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post #121 of 175
6/2/11 at 12:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

How else would you do it? Telekinesis?

now there is an idea. this would make the challenge go away completely.
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Maybe you should get your mind out of your niche. -Dilbert
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post #122 of 175
6/2/11 at 12:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova View Post

Im a touch typist...

Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

How else would you do it? Telekinesis?

Soli, I hope this is meant to be humor. In case it isn't (I'm humor-challenged today), the term "touch-typist" refers to a person who can read a ms. and accurately type without looking at the keyboard. That's why there are little projections on the F and J keys of the US keyboard; that's where you place your two index fingers.
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post #123 of 175
6/2/11 at 12:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecphorizer View Post

Soli, I hope this is meant to be humor. In case it isn't (I'm humor-challenged today), the term "touch-typist" refers to a person who can read a ms. and accurately type without looking at the keyboard. That's why there are little projections on the F and J keys of the US keyboard; that's where you place your two index fingers.

Not the inclusion of an emoticon smily sticking his tongue out .
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Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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post #124 of 175
6/2/11 at 12:34pm
List of quotes posted by Flaneur:

Quote:
It does look nice.

Quote:
It looks good.

Quote:
have to admit that I thought it looked pretty good.

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I have to agree, it does look good.

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The UI looks nice.

Quote:
It does look nice

Quote:
I must say it actually looked good



If I didn't recognize the posters of these comments to be regulars on this board, I'd think that they were astroturfers, using pretty much the same words. (Not meaning any slurs on those of us who think alike and not criticizing the commenters' opinions.) Reminds me of the commenters/reviewers on MacUpdate who are all one person (the developer's brother) commenting under different logins, extolling the virtues of the app, all reading the same.

Of course the quotes are reduced to a few words and probably taken out of context.
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post #125 of 175
6/2/11 at 12:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

Not the inclusion of an emoticon smily sticking his tongue out .

Ahhh, NOW I get it. You see, I am a bit slow on the uptake today. Sorry 'bout that!
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post #126 of 175
6/2/11 at 12:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

How else would you do it? Telekinesis?

actually, this has cause me to think about this a bit more critically. I guess touch typing would work better in the iPad if it would allow you to lightly rest most of your fingers on the on-screen keyboard region without sending an input event when you lift up your fingers to push down an a desired virtual key. Maybe they can try to use the accelerometer in-conjunction with the touch screen as a possible solution like they do to recognize desired attenuation in Garageband for the iPad.
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post #127 of 175
6/2/11 at 1:27pm
Didn't Microsoft just go all ape shit over Ballmer using the name Windows 8 just a week ago? Now they release a demo of Windows 8. Man they don't know whether they are coming or going.

Life is too short to drink bad coffee.

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post #128 of 175
6/2/11 at 2:56pm
What I envision my ideal notebook to be is something I use for productivity when I am at my office desk and when it's time to relax, I just pull off the LCD screen and use touch technology as I lazily lounge on my couch. This is what is preventing me from purchasing a tablet in its current form - be it an iPad2 or an Asus Eeepad Transformer. Unless there is something coming out that would allow me to do this in 2-years time, it looks like Windows 8 is the only viable option for me.
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post #129 of 175
6/2/11 at 3:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kongqueror View Post

What I envision my ideal notebook to be is something I use for productivity when I am at my office desk and when it's time to relax, I just pull off the LCD screen and use touch technology as I lazily lounge on my couch. This is what is preventing me from purchasing a tablet in its current form - be it an iPad2 or an Asus Eeepad Transformer. Unless there is something coming out that would allow me to do this in 2-years time, it looks like Windows 8 is the only viable option for me.

I think you the user MS is banking on. My question is good of an experience can Windows 8 yield as tablet coming from a desktop/x86 foundation? Even with the new Ivy Bridge CPUs will this be sufficiently low power enough to give you all day use? What size does a tablet begin too big to cart around? People already complain about the 9.7" iPad and most 'PC' displays are 13" or larger for notebooks which desktops being even larger.

