9 ms·
Windows 8.1 Preview
- moot 13y agoIs this the first time Microsoft has branded an update as a dot X release instead of a Service Pack? I for one welcome this change and hope it signals a switch to more frequent major OS updates.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jffry 13y agoDepends if you count Windows 2.0/2.1 and 3.0/3.1 as similar-sized increments to this [0] At least in the past 10 years, Microsoft's language has been all about "Service Packs". The landscape of mobile OSes, their app stores, and the movement of web browsers to an always-up-to-date model is conditioning consumers to expect continuously-updated software. It only seems natural that desktop OSes (which are the most entrenched in point releases) will eventually follow. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1#Improvements_over_Windows_3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1#Improvements_over_...
- bmm6o 13y agoThere was also Windows NT 3.1/3.5/3.51 (among other lesser known ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows)
- lancewiggs 13y agoThe branding did recall to mind Windows 3.1, which was the first usable Windows. The video was clearly not targeted at me - lots of jumping around the product and distracting. It just seems sad versus the Apple approach of focussing on end users doing things.
- jmspring 13y agoI'm waiting for some Windows 8 for Workgroups... I mean, Win3.1 was quite usable, then OS/2 (joke), 95, then XP (some flavor of NT w/ a service pack wasn't horrible). It takes some iterations, sometimes, to get it right. There are things I don't particularly care for in Win8, but compared to Win7, it is much snappier on older hardware and that I appreciate (stuffing it in a VM). I also appreciate the faster release iterations.
- pedalpete 13y agoI agree it was a tad distracting, but I think your comparison with Apple is slightly flawed. In the Microsoft ad, you're supposed to be able to project yourself to be the person doing these things. You're supposed to feel that 'you' are opening an e-mail and looking at photos or "you" are searching for Marilyn Monroe, etc. etc. That is similar to the Apple ads, but the Apple ads do two things differently. 1) they are at a slower pace and with less frantic movement and music, so it is easier to understand 2) apple ads will often have a voice over explaining what is happening. I don't like the Microsoft ad, but the ad does focus on an end user doing things. Everything in that ad is a user doing things. I think they need to refine their approach though, and make it about things people care about doing.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- MattDL 13y agoIn one of the articles I read on this (sorry no link) I'm pretty sure it mentioned their new philosophy, for hardware and software, was rapid iteration.
- jcampbell1 13y agoA company must live atop a mountain of stupidity to call a free upgrade a "service pack". It is really fun to watch Microsoft walk out of it's own echo chamber and create interesting things. It is an interesting time to be the software business.
- shaneofalltrad 13y agoDon't forget this download lasts a year, as it is a trial only. Read the fine print after your two hour set-up to see everything is useless after the set date. I ended up canceling my update.
- trimbo 13y agoWindows 5.1 was "Windows XP" It only came out a year or so after Windows 2K, which was 5.0 technically.
- tiles 13y ago"SkyDrive is now the default location for saving documents. So you always have your files wherever you go, even when you’re offline. And with the included SkyDrive app, you can manage both local files and SkyDrive files in one place." This is a massive play for cloud storage. Will this be replacing "My Documents" for the majority of casual Windows users?
- spoiler 13y agoAs someone who has ~20 kbps upload speed this news is very frustrating. :(
- ciniglio 13y agoIt should still work like a normal folder, even if you're offline, no?
- scholia 13y agoSure. You can save files locally (SkyDrive is not compulsory) or you can have SkyDrive automatically sync docs on all your PCs and/or Macs. But if you are creating documents online using the Office Web Apps in SkyDrive, then it would be very odd if the default storage was a local PC, tablet or phone. All these things are true today under Windows 7 and 8 as well as 8.1. If cloud storage is such a terrible idea, it seems odd that there is so much hype for Google Apps -- which apparently 100% of startups use -- and for Chromebooks and similar thin client operating systems.
