Windows 8 Consumer Preview released.
windows.microsoft.com
windows.microsoft.com
"We really liked Windows 7 when it launched. It felt like a big step forward in the short time that had passed since Vista. Now, as we creep closer to a likely release near the end of this year, we can't shake a sense of doubt. Windows 8 still feels like two very different operating systems trying to be one. The potential is hugely alluring -- a single OS to rule both the tablet and the desktop -- and with each subsequent version we keep hoping this will be the one that ties it all together. Sadly, as of the Consumer Preview, we're still seeing a lot of loose threads.
As it stands, Windows 8 is a considerably better tablet operating system than any previous version has managed to be. However, it's still a clumsier desktop OS than Windows 7. That's a problem Microsoft must fix before release."
I feel the same way. By trying to please everyone, Microsoft will please no one, and will frustrate 95% of the Windows users out there who will be very confused not just by the tile interface, who is much different than what they are used to, but also by the disconnect between these two interfaces.
Microsoft is trying to win the few who want a tablet interface at the expense of the vast majority who want a PC, mouse-oriented interface for their...PC's and laptops.
My path, which I'm sure matches a great deal of others is:
3.1 = buy 95 = skip 98 = buy ME = skip XP = buy Vista = skip 7 = buy
Extrapoloating, 8 will be a "skip". I hope this will be the exception.. I kind of like what I've seen with 8 so far.
3.1 = buy
95 = skip
98 = buy
ME = skip
XP = buy
Vista = skip
7 = buy
The "every other version" rule left him on 3.1 while the rest of the world was on 95, though. Seems like a pretty broken rule...
Thing was I didn't have a computer capable of running Win95 at the time, and even then convincing my parents to drop $100 on that plus the requisite hardware upgrade was pretty tricky.
Then this and that happened, we got the new computer with 95, and then upgraded it to 98. Ah, those were the days :)
It was actually a very solid OS from my experience.
Went straight from 98 to XP, buying ME and then taking it back after finding out that it broke EVERYTHING.
That is: you get only a classic desktop (+ windowed Metro apps) when your slate is attached to a docking station and you only get the tablet interface otherwise.
And then provide a switch within Control Panel to get the hybrid experience, as it is now.
What? The whole point of Unity is to have a single interface. Canonical is making the exact same mistake as Microsoft.
Ubuntu for Android is not Ubuntu for tablets.
...and I'm pretty sure it was an ARM
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/win...
"You will get the traditional desktop with Windows 8 on ARM - but you won't be able to put third-party apps on it.
That's because all the third-party apps developed for ARM-based Windows 8 devices will be for the new Metro interface."
If I'm not mistaken, the main reason for the Vista-hate was the too frequent UAC-prompt, buggy drivers and extreme slowness. This was generally resolved by Windows 7, and that's why I think they started praising it.
I don't think I heard many complaints about the "new" UI. Rather, if anything, people was saying it looked like XP with a new theme. That's not much to get used to over time as a previous XP-user.
And as you said the completely broken uac in vista didn't help, they had managed to make limited accounts worse to use than in xp somehow.
Note that there is no security need for admin here, just a dumb prompt that you can't second-guess.
Because the last polishing step for an OS, like for every other software, is the most important ? Vista was filled with things that were one little short step from being great, or said another way vista was filled with things that were not great.
Interesting, I thought the wisdom here was that the post-PC era is upon us and PC are going to die? In that case MS is definitely going the right way.
A major issue at many corporations is asset management, with laptop theft or loss being a massive problem. Now take all of those desktops and replace them with roaming, fragile tablets?
The difficulty here is of course with security etc, but most of the corporate apps are probably web based and hidden behind a firewall anyway and none of the data is cached on the users device.
All you do is save on the cost of having an extra CPU in the desktop system and this is partly offset by power considerations (since you can have a faster chip in the desktop).
You can do better than to listen to the Y-Combinator-funded "geniuses who are attempting to re-implement poorly the protocols which worked fine 20+ years go.
Oh, and they STILL work, too.
