First Looks At Windows 8.1, Complete With 'Start' Button 800
Ars Technica has taken a look at Microsoft's newly released preview of Windows 8.1. As widely rumored, the point release features a clamored-for concession to Windows users who rankled at the loss of Windows' Start button in the taskbar.
In addition to various tweaks to 8's search capabilities and icon presentation, says the article, "Some of Windows 8's obvious limitations are being lifted. In 8.1, Metro apps can be run on multiple monitors simultaneously. On any single monitor, more than two applications can be run simultaneously. Instead of Windows 8's fixed split, where one application gets 320 pixels and the other application gets the rest, the division between apps will be variable. It'll also be possible to have multiple windows from a single app so that, for example, two browser windows can be opened side-by-side."
Similar reports on these changes at Wired, Engadget, and SlashCloud.
Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
What most of us wanted back was the Start menu, not just the Start button. Microsoft still doesn't get it: We don't want to see or interact with Metro, at all. Ever. It has no place on the desktop.
How to save your company (Score:5, Insightful)
Give users the option to use your terrible Metro interface or have a standard Start menu. What's so hard about that?
No start menu, and lots of monopolistic tie-ins (Score:4, Insightful)
So, Microsoft brings back the start button but forgets the start menu. Looks like something done just to shut up the complaints, instead of listening to their users and delivering what they really wanted. Of course, they can't be seen backtracking and admitting that TIFKAM is as much of a success in the desktop as it is on smartphones...
To that, we have all the extensive integration with bing and skydrive which could/should be considered another abuse of a monopoly position. Personally, both of the services are worthless to me, but if could replace them with Google, and dropbox/copy/google drive, like I can do in android, then it might be useful. In fact, an Android style approach might get Microsoft out of monopoly abuse...
It's always been rather striking.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can never quite shake the dissonance associated with the fact that the OS called 'Windows' has always had fairly shit window management and now seems hellbent on making it worse(Gosh, why wouldn't a UI designed for 10' or smaller touch-tablets be a bad idea on a dual-head desktop? I sure can't think of any reasons...)
Re:How to save your company (Score:4, Insightful)
I am scared to think how terrible a remote server connection sending touchscreen data back and forth would be. I will be having nightmares for the next week. Or I will continue to use Linux servers.
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that this new "Start" menu takes you into the Metro start screen.
Staying out of Metro would be a lot easier if Microsoft gave us back the ACTUAL start menu.
Why bother, Win7 is fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Why bother upgrading?
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it incredible that a self-confessed geek is having an issue with people pointing at Microsoft's HUGE mistake.
Why is it so hard for them to NOT FORCE US into their Metro crap ?
Multiple, resizable Windows - Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like 1991 all over again. Do I have to install Trumpet WinSOCK to connect to my ISP?
Seriously, it feels like Microsoft has forgotten why they called the damn OS 'Windows' in the first place.
At work, we just finally upgraded to Windows 7 a few months ago. Microsoft still has plenty of time to fix more things before IT even considers Win8.
- Necron69
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
What does Windows 8 do for any user without a touchscreen that Windows 7 won't? As a matter of fact, much of what normal users do can also be done on XP. The way people interact with mobile touchscreen devices is fundamentally different than on an ordinary desktop or laptop computer. Apparently, Apple has understood this, but Microsoft has not yet figured it out. A Swiss Army knife might be fine for camping, but has no place in any kitchen especially one of a restaurant.
Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
That's actually a minor point for me. I don't really care if the Start Menu takes up 1/4, 1/2, or the whole screen. What I hated most, they addressed:
1. The way I launch apps and control panels is to hit the Windows key and then start typing the name. Win 8 broke this (except for apps). Now it works again!
2. You had to hunt all over the place to find settings. Some were in the "charms", some in the control panels. Now they have (almost?) everything in the charms.
I did not see whether they address the Metro apps just quitting by themselves when in the background, so I guess I will still just avoid running Metro apps. I would also like to shrink the size of the individual app buttons. Classic Shell is of course still an option. I still don't like all of the magic corners and gestures, but I've mostly learned those. Besides, if Windows was easy they'd be Apple - I'm very accustomed to struggling with MS products at first, it's a great custom that harkens back to the wonderful days of .ini files.
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's beside the point that OSS solutions exist - it's the principal of the matter. What's so hard to understand that people might not like having changes like this forced upon them? Some people may prefer not having to using third party code to restore this functionality, while others may not be able to apply OSS options because they lack the ability to update their standard operating environment (e.g. corporations, government workstations etc).
