Who’d send his mom to the mall right when it opened so she could spend $50 of his hard-earned money on Pac-Man for the Atari 2600?
Yes, it’s been 31 years. No, I’m not over it yet. Bastards.
Why in the flying fucktastic would anyone WANT a unified OS across their desktop, tablet, phone, console, watch, microwave, iron and pocket screwdriver?
Let’s not pretend that a unified look and feel of OS across desktop and mobile computers is a brand new, surprising idea. Windows CE/Mobile tried to look a bit like Windows 98/XP, iOS tried to look a bit like OSX. Only quite recently have both Windows and IOS dropped the pretence that you’re running a windowed application on your smartphone.
I don’t even remember the specifics. I was helping my girlfriend at the time set up her new Laptop and just even knowing where to find the simplest of things was a chore. The minute you have to fight an operating system, it has failed.
The idea is that you are gradually introduced to the new way of handling things, so you’ll be ready when that’s the way you have to handle things. That’s why the desktop is still there. You are forced to use the Start Screen because, otherwise, you might never try out the new stuff. As the Start Menu was the least popular part of the OS (as confirmed by actual metrics of people not really using it), they thought they could get rid of it without a big reaction. They were wrong.
I’m not saying Microsoft did a good job with it, either. They should have integrated the desktop and tablet modes better, and used more of the desktop paradigm on their tablets. But the basic idea of leveraging the skills you’ve learned on one device to use on another is sound. That’s why everyone else is doing it.
Pretty much the only real problem with Windows 8 is that they seemed to be going in two directions at once. They were trying to unify the OS, while also redesigning the interface from the ground up. You can’t do both at the same time.
It brings up the Metro interface? Why did they bring it back, then?
Why can’t it just have a start button(and menu) that you turn on or off depending on what you want?
From the metro screen, just type a few letters of whatever you’re looking for… I swear it’s the opposite of complicated.
I use a little program called IObit Start Menu 8 that forces Windows 8.1 to boot to the desktop rather than the metro screen and gives me an actual start menu. Makes the OS very tolerable.
Windows 8 is really, really bad, and it keeps getting worse. When I first got it for my new build, at least I could get up and running without logging in to Microsoft first. They updated the damn thing and now it wants to go out to a website every time it starts up and have me log in with id and a password. Really Microsoft, when I am working or playing with my computer and where is none of your damn business. If I want to take my laptop and go to the hinterlands and play games and write, I don’t want to have to have a connection and your damn permission to use my own tools. Thus, I will never buy another laptop that requires Microsoft. How do you like them apples?
and a Dvorak keyboard is less complicated than a Qwerty layout.
But nobody switches from the standard way of doing things…because switching costs time and money, and offers zero improvement.
Over the past 20 years, a billion people have learned standard ways to do stuff. In offices all around the planet, people type documents, produce spreadsheets, draw engineering plans, and use thousands of software programs which work with a mouse and standardized menus. You develop mental habits, and you develop muscle memory in your hand to click on those menus effieciently and automtically…without wasting time re-learning from ground zero to do the same things that you already know how to do.
No idea - it seems like a feeble attempt to appease the people who were complaining about the absence of the Start Menu, but the Win8.1 Start button does exactly the same thing that the bottom left hot corner always did in Win8.
The new power menu in Win8.1 contains some new stuff (including a shutdown submenu), but the start button does nothing new besides being visible.
Windows 8 (or whatever flavor my wife has on her new Lenovo laptop) isn’t that bad- they have the “charms” interface or whatever, but I can hit ESC and get back to a more normal desktop. And with a little hunting, I can find everything else that I need.
What drove me crazier than anything at first was the colossally stupid decision to include those touch-screen gesture commands on the damn touch-pad. So if I’m trying to get the mouse to go from the right side of the screen to the left, dumb-ass Windows 8 thinks I’m doing the right-side gesture and keeps bringing up the right-side bar and time. Uh no, I’m just moving the damn mouse like people do with a touchpad.
Once I disabled all that crap, it’s a lot more functional and useful.
Excellent example. Look at the start screen. It has no edit box, no cursor, no search button visible in its default state. If you’re using it in tablet mode, it doesn’t even bring up the keyboard. What would indicate to–say, my mother–that you could TYPE to it? There are a few dozen conventional metaphors in UI design for “type here” – the Metro screen has exactly zero of them.
Then it’s better by that alone. Making things invisible was a dumb idea.
The UI design principle of making things appear only when moused over is not a brand new idea that came along with Windows 8, so you mustn’t feel obliged to hate it.
Auto-hiding the taskbar - for example - I think that came along with Windows 98. Can’t remember when tooltips were introduced, or the thing where infrequently-used items in the Start Menu were automatically hidden.
Yeah, but you have to actually turn it on – in other words, to say “I know what I’m doing here, and I prefer the taskbar to be invisible.” By default, the taskbar is always there.
Giving people the choice is the best of both worlds.
…Except when you start giving people too many choices and your preferences become an infinite maze of incomprehensible options. But that’s a different debate. 
Exactly. Teaching people to type when they do not know what window (and what part of that window) has focus is not something I consider desirable.
MS doesn’t have to listen to customers because 90% of them just use whatever came pre-installed on their craptop they bought at the Walmart. So long as they can get to Facebook and youtube they don’t care about anything else.
And a good chunk of the rest will just wipe the thing for Linux because they’re just too cool for school, leaving a small batch of people really pissed off but with no leverage to get MS to let them do things their way instead of the way MS wants you doing them.
I agree, but the thing about the hot corners originally being invisible in Win8 is the lamest complaint ever. I don’t think it’s possible to be a new user of Windows 8 and not be aware of the corner actions, unless you’re the sort of person that has trouble remembering which way up to sit in a chair.
After my experience relayed above, my second experience with Windows 8 was at work. We had a virtual machine loaded with Windows 2012 (the Server version of Windows 8). I logged in to install some programs on it and found no matter what I did I couldn’t access any features. The corners did nothing, typing did nothing. I had nothing but an empty desktop that would accept no clicks or commands or anything. After almost an hour of frustration I gave it back to our Network Admin telling him it was unusable. When he looked into it, apparently (from what I was told) he was able to install the OS with every single feature locked down and disabled. Yes, he made a mistake and it was his fault but just allowing someone to install something useless like that is, again, bad design.
I am sure you will say, “Well he was stupid blah blah blah” and maybe that is even true (it isn’t) but the point is an OS isn’t supposed to be a game you have to solve; It’s supposed to be a tool you barely even notice.