Previewing Windows 8 (Video)
microsoft.com
microsoft.com
The Metro UI is great. The tiles are smart, the apps are beautiful, the solution to multitasking is promising, but this whole new approach cannot coexist with a Windows desktop. I almost fell out of my seat when the demonstrator nonchalantly switched back to the Windows 7-style desktop, complete with start menu, taskbar, and maximized MS Office.
This the old curse of Windows backward-compatibility in a new form – not in system-level cruft this time, but in incompatible UIs from completely different worlds. You can't put a new tablet UI and a traditional desktop UI next to each other on the same device and expect users to use them together.
It's as if Microsoft is attempting its own "Back to the Mac," only they never actually left. Apple got it right, starting fresh with a new form factor and adapting appropriate elements of it to the desktop. Microsoft is also starting fresh with a new form factor, but then trying to shoehorn the whole thing onto the desktop.
Of course, this is just a preview. I'm sure things will change a lot between now and the next preview, let alone the final release. But this isn't starting off on the right foot.
One thing that did jump out at me was that it seemed to be best suited for a tablet and NOT a desktop computer. Hopefully MS keeps building on it and the new desktop doesn't turn out to be Bob 2.0 :)
The first thing I try with any new Windows release is to add a font using their interface (not just dragging it into the fonts folder). The "Add font" dialog box is STILL circa Windows NT/3.1 era.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Install-or-...
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Install-or-delet...
Here's the instruction for those that don't want to click the linK:
Right-click the font you want to install and click Install.
This is one of those features that seems really cool in a demo, but in practice...well, even decades later my shoulder hurts just thinking about the hour I spent using a "light pen" interface on a vertical "touch" screen.
Sure, some Apps will only be available as desktop apps at the start, but they will just function as low hanging fruit for developers.
My dad spends minimum 4-5 hours of his day in Excel. He's an accountant and uses it to organize all types of info on clients.
On the other hand I almost never use excel. About the only time (and I use google docs anyway) is for managing bills.
- the entire desktop metaphor (tired, outdated, can be improved upon)
- the entire hierarchical filesystem metaphor likewise
- application installation
- the registry
- WinSxs - seriously, take a look at how much space this directory "wastes" (increasingly important with virtualisation and SSDs)
- the start menu - it's not useable, honestly
- ribbon UI (don't even get me started)
- the whole look and feel of Windows (more akin to Fisher Price than polished glass and aluminium)
- the quality of bundled applications - notepad and paint - seriously? in 2011?
- I could go on and on and on. If it weren't for the quality of the .NET stack and the jobs market for .NET I would be on Linux/OSX in a flash
IMO, Windows merely reflects the beuraucratic uninspired organisation that creates it. This will never change, so really, I shouldn't get so upset, but I have to work with this goddam OS, so it grates a little.
I would be surprised if we don't see new/better bundled applications (particularly for photo/music management, as their other platforms do this better), a different application install paradigm (more akin to OS X or iOS installs), the ribbon was not shown...
What they're showing here is intent. That's all. They've shown their intent to do something different. That might well mean they have intent to start changing things under the hood, which was not spoken about at all in that video. It's too early to judge anything but the intent.
And in defence of the bundled apps, 7 does come with both Wordpad and Notepad. So much better than what OS X bundles.
http://www.webtechpoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/wordp...
http://developer.apple.com/ue/accessibility/images/TextEdit....
But this isn't starting off on the right foot
Where did you expect them to start from? Build the kernel from scratch?
That actually wouldn't be a bad idea. As someone pointed out, I also feel that filesystem hierarchy, window frames and the desktop metaphor is now outdated and overly stretched. Imho, they would be better come out with a whole new OS with no backwards compatibility, while keeping developing windows for the time necessary (10-15 years) to allow most of its users and software a 'transition' to the new system.
If they don't do it, someone else will do.
I guess the easiest one-liner to describe it is: In bash, you can build tiny apps and pipe textual output from one to another.
In PowerShell, you can pipe objects.
As a developer I doubt I would use the Metro UI a lot, so it would mostly be a shiny thing to randomly switch to.
It also worries me a bit that so many OS:es are moving away from keyboard-based navigation. One can always hope for good keyboard shortcuts, Win 7 has some good quite hidden keyboard shortcuts after all.
Also, how does it scale to my 3-display development machine? Multi-monitor may not be the standard, but it is quite common with monitor-prices going down. Mac OS X is quite random when it comes to scaling to multi-monitor.
I guess we'll eventually figure these things out, but a lot of uncertainties so far.
With apple you have to buy/carry/maintain two physical devices (ipad, notebook) and here you potentially can choose/switch within the same device. Way smarter and more environment friendly too.