I don't really see this as PCs vs tablets where only one can be left standing, I think we will see a diverse range of devices and software come to market over the next few years. The ones that actually suit peoples needs will survive.
Apple is slowly converging OSX and iOS into one platform, "inspired by iPad", etc. Microsoft isn't doing that. They are smashing the two together at once, when they should really have created an OS that ran alongside the PC market until the proverbial train tracks merged. This way, everyone melds into a comfort zone rather than being shoved into it (not comfy).
I don't know if Apple initially figured this out intentionally but they are surely proud of it today, because people want iOS features on OSX – least to a degree. Apple incentivized the experience through the needs created by developers. Microsoft is not answering these needs (API) directly, instead, just supposing they should exist and that will translate into useful applications.
Apple emphasizes that iOS and OSX fundamentally different platforms and will stay so, and says they're borrowing relevant ideas from one and bake them into the other (and vice versa).
Microsoft says their strategy is the Windows Everywhere convergence, and stitches the desktop and Metro side by side with no overlap.
It's interesting to see that their approach is the exact opposite of one another.
I agree. But I think you think that this mentality is set in stone, just as console gaming must have a standard controller, or personal computing must have a physical keyboard. Touch is the marvel of today. Voice may be the marvel of tomorrow. Eventually a keyboard and mouse will be the old way of doing things. Your knee-jerk reaction to that sentence is also mine. I can't see a world without keyboard and mouse, but that is because nothing better currently exists. Remember: Unreasonable men with unreasonable ideas.... Touch only supplants certain features of the keyboard and mouse. Apple was unreasonable. Nintendo was unreasonable. What technology will be the next to pull us out of our comfy habits? The technology that improves upon the existing infrastructure wins, not the one that asks us to change our habits or do more work.
Microsoft is asking their users to do just that – more work. Does it work in Metro? Standard?
With iOS, I don't have to ask. I know. It is too underpowered to handle intensive applications. I don't have to look it up in the "app store" to find out. I don't have to look for "designed for X" stickers or buttons. I immediately know because my technological emersion and knowledge of what is possible makes this argument for me.
I don't. I merely restated the current public discourse of each company. This is not a knee-jerk reaction, because it's not a reaction at all, merely a summary.
(sent from my PC)
I expect what you're looking for will be Windows 10, once enterprises have had time to get used to Metro.
The first thing a power user will do is to go to the old-desktop and stay there, basically not interacting with metro at all. There is no point, it's about as useful as the winkey+tab is on Vista/W7. "Cool" but useless for real work.
And there seems to have been numerous improvements to the windows experience (outside metro), the ability to pause file-copying etc. proves that they still have some focus for the enthusiast.
For everyone but the average Joe the new "metro-UI" is nothing but a bundled application that you will only use when you want to demo something or for some very light use (on a tablet for instance).
Just as Media Center is today!
How does a bundled application make the whole windows experience clumsier? If it is clumsy, close it! Sure, the start menu is different but who uses the start meny on windows today? All apps that you actually use are pinned to the task bar...
And that is how everyone that does real work will use their windows 8 machine, just as they do today in windows 7. And no. MS will not phase out the "regular windows", that's just moronic. Contrary to popular belief but people will actually do work in the near future as well, not floating around in a fluffy cloud with touch devices.
You read it here first. The mouse and keyboard are not dead.
Curious to see how broken the metro is on a multi-monitor setup is though. Any UI that doesn't scale well to multiple monitors has failed miserably in my eyes (hello OS X + Unity + Metro(?)). And that's not an edge case (at least it shouldn't be for anyone favoring productivity).
I don't know if you're trying to troll or you're just incredibly short-sighted, but I'll bite.
Windows 8 is clearly designed as a hybrid OS, in the same vein that Ubuntu on Android is, even if Microsoft's marketing team don't outright say it. It's fills the use case of "I love my iPad, and I love my Mac, but I really hate that I have these two devices."
