Microsoft announces Windows 8.1 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft announces Windows 8.1

blogs.windows.com

107 pointssimonsarris111 comments

I found this announcement frustrating to read because it contains little useful content. Almost all of it is about how supposedly awesome Windows 8 is and how well it's doing. The relevant part could have been summed up as: there's a free upgrade coming out sometime later this year called Windows 8.1.

> how awesome Windows 8 is and how well it's doing

Ironically, if that were the case, it wouldn't need an update.

It's not at all unusual for awesome, successful software to be updated.

Not contradicting your point, but such updates would likely tend not to be in great demand.

Recently encountered an interesting article on topic—Sorry, PC Industry: You’ve Apparently Managed to Perfect the PC (http://techland.time.com/2013/04/11/sorry-pc-industry-youve-...)

MS always does this. Windows XP had three or four major updates (service packs). Mac OS X is on v10.8 (i.e. they've updated version 10 8 times). Do you expect them to release it and never release another version of Windows?

Windows service packs were free updates, OSX dot versions are paid.and usually.change everything...

I know, I was making the point that all software gets updated regardless if it's good or bad.

MS had planned to make the update before Win 8 was released

I fully agree and I couldn't help but add this as the summary of the post (http://i.imgur.com/Wcw43l4.png) using tldr.io

Thanks, i didn't know tldr.io

This sums up my experience with MS in general; conversations driven by marketing and nothing else. For many other tech companies it's a much lower marketing:info ratio. Google is fairly good about it, and Mozilla is pretty good, while Apple is just as bad as MS.

I think MS is as bad as Apple. They learned/copied a lot from Apple over the last year when it comes to marketing. Including the highly annoying "No comment".

Parent and grandparent claims look false. Apple generally doesn't make announcements unless they have a real demo, or often until the product is ready to go. What we're talking about here OTOH is Microsoft providing a product (update) announcement without much substantial, soemthing MS is well known for. The stark differences between their current approaches have been extensively documented, for example:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/922B4392-850C-4CA6-92...

I disagree about the Apple part. If Apple tells you something, they will generally tell you what you will get, but not how it works.

Microsoft, in this example, tells you neither. The three items of information are "it's Windows 8.1", "it's a free update", and "we will tell you more" (that third one is counting liberally)

With Apple, this would either be a new OS X release that gets a page showing its new end user features, or it would be an update that simply showed up in System Update.

Yes good point, for announcements Apple typically won't divulge a whole lot, but it's strategically important to drive the message (i.e. key features/capabilities), and then saving the rest for later. At least that's my observation, and I can't fault them on that basis.

Maybe you're talking to the wrong people at Microsoft. My conversations with MS are usually focused on architecture and how I can use their products to better solve my specific problems. Ask to talk to a developer evangelist for starters.

The public relations drone(s) who wrote this and thought it would be a good way of announcing the point release is fucking terrible at their job.

Announced at some no-name conference which just happens to be the day before Google I/O. This is just a marketing attempt to get their name in the news when the wave of Google stuff comes out. They like to do this for Apple too, though I never quite understand the point.

Stay classy Microsoft.

To be fair, Apple (and I'm sure Google) does this too. There is no doubt in my mind that Apple is going to announce a milestone of it's own tomorrow[0], a day that just happens to be the day of the Google I/O keynote.

[0] https://www.apple.com/itunes/50-billion-app-countdown/

Apple has done this before announcements (software updates usually) but not regarding iTunes app sales milestones. I'm of the mind that it is a coincidence.

Google's done the same as well after Apple events such as them announcing they would drop h.264 for Chrome which never came to fruition.

"We now have more than 70,000 apps in the Windows Store (the online app store for Windows) – apps such as Twitter, ..."

Did anyone else chuckle that he felt he had to describe parenthetically what the Windows Store is?

Perhaps to distinguish it from the Microsoft Store, which sells physical goods?

If that's the reason (though I have my doubts), in that case it may have been a very poorly chosen name.

Microsoft has a long history of very poorly chosen names. There are at least 3 other Microsoft Stores -- their chain of retail stores (ala Apple Store), the online version of those stores, their multiple "Microsoft Stores" on the corporate campus that sell Microsoft hardware/software/books/swag to both visitors and employees predating the retail locations, and their employee-only online store.

I remember working with IIS at one point, and an object had a name like "site" then inside of the configuration files you had other "sites" that configured your site.

Finding errors for one was incredibly difficult because the other one kept popping up.

