Windows 8 Consumer Preview Feedback Thread

[Dominato3r]

You really think having two chat windows, a music player and a browser isn't something an average teenager would have? That's a super light usage scenario for a desktop.

Besides, even if you *could* make it work and get used to it...why would you want to? What advantage are you getting from this reduced functionality?

Two chat windows? Almost, scratch that, nobody I know uses MSN or an IM service these days, it's just Facebook chat (Inside the browser) or texting.

 

[QueBert]

Two chat windows? Almost, scratch that, nobody I know uses MSN or an IM service these days, it's just Facebook chat (Inside the browser) or texting.

Plenty of people don't use FB, I have 100 people on my Yahoo Messenger list and at any time around half, if not more will be online. Even if I did use FB (never will though) I wouldn't use their chat thing, it doesn't support file transfers right? Or a lot of other features that YM or even AIM have.

 

[neilm]

Is there going to be a non-kids version released?

 

[Dominato3r]

Plenty of people don't use FB, I have 100 people on my Yahoo Messenger list and at any time around half, if not more will be online. Even if I did use FB (never will though) I wouldn't use their chat thing, it doesn't support file transfers right? Or a lot of other features that YM or even AIM have.

All of my friends (They all fall into the 19-21 age group) use Facebook for chatting. There's one exception, but he doesn't even have a mobile phone. I'd say most young people use Facebook chat. Skype is pretty popular too. I don't know if they support file transfers... I usually transfer files via email.

 

[BD2003]

Two chat windows? Almost, scratch that, nobody I know uses MSN or an IM service these days, it's just Facebook chat (Inside the browser) or texting.

There are desktop apps for FB chat, the one I use (the messages beta for lion) supports a form of texting as well (iMessage). Having a buddy list open on my desktop is basic functionality I've enjoyed ever since the AOL days...if a constantly open buddy list makes you a power user, then the term has lost all meaning.

 

[QueBert]

There are desktop apps for FB chat, the one I use (the messages beta for lion) supports a form of texting as well (iMessage). Having a buddy list open on my desktop is basic functionality I've enjoyed ever since the AOL days...if a constantly open buddy list makes you a power user, then the term has lost all meaning.

Don't fret, MS always releases multiple versions of their OS's. I'm sure they'll have an "Uber Power User" version for people like you who do shit like have 2 chat windows open!

I don't use FB at all but I just looked at screen shots, no way in hell could chatting with multiple people at the same time thru a WEB SITE be a good experience. It hardly looks optimized for chatting with a single person.

 

[Pia]

So who is this for then? If its just a half assed attempt at the future, why screw things up now, instead of working at it until they have something that makes more sense for a PC? Aren't they doing a disservice to their future plans by putting out this poorly integrated hybrid?

I think the primary reason they had to come out with Metro now is to push developers to bring their apps over to it. They lose on polish and user experience for now, but possibly gain later. The point where Metro meets a particular user's needs so that user no longer has to jump into classic at all for key apps is a giant leap forward in user experience. Reaching that point would take longer if Microsoft stopped right now to polish Win8 for another year.

To me the big question is: in their hurry, has Microsoft made design decisions in Metro that prevents them from expanding its power significantly in the future? For instance, can they later cleanly add the ability to show more than two apps at a time? If they haven't painted themselves into a corner, I like them making the tradeoff.

 

[bdunosk]

When did programs become apps? Or is that just how the cool kids talk these days?

I'm with BD2003. It's not about getting used to something, it's breaking what worked very well on a desktop.

I hope Microsoft accommodates people like me without sacrificing what will work for tablets. I think it's great idea to integrate these things because it broadens their market - quite honestly I would love to have my devices sync'd with very little effort - something I think Win8 will accomplish. I'm not willing to sacrifice the currently functionality of Win7 for it, though -- and surveying my peers (30-somethings), they're already planning on skipping 8 for this very reason. This likely means those of us with non-computer savvy parents will also be sticking with 7.

