Windows 10: Charms Bar Removed, No Start Screen For Desktops 378
jones_supa writes Late last week, Microsoft pushed out a new build (9926) of Windows 10 to those of you who are running the Technical Preview. The latest version comes with many new features, some easily accessible, others bubbling under, but two big changes are now certain: the Charms bar is dead, and Start Screen for large devices is no more. Replacing the Charms bar is the Action Center, which has many of the same shortcuts as the Charms bar, but also has a plethora of other information too. Notifications are now bundled into the Action Center and the shortcuts to individual settings are still easily accessible from this window. The Start Screen is no longer present for desktop users, the options for opening it are gone. Continuum is the future, and it has taken over what the Start Screen initiated with Windows 8.
Screenshots (Score:5, Insightful)
Screenshots of more than just the settings would have been nice.
Three-month-old Continuum screenshot (Score:5, Informative)
Google Images search for windows 10 continuum brings up images such as this one [softpedia-static.com] from this page [softpedia.com]. It looks like a small chunk of a Windows 8 Start screen and part of a Windows 7 Start menu put together. I'm assuming that the appearance of the new Continuum start menu didn't change when Microsoft removed the option to use full-screen Start screen.
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Different but not horrible. Kinda like when they changed the classic 9x/2000 start menu with XP.
10 is looking decent enough to give a shot.
Re:Three-month-old Continuum screenshot (Score:5, Interesting)
10 is looking decent enough to give a shot.
It's good enough that I won't howl if my employer requires me to start using it. However, there is not a single thing in Windows 10 that I find compelling enough to make me upgrade unless I'm required to. There are some minor performance improvements, but nothing that makes the upgrade a "must-have". All of the new features are things that I will never use and don't care about. And I am very, very nervous about the tighter integration with the cloud.
Re:Three-month-old Continuum screenshot (Score:5, Insightful)
I second the nervousness about the cloud, and would like to add my own trepidation about the closer tying of licenses to individual machines and subscription payments.
Seems like since World of Warcraft, every software developer wants me to pay a goddamned subscription fee for SOMETHING. Then when that doesn't work, they want me to go to their store and buy every little update and app for some extra fee.
How about you just sell me your software upfront....I install it....and I use it? Is that too much to ask?
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Great, now all they still have to do is replace that right portion with something useful and we might get a GUI again that's usable.
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Actually Continuum is a feature that switches between windowed desktop and fullscreen mobile modes when you dock or undock your device.
See this demo video [youtube.com].
Looks UGLY (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 8 and these screenshots look really ugly. Why the switch to every shape being super sharp and using a 4 bit color palette? Looks like something I could draw up in paint in a few minutes. At least Apple's designs are aesthetically pleasing. This just hurts your eyes.
Re: Looks UGLY (Score:3)
I would say Windows 8 looks like something designed in a communist country but even the North Koreans know enough to rip off MacOS!
Bring back Aereo! Since I'm not a gamer my GPU is suffering from severe boredom.
I hope WindowBlinds is ported to 10 quickly. That and a start menu replacement is the only way I can stand windows 8!
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So you want the GPU to start tuning television channels over the web?
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Indeed. I mean you can find them in google, but you'd think an article on the subject would at least include a screenshot of what it was actually talking about.
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Re:Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
It's not much to look at, sadly, as the new build brings the start menu more in-lines with Windows 8. Also sadly, along with this change they require you to use Cortana in lieu of the normal start menu search. They replaced the regular WPF start menu with a XAML (metro app) start menu that depends on a bunch of metro stuff to work, and removing Cortana breaks it. There's a hidden registry setting to go back to the one found in previous builds, but I suspect Microsoft will remove it like they did the start menu from Windows 8.
Meanwhile I've found that you can presently "de-metro"ify this build with these three powershell commands:
Set-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced -Name "EnableXamlStartMenu" -Value 0 -Type DWord
Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online
Get-AppxPackage | Remove-AppxPackage
logoff # logs you off so you can log back in to see the effect
(The first two lines are actually one line; should be 4 lines total)
After you do that, it very much resembles the Windows 7 start menu. But again, I am doubtful that Microsoft will leave all of this intact for the final release, much as they did with Windows 8. One can only hope, or perhaps fill it in as a big petition in the feedback app (the code above removes that app, so keep that in mind.)
http://i.imgur.com/880f17Q.png [imgur.com]
Re: Screenshots (Score:3)
I hate that now we're left with a bunch of icons that don't match each other, as if they used two or zero user interface guidelines to build this thing.
