Windows 8′s next victim: Microsoft kills the Start button
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
There was a mega post at the build windows blog justifying (rationalizing?) their decisions. It's interesting reading to slog through. They've certainly put a lot of resources onto this decision, and it feels like the future of Windows based desktop PC's is in the balance. It feels like a really risky bet.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-...
Ideally, MS would add a "Windows 7" mode that I can turn on and use my computer the way I've been accustomed to. I don't want to be learn more efficient with swipes/fewer clicks/etc - I've got a good thing going here. First thing I used to do with XP was switch it to the Windows Classic mode, so I'm probably not their target user.
FWIW, I also dropped Ubuntu post-Unity (running Debian now) and haven't looked back. This dog is too old to want to deal with learning any cheese moving tricks.
Why? If you're technical enough to run Debian, you're technical enough to run Ubuntu with Window Maker or some other non-Unity UI.
I have no doubt that Ubuntu 16.04 (or whenever they finish) will be amazing, but in the meantime I really wish they would just wait until they have everything ready.
And then when you complain, they say, "don't be a whiner, you received a three-course chicken cordon-bleu meal prepared by a trained French chef!" Nevermind that it was out of order and disassembled.
I recently migrated my main desktop back from Windows 7 to Linux, and I actually ended up on Fedora. I've been pretty pleased with it overall. Sure, I ripped out Gnome 3 and dropped in KDE 4.8, but on the whole it really works quite well, including 3D (I recently replaced my old ATI card with an NVidia 560, which certainly helped).
Surprised even me. My linux journey, going back 12 or so years, was more or less Mandrake -> Debian -> Gentoo -> FreeBSD -> Ubuntu - Slackware. I tried Debian recently, didn't really like where any of the distros fell - unstable was TOO bleeding edge, while even testing lagged annoyingly far behind. Arch is nice, and I like it on servers but too fiddly for a desktop. Fedora really seems to be right around the sweet spot where it's useable, pretty up to date, but more importantly it's very much "linux" as I remember it, not with lots of not-very-well documented magic going on.
Then I was trying to install Amahi and it required a package that was different than one that was installed by default. I could not figure out how to get yum to replace the current package with the one my software needed. The help from the developers? "--force is never a good option, so we don't offer it". Thank you, Microsoft, for protecting me from myself. I uninstalled the package, and it automatically uninstalled Network Manager and everything related to DHCP/networking. After that, I couldn't install the package I wanted because I couldn't configure a network connection.
It really seems the only time I have to resort to using the command line is when the distro's "intelligence" breaks the GUI. Ubuntu doesn't not break things, but at least when it does I know the best recourse (since I partition /home on it's own drive) is to just reinstall. Wouldn't have fixed a thing in Fedora.
I grew up on a command line, and I really hate being forced to go back to that just because the developers don't care enough make the GUI work properly.
I have a notebook set up in there for "profound internet quotes".
Exactly. The hot trend right now is to throw desktop aesthetics and performance out the window and just build products for small touchscreens.
Dumb.
They're all trying to mimick his vision and design but without understanding it at all. I think this is why we keep ending up with all these heartless, sterile, Kindergarden UI designs.
Meanwhile, KDE isn't all that bad nowadays. I actually kinda like KDE 4.8, it's come a long way since the early days of KDE 4.
I agree though, although I blame the shift mainly on the tablet/smartphone mentality.
From this day forward we shall call this abomination "Kindergarden UI".
Example: Tom: "Hey how's Windows 8 compared to Ubuntu?". Stacy: "Oh they're both going to shit, they've got kindergarden UI now."
I wish Microsoft would realize that Windows is NOT OSX. In their desperate attempt to fabricate a Windows Cult following and "it just works" culture they're going to end up destroying the very thing that made windows what it is.
I tried unsuccessfully to convert to mac a few years ago, and numerous times to convert to linux. In my perticular situation, my linux installs have less stability than my windows 7 installation. After all trialing 10+ operating systems over the last 7 years I realized: I love Windows, it's Microsoft I hate.
"Kindergarden UI" is a ridiculous term, and very subjective. I really hope no one actually takes your advice on anything.
But freehunter, I'm just trying to mimic Steve Jobs like the other designers :(
Naa, miscommunication here. I try out a new linux flavor almost twice a year. I tried out the Windows 8 preview. I kept my mac around for months when I was trying that out. I LOVE different, I love simple. What I don't love is "minimalization without understanding what needs to be minimalized".
