Windows 8 hits RTM status
windowsteamblog.com
windowsteamblog.com
Among all this, the teams who worked on this product (including several close friends) really busted ass to get it right. I think this will be the best version of Windows ever, and might be the first operating system that gets a touch/keyboard+mouse hybrid UI right.
The lower-end surface will be for consumers. It will run Windows RT (previously called WOA, "Windows-on-ARM"), and support Metro (touch) apps exclusively. Main expected software distribution channel is the Windows app store. This device is positioned against the iPad; it's an Apple-style "shrinkwrap" experience that resets everything for the sake of this version, which wouldn't ever fly in the business world.
I've been studying this extensively because my company (Crittercism) will have a build of our mobile crash instrumentation on Windows RT from the day it launches. Email me at david@crittercism.com if you want access to the beta.
MS's stated intention was to have a consistent UI across phones, tablets, and desktops. This strikes me as an utterly absurd notion: different products call for different interfaces, each designed to maximize the unique benefits of that particular product. Phones, tablets, and PCs are not generally substitute goods; each of them has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and a common UI just obscures them beneath a lowest-common-denominator facade.
If you see the current metro implementation, it is similar. The whole desktop is treated just as an app along with the rest of the metro apps (like command shell was in gui). This is the first version of metro and dismissing the current approach is a little premature.
Metro is a step backward in all of these areas: it makes functions less discoverable, it makes multitasking more cumbersome, and it makes workflow more difficult. Full-screen applications with inconsistent UIs and limited integration with other programs make me feel like I'm using DOS.
What are the benefits to ease of use, productivity, and functional sophistication offered by a desktop touch UI? I can't think of any, just more limitations: in addition to the retrograde utility specific to Metro, with any touch UI you've got the problem of slower, more burdensome text entry, and having your hands obscure the stuff you're looking at and leaving smudges on the screen.
I still don't understand what problem desktop touch is meant to solve.
If you have been following the posts on the building windows blog then you will be able to understand the reasoning behind the design. Please do it. As a software engineer, understanding the design process behind one of the most used pieces of software is very educating.
There seems to be a general trend toward a "sparse, haphazard 2D grid of elements of varying size and shape" UI paradigm, not just in Metro, but on websites and elsewhere, and apart from the more detailed criticisms of what we've seen in Metro, I think this paradigm just doesn't work - it prioritizes static aesthetics over interactive functionality - and Metro, being an instance of this, is essentially broken in concept, not just in implementation.
I think this is a very simplistic summation: the problem with Microsoft isn't price, it's the lower perceived value. For a long time, even more expensive Windows systems - particularly laptops - simply felt cheaper than Macs: the clumsy Windows system UI coupled with vendors bundling crapware or saving a few dollars with flimsy plastic parts to fit a very tight price-point, etc. Saving $5 with a screen hinge makes the entire system feel worse but for a long time it's been the rule thanks to the prevalent design-by-spreadsheet mindset.
There are some people who simply won't consider buying a Windows system but I think there is a much larger group of customers who would be quite open to a high-quality system — I'm just not sure that this will happen without Microsoft getting a good industrial designer in charge of the entire product. I'm also hoping that either Windows 8 has either improved a lot since the betas, interacts horribly with VMware, or a service pack will spread the Metro design around more completely because the betas were something of a disaster once you left Metro.
I think there's an interesting lesson in here about perception of value in technology. I used to work at Microsoft but currently use exclusively Apple products, mostly because they're unix machines and are more familiar. That said, I know I'm in the tiny little epsilon of the general population that cares about whether it's unix underneath.
At bottom, I have no idea why people buy Apple products.
Also, FWIW, I'm totally price-insensitive when it comes to computer purchases; I keep these thing for 3-5 years so paying $1000 more just doesn't matter over that span.
Fit and finish. Only a few Sony/Samsung products I've seen on the market recently are really designed tightly and I've never had to use them so don't know how Win7 works on those compared to a Mac.
The problem in the PC/Windows world is that even if you make an Apple-quality product - hardware, drivers, testing, mandating component quality - you will be "disrupted" by another PC manufacturer that steals your design just enough to confuse consumers. Meanwhile the large Windows license costs require razor thin margins unless you price your end product above what Apple offers. This is a no-mans land.
Also the cheaper feel of laptops was a valid argument a few years ago but since then quite a few ultrabooks have been available that are quite sleek.
VMware is fairly important in the enterprise.
Even if such a product exists, the other side of that is hardware / software integration: does the vendor not install a bunch of crap which needs to be removed / disabled, did Microsoft provide a single, simple place to configure and interact with the system (hint: maybe for Windows 9), etc. None of these are unworkable but I've heard them mentioned over and over by people who've switched from PCs to Macs over the last decade[1] enough that it feels like the sharp decline of the traditional PC industry is more due to some local-minima revenue decisions than anything else.