It's like we have two platforms that were smashed together with a sledgehammer, and they're not able to fully separate them. They should talk to the scientists that unboiled the eggâ¦
They either need to redesign all the icons or revert back to the Windows 7 ones. I could live with Windows with those registry changes, I would hope for Microsoft that
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That's what the quick launch bars are/were for, if you make it small enough it's just another menu. I dunno if it's in Windows 8 because I got so frustrated with the start screen's jarring appearance that I just put shortcuts to everything I run on the desktop, removed the start button and trained myself to never hit the windows key unless I'm using it in a key combination. Even though I eventually installed classic shell, my workflow had been destroyed enough by that nonsense that I haven't bothered to s
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Damn right, I could be productive, why the heck would I want that in an OS that I have to use at work?
Terrible names (Score:5, Insightful)
Names used to be fairly intuitive, and even when they weren't completely intuitive their names were derived from their technical function. I'm thinking "context menu", "start menu", "task list", "quick-launch menu", and "system tray".
Now they're just marketing doublespeak.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Funny)
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Where were we talking about open-source projects?
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It was a joke, son. Please try to keep up.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Funny)
Please Incontinent-Wombat and Diarrhea Tapir are fine names for projects.
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Why don't you just admit the woosh and move on?
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Somehow the use of the code-
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I absolutely loathe the use of code names. Their just cutesy nonsense that makes it a bigger pain in the ass to figure out exactly what is being discussed.
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Particularly when they're all the same thing, with no sense of order. At least Android goes up a letter each time, so you know "KitKat" comes before "Lollipop."
But OS X and the cats? Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, fucking Ocelot whatever. All that shit means is I have to go lookup the fucking 10.x number so I know if it'll run on my wife's computer.
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That's just it, products aren't supposed to be released with code names, that's the whole damn point. For decades code names were used just to give the people working on a project something to call it, because coming up with a real product name takes time (market research, trademark search, considering how it sounds in other languages, etc.) Ridiculous names were chosen on purpose so that they wouldn't be mistaken for actual product names. I guess some marketing genius didn't get the memo.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Funny)
Shitty names and FOSS go hand-in-hand.
If you can think of another name for the Secure Human Interface Teletype then why don't submit it to the shitty developers? Or make your own shitty fork if you don't want to work with the shitty team. All of the code is right there in the shitty repository.
New name: 'Windows Auschwitz 9-11 happy' bar (Score:5, Funny)
So true. When I saw the blurb about the 'charms bar' I immediately imagined an exclusive hipster cereal bar in San Francisco that exclusively served lucky charms cereal with organic unpasteurized milk. The flatware was reclaimed 1890s mining camp tin spoons, and the maitre'd was dressed like lucky the leprechaun.
I suppose we have that dumb fuck Balmer to thank for this....
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And you know this place must exist somewhere. If not San Francisco then in Portland.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't care what they call it. But I just want the ability to drill down to find my feature.
The Windows 8 Interface, and Office 2007+ Ribbons with its tiles, kills the drill down idea, and gives you a big set of data cluttered in your face.
I am all for a spot for shortcuts and links, where you can put the most used features right at your beck and call. But being the case I use 20% of the features 80% of the time, means I much rather have most of the stuff shoved away from my site, until I need them, and I can use common sense to find out where they are.
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I don't care what they call it. But I just want the ability to drill down to find my feature.
Yes. I always liked to go through every menu to look at what is there. Drilling is a fine way to do this without actually performing the function. It also tends to allow me to figure out where things are when something new comes up, and I need to find something, because... hey, I know where that menu function is!
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As I say every so often, I'm just so glad I don't have to deal with any of this. I need to actually get something done on my computer, and Linux has served me well for 20 years. To each his own.
Re:Terrible names (Score:4, Insightful)
But what the ribbon does in practice, at least for me, is to guarantee that I'll spend far too long trying to figure out where in the hell an option actually is.
God, I hate the ribbon.
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Office isn't worth that amount of effort. What I do now is just to avoid using Office whenever possible. Its UI is abominable, with the ribbon being the worst, but not only, offender.
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Well the Charms bar is apparently dead so it no longer matters that its name is terrible.