.net, anyone?

Sql Server and MVC also come to mind as less-than-ideal names.

I grinned because I assumed it was a deliberate attempt to hurt Apple's "App Store" trademark claim.

Could have been to make it clear they were only counting Windows 8 apps not Windows 8 + Windows Phone 8 apps. Probably just trying to prevent the media spinning the numbers.

And he didn't mention what percentage of those apps are of any decent quality. They're ruining the experience by pushing quantity over quality.

That's what makes the whole app store count metric such a farce. MS is feeling envious because it doesn't have 800,000 apps like Google Play does? Who cares? Of those 800,000 apps maybe only 8000 are decent, 800 actually good, and maybe only 80 truly essential to the platform.

Until about a month ago I had been an Android user since the Google 1 phone, I think over the course of several phones I probably used about 30 or so apps, most getting only infrequent use aside from the ones like Twitter and my banking apps. Losing any of them wouldn't have been a deal breaker as long as my phone continued to work as, well you know, a phone.

I switched to a Windows Phone recently, of my essential apps from Android I lost only one (INGDirect banking app). Whenever I browse through the Windows app store I keep hoping that Msft will purge about 69,000 of their 70,000 apps because almost all of them, as on Android and iOS, are pathetic facades over simple mobile websites.

M'eh, rant over. Journalists will keep flogging app store penis sizes causes it russles the jimmies of each platforms respective fanboys and runs up the page views and retweets. I fall for it too but less frequently these days. But Microsoft does have a serious problem with the platform in not being able to play XBox video (even though WP7 can), they launched without it and it doesn't sound like 8.1 is addressing the problem either. Cutting themselves off from their own service, after they already had it no less, reeks of incompetence. It's almost comical that the only video you can play on WP8 would be considered "pirated" video. Apple would never have pulled shit like that.

Have you seen some of the horrific efforts that populate both the App Store and Google Play now? Let's not pretend that either Apple or Google are curating anything beyond "meets requirements/guidelines/rules", certainly not "brand-positive User Experience".

No, I haven't really, but this doesn't surprise me either. I have a feeling that Amazon is doing the same thing with their Android app store.

will be a free update to Windows 8 for consumers through the Windows Store

This could be to get more people to link their Microsoft ID with their Windows user accounts so that they will be more likely to use the store in the future. The alternative would be to release it through Windows Update like every other Windows patch for the last decade+.

i think it will be interesting to see how this works. I'm not 100 percent sure, but i think the store basically cannot update apps and functions outside its modern UI jail, right?

The store can do whatever Microsoft wants it to be able to do. Updating and installing apps necessarily involves more permission than the apps themselves have access to.

I miss the pre-iphone era where your devices din't require registration with the manufacture to be used/updated/upgraded. Sad to see even desktops and laptops moving towards that direction.

Sounds like a service pack just got rebranded as a point update.

Shrug, Apple does the same.

Service packs typically don't contain new features, though, while this update is expected to.

I haven't used Windows in a few years but I remember XP SP2 included several new features. Security Center was a major one but I know there were a few others too.

I believe the wireless networking support was majorly beefed up for XP SP2.

Service packs have historically ALWAYS contained new features. Otherwise it's just released with Windows Update.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Service_packs

> Microsoft occasionally releases service packs for its Windows operating systems to fix problems and add features.

The main difference being that in order to get Windows 8.1, you’ll probably need to register a Windows Store account (or whatever it’s called this month).

Or you can get it on a new PC after it comes out.

There are no Windows Store accounts, there's only Microsoft Live ID which you can use to sign in to the PC. You can also run and browse the Windows Store without signing in to a Live ID account, so this may not be the case -- you need an account to buy/download a new app, but probably don't to update Windows.

It's called "Microsoft Account" this month, not Live ID. They push you to create one to sign in on your shiny new Windows 8 computer, putting the button to create a local account in a place most won't ever notice it. If you avoid creating one at that point, you're right --they do let you use the computer and install patches without a Microsoft Account.

Some updates on the way:

1. Start menu 2. Tile size

(source: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/380713/windows-blue-8-1-release-...)

Ugh. I don't actually miss the onscreen start button (although I can imagine the discoverability hit to casual computer users). I miss the actual start menu, which was vastly more useful than the gimmicky thing they replaced it with.