One of the major points of difference between Microsoft operating systems and others is that in most cases power users have the ability to heavily customize the Windows operating system (and other Microsoft products) without necessarily having to resort to third party code. What's so difficult to understand about that?
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How to save your company (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of this is due to Microsoft's marketing department (they want to force people into Metro so they can get a cut of app sales), but another part is due to the arrogance of modern UI "experts". Received wisdom in the UI design fields is that you should never give users a choice, it just confuses them. Come up with one method that is simple enough for everyone to understand, then force everyone to use it. We will have to beat back these idiots if we ever want to have workable desktops again. Note that they have infected Ubuntu as well.
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I did not see whether they address the Metro apps just quitting by themselves when in the background
I'd be exceptionally surprised if they change this. That was an intentional design goal with a lot of effort in it. It's infuriating as it is bringing over one of the worst aspects of android and ios, piss poor multitasking. The thinking being that 'task management' is scary and if an app developer goes through some hoops, they should be able to restore state if killed. In practice, developers are too lazy to properly handle that use case and a task switch away and back might get you back where you were or it might start the application over without any persisted state depending on the effort of the developer and hard to predict decisions by the platform whether to suspend it or kill it.
The major goal, of course, to automatically guess what the user would want and 'save' them from having to close apps when memory is in short supply. The 'SIGSTOP' in background is annoying enough, but is marginally more defensible in the name of saving power.
Re:Metro should be able to run in a window on the (Score:5, Insightful)
THIS.
Metro should have been put inside of Explorer, as an optional component, not the other way around. Alternatively, detect if there's a mouse or touchscreen present - and if there's a touchscreen, launch Metro, and if there's a mouse, launch Explorer.
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing.
Metro UI sucks just as much as the window system Ubuntu and many other linux distributions have 'glommed' onto. It's all Mac like and I personally don't like it.
I preferred the windows 7 design. Oh and the whole "it's (win8) smaller and faster" is crap! I finally got windows 7 installed on my hp 2000 notebook and that was tough because hp didn't want me to do it, but they finally "allowed my downgrade". Now my notebook is fast and awesome!
I like my windowed layout. I have my applications laid out a certain way when coding and I hate the way Metro UI fights you at every step of the way to do this. They want to force you to have one app visible at a time. They started this on Linux with Gnome3, which is why it sucks so much. I can't stand the layout there either.
The only way I even remotely get what I want (in the linux realm) is to use CentOS. Not even fedora is good anymore.
I don't know who came up with it or why but it sucks.
Re:Not good enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that sounds like a plan, Chucky. I'll just crawl under my desk every time I want to turn my PC off.
Were you Microsoft apologists dropped as children, or just well-paid now?
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that this is obviously not working. At all. And as that strategy unravels, they have to start handling the fallout from throwing their desktop OS under the bus to save the phone one.
Hence, these moves. They want to see how much of a lifeline from desktop to metro they can keep going before people start rejecting their metro on desktop.
Win8.1 reminds me of the Blackberry Storm (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone remember that phone? That's the one where Blackberry (RIM) decided to get in on the touchscreen craze by building a phone that tried to bridge the gap for users who preferred physical keyboards. In response to physical keyboard users who clamored for tactile feedback, they made the whole screen click when you pressed hard enough.
At the time, I thought to myself, "no, you idiots, an entire screen that clicks doesn't provide the same tactile feedback as individually raised keys that click under your fingers. What were you guys thinking when you came up with this partial solution to the wrong problem?"
This time around, I'm thinking to myself (and the Slashdot community), "no, you idiots, adding a start icon to the desktop so that users can get to Metro doesn't address the underlying problem that Metro is not appropriate on non-touchscreen desktop PCs. What were you guys thinking when you came up with this partial solution to the wrong problem?"
Re:Not good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like a true moron -- I'm the freakin' admin, and I spent 15+ years as a developer. If I have it open, it's because I use it constantly.
This is the stuff I use to do my job, and rebooting because someone has no idea of what's going on but thinks a reboot will make the problem go away has always been a stupid idea.
Usually it's some idiot doing tech support who knows far less than I do who is suggesting it. Just because some half-wit at the service desk has that as the first item on his checklist doesn't make it the right choice.
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you sure you want to reboot?
Yes.
There are other people logged in.
I said Yes! That "other person" is my non-admin account!
Please state the reason for the reboot:
Operating System reconfiguration.
Application Foo not responding to close request. Shutdown canceled.
#$^*@!
shutdown
Re:You're all gonna hate me (Score:4, Insightful)
Changing things for the sake of change is not good. I see you are still speaking English? Why don't you start using that "new" Esperanto instead? If you don't, then you are doing things the oooooooolllllld way.
