How long will Windows 8, the terrible, last? Any bets?

4 hours ago, davewill wrote

@PaoloM:  Early involvement is a good question.  I often wonder if early involvement (to garner feedback) is done so in a context that does not give away the store but also isn't a peep hole view.

I can only speak about win7 and there many companies were involved in the design phase. I have no reason to think that win8 (it being led from the same leadership and mostly with the same team) has been different.

3 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

@PaoloM:

sadly from the Win8 Blog, the article is focused on justifications instead of assurance.

I'm not sure I understand. What assurance would you like?

4 hours ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

*snip*

Show me my wrongdoing.

Seriously? Okay.

User- and developer molesting app store - check

You really think Windows will be a failure on the market because there's an optional app store that allows you to run the same apps you run on your phone?

Botched "Metro Menu" - check

Botched is an undescriptive comment.

Get sick from neat switch effect - check

I don't see how its any different from minimize/maximize effects.

Unkillable apps - check

If you really care about killing them, you can do it in Task Manager. But since you're not interested in using Metro apps, I'm not sure why you care about that.

Lightgreen eye raping monster everywhere - check.

The menu? You'll be able to change the color in the final release of Windows 8.

WinDiv promised a 'fast and fluid' way to close metro apps in the beta.

I has some problems with the start screen and task switching, too, not 'terrible' but 'annoying', I will try again for the beta.

Windows 8 Developer Preview != Windows 8

5 hours ago, PaoloM wrote

*snip*

I'm not sure I understand. What assurance would you like?

If that is required to explain to MS to actually make the product usable for me, I will simply stay with Win7, thank you. But, just FYI, I have said it already.

@felix9:

Got to try beta when it is out. The current build is horrifying. My notebook was dying running all the apps. It was really 70% CPU and 80% RAM. The horror.

(also this is only subset of my concerns if other readers are trying to blah)

11 hours ago, DCMonkey wrote

I keep hoping that, behind the scenes, several of MS's largest corporate desktop customers are tearing MS a new one over forcing the Metro environment on the desktop, and that we'll eventually see a Mea Culpa post to b8 about how they "heard our feedback" and are making changes. 

Isn't the Metro thing optional? I agree, it looks like a train wreck on the desktop, but as long as folk can drop back to regular Windows then I don't really see a problem.

3 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

Got to try beta when it is out. The current build is horrifying. My notebook was dying running all the apps. It was really 70% CPU and 80% RAM. The horror.

For god's sake. It's a developer preview. It's designed to give DEVELOPERs a PREVIEW of what Windows 8 will be like so they can start planning what direction they want to take their apps, and to give an indication of what Metro is and how it might work. It's not a finished product, the graphics and animations, localisation, colours, windows, fonts, bitmaps and so on aren't done yet, and although most of the functionality is there under the hood, lots of it hasn't been properly exposed via the UI.

That's the reason why Metro feels clunky, why the start menu looks like a bitmap and why you can't close Metro apps - not that Microsoft has decided to abandon usability studies and unilaterally ignore common sense.

Why not go and have a look at the Longhorn Developer Preview, and the bloody murder that was shouted, and then look at the difference between Longhorn and Vista RTM. That's the kind of distance Windows 8 is from RTM right now.

9 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

Windows 8 Developer Preview != Windows 8

Correction: Windows 8 Developer Preview != Windows 8 Beta

The chances of Windows 8 resembling the preview anything beyond the basics (i.e. as much as the preview resembles WP7) is slim and none, and I don't think Slim is in town. This thread is pointless trolling.

The applications that most users will use (the web browser, an e-mail client, Netflix and other media software, etc.) are perfectly suited for Metro, so "fart apps and Twitter clients" is a gross exageration. Oh wait, I get it, you chose that because it sounds great for trolling. I shouldn't have fed you. *sigh*

BTW, there's a huge focus on Metro in the Developer Preview because that's what developers would be interested in seeing. Like everyone's said, and you fail to listen to (oh yeah, trolling), it's unlikely that such an emphasis will exist in the final product.

18 minutes ago, wkempf wrote

BTW, there's a huge focus on Metro in the Developer Preview because that's what developers would be interested in seeing. Like everyone's said, and you fail to listen to (oh yeah, trolling), it's unlikely that such an emphasis will exist in the final product.

What I see on the Building 8 blog is Dr. Evil is defending his suffering Metro mutant to the end. He has basically said that the old start menu is gone. Metro menu, One of the biggest annoyances, is here to stay.