1. That describes me as well but I'm excluding my own experience as unrepresentative & sticking to more normal users
Sometimes I wonder if MS would have been better served offering two version: one with the new metro UI and one without.
Metro mainly for touch, desktop mainly for mouse/keyboard. One device, 3 scenarios.
Does that not excite you at all?
If Apple does indeed release a 7" iPad then this further cements the tablet-phone approach. Microsoft will have difficulties competing here immediately because Win8's UI is not made to scale down that small and it would be awkward to release 7" devices running WP8 (2 different tablet OSes!).
Most people agree that there needs to be more continuity between desktop and mobile and Microsoft is setting themselves up decently with Windows Phone 8 (based on the Win8 core and WinRT).
My concern with Windows 8 is that it took a cheap route to extend to tablet UIs (the second shell, Metro), resulting in 3 UI platforms- desktop (classic shell), tablet (Metro), phone (WP8), rather than 2.
Attention to detail matters - sometimes more than the grand vision. Microsoft needs to get down to brass tacks - show success stories and tell us how the tablet/laptop scenario would specifically work with Windows8.
I just remain unconvinced that the integration was as smooth as it could have been. And, let's admit it, it's going to be a while before I forgive MS for killing off the start menu mere moments after they finally figured out how to make it really good. The Metro replacement looks great, and I'm sure that approach will work as well on tablets as it does on smartphones. . . but for computers, the Windows 7 version was really pretty good, and its replacement just isn't doing it for me.
Also, I'm annoyed that the app store is Metro only. As a result its full of junk toy apps that are again designed to take me out of the context of the desktop. The fact that you can't purchase and install MS Office through their own app store shows how worthless it is.
How? I've been using Windows 8 for weeks and only see Metro when I'm launching an app I don't have pinned. And even then only for a very brief moment while I'm typing, a moment which is hardly disruptive.
How do you feel forced to use Metro when everything you do is on the desktop?
Install and launch an application - Gotta go through metro
Hit close on a fullscreen window - Metro sidebar shows up.
Doubleclick a video file, where does it take you? Metro
Need to look at pdf or image real quick, where are you going? Metro
Wanna use a one off app like Notepad or Calculator? You have to go through Metro, then right-click to pull up the bottom bar, hit All Apps and then finally find your app. Dear God.
You can change the default apps, just like you always have to not use Metro apps.
The Start Screen works just like the Start Menu did in terms of searching. Just start typing "notepad" rather than browsing for it.
I just downloaded and installed a program from the web, the shortcut to launch that program only exists in the Metro UI unless I either pin that to the desktop launchbar, or I add a shortcut to my desktop
Either way, you're going to lose focus of whatever was on the screen to begin with.
Is that any different than Windows Vista or 7?
For media, you don't have to use Metro. When I open a video it opens MPC. When I open a picture it opens Windows Photo Viewer (not the Photos app). When I open a PDF, it opens Chrome or Foxit.
Hell, I want to use Metro but my workflow keeps me in in the desktop 95% of the time. The other 5% is just to open a program I don't have pinned. In that case, just type the application name.
No, they want to leverage the power of the desktop Windows to get a foothold in mobile, which they werent able to achieve on their own.
Now everybody who develops for desktop windows also kinda develops for mobile windows and strenghtens the weak windows mobile ecosystem. That was the goal. One step back in the desktop, two steps forward in mobile.
Thios force-bundling of ecosystems will work out if developers arent so disgusted by Metro to decide to leave the Microsoftian ecosystem alltogether.
I don't see this happening. You're talking about the intersection of Windows apps and their corresponding developers which:
a) Haven't already migrated to the web. Discounting Microsoft's own products, the revenues for web "applications" have to dwarf desktop commercial software by several orders of magnitude. Remember when Encarta was a viable product? Or a recipe database? Mapping? Finance? You name something "ordinary people" used to do with boxed software and it's almost all being done online.
b) Are suitable for a Metro/Touch-style interface and can leverage it to be cross-device easily (Games are out, so likely are IDEs, pro tools like Photoshop...). Whole classes of applications are going to keep being written against the non-Metro Win32 APIs and under the assumption that you've got a 12"+ screen and a keyboard/mouse.
c) Are popular enough to go through the bother of a rewrite (and presumably popular enough to make a difference to Windows Phone or the Surface). Much of what's left when you exclude a) and b) is vertical market stuff or internally written line-of-business applications that will never be worth a radical WinRT rewrite.
