CowboyNeal Weighs In On the Windows 8 "Metro" GUI 671
from the we-fear-change dept.
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.
Microsoft Breaks Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
At last.
The Windows 7 perpetuity machine is fully fueled, and ready to roll.
Death rattle (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, "new" is not necessarily "good," and in this case I think the jury is definitely out on whether Metro is good.
All in all, this feels like a death rattle to me.
Don't like it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Window 8 game plan - tablets first? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it's simple (Score:1, Insightful)
Who the hell "trains users" on Windows and Office? If they can't adapt, they're in the next round of layoffs.
Put Dad's tools back where you found them! (Score:5, Insightful)
We all learned this as kids.
Out right hiding dad's tools was unthinkable.
With Microsoft hiding the tools and forcing them to stay hidden... what are they thinking?!
When they forced the removal of "classic" view in Windows 2K8 it was insane.
I say it is insane because of the financial loss incurred by world business in lost man hours and down time just looking for the "new" way to do things you have been doing for more than a decade.
In man hours it is a simple salami attack taking small slices here and there from every user and admin.
In down time it gets scary. You have a site that is losing 100K per minute because it is down. The old way takes 2-3 min to fix the issue. once your tools are hidden you are on a 30 minute google session to find out how to do what you have been doing forever. 3 million dollars out the window for a single admin on a single outage. I had a site that cost that when it went down.
World wide, I would not be at all shocked if this causes more than a trillion dollars in hidden and obvious losses. I'm sure the R2 removal of classic did.
It maybe that in the future we just have to change the windows UI from explorer to Powershell so our tools stop getting hidden every new version of Windows.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
No one does a full screen "launch apps" except OSes that cannot handle multi-tasking.
Re:Put Dad's tools back where you found them! (Score:5, Insightful)
I still can't find half the shit I want for simple things quickly on word and excel....
Re:The every other version problem (Score:2, Insightful)
I almost think they do it on purpose as some sort of "bait, switch, fix and be praised" method in all honesty.
It has certainly worked out for them in the past and everyone seems to suck it all up.
I still hate Windows 7, it is obtuse in every sense of the word, requires more clicks to do anything that was simple in the previous versions, a terrible security model that is basically "click happy" (at the least, unless you disable the entire thing!)
I really don't think I need to get in to what else is wrong with it, and how it is entirely built to appease stupid and ignorant people and has no care in the world for any person familiar with computers or worse, businesses, THEIR MAIN INCOME.
Windows 8 seems to be even more awful for businesses.
Guess Windows XP will live for another 3-5 years in the business world.
Maybe come Windows 9, this loop will come to completion only for it to begin again with Windows 10 announcement and betas.
I don't even pity them anymore. I actually do hope a good portion of the company loses money because of it. I don't even care for their jobs. They are awful, awful people.
The worst of it was when someone related to Ribbon development used research in to UI interaction from people that showed Ribbon was pretty much not even used in favor of context menus, menus and then toolbars to show "how awesome" Ribbon was... talk about terrible defense. Even Apple claiming a rectangle with round corners was patented is less terrible.
The only use Ribbon has is for some 8 year old to write and print out a card for his grandparent. Any serious use and it is laughable.
Re:it's simple (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, uh, no. There are a lot of people with very valuable skills that don't include "computers." Reality doesn't work like this in most places.
Re:The every other version problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm beginning to think that Microsoft isn't allowing the new GUI to be disabled in order to purposely have a bad Windows version.
Then, Windows 9 will come out in a year or two and suddenly have the option of booting to the old Start menu, thus perpetuating the "every other version of Windows is good" trend.
And they'll have tv commercial with peoples stating "It was my idea" and they'll call it a new improved feature.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but will Windows 7 run on some future Intel i11 machine with the latest 4320p graphics card? It might be missing the required drivers.
BTW ballmer strikes me as the kind of hardline manager who refuses to listen to criticism. Even in the face of negative Vista and WinPhone and Windows8 reviews, he just keeps pressing forward like a bull in a china shop: "Once they see what's in it, I think they will like it. But first we have to release it so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy."
I don't see the big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, nobody is going to move to Macs or Linux on an enterprise desktop. They will stick with Windows. Windows 7 will not sunset on support for quite some time, and in the interim people will wait and see what Microsoft is going to do; either Windows 9 will be a better benefit to them, or they will figure out how to make Windows 8 work for them.
