There’s two things about that image that I cannot get past.
I keep my desktop very uncluttered so that I can see my desktop background.
These giant boxes blocking everything would infuriate me.
I also find the stacked boxes difficult to focus on when I do try to read them.
That’s an exaggerated comparison. On Windows 8 laptop, I’ve got programs I use most pinned to the toolbar for 1 click access, and the rest are shortcuts on the desktop that can be accessed in 2 clicks from the Desktop list. I never use the flashy tablet view and find it annoying when I have to go there. However, overall I prefer Windows 8 to Windows Vista.
That said, MS is being shrewd in preparing an OS for the future and that will run Office.
You just neatly illustrated the tremendous suckage of metro’s jumble of crap versus the logical arrangement inherent to a cascading menu.
Thank you very much.
Yes, I know: You were trying to do the exact opposite of what you actually did.
Pity.
I use windows xp. Thus I prefer 1 over 2. But either works and is not “dead”. Its a matter of preferences and choices. Apple works great too but is too pricey for my tastes. Whatever floats your boat. :-)
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.
“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.
Hey, if ppl actually want the Idiocracy UI, they can have it. I’d much rather work with the first.
Also, while you’re at it, name me some things you find so terrible about Win2k, that aren’t directly related to “they stopped making things for it”. I admit to being utterly baffled how anyone could find fault with such a clean and elegant OS. Even XP makes a few tradeoffs that sacrifice speed for function you may well not care about, but end up having to accept if you need the compatibility.