That's not to say Metro and Windows Phone won't be successful. I just think they're not going to be successful because the folks still writing desktop Windows software will wake up one morning and realize, "Oops, I guess I wrote a Windows Phone application, might as well ship that, too!"
Windows Phone has already gotten pretty good developer support. I believe for a while it was the fastest growing platform in apps. But you hit a wall where users matter. They're not going to catch up to iOS and Android in apps without also having users. The two must grow together.
Not quite. I am sure not everyone will port their apps to Metro. There is also the format thing - a keyboard/mouse desktop app will require a lot of adaptation before it works as expected on a small mobile device.
Oh maybe with the release of Microsoft Surface it would be more useful. But with the run of the mill pc's it won't be so easy to convince the users to buy W8.
My predictions: Developers download it on August 15th and we'll see many reviews like we've seen about the RP. Some will hate it, some will love it. The fact that it's going to be much less buggy than RP will help a lot.
Then on October 26th, all of the new touch devices will launch. At that point, we'll actually see why they focused on a touch interface, and things will make more sense. Some reviewers should install this on a touchscreen device and give it a proper review before that date though, it'd be nice to get some insight.
1. There isn't a lot of good (in my opinion) touchscreen hardware out there [yet] which can run Windows 8.
2. I do all of my programming and productivity work on a desktop/laptop using software which would likely never benefit from touch UI (e.g. programming and systems administration).
as for (2), I imagine everyone who does any sort of work on a pc is in the same boat on this. but I’ve found (been using the previews for a while now) that metro has a lot to offer beyond being a touch-optimized ui..
essentially, in using windows 8, the entire desktop has turned into a ‘work’ app (as well as ‘file manager’ and ‘advanced settings’ apps). I still can do everything I could before on the desktop, and still do when it comes to work-related tasks, but much of my other use has shifted to metro. things like casual web browsing, email, messaging, and music have all become metro experiences for me, and all those experiences have become markedly better (the interface just lends itself better to consumption-related tasks). in addition, it’s also pretty nice to have the ability to play a casual game here-and-there, and checking-in on news via apps is much more enjoyable then the web.
that’s just my take on it. I think when people stop thinking about it as windows with metro tacked-on, and rather as a whole new experience + a very powerful ‘app’ that holds all functionality of classic windows one click away, they can better appreciate it. I think this will become more apparent once it's been out in the market and more apps are added so that people can spend more time in the metro environment.
While Windows 8 desktop is pretty much identical to Windows 7 desktop, the rest of Windows 8 offers quite a lot. Metro works really well as a consumption interface - I was using it the other day to look at sports (looking for Olympic news), and I wished that there was an Olympics metro app. Trying to view olympic news through a browser on nbc.com feels so awkward compared to the sports metro app.
Here's a review of the touch aspects of Windows 8, btw:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/does-w...
Why would a developer spend time working on Windows RT software when there are zero customers for it, rather than for iOS or Android? Those Nexus 7 tablets you mention are flying off the shelves faster than Acer or Asus or whoever can make them. You can't even get a Windows RT device to test your software on yet.
The entire point of WinRT (read: Metro-style apps) is the you can code it once, and it will run on either platform.
> Why would a developer spend time working on Windows RT software
Because they don't have to spend any extra time over writing the same application for x86-based Windows 8
In reality, it is my understanding the Windows RT (the OS), can only run applications designed for Metro/WinRT (the runtime). That is, any Metro application out there should be compatible with both Windows 8 and Windows RT (the OS).
(There may well be gotchas around reusing some native libraries, but I suspect these would be few and far between).
So to your earlier 'bet' you went against...
> ...Windows RT will have more apps at launch than Android tablet currently exist.
Well Windows RT (the OS) should have the same number of (Metro-style) apps as Windows 8, given my understanding from above. I'd expect this to be a pretty high number once the devices hit, given that Developer Preview (and therefore the tools to make these apps) have been out for nearly a year now.
Counting the number of Android tablet apps is more difficult. I wouldn't count the full total of Android apps, only ones optimised for a larger screen. First you have to define it. On Google Play's store, I could only find one list of apps for Tablets, which only has around 250 apps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/tablet_feature... (Given that I was able to get to the 11th page).
If betting the number of Windows RT apps against 250, I know which I'd put my money on.
Of course, there may well be more than 250. How on earth does one find them though?
(In my quick searching, I came across this article from the honeycomb days, which still seems to apply: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/mystery-how-many-a...)
If supporting Metro without leaving mouse and keyboard users behind is possible, then it might seem more viable to me. The choice between dropping support for Windows 7- and maintaining two code bases raises the stakes for many developers. My understanding is that the only way to support Windows 7- and 8 in a single app is to make it non-Metro. So most developers must then choose between supporting Windows 7 and Windows RT, with the latter unproven.
