Windows 8 Is Ready 558
New submitter drinkydoh writes "In an announcement today, Microsoft has finally said that Windows 8 is now complete. Microsoft has begun delivering RTM versions to manufacturers and the general availability of the tablets and computers using Windows 8 will be on October 26th. 'Microsoft's final milestone concludes almost two years of development for its new Metro-inspired Windows 8 software and marks the beginning of the release phase. Microsoft says MSDN and TechNet customers will be able to download it from August 15th. Windows Store will go live on August 15th. Developers will be able to access the final tools and submission process for Metro style apps at the Windows Dev Center later this month.'"
Let the bitching begin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft seems to repeat mistakes don't they? DOS 4.0, Bob, ME, Vista; the public reaction to all should have been predictable enough that somebody in a corporation their size should have been able to see it coming and delay or abort the release of those turds. But no, they dropped em all and took the abuse and ridicule while apparently learning nothing. Now comes Windows 8.
Maybe they will have time to get Windows 9 right, maybe not. That is what has changed, before they were an unstoppable monopoly and now? We shall see. They have offended their OEM partners with the Surface tablet, the Developers, Developers, Developers! with the knifing of Silverlight and apparently the beginning of the end for both Win32 and .NET and I'm not convinced customers are going to be all that happy with what is about to be rammed down their thoat. All at a time when their monopoly is threatened like never before. The desktop PC itself is being questioned for most users, Office is threatened by Cloud apps and even the long standing stranglehold of Blackberry + Exchange is not looking very healthy about now.
Netcraft hasn't confirmed it yet but Microsoft just might be dying. And after hating on them for decades I'm not entirely sure I'm going to applaud when they exit the stage. The PC is likely to go with them, by which I mean the open platform anyone can write programs for and create add on hardware, etc. The post Microsoft future looks like a grim world of sealed media consumption devices for most and a return to 'workstations' for the select who can afford machines costing as much as a car.
Few will question anymore that Apple is a dark force of DRM and lockin. And the release of the Nexus 7 shows Google to be fast getting in touch with their Evil side. The only major difference (other than a model years' worth of hardware refresh) between it and the equally sealed up Amazon Fire is which app/media ecosystem it is bundled to.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Brace yourselves (Score:4, Insightful)
As if the UI is the worst thing about it...
Valve isn't lambasting windows 8, and porting all their games to Linux because of the UI
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok...
I also like Windows 8 too. I am not sure why this is at -1. I guess moderators are Rabid Windows Haters today.
An auspicious date (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course there are many, many factors leading to the downfall of Microsoft. We've been reading about them for years as the 800 Pound Gorilla from Redmond has been slowly breaking its bones under its own weight.
Most people will point to the fact that Microsoft's failures have ensured that more people are using Linux worldwide than ever before... in the form of Android smartphones. MS *could* have had that market, but they continued to present shit products in the face of (at least perceived) quality goods from Apple and Google.
We've also heard in the last few days and weeks about how serious Valve is about getting their products to be 'Native' for Linux. We're going to see more of that, especially as more and more game designers want to develop for smart-phones.
Going forward, Microsoft's plans for smartphone development look pretty dismal. They're not even supporting their own technologies or frameworks, like Silverlight.
Ultimately, however, I think that shipping an WindowsME-bad desktop OS while this massive paradigm shift is happening is going to have long-reaching and long-lasting effects. Unlike when WinME shipped, there are some pretty darn good alternatives for development on both phones and PCs right now. When Win8 starts flopping around like a hooked carp, it's not going to be just the developers looking for an exit. It's going to be gamers and home-users as well. This time that exit is pretty darn visible.
And today is the day that flopping carp was hooked.
Captcha: resisted. How oddly apropos...
Killing the Start Button... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brace yourselves (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone on slashdot is about to become a UI expert.
Because it requires an expert on bovine biology to recognize bullshit.
What matters is the kernel (Score:5, Insightful)
They should follow the Chrome and Firefox model (Score:4, Insightful)
Announcing Windows 15!
Or you can wait two weeks and upgrade directly to Windows 19!