The one thing people know about Apple is that they do NOT support enterprises in any meaningful way. Look at XServe, which was pulled from its product line, and OSX Server which is basically an equivalent of Windows Home Server. And Linux? Comon... the arguments for retraining users apply for Linux and Mac TOO. The amount of investments made around the Windows platform are for many companies, quite large, and nobody's going to throw them away because despite the new interface, its enterprise pinnings are still pretty good on the client desktop.
I'm in the "wait and see" crowd. I don't particularly think the new interface is appealing, especially as a keyboard/mouse user, but given how little I use my start menu as it is, maybe it's not such a bad change... I really don't know. I do know that when we got preview copies running on PCs, all the Mac users came running by and told the IT teams how much they liked it. Go figure, eh?
Technology changes. And for many non-IT users of computers, Windows 8 is going to be great, simple, and straightforward to use. Viruses won't happen as easily because of the App Store, IE can't have any plugins/addons in its metro form, so all in all, it will be a boon to those folks. The IT folks who resist change will be the same people crying about the MS Office ribbon, or whatever else they got stuck on and didn't want to adapt. You're IT people -- you're supposed to adapt and change. Granted this change may not be the best, but you use it as a tool rather than a religion and you may find it better. Or not. In either case I don't think Metro is going anywhere, and the Surface tablet, if it does as well as people think it might, will just reinforce the fact MS made the right decision.
I on the other hand, will just wait and see.
No. "Idiotic" is your reasoning. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is clear that, soon, new PCs and laptops will come preinstalled with Windows 8. 95% or more of users will have no idea how to "stay with Windows 7". Some may be lucky to have friends who can do that for them. Or even luckier to have real friends who install some reasonable Linux on their old machines so they don't have to spend big money on new hardware right now.
As long as Microsoft "rules" the desktop market the way they do, with a quasi monopoly, ordinary users are more or less at their mercy. Bickering about the average user not being able or willing to accept change doesn't help anyone, except perhaps, MS and their droids.
Apps are poorly implemented. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I also found really annoying about apps is you can't easily close them. Esc does nothing, there is no "X" in the corners, nothing intuitive how to do it. I thought by time they hit the Release preview there would be some changes to this. The only way I found you can close them is my hiding/minimizing them, then bringing them up in app list in the top left corner thing-a-ma-jig, then right-click to bring up a "close" dialog.
App configuration is also a chore, the only way I found to bring up an apps options is to mouse over the "hot" top right corner of screen. Too bad this "corner" is about 1 pixel x 1 pixel. I'm not a GUI or usability designer, but the current app implementation is a chore to use. Perhaps there will be come big changes in the release, but as it stands right now there is no chance I would pay for an "App", let alone use a free one given the current design choices.
Re:Window 8 game plan - tablets first? (Score:5, Insightful)
when i start using a game controller to do work on a big screen tv!! i can switch to metro
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
It should take 0 clicks. That's the problem.
Re:I don't see the big deal... (Score:3, Insightful)
The next generation of monitors, laptops, etc... will all have touchscreens. So to say it's "worse" is premature, and my guess is that the majority of people who hate the new UI haven't even used it for a prolonged amount of time. I used it for a bit, and while things are awkward, they certainly haven't slowed me down any in getting anything done. But that's because I'm very familiar with Windows 7, and not at all with Windows 8.
When "companies pull that crap" there are not just one set of outcomes from IT. First IT decides whether they want it, then they decide HOW to integrate it, HOW to support it, and HOW to train for it. If you're at the bottom end of this trying to create workarounds I'd say that the management in your organization probably sucks. I don't have that issue though, I'm also the one who is in management of it :)
If you want people to use the system a different way -- keep them on a different system. Windows 7 isn't going anywhere, and that's the whole point. Windows 8 is there if you want to migrate to it, and I don't think any enterprises are going to rush to do it. However that said, I think you'll find as consumer adoption picks up (and it will), enterprises will give it a harder look to see if it's worth integrating. MS isn't coming at this from only one angle, they have IT tools and enterprise tools that go along with Windows 8 and a mobile solution for enterprises as well. It's a multi-pronged strategy that despite the new interface/training, might actually save a company money and time. If that's true hell if I know... we aren't even going to look at it before a year or so.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:2, Insightful)
Here is the Typical Slashdot Response...