What about it was more useful? I didn't change any of my habits after upgrading to Win8. It was only a cosmetic change as far as I can tell. I still just hit the start key and start typing to launch things, search for apps and files, or run commands. Meanwhile the new start menu also lets me search any app that registers itself as a search provider (i.e. search through my Kindle books, my Netflix account, etc), which is handy.

> What about it was more useful?

Universal search: I didn't have to choose "Files" "Apps" "Settings", etc. It just floated whatever answered the query.

Outlook Integration: I could search emails, files in email attachments, and files on disk with one query in 7. As far as I can tell, Outlook 2013 wants nothing to do with the TIFKAM search at all.

Not full screen: I would routinely transcribe something onscreen or drag something out of the search results into a window.

If there was any upside to the weird new menu at all, I could deal with these changes, but as far as I can tell it's pure regression. Windows 8 has lots of tiny technical advances, but the shell changes are just a disaster.

I miss jump lists on pinned start menu items. I never liked pinning things to the taskbar because when you run those apps, the launcher becomes the taskbar item and you lose the launcher. So I always pinned things to the start menu. Now I can't do that and have the jump list.

I also miss Microsoft being the non-walled-garden OS company. There's no way I'm granting them a monopoly on what can and cannot be installed on my general purpose machines. If there's one thing I hope they change - it's this. Let me install Metro apps from whatever source I want.

For me the worst thing is that I get completely thrown out of context. Usually I've got 3 apps open, I quickly need to bring up another window to do something (say, calculator to do some simple numbers) and now wham! my whole context is gone, my brain is jolted out of the 'flow' that I was in. It's a mental thing so it is hard to explain, but I just find it jarring, unpleasant, and kind of hostile, like someone coming into my office every 10 minutes and shouting in my ear or something.

But if you want a practical consideration, the start 'menu' now obliterates whatever I was looking at. So say you were following instructions in a web page (open start menu, type 'control panel', click in menu ...) - well you can't, because the web page you were looking at is not visible now, all you can see is a bunch of stupid tiles trying to distract you from what you actually wanted to do.

I agree. It doesn't have to be an actual button. The menu is important.

I started off really hating windows 8, but it turns out you are supposed to use the 'start screen' like gnome 3.

I.e. you hit meta-key, then start typing - 'fir'. At this point, Firefox is the only thing on the screen. Hit enter.

You do the same to get up settings, e.g. meta-w -> 'net' selects network settings.

You can use the win 7 start menu like this, but the win 8 search is much smarter and faster.

The tiles thing is horrible, but personally, I think the start-search screen makes me slightly more productive. Less grubbing around for settings.

I didn't know about win+W. Is there a list somewhere?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/new-keyboard-sh...

What does pressing Ctrl-Esc do in W8?

The same thing the Windows key does.

Brings you to the start menu.

s/menu/screen/

It's the same darn thing, so yes :)

"The problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste." (S. Jobs)

The reports of still insisting on Metro for big monitors and computers instead of keeping it only on phones and tablets confirm this. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

(And forcing people to get an OS update over the Windows Store is as spammy as it can be.)

Can you clarify what you are saying here? That Metro is ugly? Or that it's only ugly on Big Monitors?

It's a touch-centric paradigm forced onto non-touch devices.

That brings up a good question. With newer laptops and monitors being touch, how long do we have left before touch display become the norm? Is Microsoft trying to have a solution before the problem?

I have a laptop with a touch screen and even while using programs it conceivably makes sense in (read: not a webbrowser, terminal, text editor / word processor, video player....), I still don't use it. My hands are at rest near the clickpad so why would I?

As long as computers ship with good pointer devices, as far as I can tell there can be no problem to solve.

If you are a kid today growing up with smartphones and tablets, the fact that you can't touch things when you're old enough to start interacting with computers would be weird. That you naturally default to using the mouse is a learned habit. It's not one the next generation will have when they grow up; give them only a pointer device and they will not buy your device. If Microsoft weren't positioning itself to work the way they will be accustomed to just as well, it'd be ensuring its own demise when they become the next generation of workers and computer customers.

Microsoft is trying to play the long game, as always; whether they're doing it well is up for debate. They want Windows to work for you with your mouse, for Bob who wants a tablet to watch videos and check e-mail on, for Stacy who wants a tablet to seamlessly switch between working in Office and entertainment, for Josh who only uses a smartphone, and for Johnny who's just growing up and will be a potential Windows customer in 5-10 years.