Apple already came out with "Continuity". So Microsoft's "Continuum" sounds pretty similar. You might just have to knuckle down and live with a new term for seamless transitions between phone+tablet and laptop+desktop devices. Of all the terms they could have chosen, "Continu*" don't seem too bad.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Insightful)
But here's the thing. I'm sure there are a handful of people who don't have anything complex to do on their laptop but like having a keyboard when posting their instafacetwitter drivel but still like to have a portable tablet with a touch screen. However, the whole reason Windows 8 has been such an utter and complete failure is that the business world has people doing real work on real desktops and laptops that need real windows. We're not a bunch of hipster douchebags who have nothing better to do than to break out in bad choreographed dancing at staff meetings. We have work to do. We don't care about transitioning from desktop to anything because there's no reason for us to do it. We don't want a tablet UI infecting our desktop/laptop operating system. We want to get our work done. This absurd attempt to make one operating system fit for both business desktops and consumer electronics devices is a fool's errand. Call it whatever you want, it's a stupid idea. Desktops and work laptops need a desktop OS/UI. Phones and tablets need a mobile OS/UI. Trying to make one OS/UI for the whole market will just ensure that you will fail utterly at both. Microsoft needs to rectify their cranial-rectal inversion and break the two halves into separate products.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Insightful)
Charms bar? Continuum? Names used to be fairly intuitive, and even when they weren't completely intuitive their names were derived from their technical function. I'm thinking "context menu", "start menu", "task list", "quick-launch menu", and "system tray". Now they're just marketing doublespeak.
Hey Microsoft!
Pick a UI and stick to it! I'm getting very tired of having to relearn the entire UI whenever you make a new release.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Informative)
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Slowly, they're closing in the gap from Linux naming conventions :)
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Charms bar? Continuum?
It's the new "Dude, Where's My Car?" Operating system design methodology. You'll have to guys pop up in leather jumpsuits asking if you have your Continuum Transfunctioner? They had thought about using "Chinese Food" as a menu but it would be nested too deeply with infinite "and then" sub-menus.
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Charms bar? Continuum?
It's the new "Dude, Where's My Car?" Operating system design methodology. You'll have to guys pop up in leather jumpsuits asking if you have your Continuum Transfunctioner? They had thought about using "Chinese Food" as a menu but it would be nested too deeply with infinite "and then" sub-menus.
Silly goose! The continuum Transfunctionator is alway, always, right beside the wobbulator snubber. Anywhere else, and you'll get a data frap that will cause your facebook to splooge.
Makes a hell of a mess on the touchscreen.
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So I won't get the "Big Ass Panties" effect then? I'm disappointed.
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Try the labeling of quarks [particleadventure.org].
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Terrible names (Score:2)
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Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Funny)
I thought the first season of Continuum was pretty good. But the second season was just tedious. Got tired of them constantly resolving storylines with "but then we just changed history again with time travel."
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Am I the only one who thout replacing the "charms bar" with the "action center" sounded like a mid-'70s toy company trying to sell a "girl's toy" to boys?
How about selling an OS to adults?
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So does that mean every Windows 10 system will include a cat that's either possibly alive or dead? I'm not sure I want a cat in my Desktop system getting fur all over the insides. I wouldn't want a dead cat either because it'd start stinking up the place.
Re:Terrible names (Score:5, Funny)
Almost. But it's the OS that's alive or dead, you just won't know 'til you try to save your work.
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No, I think it has more to do with Heisenberg.
In other words, you can know that the function to perform some task exists*, or you can know where to find the control that should make it work** -- but knowing either one will cause the other to fail.
Really, Quantum is the reason I hate "modern" UI -- the spatial UI makes sense with human psychology; this contextual stuff means that we change the function of the software just by observing it, and that means we can never memorize it all and just move on.
* while
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The first thing that comes to my mind is "charm bracelet," telling me that Windows is now the preferred OS of 10 year old girls. It's still missing the Hello Kitty Explorer, maybe that'll show up in a later preview.
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That, and the Irish serial killer from one of the Austin Powers movies...
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Microsoft would be onto a winner if... (Score:5, Insightful)
... they took the Win 7 desktop + the win 8 kernel and called it windows 10. Job done. The days when anyone cared about all these GUI toys like the charms bar/continuum/whatever on a PC is long gone - people have got all that crap on their smartphones now.
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You know, aside from the "Metro" or "Modern" interface, I don't have a problem with Windows 8. It seems like they've addressed that, so I'm not sure what else you're hoping for.
Actually, I do have one other annoyance: their seeming insistence that you have some kind of an Windows web account (outlook.com or whatever) in order to run the OS I understand that they're actually doing something kind of neat with that, but it's pretty annoying that they won't let you skip it during the Windows setup.
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I sincerely hope that isn't true, and that they're not going to take the step to force you to sign up for some of their crap.