 

[wiin]

Wow, Windows 8 is PURE CRAP (as far as the UI goes). DO. NOT. WANT.

Having to log off, before you can shut down the machine, and having to do something un-intuitive (for keyboard+mouse), like slide a picture upwards and off of the controls, before you can shut down your machine, is horseshit.

I disable the User-select screen normally in Win7, with Win8, I don't know how I would ever shut down the machine.

Why do you have to log off to shut down the machine? I have mine running on VM and I don't have to log off to shut it down. Win+i will get you to power icon. Ctrl Alt Del will do the same.

 

[BD2003]

I think the primary reason they had to come out with Metro now is to push developers to bring their apps over to it. They lose on polish and user experience for now, but possibly gain later. The point where Metro meets a particular user's needs so that user no longer has to jump into classic at all for key apps is a giant leap forward in user experience. Reaching that point would take longer if Microsoft stopped right now to polish Win8 for another year.

To me the big question is: in their hurry, has Microsoft made design decisions in Metro that prevents them from expanding its power significantly in the future? For instance, can they later cleanly add the ability to show more than two apps at a time? If they haven't painted themselves into a corner, I like them making the tradeoff.

What's the meat of that leap forward though? What new capabilities are there? Does it enable to you do stuff faster than before? Is it just that metro is prettier, or simpler?

The more you expand it's power (by adding the ability to show more apps, etc) - aren't you just basically getting back to where you started with desktop?

 

[arod]

No, I didn't use the dev preview. If this isnt the near final interface, they've got a lot of work ahead of them. But my misgivings about it go way, way deeper than any specific UI choice. I'm just not on board with their vision of the future of the desktop. I can see this being really fantastic on a tablet, but as far as the desktop goes, the most anyone has really said in favor of it is "it isn't that bad once you get used to it". That's been repeated over and over. I'm failing to see the reason *why* this is something I should get used to. No one had to say that about the taskbar. What's the upside? Where does this interface excel, what does it do better than a standard desktop?

To me metro has a number of interface advantages over a desktop.... just off the top of my head:

The way apps can talk to each other and with windows directly (see skydrive integration when choosing a wallpaper or profile image.... apps will be allowed to register themselves there so its not just skydrive).

A universal search that allows in app searching (its been done before but never like this)
WinRT is a significant change because it allows the above functionality (this would never be possible with desktop windows because even if the hooks are there w/o a complete redesign there would be no standard area in an app to allow this functionality)

The home screen with Live tiles also show you more information than you ever hope to see in a desktop interface (they aren't app open but you don't need to have them open to see whats happening.... now this will also not be really as useful until more apps utilize live tiles and the kind of stuff they can show)

Even the multitasking with how apps have multiple states is an improvement.... you should show things differently depending if its full screen in the 2/3 or 1/3 window. In Win7 I know I was constantly resizing windows to show me the data I am looking for while keeping it on the screen.

Now alot of the above would be possible in a desktop environment but not w/o significant change to how windows works which at that point I think you would be complaining just as loud.

At the end of the day it sounds like you are one of those people who will stick with windows 7 and the rest of us will move on. That is the beauty of it.... metro is not for everybody and if you want choose something else.

I think the primary reason they had to come out with Metro now is to push developers to bring their apps over to it. They lose on polish and user experience for now, but possibly gain later. The point where Metro meets a particular user's needs so that user no longer has to jump into classic at all for key apps is a giant leap forward in user experience. Reaching that point would take longer if Microsoft stopped right now to polish Win8 for another year.

To me the big question is: in their hurry, has Microsoft made design decisions in Metro that prevents them from expanding its power significantly in the future? For instance, can they later cleanly add the ability to show more than two apps at a time? If they haven't painted themselves into a corner, I like them making the tradeoff.

That is an interesting question.... I have to imagine they will eventually expand it to allow more but I would not expect it to ever be like windows because of the groundwork laid in win8 with the 3 app states.... they don't want to force devs to rewrite everything every few yrs.

