6 ms·

Indeed, Microsoft seems to have this belief that we must have the same look and feel across our PCs, laptops, tablets, and phones. That is obviously the answer

Indeed, Microsoft seems to have this belief that we must have the same look and feel across our PCs, laptops, tablets, and phones. That is obviously the answer because, hey, it worked for Apple, right? There's only a handful of people I've spoken to that like Windows 8 and hardly anyone seems to share Microsoft's belief (above). Meanwhile, Canonical has came along and pretty much came to the same conclusion as Microsoft -- that a common experience across all of one's devices is the way forward. And, just like Microsoft, they apparently fail to realize that nobody wants this but them.

throwawaymsft 13y ago
Microsoft has always had this dream that "one unified experience" is automatically the best answer. It's facile thinking. If they ran a restaurant they'd be trying to make a plate/bowl hybrid with a spork holder. So unified!
- AmVess 13y ago
  I'm glad MS is building OSes. Imagine if they built cars; the brake pedal would be next to the brake lights.
- jinushaun 13y ago
  I think MS is conflating unified with Apple's end-to-end approach. You can have a great end to end experience with two completely different UI. The key take away is interoperability, not looking the same.
sentenza 13y ago
What I don't get is why architecture designers keep insisting that the look and feel must be the same, when the obvious solution needed here is a cross-plattform framework/SDK that allows maximum code similarity between the different platforms while taking care of _generating as much as possible_ of the natural look-and-feel of each platform. It would be the best for both users and developers: The developer writes an application that has different front-ends for mobile and desktop, all the while being helped by the tools, whereas the user on each plattform gets the interface that is intuitive on that plattform.
x0054 13y ago
> That is obviously the answer because, hey, it worked for Apple, right? The fact is, it really didn't work for Apple. Short of a few common design choices, iOS and OSX are very different, and for a good reason. I am not sure why it's not obvious to people. Mouse or keyboard driven UI can be much smaller and tighter, with a lot less chrome, to allow more room for data. Touch UI has to be chunkier by default. The simple truth is Metro UI works amazing on a touch device, I love it. Windows 7 works just fine on PC. What Microsoft really needed is 2 separate operating systems, just like apple. The Windows line could have been updated with a fresh skin, more stability improvements, and some core new features here and there. The Metro OS could have been a separate OS for the Phone, Tablet, and TV markets. Instead Microsoft now has 4 incompatible OS lines which all function very different, but look identical, only adding to the confusion: 1. Windows 8 - For PCs, Tablets, and God knows what else, 2. Windows RT - For Tablets which are not as nice as the Windows 8 tablets but can run some of the same software, but not all of it, and some apps which work on the RT actually do not run on Windows 8 tablets, and, so ..... yeah. 3. Windows Phone 8 - Exclusively for phones. For convenience, incompatible with Windows Phone 7 and 7.5. 4. XBox OS - Runs only on XBox, looks like Windows 8, but works very different. So, instead of 2 visually distinct operating systems, Microsoft now has 4 visually similar operating systems. I can see their logic, they wanted to leverage their huge PC instal base to drag some users to their Tablet and Phone products. Much like Apple is using iPods to sell people on iPhones and iPads, and perhaps later, Macs. But the problem is, they are not really achieving that goal, while pissing of their core PC customers.
- tankm0de 13y ago
  this is spot on. The only thing I would add is to point out how meticulously little has changed in the Apple OSX over the years. It's mostly carefully vetted polish & performance improvements. Microsoft tries to reinvent the wheel with every other release when what people really want is something stable, fast, simple & familiar, with tasteful updates so that nothing feels stale. The last few OSX releases, WinXP and 7 were in the sweet spot. When Apple added touch-sized icons to the Application menu in dock and eventually Launchpad, Microsoft and Canonical saw it and just completely jumped the shark on device/OS convergence. Meanwhile, Apple has tip-toed with the changes, to the point that they're not really moving forward with touch UI on OSX because it seems the value-add is not really clear for the end-user.
josteink 13y ago
Microsoft seems to have this belief that we must have the same look and feel across our PCs, laptops, tablets, and phones. Actually I think their key argument was that people should be able to develop apps across all these devices using the same APIs and technologies. Same look and feel is just a (unfortunate?) consequence of that. The idea was that having a unified technology-platform, if people made an "app" for Windows, it would also work on Windows-based tablets and phones. This was Microsoft's attempt at trying to leverage their desktop-dominance into working for their mobile strategy. If that worked out OK or not can clearly be argued, but the basic premise wasn't all bad. If they had made that work, developers would probably want to create apps for Windows first, instead of iOS or Android.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > Same look and feel is just a (unfortunate?) consequence of that. It's actually a consequence of a strong coupling of GUI and the programs and the unwillingness of developers to refrain from pixel-perfect control. In order to make a program consistent with different interfaces, you need to write them against a "generic" layer. You should declare your screens, menus and visual elements in a GUI-neutral environment and let the specific device use the GUI consistent with it. In order to make a multi-GUI app you either code for each and every GUI or you give up fine-grained control.
  - axilmar 13y ago
    Actually, in order to write an app that runs on both desktop and mobile platforms, you shouldn't mess with visual elements at all. You should just tell the UI layer to display your data/commands/options, and let the UI layer decide how to display them.
    - ygra 13y ago
      Ironically this is easiest in things like WPF which don't have a cross-platform foothold.
      - 13y ago

throwawaymsft 13y ago

Microsoft has always had this dream that "one unified experience" is automatically the best answer. It's facile thinking. If they ran a restaurant they'd be trying to make a plate/bowl hybrid with a spork holder. So unified!

