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It's not meant to be better for desktop use | 101 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Just like Office 2007: Create Novelty for the sake of the bottom line....
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 09:59 PM EDT
Let's see, I've been a programmer and user for 30 years, more or less.

I am doing a few more things on the computer way back then, but the
fundamentals remain unchanged, except for the blinding speeds now
possible, and now touchscreens, for which both Android and iOS have at
least halfway decent solutions. The main limitation on what I do with the
computer is now me -- that is, do I have the time and energy and space to
do it.

There is quite a bit of frustration with having long-practiced interfaces
scrambled for no real benefit except someone's bottom line, especially the
small fraction I actually use constantly. I suppose that the idea is to tap
into
the non-desktop market, but Android is making that extremely tough--thus
the various legal assaults, which, along with PJ, I suspect are in fact being
coordinated and/or goaded and/or financed through Redmond. Redmond
has the means, in the form of a huge pile of cash, and the motive, since my
desktop stays put but the touchscreen goes in my pocket, and this
threatens their cash flow, as well as the attitude("Win at all costs"
from Bill
Gates). I can offer no direct evidence, but the pile of circumstances,
starting with SCO, and Novell versus Microsoft, is quite high and all over
Groklaw.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Simple; they've lost it.
Authored by: soronlin on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 11:05 PM EDT
I've not used Windows 8, but I have used Windows 7 and Office 2010.

It's supposed to be simple. It's supposed to be obvious. But it isn't.

Instead of having a huge control panel with hundreds of icons, you've got a tiny
one with a handful of icons. That seems simpler. But in practise you need to
remember which one has the particular dialog that you are looking for. Then when
you press that, the option you want might be in the main panel or it might be on
the side-bar. Instead of a huge field of icons, most of which you ignore and a
few of which you memorise, you have a maze of twisty dialogs and menus, all
different.

Take printing in Office. You used to click File->Print. Now the File tab
takes you to a whole new page, then you click print in the side-bar and the big
print button on the main panel. Each of those is a different type of action, and
it's an extra mouse click and two whole page redraws more than it used to be.

There's no obvious way to work any of this out; even the buttons don't appear to
be buttons until you mouse over them. There is no consistency and too many
warring metaphors. There is no global model.

The windows explorer tree-view has lost the vertical lines so you get lost
easily, and it doesn't sync to the folder shown on the main panel so you keep
having to hunt down the tree for where you are. Opening a folder in the
tree-view used to open it and scroll to show all contained items until the
containing folder was at the top of the page. Now it doesn't. When you closed a
sub-tree and re-opened it it used to open it with all the sub-trees open the
same way they were. Now they're all closed and you have to open each one again.
You've lost the ability to have a folder open with its own style and size; now
all explorers open the same as the last one you had open. You can't arrange
icons how you want them; they always auto-arrange.

Lots and lots of petty annoyances, individually just a shrug and get on this it,
but altogether Windows 7 is just less efficient than XP, and less
newbie-friendly. This isn't just a newbie thing though; I've been using it for
months, all day, every day, and I still have to search for stuff.

Why? Because Microsoft has lost the plot; it's all eye candy and cute ideas.
Efficiency and obviousness are not design goals.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Windows 8 - For Touchsceens? UI and Gestures are AWESOME!
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 04 2012 @ 07:44 AM EST
Windows 8 for keyboard use it's not something that
instantly gets you excited. It takes getting used to. But
over all, I'd say it's better than Windows 7, but not as
good as XP with greater user control. I think any OS that
takes away control and customization features completely,
like Apple's done..... will fail in the long run!

Especially with new gesture enabled touchscreens and stylus
interfaces on desktops or tablets interfaces in Microsoft's
future. Things Linux has had since powering Kiosks and bank
teller interfaces since the 90's. Why didn't Apple do a
ground up rewrite of Mac OS or OS X to include them?

