3 ms·

> I think what happened was eventually the designer types got their hands in there No, what happened is Microsoft placed a bet on us moving to a multi-platform

by untog 7y ago

> I think what happened was eventually the designer types got their hands in there No, what happened is Microsoft placed a bet on us moving to a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, all with the need to use touch, pen as well as keyboard for input. The existing start menu and taskbar would be hideous on mobile devices. The problem is they were wrong. But I'm not going to blame "designer types". If you ever used Metro UI on a Windows Phone device you'd see that it was a truly remarkable system... that was bent to fit a task it didn't fit.

vezycash 7y ago
I feel their main mistake was lack of choice. The second biggest mistake was pushing too many changes at a time. For choice, they finally relented with windows 8.1 and allowed people to boot to desktop directly rather than the start screen. Windows 10 took off the start screen completely. Choice matters. I liked the start screen but the horizontal scrolling killed it. Like pouring salt in Tea. Too many changes. Facebook's learned this lesson well. They no longer do large overhauls. Small changes at a time and in a few months, it's a whole different interface. Only infrequent users would notice. That's what they are doing with Windows 10 - many small interface changes. The little changes are mainly minor inconveniences. One last thing. When they released windows 8 - hardware support was almost non existent. Touch screen PC from that era really sucked. Now with detachable screens, Win 8 style pc interactions might be cool.
ogre_codes 7y ago
> a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, ... > The problem is they were wrong. They weren't far off either. While PC sales haven't crashed as many feared, the majority of growth in larger form factor computing has been iPads & Chromebook. That plus the fact that a big percentage of desktop software has moved to Javascript/ Electron.
zozbot234 7y ago
GNOME 3 actually does a far better job of integrating the "desktop" and "tablet/mobile/hybrid" worlds, and that's with a pretty conventional widget toolkit (Adwaita), albeit running on a loosely Win8-like shell (no "applications menu" or taskbar by default, they're replaced by an "overview" screen). So I'm pretty sure that the traditional Win32 UI would've been up to the task with a few tweaks.
agumonkey 7y ago
I can't blame MS for trying to retrofit Metro on desktop. They were in a tight spot (apple and google were shining hard) and had to make a move. Market war. I admit being sad that Metro was wasted though because it really was very nice on phones.

by untog 7y ago

vezycash 7y ago

I feel their main mistake was lack of choice. The second biggest mistake was pushing too many changes at a time. For choice, they finally relented with windows 8.1 and allowed people to boot to desktop directly rather than the start screen. Windows 10 took off the start screen completely. Choice matters. I liked the start screen but the horizontal scrolling killed it. Like pouring salt in Tea. Too many changes. Facebook's learned this lesson well. They no longer do large overhauls. Small changes at a time and in a few months, it's a whole different interface. Only infrequent users would notice. That's what they are doing with Windows 10 - many small interface changes. The little changes are mainly minor inconveniences. One last thing. When they released windows 8 - hardware support was almost non existent. Touch screen PC from that era really sucked. Now with detachable screens, Win 8 style pc interactions might be cool.

ogre_codes 7y ago

> a multi-platform future where there are many fewer PCs and more tablets, hybrid devices, whatever, ... > The problem is they were wrong. They weren't far off either. While PC sales haven't crashed as many feared, the majority of growth in larger form factor computing has been iPads & Chromebook. That plus the fact that a big percentage of desktop software has moved to Javascript/ Electron.

zozbot234 7y ago

GNOME 3 actually does a far better job of integrating the "desktop" and "tablet/mobile/hybrid" worlds, and that's with a pretty conventional widget toolkit (Adwaita), albeit running on a loosely Win8-like shell (no "applications menu" or taskbar by default, they're replaced by an "overview" screen). So I'm pretty sure that the traditional Win32 UI would've been up to the task with a few tweaks.

agumonkey 7y ago

I can't blame MS for trying to retrofit Metro on desktop. They were in a tight spot (apple and google were shining hard) and had to make a move. Market war. I admit being sad that Metro was wasted though because it really was very nice on phones.