 

[Kingbee13]

I’m still hoping Microsoft will have a more desktop friendly mode at launch. I don’t mind the metro start window but playing a song by default in metro when you launched it from the desktop is ridiculous. I know I can change file associations etc but the functionality of the metro apps is so bare. I tried to send a picture to a friend over the integrated messenger app, via the new universal share, but it’s not so universal.

I downloaded a couple metro apps the iCookbook and USA Today app, they look interesting for a tablet, and I wouldn’t mind having tablet apps that also work on my desktop/Laptop but these non Microsoft apps don’t scroll with a mouse scroll wheel like the MS apps. To scroll in these 3rd party apps requires you to click the mouse-wheel and auto scroll or drag the scrollbar.

I do like the new task manager, and file copy, and yes the ribbon windows explorer. I find it a bit disconcerting that MS stores your logins for things like twitter via a live id or Microsoft account as they are now calling it, not to mention all your bookmarks. Of course you don’t have to use this and perhaps there’s a way to control what is cloud synced and what isn’t.


TL;DR UI elements of 3rd party metro apps aren’t uniform (yet) privacy concerns of all the cloud syncing and opening a file song/picture/etc from the desktop should by default launch a desktop app and vice versa for metro apps

 

[BD2003]

Now alot of the above would be possible in a desktop environment but not w/o significant change to how windows works which at that point I think you would be complaining just as loud.

Not at all. I'd be applauding them for pushing windows forward, instead of going off the rails like this. There is absolutely nothing that precluded them from doing everything you said without breaking the UI like they are (as you recognize).

At the end of the day it sounds like you are one of those people who will stick with windows 7 and the rest of us will move on. That is the beauty of it.... metro is not for everybody and if you want choose something else.

Well, I def won't be upgrading my 4 PCs like I did with 7. Going forward unless something drastically changes, looks like I'm moving more and more towards macs.

And the crazy thing is, I think metro on a tablet could be a real competitor. I could have envisioned a future where MS and apple go head to head for the next decade in both the mobile and desktop spaces with separate OSes. I don't see it happening with their one OS to rule them all paradigm. Too many compromises that hurt the user experience on any given device.

 

[Pia]

When did programs become apps? Or is that just how the cool kids talk these days?

Huh? Application is more specific than program, so of course we use application instead of program when we mean application. You don't go to a restaurant and order an "animal fillet" when you mean chicken fillet.

 

[arod]

Not at all. I'd be applauding them for pushing windows forward, instead of going off the rails like this. There is absolutely nothing that precluded them from doing everything you said without breaking the UI like they are (as you recognize).



Well, I def won't be upgrading my 4 PCs like I did with 7. Going forward unless something drastically changes, looks like I'm moving more and more towards macs.

I think it would cause windows to fundamentally change from a ui perspective... They would have to at a minimum is reserve big chunks of an app to allow for that new functionality.

I get the impression that your real hangup in all of this is only being able to see 2 apps at a time in this first version..... that will inevitably change over the next few years if the data ms gets from win8 usage shows its needed. I think they will find 2 is good and at most 3 1/3 screen apps is all people want to see at a time.

Personally I hate going back to windows 7 and that start menu now.... and this is only after 2 days. Maybe its just the newness but I very much prefer the metro start screen to the win7 startmenu/taskbar (and this is also before most apps are even using the live tile functionality)

And you better go mac now because even they will probably be touch first/ipad like in the next few yrs. Everybody in the industry is moving in that direction.

 

[Infraction Jack]

I will still use windows 8 but I will find a replacement shell for it.

 

[Chiropteran]

I'm starting to think my next desktop OS will be Windows 8 Server...

 

[Pia]

What's the meat of that leap forward though? What new capabilities are there? Does it enable to you do stuff faster than before? Is it just that metro is prettier, or simpler?

It's simple - the removal of the friction and needless complexity you get when you have to move between Metro and the incompatible legacy desktop to get everything done. Given that Microsoft has chosen to go Metro, it's better that the transition goes quickly instead of dragging on.