It's one thing to think to think different, which I believe MS is doing in spades these days, but it's another to think clearly and accurately. I think W8 on tablets is still a big gamble.
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post #130 of 175
6/2/11 at 4:13pm
The tile interface looks good and looks very fluid and very well suited for touch. My major gripe is the desktop and laptop thing. They say that this interface will also run on normal computers with a mouse and a keyboard. It looks interesting but for a normal computer it is downright scary.

I got scared when they showed Office in the demo. IE10 looked pretty awesome and the multitasking looks like something that should have been on tablets since day 1.

In about a year, we will be seeing the new Windows shell. I don't believe they're that stupid to leave the 2nd interface in the state it is in. Anyways, we'll see if I will be getting an iPad 3 or a W8 tablet.
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post #131 of 175
6/2/11 at 4:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post

Microsoft's idea of a "better user experience" is to add more animations. At least, that is how they process what Apple is doing.

I think there's a typo in your post:

Microsoft's idea is a "bitter user experience"
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post #132 of 175
6/2/11 at 4:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova View Post

Instead, the trend is to store user files of type XYZ in a database which which is designed to manage and quickly index and search for files of type XYZ using metadata, i.e. photos are in a photo library, music in a music library, apps in an app library, and books in a book library. Where the photo library is relative to the music library is of no importance to the user.?

sounds like how win 7 can be set up currently

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post #133 of 175
6/2/11 at 4:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BertP View Post

I am not an engineer, but is it not true that even an Atom IA64 struggles with W7? So, the SoCs now can handle 'full access' on W8? I am waiting to be impressed!

No, it is not true that even an atom struggles with w7

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post #134 of 175
6/2/11 at 5:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by cycomiko View Post

No, it is not true that even an atom struggles with w7

Not with Windows 7 Starter Edition, you mean.

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iPhone 4S 64GB, Black, soon to be sold in favor of a Nokia Lumia 920
Early 2010 MacBook Pro 2.4GHz, soon to be replaced with a Retina MacBook Pro, or an Asus U500

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post #135 of 175
6/2/11 at 6:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukeskymac View Post

Not with Windows 7 Starter Edition, you mean.

Dunno, never used the starter addition. My hp mini runs perfectly well with Win 7 home. For sure, it could be faster, but most of hte issues are related to the dog slow hdd in it, rather than the processor (plus access through an 802.11g network). There are points that I get annoyed with my macbook doing things slower than the atom based machine - whcih is likely due to the way osx handles the software, and the dog slow hdd that apple put in there...

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Household: MacBook, iPad 16gb wifi, iPad 64gb wifi, iPad Mini 32gb, iPhone 4S 32gb, iPhone 32gb, iPod Touch 4th gen x2, iPod touch 16gb gen 2, iPod nano 16gb gen 5 x2, iPod nano gen 3 8gb, iPod...

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post #136 of 175
6/2/11 at 6:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone View Post

Didn't Microsoft just go all ape shit over Ballmer using the name Windows 8 just a week ago? Now they release a demo of Windows 8. Man they don't know whether they are coming or going.

The first time Ballmer used it, they were coming. Prematurely

"Can't innovate anymore my ass!" -- Phil Schiller

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post #137 of 175
6/2/11 at 7:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecphorizer View Post

List of quotes posted by Flaneur:





If I didn't recognize the posters of these comments to be regulars on this board, I'd think that they were astroturfers, using pretty much the same words. (Not meaning any slurs on those of us who think alike and not criticizing the commenters' opinions.) Reminds me of the commenters/reviewers on MacUpdate who are all one person (the developer's brother) commenting under different logins, extolling the virtues of the app, all reading the same.

Of course the quotes are reduced to a few words and probably taken out of context.

It's true I unfairly snipped out the quotes here, and from some people I really respect, but the point is that Microsoft is slipping in some truly awful taste (still) with their new snazzy tile metaphor.

