CowboyNeal Weighs In On the Windows 8 "Metro" GUI 671
By far, the most visible new "feature" in Windows 8, is it's new UI, which takes inspiration from smart phone and tablet devices. The old start menu is now full-screened, with large icons for all apps, and apps run in full-screen by default, changing a desktop PC into a very large tablet minus touchscreen with a keyboard and mouse added on.
It's not surprising in the least that many users take issue with this. Early on, people have said something along the lines of, "Oh it's just for the early builds, surely they will allow some way for long-time users to disable it." However, now it would seem that that would be only wishful thinking, at least for the time-being.
This is a sharp turn for Microsoft from their previous UIs. Aero, found in both Windows Vista and Windows 7, allowed users to disable it if they didn't agree with it's aesthetic, or wanted to reallocate the memory from the UI to applications. Moreover, Aero was still functionally the same as older Windows UIs. It may look prettier, but it still fires up a Start Menu like before, still lets one dock things into the taskbar, and still lets the desktop get cluttered up with icons.
It's this difference that's key here. For companies that have Windows deployments with hundreds or thousands of seats, changing the way a Windows UI works is not an option. Regardless of how easy to use the Windows 8 UI may be, it's still not the same as what users have been trained to use since 1995. Sure, Windows 7 isn't Windows 95, but changes have been introduced gradually over time, making new features easier to adjust to. The Windows 8 UI is a fast, jarring change, that is likely to frustrate users as they adjust. With no clear path to turn it off as there is with Aero, it also makes it more likely that administrators around the world are less apt to adopt Windows 8 quickly. After the debacle around initial releases of Windows Vista, one might think that Microsoft had learned their lesson. Even Microsoft wasn't too popular to make an OS that no one wanted, and Windows XP lived on far longer than anyone ever thought it would. Windows 8 has already suffered from its share of bad press even before the official release. The logical thing to do here would be to be proactive in heading off user complaints.
That's why it's rather surprising to see them take a hard stance on the Windows 8 UI. Sure, undoubtedly some third party will create a drop-in shell replacement eventually. That's been done in past versions and will likely be done again for Windows 8. For a home user, it's an acceptable path. Home users of Windows are used to beating it into submission. However, for any company that has deployed hundreds of Windows seats, mandating the use of a third party shell replacement just isn't an option, much like Windows 8 isn't an option at present.
Short of opening the source to Windows, it's reconfigurability has, until now, been rather accommodating for users. Through the use of registry settings, or third party software, users have been able to configure Windows for themselves until they feel it's sufficiently usable. While still not "free" in the GNU sense, the UI has still allowed users this semblance of freedom, to do with the UI as they will. Since a normal user wouldn't hack at the source anyway, giving them the tiny bit of freedom to determine how they interact with their UI is what keeps them as a user. What Windows 8 is looking at here, is backlash not unlike the transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, albeit on a much grander scale.
What will be the final outcome? That's hard to say at this point, as Microsoft could still change their stance and implement a way to bypass the Windows 8 GUI and bring up the legacy desktop. As it is, there are several keyboard shortcuts that allow this, it's just not possible to do so automatically at boot, which would seem to be what legacy users would want most. There's also an opportunity here. If people with large Windows deployments are faced with having to retrain their users, they may think about training them on Macs or Ubuntu or something else instead. The most likely scenario though, is likely the one that we saw with the release of Windows Vista, and that is that Windows 8's predecessor will be around for a lot longer than Microsoft planned.
"Bypass" Metro (Score:4, Informative)
You can "bypass" Metro -- http://www.sepier.com/bypassing-metro-on-windows-8-rtm/
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Informative)
It takes one click to get to the desktop.
Have you actually used it, or just spouting off what you read on the internets?
Re:Business Workstations (Score:3, Informative)
No company in their right mind is going to adopt Windows 8 for their business workstations if Microsoft forces the Metro interface on everyone. It simply is not productive. Visual Studio Touch Edition? Microsoft Word and Excel from a tablet? Right.
The good thing, then, is that Metro interface is not forced on anyone. About the only thing that is actually forced is the Metro home screen as a replacement for Start menu, and even that can be overridden by third party offerings like ViStart or Start8. Certainly, there's no "VS Touch Edition", nor such a thing for Office.
This, in fact, is where this review is incredibly confusing. It states certain things which are only partially correct, and outside of the context, plain wrong. For example:
The old start menu is now full-screened, with large icons for all apps, and apps run in full-screen by default
Only Metro apps run in full screen by default. Desktop apps (i.e. any existing Windows app) do not.
