HN behavior really.
Among all this, the teams who worked on this product (including several close friends) really busted ass to get it right. I think this will be the best version of Windows ever, and might be the first operating system that gets a touch/keyboard+mouse hybrid UI right.