Remember starting in the early sixties when everything in the kitchen had to be avocado or harvest gold? Horrible. That's maybe where these "designers" formed their color habits.

It has to stop. These colors are deeply depressing, and it's alarming that they and seemingly everyone else fails to see it. I bet Jobs and company are howling.

Microsoft has dragged down the world's spirit with their visual littering long enough. They should hire Martha Stewart or somebody. Somebody with taste.
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post #138 of 175
6/2/11 at 8:35pm
I'm lovin the innovation here. Lion looks stagnant in comparison. :/
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post #139 of 175
6/2/11 at 8:37pm
"Sales of PCs have yet to rebound to levels prior to the release of Vista"

Flat out wrong. Last year 348 million PC were sold, which is up from the year before and the higest ever.

Of course DED wrote this so the lies should be expected.
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post #140 of 175
6/2/11 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

LOL It did look the MS versioning of Ive.

M$ has no shame. They'll copy anything are everyone. The reason the guy in the video said we'll be showing other *new* stuff in the coming months is because Apple hasn't revealed them yet!!
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post #141 of 175
6/2/11 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post

This is all "damning with faint praise."

Sorry to quote you guys in this context-- some of you are my favorite critics -- but why do so many feel compelled to say it looks "nice" and "cool"?

I'll tell you why: BECAUSE THE TILES ARE RECTILINEAR, BLAND AND INSTITUTIONAL!! And in the worst possible "safe" school/kitchen/Seattle-office-cubicle colors! They are worse than tasteless, they are in bad taste! And they are getting past your filters only by being left-brained-rectangular and animated.

"Beige fascism" has devolved into pastel fascism. If Microsoft can put this over on the world, we are further doomed. Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft -- you have to get rid of that baby blue! Combined with the horrible, lifeless green, orange and chalky eggplant . . .

Oh, snap! Quite a scathing critique. But I agree with you. I guess you could say that Microsoft is employing "inside the box" thinking.
Quote:
But it misses the geographical/cultural/generational mark. "Upspeak" is bicoastal. It is infantalism, like those colors are infantile.

I think this inflection was brought to the mainstream via that crapumentary showum, what was it called? Oh rightAmerican Chopper. Since that show came out, every subsequent crapumentary show had that same "know what i'm sayin'?" lilt*.

* "lilt" is the wrong wordthe Irish have a lilt and it's lovely. What the AC boys and all their wannabes do is not lovely. \
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post #142 of 175
6/2/11 at 9:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdkennedy1 View Post

Microsoft schooled Apple on this one, a week before Apple. You know Steve has to be pissed. You have to admit, no one saw Microsoft doing this so soon.

Actually, I just finished reading the 1998 book "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" last night, and it described this interface along with saying Microsoft had been working on it since 1996. The only detail not mentioned was that it would use multitouch.

One of the authors of this 1998 book worked on tablet PC's for Microsoft in the early 1990's.
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post #143 of 175
6/2/11 at 9:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova View Post

Im a touch typist, yet even when the iPad is in landscape mode I have to look at the screen. The glass all feels the same to me and I simply don't trust the outcome of my efforts without looking.

If you're a touch typist, then you're relying on muscle memory, as I mentioned earlier. Professional string players (violin, viola, cello, bass) also rely on muscle memory, and they do it quite well. For "ordinary" people (yes, I think string musicians are a bit super-human) muscle memory is what helps you go up and down stairs without looking at every step. It also helps your feet find the clutch, brake and accelerator pedals without looking while you drive (very important!!) Similarly, once you get used to holding your iPad (if they ever did the "thumb keyboard" thing) in the "correct" position so that your thumbs could reach all of the soft-keys, then you could do your muscle memory driven touch-typing thing.
Quote:
Now that you mention the problems with split keyboards, causes me to pause. I haven't considered the additional effort required to continually refocus one's eyes from each side of the tablet as you type. Good point. This could very well be an issue. Don't know till I try it.

