Windows: It’s over, tech site declares

Fox News ^ | April 16, 2013

[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. …

[adorno]

I keep my desktop very uncluttered so that I can see my desktop background.

Sounds like you got used to the idea that a computer screen needs to have a background, and one that needs to be visible at all times. A background was basically enabled on computers, just for the purposes of making them not so boring. Otherwise, it's not a necessity and it's mostly a personal preference.

Also, you can customize the sizes of the Start screen boxes, so that you can have an easier time reading them. Also, they are supposed to be "active" mini-screens, so that you can see at a glance what's happening with all of your active applications. That is something that Windows 7 never had, and that no other OS has.

[tomkat]

Are you aware that that pic looks suspiciously like a cat draped over a boob ?

(fofl ;-)

[Still Thinking]

8 blows. 7’s fine. XP was fine. 2K was fine.

That Freeper evidently thinks we should change how we work when the new alternative is no better, AND you still have to pay for it. Meh.

[DJ MacWoW]

It’s an arm but if it gets attention....... LOL

[adorno]

I need to know how to disable the apps careen so it just goes to the desktop

One quick and easy way to go to the desktop "almost" immediately, is to just click on the browser of your choice, or on any application which your know resides on your desktop screen, and the system immediately takes you to the desktop.

[Still Thinking]

Windows 8 is in the Windows Me and Vista camp.

Don't forget "Bob"!

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I love threads about Windows 8. They bring out “Road Rage” on the information highway. LOL

[tomkat]

Suuuure it is .. hate when I inadvertantly post the wrong pic on the interwebs !

LOL

[jeffc]

My response would have to be I like a clean, neat desktop, and you know what they say about people like that, LOL! I just don’t like a lot of apps’ shortcuts sitting around “cluttering” up my desktop. Each to his own, though.

[adorno]

Sales are down 14% in the worst economy since the Great Depression?

That 14% drop mirrors the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate combined. People without jobs will tend to not spend as much, especially for high-priced devices, and especially when the PCs they already have at home still work quite well.

[adorno]

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.

You can pin all of your toolbar apps, and all of your desktop apps, to the Start screen, to give you one-click access to all of them.

[adorno]

You just neatly illustrated the tremendous suckage of metro’s jumble of crap versus the logical arrangement inherent to a cascading menu.

Apparently, you would be the type to argue that, simple is actually worse that difficult, when difficult is all that you've been used to.

Menu driven applications will still be around for a long time, but, when they can be replaced with the simpler option of just clicking on one icon or box, then, by all means, the menus should be given the heave-ho.

[HomeAtLast]

Also, they are supposed to be "active" mini-screens, so that you can see at a glance what's happening with all of your active applications.

LOL. The active ones are the first ones I removed! I'll say one thing for that start screen, it does let you put stuff out to pasture. My Windows 8 start screen has almost nothing on it. Desktop and very few other things. My mission is to get to desktop and forget I ever saw start screen.

[adorno]

the hard disk became the limiting factor some time ago

That's why PCs and other form-factors are being made with solid state storage, but the problem there is that, it's also more expensive. The best of both worlds is the combo, where you get solid state and hard-drive storage. Then there is also the cloud, where you don't have to worry about local storage, and everything goes into the cloud, and the speeds is wholly dependent on the cloud server, the speed of your broadband, your PC/device. Eventually, most storage (if not all), will be of the solid state variety, but the prices will have to fall in order to get enough storage locally.

[Still Thinking]

What’s “Metro?” It sounds a lot like “Vista.”

"Metro" is someone or something that claims to be male, but for whom the evidence suggests otherwise.

[HomeAtLast]

Things get moved around, ostensibly to make things "easier", but it looks like they just bury them deeper and that makes them harder.

Totally agree. When I first started using Windows 8, it was like having my old pc chewed up like a jigsaw puzzle and I had to put it back together -- not like it was, but in a different way, so that it would work. :( It works, but it took time I could have spent learning a foreign language.

[adorno]

It adds layers of superfluous junk preventing me from getting where I wish to navigate.

I thought the same before I started using it, but now, it's as easy as working the remote for a TV, and even easier most times. It just takes time before people begin to realize the genius and reasons for the Start screen, and the whole of Windows 8. Windows 8 is still Windows 7 underneath it all, and actually works faster.

[adorno]

Jakob Nielsen hates it.

Why take the word of one jackass? Why not give it a try yourself, just like I did.

There is nothing wrong at all with the multiple personalities of the OS. Both of them are not working at the same time, and even on my weakest processor PC, the one with the i3 processor, it flies, and works just as well and better most times than my old Windows 7 machine.

[RegulatorCountry]

The problem is simple, there’s no hierarchy, they were more concerned with making a “pretty” Mondrian design than creating a logical eye path.

More frequently used icons should be more obvious and more easily utilized, and the more ancillary, secondary icons should be segregated by size, location, or visual “level” as far as reduced contrast or some other visual organizational structure.

The “desktop” metaphor has grown, improved and evolved over the past thirty years or so into a very workable graphical user interface. Websites use it, larger touchscreens use it, even television uses it and it’s typically not even interactive.

Scale is the only reason to move away from it, as in smartphones and tablets. Even then there are much stronger visual differentiations between icons.

Windows 8 manages somehow to be both flat and a visual assault at the same time. Lack of hierarchy and visual differentiation of apps and functions is the reason why, it’s too large on devices with large screens.

The whole idea of totally matching interfaces across all media is only being put forth by Microsoft and it’s not an accurate representation of how the different devices are used anyway. Tone it down on the PC desktop, admit that no style points were won, it just confused their core customers.

[adorno]

But I do agree with Jakob that I believe MS will correct their mistakes with Windows 9.

The next update will be Windows 8.1, or like some are referring to it, "Windows Blue".

But fact is that, even as it stands today, Windows 8 is vastly superior to any OS out there, and it's the OS which others will be trying to emulate in scope. Apple's and Google's interfaces, are already more than 20 years behind the times.