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. …

[VanDeKoik]

"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”."

This is what it is about. The people making the most noise spout off constantly about their Start Menu. Each time they get more over-the-top, more overly-dramatic, and more emotional about how they are utterly unable to even use a computer because they took away that thing.

"When it’s really about the lack of need for a new desktop paradigm and all the unrecoverable 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."

Lack of need is your opinion. You don't want it so everyone else doesn't want it? It's all unnecessary? Based on whom? That whole paragraph is what I'm talking about. hand-waving conclusions based on nothing but your opinion that is somehow to be taken as settled fact.

"I cant use Windows 8, so it's bad"

I had no trouble using it. What I didnt know, I learned. What's their excuse?

"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."

You still have the desktop and the ability to run whatever you want. MS has made no statements otherwise. Did they introduce a model so that the vast majority of people can have useful apps available for their machines without having to dig through crap shareware sites? Yes! As a person that has cleared off lots of stupid programs from PCs, I'm glad they are doing this as most PC users have next to nothing useful to them to run on the desktop outside of a handful of programs.

" 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."

No. Those people will likely go for a Windows RT device. Again, GOOD! Those people are the ones responsible for all of the botnets and Malware being spread. MS, and Apple are doing the world a service by getting those people away from Win32 software.

"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."

Do those buttons vanish from my desktop? Nope. If I wanted a cluttered desktop I could just stay with the old versions of Windows.

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.

Like all of the cool .ini files or .html shortcuts? That's really reaching to find some magic in the old start menu. You can easily say that typing dir in a DOS prompt led to discovery too.

"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."

They did that in the 90s and with XP, and the same people complained like clockwork. I hope that MS stops catering to people that bitch for the sake of it. They are the biggest boat anchor on technology. If they cant rub two cells together to learn something, they expect everyone else to slow down and wait for them.

"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."

And you surveyed us all about this when?

So stop with shrill and loony BS that this about menus vs tiles.

When I hear something other than "where is my start menu???" then I'll buy that it's about something more.

[adorno]

Usability considerations for a PC are much different than for a tablet

Nonsense!

When it comes to the capabilities of a form-factor, the application will handle that, but when it comes to how things look on the top of the surface, there is nothing that says that, all of the form-factors need to make things look different. The application and the OS and the capabilities of of the hardware, all determine how much a form-factor will be able to do, but the User Interface doesn't have to indicate anything at all about the capabilities of any of the form factors.

[adorno]

That means that I have seen this.

But, your deception was easily detectable from the following statement which you also made...

I’ve never seen lifelong PC fans moving to Mac in droves

One person does not see "droves" of PC fans moving to Macs. That was all made up.

And Mac people, though they may have purchased the machines, are still moving to Windows, when they decide that they want and/or need Windows on their Macs, which defeats the whole purpose of getting a Mac to begin with.

[killermosquito]

Don’t forget an economy that continues to shrink. If there is no one in the cubicles they don’t need computers.

[adorno]

MS’s desire to lock everyone into a walled garden model.

You need to start looking around a bit more, because, when it comes to "walled gardens", there is no more closed environment than you will find with Apple and with the Android system, which are all about locking people in with the unending number of apps in the apps stores. That argument is no more valid for Microsoft than it is for Apple or for Google. With Apple, they control their whole ecosystem, including the hardware and software and services. With Microsoft, they still don't have control of the hardware side, although they are now making Surface tablets. Microsoft also doesn't control the applications side of things, where just about anybody can still code for the traditional desktop mode, with no loyalties or fees needed to be paid to MS. In fact, even with Windows 8, it's still the most open ecosystem around (and no, no need to bring up Linux, since it's not even in the same ballpark when it comes to usage).

Regarding the menu driven mechanism to launch an application of open a file, it's still a lot easier to do with Windows 8, since you can pin any application or file to the Start screen, and launch with a single click from there. And, it's actually easier to organize and customize than the old desktop environment.

To me, it sounds like you actually haven't spent any time using Windows 8, or you come with the negative bias that Windows haters or Microsoft haters bring to the discussion.

[Vaquero]

I’ve had it since November. It sucks. If I bring up a picture I can’t shut it and just go back to where I was. I have to make 2 or 3 clicks to get back to where I was. I would pay money to return windows 7. (BTW this was a warranty replacement notebook computer from HP I had a great
Computer before and replaced it because the hinges seized. I should have kept the old one I couldn’t close)
Not a computer guy. I just use them. Like the old system much better.

[FreedomPoster]

Win7 is solid and stable. Win8 can be made to look like Win7. Microsoft needs to make this an easily-accessed option out of the box.