Not to get all contrarian here, but again, once you get used to proper positioning, you'll be needing to move your eyes to the keys less and less.
Quote:
Giving this some more thought, I think I would be just as happy with an iphone sized portrait keyboard along either the right or left side of the ipad in any orientation. Either at a user pre-defined location or using some kind of proximity sensor to determine where you are holding the ipad with your hand(s).

Hmmm... this is an intriguing idea. In contrast to what I said earlier, a user will often find themselves in a situation where they only have one hand free, in which case your suggestion would work better. I still like the "two-thumbs" keyboard as well. There's no reason a future iOS version (or third party add-on) couldn't employ both, utilizing each as the situation requires.
Quote:
I also agree with you about smaller sized iPads. I think the ergonomics of the smaller unit that you can easily hold with one hand without getting tired would feel nice to me.

Perhaps, but obviously, as you go smaller, you lose screen real estate, unless you just make everything smaller, but that just makes things harder to read then. I think Apple should continue avoid the temptation to make sizes for every whim and preference.

Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

How else would you do it? Telekinesis?

I believe the technical term is "hunt and peck".
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post #144 of 175
6/2/11 at 9:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Futuristic View Post

If you're a touch typist, then you're relying on muscle memory, as I mentioned earlier. ...] Similarly, once you get used to holding your iPad (if they ever did the "thumb keyboard" thing) in the "correct" position so that your thumbs could reach all of the soft-keys, then you could do your muscle memory driven touch-typing thing.

Not sure about your thumbs, but the only typing memory skills my thumbs possess is hitting the space bar.
Maybe yours technique is different then mine when when you type on a keyboard?
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post #145 of 175
6/2/11 at 10:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova View Post

Not sure about your thumbs, but the only typing memory skills my thumbs possess is hitting the space bar.
Maybe yours technique is different then mine when when you type on a keyboard?

The point is your thumb muscles can learn thumb-typing*, as BB, iPhone and iPod Touch usersand anyone who's ever used a mobile phonecan attest; they certainly use their thumbs to do their typing, no?

* to get technically nit-picky, it's your brain that learns, not your thumb muscles.
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post #146 of 175
6/2/11 at 10:43pm
@Flaneur #120

This is a particularly sad post. Calling out people because they have a different opinion than yours? We don't need biased group think.
If you want to know Microsoft's design principles, just go to the source: Bill Buxton and Albert Shum http://bit.ly/jkxZjv

Fascism? Really?
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post #147 of 175
6/2/11 at 11:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Futuristic View Post

The point is your thumb muscles can learn thumb-typing*, as BB, iPhone and iPod Touch users—and anyone who's ever used a mobile phone—can attest; they certainly use their thumbs to do their typing, no?

* to get technically nit-picky, it's your brain that learns, not your thumb muscles.

As you said above.. muscle memory means you can do things without using your eyes to coordinate (or words to that effect; I apologize in advanced if I miss-paraphrased). I am afraid that I dont have that skill when using my thumbs to type on any touch screen device that I can think of (iPhone, iPad, etc). I need to look at where I place my thumbs for each and every letter. I must admit that I have a pretty good idea where the keys are relative to each other based on my experience getting around a traditional keyboard. However, I not sure that is finger memory? Or is it? I don't know.. maybe I am alone in this. However, I suspect not.
Maybe I am just needlessly splitting hairs at this point. sorry if I appear to be.
Maybe you should get your mind out of your niche. -Dilbert
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post #148 of 175
6/2/11 at 11:43pm
And you really think anyone cares?
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post #149 of 175
6/3/11 at 12:46am
ack. double post. sorry.
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post #150 of 175
6/3/11 at 1:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova View Post

As you said above.. muscle memory means you can do things without using your eyes to coordinate (or words to that effect; I apologize in advanced if I miss-paraphrased). I am afraid that I dont have that skill when using my thumbs to type on any touch screen device that I can think of (iPhone, iPad, etc). I need to look at where I place my thumbs for each and every letter. I must admit that I have a pretty good idea where the keys are relative to each other based on my experience getting around a traditional keyboard. However, I not sure that is finger memory? Or is it? I don't know.. maybe I am alone in this. However, I suspect not.
Maybe I am just needlessly splitting hairs at this point. sorry if I appear to be.