She also led the Win 7 overhaul, for which I'm forever thankful if only because of the changes to how title bars work (being able to drag to maximize or cover 1/2 the screen, for instance). It was so intuitive that one day I was complaining about how Windows DIDN'T do that, but was on a Win7 box and it worked. I know Jobs likes to use the word "magic", but that was the first time I experienced it with a UI.
I'm wary of the changes I see outlined here, but I think that might, again, be the consequence of having adapted myself to bad design that's been prevalent. Past experience has me hoping I'm wrong to be wary, and I'll be delighted if I am.
Perfectly correct. She even had a blog up about it IIRC and was pretty interesting to read. I echo some of your sentiments and W8 is looking pretty slick - it's teetering on the fine balance of being too Metro like, too tablet like, too gimmicky, etc. - if the people at Microsoft pull it off, it will be damn impressive.
Do you know something that wasn't shown? It could just a full screen app that runs on top of the existing shell not a replacement shell with a sub process of the old shell. Or by having the quotes around OS when you say "OS" do you just mean a new interface?
It would be exciting to develop for this. Glad I familiarized with the metro look and feel developing for the Windows Phone. I can reuse it.
The premise of an HTML5 and JS based desktop is simultaneously promising and terrifying due to bad memories of the Active Desktop days (and the exploits that brought...).
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It's not just a picture replaced by text, those are LIVE tiles, they can be updated to show timely relevant information.
Metro is quite innovative, if it came from Apple, we'd be reading Gruber's fawning over here about how chrome-less UIs are a paradigm shifting move by Apple.
Let the desktop metaphor evolve respectively until it's no longer needed (by most), do not sap it's identity by tearing users between two very different modes of interaction. Once my brain is working in the desktop metaphor will it want to "zoom-out" to yet another layer of abstraction and back and forth? Surely this is a recipe for experience-degrading cognitive dissonance. When I stand up from working on my mac, pick up my iPad and then read a blog on the couch I have, subconsciously, switched to a drastically different set of interaction-metaphors for iPad use. ("Design dissolving into behavior." - Naoto Fukasawa)
If this interface found it's way on sub $100 20"+ smart screens (lcd or laser projected) with kinect-like interaction than you have a compelling product. Put it on Xbox and media center devices/tv's and you potentially have a new interaction ecosystem.
This Windows 8 concept is fighting reality and for it's eventual users it won't feel nearly as natural as their smartphones do today.
I don't doubt Microsoft's ability to get Windows 8 into consumers homes as much as I do not doubt their ability to shoot themselves in the foot by pushing yet another half-baked product out the door.
Sure in 2012 millions will experience Windows 8, I would only add that 2012 may be the tipping point with OSX, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, PalmOS and others aggressively vying to inherit their share of consumers who choose to move on.
I'm ambivalent to Microsoft's success or failure, I'm simply extrapolating from current cultural undercurrents, the sentiment even long-time Windows user's now hold towards conventional Windows PC's is haggard at best and they're more open now than ever to exploring alternatives.
Decades ago I would not have bet against Windows, but today you can sense a perfect storm of competition approaching their gates.
If in 5 years Windows is still a dominant piece of software I will be surprised. However, I won't be surprised if Microsoft is still a main technology player in 5 years.
Office isn't the lock in. It's all those Line of Business (LOB) Apps that run on Windows. Ironically many require internet explorer and are built in...Java, oddly enough.
Marketing departments could switch tomorrow. Operations (depending on industry) are locked in for years. Some are lucky enough to web based options, some are stuck on what they have.
It is? I'm genuinely curious to know what leads you to believe that.
Nearly all my friends (many non-techie) have switched to mac without a hitch. Some use Office for Mac, some use iWork.
The only users that are tied to Windows/Office are probably corporate/business users and that's certainly Microsoft's last stronghold.
The I.T. workforce has been programmed into the Microsoft ecosystem with a technical education of proprietary standards BUT what happens when it's developers who run the show? As the cloud decreases the need for much of the I.T. staff of your average company the leverage is shifted to web technology companies (and there developer ecosystems).
As we speak, somewhere in the world, an I.T. guy who used to maintain the email servers looses his job and in place Google offers the company hosted Google apps for a fraction of the cost. Google develops it's suite of office apps to be adequate MS office replacements within 3 years and easily convinces the company not to renew it's Microsoft Office licensing. Google Apps marketplace offers web-based alternatives to many legacy Windows software like the tightly integrated Salesforce Suite (with it's own web developer ecosystem). Without the need for Windows applications the company switches to a managed enterprise linux OS.
