Pretty sure they are referring to 4 windows 8 apps being displayed on the screen simultaneously. As windows 8 works right now, apps can only be displayed 2 at a time (one in a column on the left or right hand side of the screen, and the other in the rest of the display). Not sure the utility you would get from having for apps split in columns down the screen but that’s what it means, I think.
The desktop of course will be running as many damn things as you want.
Dude, don’t worry. Didn’t you hear? It’s just not finished yet.
Okay, thanks. I guess I can’t picture what is meant by apps in this context. I’m not on board with my computer screen looking like my phone screen. Yet.
OK, you’re just wrong then. I don’t give a shit about Calc - can’t even remember the last time I used it. We’re talking about the generalities of launching familiar or often-used applications - and whether or not the workflow of doing this is better/worse/similar in whatever OS.
Again, please describe the three clicks you previously claimed upthread, when you said:
I count four clicks in XP, Vista and Win7; Start>Programs(/All Programs)>Accessories>Calculator.
Win7 takes 2 clicks for me:
Start>Calculator
But counting clicks isn’t really the point. The keyboard interface worked great in the 80’s and if you want to do it great, but there is a reason the GUI and mouse were created and many consider it an improvement.
I personally hate using the keyboard for navigation and generally don’t do it.
Does that stay put permanently even if only used infrequently? In any case, dropzone is apparently talking about XP - it’s definitely not pinned by default there.
(Of course, it can be pinned to the start menu in XP, making it two clicks, and it can be pinned to the start screen in Win8, making it one click)
I don’t believe it is either, and I don’t think I started that particular argument.
Things are changing - it’s not quite common for people to have an enormous amount of software and data on their computers - and the more you have, the more awkward it becomes to organise it.
Some people like to file it all away into multiple, deeply-nested hierarchical folder structures, but OS developers seem to be tending not to indulge this habit - but instead, seem to be encouraging people to trust the OS about where to put things - and providing effective indexing and search tools - instead of remembering where you put something, you just have a quick and easy way of searching for it. Apple has been doing it like this for a while.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison. For example, I despise the idea of spending time filing emails - I just leave them to fall off the bottom of the screen and search for them by keyword, sender or date if I need to refer back.
Some of my colleagues think this is insane, and prefer to put everything away into themed, nested folders so they’ll know where to look if they ever want something.
To them, I’m disorganised and undisciplined. To me, they’re wasting time dicking around with things that in all probability they will never look at again anyway.
So Win8 suits me really well - more so than previous versions that suited other people better than me. I guess it’s just my turn to be comfortable.
Well, no, the first time it’s Start, All Programs, Accessories, and click and drag to the Taskbar. Four steps. But for all subsequent uses it’s one click. ETA: And I wasn’t counting clicks, I was originally counting keystrokes. See my next post.
Then maybe they should stick with their toy-like tablets and toy OS. 
Just off the top of my head:
Of those, only two would work in column format because I don’t read or use Chinese. And yeah, with all that stuff two large, widescreen monitors is almost a requirement, and three would be sweet. And with my present job, only one of those, #9, is allowed, though more would enable my colleagues and I to work more effectively.
And developers, especially Apple’s developers, always know what users want and need more than the users themselves. I’m no “power user,” but I still prefer to not be led around and spoonfed like I’m retarded.
At least we agree on something: Your co-workers are OCD idiots. (I’m one, too, but I’m better medicated.)
Don’t get me singing Kumbaya!
I wish I could find it, but some 25 years ago I read a study that measured the “Oh yeah, that’s what I was doing” recovery time in between inputting CAD commands on a slow computer. The longer it took the command to be accomplished the even longer it took the user to remember where he was at, what he was doing, and what he had planned to do next. I believe this can be extrapolated to be true with most things, and seconds shaved off the optimal time it takes to do something can be many more seconds shaved of the actual time to do it. Like with using that stupid, little Windows calculator that hasn’t changed in decades: A click to open it and a few clicks to make a simple calculation (that you could probably do faster in your head, but that, too, would distract you from the task at hand) is less distracting than straightening up in your seat and putting your hands in position to type C-A-L-C, or searching your real desktop for which pile of paper is hiding your real calculator (they won’t let us have paper, pens, or calculators, too–this job is hellish). When you have to account for your time, improving efficiency is important.
In windows 8, the things called apps are the things that run in full-screen, can be purchased/downloaded from the windows 8 store, and are run from the start screen. For example I have a windows 8 Bank of America app that I run by clicking it on my start screen, and it opens up into a full screen display where I can do my banking. Of course I can also do my banking by opening the desktop and going to chrome and going to www.bankofamerica.com and logging and all that, but the app looks cleaner and is much faster to open and it’s full screen which is nice.
Desktop applications run in the desktop, show up in your task bar at the bottom, etc. They are very different things.
OK, but you can do exactly that in Win8 too - so the conclusion we’ve actually reached is that things you have configured to be the way you like them are better than things you haven’t.
I have not expressed any great love for Metro apps in this thread or elsewhere. Personally, I’ve not much time for them - I think they’re only really useful for the ‘soft’ stuff like browsing photo libraries, casual games and maybe quick update stuff like news tiles.
I’d actually prefer a live ‘mail’ tile that when clicked, takes me to hotmail in the default browser.
The Metro start screen though, as a way of finding things that are not just Metro apps, works very well for me.
I don’t really disagree with anything in this post.
The basic problem is MS shifting the UI to something that meets their needs but isn’t necessarily an improvement for the desktop user and in some cases is clearly a step backward.
