Sometimes I wonder if MS would have been better served offering two version: one with the new metro UI and one without.
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.
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.
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.