The more you expand it's power (by adding the ability to show more apps, etc) - aren't you just basically getting back to where you started with desktop?

Why did Microsoft start anew instead of iteratively improving the old desktop until they had what they want? Because the old desktop had faults too deep to fix iteratively. That goes both ways; Metro's fundamentals are incompatible with the old desktop so iterative development starting from Metro cannot end up in the same shit again.

 

[wirednuts]

Is there going to be a non-kids version released?

they did. win7

 

[BD2003]

It's simple - the removal of the friction and needless complexity you get when you have to move between Metro and the incompatible legacy desktop to get everything done. Given that Microsoft has chosen to go Metro, it's better that the transition goes quickly instead of dragging on.
Why did Microsoft start anew instead of iteratively improving the old desktop until they had what they want? Because the old desktop had faults too deep to fix iteratively. That goes both ways; Metro's fundamentals are incompatible with the old desktop so iterative development starting from Metro cannot end up in the same shit again.

Wait, what? What irreparable faults were there with the desktop UI?

 

[SAWYER]

I have an Acer desktop that has a restore partition and then I have my c: of 250 gigs. What would be the best way for me to dual boot, I have about 70 gigs free now. I tried shrinking it down in disk management but it would only shrink down about 13 gigs

 

[Pia]

Wait, what? What irreparable faults were there with the desktop UI?

What is the primary problem an OS GUI exists to handle? To efficiently show the user whatever surfaces the user needs at a given time, whether application surfaces or surfaces supplied by the GUI itself, containing useful data and/or widgets for actions.

How does the GUI know what the user needs to see? Mostly, it doesn't, so the user has to be given efficient means to choose what surfaces are shown and also to choose how the available screen space is split between the currently shown surfaces.

The most fundamental mistake in classic desktop is to shoehorn most of those surfaces into windows. Windows can be obscured behind other windows, off screen or behind OS elements, and they are a terrible waste of screen space. For example, every time user resizes a window, either the user does double or triple the same manual work to resize other windows to match, or space gets wasted in the resize operation, or the resize operation causes overlap of windows and obscures information, or the resize operation reclaims space that the system previously allowed to go to waste for no reason, or a combination of those things. This is a dead end. You can add however many band-aids you want - and Microsoft has certainly added many over the years, many very good band-aids in Windows 7 - but you will be complicating the system and burdening the user to only partially fix problems which shouldn't exist in the first place.

 

[BD2003]

So the solution is to just say screw it, let's go back to windows 2.0? This doesn't solve that problem. It dodges it entirely by removing functionality.

 

[Deeko]

So the solution is to just say screw it, let's go back to windows 2.0? This doesn't solve that problem. It dodges it entirely by removing functionality.

I don't think you understand how the snap feature works. When a Metro app is snapped, an event is fired informing the app of which location its in. This is a more precise configuration than a simple resized event, and it allows the app to shift its view to be more presentable in that format. This allows developers to create distinct views for snapped vs full screen, which, if done properly, will both look better & require less dev effort than parsing through resize events.

 

[BD2003]

So I finally sprang it on my wife. Reactions ranged from "wtf is this" to "I don't like this.". Choice quotes include "how do I go to a website", "how do I move this out of the way" and "how do I open a tab?".

When I finally showed her the desktop she went "oh, good. what was all that other stuff about". She then proceeded to instinctively open a browser window, a few tabs, and got to work. At no point did it seem to occur to her that she was having difficulty with the windows paradigm she's been using for decades. She wanted to open up email so I told her to figure it out. She stumbled around near the taskbar until the start menu came up by accident. She launched it and it came up in metro mode and she kept asking me how to make it just stay in "normal mode."

I told her that in windows 8, this IS normal mode. The desktop is the fallback. She looks at me in utter disbelief, slams the laptop shut and says "I can't deal with this shit".

They leave behind the desktop at their peril. Normal people are just not going to be ok with this drastic a change.