Windows 8 Previewed At D9 330
theodp writes "Mum's still the word on a shipping date for its new OS for laptops, desktops, and tablets ('touch slates' in MS-speak), but Microsoft on Wednesday gave the world a first look at the touch-friendly 'Windows 8' user interface, which sports a live tile-based Start screen reminiscent of the company's Windows Phone 7 interface. Also prominent in the demo was a large 'Store' tile, suggesting that Microsoft plans to offer Windows apps through a marketplace. A Microsoft video offers an overview of the interface, showcasing Win 8's multi-tasking capabilities and some other interesting features, including a virtual keyboard that can be switched from full-screen to a more ergonomic split-screen thumbs layout."
I lost count... (Score:2, Interesting)
I lost count, are we supposed to hate this one?
It will be interesting to see how this is to use on a desktop computer with a proper mouse. I object to being told that desktop computers are going out of style, and I personally despise majour interface changes (Office ribbon, I'm looking at you!)
Will the "store" be locked in place like it is on my vendor locked cell phone? Kuz that'd be sweet.
Very good for computer novices. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that this kind of interface is very good for computer novices. I've seen many computer-illiterate people to struggle with the WIMP interface; this interface feels a lot more natural to them.
I hope they have a button to take the glitz away though, since Windows is also heavily used by professionals.
Actually, I'm impressed... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't want to touch my monitor on my desktop and get fingerprints all over it. This is great for tablets and phones, but making this the default UI for your desktop is nothing short of asinine.
I can't see any reason why the interface shouldn't work with a mouse or with gestures on a decent size (MacBook-style) trackpad. Its probably easier to take a touch-centric interface and map it on to mouse actions than it would be to make a mouse-centric interface usable with touch.
This is a pretty interface, but most real work will require skipping this whole Start grid and going to the desktop tile.
More likely, they'll go to the Word tile or the Excel tile - and by the time Win8 launches there will probably be an "Office 201x" suite that integrates properly with the tile-based interface, so you'll get a nice "preview" tile. My experience is that non-techie Windows users don't use the desktop much anyway, and live in full-screened Office apps (Unlike OS X, Windows' existing MDI structure promotes this style of working).
Also, its pretty clear that the focus of Win 8 is to win back ground from Apple and Google in the consumer PC/laptop/mobile market - the corporates will be using Win 7 (if not XP) for the forseeable future. MS may have come to the point where it is sensible to "fork" personal and corporate product lines to prevent the corporate demand for endless legacy support hindering their efforts in the consumer/mobile/small biz market while Apple and Google eat their lunch.
Both MS and Apple (with OS X Lion) seem to think this is the way the wind is blowing - if they're right then expect, 3-5 years down the line, to see the old-fangled desktop relegated to the same sort of "power users only" status as the current Command Line/Terminal.
And Windows 8 ARM might as well be dead on arrival given that it can't run x86 apps.
Windows 8 ARM will, initially, be for tablets, mobile devices and ultraportables only. Most tablets and mobiles already run on ARM and are doing quite nicely without being able to run x86 apps. For one thing, the issues moot because most "legacy" x86 apps were never designed for touch interfaces and small screens and would be unusably clunky. Win8 ARM should be able to run .NET bytecode apps and will almost certainly be accompanied by "official" versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook which would be seen by some buyers as an end-of-argument advantage over iOS/Android: MS's domination of office software is just as significant as its OS near-monopoly.
Basically, I want to hate this due to its lack of a fruity logo and MS being Teh Evils, but it actually looks rather interesting and, while its clearly taken some cues from iOS and Android there seems to be a lot of original thinking, too. The big question is what is the perfomance on tablets going to be like when every "icon" is actually an Android-style "widget" requiring continuous updates from its App, and will it still grind to a halt with a borked registry after a few months of use? If only this was running on top of a proper *nix system instead of a CP/M emulator written by VMS engineers I might be sold.
We develop WPF / Silverlight applications (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the Metro style MS has going on here, but there seems to be a lot of concern in the .NET community that they are tossing the "traditional" developers overboard to chase HTML5 over Js. We have been working with WPF/XAML/C# for the last year, and it's not even entirely baked yet, so I just don't understand why they feel the need to start bolting new shit onto it. They SERIOUSLY need to fix VS2010 before doing anything radical like this, or who the hell is going to develop for this thing... and with what? Right now, XAML is non-debuggable, takes twice as much time as forms did to develop with, is SLOW, doesn't deploy well, is incomplete (even after you add all the codeplex add-ons and toolkits), and WPF and Silverlight are nowhere near as "interchangable" as MS marketing wants everyone to believe. And javascript/HTML? Apparently we should all throw out VS2010 and start working with Eclipse?
I guess Apple has them so scared that they are in danger of hopping on trends to try to catch up, and that's going to be a MAJOR PROBLEM if they screw all the .NET developers along the way.
I mean, look, touch is cool and all, and we have been able to make some really cool interfaces on early windows tablets, but I have to agree with Enderandrew above that turning the OS into a giant phone is a bad idea. Sheesh, one would think that MS, one of the largest software shops IN THE WORLD, could do both at the same time, but it appears not ....
Consequently... fingerprints are a huge problem for us (we make medical workstations where smudges can screw up diagnostic quality), so I wonder if anyone is out there working on a smudge-less touch interface? Maybe self-cleaning? Too much to hope for?...