But I will be fair - if the beta is considerably better than the preview I will be the first to praise it.

What all you "W8 dev preview != W8 (beta)" guys are ignoring is what magicalclick and others have aluded to. Sinofsky and crew are offering justifications for the bad decisions rather than a tone of "You're right, we got it wrong. We're fixing it." The direction they took with changes to the start screen search now defaulting to a list of all applications is nothing more than a cludge meant to shut up those who want the real start menu back in desktop mode. It's pretty clear they aren't budging much on original design. W8 and its approach to developing apps leans heavy on entrapping dev's and their applications in metro/W8. Sinofsky is working hard to give metro as much exposure as possible so users will start demanding metro apps.

Longhorn's biggest flaw was that it underperformed on the hardware of the day and in my mind is the biggest reason it got scrapped. At least they appear to have the performance piece under control in the W8 preview.

Don't get me wrong: I do want W8 to succeed but I don't believe Sinofsky nor Microsoft as a whole has the will to go beyond their "success" being defined by sales they get by default on new computers. The whole W8 story is fractured with contradiction:

• Need a tablet with 10 hours battery? No problem!: W8 ARM will give you that. Oh but you loose the desktop -- so much for the advantage of W8 tablets in the first place. This makes W8 tablets and also-ran as in this mode they provide no value over an iPad.
• Developing for WP7? Great! Bring your skills not your apps to W8/Metro. Oh and BTW, we'll be killing WP7/SL with W8 ARM on phones so we're doing you a favor by tell you this now.
• Plug-in free Metro IE makes for a fast & fluid browsing experience! Oh except for all of you casual browsers who wanted to watch any videos out there you'll need to constantly context switch to deskop mode to do that. Brilliant! As a bonus those in desktop mode will be taken to metro IE when you click any links in such things as emails in Outlook. Too bad if those links were to a video of Balmer screaming "Developers! Developers! Developers!"; you'll need to context switch back to desktop mode to watch it.

12 hours ago, Charles wrote

Provide your structured feedback to the Windows team on the Windows 8 forums: http://win8.ms/forums Lots of Windows folks read the posts there.

C

We have. Sinofsky and crew make it pretty clear they aren't listening but rather trying to indoctrinate us into their way of thinking through justification after justification after justification. With the story of Courier now finally out it's pretty clear Microsoft isn't after new ideas; it only is interested in continuing the lock-in to Windows & Office by offering an "also-ran" tablet story that they use to try and control both users and developers.

33 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

 

• Need a tablet with 10 hours battery? No problem!: W8 ARM will give you that. Oh but you loose the desktop -- so much for the advantage of W8 tablets in the first place. This makes W8 tablets and also-ran as in this mode they provide no value over an iPad.

It's astonishing that no one else seems to see this. 

28 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

We have. Sinofsky and crew make it pretty clear they aren't listening but rather trying to indoctrinate us into their way of thinking through justification after justification after justification. With the story of Courier now finally out it's pretty clear Microsoft isn't after new ideas; it only is interested in continuing the lock-in to Windows & Office by offering an "also-ran" tablet story that they use to try and control both users and developers.

Yup, that's about the size of it. To be fair, Microsoft's takeover of the desktop market was partly the result of stupidity on the part of IBM, Apple and a whole raft of other companies who didn't understand the PC market as well as Gates. Microsoft knows that they would be unable to pull this off again in a new market (for a start they would be unable to force partners into the kind of illegal deals that would lock out the competition), so the only alternative is to extend the existing one.

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

• Need a tablet with 10 hours battery? No problem!: W8 ARM will give you that. Oh but you loose the desktop -- so much for the advantage of W8 tablets in the first place. This makes W8 tablets and also-ran as in this mode they provide no value over an iPad.

*snip*

If Windows is going to run on ARM devices, then those ARM devices are going to have a desktop interface.

I think I showed last week or thereabouts that the desktop is still the dog wagging the tail, not the other way around. The immersive start menu lives inside the explorer.exe process. It truly is just replacement for the old Windows 7-style start menu and serves as nothing more than a launcher for applications, whether they be Metro-style apps or standard desktop applications. It's not even a separate shell that runs on top of Explorer. It IS Explorer, and Metro-style apps are just chromeless, full-screen apps that run on a special application stack with a unified design language. To Windows though, they're no different from any other type of application. They all live in separate processes like desktop applications. They can be killed separately using Task Manager. If you kill the explorer.exe process, they can be launched using Task Manager, just as you can standard desktop applications. There's really nothing special about Metro-style applications other than the application stack that they run on.