Within a year, you're going to see probably about 30% of the new machines being manufactured as tablets, with docking stations. Run the machine in tablet mode, and you get Metro, perfect for reading web pages and flinging Angry Birds around in bed. When it's time to go to work, you pop your tablet into the docking station, and up pops the Desktop for productivity apps. Metro is not going to disappear like Media Center did. It's integral to the whole thing.
The iPad is not a machine to do large amounts of work on, but you'd be surprised how many people are trying to. Have you been on a plane recently? A good half of the iPads I see are actually jammed into some horrible looking keyboard dock. Consumers seem to really want a machine that will do this. That's what Windows 8 is.
To me, Microsoft and Apple should realize that once you plug a keyboard/mouse into a tablet, it becomes a notebook, and the user should be presented with a new experience -- because it now has a new interface (keyboard/mouse vs. touch screen only).
If they could figure out how to intuitively transform your experience from a tablet experience to a notebook experience without jarring or confusing the user, then they could have an OS that could work with both devices -- or a single device that supports both interfaces.
For a legacy laptop, most of the work is done in the desktop anyways no matter how much Microsoft is touting the cool metro UI, I doubt the users of older laptops are going to spend much time in metro land. So that experience does not change much anyways.
So its like you do have two devices in one. Use the one which you prefer.
If Microsoft was serious about building this as the future computing experience, they should have built the hardware and controlled both the hardware and software. But then they'd be no different from Apple and they'd alienate their hardware partners.
I am typing this response on an ASUS Transformer laptop, which I don't see as a failure at all at the hardware level. The only downside of the ASUS Transformer is that the Android software ecosystem has a long way to go to catch up to the idea of being run on a laptop-like device. This is something Windows 8 should have a big advantage on, which is one of the primary reasons I'm really looking forward to Win8.
Windows On ARM tablets do exactly this.
It's an interesting point, but if this is the target, then I think it's hopeless. Indeed, I don't think that people are ready to ditch there Mac/iPad setup for a unified windows setup. And if MS wants to conquer the tablet market, then I'm not sure that the "unified" argument is a key selling point. People won't buy any tablet over the iPad just because you tell them: "hey, you can find everything you (don't) like about windows on your tablet too!"
Note: I'm sorry if I sounded anti-windows, that's not the case, although I'm not a big fan either
Of course the metro UI has advantages on a tablet, my post was mainly centered around the workstation. Whether you take your workstation with you at the end of the day or not is irrelevant for the work you do on it when it is being used as workstation.
If you feel the transition between the two isn't smooth enough that's another point but my first reaction to this is positive. I do not want that transition to be smooth, to me that's like trying to mimic the feel of a nice heated leather car seat while skydiving. If either was any like the other at least one of them would be worthless (probably both).
Realizing that that is impossible and separating them is the key to my heart and both windows 8 and unbuntu for android seems promising in that regard (but since I haven't used any of them that is just my initial impression). Apple on the other hand seems to be taking small steps in the opposite direction with mountain lion, which is of course fine for most but I don't think that that will cut it in the long run.
And I doubt we'll ever see x86 tablets
But then again I disliked the Windows7 Superbar until i'd been using it a while, so I'll reserve my judgement until I've used the Consumer Preview for a month or so.
The "Start-Menu" has now gone, no button - nothing. Metro is the start menu. That means to launch apps you've not created desktop shortcuts for yet, or pinned to the taskbar, you need to launch Metro. I find it quite jarring switching between the two, but I could get used to it.
Also, to bring up things like "settings" for a given item, you need to hover over the top-right corner and then move your cursor directly down. This is just plain weird for me, and I fear what a less confident computer user would make of this. Effectively things they may need are completely invisible, unless they know where to look.
My biggest concern is that sometimes you can be using a screen in the old way, e.g. network preferences - select an option, and then a completely different style of screen appears out of the right hand side for you to action on. It's just plain weird and confusing, and needs to be sorted before launch.
It seems to me that in an effort to simplify the OS they've made it way more confusing.