All the ducks are lined up, now hundreds of capable tech companies are beginning to execute their to-market strategies.
I'm not saying there is no Windows lock-in, what i am saying is that the Windows/Office lock-in strategy is becoming ever less defensible in a highly competitive market with lower barriers to entry.
When you realize that more and more VC capital is going into non-consumer web technologies, once you see that pool of dispersed rapid research and development you begin to see the force Microsoft is up against.
I'm asserting that if Microsoft's software lock-in strategy were effective Apple could not possibly make such gains into the enterprise/pc market.
The temperature increased by 66%, it must be soooooo hot now... oops it only went from 3C to 5C. Get it?
Also, why use URL shorteners? Is this twitter?
The growth figures in the article are sourced and you're right Apple only went up a few "degrees" (which because of Apple's relatively small enterprise market share results in a big growth percentage).
I never asserted it was "soooooo hot now", surely I.T. guys everywhere are still smitten with Microsoft and cleverly seeing Apple as rather toyish.
I only brought up Apple's headways into enterprise to prove to 'georgieporgie' that Microsoft's enterprise lock-in strategy is not insurmountable but instead increasingly ineffective.
I don't know why I use url shorteners, i guess they don't break-up the body of paragraphs as much and that makes me feel winning. No this is not twitter.
Being condescending and sarcastic to those whom you share affinity is not cool it merely tends to reverberate a rather toxic attitude throughout an otherwise friendly online community.
Your annoyed sentiment would suggest I came into your home and made disagreeable remarks, only we're in a commons and i was already in a conversation when you decided to balk in protest against misleading information.
BTW a push notification to my iPhone alerted me of your response so I got on my macbook to type this... does that make me a fan boy incapable of seeing apple's short-comings or microsoft's good? Do fanboys make you angry?
then our problem, my friend, has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with philosophy. i recommend you click this shortened url: http://bit.ly/ig2aLF
I think even Apple is going in this direction with it's Back to the Mac stuff, albeit much more slowly (and will be lavished with praise when it completes the transition).
That's where I wonder how well received this new interface will be. I wonder if this shell will just become something that most people skip past to get to the familiar Windows desktop. Granted, my experience as a power user (read: I'm a developer writing code and using the terminal--not on Windows but on OS X or Linux) is vastly different from that of a normal consumer, but I still think there is a common ground of using the computer to create rather than purely for consumption.
Still, very interesting concept. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this released.
But I could see this having a different fate if it doesn't feel like a drag on the system and it can be made useful (as I think external developers will make it.)
For instance, the device used in the demo (assuming it has no other mode of operation) seems to me that it would be a nightmare for using Excel.
edit: added the last sentence.
For example, imagine a version of Excel that you could do the sum of a set of numbers by speaking "sum up these numbers" and swiping your fingers over the set that you wanted to do the sum on. Excel as it exists today may not be the best user of touch but tomorrow's Excel may provide much smarter ways of getting better milage out of it. It truly will be dependent on how well MS developers can imagine.
This gives the video the feel of a Courier-like demo. Inspirational to look at, but not realizable in practice.
Microsoft is like a kid with OCD. Touch! Touch is great! I love touch! Everything is touch! Can I touch this? Then it sucks! Give me touch! More touch!
I mean... yeah. Touch is cool, touch interfaces will probably be the main way to use computers eventually.. but as usual, it feels like they are going at it in the wrong way. It doesn't improve Excel to put it in a touch environment. Apple did try that and discovered that it wasn't what people wanted.
Then again, this video focuses on the new stuff, so it's hard to tell just how much they've moved things around.
What makes it even stranger is that they pass by a much better implementation of the same thing in passing while demoing IE 10, where he pulls down to reveal thumbnails of all the open tabs. Something like that in the main interface would have been much better than having to swipe, swipe, swipe, accidentally pausing videos, replacing views and causing all kinds of frustration just to locate the particular app I was looking for.
I really hope that store becomes some sort of primary distribution channel. After using Linux for so long, I've become so used to repositories that it makes me cringe to go find some obscure nagware application when ever I need to get something done on Windows.
Have a play with kde netbook stuff, pretty funky and solid. Also there is meego but i've never used it.
Microsoft is taking their phone UI and scaling it to the desktop, which is a big risk given how many people use that phone.
I give them credit for taking a risk, but IMO, this is the last nail in the coffin of Windows.
in what way is Lion surprisingly similar to win8?
Touchpad and touchscreen are comparable but not equal.
It's not that bad, but just a little layer over their Win7 is a little disappointing. There will still be the annoying virus scanner in the background who makes noises and you will browse the files the same way like you did in 3.11.
In the demo when he switched to the "desktop" it looked pretty much like any desktop OS to me.