- dangrossman 13y agoYou definitely don't have to let it waste your bandwidth if you don't want to use it. You can: a) Tell SkyDrive not to start on startup b) Remove that folder from syncing c) Tell SkyDrive not to sync on metered networks and set your home connection as a metered network d) Save documents to a different folder e) Uninstall SkyDrive
- Legion 13y ago
- cpursley 13y agoThis is actually quite an impressive update. People like to dismiss MS, but they really understand iterative development.
- embolism 13y agoYeah windows phone smoothly iterated from its early beginnings to where it is today. Oh... wait.
- madoublet 13y agoMy guess is that WP9 will just be a tweaked version of Windows 9 without the desktop. The WP8 updates have been annoyingly slow, and Microsoft does not seem to be investing at all in apps (e.g. no Bing apps for WP8).
- noveltyaccount 13y agoThey've been doing a fantastic job of updating the first party "metro" apps such as mail and music on a near-monthly basis. Really looking forward to a more frequent OS refresh as well, and with more customer feedback. Pulling the desktop background into the start screen is brilliant IMO.
- Maxious 13y agoFor details, please download this 18 megabyte PDF file (don't mention XPS).
- drivebyacct2 13y agoSince there are no IE11 threads on the front page, I'm going to hijack to express some amazement with the IE team. DASH and Media Source extensions (among the other, more well known HTML5 stuff added/bolstered)?! Awesome! Any word of CU-RTC/WebRTC though?
- signed0 13y agoThere was one yesterday about IE11 getting WebGL support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5942739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5942739
- suby 13y agoInteresting. I heard rumors about them possibly adding something akin to a start button back in 8.1, but there's no mention of that on this page.
- encoderer 13y agoIt's there when you watch the video. It takes you to the Live Tiles screen. (I assume that screen has a real name but I don't know it and you get my drift)
- erik14th 13y agoIt's called metro I guess. I giggled at how they brought the button back, but not the menu.
- jared314 13y agoI thought it was called the "Start screen"[0]. I cared more about booting straight to the desktop than the loss of the start menu. [0] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/start-screen http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/start-screen
- MichaelGG 13y agoMicrosoft is being intentionally obtuse here. I think their goal is to knowingly introduce what people are not asking for, then when people complain about that, MS can say "see, people complain, start button or no". No one cares about the start button. They care about the start menu. In 8.1, the button just does the same thing as hitting the winkey or clicking in the corner in 8 -- you get completely launched from the desktop environment, and go full-screen Metro-mode launcher. While at first I thought it'd be the same (press winkey, type, enter), Windows 8/8.1 makes it far more cumbersome and is quite interrupting. Also, on Win8, you need to select what you're searching for. Unlike 7, it doesn't automatically search everything. There is no way that MS actually thinks people want the button, not the menu.
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- pca 13y agoIf your titlebar has a dark background color, text and the minimize/maximize buttons are still unrecognizable. Is it so uncommon to use a dark color scheme that no one who works on this cares to fix it?
- tajddin 13y agoI've been wondering this exact thing. I generally use darker schemes as it's easier on my eyes, but am forced to use a lighter color as a result of not being able to read the window caption.
- sergiotapia 13y agoThey still refuse to let me purchase a valid Windows 8 licenses here. I'm in Bolivia. Hell, I can purchase games on Steam, a VPS from a wide array of providers and even make purchases on Amazon, but Microsoft doesn't take my money. Just give me a cart, a checkout page that lets me pay with Paypal and we're done MS. Just sell me the god damn serial key!
- csomar 13y agoI'm in Tunisia, and my experience is that Microsoft products are available in many retailers and you can pay with your local currency.
- zmmmmm 13y agoIt's interesting to see Microsoft unashamedly exercising what's left of their monopoly power to force market share of unrelated products up. Defaulting storage to SkyDrive, integrating Bing as a default search every time someone does any kind of search, even tying the windows login itself to a microsoft account, integrating Skype as a default installed app and giving no opt out once you accept linking your Windows login. I notice they've made it extremely difficult to set Google as your default search engine in IE (no default search provider for it, can be quite hard to find in the search provider list). It's the kind of thing that used to get them in a lot of trouble. I wonder if they are past this or whether they will get rapped on the knuckles for this at some point?