Lets say I'm in a webbrowser, like I assume 99% of the population is 99% of the time (locally running games excluded). What am I going to touch? Unlike on a phone the pinch/zoom gesture that makes clicking on links practical isn't comfortable in the slightest (I have to bend my wrist uncomfortably to put both my thumb and index finger on the screen at the same time). Even worse, desktop browsers aren't going to fetch mobile versions of pages that are meant to be used with touch.

The one place that I've ever seen it being a decent input choice on my laptop is clicking through the menus in minecraft. Unusually massive buttons that only need a single tap of the finger to use. I don't think anything other than minecraft or other "low-fi is cool" style games could really get away with doing that though.

Even if they make all of Windows "lo-fi" like minecraft, which I suppose is what they are aiming for with windows 8, it won't matter. The things people actually use windows for won't/can't follow suit.

I don't know, maybe I'm just an old grump.

You're not forward-looking enough. 2012 was the beginning of the end of the laptop form factor. Windows 8 needs to last a good decade or so for Microsoft, so it better be ready for the form factors that will be popular in the coming years. That's going to be tablets of all sizes you can dock to a keyboard for laptop-like work. With a hard hinge or kickstand, they look and work like the laptop you're used to. They're otherwise undocked or have the screen flipped down over the keyboard for tablet-like interaction.

There's no wrist contortion when using the same computer if you can move the screen flat in a split second to switch modes of interaction. If you're not convinced that using the full internet on a touchscreen PC can't be as fluid, easy and enjoyable as it is on your mobile device or Android tablet, find a store with a Surface Pro tablet on display, hold it in your hand without the magnetic keyboard attached, and tap Internet Explorer 10. It feels like the future, man. If your phone feels fluid, pinch zooming on an Intel Core i5 feels like you're in an Iron Man movie working with Jarvis. No mobile sites required; the only thing that you'll have trouble doing just as easy and accurately as if you had a mouse is menus that have hover states.

We've had laptops like that for a decade. Tablets make sense, I don't doubt that, and laptops that can turn into tablets are fine, but the technology is just silly in regular laptops.

If Windows 8 is all about Microsoft getting ready to ditch regular laptops let alone desktops entirely... well besides thinking that is a mistake I think they should have manned up and never pretended it was for regular laptops in the first place.

I've used a surface briefly. I walked away from it with that "gee wiz that was neato... but adds no value to my life" vibe that I got years ago from Beryl/Compiz.

Ugly and nonsensical once you're in front of the big screen holding the mouse in the hand.

They put the same interface on Windows Server 2012. Try using that through Remote Desktop Manager running in windowed mode, it'll drive you crazy.

The mind boggles at this choice. Metro is extremely difficult to use over RDP. I'm convinced this must be hurting their Server 2012 sales.

Try using Windows XP or later in safe mode... the start menu is near to worthless now...

Try this in Windows 8...

Isn't Mac OS X only updatable via Apple's equivalent App Store now as well? If it's "spammy" for Windows, are you also implying it's spammy of Apple?

This will totally blow if you have to install Windows 8 just to install Windows 8.1. I hope we are talking about a stand alone installer.

I frequently hear that 8 should have a start menu, and should be able to boot to desktop. Although I agree, I've found a solution that serves me well.

http://www.classicshell.net gives a start menu, and boots to desktop.

I'm mainly a Linux user, but I upgraded from my xp drive to 8 because the upgrade was only 40 bucks at the time, and I couldn't find a copy of 7 in stores nor online.

With classic shell, I'm content for the limited uses of windows I need. And all of my programs written for xp run correctly, which surprised me.

What are the new features?

A start menu.

-1 for inaccuracy. There is no start menu in Windows 8.1. There is however a start button.

Press "Windows" key. Get full screen start menu with improved search function.

Actually, as a user of Windows 8 in Parallels I find activating the start screen to be difficult because the Apple+C keyboard combo maps to Copy rather than to Win+C. And activating the corner of the screen is difficult because the mouse leaves the virtual machine window to go to the host OS. So having a Start button will improve usability for virtual machine users.

And it will help the usability for my parents too on their Windows computers. My mother has become confused with her Windows 8 laptop (that has a touch screen) about how to switch between modes.

Is it a tablet? If yes, show her the "swipe with the right thumb from right to left" to open the charms bar. It is pretty natural, because both thumbs should also be in the correct position if she holds the tablet in landscape mode.

With Parallels, I agree. Sorry, it was a reflex for the usual "Win 8 has no start menu" trolling.

Because yes, the start menu necessarily has to occupy my entire screen and push out whatever it was I was doing.