Oh god! it is windows.
It is W I N D O W S ! ! !
FTFY
Re:Microsoft Breaks Windows (Score:2, Insightful)
There, FIFY. You should either look around and see how silly your worldview has become, or stop making such broad statements.
Re:DISCLAIMER: I WORK FOR MS ON THE "METRO" SCREEN (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is what you at M$ don't get. You don't "improve search" by introducing a big, new, confusing UI paradigm, you "improve search" by improving search! Similarly, I think those "speed improvements" in 8 vs. 7 could have been done without shoving "Metro" down everyone's throats.
Count me among the people who are going to squeeze every last bit of life out of Win7 we can, just as we squeezed more life out of XP until 7 came out and we could forget Vista ever existed.
Re:Death rattle (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not that Microsoft feels the pressure to be innovative because of Apple. For the first time in 20 years, the best-selling low-end PC (iPad 3) does not run Windows. Further, for the first time ever, the cheapest Internet terminal (iPad 2) does not run Windows. People bought a lot of Windows solely because it was cheapest. It's not the cheapest anymore.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:2, Insightful)
As always, we support the provisions that give us stuff, but dont support the provisions that pay for it.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine Windows 7 where the start menu opened at login and took up the whole screen. That's it.
And that sounds terrible.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that "modern" apps are all going to be fullscreen and tablet optimized (ie, only interacts on click, no cursor hover effects) is asinine.
Re:I don't see the big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
The next generation of monitors, laptops, etc... will all have touchscreens.
Ha-ha. You think people are going to sit at their desk all day holding their arms out to press big icons on a screen two feet in front of them.
I already have a laptop with a touch screen. I can tell you right now that it fscking sucks as a user interface.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
To add to this.
What MS is trying to do is, they get all the "average" users out there use to the new Win8 interface which so happens to mirror their new mobile OS interface. Once people know an interface they will stick with it as long as they can. So in return they are hoping people will buy their mobile OS based phones. Looking at it from my parents point of view who HATE change on a computer and learning something new. They would buy a phone with a UI they are already familiar with over something else to learn such as Android or iOS.
I agree with most people here. I won't even consider using Win8 as long as it doesn't offer a way to use the standard desktop with a start button/task bar.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes one click to get to the desktop.
Have you actually used it, or just spouting off what you read on the internets?
Have you actually used it? Because when you click that button to get to desktop, you get to see your wallpaper. Woop-de-doo. You don't actually get to use said desktop in any way. There's no start menu. To launch apps, the metro UI will pop up again. If it's a metro app, it'll worked like metro apps do. If it's a desktop app, it'll pop up in the desktop, which really is just an additional problem: not only do I have to deal with the retarded metro apps, but the experience isn't consistent. These apps don't play nice with each other and don't share the same space.
Why is any app that I launch in my desktop computer trying to be the only app I work with. That rarely applies to me. Hell, even when I'm playing a movie, I usually have it to the side while working on something else.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually correct, at least in my case. Only it would be "Different is Bad. GOD DAMN THAT FUCKING MICROSOFT! Damn it, I'm trying Linux!"
Which is what got me to Linux ten years ago. Change for the sake of change is stupid. Change to improve somthing is good. From DOS to Windows? That was a good change. Changing the placement of "options" in every version of IE from 1 to 4? Just fucking retarded.
When my shop migrated to Excel from Quattro ten or fifteen years ago, I took a class in Excel. It was on my desk for a week when they upgraded to a newer version of Excel, and the money my employer paid for my training and the time I spent attending was completely wasted. The newer version of Excel was more like Quattro than it was the older version. Microsoft has been bad about this ever since Windows, they weren't guilty of this with DOS.
If I have to learn a new thing to be able to do a new thing, that is a good thing. But having to relearn how to do somenthing I've done a thousand times before is just idiotic.
When... (Score:4, Insightful)
More and more browsers, programs and O/Ses are hiding or completely eliminating the controls to customize their user interfaces.
THIS ISN'T PROGRESS!
If designers, instead, created highly customizable user interfaces with MORE options instead of less, they would inevitably have satisfied users.
Who the hell had the idea that giving all users a simplified, static, unchangeable interface was the right way to go? Was it Apple or did it start earlier?
