The Metro UI is great. The tiles are smart, the apps are beautiful, the solution to multitasking is promising, but this whole new approach cannot coexist with a Windows desktop. I almost fell out of my seat when the demonstrator nonchalantly switched back to the Windows 7-style desktop, complete with start menu, taskbar, and maximized MS Office.
This the old curse of Windows backward-compatibility in a new form – not in system-level cruft this time, but in incompatible UIs from completely different worlds. You can't put a new tablet UI and a traditional desktop UI next to each other on the same device and expect users to use them together.
It's as if Microsoft is attempting its own "Back to the Mac," only they never actually left. Apple got it right, starting fresh with a new form factor and adapting appropriate elements of it to the desktop. Microsoft is also starting fresh with a new form factor, but then trying to shoehorn the whole thing onto the desktop.
Of course, this is just a preview. I'm sure things will change a lot between now and the next preview, let alone the final release. But this isn't starting off on the right foot.
I don't know if I'd say he switched back. It looked more like the win7 UI was contained in it's own tile, and only came about because he ran a non-win8 app (Excel). Pretty smart way to maintain backwards compatibility.
One thing that did jump out at me was that it seemed to be best suited for a tablet and NOT a desktop computer. Hopefully MS keeps building on it and the new desktop doesn't turn out to be Bob 2.0 :)
Absolutely right. There are some really really crufty bits of Windows in there, and they don't ever fix them, or at least do little things to update the interface to current standards.
The first thing I try with any new Windows release is to add a font using their interface (not just dragging it into the fonts folder). The "Add font" dialog box is STILL circa Windows NT/3.1 era.
This annoys me too, for example, Windows 7 has this flashy 'aero' GUI on the top, but as soon as you descend below that, for example when setting environment variables or adjusting TCP/IP settings, you're back into Win3.1 prehistory and those cramped windows aren't even sizable so you have to scroll a square inch of visible space around with both horizontal and vertical scrollbars on a friggin 30" screen to find that specific network adapter.
There's no 'Install New Font' in the File menu in Win 7 64-bit, and you have to press Alt before you can even find the menu there! Are you sure those instructions are still valid?
I wonder if they've thought about a Kinect interface so Air Gestures can be used for those who intend to have an upright screen mostly for keyboard-heavy work.
It might be good for extremely passive users for whom a computer is just a fancy TV. Tap the screen, sit back and watch stuff.
This is one of those features that seems really cool in a demo, but in practice...well, even decades later my shoulder hurts just thinking about the hour I spent using a "light pen" interface on a vertical "touch" screen.
I think one of use misunderstood him. I assume he meant that using a touch screen that's in front of you (vertically) is unfeasible (nothing to do with x/y-axises).
Actually I was under the impression that Excel was the Emacs(I'm an emacs users :) ) of the non power users. They spend their entire life in there. If Microsoft would just embed IE into Excel(I know someone will point out how this is already happening ;0p) then they would never have to switch app.
My dad spends minimum 4-5 hours of his day in Excel. He's an accountant and uses it to organize all types of info on clients.
On the other hand I almost never use excel. About the only time (and I use google docs anyway) is for managing bills.
Agreed. It's a good effort, but there seem to be many UI problems. e.g. when he launches Excel 2010 under Windows 7, focus has to be in the Excel context otherwise touches on the right side will bring up the task switcher instead of scrolling. And what's with the virtual "Control" key being in the default keyboard? That should only be exposed to Emacs/shell users etc.
I also agree. There are so many fundamental issues with Windows that do not seem to be being addressed such as
- the entire desktop metaphor (tired, outdated, can be improved upon)
- the entire hierarchical filesystem metaphor likewise
- application installation
- the registry
- WinSxs - seriously, take a look at how much space this directory "wastes" (increasingly important with virtualisation and SSDs)
- the start menu - it's not useable, honestly
- ribbon UI (don't even get me started)
- the whole look and feel of Windows (more akin to Fisher Price than polished glass and aluminium)
- the quality of bundled applications - notepad and paint - seriously? in 2011?
- I could go on and on and on. If it weren't for the quality of the .NET stack and the jobs market for .NET I would be on Linux/OSX in a flash
IMO, Windows merely reflects the beuraucratic uninspired organisation that creates it. This will never change, so really, I shouldn't get so upset, but I have to work with this goddam OS, so it grates a little.