Take the Zune and Windows Phone 7. People who own them love them, especially the Zune. My neighbor had an iPod and Zune and always stood up for his Zune despite loathing Microsoft. But everyone else refuses to touch them. Why? Because they're Microsoft products and the stigma around them is that MS products have no future and become abandoned quickly or go nowhere fast. A reputation that's going to take consumers at least a decade to forget about and move on. So hopefully MS keeps these "revolutionary redesigns" going at a constant rate and not just kill them once profit comes in and market share returns.
That said, the first thing that struck me about Windows 8 is that there's still a hard line between the 32- and 64-bit versions, which points to a fairly major underlying technical legacy in the current stack. So they need to go through another major revision (as in DOS -> NT) or hope 32-bit disappears (at least on the Intel side; it looks like they're planning on making the ARM side embedded/pre-installed only, so it won't matter so much).
Furthermore, the 4GB limit does not just concern physical RAM, it also applies elsewhere, like memory mapped files.
In general, it is unlikely that you will see poorer performance from 64-bit code compared to its 32-bit counterpart.
>> Most of the memory used by programs are pointers
This is a huge generalization, may I add.
Yes, I will not argue that cache usage is less efficient, but I am sure you know that register access is faster than cache access, and we double the amount of registers in x64.
You may double the number of registers, but you are still shuffling tons of data between your caches and memory, and that is going to be your constraint for most programs. Losing half of the 4mb or 12mb of your L2 or L3 cache because you use 64 bit pointers has a much bigger impact than doubling the number of registers.
However, I believe Google is working on some program to let people use all the goodies in x86-64 while also using 32-bit pointers.
sadly, this might take another 10 years or so...
For the legacy problems, I found a VMWare + old OS in virtual machine solution really usable. Especially when some magic is applied to window management to have it seamlessly integrated in the host OS.
It would free MS from so much pain if they'd bless this setup and get rid of the administrative hurdles (licenses, registration, genuine check etc.).
I've never used it though, as I already have old XP media and like using Virtualbox.
I really, really don't believe that. What consumer-facing product was abandoned quickly in the Zune era? The Kin was an unmitigated disaster, sure, but when people think of MS they think of Windows, Office and (perhaps) Xbox- none of which have been abandoned.
I don't know what you mean by that exactly- have all the ZuneHD devices out there stopped working? No. Is the Zune desktop software still being updated? Yes.
And 'Zune' wasn't killed, it was integrated into Windows Phone. MS are just responding to the market in that regard- no-one wants to carry around a dedicated media player any more- they use their smartphone.
Kin was a giant mess, yes. But MS practically killed it before launch, and it has next to no advertising- I very much doubt it affected the average consumer's perception of Microsoft, because they probably never heard about it.
That is rather like saying the iPod mini wasn't killed off because iTunes is still updated. You are unable to build software with the current sdk that will run on a Zune. Zune device software hasn't been updated since before it was discontinued. So no Zune devices were not integrated into windows phone, they were dropped in the dust bin.
You're talking about the Zune as though it were a single product, like the iPod Mini. It's not. Zune is a product line. Windows Phone is a continuation of the Zune product line.
By your reasoning, Apple must have killed the iPod line because the older iPods are not being made. You ignore that they're making new iPod (Zune) hardware. The only thing that has changed is Microsoft is not making Zune-branded hardware anymore, rather hardware that runs the Zune software.
So they had a product that was made and sold for two years. At the end of its life they stopped making them and started making the replacement. How long did the iPod Mini last? (hint: less than two years)
>or at least that is the rumor.
Let's save that discussion for when it becomes fact. Even if it's true, Windows Phone 7 has had many significant updates. Every mobile device has its support dropped within years of its release.
If anything, Microsoft has a history of holding on to old things for far too long. The rest of the industry changes far more rapidly and far more drastically.
I thought the rumor was the opposite?
http://www.windowsphonedaily.com/2012/02/rumor-apollo-will-s...
Rather sounds like no upgrades to me.
If you google [microsoft flop] you will get many overlapping examples. Kin shows up, of course. As does Vista, as does Zune. And that latter day tablet product that never was. And the other products of MSR that never quite make it to stores. Consumers are not dumb. They are aware of these high profile collapses.