I'm not keeping this topic of "muscle memory" alive simply to be pedanticit's more because I'm geektastically amazed at how our brains work. You may or may not have heard the following joke:

Tourist: How do I get to Carnegie Hall?
Smart-ass Local: Practice, practice, practice!!!

"Practice" is all about training your brain. We're not born knowing how to walk or drive or type or play an instrument. We all have to practice doing the same actions over and over again, so that our brain learns how to direct our muscles to do what we want to do. It's the reason I can type what I'm typing now without thinking of where I'm putting my fingers. It's the reason we have the common idiom, "It's like riding a bike!"once you learn to ride a bike, you basically don't forget (barring a severe brain injury or disease)that's what muscle memory is. This stuff may seem trivial, but it's vitally important to anyone who works in the realm of UI design. UI designers have to have a good understanding of how our brains learn, so that the technology helps, rather than hinders the user. By UI, I'm not just talking software interfaces, I'm talking about physical, industrial design as well (cars, keyboards, airplane cockpits, etc.).

To split hairs further, I would argue that it's not about having thumb-typing skills, it's about developing thumb-typing skillseven on a glass surface that provides basically no tactile feedbackby training your brain. You'd be pretty amazed at what your brain is capable of learning.
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post #151 of 175
6/3/11 at 2:41am
Looks Like a big Windows Phone 7 PC. Hate the phone. What do you think I think of the OS?
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post #152 of 175
6/3/11 at 6:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by majjo View Post

The problem with muscle memory on on-screen keyboards is that, with the varying display sizes of phones and tablets, almost every keyboard is going to different key sizes and spacing. So while if you practice enough at it, you can get used to say the iPhone4 keyboard, but that muscle memory won't translate too well over to the iPad.

Eh. Our brains our pretty resilientpractice enough on each of your devices, and your brain will be able to figure out which one you're using and adjust accordingly.

Say you have an iPad and an iPhoneyou will need to get used to both interfaces, which wouldn't be too hard. But, learning the interfaces of your own devices won't serve you so well if you need to borrow your friend's Android phone. You'll have to resort to the ol' "hunt & peck" method.
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post #153 of 175
6/3/11 at 6:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Scrip View Post

Exactly. That "launcher" will be great on all the upcoming Windows tablets... until you open a legacy Windows application.

Then it's the same ol' Windows.

I'm not ditching the mouse and keyboard for a long time...

Well, legacy apps demand legacy control scheme... can't help much there. But I would expect MS Office 2013 (or whatever) will work in new environment, ideally giving an option to choose/switch between legacy and touch environment.

But still... I don't think that even legacy part is same old Windows 7. It has to be much more flexible in order to scale down to tablet hardware.

Off the topic... I was mildly amused to read in this article that Windows 7 is conservative compared to Windows Vista. Really?
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post #154 of 175
6/3/11 at 6:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

Prediction 1: Windows 8 will be the best selling version of Windows EVER.

Prediciton 2: Apple will continue to outpace the PC market furthering it's revenue, profit and valuation lead from MS.

Well, this will be first Windows for tablets, so that part will be the most interesting - how well will it work, and how well will it sell? Additionally, what approach will MS take - sell to anyone interested (likely), or sell exclusively to one brand (Nokia?)... or differentiate somehow premium brand (again, Nokia?) from all the other me-toos.

Regarding profit, revenue... I'm not that sure. So far we basically had traditional PC market on MS side versus traditional PC market on Apple side significantly helped by iOS growth. With Windows 8, MS will finally do significant push into tablets, and by that time WP7 will be more mature and, hopefully, well supported by Nokia. Of course there are so many unknowns there, but considering number of Nokia-faithful I know, I wouldn't be surprised to see WP7 getting respectful market share once Nokia starts selling.