I should think they'd break some antitrust laws by requiring shit like that.
And I bet they won't allow you to return it if you say "piss off, no I don't want one".
Looks like I better buy my next Windows machine soon, because Windows 10 sounds more and more like a
Re:Microsoft would be onto a winner if... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I do have one other annoyance: their seeming insistence that you have some kind of an Windows web account (outlook.com or whatever) in order to run the OS I understand that they're actually doing something kind of neat with that, but it's pretty annoying that they won't let you skip it during the Windows setup.
You need _an_ email account - nothing more. It doesn't have to be windows or live.com or outlook,.com at all - I use a throwaway on one of the domains I own.
If you want to have things shared across multiple devices (I am finding now that I do - and I suspect it will become more of a requirement not less) you need a common identity, and without a corporate domain, windows is simply doing what most websites and services do and using an email address.
Also, you can stop it requiring email account, even in 10 (tech preview) - simply disconnect the network during installation, it will allow local account - if you think about it there isn't much else it _can_ do...
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Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure that you don't just need an email account, but a Microsoft Live account (or whatever they're calling it now). That Microsoft account doesn't need to include an outlook.com email account, and it can be bound to an email address that's not on a Microsoft domain, but you need to open an actual account for Microsoft services.
And if that's right, that's what annoys me. I wouldn't mind if they set the default to use a Microsoft account. I wouldn't mind if it warned you s
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You don't need a Windows account to install it, but you have to be firm with it. It asks two or three times and if you keep saying No, it will eventually give up and keep installing.
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It's a sneaky option, because it isn't what is labeled. You click the button that says "Create an Account", and then on the next screen there is a button to "Sign in without a Microsoft account" (don't fill in any of the information above the button). Screenshots here: https://superuser.com/question... [superuser.com]
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You can skip it, it's just clear at first glance how to do so. This feature convinced me that the primary goal for Windows 8 was to push their store, they want a piece of the pie that Apple was getting with their store (which no one on the mac would ever have dreamed of using at the time). Consider that even after installing without getting their Microsoft account, that some apps still want to use it. Ie, Mail refuses to work without also giving your Microsoft account in addition to your real mail accoun
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Re:Microsoft would be onto a winner if... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody would mind a better OS, but when the GUI has reached the pinnacle of usefulness, why try to force a change?
To entertain everyone with the ever popular car analogies, a car has a steering wheel, two or three pedals and a dashboard with a more or less common way to display what you want. The designs changed over time, but that's fairly constant. Why? Because it's been tried and proven as useful and intuitive, and people all over the globe know how to deal with this. It works. It works great. You don't see car manufacturers try to come up with, I don't know, a HOTAS setup for cars (well, maybe in some far out "concept" cars to entertain the press, but sure as fuck not in series cars) or try to be "creative" with their user interface. Despite heaps of changes under the hood in the past decades. Quite seriously, cars ain't the same they were 2 decades ago, but the user interface didn't change at all!
And? Do you see people lament and complain how they don't need a new car 'cause it just looks like the old one? Slap on a new paint job and design the exterior differently and they'll go "ohhh shiny!" and buy it.
Same for GUIs. Keep the user experience the same, just round the edges and make it flashy and gadget-y (and PLEASE allow us to disable all the blinkenlights, for those that don't want SHINY but rather go for useful).
Re:Microsoft would be onto a winner if... (Score:4, Informative)
1) The file: open, save, close is really designed around a dual floppy paradigm. It makes no sense at all with SSD hardware.
What would make sense? You still open files. You still save them. And you still need to close them (or have some means of releasing locks on them so that they can be moved/copied/backed up/etc).
2) As the number of system services require notification increase integrated notification handling becomes key
This is, essentially, what an idea "Event Viewer" should be doing.
3) As device types become much more variable (ranging from a watch to a 55+" TV) graphics need to switch more readily
You're mistaking form-factor for something that actually matters.
When you're talking about a 55" TV, you're talking about what? SD Widescreen? HD? SHD? 4K? What? Resolution's the issue, not the device itself.
And the answer isn't necessarily "waste more space so stuff remains clickable on high-res or touchscreens"
4) As input devices became more variable applications needed to take better advantage of them
So Microsoft and application developers should be building in NATIVE SUPPORT for my left-right testicle-twitch control unit?
And my retrofitted Atari Paddle controller should be AWESOME in Excel right?
Face it. Standard desktop is 1-3 monitors, a keyboard, directional controller (mouse or mouse simulant (rollerball, touchpad, or joystick)), speakers and a microphone.