And there is a general trend of lagging the market, then failing to catch up. This more than anything explains the performance of Windows Phone in the market.
PlaysForSure and Silverlight are actually great examples of what I'm talking about- consumers have zero idea what they are. Developers are angry that MS dropped Silverlight because they spent a lot of time learning it and creating stuff with it, but beyond an initial install screen (which they've already forgotten about) consumers have no idea whether they are using HTML5, Flash or Silverlight. This is a good thing.
Consumers do not regard the MS Courier tablet as a flop. They have never heard of it.
I don't know how many google searches you want me to provide you with. Here is the top result for [Microsoft brand]. Admittedly it is from 2010. However, it is not an isolated example.
"Microsoft is a dying consumer brand"
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/27/technology/microsoft_pdc/ind...
Consumers have turned their backs on Microsoft. A company that once symbolized the future is now living in the past.
Microsoft has been late to the game in crucial modern technologies like mobile, search, media, gaming and tablets. It has even fallen behind in Web browsing, a market it once ruled with an iron fist.
Here's something from a few days ago reinforcing my position.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsofts-branding-crisi...
What I am disgreeing with is the original suggestion that these brand problems are the result of products that are abandoned quickly and/or have no future. I do not think that consumers regard Silverlight as a failed experiment, I don't think they know what it is, or that it even exists.
I think Microsoft's brand problem is that they are not seen as interesting or innovative, not that they ditch their products too quickly.
People love windows in here, they are very eager to try new versions of windows (Majority of them don't even know that something else exists). Many companies with annual revenue above 1$mln usd use Excell as a primary work station. Nobody heard about Silverlight, MS Courier tablet (even me) and other "failed" MS products. Microsoft is regarded as a safe-bet. Thats what keeps many people from buying macbooks.
Thats said, I believe that majority of the world (those who don't follow tech news) think of Microsoft as they think of Windows- stable, reliable, familiar, indispensable product (company in case of Microsoft itself).
The Zune failed because people didn't like it. Not because it's a Microsoft product. Same goes for Windows Phone 7, it is failing because people don't like it.
Now whether it's a better product or not is a subjective debate that isn't worth having, IMHO (better for whom?) But to say that they failed because of the Microsoft stigma is absurd.
I think people actually did like it, and I think that people do like Windows Phone when they try it. Zune failed because of a lack of visibility in a crowded marketplace (well, crowded in the sense that Apple is taking up 90% of the room). Windows Phone actually has the same challenge, and MS haven't really stepped up their game with regards to promoting it. Yet?
I'm saving this quote. Not to poke fun of you if it doesn't come true, but because putting together a list of "wild" predictions for the future would be pretty interesting.
It's been out for a little over a year in a crowded marketplace. Microsoft's strategy is long term - there is little evidence to the contrary and their history is of taking such an approach (easier when the founder and CEO each hold more stock than any other shareholder).
Windows Phone is targeted far more broadly than the competition - from the 4G smart phones of Europe to the data planless feature phones of Zambia.
Really? How do you know this? Have you gone door to door asking people?
You couldn't be wronger. In fact, it is ahead of Android.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/wp7-ahead-of-android-and-...
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Phone-Leads-in-Custom...
Windows phones have some of the best ratings on carrier websites and Amazon.
There is indeed a Microsoft stigma, and MS is failing at shaking it. When have you seen a commercial for the HTC Titan on TV? It's all iPhones and Android out there except for an inkling of ads for the Nokia 710 (which IS selling well btw, and is the third best selling device on their network).
It is also failing because of carrier stores and salesmen, who seem to be steering people away from Windows Phones to Android LTE devices.
There's truth to that. When I asked what Windows Phones the store had, the sales clerk gave me a surprised look and asked "Are you sure you want that?".
Those sales goons also steer people toward Android and away from iPhones as well -- for a simple reason that the carrier tells them to because the carrier makes more profit on Android phones -- but yet iPhones continue to sell extremely well.
Accept reality; most people don't like Windows Phone 7.
Most people don't even know about Windows Phones, and many of those that do are already wedded to iOS/Android phone contracts/ecosystem.
