Microsoft Co-founder Dings Windows 8 As 'Puzzling, Confusing' 343
CWmike writes "Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has called Windows 8 'puzzling' and 'confusing initially,' but assured users that they would eventually learn to like the new OS. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, left the company in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. In a post to his personal blog on Tuesday, Allen said he has been running Windows 8 Release Preview — the public sneak peak Microsoft shipped May 31 — on both a traditional desktop as well as on a Samsung 700T tablet, designed for Windows 7. 'I did encounter some puzzling aspects of Windows 8,' Allen wrote, and said the dual, and dueling user interfaces (UIs), were confusing. 'The bimodal user experience can introduce confusion, especially when two versions of the same application — such as Internet Explorer — can be opened and run simultaneously,' Allen said."
Re:You'll learn to like it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost.
They'll hold your hard work hostage in the guise of proprietary application and data formats instead.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like he said (Score:2, Insightful)
Or they will keep bashing it and refuse to have anything to do with it... Kind of like Vista. If it's anything like Vista, Windows 9 will be a much more refined OS based on Windows 8 and everybody will like it.
It's improductive (Score:3, Insightful)
For me it's quite simple Windows 8 interface doesn't make me more productive.
Looking at my physical desktop, I don't have fancy clocks, tons of post-its, shinny gadgets... No, just a couple of books, some papers. I don't want distractions. I want to be focused on my work.
I'll leave Windows, I'll return to GNU/Linux now that it's more matured, tons of great applications an a solid OS.
Or else?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it pretty sad that even Allen is finding problems with it. I can't say I understand the necessity of making a workstation OS easy-to-use on a phone. They should have been focusing on making it work better on, you know, workstations. For example, I have 3960x1600 pixels of resolution on my current workstation, and windows is a complete dog in terms of window management. How exactly does Windows 8 address this? It doesn't, but gee, it works great on a cellphone/tablet, which maybe I'd care about if I actually ran Visual Studio on a fucking cell phone. As it stands, this UI is an inconsistent piece of garbage, whose sole purpose seems to be to force me to waste my time learning how to use their mobile UI, in the hopes that maybe I'll be more likely to buy one of their tablets.
Google could upend this whole forced upgrade BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, the great majority of people don't have a choice. Corporations need Windows, and when MS says "jump", they fucking JUMP. But they're tired of it.
Google, with a beefed-up ChromeOS, could truly disrupt the status quo - include WINE so that it can run a select few Win32 apps - notably MS Office -, make it manageable remotely, and a lot of desktops will migrate to ChromeOS.
Not easy, but Google is the only who can pull it off. And should - since Win 8 is a walled garden environment, about to shut the others out.
Considering that there are standard data formats (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like he said (Score:1, Insightful)
I love the ribbon and use it in all my (commercial and oss) applications. Never had a single complaint about it.
Re:It's improductive (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, you're saying it's "snappier"? Well shit, that's all my objections taken care of. Because we all know "snappierness" is the only objective metric that matters.
Re:Welcome to Windows 8 (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the developers of Linux desktop environments are working hard to change that. :-)
Re:Or else?? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ok that they go on this track for consumers of things; but for god sake, make something for the rest of us that are producers of things.
The sad thing is that they actually have done that, but then layered the stupid mobile crap on top, hiding the productivity-enhancing goodness underneath!
For example, PowerShell 3.0 is a pretty big step forward. I've been using the CTP and now the RTM build on Windows 7, and I love it.
The guts of Windows Server 2012 are better than the previous versions, but it's all hidden behind the new Server Manager that has been re-authored to have the "formerly known as Metro style, but not a really a Metro app, because Metro can't actually be used to... do things." The result is a hideous application that doesn't look like anything else in the operating system, and has a terrible control layout that's both confusing and slow. For example, after you open a "menu", you see about three items. About two seconds later, more items appear in the menu. That's just about the worst GUI design failure I've seen since I've had the misfortune of having to use X11 applications, where some buttons perform their command when the mouse button is depressed, and some perform the command when the mouse button is released.
The core: better than ever, better even than UNIX/Linux in many areas, including the command-line!
The skin: worse than ever, worse even than the inconsistency than UNIX/Linux is sometimes bashed for, but all within one operating system that I assume follows some sort of "design guidelines".