Re:Let the bitching begin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before they had a monopoly. OEMs had no choice, neither did customers. You ran Windows, whether this year's version sucked or not. If you were an enterprise you had the option to get your new machines licensed with the non-sucking version but end users just sucked it up.
That is what is now in doubt. Will people just sigh and buy that PC with the Win8 turd on the drive anyway, because they still feel they have no other choice, or do they go ahead and move to a tablet. Cut total boxes shipped in half and the economies of scale come into question in a world where even flat sales is considered a disaster by the stock market. AMD will certainly be dead leaving Intel to carry the workstation CPU flag forward alone. Dell would survive but HP probably dies. Enough of the chop shops and builders leave and the flood of generic 'PC' motherboard and other parts start to dry up. That is the phones/tablets/consoles vs workstation future I worry about.
Re:Windows 8 seems like a solid product (Score:4, Insightful)
Severely limiting new/anonymous accounts in any way would benefit the majority of threads. I still don't understand how new/anonymous accounts can start threads.
Do they have customers already? (Score:4, Insightful)
Before Windows 7 came out, almost everyone I knew (that ran Windows) was *genuinely* excited about it and was planning to upgrade to it. And they did.
I don't know a single person that even considers Windows 8 (either as a desktop OS, or a phone OS). Many people don't even realize it's going to be a desktop OS, they assume it is a smartphone/tablet only OS.
I can only wish Microsoft good luck, because I don't think they understand what they're doing.
Re:An auspicious date (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree that a bad Windows 8 will result in consumers/developers leaving Windows. If no other reason the simple fact is there is simply no alternative: Macs are too expensive (I've tried many times to convince family members to switch, always came down to cost). Linux is just a hopeless mess (ex. Less than a year ago there was a thread on slashdot about the state of audio drivers in Linux and not being able play two audio streams at once. An issue resolved in Windows more than 15 years ago...)
PC gamers will continue to game on windows, normal users will continue to get their hotmail and check the weather on windows, and few businesses will want to take to the training time/money of switching to a different OS and compatibility issues that go along with it, although I suspect businesses would have stayed on 7 for several more years even if 8 had a traditional UI.
Re:Killing the Start Button... (Score:2, Insightful)
Killing the Start Button is like building a house without a front door. Sure, I use the garage door 99% of the time. According to Microsoft, this is reason to get rid of the front door.
Very well put. Same thing with Unity.
Microsoft has a long future ahead of them (Score:4, Insightful)
But one thing's for damned certain: their days of dominance are over. OVER! YES!!!!!!!!!
Re:Let the bitching begin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see where Microsoft is coming from actually. Dell, HP, etc. add almost nothing anymore. They all just rebadge stuff made in the same Chinese factories Apple, the phone makers, etc. gets their stuff from. So why leave the profits currently going to Dell and friends on the table? Cut out the middleman AND gain agility to innovate. The downside of course that with that vast 'PC' ecosystem out there competing it ensures that one lame batch of designers can't kill off the PC as a platform. And Microsoft has never been known as a 'innovator' or even particularly creative. They ain't no Apple. Heck, they have never been known to even play at the level of a Sony or Samsung. They better get really good, really fast because they have pretty much declared open season on the OEM partners.
Re:Brace yourselves (Score:3, Insightful)
Win 2008 can run headless. Here is now to do it. [trainsignal.com]
The more interesting thing is that Microsoft now requires all server apps be able to run without a GUI [msdn.com]. There was also a /. story about it [slashdot.org].
BTW, nice 4 digit /. UID. :)
Re:Let the bitching begin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 8 has gotten more idiot proof than usual, and that's what draws in people that don't already somehow have a PC.
Thing is, make something idiot proof, the universe evolves a better class of idiots.
Re:TERRIBLE! (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, you still press Start to Stop your PC.
What is people's beef with starting a shutdown process?
Re:Let the bitching begin.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows 8 has gotten more idiot proof than usual, and that's what draws in people that don't already somehow have a PC.
Thing is, make something idiot proof, the universe evolves a better class of idiots.
Idiots are so ingenious that they've written themselves an OS.