I would hope for you to back up such statements with some substance. By your logic, most people don't like OS X as well.
People don't like == miserable sales numbers. The narrative for Windows Phone 7 is so bad that naturally the only people who buy it are generally going to automatically like the platform -- they had some ulterior motive, generally, for selecting it.
Windows Phone is evolving quickly and is turning credible, but that satisfaction survey is complete discardable nonsense.
Windows phones have some of the best ratings on carrier websites and Amazon.
Fringe things generally do. That isn't an insult to it, it's simply truth.
It is also failing because of carrier stores and salesmen, who seem to be steering people away from Windows Phones to Android LTE devices.
Maybe because they think the Android devices are better? For much of Android's life salespeople have rightly steered users to the iPhone. A "held down" conspiracy doesn't follow.
Microsoft's initial marketing spend on WP7 was vast; nearly 500m in three months (for comparison, that's about 100m less than Apple's _entire_ annual marketing spend). It didn't appear to do much good.
Nokia is a Finnish based company. They release their products globally, and generally the US is lower on that list. Nokia treats the US how Apple treats other countries. It's not that different.
Apple is an interesting case in that they've been allowed to control every aspect of their system because they have such an insignificant marketshare. Their aggressive actions in the mobile arena coupled with their unbridled success may very well see them in the same boat Microsoft was in during the late 90s.
When someone I know goes to buy a piece of hardware, generally they'll ask me or someone else what they should get. It's up to me/other people to understand what they need before giving them advice. Telling them " don't buy a Windows Phone" without understanding them or clarifying why (and telling the truth) is just being an asshole. The question should be "if they use a PC, why should they get an iPhone (and vice versa)".
Imagine a world in which Apple was taken to court for including Mobile Safari on the iPhone, with talk of huge fines and company breakups. Consider having to make strategic decisions with those threats hanging over your head. Would we get Siri? Maybe adding Reminders counts as bundling? Maybe Game Center is anticompetitive against OpenFeint? Will the Growl developers sue over Mountain Lion notifications? What do you do when every improvement could become grounds for a lawsuit?
Of course, Apple doesn't have to worry about those things because they don't have any monopolies. Microsoft did. So competition from Apple may have made the difference simply in that Microsoft no longer has to worry about being a monopoly either.
Despite the widespread perception that the antitrust investigation was ineffective, if you trace back to the beginnings of Microsoft's stagnation, you will find it happens exactly when they started getting sued for antitrust in the US and Europe, and similarly so too did their innovation stall. They kept on producing cool stuff out of their research labs but nearly none of it ever made it out. Regulatory concerns enormously biased them towards playing it safe, just doing incremental improvements and milking their cash cow instead of risking aggressively entering new markets and getting hauled into court for it. Even the rise of OSX can be traced to it as MS has been forced to license a great deal of technology (exchange, office formats, etc) to its most hated competitors under FRAND type terms.
So its kind of interesting that regulation may actually have been effective, just very slow to work, and also it is unclear whether it was in the ultimate interests of consumers or not (eg: years of stalled innovation that we are only now catching up on).
Or, when they managed to effectively kill Netscape and BeOS, having essentially zero competition.
> They kept on producing cool stuff out of their research labs but nearly none of it ever made it out.
The stuff out of their research labs never made it out before that either.
> Regulatory concerns enormously biased them towards playing it safe, just doing incremental improvements and milking their cash cow instead of risking aggressively entering new markets and getting hauled into court for it.
Huh? Was there any point in time after, say, 1987, when they did not play it safe? what does regulation have to do with it?
> Even the rise of OSX can be traced to it as MS has been forced to license a great deal of technology (exchange, office formats, etc) to its most hated competitors under FRAND type terms.
Samba was bundled with OS/X before MS was forced to open the protocol (which was actually extended from an older Digital protocol). The only other protocol which might have been at all relevant is ActiveSync, but it wasn't a factor in the rise of OS/X. It might have contributed to the iPhone, but I'm not sure of that either.
