Posted on 04/16/2013 1:12:27 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Calling the latest operating system a “failure” and Microsoft’s leaders “idiots,” a top tech website has proclaimed the PC era over. Windows is coming to a dead end, they say.
PC shipments collapsed in the last quarter by almost 14 percent, analysts with IDC said last week, marking the biggest drop in sales since the firm started tracking them 19 years ago. The problem, said ZDNet’s well respected Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols, isn’t the designs from the likes of HP and Dell or the size of consumer’s wallets. It’s Microsoft.
“Look at the numbers: Metro-interface operating systems have already failed,” Vaughn-Nichols wrote in an essay on the site. “Microsoft is betting all its chips on the silly notion that Metro will be the one true interface for its entire PC and device line.”
“Idiots,” he wrote. …
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It adds layers of superfluous junk preventing me from getting where I wish to navigate.
One of those big ugly Fisher-Price squares is “desktop.” You can click on it and get to the desktop which you then customize. Eventually you adjust :)
But I do agree with Jakob that I believe MS will correct their mistakes with Windows 9.
In a way I think that was the plan all along, put out something now to get a feel for what users like/don’t like, and then incorporate that into the next version....they couldn’t wait until then to put something out...at least now they have the feedback they need to make the next version better, and by then, people might be more willing to look at them for the tablets.
I have operated all windows systems, since day “one”...win7 is robust, takes a licken, but keeps on tickin....can’t think what would be a better system....
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What we are seeing is the specialization of the computer user.
It used to be one size fits all. If you wanted to game, or web surf, or work on a computer you bought pretty much the same machine as everyone else. You might get a slightly better processor, or more memory, or a bigger hard drive, but it was all variations of the same basic hardware.
Enter the laptop and computer users became divided between those who were mobile (sort of) and those who were not.
A large number of computer users never use a spreadsheet, rarely use a word processor, and wouldn’t know a line of code if it bit them. These users primarily surf the web, email, and play (simple) games. A low powered portable computer with only rudimentary input needed is perfect for them.
Add to that number the users who toil away at expensive workstations all day (c’est moi) and just want something simple at home to recreate with, and you see why tablets are taking over.
I wouldn’t take a laptop to a football game, but I do take my tablet. I can record video, check the scores of other games, tweet/text/facebook/email my friends all on a very portable device that I don’t have to put on my reading glasses to use.
Those are a couple of nice graphics, and they tell the story behind the reasons for Windows 8 than all the clueless chatter which the Windows 8 detractors fill the internet with.
Usability considerations for a PC are much different than for a tablet, and mobile phones. One size does not fit all.
>>I’ve never seen lifelong PC fans moving to Mac in droves as I’m seeing since Win 8 came out.
>>Bunk!
>>Show me the studies and statistics that prove your assertions.
Do you know what the word “I” means? That means that I have seen this. I was not claiming that it was a scientific poll with statistics. It was an assertion of personal experience. Nothing more. So chill out.
Well I’m not driving 12 miles down the road to get internet service on no stinking Tablet. There will always be a market for PC’s until high speed internet service comes in over the power lines to people’s homes.
“They have to keep taking the exaggerations up a notch. Becoming more shrill and loony until you have people say goofy stuff like Windows 2000 should be good enough for everyone or that MS is “over”.
They start to sound like cartoons.”
Hmmm. I believe that is exactly what you’re doing in your argument. You start off with the huge exaggeration that it’s all about cascading menus verses tiles. And then you go on a shrill ad-hominem attack about how everyone that disagrees with your position is “goofy” and ‘loony”.
When it’s really about the lack of need for a new desktop paradigm and all the undiscoverable gestures needed to work their new paradigm and all the completely unnecessary retraining to perform tasks that people already know how to do that that entails. And about MS’s desire to lock everyone into a walled garden model. But since they know everyone would rebel if they transitioned directly to a walled garden, they’ve decided to do it in stages. First they just introduce an app store, but they don’t close all the sidechannels. Another release or two down the line when they have enough customers locked in then they’ll close off all the sidechannels and be a true walled garden.
We all know it’s not really about cascading drop down menus verses tiles, because anyone that hated cascading drop down menus and prefers having buttons all over their home screen could achieve the same effect by dropping application icons all over their desktop in the old paradigm. So there was no need for a paradigm shift to achieve that.
And frankly, I doubt that very many experienced users use the menus to launch apps very often anyways. I think most people don’t launch apps directly, they “launch” documents. Because navigating to a document in the file dialog of an app is generally a pain in the ass., especially when it’s buried out on a server, most people tend to navigate to the file outside of the app by various means, either via the “recently used” menu or by dropping a link on their desktop. And for those apps that aren’t about manipulating documents, they either drop an icon on their desktop or use the recently used apps menu or install a dock app to contain their “favorite” apps.
The menu isn’t really there for experienced users that have already customized their machines. It’s for discover-ability. So that when I jump on j6p’s machine that I’ve never used before, I can easily discover everything he has installed on his machine.
And MS easily could have made application icons on the desktop have dynamic data displayed in them just like tiles, if they really wanted to. They didn’t have to completely redesign the desktop to achieve that. So it’s obviously not about that either.
And we know it’s certainly not about productivity because nothing in the new paradigm makes workers any more productive than they were under the old paradigm.
So stop with shrill and loony BS that this about menus vs tiles.
Because they are not the same thing, and you don’t interact with them the same way. That is what some people don’t seem to grasp.
What you end up with when you try to unify the interface is a single interface which doesn’t work very well on some or all of the devices on which it is placed.
See: Windows CE, Windows Mobile, etc.
Apple generally has it right: one interface for smartphones and tablets (with some differences even between those two), and a pretty-much entirely different interface for desktop and laptop computers. No one has an especially hard time figuring it out.
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