All in all, MS has more new markets to "conquer" than Apple at this stage, and should they be successful, more profit and revenue to gain. But all this is purely academic - of all knowns and unknowns, one thing is very certain - both companies will do more than well for years to come.
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post #155 of 175
6/3/11 at 6:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jkichline View Post

ANy hope of that difference is going away Monday when Apple releases iCloud. What will it do? Simple... NO SYNC. That means all your content will be available on any Apple laptop/phone/tablet. You buy it and use it anywhere and with no storage concerns. That's my input.

When this happens, these devices are no longer companions, but standalone and stand together as a tighter ecosystem Microsoft won't be able to match because of their fragmented OSes

I can't see a reason why MS could not update their SkyDrive to match whatever iCloud will be doing. It already offers 25GB of free storage for anyone with MS Live account (which is also free to get).

Don't forget, this is mostly software-defined technology, and MS is mostly software company with biggest potential in software development. I don't think Apple can easily beat them there.
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post #156 of 175
6/3/11 at 7:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post

Why is it good for MS to have shown this so soon? This is just another MS concept video tossed out before another real Apple product. Remember the Courier? Everyone always trots out a bunch of half-baked crap before a big Apple announcement. That is part of the reason why this stuff pales in comparison to the Apple experience. Look at Amazon and Google. They both just announce music storage services. So desperate were they that they didn't even bother to secure proper licenses. They just vomited something up to get something out there before Apple announced their cloud service. Notice how Apple didn't announce anything before it was ready. This move by MS just shows how desperate and behind they are, and are about to be.

Except that Courier was only a fancy prototype/research/smoke&mirrors for MS, and mainstream desktop OS is big part of their current bread & butter core business. I don't expect MS would play with one of their major products. It will be out in 2012, 3 years after Windows 7.
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post #157 of 175
6/3/11 at 7:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post

Completely agree! I'm not saying the this is CGI, or that W8 will not come out in some form. But this is very early interface concepts stuff. They are nowhere near ready to be talking about what the actual shipping product will look like or how it will perform. The are not shipping betas to devs. There is no reason to even show this stuff except to try and stay relevant in the onslaught of what they know is about to happen at WWDC.

The only real difference between this and the Courier is that they actually intend to develop and ship this at some point.

I don't think it is that early. At worst, they are working on Windows 8 since Windows 7 was released (which puts it at 2/3 of its development cycle). At best, Windows 8 development started before Windows 7 was released, which makes its current iteration even more mature (relative to expected release time-frame).
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post #158 of 175
6/3/11 at 7:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova View Post

Likes:

- "Thumbs" keyboard. I hope Apple does something like this for the iPad. Its unpleasant to use the existing soft keyboard on the iPad. I prefer the iPhone keyboard over the iPad due to the ergonomic issue.
- New touch oriented apps sound cool.
- Nice vivid demo

Unsure:
-. Live tiles seems useful. However, I'm concerned about battery life of having too much "live" updates. Is this really practical and a worthwhile battery life trade off?
- Is there a style guide for the new touch oriented app SDK? Or will it just be the wild wild west free for all?
- Multitasking. Not sure how average consumers will actually want more then one apps on the screen at the same time. I only really do this for cut-n-paste operations personally. As long as the task switching is efficient and cut and paste work well, I dot really need to have more then one app visible at the same time. Battery life concerns of turning multiple apps at the same time.

Dislike:
- I don't think running legacy Windows apps designed for use with a high resolution pointer such as a mouse via touch interface is appropriate. I guess this would be similar to having the desire to run my Mac OS X apps on my iPad via an agent like Ignition. I don't really have any desire as this would be exhausting, IMHO. The app has to be DESIGNED for touch from the very beginning.
As a result, would a buy a tablet form factor to run my legacy desktop apps? probably not. Same reason all Windows tablet have failed thus far.