- nebula 13y agoThey are doing what they are extremely good at :)
- joseph_cooney 13y agoThis was always going to be the way with Windows 8....and continues with 8.1. Now that the consent decree imposed by the US gov. has been lifted, since Microsoft's monopoly looks far less threatening these days, and Apple and google are getting away with it in the mobile space I think it is game on for vertically integrated software and services from MS.
- TheAnimus 13y agoSome say monopoly, others say horizontal integration. Most non-tech savvy types want the ability to have their email, cloud document storage, cloud music service, browser history / favourites, all effortless syncronised between devices. MS have actually been not that bad at doing this in metro. The share charm is extendible, integrating things like DropBox wouldn't be hard. So long as they make APIs for say extending the images selection thing available to 3rd parties, I don't think its that bad.
- kenjackson 13y agoIf you view Metro as a tablet OS, which many do, they are not monopoly. How easy is it to match the iCloud experience on iPad?
- gordondevoe 13y ago".1" aka "SP1"
- mtgx 13y agoSo no more Service Packs? Now they're just calling them "new versions of Windows" ?
- untog 13y agoYep, they're following the Apple model.
- interpol_p 13y agoWhich just follows software versioning in general.
- efdee 13y agoExcept for the fact that Microsoft doesn't charge for the updates.
- oth3r 13y agoThe first thing I looked for on that page was an image showing the Start button they've added back. I guess it's pretty telling that none of those pictures include the desktop and everything is showcasing the tablet interface now.
- dragonwriter 13y agoThe Windows Modern UI isn't intended as a "tablet interface"; its intended as a form-factor agnostic new interface, the desktop is the legacy interface. Now, I'm not saying I like the interface -- just that it isn't the "tablet interface".
- lubomir 13y agoThe enhanced fullscreen browsing is pretty much also almost tablet only. Even on a 15" screen having fullscreen browser feels unusable to me – either the site has more-or-less fixed layout with a wide empty strip on each side, or it fills the entire screen so that lines are so long they are unreadable. I can't really imagine what it is to browse fullscreen on an even bigger screen.
- DelvarWorld 13y agoI don't understand anything that's going on in this video and the colors are disgusting. Reeallllyy hope IE11 works on 7.
- pgsandstrom 13y agoWhat surprices me the most is that Windows 8 is so darn expensive. The vanilla version costs $120, that is the biggest hurdle for my family to upgrade.
- endijs 13y agoI bought upgrade to Win8 Pro for 29EUR. Not that expensive. That was shortly after Win8 was released but anyway - who wanted were able to upgrade cheap.
- bobsy 13y agoI have been using Windows 8 since launch day and I have hardly touched the Metro apps. The only thing in this update I see for me is the start button. Something which I do not need. The only update I want to see is a 'Shut Down' option when you click you name on the start screen. I think Windows 8 is alright but I am somewhat disappointed at how they haven't even attempted to unify the metro / desktop experience. I thought this was one of the main gripes people had. As someone without a touch screen, I would use Metro apps far more if they opened in a container on the desktop.
- shinratdr 13y agohttp://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/ http://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/
- sjmulder 13y agoIt looks like Windows 8.1 will be solving many of the issues people have been having with Windows 8. On the other hand, it’s such a shame that they’ve made Modern UI a walled-off platform. The PC’s biggest strength has always been how democratized the platform was – anyone could build a PC, make software for it. OS X is sometimes criticized of becoming a closed platform, with GateKeeper and such, but the sad reality is that right now Windows 8 is the more restrictive of the two. At least Apple lets you self-sign and bypass the App Store vetting process (albeit for a fee), and you can easily disable GateKeeper altogether. It’s also clear that the Modern UI and desktop teams have been working in complete isolation. Microsoft keep pushing out new frameworks, completely ignoring what came before. Will WPF go the way of Windows Forms? What are people who built XNA games supposed to do about Windows 8? What does modern Windows desktop app even look like? Most of them spot ribbons, but there isn’t even a standard component for that.