You seem to be arguing (by defending win8 and invalidating the experiences of users unhappy with some of the changes) that the change in UI was actually targeted towards improving the desktop user experience and efficiency when that wasn’t MS’ goal in the first place and obviously they didn’t meet that non-goal.
On a side note: I’ve always hated the Start menu and/or the lack of user defined menuing in Windows. I have to create something on my own to produce a nice simple hierarchical view of those objects I use 95% of the time.
Hmm, how can I argue with a truism? I’ll get back to you on that.
If people don’t like it, they don’t like it - that’s a perfectly valid perception and I won’t try to convince them that they do like it, however, I probably will continue to try to draw the distinction between difficult and different.
Not everything that people are complaining about in Win8 is difficult - in some cases, it’s just new or different - I hated Win8 when I first encountered it, then I learned a few new habits and grew to really like it. That experience of transition isn’t going to be the same for everyone - for a variety of different reasons including where they’re starting from and the way they were interacting with previous versions of Windows.
I feel that I work more efficiently on Win8 than I did on XP or Win7 - but I don’t think Win8 is primarily an efficiency improvement as much as it is just an attempt to provide a consistent experience across PC, tablet and phone offerings from MS - Windows Mobile used to trail in the wake of the desktop OS, now the roles have been somewhat reversed. I don’t see any way to resist that tide - so I’m swimming with it instead.
As a side note, I also just switched from Android to Windows Phone 8, and I find I like that too.
I’d like to defend in part my earlier comment that Win8 requires use of touchpad/mouse/touchscreen much more than Win7.
I have noticed among my peers that even the most savvy tend to use the mouse quite a bit. I’m not one of those people. If a task can’t be easily performed using keyboard-only, without learning new WIN+x combinations or the menu key, IMHO it’s useless.
Obviously this method differs from the way many people use their computers for work or, perhaps, for some “power pleasure” pursuits, like gaming or playing solitaire or whatever hobbies one has.
To put things in perspective, consider how much a PITA it is to switch to a new text editor – one that is keyboard-only. Yes, I’m thinking emacs and vi – switching between the two isn’t all that bad, but muscle memory counts for quite a bit.
And that’s why some people very much prefer one interface to a text-editor to another.
And if there is incentive to switch “brands,” by all means, anyone remotely sentient can do so at the drop of a hat.
But in the case of operating systems, the distributor, source-code owner, and hardware manufacturers create the incentive.
Whence the seeds of malcontentment.
1 - Keyboard access where mouse access existed previously IS more difficult for some people in some situations. For you, this Start button example may be in the category of just “different”, but clearly others disagree with your analysis based on their own perceptions and experiences. For me, if I had to use the keyboard (I’m on Win7) to access things I can access today with the mouse I would find it more difficult.
2 - Different is more difficult due to time taken to learn something new. Unless that new method is more productive or efficient in the long run, it can reasonably be considered a negative.
Exactly. It is a change that meets MS’ needs, not desktop users.
Acknowledged - like I said, I guess it’s my turn to be comfortable. I’m sorry it’s not working out for everyone, but I guess that will always happen when things change.
True, but change always costs a little pain - it remains to be seen what this one is like in the long run.
Ultimately, Microsoft is in the business of meeting its own needs, but I don’t believe they’ve completely ignored their users - at worst (and I’m still not really convinced of it) this could be a bit of an awkward, but necessary step brought about by the hinge moment between PCs and tablets, screens and touchscreens.
You may find yourself using it more that way - as it happens, the opposite it true for me. Previously, I was mousing my way through three columns of Start menu programs - now, I’m hitting the Windows key and typing a few letters to find what I want.
This is just a question. No snark is intended because, in the long run, I probably don’t use the Calc app any more than the rest of you, but just use it as an example we can all understand:
If you are using Win8 on a tablet or phone you probably don’t have a keyboard. How do you access the calculator without typing?
I’m not using it on touch so I might be slightly wrong with the touch gestures, but it’s something like -
Start charm to get the start screen (swipe from right of screen the press Start) > swipe from the bottom of the screen > All Apps button > swipe across to Windows Accessories section > Calculator.
If you then want to pin it to the taskbar or start screen, you’ll have to bring up the menu for it, which I think is done by swiping down across the app, then pressing the appropriate button at the bottom of the screen.
Without a keyboard or equivalent, you will have to spend longer looking through lists of programs, but I think that’s an inevitable consequence of touch devices.
I looked up the touch commands in the Microsoft guide downloaded here. It’s actually fairly useful, if you’re struggling to find things - should have been included with the OS though.
You’d activate the search charm, which takes you to an unfiltered list of all applications, then scroll across to find it.
Edited to add: (This is very similar to, and approximately as easy/difficult as the way you find infrequently-used apps on both iOS and Android)
This isn’t a very fast way of launching it though - if there are a lot of applications installed, it may be a bit of a hunt for the calculator, as the applications are grouped thematically, however, for anything you want to be able to find quickly, you’d just pin it to Start, then it’s easy.
If you’ve got a truly mountainous load of software installed, then keyboard entry via the search charm is probably quicker - this isn’t a problem on a tablet, as an onscreen keyboard pops up when you enter the search field, and the search results on screen filter interactively as you type - so as soon as you press C, Calculator appears amongst the very first few results.
On a Windows Phone, to launch an application that isn’t pinned to Start, you swipe left for a list of all applications, then scroll down - if you have a lot of applications installed, the OS inserts alphabetic group headings and when you touch one of the headings, a grid of letters appears so you can jump directly to any section of the list.