If Microsoft wants to give the OPTION for new interfaces, great!
But forcing everyone (including enterprise partners, where retaining costs MONEY), over to a new UI paradigm when there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the old one, is Just Fucking Stupid.
There are basically NO functionality enhancements added to Windows 8 that required such a drastic UI revamp for desktop users. And there was DEFNITELY no reason behind applying that crap to Server 2012!
I've also used Win8 as a tablet interface. It works fairly nicely. But I STILL don't want it replacing my desktop UI!
Good! RIP Charms Bar (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounded stupid and it was stupid, an artifact of trying to force desktop computers to have the interface of a mobile device. Please stop this insanity. At work everyone has 17" monitors, at home I have a 22" monitor, and none of them are (or will be) touch screens. There's plenty of room for a real UI.
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> At work everyone has 17" monitors
Do you work in 1998?
But how did it happen? (Score:4, Interesting)
What I still don't understand is how management, which is presumably comprised of older, more conservative, more experienced types, fell for the ridiculous idea of replacing the proven desktop metaphor with a tablet interface. (I'm assuming the idea was proposed by young, inexperienced marketers and junior executives.) What in the world was upper management thinking when they signed off on this, and why are they still working at microsoft after it's been proven a disaster?
Re:But how did it happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think panic is the key word.
Microsoft doesn't want to be the next RIM. They've been sitting comfortably on their office/desktop monopoly while google and apple have (not necessarily for better) been driving the future of computing, and are worried they may no longer fit into it. Everything they've done recently screams of desperate flailing to stave off a march down RIM's "we innovated once, that aught to be enough" path of doom.
This comes off less as some young guy saying "tablets guys, tablets are cool, lets do tablets!" as some old guy screaming "everyone is using tablets and we don't do tablets, we need to get on tablets now!".
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Unfortunately, they're using the only schtick they know when it comes to innovation. Build something vaguely similar to what everyone else is doing and then use their monopoly position to leverage everyone into using it. Trouble is, they don't have the lever any more and it doesn't work. So they have no idea how to proceed. This is why their response to the failure of Windows 8 is so confused.
Re:But how did it happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's no "grown-up" alternative. Back in the day you didn't run Windows 95 - ME at the office. You used NT.
If they'd made a vanilla, office-friendly version of Windows 8 called "Windows 8 NT" or whatever else, that kept the same interface as 7, they might convince some corporate IT departments to upgrade. But when you've got a staff of 10,000 plus, and you're looking at rolling out a new OS with a completely different interface, at the minimum you're taking a huge productivity hit while people figure this new thing out, and at worst you're springing for new training.
I can only imagine how many billions of dollars in productivity were lost when they switched to the Ribbon in Office. It's as if millions of voices suddenly cried out "where's the edit menu?" and were suddenly confused...
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How does Microsoft test with USERS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. It seems like Microsoft decides what are the systems that users should be working with and runs from there with no regard to what users are actually working with.
The biggest irony is that they don't seem to understand that the people who will have the biggest problem with what they are throwing out are developers. I can't imagine that Microsoft's own developers are running their own development systems on Windows 8.1 - I wouldn't be surprised if it were a dirty secret within Microsoft that application development takes place on Win7 (and maybe WinXP).
I understand the appeal of having one OS and UI for all devices but a Phone isn't a Tablet which isn't a laptop which isn't a desktop which isn't a server. And if you're a developer, requiring a touch screen hurts your productivity.
myke
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Microsoft development platforms are Unix.
Re:How does Microsoft test with USERS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just PM'ed a buddy of mine in Cloud and Enterprise Engineering @ Redmond, WA. about this. He says he uses Windows 2012 Server as his desktop and VMWare Workstation running Slackware Linux on it. Yeah, seems weird, but he says he is more efficient that way.
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I understand the appeal of having one OS and UI for all devices but a Phone isn't a Tablet which isn't a laptop which isn't a desktop which isn't a server. And if you're a developer, requiring a touch screen hurts your productivity.
myke
The appeal pretty much fails in real life, don't you think? It's more like the feature creep in software. Reviewers can rhapsodize about the 20 new features in say, Windows office, where something no one ever uses is become a big deal in a review.
It just seems like soundbite mentality to talk about one interface to fit them all. And yeah, I can see touchscreen capability in some programs to be seriously useless.