Recommendation to MS. Stop trying to make Windows Legacy Apps run on Tablets. You are better off just extending Windows Phone 7 to the tablet with its own set of touch oriented apps.

Agree with you on most parts... except for legacy support. MS simply has to cater for their business users who, I believe, make majority to their home users.

Now... we have companies still running Office 2003 on their new Win 7 machines. And we have users using downgrade rights to revert from purchased Office 2010 to Office 2007 and 2003. Additionally - bigger companies are much more inert than small businesses.

MS simply must give legacy support if they want Windows 8 to be accepted among corporate users, and hell yeah they want it. Even if they release new Office and other tools together with Windows 8, you can bet biggest Windows users will require older versions to run.
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post #159 of 175
6/3/11 at 9:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bk212 View Post

@Flaneur #120

This is a particularly sad post. Calling out people because they have a different opinion than yours? We don't need biased group think.
If you want to know Microsoft's design principles, just go to the source: Bill Buxton and Albert Shum http://bit.ly/jkxZjv

Fascism? Really?

Thank you for calling my post out as particularly sad. I should say that I'd like to see Microsoft succeed with their different approach.

I'm not calling out people for their different opinion, I'm calling them out for having, or allowing, bad taste.

On their OPERATING SYSTEM!

The operating system on your phone or your computer is where you live with your machine.

So. Would you like to live in a house that is painted those colors? You would? Ok, I say you have bad taste. I would not want to hang out at your house and have glass of wine and a smoke. I would go crazy around those colors, like I go crazy when I have to use certain computers.

Yes we've been living under beige fascism -- Terence McKenna's term -- and now there's pastel fascism in the works, only I'd like to change it to animated pastel fascism. Fascism is about misleading and oppressing people with bad symbol systems. It's time to lift the burden of junk computing from the world, which has dragged us down for 25 years.

Microsoft is trying to get it. The video you link to shows two elegant guys working from the wrong direction -- from the left brain -- to design an OS. It's like they've analyzed a good user experience (guess whose) and come up with principles and strategies to "impliment" a new one. It doesn't work that way with art, which is what an OS should be. You design from the heart, or at worst from the whole right/left brain.

Microsoft, change your colors! Be more Zen and less zany!

By coincidence, Gruber links today to an exact contrast of the two designing styles, as evinced by their videos:

http://daringfireball.net/ (about Red Pop, don't miss it -- ok, here's a direct link to the exemplar video; notice the colors he has around him: http://red-pop.com/#!prettyPhoto/0/ )
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post #160 of 175
6/3/11 at 1:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukeskymac View Post

Not with Windows 7 Starter Edition, you mean.

I have an HP AIO running a 64-bit version of W7 Home Premium. It uses an ultra-low voltage AMD Athlon II 250u @ 1.8GHz. Dual Core. Integrated GPU and 4GB DDR2 800 RAM. SATA II HD.

It ain't no rocket ship. It never gets hot like my 20 inch iMac Core 2 Duo (2GHz) did, but the fan purrs constantly. iTunes can push the CPU to its limits, and it is way slower than my iMac when it comes to converting music files.

I am more than happy with the system, as the screen is viewable. I had to part ways with the iMac, as my eyesight is not compatible with the Mac OS X accessibility features. Even now, I am pushing my visual limits to type this post.

With all that said, W7 is hunky - dorry. I consider my $500 closeout HP to be very useful. Think of it like the old Geo Metro. Press the accelerator to the floorboard and wait. Day to day tasks are no problem, and I know the limits of the machine. I am quite positive W8 will work fine, probably better.

It is nice to see a few open minded folks posting here. Not sure why AI even posts MS stuff here. Many posters will never have a kind word for the other side. Apple is still a better system, but MS is moving right along. They are loosing ground when it comes to being blind friendly, and Apple is gaining.

Gee, guess that is all I got to say about that.
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