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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one seriously underwhelmed?

Everyone else is talking about the Start Menu and name. That's all fun and good but it isn't very substantive. The only actual feature which I've read about is Virtual Desktops (which was already obtainable via the "Desktops" TechNet download[0]).

If those are all the improvements Microsoft has to talk about then frankly what the heck have they been doing for the past several years? Windows 8 for all of its problems was a substantial change that likely took a lot of work. The difference between 8.1 and "10" is far from substantive.

[0]http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.asp...

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Is running the same OS across all device factors not a big enough accomplishment?

Develop a single application, that relies on the same API set and runs across,

PC, Phone, XBOX, Micro... aka Desktop, Mobile, TV, Everything Else...

I would say that's pretty impressive if they pull it off, considering how many customers and scenarios that will span.

[1] http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2014/09/30/universal-w...

Microsoft was always the continuity OS company. The fact that they need a concerted effort to get closer to what Apple has maintained is ridiculous. That they had separate and incompatible desktop, gaming, tablet and phone OSes is a monstrous error that puts them behind, again, for years.

I don't understand the Apple comparison. Do iOS apps run on OS-X?

The fact that they're consolidating the console, desktop, and tablet/phone OSs is the impressive accomplishment, not the phone/tablet consolidation.

As for consoles, a few years ago, consoles were a whole different beast from what they are now, so it wouldn't have made much sense to have the OS the same.

No but iOS shares a lot of code and APIs with OS X, which simplifies Apple's development.

Apple understands that different devices need different UIs but can share code and core APIs.

Microsoft thinks that different devices should have the same UI but hasn't previously managed to share code and APIs.

> Is running the same OS across all device factors not a big enough accomplishment?

Sure, but unification was part of the big pitch for Windows 8. Of course, it wasn't quite what they did, but the fact that it was the pitch for the last major version makes the "this time we really mean it" repetition of the pitch for Windows 10 less overwhelming. Fool me once...

Anyone else remember the huge changes that used to come around OS releases? I remember the jump from Windows XP to Windows Longhorn (http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/story/70/00/007363/original/02...).

The revisions were ambitious and challenging. All OS releases have seem to kind of lost that recently. But that might just be a plateau we have reached.

Oh god that UI, sent shivers down my spine. Skeumorphism can die in a fire.

What's skeumorphic in that screenshot? Doesn't seem like much; all I can think of is:

-The icons look like physical objects. I'm not sure this actually fits the definition, and regardless it's still common practice in 'flat' UIs

-The calendar looks like a physical calendar, again this is still common practice

-Some of the thumbnails (presumably videos?) have borders like physical film. Seems inoffensive.

-The buttons are styled like 3D physical buttons

You have to consider that there were six years between XP and Vista (aka Longhorn), compared to an OS X release every year since 2011. Windows has picked up quite a bit of speed as well, though they're not quite at yearly releases yet.

> Am I the only one seriously underwhelmed?

It's not unexpected; at the rate Microsoft is pushed out new versions there isn't time for them to develop anything substantive. This should really be called Windows 8.5 but because Microsoft wants to distance itself so far from that it's actually 10.

The message Microsoft provides is that the huge version bump seems right given the number of changes but the reality is just the opposite. It's the perfect recipe for being underwhelmed.

One of the big messages was unification of the OS, right? So presumably there is a lot of work going on under the covers to make Win10 scalable from phones to high performance desktops.

None of that is sexy though; you can't really demo it to a room full of reporters.

That may be a reason why they're offering it for free - it does seem more like a downgrade (somewhere between 7 and 8) than an upgrade (somehow jumping up two major versions for a smaller than average feature set.)

Microsoft hasn't confirmed (or denied) that "free upgrade" rumour.

Operating systems are feature-complete. There's nothing more to add.

So instead they're bundling services into the OS and calling it a feature. Expect this trend to continue.

That's the way of OS releases these days. OS X isn't much different.

Really? Mavericks seems like it was a substantive upgrade (2013 update) and while Yosemite isn't quite as dramatic they're doing a completely new UI end to end.

I'd be fairly happy if I was an OS X user in terms of upgrades, not least of all as they're free.

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