Can /. also post some possitive Win8 articles? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean there are some people that actually like it and have written so but you wouldn't know it coming here. That is unless we're only interested in hearing bad news.....oh right....
Re:AJAX apps (Score:4, Insightful)
And enter the new hell where you need to support 12 different browsers across 25 versions. Nothing says love like having to support Safari (Mac users), Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer (6-9?), and so on users these days.
I'll take the fights with the local libraries over this nonsense. Three platforms? Only a few versions to each? I can live with that. It's when you write your app in HTML5, and someone's browser doesn't support it, that you hear it.
Re:Can /. also post some possitive Win8 articles? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense. /. is about what IT people tend to think. If anything, it's refreshing to read what has been so painfully hidden on every other news / discussion site. It's almost like someone threatened them with an immediate removal of ad dollars if they didn't taught the cheeriest of interviews, while their chief technical contributors are fighting for a chance to use the defibrillator machine in the back after they thought about how badly Windows 8 is going to crash their stock portfolios. Put bluntly, the GUI for Windows 8 is designed for 'tards! People who get confused if their computer is doing more than one thing at a time, the kind of people who see overlapping windows and look under their desk for the ones underneath ("They've got to be under here somewhere"). And despite the amazing success of the MS Marketing team to threaten or otherwise shutdown any amount of opposition to the new heir to the MS throne, most of IT and its major pundits are desperately trying to figure out whether Windows 8 is some sort of April Fools joke that Ballmer is playing on the rest of us. If we had to make a choice today between Windows 8 and Vista, we'd choose Vista! You hear that? It's the sound of the tech industry pundits having to choose between being on MS's naughty list for the next 3 years, or losing any credibility they have.
Re:It's improductive (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't that suggest that the new Start screen is a failure then? The fact you have to pin more apps than normal sounds very much like a workaround for deficiencies which didn't exist in Windows 7. Heck, I have about half of my Superbar in Windows 7 full pinned apps already - the rest I launch from the "recently launched" area of the Start menu (and the remainder via search of course). Does the Windows 8 Start screen have a recently launched area at least?
Re:Can /. also post some possitive Win8 articles? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this site is about what people with an anti-Microsoft bias tend to think. To be honest I don't know why I'm complaining; I might as well ask Fox News to write about something good Obama's done.
As for the rest of your post; I read it, but yet couldn't find any actual information. Yes, I think that about best describes it.
Re:Or else?? (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's just it: It *is* required. You can't turn it off.
Re:Like he said (Score:5, Insightful)
Never had a single complaint about it.
Quickly: I need to check the routing headers of an e-mail I've rececived in Outlook.
Without looking or checking, explain where I'd find that option on the Ribbon.
Remember, the Ribbon is semantic. So I'd want to VIEW the HEADERS.
Proceed.
Paul who? (Score:0, Insightful)
Honestly who really cares about what Paul Allen thinks? He hasn't been relevant in 30 years.
Re:You'll learn to like it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Like they did with Vista? Oh wait, nobody bought it so they had to go back to the drawing board and give the people what they wanted with Windows 7.
Back to the drawing board? Hardly... Windows 7 is as close an OS to Vista as XP was to W2K. Some minor UI tweaks, less offensive UAC, and most importantly the fact that by the time Windows 7 rolled out there were actually working drivers for most hardware due to Vista development.
If anything, people thinking that Windows 7 was some kind of major remake of the OS means that Microsoft marketing really did their job in providing damage control. It could have been deployed as a Vista Service Pack, but likely would not have been able to get the buy-in from consumers that somehow Windows 7 did. So Microsoft Marketing gave people what they "wanted", which was simply the perception that they were not getting Vista.
Re:Like he said (Score:4, Insightful)
Read into that what you will. For some of us, it's a tear-your-hair-out, dumbed-down experience. For someone else it's nirvana because they are clickers, not typers and reading that many words hurts their brain. As someone who's been using office software since it was created -- think GEM desktop and others -- and who has used many many systems, this change is unwelcome and feels wrong. It's slow to use and takes up too much room.
If you want to have the same skills as everyone else, go clickie at the pictures. And now it's much harder for you to use any other system because your "hamburger" button isn't there.