[FreedomPoster]

I hope you’re really careful what sites you visit and use a browser other that IE.

[adorno]

Apple generally has it right: one interface for smartphones and tablets

Except that, even Apple is trying to unify their different devices to work the same way, and to do that, they need to make the UIs look and act the same.

Simplicity is what Apple and Windows have been trying to achieve with their devices, and with their OSes. Heck, even the old Mac OS is in danger of being replaced with iOS, since, in order to achieve sameness across all devices, it would be more easily achieved if only one OS controlled all of the form-factors.

Windows 8 is intended to be "one" OS, even if the underlying code and the underlying hardware and device sizes are all quite different.

The goal of simplicity and sameness is all about the users, and the user doesn't need to have to learn or re-learn a new way of doing things simply because of the different sizes of the devices. There is absolutely no reason that the UI needs to look or be different between all devices. In fact, the UI for all devices and all makes should be the same, and that should include Android and iOS and Windows. Let the battle occur with the applications and the hardware capabilities. If all browsers look basically the same, why can't the UIs for all devices and all makes?

[OneWingedShark]

Win7 is solid and stable.

For the most part, this is a result of some of the tools/initiatives I mentioned earlier on this thread [IIRC]. There are other software items to consider as well, Visual Studio for one example has some "interesting" memory issues.

Win8 can be made to look like Win7. Microsoft needs to make this an easily-accessed option out of the box.

This is true. With a new UI they'd probably be best off using something like the Win98 startup/intro screen with three options 1) set to the classic mode, 2) use the new UI mode, 3) a tutorial for the new-UI mode.

[adorno]

My mission is to get to desktop and forget I ever saw start screen.

The eventual goal by Microsoft, is to get rid of of the desktop, and to empower the Start screen even more. But, that's years away, although it's starting to happen slowly.

Meanwhile, I too started seeking out the desktop as soon as I saw the Start screen. But, I decided to start playing with it, and eventually, I was won over, and saw the reasons why it is superior to the desktop environment.

[adorno]

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

Yet, Microsoft isn't using "metro" to refer to anything within Windows 8. You are still using last year's terminology, just like you want to continue doing things the old way.

[adorno]

It works, but it took time I could have spent learning a foreign language.

You must be a slow learner. It took me no more than an hour to learn the ins and outs of the OS, especially when it's basically Windows 7 with a new Start screen. Heck, I even taught my non-techie wife how to use Windows 8 in less than 10 minutes.

[JoeProBono]

[KevinB]

Windows 8 sucks. I got in a laptop without a touchscreen. Had it had a touchscreen it might have been useful.

I upgraded to Win 8 on my HP Slate touchscreen tablet. I sort of like it. It's a lot less resource hungry than earlier versions of Windows.

[adorno]

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.

Most of what you're talking about is more about a visual preference, and not one of logic.

The icons interface is already 20-30 years old, and it was good for a long time, and one that worked well with the mouse.

The problem is not with the organization of applications on the desktop or in the new start screen. Both of them were and are quite capable of being customized and optimized, depending on what one wishes to accomplish. Myself, all of my most used applications reside on the left side of the Start screen, and organized by usage and importance; I also re-size the tiles depending upon what I wish to see and read. The tiles come with categories, and I can change those around too. But, I still haven't felt the need to go back to a menu driven organization for the tiles, and once I got used to where things were, I didn't need to reorganize. I still have a couple hundred applications available within the system, with the majority of them being the apps provide by Microsoft with the system, but, if I can't easily find any of them visually, I can find them even faster by starting to type the name of the application or file, and, Voila!!!, the file or app is immediately found and presented for quick access.

There is a great deal of thought and work that went into Windows 8, and I can easily understand why it was done the way it is. I believe that, eventually, even Apple and Google might have to adopt some of the ways Windows 8 works.

[FreeAtlanta]

I have started doing some Windows 8 app development. It is cool. I think they they have something that is going to take off and dominate the Corporate world.

You can develop metro apps in Javascript! MS is bending over for the developer community.

[ArrogantBustard]

You misunderstand ...

I don’t find a jumbled mess to be particularly simple.

Metro is a jumbled mess.

If you like it, bully for you. I’m not interested.

I use a computer for rather more than reading email, browsing the wwweb, and looking at pictures, and I have been doing so since the late 1970s.

ALL operating systems suck.

[RegulatorCountry]

Keep telling yourself that your customers are wrong and see where that gets you.

[FreeAtlanta]

The really goofy thing about the hate for the start menu is that all you have to do is start typing the application you want, and there it is! Like Magic!

If people only knew that, then I think the confusion and resistance would quickly fade.