Microsoft's big Windows 8 secret? It's actually about advertising.
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
I used to pop open Minesweeper and play a game in 30 seconds. Now it takes 30 seconds to get through loading screens and all this "Xbox live integration" crap. I hate it. Who really wants "achievements"? I just want a fast loading game that I can throw on a USB stick.
For all the improvements they've made in the Desktop space, the direction they're heading with Metro is so awful for power users.
Hopefully, the people who laughed at Gabe Newell and Notch for being "paranoid" are starting to get it now.
Also, there's nothing about Windows 8 that prevents you from running an older Minesweeper.exe from a USB stick like you mentioned.
Speaking of ads, here's a panorama of the entire app: http://encosia.com/i/minesweeper-wide/. The ad only takes up about 4.5% of the landscape, in the least conspicuous possible spot. That ad is like putting a small banner ad in the footer of a website. If you're jumping into the app to play a game of Minesweeper, you'd never even see the ad unless you're using a 4,850 pixel wide display.
Also, there's nothing about Windows 8 that prevents you from running an older Minesweeper.exe from a USB stick like you mentioned.
We aren't going to agree about the ad. I literally never saw it in Minesweeper until I went looking for it today, and it's clearly a generic CPM based display ad instead of something invasive based on your activity. Focusing on these nearly-hidden ads in ancillary apps seems like the pinnacle of bikeshedding to me.
edit: Not to say that your opinion is wrong or mine is better. I just can't get on board with all of the fuss I've been seeing lately about these ads. Having been using Windows 8 as my primary desktop OS for about a year, I never see the ads. I have to hunt for them to even verify that they're still there when another blog post pops up about them.
I don't get it, which app. It says minesweeper, where are the mines? Is this like the minesweeper starter app, did they feel interstitials were so loved on the web that they wanted to give people more of them?
Also, don't they have any designers at MS or is mis-alignment the new grid? Or perhaps there's some cunning reason [other than making it stand out more in the most annoying fashion] that the advert should not adhere to the grid of the rest of the content.
If that's not crack smoking, what is?
If you click/tap one of the tiles for the classic game modes, like "easy", you see a brief loading screen with nothing but a Minesweeper flag icon, and then go straight to the game and there are no ads on that next screen.
It's a joke. I'm not letting it near my network.
That's a fair point about the pre-loading when you likely will never even see it. That doesn't really bother me, but I can see your point there. Would it bother you significantly less if it only loaded the ad on-demand in the rare instance that you actually scrolled that far right?
I'd rather pay for something which is not ad supported.
I prefer buying paid apps when they're available too. I don't play a ton of games, but I own the paid version of the ones I play that offer both choices (Words with Friends, Letterpress, Drop7).
I think we're seeing that pricing model fade away though, particularly in the gaming segment. Developers have discovered that only a tiny minority of paid games will be popular enough to hit the Angry Birds jackpot, driving them toward ads or IAP approaches instead. Even when they do hit that jackpot, some popular paid apps are struggling to subsist in the long term with no mechanism for paid upgrades (e.g. Sparrow).
My issue is that this is a built in feature/program which has been around for at least 20 years which now has advertising with no opt out pumped into it and the base price of the OS is still more expensive than ever.
So for the Window 8 upgrade, I gain advertising pumped into my existing applications and get charged for the privilege. Fuck 'em.
I'm still having the hardest time understanding why you seem to be so angry about this, of all things to focus on about Windows 8.
"Microsoft Windows 8 32-bit DVD - OEM" is £77 GBP (~ $120 USD).
Prices include "sales tax" known locally as VAT.
Windows 7 Home Premium OEM = 55 GBP ex VAT
Large difference!
There are a number of Win8 upgrade restrictions in the UK AFAIK including you can only upgrade retail PKUs (not previously purchased OEM ones). The deal is 25 GBP for the upgrade.
http://www.androidpipe.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Downlo...
This isn't true. I seldom see billboards (I live in the city, looking at the traffic is more than enough); I don't have a TV, I don't get flyers, don't eat cereal, and use adblock in my browser. It's very very rare for me to see ads outside of free apps for my android devices, and those generally go away once I buy the non-free versions.
I do not expect an OS I pay for to show me ads, and I'll reject any such OS as maliciously attacking my attention span.
Don't visit shops?
We don't watch broadcast TV and having used adblock for many years I find the messiness of un-filtered internet almost unbearable. However we get flyers posted through our door and I still occasionally buy things online (which come with flyers and adverts either at checkout or in the box) and I go shopping where advertising and marketing interfere at every shelf with the buying process. Then there's vehicle wraps, hoardings, posters and billboards, clothing based advertising, and all the usual paraphernalia of the street. Letters home from school, the inside cover at the back of the book you finished, the start of a DVD with its no-skip "feature". The rich host of a BBC program plugging their book (they're supposed not to allow advertising¹) ...
Where do you live, not in "The West" surely?
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¹ But they let very rich people advertised on there anyway whilst being fastidious about removing any semblance of a logo for small companies or when the advert would be entirely incidental.
How are those two even correlated?
Adding ads to your product is not breaking anti-trust laws.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong about them only using their own ad network, and not allowing developers to choose other networks for their apps.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh506371(MSADS.10).a...
Arguably downvoting based on a particular manner of conveying his dislike of overt money grabbing like this would be as juvenile, if not more so, than expressing oneself in the manner of the GP.
2. Show the Windows Charms bar (swipe from the right, or press Windows + C)
3. Click Settings
4. Click Preferences
5. Change "Startup View: When the app opens, show my music" to ON
Yet it's called the "Xbox Music Store" making it very clear where their priorities lie. iTunes is iTunes and can also access the iTunes Store. It's not "iTunes Store, Play Music Also".
> I don't consider showing content from the store as advertising.
Many disagree.
> Is iTunes also "a big advert"?
Nope, because the line between the iTunes Store and iTunes is quite clear. It ends when you click that "iTunes Store" link in the sidebar. Up until then, you'll see no advertisements or artists promoted.
Is the iTunes Store a big advert? Definitely. However it's a store, most are plastered with advertising. That is normal.
Ads in your music player isn't normal. If you're willing to accept it, that's completely different and entirely your prerogative. Many others feel they already absorb plenty of advertising and aren't interested in providing new avenues to reach them, especially ones through products that they paid for.
Plus we already paid for the operating system. Taking ad revenue on top is just fucking greedy.
With that said, iTunes has added "In the Store" picks in iTunes... while I'm sure you'd argue that it's distinct, given how seamless it is integrated in the new iTunes UI, I think most people won't view it as much different than the XBox Music Store -- and even worse in some regards since you can stream for free from the XBox Music Store.
Xbox music has actually been one of the highlights of my overall negative Windows 8 experience. The free streaming service has a fairly extensive library.
https://montevallotimetravel.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/idi...
That was a bit of a special case, for similar reasons to the ones in Metro apps. Search engines had ads anyway, so ads in a program that gave you search results in a desktop app wasn't a huge leap. (There was still significant backlash, though.) And ads in mobile apps are fairly commonplace, MS has just gone a step further integrating them into their first-party ones. Which is a curious decision—how much revenue are we really talking about?
I also feel like there's an interesting parallel between Sherlock—a specialized program for getting results from the internet—and "apps" in the mobile sense. They're both ways to get around at-the-time-limited web user experiences. Desktop apps like Sherlock, though, did not last particularly long as the web itself got more usable.