> So its kind of interesting that regulation may actually have been effective, just very slow to work, and also it is unclear whether it was in the ultimate interests of consumers or not (eg: years of stalled innovation that we are only now catching up on).
Excuse me for the question; in all seriousness - are you a Microsoft employee?
Are you seriously claiming that Microsoft's failure to and delay in implement standards for web and office documents is somehow related to regulation? Because from where I'm standing, it sure looks like "it's good to be the king, we don't need to do anything" stalling.
If your best interpretation of "innovation" is "web standards," it is clear that we have VERY different perspectives on modern computing.
Please consider the tone of your posting.
It is completely devoid of any data - just assertions that are completely false in the world I live in.
> If your best interpretation of "innovation" is "web standards," it is clear that we have VERY different perspectives on modern computing.
Well, in HN the standard topic of "MS stalling" is IE, so I assumed that.
> Please consider the tone of your posting.
Yes, it was a bit aggressive. I've been on HN since the time when a demand for facts or at the very least items that could be discussed (rather than vague notions) was the norm. Most people on this site had joined recently, and think this is a reddit/fox news "everyone's opinion carries the same weight". I don't; I think If you want to advance a position, you have to give some support. Non was given.
Let's start again. Do you think the claims in the post I replied to have any merit? I don't. Do you have any examples we can discuss, since you clearly disagree the ones I brought up are relevant?
The real question is why was the Zune a failure. It was a failure because it didn't offer what the market was buying. The fact that the few who did buy the Zune liked it in no way confers any quality upon the Zune.
To rank my experience between portable music playback devices:
iPhone > Zune > iPod
She swears by her Zune, and having used both it and the iPod, the Zune is far and away a better device on every front. Having said that, the iPhone's interface is just that much better - and has the benefit of in-depth integration with third party devices.
When I'm listening to music on my computer though, I actually came to use the Zune desktop software. I have a rather silly process of downloading music, tagging it with MP3tag, dropping it into iTunes (to sync to the iPhone, & to organize the files into folders based on artist & album), and Zune Desktop picks up on the changes to my Music folder and catalogs them automatically.
Zune Desktop blows away iTunes for music playback. iTunes is perhaps a better music/app/video store, but the interface sucks, it's laggy. It looks out of place because it's using dated Mac aesthetics in a Windows environment. For a company that prides itself on style, it sure screws that pooch in the software department.
I feel the same way too. It's weird that for an application that could be a gateway to Apple-dom, Apple doesn't appear to spend much effort. I see it get updated on a regular basis, but I see very little improvements, just feature adds. It's gotten to the point where I don't bother updating unless it blocks me from updated my iPhone.
I suppose Apple thinks that spending those resources on other properties is a better investment, but as an end user that deals with iTunes it's a bit frustrating.
I saw it for the first time when my friend brought an windows phone 7 device. I was so fascinated by the Desktop zune, I didn't even properly played the phone itself(I saw it for the first time as well)
"the Zune is far and away a better device on every front"
followed by:
"the iPhone's interface is just that much better - and has the benefit of in-depth integration with third party devices."
Which is it?
Within that quote, I say that the Zune is better than the iPod, and the iPhone better than the Zune. I illustrated this very simply just two lines before that one. There is no contradiction at all. By asking which is it, you are intimating a dichotomy where a trichotomy was actually in play.
I'll restate more clearly, and in greater detail: For playing music from my library, I believe the Zune is a superior device when compared to the iPod, however having come to own an iPhone, I prefer the iPhone to the Zune - with respect to playing music from my library.
Windows 7 is an excellent operating system. It is secure. It is very robust. It is easy to use. It is feature rich. It connects to everything and uses everything. In what way is that going nowhere?
Same on the server side with Windows Server 2008 R2.
I think the competition provided by Apple is proving terrible for Microsoft. They are abandoning their core strengths while poorly trying to duplicate what led to Apple's recent success (which, it should be noted, is largely the same design philosophies that Apple has been using for decades, through their rout as well). It is a classic cargo-cult where Microsoft desperately tries to copy the playbook.