I may have jumped to conclusions with your post, but you must admit there was no obvious sign of open-thinking ;)
Don't take the complete fail that Unity is and apply it to this situation. Shuttleworth has no big corporate customers he needs to cater to. Those that don't like unity can figure out how to install Gnome or LXDE or whatever. Windows on the other hand will have both options ready to go from day one with an ease of a click. MS knows who butters their bread: corporate clients.
Whether it's old Windows users, Mac users, or Linux users - the transition will definitely not come as easy for them as it was the transition from XP to Win7, which was also heavily helped by the fact that people were already very tired of XP.
Will Windows 8/Unity/Gnome 3 be better? Who knows. Will be it worse? Probably not. More than likely it will just be "different". Either way, if computing doesn't keep changing and evolving, we're going to be stuck in the barely-functional status quo forever. I'm willing to live through (and learn to love) the rough parts along the way until we reach the best we can possibly do.
This is largely quite true. I was probably one of the few people among my peers who actually appreciated the new taskbar introduced in Windows 7. Although that's not to say that criticism of Windows 8 isn't important; I think one of the things Microsoft did learn with the Windows 7 betas and release candidates was that feedback from the user base can very occasionally be helpful. In some exceptional cases, monitoring user feedback can short-circuit certain disaster.
The other thing to keep in mind is that change for the sake of change isn't always good--and likewise, it isn't always bad. Paradigm shifts will happen, things will change, and sometimes legacy designs will continue to persist for wont of familiarity. What I'm saying is this: Changing too much too drastically is a bold move. It might pay off; it might also be disaster.
My personal preference is to agree with apg; the developer preview was less than stellar, but my expectations weren't terribly high. I don't really like the paradigm shift Microsoft is trying to force across the Windows brand as it exists for a desktop OS, but it might be great for what it was designed for--tablets and phones.
It should be said that I also didn't care much for Unity even though I gave it an honest try for about two-three weeks. There were some things that it did well--and were equally quite handy--and there were others that felt too jarring and awkward. Metro feels somewhat similar in that regard. However, I'll reserve my full judgement until we're closer to a more finalized product so we can see what Microsoft's vision ultimately boils down to; thusfar, I'm not terribly impressed, but I admit they're making a decent effort. I do look forward to seeing the finished product even if I absolutely hate it. :)
Tablets and future, immersive, physically interactive interfaces (e.g. "virtual reality") will certainly be different, but I don't see why we should completely warp our well-established paradigms of interacting with current technology.
Incidentally, the greatest sin I see is that they seem to be keeping the Start Menu concept, but they're hiding it!
Unity might be incredible on a tablet when ctrl+space to bring up a launcher and typing "fir<enter>" to launch Firefox is slower than slapping an icon with my sausage finger. But on the desktop, Unity is a step backwards and adds nothing to me when my fingers are on home row all day. And trust me, I really tried to use Unity and I'm rather open-minded about new paradigms (Openbox was new to me).
I haven't tried Win8 yet, but it sounds like a similar situation. But I don't feel like the future of Windows-based desktop PCs is under fire. As long as Windows has powerusers, there will always be a solution to what might be a step backwards in design.
It's not nit-picking when the decision is a bad one.
But in all the releases so far, the menu has basically just been a link to settings, spotlight functionality is gone from it.
Does make me wonder how it'll work in multi-monitor setups, though. Presumably you can change the hot corner, but if that's not a launch feature there are going to be some severely annoyed users.
But then, if you're targeting the tablet market, none of this would matter.
I honestly don't think it's going to be a bad thing for me or the people that I know, but do I ever feel bad for tech support crews that already had issues getting old people to find the start button. :)
I suspect we haven't even seen half of the things that will make this paradigm work, and I'd bet they have extensive Usability tests to back all of it up.
As for Windows 8, I have high hopes for it because I like Windows 7, but I do think Microsoft is going to end up with a weird GUI mashup if they are not careful.
The average user uses the Start menu as a browseable library of their installed programs (which it isn't even good at), so I think a direct list of apps is better all around with an option to launch apps from an intuitive search bar.
The Start button was always a few pixels off the edges so you couldn't just shove your mouse to bottom-left corner and click. Instead, you had to find the corner and offset the mouse a notch towards up-right to hit the button.
