Too much statistics, lack of human touch.

What my thought about

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-your-comments-on-the-start-screen.aspx

is, all statistics, but, not enough human engineering. It was such a chore to move the Metro list in comparison to moving the Win7 app list. And lets face the fact, it did say started from Win7, more and more people moved to Taskbar pins. And what does Metro Start Screen does? Blocking taskbar which people grown to love. It is a gigantic contradiction.

They started to point out the it is time to redesign start menu because it is less useful now. And it shows people are using taskbar more. And then, decided to crap out taskbar? I mean really? That's you solution to revitalize start menu by crapping out stuff that people use everyday?

Let me get this simple. I still use Star Menu because it still does something  I need, even though I don't use it as often as taskbar pins. It is a second tier frequent list. And I have make to this clear. Win7- Start Menus are not "intrusive". People dissing Metro Start because it is intrusive, and started to find reasons that compares to old menu. But, reality is simple, it is intrusive.

And seriously, if they already stated the importance of taskbar pins, they really wants to ignore that? I mean, really?

1 hour ago, magicalclick wrote

And seriously, if they already stated the importance of taskbar pins, they really wants to ignore that? I mean, really?

Taskbar pinning is still there in Windows 8, and if anything has increased in importance and prominence compared with Windows 7. Microsoft aren't taking it away.

46 minutes ago, CKurt wrote

• Use the same icons for metro and desktop style versions of an application. Why does the desktop control panel have a different icon than the metro one? And feature the icons on a more prominent place!    

@magicalclick: Think of the start screen as a full-screen taskbar. You pin and launch your programs there. For everything else, press the windows-key and type the program name. That's what I do with the start menu in Win7 (when I actually open it, which is very rare).

The transititions and icons and graphics will all be tweaked before the public beta. The preview is just to let developers play with WinRT and start making Metro apps.

They mentioned that they noticed an increasing trend in installed apps over time and found that this trend made each previous solution cumbersome. For example, a lot of people including myself pin a lot of apps to the taskbar (I count 16 right now) and this number will only go up, especially with the other trend that is to make these small, simple apps/mashups. Thus, the start screen which offers two dimensional search and organizational features would help manage all these apps.

So, while it's not an issue now, it soon will be and they just want to be ready for it.

@evildictaitor:

right, of course I know the Desktop "APP!!!!" did not go away from Win8. And let's face the reality here. They are going to replace start menu for sure because they firmly believed that, implied from the blog. Meaning, 80% chances that, when you press windows orb, Metro is the only thing you will get. I wasn't this pissed off until the blog you know.

anyway, the reason I removed Win8 and back to Win7 is because Desktop is an app. The blog did not address this. But, the same blog implied such reality in the final build. There is many political ways to spin my argument and I am not interested in pointless debates. When it really happens in such way, a way that you may not consider Desktop as an app while I do, I have to stay with Win7.

And I hope I am so strange and weird that, only me agrees with me and does not affect Win8's sales.

14 hours ago, MasterPie wrote

They mentioned that they noticed an increasing trend in installed apps over time and found that this trend made each previous solution cumbersome. For example, a lot of people including myself pin a lot of apps to the taskbar (I count 16 right now) and this number will only go up, especially with the other trend that is to make these small, simple apps/mashups. Thus, the start screen which offers two dimensional search and organizational features would help manage all these apps.

So, while it's not an issue now, it soon will be and they just want to be ready for it.

While that may be true it doesn't excuse them from justifying the removal of jump lists. The main reason I pin my apps to the task bar is for the jump lists. Sinofsky is dead set on moving the world to touch on the desktop and he'll create as many thousands of little cuts as possible to motivate people to do so. If he were truely interested in the mouse/keyboard desktop he'd put in mouse/keyboard convienece features in the start screen. Even if the world goes to touch on the desktop in the next 5 to 10 years he still needs to address the tools we have to work with now.