Because they never were into true Enterprise or Commercial
use and innovating them. They are going to lose this
generation because of that. Anywhere you see Kiosks, you'll
never see Mac OS. Windows 8 will change the game.
Especially with it's marvelous new stylus for graphics and
art. Take away Photoshop from Apple's OS X and they have
nothing for the future that's new. They never will...
because they never developed a Touchscreen Framework for
the FreeBSD Kernel itself and only have a stripped down iOS
kernel running on a legacy file system even today!

That legacy file system has always been a chain around
their neck. All for backwards compatibility and to take
failing NeXT Step (excellent but ahead of it's time like
BeOS) off Steve's hands. If Apple has made any mistakes the
past 15 years, it was NOT buying BeOS (written by former
Apple devs too) instead of NeXT and then failing to drop
legacy Mac OS and it's archaic single threaded file system
until iOS. Then failing to see how important touchscreens
would become over time. Because Money Hungry Top Brass (not
Steve) kept it's development off the table insisting on
backwards compatibility even Steve wanted gone. So they
didn't hire their first Touchscreen Engineer till finally
started work on their touchscreen phone OS in November
2004. Crippling it no less by again insisting on backwards
compatibility with Legacy Mac OS and it's archaic old file
system. That they couldn't take much further than single
tasked consumption devices in tablets with just finger
gestures only and still dragging that file system along
from 1984.

The only thing that's saved them, was 3rd party developers
and accessory makers. Whereas for Microsoft they've manage
to stumble upon two things that will change the game. I say
this as someone who personally hates Microsoft, loved what
the Woz brought to personal computing and Steve brought to
marketing and ease of use. But there were powers that be
within Apple gaining greater power, that will be
responsible for it's downfall. Why? ....because they are
primarily responsible for the greed within Apple and it's
that greed that will kill them. Firing the wrong people or
retiring them, when they need them most. A business can
never be solely about the business of making money first
and foremost and that's what Apple has become, the again
gaining the upper hand with Tim at the helm!

You'll need to get your hands on Windows 8 on a touchscreen
and their new stylus (actually invented by them, if you can
believe that) before you realize how the full tables at
Apple's display and empty ones at Microsoft's will once
again be TRADING PLACES. When they get their Kinect Gesture
based system and stylus all working together. Sure Apple
has managed to bring back Mansfield, but it'll be Tim's
Greed for money and Sir Jony's Greed for Arrogance, in his
ignorance of being just a shill, that'll kill them in the
end. The ball is rolling and the latest push by Tim and
others at the top within, without Steve to hold them at bay
now, that's spelling doom for Apple's future!

The truth is.... Apple has no real plan for the future,
other than to fill shareholder pockets and they are once
again back to having a board of directors killing them from
the inside out. This time they have no Steve Jobs to
Magically Save them from that fate! ....the Woz certainly
isn't going to do it. Even though he knows the self
destruct switch, that ran Steve out is up to their old
tricks again. People that only see money in ideas should
never run them... ever! ....because in the end they're only
running on the now empty fumes of their past!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

It probably doesn't
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 04 2012 @ 05:23 PM EST

Apple copied the Palm Pilot for the iDevices, and Palm copied someone
else.

Just like everyone (Windows, Mac OS, GEM, GEOS, KDE, Gnome, XFCE,
etc.) copied Xerox for the desktop.

Microsoft has either lost consistency with the rest of the world, or designed
a new paradigm. However where they first introduced the aradigm, it didn't
sell well, so I suspect the new interface will be a failure.

A guy I know claims that Microsoft will be rescued by a Free Software
project that installs the old interface on Windows 8. I wonder if he is right.

Wayne
http://madhatter.ca


[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

It's not meant to be better for desktop use
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 04 2012 @ 07:39 PM EST
Sounds insane, but that's the reality - it's intended to be something that works
on both tablets and more conventional PCs. I think they've sort of got there on
that (and keyboard use on win8 is still pretty good), but mouse use really
suffered quite a bit on desktop.

We'll see what happens I guess.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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