I also wonder if developers are going to be hit by the separate version of Windows 10 for sm
Re:How does Microsoft test with USERS? (Score:4, Informative)
I can't imagine that Microsoft's own developers are running their own development systems on Windows 8.1 - I wouldn't be surprised if it were a dirty secret within Microsoft that application development takes place on Win7 (and maybe WinXP)
I'm a Microsoft developer. I and most of my colleagues develop on Win8.1. I don't know why your imagination is failing you.
My team does much of our work on VMs running recent builds of VS, and those VMs typically run Win8.1 -- presumably because it has a lower memory footprint than Win7.
As an engineer who actually uses win8.1 for my daily work, the only main UI difference with Win7 is the start screen, and that has negligible impact because I launch apps either by clicking on the taskbar or by pressing Win and then typing by keyboard the name of the app. Exactly the same workflow and same number of keystrokes as before.
After a glimmer of sanity.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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More importantly, Microsoft seems hell bent on discarding the years of research IBM put into the Common User Access guide on which Windows was originally based. A lot of the "new" metaphors *were* tried out during that research, and users hated it as much back then as they do now.
Here it is! (Score:5, Funny)
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First of all, that's a cool sig. Second, what does it imply about us Slashdotters, when we mainly think Win 8 and Win 10 UI's are stupid?
BUT - will it auto-calculate folder sizes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:BUT - will it auto-calculate folder sizes? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm using Windows8.1 and it auto-calculates folder sizes.
the best thing about win10... (Score:2)
i've been running win10 on my primary dev desktop for months now and on an i3 laptop, and i can say, without a doubt, the best thing about it is the install.
i have yet to have to install a driver for anything, and everything "just works" right from the jump.
its a pretty amazing technical achievement, considering the size of the wintel environment.
Still don't like it (Score:2)
Charms Bar vs Action Center (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not at all clear to me what "Replacing the Charms bar is the Action center which has many of the same shortcuts as the Charms bar but also has a plethora of other information too." actually means.
If it means you still have to point your mouse to a corner and wait for a hidden window to magically appear, then it doesn't fix the major problem with the Charms bar.
If it means you have a bunch of options and settings that are only accessible from this hidden menu which you have no indication on the screen whether or not it exists, then it doesn't fix the major problem with the Charms bar.
If it means you only get a bunch of random icons with no label for what those icons mean, then it doesn't fix the second problem with the Charms bar.
Having a secondary OS Settings menu to complement the Start menu for programs isn't necessarily a poor design choice, but I am really concerned that they're not going to correct the fact that the theme of Windows 8 was to remove the user interface from the screen and magically expect the user to know what to do.
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If it means you have a bunch of options and settings that are only accessible from this hidden menu which you have no indication on the screen whether or not it exists, then it doesn't fix the major problem with the Charms bar.
Oh! Is that what they are calling the "charms bar"? Dayum, I seriously dislike that thing. I typically want to reboot my machine only when something I'm having trouble killing is making it sluggish. In that scenario, it would seriously take some impressive creativity to come up with an interface for doing that which is worse than how Windows 8 does it. If the little magic window doesn't come up, is it because my system is sluggish, or because I don't have the mouse in the right place? If I do manage to get
Re: Fuck you cocksuckers. (Score:3, Funny)
Thank you, Mr. Ballmer.
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You don't even have Windows 8.1 yet and Windows 10 isn't complete.
You won't know how to operate a Mac, either.
Re: (Score:2)
Going to/from a Mac isn't hard (Score:2)
yeah because learning MAC, an entire new eco system is going to be easier than learning about the incremental (although visually major) update to windows??
The Mac interface is a LOT closer to classic Windows (XP through 7) than Windows 8 is. I've transitioned plenty of people between OSX and Windows XP/Vista/7 in both directions. They're not all that different and transitioning between them isn't hard for most folks. I use both on a daily basis. Windows 8 is a HUGE departure in interface intended to merge touch screen and keyboard/mouse interfaces.
Personally I absolutely loathe Window 8. For me it is the most annoyingly unintuitive OS interface I've used
Re:Great news. Bye Charms bar! (Score:5, Insightful)
Good news: charms bar's been gone since early preview builds, wonderfully refreshing to be able to hit the scrollbar reliably again.
Bad news: the start menu has not got more functional and sensible, it's gone way backwards in the latest build, and it's now the only option. Incremental search for applications is now completely broken, you get one result (if you are lucky) and half a screen of completely irrelevant web search results. In fact after enjoying using the previous builds, I may now revert to 8, it's that bad.
Re:uh huh (Score:4, Funny)
That brown stuff isn't shoe polish.