This mattered two decades ago. It does not matter now. Two decades ago, there was a large number of people who were just starting to integrate computers into their daily lives. This is no longer true. Computers are integrated into people's daily lives. The only people [1] who are "just starting" to integrate computers into their daily lives are the same people who are "just starting" to integrate using a toilet into their daily lives.
From now on, people will grow up with computers, and I think we should design interfaces to reflect that. "But what about first-time users?" should no longer be an interesting question.
[1] I'm sure someone can come up with specific counter-examples. I submit that those cases are rare enough that they shouldn't be a primary consideration for designing interfaces. Of course, there should be interface back-doors for disabilities and such, but that is not the same as primary considerations for most people.
If you have a new interface, especially one that works differently from the old interface in a notable way, you can't assume that everyone will instantly figure out your new interface without cues.
There will be precious few who can never get the hang of it.
In addition, computers may be integrated into daily lives, but I think this definitely does not mean the opposite - that people have learned how to operate them properly, despite them being so integrated. If level of integration into society means that user interface does not need to cater to beginning users, there would be no designers left to make designs - only engineers (perish the thought :) But seriously -- and forgive me for using a car analogy -- but the basic operation of a car is actually simpler, rather than more complicated.
To be fair, some OS X advanced options are in hair-pulling places, which I believe only underlines how hard it is to market computers to the masses with differing layers of knowledge
The point of a good UI is to make a handbook superfluous.
Looks like the desktop metaphor is back in business.
And yes, that seems silly and inflammatory... but it has all the hallmarks of Vista's over-zealousness, last minute changes and disdain for Microsoft's core customers.
I think it's going to be jarring to move between classic and Metro modes, but I don't think there's a clear way for Microsoft to alleviate that. I also don't think it's unreasonable to say that there is a tablet paradigm that can live alongside the regular desktop paradigm. I think there are some that expect Microsoft Office and a twitter app to be equally usable via a mouse and a finger and I'm not sure that's entirely reasonable. At the very least, the hacker in me has no problem with needing to break out a mouse and keyboard to really get things done.
Windows 8 is looking like such a failure.
It might be the same functionality, but that's not really saying much. Linux and Windows fundamentally offer the same functionality.
Here's an anecdote for touch vs. mouse/keyboard:
Pretty sure I'm not - nor is my family setup - typical of a windows user. We have two touchscreen desktops in our house.
I have a two year old that can work the touchscreen very proficiently. My 5 & 7 year old stick with the mouse and never use the touch, I almost never use touch, and my wife rarely uses it.
Based on my personal observations, on the desktop, touch is good for very new users or those who lack the physical coordination to control the mouse and keyboard. Otherwise, mouse and keyboard wins.
The Windows 8 mouse experience is really lacking at the moment. I expect that gets a major update in the next version.
It's like old efforts to make cars and vans run on the same body. The cars handled like vans and the vans handled like awkward cars.
If you're looking to only use a mouse, I suspect you will be spending time in Desktop mode. I know that the CTP has enhanced the mouse support in RT mode, but it's still touch-first apps. I don't like tablets and don't love the nature of touch interfaces and I know that I will not be happy with a mouse and WinRT mode ever. Frankly, if the buttons and layouts are accommodating for touch interfaces, it's NOT going to be optimal for use with a mouse. (I think some additional evidence of this would be the intrusion of ribbon into Windows Explorer. IMO it's pretty obvious that it's motivated by touch interface needs.)
In the developer preview it looked awful to have the black windows button on the aqua 3d suparbar. Why not just make the whole thing black? I think the desktop would look great with solid white / colored windows over a good photo.
Stick to odd-numbered releases, they're like LTS.
Tablets and keyboards are the new laptops.
Desktops will increasingly have to prove their value in the market. In a world of booming connectivity and mobility, desktops (and even laptops) are legacy technology. All hail gestures and keyboard shortcuts.
Windows Vista is Windows NT version 6.0; Windows 7 is actually version 6.1. Similarly Windows XP was version 5.1; its predecessor, Windows 2000, was 5.0.
Windows Me was version 4.9 of the Windows 9x code base (whose first version -- as an obvious successor to Windows 3.x -- was 4.0, Windows 95).
The funny thing is that during all those transitions, the basic Win32 API stayed more or less stable. The programs I wrote for XP (or even Windows 2000) still work well in Windows 7. They just don't have the visual bling (which my customers don't need anyway).