Nothing's set in stone until the public preview next month, but it's likely to be:

* A start button (not menu) on the desktop mode taskbar, having the same functionality as pressing the Windows key

* The option to boot into desktop mode instead of the start screen

* More tile sizes (1/4 small thumbnails, and 2x large) for the start screen

* 50/50 split view for Win8 Apps in addition to the ~25/75 option

* Internet Explorer 11

* A rollup of windows update patches to date

They'll probably also announce the 7.5-inch Surface tablets at the same time. They're getting 8.1 to OEMs so the next generation of Win8 tablets can ship with it.

I'm curious if this will be delivered as a service pack or as a new OS. It seems like they are announcing it as a new OS, I've never seen this much news over a SP before.

I think they're trying to hype it in much the same way incremental Android/iOS updates are hyped.

> Tami Reller shared with the audience that the update previously referred to as “Windows Blue” will be called Windows 8.1 and will be a free update to Windows 8 for consumers through the Windows Store.

I wouldn't call installing a free update from your OS's app store a new OS. It's mostly just minor cosmetic changes from the sounds of it.

I'll wait for 8.11 for workgroups.

I'm disappointed to see no mention at all of Windows Phone in the post. This is supposed to be the update that finally unifies Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, which are currently quite separate from each other.

All I want too know is can you now easily make Metro not the default GUI and can the start button menu now appear easily. ALl without hacks and addons and mods by third parties. If they have done that, I'll bite, that alone stopped a laptop sale for a friend who stuck with windows 7 laptop as not even a salesman could demo/handle it. Tried a few shops as well and all and myself and friend just could not handle it, was messy. Now touch screen laptops, whilst much more compfortable with metro, still only suitable if you use it as a tablet with keyboard

All those jokes about how Windows 8 resembles Windows 3.1 and now this...

Is this Microsoft's official Windows blog? What a piece of garbage.

Who labels their feeds (Atom??) as "Syndication"?

I don't know who works at Microsoft anymore, but it's a really weird culture.

I'm feeling like the Windows 8.1 upgrade, available on the Windows Store, is just a way to force Windows 8 users to finally register for the Windows Store?

Speaking from personal experience only, I've never used the Windows Store, and I don't know anyone who has.

I'd love to see the numbers of Windows 8 installs vs Windows Store accounts.

Does anybody know whether they are going to fix the INT_MIN / -1 bug in the kernel? This code below (compiled and linked with gdi32) crashes fully patched versions of Windows 7 and 8 (32 bit), I didn't try it with 64bit versions.

#include <windows.h>

#include <limits.h>

int main() {

HDC dc = CreateCompatibleDC (NULL);

SetLayout (dc, LAYOUT_RTL);

ScaleWindowExtEx (dc, INT_MIN, -1, 1, 1, NULL);

}

That'll likely be a regular update through Windows Update.

why isn't this treated as a serious security issue?

Is it exploitable to gain elevated privileges?

Typically a user with the ability to make those calls can shut down the machine anyway. But Terminal Services/Remote Desktop may be an exception.

I hope they add a feature to change the Start Screen wallpaper. I have to use Decor8 just for that, but it's worth it in my opinion. The Start Screen looks much better when you use the same wallpaper as your desktop, but blur it a bit.

So SP1, but "SP" = "." because we "why not".

Story seems to be getting flagged and is going down the front page.

Looks like some HN folks with good karma can't stand a Microsoft story that is not super critical and bitching about them. Those stay on the front page for days.

http://i.imgur.com/wFN21wY.png

Even announcements are not spared. Can anyone who flagged this post care to tell us why? I suspect the answer is "lol M$'.

I didn't flag it, but the article is fairly content free. It's just saying they're going to release an update. Well, yes, of course - it's safe to assume Windows developers are still working.

Are you speculating or do you know it's being flagged? An alternative could be that only people with low karma are voting it up which is what's keeping it from having more staying power.

Thats news to me. I din't know someone with a higher karma gets a better voting rank. Reminds me of what Digg wanted to achieve and it backfiring.

I think HN uses a weighted Karma system for voting but I don't know for sure. It would make sense to give certain people more weight than others. At least in a primitive way with something like "new user" VS. "trusted user".

I didn't flag the link or anything (can't even flag if I wanted to, probably not enough 'karma'), but read the article and wondered why it was posted here at all. It pretty much told me nothing except that a Windows 8.1 was coming - doesn't even tell what features to expect.

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