Many of your comments are accurate, but it doesn't mean they are not being worked on.
I would be surprised if we don't see new/better bundled applications (particularly for photo/music management, as their other platforms do this better), a different application install paradigm (more akin to OS X or iOS installs), the ribbon was not shown...
What they're showing here is intent. That's all. They've shown their intent to do something different. That might well mean they have intent to start changing things under the hood, which was not spoken about at all in that video. It's too early to judge anything but the intent.
I think that this is definitely a step in the right direction - I just wonder how far they will take this. I think it was very obvious that what we saw was a far from polished demo and hopefully they will bridge the gap between the Metro UX and the classic Windows UX.
And in defence of the bundled apps, 7 does come with both Wordpad and Notepad. So much better than what OS X bundles.
Seriously? I mean, don't get me wrong: I love OS X and it does pretty much everything better than Windows, and its other bundled apps beat Windows hands down (Mail.app for example), but I really can't say that TextEdit can beat Wordpad
On the off chance you were NOT being snarky, yes. PowerShell is actually pretty great. A lot of bash-e-ness (I can 'ls' for example), and it's a really powerful programming enviornment.
I guess the easiest one-liner to describe it is: In bash, you can build tiny apps and pipe textual output from one to another.
Where did you expect them to start from? Build the kernel from scratch?
That actually wouldn't be a bad idea. As someone pointed out, I also feel that filesystem hierarchy, window frames and the desktop metaphor is now outdated and overly stretched. Imho, they would be better come out with a whole new OS with no backwards compatibility, while keeping developing windows for the time necessary (10-15 years) to allow most of its users and software a 'transition' to the new system.
That's not how their market works. They need to keep enterprise (which requires backwards compatibility) and consumer unified if they want to throw their weight around the way they need to (particularly with hardware vendors). This may not be the right strategy, but it is theirs and I see that as much more entrenched than even the most legacy features windows.
I do like the Metro UI, and I find it awesome in a lot of ways, but it mostly seems forced and not that effective if you are using keyboard/mouse.
As a developer I doubt I would use the Metro UI a lot, so it would mostly be a shiny thing to randomly switch to.
It also worries me a bit that so many OS:es are moving away from keyboard-based navigation. One can always hope for good keyboard shortcuts, Win 7 has some good quite hidden keyboard shortcuts after all.
Also, how does it scale to my 3-display development machine? Multi-monitor may not be the standard, but it is quite common with monitor-prices going down. Mac OS X is quite random when it comes to scaling to multi-monitor.
I guess we'll eventually figure these things out, but a lot of uncertainties so far.
I agree with you 100%. It seems as though the UI team came up with this concept, which is a cool prototype, but naively misses a lot of the functionality that the standard interface has evolved over time. As such, it either needs to be better integrated (e.g. just an active desktop + widgets all over again with some flashier task switching) or purely for mobile devices (say a special edition you can install). As it stands it's an ugly hybrid of both UIs that just screams "we don't know how to make this work well for regular daily operations (e.g. file management)".
To me it looks like a more versatile and updated windows media center. When using a PC I found it much easier to access my media files without media center, I wonder if this will follow suit as a flashy tool that goes unused.
With apple you have to buy/carry/maintain two physical devices (ipad, notebook) and here you potentially can choose/switch within the same device. Way smarter and more environment friendly too.
The Metro UI is great. The tiles are smart, the apps are beautiful, the solution to multitasking is promising, but this whole new approach cannot coexist with a Windows desktop. I almost fell out of my seat when the demonstrator nonchalantly switched back to the Windows 7-style desktop, complete with start menu, taskbar, and maximized MS Office.
This the old curse of Windows backward-compatibility in a new form – not in system-level cruft this time, but in incompatible UIs from completely different worlds. You can't put a new tablet UI and a traditional desktop UI next to each other on the same device and expect users to use them together.
It's as if Microsoft is attempting its own "Back to the Mac," only they never actually left. Apple got it right, starting fresh with a new form factor and adapting appropriate elements of it to the desktop. Microsoft is also starting fresh with a new form factor, but then trying to shoehorn the whole thing onto the desktop.
Of course, this is just a preview. I'm sure things will change a lot between now and the next preview, let alone the final release. But this isn't starting off on the right foot.