AmVess 13y ago
I'm glad MS is building OSes. Imagine if they built cars; the brake pedal would be next to the brake lights.
jinushaun 13y ago
I think MS is conflating unified with Apple's end-to-end approach. You can have a great end to end experience with two completely different UI. The key take away is interoperability, not looking the same.

sentenza 13y ago

What I don't get is why architecture designers keep insisting that the look and feel must be the same, when the obvious solution needed here is a cross-plattform framework/SDK that allows maximum code similarity between the different platforms while taking care of _generating as much as possible_ of the natural look-and-feel of each platform. It would be the best for both users and developers: The developer writes an application that has different front-ends for mobile and desktop, all the while being helped by the tools, whereas the user on each plattform gets the interface that is intuitive on that plattform.

x0054 13y ago

> That is obviously the answer because, hey, it worked for Apple, right? The fact is, it really didn't work for Apple. Short of a few common design choices, iOS and OSX are very different, and for a good reason. I am not sure why it's not obvious to people. Mouse or keyboard driven UI can be much smaller and tighter, with a lot less chrome, to allow more room for data. Touch UI has to be chunkier by default. The simple truth is Metro UI works amazing on a touch device, I love it. Windows 7 works just fine on PC. What Microsoft really needed is 2 separate operating systems, just like apple. The Windows line could have been updated with a fresh skin, more stability improvements, and some core new features here and there. The Metro OS could have been a separate OS for the Phone, Tablet, and TV markets. Instead Microsoft now has 4 incompatible OS lines which all function very different, but look identical, only adding to the confusion: 1. Windows 8 - For PCs, Tablets, and God knows what else, 2. Windows RT - For Tablets which are not as nice as the Windows 8 tablets but can run some of the same software, but not all of it, and some apps which work on the RT actually do not run on Windows 8 tablets, and, so ..... yeah. 3. Windows Phone 8 - Exclusively for phones. For convenience, incompatible with Windows Phone 7 and 7.5. 4. XBox OS - Runs only on XBox, looks like Windows 8, but works very different. So, instead of 2 visually distinct operating systems, Microsoft now has 4 visually similar operating systems. I can see their logic, they wanted to leverage their huge PC instal base to drag some users to their Tablet and Phone products. Much like Apple is using iPods to sell people on iPhones and iPads, and perhaps later, Macs. But the problem is, they are not really achieving that goal, while pissing of their core PC customers.

tankm0de 13y ago
this is spot on. The only thing I would add is to point out how meticulously little has changed in the Apple OSX over the years. It's mostly carefully vetted polish & performance improvements. Microsoft tries to reinvent the wheel with every other release when what people really want is something stable, fast, simple & familiar, with tasteful updates so that nothing feels stale. The last few OSX releases, WinXP and 7 were in the sweet spot. When Apple added touch-sized icons to the Application menu in dock and eventually Launchpad, Microsoft and Canonical saw it and just completely jumped the shark on device/OS convergence. Meanwhile, Apple has tip-toed with the changes, to the point that they're not really moving forward with touch UI on OSX because it seems the value-add is not really clear for the end-user.

josteink 13y ago

Microsoft seems to have this belief that we must have the same look and feel across our PCs, laptops, tablets, and phones. Actually I think their key argument was that people should be able to develop apps across all these devices using the same APIs and technologies. Same look and feel is just a (unfortunate?) consequence of that. The idea was that having a unified technology-platform, if people made an "app" for Windows, it would also work on Windows-based tablets and phones. This was Microsoft's attempt at trying to leverage their desktop-dominance into working for their mobile strategy. If that worked out OK or not can clearly be argued, but the basic premise wasn't all bad. If they had made that work, developers would probably want to create apps for Windows first, instead of iOS or Android.

rbanffy 13y ago
> Same look and feel is just a (unfortunate?) consequence of that. It's actually a consequence of a strong coupling of GUI and the programs and the unwillingness of developers to refrain from pixel-perfect control. In order to make a program consistent with different interfaces, you need to write them against a "generic" layer. You should declare your screens, menus and visual elements in a GUI-neutral environment and let the specific device use the GUI consistent with it. In order to make a multi-GUI app you either code for each and every GUI or you give up fine-grained control.
- axilmar 13y ago
  Actually, in order to write an app that runs on both desktop and mobile platforms, you shouldn't mess with visual elements at all. You should just tell the UI layer to display your data/commands/options, and let the UI layer decide how to display them.
  - ygra 13y ago
    Ironically this is easiest in things like WPF which don't have a cross-platform foothold.
    - 13y ago