In the end they diminish the advantages they hold, while continuing to be deficient by the Apple playbook. They are following so they can never lead.
I must say again that it is telling that the people who are most impressed with Microsoft's makeover are the people who would never buy their products -- the Apple faithful. They still think that Apple is leading, which is natural when one follows the other, but they like what Microsoft is doing. That's great if second place accolades could carry a business.
Windows 7 is awesome, but it wasn't going anywhere NEW. And that's something consumers want. A constantly moving product. Constantly evolving. Not just build it once and sit on it for a decade. But something that has life.
"They are abandoning their core strengths while poorly trying to duplicate what led to Apple's recent success"
But so is Ubuntu. They're just starting to realize that there's a huge demographic out there that they can make money off of and are adjusting their assets to compete for it, I think. A lot of the doom and gloom "desktops are dying" are because of mobile but also because of the stagnation and lack of 'ease of use' of desktop operating systems. Mobile's great but lets not bullshit ourselves, you can only stare at that little screen for so long before you hop on your laptop and do everything you wanted to do 10 times faster.
For the uninformed: on a 64bit Windows, SysWOW64 (i.e Windows On Windows 64) holds 32bit binaries while System32 holds 64 bit binaries (whoever pulled that April's fool prank must have laughed out himself to death by now)
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/11/29/html5-for-appl...
Metro UI is quite cool, but you can spend most your time in the desktop mode if you wish (you'll have to use Metro to search for stuff and open apps).
One big drawback is that my favorite tool, Dexpot (virtual desktops manager) does not work - I hope it's not because they removed VD support, that would seriously suck...
Even if you put all your icons on the desktop, you'll have to use Metro for search, settings, shutting down the PC, etc.
It's not a big ordeal to open the start menu.
Metro is also surprisingly intuitive - I've picked up everything on the first try (the corner actions are cool, too).
Now, what I don't like:
- All of the advanced settings (Control Panel and everything) are hard to access;
- WIN-TAB shows only Metro apps, but ALT-TAB shows Metro and the normal apps, cluttering the interface.
- While I like the Metro apps and will probably use them, the desktop should be loading by default on a laptop/desktop - there's no reason not to do it, and it looks like it's easily doable with some tweaked settings;
- The dumbed down everything feeling of Metro is cool at first, but gets annoying on a laptop after a while;
- I had to register a LIVE account to login to the OS - what if I don't have an Internet connection?
But that's about it - Windows 8 looks like a great OS, I like it. I still don't get why Microsoft had to make it an all-in-one OS for tablets and desktops when they could've packed Metro only for a tablet edition, but whatever...
I believe there's way to create a normal user account as well. Also your live credentials are cached for use when the PC is offline.
>I still don't get why Microsoft had to make it an all-in-one OS for tablets and desktops when they could've packed Metro only for a tablet edition, but whatever..
Because you'd be able to dock the tablet or connect a monitor mouse/keyboard and have the full Windows desktop experience on a x86 tablet. Metro only will limit its power.
If you try to log on without networking, I would imagine it caches your last used login information as a local account. I haven't tried it, but this is how previous Windows versions worked when you were using a domain login.
Is Microsoft still doing the silent update for IE?
Keep in mind, you can't install WinRT (aka, Metro) apps unless you go through the Store.
Don't expect win8 to suddenly transform legacy apps into 'metro' style apps. The current chrome experience that you have on win7 isn't going to magically transform to a full-screen, touch optimized experience unless google put's in the effort to develop the metro app (whether google is doing this work or not, I'm not sure)
Instead, the chrome that you are familiar with will run on the desktop, in the same way that it does on win7, in a windowed mode that you can click/drag-around/resize.
Looks like IE10 is making the gap smaller, but there are still many points separating them from the competition. Those results are probably not updated to reflect any potential updates in the Consumer Preview yet, though.
I installed it in VMWare 8, just had to update VMWare before installing and it worked fine.
The setup gave me one, too. I'll save both, just in case.
Live coverage of the preview event here.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/29/live-from-microsofts-wind...