Re:I don't see the big deal... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, what I'm saying is that these devices will become more commonplace and Windows 8 will seem more useful and easy.
Why? Who's going to want a touchscreen on a laptop or desktop system?
Sure, it's good if you're flinging burgers in McDonalds' and need to press some big on-screen icon to track who wants what, but do you really think that people posting cat pictures to Facebook want to have to prod the screen with a fat finger, repeatedly missing the link they wanted to select, and use an on-screen keyboard to type when they already have a perfectly good keyboard right in front of them? Or having to take their hand off the mouse and keyboard to press the screen when they want to start a new program?
I honestly can't imagine why you would think that anyone wants this. Touchscreens are a crappy interface we use when there's not enough space for a real one. Desktops and laptops already have keyboards and pointing devices which are vastly superior to a touchscreen.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
"they're trying to unify the interfaces so that the tablet experience mirrors the desktop experience"
You have it back to front. They're modifying the desktop to expose PC users to their tablet/phone product UI. Not because it's a good UI for PC. Not because any user ever asked for the same UI on such different devices. Certainly not because anyone wants this shitty UI.
This is leveraging a monopoly to support a failed product. They cant sell phones so they need to train users on the phone interface so the sheep will all choose Win8 on tablet and phone.
They also need to ditch the traditional desktop because it's too open, so open MS cant tax users on every app sale like Apple and to a lesser extent Google can.
This is monopoly abuse as a form of marketing and it has no benefit for users. It remains to be seen if it benefits MS profits or if the backlash sinks Win8 as well as their phone business.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right of course users will ultimately choose. I think the thing with evernote (haven't used it) or Skype(have) which are on multiple platforms is that just because you work on multiplatforms doesn't mean your interaction style needs to be the same. While start menu search is what I use to find things quickly usually, sometimes if I can't remember what a think is called I'll click through the startmenu to see what's there. With Metro it is a big pain because the tiles are big and clunky requiring more motion on average to see everything. Not to mention privacy issues data in the "find an app" area means that your data is visible to anyone in the room whenever you use your computer, even stuff you aren't currently using.
Realistically for the next few years at least Windows phone isn't going to be the most familiar UI for people coming from a phone anyways so why mimic it on a desktop? They might drive market share of each other up but the common design is more of a "make devlopers happy" decision I my opinion. Maybe users will like it. I can definitely see it pulling in the types of people that like Mac for their closed eco system, this is even a better model for them I think because they are much more likely to get a matching app for both phone and desktop than on Mac because the underlying framework is the same (and the Windows store will kind of make it a no brainer to just publish the app to both the desktop and the Win Phone stores I think).
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, if you're going to to go though the pain of re-training to get people using a new interface, why not look at alternatives?
Not just in operating systems but all types of apps, I've often wondered why the change to the seeminly quite hated ribbon didn't push organisations into Office alternatives for example. Personally I hope it makes people look else where and hopfully it will loosen Microsoft's vice like grip on the commerical desktop market. Lets just hope the alternatives are ready...
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The every other version problem (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that people do not like change - they do not like change for the sake of change, and they don't want their workflow to be a pain in the ass. To this day I STILL get people complaining about the Office ribbon, because it obfuscates features in office and requires more (not fewer) clicks to do what they want. For others at that same client site, employees deal with it by using LibreOffice or OpenOffice instead.
Re:I still hate the ribbon (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, the ribbon is easily the worst UI element that Microsoft has introduced yet. Well, was, until Metro came around. (and yes, I've been using Win 8 quite a lot).
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:5, Insightful)
The tiles are dynamic dashboards, feeding real time data.
What? You mean like on my computer where I have things called "windows" that act like dynamic dashboards? Tell me, can I change the sizes of these tiles? Can I put tiles in front of other tiles? Can I minimise tiles to get them out of the way?
Now I haven't yet used the Metro interface, but it seems to me that this idea of tiles would work great on a display with limited real estate but on a PC the tiles seem redundant. Put it this way: why do you need tiles with dynamic content? Because you can't see the windows. Why can't you see the windows? Because the fucking tiles are in the way.
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:1, Insightful)
Can you explain why it's important to you that (A) you have to wait to open the start menu and (B) that it takes up only a portion of the screen?
Re:Downgrade rights (Score:4, Insightful)