Windows 8 design to radically depart from Mac OS X Lion - Page 2

When I went to university they'd have sent me to hospital for mental issues if I claimed such a thing.

Having used Windows for many years, I might not be 100% objective, but I feel that Explorer is vastly superior to Finder for anyone who actually uses the file system. As a developer and enterprise worker, I routinely deal with hundreds of files. Finder makes saving and opening files much more difficult than it should be. An indication of Finder weakness is the number of Finder add ons that have found a market. You just don't see that among Windows users. Another indication is the typical Mac user's overloaded desktop.

That said, I'm not overly impressed with the ribbon.

Oh come on, it's not that amazing, they've had over thirty years practicing.

Office 2011 is a real shame. Horribly complicated... Almost like they deliberately went out of their way to make it less usable.

I'm shocked, Microsoft has decided it will not copy an interface someone else has already designed? Who knew they had programmers that had original ideas? Just think how much extra income Microsoft will generate for supporting a ribbonized interface! I can hear the stock price deflating and the exodus from Windows increasing exponentially. It's like their service packs, one pack fixes a ton of problems and the next one breaks the OS again.

My God, it's full of buttons upon buttons, so many they had to add tabs and call the whole thing a ribbon bar! Geez, all they did was rip off their own GUI from Office 2007 / 2010 which is giving my Windows users brain aneurysms! Nothing pleases Windows users more than for Microsoft to move every last toolbar button to new and strange locations when the GUI hasn't changed in over a decade previously! I've had to deploy Microsofts Command Reference tools for Office 2007 / 2010 which are really just EXE's with Flash embedded that show you the 2003 version of Office and when you click a button or menu time it animates switching to the new version and showing the user where to find the button they are looking for! Geez, Microsoft had to give users a GPS utility to navigate their new GUI?

They had me worried that Win8 was going to be a big threat, it's simply complicating a GUI file manager that only Geeks use anyway. The average user has no need nor care to use Explorer to manage their files. They never have. I've watched people launch Word then use file open and then do weird things like renaming the file in the Open dialog, etc. This explains a lot to the new Apple concept of hiding the file management functionality and encouraging Spotlight's All My Files feature in Lion. As well as all the autosave and versions stuff.

This is about as smart as turning the START menu into a tablet home screen full of JavaScript/HTML5 gadgets. i.e. instead of doing something unique they copy the Apple dashboard which hardly anyone uses anymore. This is going to make WIn8 tablet competition to the iPad? Seriously?

It's about as smart as XCOPY.EXE which is why Microsoft's engineers produced ROBOCOPY.EXE, at first internally and now it's built into Windows. Try copying a big tree of files using XCOPY and watch it puke half way through and lose your place. Do the same with ROBOCOPY and surprise, it works and works really well. Actually all it does is what XCOPY should have done from the start! Linux / OS X "cp" command and "rsync" always always worked and I've never had them fail because they went too many levels deep or a filename was too long, etc.

Take that big, slashing, red "X" for "delete." Please, someone take it.

It's unbalanced, written on skin with a switchblade, vicious. Subliminally unsettling even to today's wracked nervous systems.

How could they not see this? Something is wrong in Seattle.

Edit: excuse me, Redmond.

I have this mental image of one of them jumping up and down like Donkey in Shrek ... "Me me me .. My turn to add something!"

So that, when you've spent many years navigating multiple desktops using Ctrl-Arrow, you now end up moving through them single file. As opposed to when they're arranged in a 2x2 grid, being able to get to any desktop with a single Ctrl-Arrow.

Sure, I'm slowly getting used to Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, but my brain just prefers the concept of directional movement rather than numbering systems (numbering systems are for libraries).

Didn't someone at MS just say in answer to SJ's post PC statement that PCs were only in their middle age ... Perhaps this is the first signs of their midlife crisis!