After giving it two weeks on my desktop i formatted and installed Windows 7. I won't go back to Windows 8 again.
Couple of points:
1) Large screens are getting really cheap. Occasionally ridiculously cheap, as in last week's bargain Korean LCD monitor threads. Today's $300 back-alley special is tomorrow's mainstream price point.
2) On the desktop, people with large screens are more valuable customers. They spend money on software and hardware. People with small screens don't. This generalization obviously breaks down when it comes to traditional Windows laptops, but Metro doesn't make any more sense for those than it does for white-box desktop PCs.
Metro is a bet-the-company move, and I'll give Ballmer credit for that much. However, the board should have required him to pee in a cup before placing this particular wager.
what if i want a classic desktop app and metro app together?
The Metro layer is the most useful Start Menu yet and the Explorer / Desktop ui is there as usual, faster than ever. It certainly is a presentation change when you first load it up but I predict that most people will get the hang of it pretty quickly. I did. I don't feel much of a disconnect honestly. It's just a bit different but not in a bad way overall.
It's a OS ready for new / touch devices yet to come and will probably run apps from 1990 if you really need it. Windows 7 was the perfection of Windows 95 and this feels like the progress that comes after that.
Having used W8 for a few months now, the problem is that the end product is half-baked, inconsistent, and confusing.
I suppose you can call that reactionary hate of new UIs, but I'm a guy that used OS X when it was still running on PowerPC, was an early proponent of the UI changes in Vista, always thought the nerd hate for GNOME2 when it first came out was silly and thinks that the current hate for Unity is equally so, still thinks that WebOS was the most usable mobile OS to be released, etc.
I've spent the past decade going out of my way to expose myself to as many new interfaces as I can get my hands on, and I'm generally quite receptive to change. Outside of the improved Explorer, I haven't been able to find very much at all to like about Windows 8.
Microsoft has weathered that storm with Windows 95, though, so they should really tart up the marketing with licensed songs and sitcom actresses. Just really hammer home that this is what the future of the PC is going to be, and hey, Penny from The Big Bang Theory is a PC and loves her some Windows 8. Then once we've all gotten into the groove with Surfaces and touch screen media centers from HP, the criticisms will quiet down some.
The October 26th date effectively acts as an embargo to make sure that all of the OEMs get enough time to get their devices into market and can start selling at the same time. It would make the press / sales cycle extremely difficult to manage if the devices were available only from a few faster moving OEMs in a smaller number of markets, versus having everything everywhere at once.
Hopefully that adds a little more clarity to it.
What actual users will say about the new WinRT/WinDesktop model is beyond me. I imagine that the Windows Store will quickly fill with plenty of useful apps, so that the pain of living exclusively in WinRT will lessen somewhat.
So are you saying there are two horrible things, and only one is even usable?
At the same time, whenever I have a touch-based device I can still make use of all the WinRT features.
Long story short, Windows 8 may look like a UI disaster at first, but for devs at least it's almost irrelevant because you can change pretty much everything, and get used to or ignore the rest.
Like I said earlier though, I'm not sure how much reconfiguration the mainstream user wants to do, or how easily they'll get used to WinRT.
If only companies compiled manuals for their products these days. I miss my old hard copy System 7 manual. Good times.
such as?
The thing most desktop-oriented criticisms of Win8 overlook is that the overwhelming majority of computers that are going to ship with Win8 installed WILL HAVE TOUCH. Comparing the experience on an existing PC and extrapolating that to how the experience will feel on devices that are sold starting in October is Apples to Oranges.
What? Why would that be? Most non-touch desktop and laptop models will continue to be non-touch but will start to come with Windows 8. These non-touch Windows devices will continue to vastly outnumber the Windows 8 tablets that are shipped, unless Surface or Windows Phone 8 devices are runaway successes beyond anybody's dreams...
Expect more laptops and notebooks to ship with touch screens.
-how to shut down the computer
How, exactly, is that going to work on a tablet?
Also, since when did we have to think about how a tablet (with one button, and hence, limited options) would handle a task, when GUIs have been handling the same task the same way for decades?
How, exactly, is that going to work on a tablet?
Has Microsoft ever shipped an OS without a tutorial? Also, how easy/intuitive is it to print from an iPad?
Also, since when did we have to think about how a tablet would handle a task?
Since people started buying iPads. Microsoft could continue to cater specifically to you then go out of business, or they could cater to both markets and give you the option of using a desktop with all your traditional printer options. Both of these things exist.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/08/01/visual-...