The Windows 95/NT 4 user interface, was - unlike Windows 8's - well researched, very solid, and very usable. Most of its "flaws" came from application developers not using it right (such as cluttered Windows 3.1 style program groups in the Start menu)
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
frankly if you're stuck at "this isn't working as I want it to" then you should hand your geek-badge in because really....this isn't difficult.
Frankly, if you can't grab the concept of "I need to make it work the way I want, and not how MS marketing dep wants it to work", I guess you don't have a geek-badge to hand-off.
I've used EVERY windows version since version 1, and Win8 is the first version ever that I can't stand.
I've now moved to Linux with KDE, where I can actually make it work the way I want. And believe it or not, I can actually have more than one window open at the same time !
So keep using your toy OS and I will keep using mine that actually tries really hard to not be in my way while I work.
Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but at least in the enterprise, downgrade rights will be around for a while, so whether Windows 8 ships with a unit or not, it seems likely to me that most businesses will be pushing out Windows 7 anyways.
Re:More than good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why Windows will never catch up. And why eventually it will fade away as our generation grows old and leaves the workforce.
How can Microsoft innovate if what "most of us" want is the same old thing? It feels a bit like the educators who were fighting computers in the classroom in the 1980s and insisted that students only learn on manual typewriters.
Its not about what your used to it is about what behavior is sane and what is insane. It is about making determinations based on MERIT.
I suspect you'll find covering the entire workspace just to launch an application or find a document just as nonsensical in the stoneage as it is in the spaceage. I don't much care what that interface *looks* like but it has to be sane and not obleterate all onscreen context in the process.
Simply making the classic change adverse argument is an exercise in making non-falsifiable statements. If the next version of windows is an abacus and I replayed your "change adverse" statement would it be any different? What it convey and more or less information? Without merit without discussing actual tradeoffs what information is being conveyed?
assure you that Microsoft spend millions of dollars on various iterations and on studies for usability testing. But that so many people rejected it even though if it can be scientifically proven to be better (through a repeatable study, that's how science works),
The real issue seems to me to be for years there are a lot of people who own computers only to check email and facebook and now they have more options that are a better fit for what they actually do...good for them...but these people while a huge group are not the entire constellation of those using computers. There are people who still need a sane UI environment to get shit done complete with programs encased in movable frames...goddamn I feel like such a dinosaur saying that.
I also disagree that this is about "science"... it was more about leveraging windows to help windows phone to improve market share in other areas. There is no technical reason they couldn't provide knobs to make everyone happy. They chose not to for political reasons as evidenced by shit they took away during early betas of W8.
Metro is about locking down the computing environment (You can't install a metro app yourself...you can only install a metro app from the MS mothership...oh I'm sorry that is such a dated term...I mean the future of all computing..."the cloud"...
Fads come and go ... this isn't an improvement or a reflection of "the future" or a better way... it is a POS forced upon the world for political reasons to make MS more money. A boiling frog on the road to the promised land of vendor locked down computation...our future...where a few control basically everything...like apple does with the iphone and google with everything else...
MS is finally realizing they left way too much value on the table in previous versions of windows and is now hard at work fixing that.
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it so hard for them to NOT FORCE US into their Metro crap ?
I think Microsoft really bet the farm on the Surface. With tablets outselling PCs, they think it's the future. This crap is part of the gamble.
See, they had been advocating the "tablet PC" since the XP days, with no success. Suddenly the iPad was huge, and they think: "We were right all along, people want tablets. We just have to push for ours harder." Well, fine. But their idea is that putting the same interface everywhere will get people to go for whatever system with which they are familiar. Gee, then why was no one interested when they did those awful tablets with XP?
The system itself was the problem, twice: as they just put a full desktop OS on a portable, not a slim one like Palm or Newton, the hardware had to be a full notebook PC with some touch junk tacked on. So it was expensive, heavy, and ran hot. Now, the Surface remains expensive, but it is light and runs cool enough, right? But the other problem was the fact that XP's interface was not adequate for tablets. So this time they are smart enough create this new interface, purportedly good for tablets. Meaning it is no longer adequate for the desktop. And they put it there anyway. Same mistake, only backwards.
And how did that familiarity thing work? Well, they changed everything, so nobody was familiar with Windows 8 anyway!
Apple knew better: different devices need different interfaces.
Re:If you don't like metro... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
You can still get Windows 7 on new PCs.
And yes, you're right that most will have Windows 8. However when someone asks "what's good about Windows 8" the answer should not be "you're forced to use it".