A turd is stil a turd. No matter how pretty you try to make it look, it's still is a turd underneath it all. dll Based os. d for Dumb L for Lame and L for loser. Microsoft needs to get away from making turds and start making bonafide Unix based OS. Then they will have become the competition to Apple. Oh and hey.... What the hell with all the damn updates Microsloft. Cant wait to see Steve at the mothership.

Yeah, it's different, but I'd argue it's a lot more intuitive and useful for the average user. Spaces mostly copied multiple desktops from decades past with some nifty UI additions. Remember they now have fullscreen apps which are in themselves a space. Now consider you can then no longer just build out columns and rows of your desktops do this fundamental and useful change to fullscreen apps. Would you just have blank spaces for when the grud numbers weren't right or would you have a completely different way of accessing fullscreen apps? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of fullscreen apps?

What about the other two things Aquatic mentioned: Exposé and Dashboard. I don't see how those are worsened with Lion. If anything I'd say the biggest shortcoming of Dashboard is the lack of updated Widgets.

The PowerPoint 2010 ribbon isn't that horrible though it takes up a huge amount of screen space. The problem is, it crashes like a (insert profanity here)!

But a ribbon for the Explorer? Wow. Apple has an easy 10 years ahead of it.

You can go back to the wall of icons. Cmd-J, Arrange by None, Sort by Name/Kind/Etc. There's now two different drop downs, Arrange By and Sort By. Not sure if it was always there or added in 10.7.1

Dear Microsoft,

Please make the Windows 8 ribbon buttons bigger and even more cartoony. That way, when running Windows 8 on a tablet, the ribbon will take up a third of the entire screen real estate.

• http://www.windows-noob.com/review/i.../xpspyware.jpg (image)

I take particular issue with the last statement, as the use of the desktop for file storage is 100% exactly the same between Windows and OS X (GNOME and KDE too). Being overloaded is far far more of a user tendency, some do it some don't. Though, as a side effect to common third-party practice, all things being equal Windows would tend to be more overloaded due to Windows application installers insistence on shortcuts.

Having switched myself from Windows to Mac, I don't understand your difficulties with large numbers of files. There's still the requisite load times for previews (in my experience Finder has been faster, and I've never had it crash on an unrecognized filetype - one of my Windows computers routinely crashes upon opening a folder with certain varieties of .avi files). Windows Explorer has an easier interface for sharing folders, whereas you have to go through System Preferences on OS X. Making a new blank file of various types is also useful. Finder wins out for opening files, as Quick Look makes things very quick and convenient, and it also wins for working with files, due to Automator and Services.

As for volume of addons, I fail to see how that shows any kind of weakness. If anything, it shows power, as it allows that kind of extensibility and users feel encouraged to expand. You wouldn't say addons/extensions in a web browser are a sign of weakness, would you?

Yeah this is the best part... They're supposedly gearing up for the tablet revolution... Like RIM, this would all be immensely hilarious if it weren't so tragic. A recent spell in the "real corporate world" and looking around at my colleagues with Windows on commodity laptops, I feel like I travelled 10 years back in time. Seriously, I don't need a company-issued POS. I'll bring my own laptop, thanks. No extra charge, boss. Windows7 64-bit and Office 2010? It's on VMWare Fusion, no worries... as a very last resort for "compatibility".

What a mess. Almost everything could be managed by a well created contextual menu.

Windows 7 does not have resolution independence.

Love it!

This is a ridiculously picky complaint.

Apple revamped all of the Desktops and Expose and put them all into one coherent framework. They even managed to keep Ctl-Arrow just for you and you're complaint that it now takes two hits on the arrow key instead of one because the arrangement is linear instead of a grid?

Why don't you just shoot yourself if you find life that difficult? I bet you complain if your teabag is dunked the incorrect number of times also.

I'm calling 100% BS on both of these statements and I bet you can't back up or prove either one in any way.

I'm only aware of one or two Finder add-ons and only one that has any traction in the market at all. I'm going to say (without any proof at all just like you), that the absolute number of Windows Explorer ad-ons is double or triple the number of Finder add-ons. I know I've dealt with Macs by the dozen every day for the last ten years or so and have literally *never* seen anyone use a Finder add-on at all.