Besides, it looks like the OS will still have the old UI if people need to use old apps.
If you're being forced to basically adopt a new product, then you start to consider all the possibilities.
Not really -- employees are consumers too, and the lines have blurred somewhat. That has definitely been a recurring theme throughout D9, starting with Eric Schmidt's line that traditional IT is dead.
Consumer != powerless.
Touch-first OS with Excel? I'd like to see that done right.
Even something as simple as a time management system may take several years and tons of money to transition from decade-old WinForms app to new web app.
It's also interesting that they only mentioned HTML5 + JS. Right now Silverlight is the only option for non-games on Windows Phone 7. Given how similar the UIs look, it would be a shame to be unable to share code between mobile and desktop versions of the same app.
There will still be registry+dll hell because the core operating system and applications will be running on the traditional windows environment in the background.
Is it just me?
Microsoft converting all of it's desktop users to a touch-first OS is going to be... interesting.
Perhaps they will settle on multi-touch trackpads like the Apple Magic Trackpad to resolve the gorilla-arm issue?
The rest of it looks cool enough, better than expected. For me personally I can't imagine going back to any version of Windows. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...uh, you won't get fooled again.
But for those still on Windows this will be an interesting transition.
I think a spit screen keyboard is a win, overall.
Thanks for the good laugh :)
There's an app that features a similar keyboard, http://radialapp.com. I think I'll get it and see if what you're saying holds true in my sample size of one.
Edit: so I downloaded the Radial version of the thumb keyboard and it totally sucks. I'm typing this on my iPad keyboard and I don't think I realized that the iPad keyboard is pretty dang easy to type on.
One thing though: I really hope they don't keep the explorer in it's original windows 7 style. It breaks the metro experience and i can only assume that this was in the video because of the early developement stage.
Well, this won't make me replace my mac, but it looks very promising.
I know it might be fashionable to bash Microsoft, but this demo looks great. While I'm at it, the Metro UI and Windows Phone 7 are actually good. Current market adoption is not equivalent to "goodness". I use it personally and I'm very satisfied .. even as a Linux user and an iPad owner.
Lends a little credence to their claim of incorporating HTML 5 apps.
I like the idea of simplification of the UI for the average mom and pop user. For them this will probably be a great fit with the large buttons and having one application that fills up the whole window. It almost allows people to think more abstractly, in terms of activities rather than apps for a lot of things (i.e. 'what do you want to do' vs. 'how do you want to do it').
I do not like the idea of having to switch back and forth between the legacy Windows Shell and this new shell. That, in my opinion, is what I would call as a developer, a 'lazy implementation' - probably easier to implement for the developers, but not the right way when it comes down to usability. I hope they are planning some kind of tighter integration that will make that more seamless...
I think they're onto something huge here.
Don't get me wrong - I really think it's great that they're courageous enough to try something new. They're obviously trying to create a new style and not a Mac OS rip-off, which I think is the right way to go, too.
But I'm curious whether the design will undergo major rework before Windows 8 comes to the stores.
I also find it funny how much this looks like a tile based WM with visual sugar. I hope they dont gloss over features on the split screen view because ultimately that's gonna be a very important thing.
And also, they'd probably need a better way to integrate native regular apps than what is shown in the video, provided, for some users, this might represent 90% of the time they spend with the OS.
For example, I don't see using Solidworks or AutoCAD with my fingers. I also don't see using any CAD/EDA packages like Altium Desiger (electronics circuit design) with my thumbs. The same applies to firmware, software and web development tools (Keil compilers, Altera/Xilinx development tools, Dreamweaver, Komodo). For that matter, I can't even see using Photoshop or Illustrator that way. I could rattle off dozens and dozens of applications that would be seriously impaired by touch. It's cute and sexy, but it is the slowest and most cumbersome way to interact with a computer.
I don't even see using the Office suite like this.
An on-screen keyboard might be the thing to do today...but...and there's only one way to say it...they suck in a big way. Useless for anything non-trivial, even on a tablet. Typing on an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard is orders of magnitude more productive than poking at the screen.
Then there's the question of multiple screen behavior. All of our engineering workstations have a minimum of two large (24in or more) high-resolution monitors. A good number of them have three. There are engineering design applications (like Altium Designer) that use multi-screen environments very effectively to greatly enhance productivity. I need to know how this new UI will affect these scenarios.
In my not-so-humble opinion I have always thought that MS really needed to fix and enhance XP rather than what they've done with Vista and W7. As a power user there's so much in Vista/W7 that makes you say "really?". They've also just about ruined the Office suite. If you were an expert user of the prior generation of Office and had a code base of routines and tools they pretty much made you look like a complete newbie with the new UI and approach. Productivity with Office definitely took a big hit for most tasks for quite some time.
