3 ms·
Disagree. It will be the biggest investment in research Microsoft has placed in the mainstream market to date. Windows 8 is effectively a research project. Micr
by jjcm 14y ago
Disagree. It will be the biggest investment in research Microsoft has placed in the mainstream market to date. Windows 8 is effectively a research project. Microsoft wants to know and understand how people will be using different modalities in their everyday work. Windows 8 will have huge issues, no doubt, but Microsoft will learn enormous amounts from it. Metro is a smart move - window chrome is unnecessary, and takes up more space than it should. Moving to a tighter and more relevant UI will prove beneficial in the long run. It will also test out some of the more tablet friendly interfaces, and most importantly Microsoft will learn how and why those fail in the desktop settings (and how to fix that). These are unknowns right now; Microsoft is going all in so they can discover them.
That said, Metro dashboard aside, it's a nice OS. If you stay in the desktop mode it's really just a faster and more stable version of windows 7. I've been using it as my primary OS for the last few months. The lack of a start menu will confuse people at first, but the keyboard driven execution of programs should be a welcomed change for many power users. There will certainly be a backlash from users, much like there was from Vista. Down the road though, I can see Windows 9 learning a ton from 8. That's where I see the true value of Windows 8.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.
- tnash 14y agoI like your point about the backlash being like Vista, considering that I thought Vista was a fine OS. However, I think that was more of a jump sideways whereas this is more of a jump forwards/backwards. I haven't used it since the dev preview, but I'm looking forward to putting this on one machine and trying it out. I'm hoping for a lot more customization. I don't understand why that's being taken out of every modern operating system. The biggest thing I dislike about Windows Phone is that I can't change the tiles to be non-insane colored. I just want them to be white, dammit! I'm hoping that level of customization is present in Win 8, but I have a sinking feeling that it will not be.
- polshaw 14y agoI believe the windows 8 naysayers will be proved very wrong, people will come to love windows 8, at least on the desktop. Take the start screen.. people are struggling to come to terms with it, but conceptionally it is so much better. Take the current start menu-- what are the usability problems? -- nested folders, stuff like uninstallers squatting there, small mouse target. The new start screen tackles all these issues, whist still keeping the keyboard/search support (what most here have been doing since vista no doubt). Why should the start area not fill the screen? Similarly, there is no point in a little windows logo/button bottom left.