It also goes well beyond the start screen. If Sinofsky wants good uptake on W8 he'll need to invest some dollars on cleaning up the desktop's support for touch computing. No I'm not suggesting he metroize the desktop. There are plenty of small issues that could make the cross-over expereince between mouse/keyboard and touch much better. For example:

1. Fix pen tracking -- every Windows 7 tablet I've used (2 HPs) and now the W8 Build table is horrible at tracking the pen in portrait. You can recalibrate until the cows come home but that software issue isn't going anywhere. It;s always worse at the top of the screen.
2. Fix the touch keyboard -- when docking and undocking the keyboard in desktop mode your desktop icons are moved and not restored. The keyboard lacks basic data entry keys like <TAB>, <ESC> and up/down arrows. Sure you can go to the number pad to get tab but there's yet again another little cut; one more context change.

It's pretty clear the blog is an effort to justify and indoctrinate rather than make course corrections with W8. That's too bad but pretty much the norm from Microsoft.

The Win8 blog is pretty much a joke.  Don't get me wrong, I like to hear the reasoning behind some of these design decisions.  But Sinofsky calls this a "dialog" with customers.  I see no evidence of any dialog taking place.  It is a platform for Sinofsky's team to defend and promote their decisions.  The clear message from the blog is that the decisions have already been made and we had better learn to like them.  Any dissenting opinions are people opposed to change.  Given enough statistics, those people will eventually come around.  The floggings will continue until moral improves.  If someone IS paying attention to the common concerns, there is certainly no acknowledgement of it.  This is a one-way conversation, not a dialog, and seems to be driven by agendas more than feedback.

Most of the concerns around W8 could be resolved with some very minor modifications, and the result would be a great product.  I am cautiously optimistic that the final product will address a lot of the concerns, despite the current public party-line.  Time will tell.  If not, W8 will end up being another low-volume, tablet-only OS.

Corporate blogs are the new press releases, except with inappropriate colloquial language thrown in: "awesome", "super cool", and "rocks".

Then Twitter got started and now it's 140 characters or less, and still with no obligation to meaningfully respond to anyone who @s them

I look forward to the next tool that enables shareholder circlejerks.

@ryanb:

that's how I feel. They have long lists of arguments to support their decisions, but, they didn't say much about why we come to love the existing system. And they didn't mention how they are going to provide the same features that we come to love.

It is like, we say, "I don't like sour cream flavor, we want our coffee flavor back".

and he is like "Hey, sour cream is better, look at my numbers".

serious, wuuut. At least say "Hey, sour cream tastes similar to coffee, and here is why (just an example, they taste so much different)".

It's more like a small vocal group is saying "we want coffee flavor back" and they're saying "we have numbers that say most people prefer sour cream." There's more Windows users out there than just us.

Some of it is arrogance.   They have to admit they misjudged their users on liking an idea they came up with.  Sinofsky and his crew will not do this.  He must be more arrogant then the guy running Netflix who admitted to a mistake.  I mean Windows giving up the start menu is like HP stopping to make computers. 

How are they giving up the start menu? It's still there, it's just full screen and with more than just a vertical list of shortcuts.

@Bas:

if you think I am talking about exactly "Start Menu",

here is a quote.

"And lets face the fact, it did say started from Win7, more and more people moved to Taskbar pins. And what does Metro Start Screen does? Blocking taskbar which people grown to love. It is a gigantic contradiction."

FYI,

I am not talking about Start Menu.

@magicalclick: But the metro start screen doesn't block the task bar. You can still pin apps and use jumplists. They just made the start menu bigger.

Have any of you ever met the average computer user? They are morons, and if a program isn't on their desktop, it might as well not be installed. The new start screen is good for users. I know it will be great for my users.

If Microsoft made a setting that disabled the start screen, then admins would all disable it for their users without considering that a small adjustment would be good for them in the long run.

@magicalclick: It doesn't block the taskbar; it is a merging of the start menu and the taskbar.