It may look prettier, but it still fires up a Start Menu like before, still lets one dock things into the taskbar, and still lets the desktop get cluttered up with icons.
Start menu aside, you can still dock things into the taskbar, and clutter desktop with icons. Again, this all applies to desktop apps - Metro ones live in their own world. But all existing apps are desktop...
It's this difference that's key here. For companies that have Windows deployments with hundreds or thousands of seats, changing the way a Windows UI works is not an option. Regardless of how easy to use the Windows 8 UI may be, it's still not the same as what users have been trained to use since 1995. Sure, Windows 7 isn't Windows 95, but changes have been introduced gradually over time, making new features easier to adjust to. The Windows 8 UI is a fast, jarring change, that is likely to frustrate users as they adjust.
As noted above, the only real change that's forced on you is the new home screen instead of start menu; the rest of it works exactly as it did before, so any training/experience that applied to Win7 mostly applies here as well.
That's why it's rather surprising to see them take a hard stance on the Windows 8 UI. Sure, undoubtedly some third party will create a drop-in shell replacement eventually. That's been done in past versions and will likely be done again for Windows 8.
There's no need for a drop-in shell, because the shell (desktop, taskbar etc) is all still there. There may be a need for drop-in Start menu clone for some people. That's already available.
Overall, it basically ignores the desktop UI part of it, and conflates Metro to the Win8 UI, which is obviously wrong. All these arguments are valid insofar as they apply to Metro - yes, I do foresee that not being eagerly adopted by enterprises for all these reasons. However, you can perfectly well use Win8 and ignore Metro altogether.
Re:Microsoft Breaks Windows (Score:5, Informative)
That is not true. Every version of Mac OS X for 10 years now was faster on the same hardware than its predecessor. Windows 8 is not even the first Windows to do that — Windows 7 shrank to match the tiny, underpowered machines that Windows ships on today now that the Mac has the whole high-end.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:2, Informative)
> Thank God for downgrade rights. :-)
Well, if you buy high-volume licenses, that might work.
In my personal case, I bought a Windows Office planning to downgrade to 2003 (prior to the "excellent" ribbon), only to find I couldn't as a home user.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Informative)
There are places, including one where I used to work, where any variation on day-to-day work involved a contract item saying they needed "training" on how to do their job. The union portion of the workforce has provisions to prevent major change in job description to make sure there is adequate opportunity to transfer knowledge. A side effect of this was that a critical application launching shortcut had to be placed on users' desktops to launch. If it wasn't there after an upgrade, because it was only located in the start menu, then they would not launch the application and were "unable to do their work" until they received training.
Now, I don't want to argue the merits of that specific example, but I bring it up because your point is spot on. The Windows 8 UI is a change to the workflow, and what does this change bring in gains? I don't believe there's any gain to be made here for the end users. Because it changes the behavior of the system in general, this *does* greatly increase the implementation cost for that particular former employer, and for others reliant on a workforce with similar protections. The licensing is no issue because it is just part of the EA. The issue is the cost associated with getting the applications up to spec, and for having to retrain the entire workforce who will have to use those applications.
And how does it make anyone's job any faster or better to have a tile instead of a start menu?
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:4, Informative)
And thusly, the every-other-release-of-Windows-doesn't-suck pattern will continue. Windows 8 will be the new Vista, and Windows 9 will be the release undoing all the annoying shit Vista/8 introduced to save Microsoft's market share (again).
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Informative)
See, the thing is, (and I wait for the downmod for daring to mention Apple)...
Apple already has this. OSX and iOS are so fundamentally similar in the end that realistically, to port apps between the platforms is a completely trivial affair where really you only have to account for the different resolutions (and potentially change your UI somewhat to handle the smaller form factors).
But yet somehow they've managed to do this with and still have a UI designed for the computer/keyboard/mouse (OSX) and for mobile/touch (iOS).
If you've used these devices, you'd also know that the cloud storage integration is entirely seamless accross platforms too. As you suggest for MS, it IS very smooth and useful.
I've used W8 too...I agree with many comments above that it IS very fast & stable. But I find Metro is ugly as fuck (and for the record, I've tried WP7 and I find the same metro-ish interface to be ugly as fuck). Personally, as much as I like the concept of a unified UI, in practice it just seems to clog up the shit.
For the record, Windows 8 will NOT be deployed in my office. I'm under 50 seats, so I know MS doesn't really give a fuck about my piddly little account here, but this isn't the only company that will hold on to W7 - and that's not even counting the companies that still stay on XP.