Despite criticism, Windows is a workhorse OS used across thousands of different industries. I really hope MS is very careful about not damaging this user base for the sake of being "trendy". Tablets are great fun, but I don't see doing my day-to-day work on tablets any time soon. Wrong UI.
Even if ARM consumes less power than Intel chips, I hope that the desktop underpinnings of Windows 8 don't bog it down and destroy battery life. I also hope there's an OEM that can build hardware that's up to snuff.
And regardless of that, this is about having a single application platform for all the form factors. This video shows a tablet interface, I don't think they will force you to use it on the desktop, at least as shown here. I think the point was the same apps can run everywhere.
On the interface, I absolutely think Microsoft can have Metro UI conventions and complex applications without compromise, but it seems ill thought-out to believe you can scale a phone interface up without greatly increasing the density of information or ability to interact with data, of which the preview seemed devoid.
The "wall-mount problem". What looks great on a wall-mounted monitor is not the best interface for my actual desktop computer.
I guess a really cool idea is to have a small touchscreen you use for control, in combination with an existing/bigger screen for the actual display.
All these full-screen apps with touch functions are optimized for laptops and tablets. Apple did it, Ubuntu did it, and now Microsoft is going to do it. Maybe that's where everyone thinks the future is. But as the proud owner of a 24" widescreen monitor who is always looking for an excuse to upgrade to 30", I am very disappointed with this inspired-by-tablets-but-also-fits-the-desktop nonsense.
I don't want full-screen apps, dammit. I bought a big monitor because I want several apps and all of their content to be simultaneously visible at all times. I shudder whenever a member of my family "borrows" my PC for a few minutes and goes on to maximize all the windows without even thinking twice. And I certainly don't want to wave my arms all across the big screen like an idiot. There's a very good reason why we have a small device (mouse) that can be manipulated with the flick of a finger to control an arbitrarily larger interface. I don't know how a small touchscreen might be used in a similar role while retaining the intuitiveness of a touch interface, but we're definitely going to need something like that or our arms will begin to hurt very badly after 10 minutes.
Microsoft isn't scaling Windows Phone 7 up to the tablet, they are scaling Windows 8 down to the tablet. By the time Windows 8 is released, it might be viable to run this OS on a phone. Will the mobile and desktop OS's merge?
And as far as specs go, one of the demo devices was running an Intel Atom processor.
This reminds me of a recent article about how Linux is inventing the future of the desktop experience. I disagreed immediately, and this UI is an example of why. I do prefer the Linux desktop experience to others, but it is a refinement on a core of existing ideas with a few small but important inventions. So it's more like a limo than a bus, which neither KDE nor Gnome are driving.
I really fear seeing the world moving towards a place where you have to either choose one platform/metaphor over the other. Or where you have to port every single application to support all different input types. And the thing is, touch is just so good for so many things, but so impractical for certain kinds of work.
Whoever manages to reconcile touch computing with boring old office computers, will have a huge market for them.
That looks like a decent tablet interface, and a good interface for the vast majority of users who will be using the core apps and little else..
But for me it's a bit useless
- file browsing looked difficult.
- App switching looked painful (when you're switching between a lot of apps at once I really don't want to be doing so in rotation).
I realise this is because I am a power user with specific needs... but I really really hope they have a version with a normal desktop.
Either MS with Metro have solved it and it plays across different platforms. I can see it work both with mouse and keyboard, touch and joypad.
Or Metro isn't versatile enough and it will mutate into a freakshow of edge case considerations.
In any scenario, I give MS props for finally presenting a worthy alternative to to OSx/iOS suite.
Now if only the hardware manufactures would follow suit it might be interesting.
But it's hard to say what will happen.
Please, Apple, Google and HP, blatantly copy the ability to see more than one app at once!
but i can't help but see that things aren't how they should be. i suppose this is a very early preview, but ms have got to go a lot further than simply creating an "on top of windows" application that looks pretty.
their benchmark for success has got to be the intuitiveness and the usability of OS X, without copying any part directly.. something i feel that has always come second place in windows.
time will tell, i suppose.
To me this looks like an official MS skin on top of the Windows desktop. We'll see though
I do like the tiling system implementation though.
I mean, trying to start Windows 7 launch parties around the world?? Posting on reddit to market some product and ask for "feedback"? Non-chalantly talking about "cool stuff"? Please... do you really think people will forget how you dealt with competitors back in the day? Will forget your FUD and zero open standards? Will forget what a humongous multi-billion dollar corp you really are?