I get to see a lot of user desktops and the giant field of icons on the desktop is pretty much the norm for a novice user on both sides of the OS fence. I've never seen any indication that Mac users do this and Windows users don't. People tend to use the desktop to organise all their files and all their downloads in both OS's, and they rarely organise stuff more than one folder deep.

FYI, the ribbon is collapsible so you don't ever have to see it unless you want to. It will most likely not be used, but

• Cut, Copy, and Paste function differently than Move To and Copy To. Like the Send To option when your right-click a file, they probably have system-defined selections such as, "Desktop", "Documents", "Removable Disk", etc.
• Open may "open" a picture in a photo viewer while "edit" may open it in image manifulation program. Open a webpage in the browser, edit in site builder program. Get it?
• They started putting the option for checkboxes in Vista. You can enable it in Folder Options.

I doubt most people will use it, but similarly to what you said, it could help people do thinks they didn't know was possible otherwise. Apple can nix the Finder, it's crap anyway compared to Windows Explorer, IMO of course. Microsoft isn't staying in the past. Traditional computing isn't going away any time soon and if Microsoft gets the dual interface right, which I'm confident they will, there's no reason it ever should.

I never use fullscreen apps except for watching movies. In which case, I'm not doing anything else and so I don't need access to other apps.

Sure, I do like having one app per desktop in order to eliminate clutter (the whole point of multiple desktops for me). But sometimes I may pull up a small app like Calculator or a Terminal window and squeeze it beside the other (main) app because it's needed in the same workflow for a bit. In which case I don't want to have a fullscreen app because it just gets in the way.

You can say what you like about Apple trying to add their own spin to an old concept, but for me it's always been about creating an efficient and uncluttered workflow -- work on one desktop, communication on another, etc. That allows me to deeply focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted.

Again, I never use Dashboard because most of the things I do require heavyweight apps. If I need to check the weather or an RSS feed quickly, I have my iPhone beside me for that (another "desktop", so to speak). I guess I just don't like the feeling of having things piled on top of each other for some reason -- even if there are transparency effects and whatnot. It just feels messy to me.

As for Expose -- again, because I tend to have one app per desktop, I don't have to use it that much. However, I'd prefer if there was a hotkey to spread out all of the windows on a particular desktop (rather than just for a single application).

I've only been organizing my applications into virtual desktops this way for almost 20 years. With probably well into hundreds of thousands of virtual desktop changes during that time over the course of writing dozens of large pieces of software, juggling that with many thousands of email messages, IM conversations, technical documentation lookups, etc. But what do I know?

It amazing to see people who are just so blindly in love with Apple that they believe they "let" you do things (re. the Ctrl-Arrow which has been in use since virtual desktops were first invented). Apple made it a "coherent framework". Hilarious. Fandom is such a comedy...

Three-finger swipe up shows all windows for the current desktop in Exposé, and three-fingers to the right/left switches between desktops showing all the windows in Exposé.

I don't think so. In Windows 7 Explorer there are "Copy to folder" and "Move to folder" options under the "Edit" menu.

It looks like in Windows 8 they are just exposing this functionality.

I think for novice users "Copy to folder" and "Move to folder" actually makes more sense than cut/copy/paste.

Are you high and drunk? Office 2011 is more usable than 04 and 08 with their terrible floating bars. It is also more powerful than iWork.

I use Mac OS at work and Windows 7 at home. I've owned a dozen of Macs, but I prefer Windows. To me Mac OS is very overrated. While graphically Mac OS is more elegant, Windows provides better usability.

1. Simple example: resizing a window.
Mac OS: if a lower part of a window is below the edge of my screen I have to make extra clicks to move it up so I can access lower right corner. Also maximize button does not work as well on Mac.
Windows: any window can be resized from any side and any corner.

2. Another example: dual monitor setup.
Mac OS: if you move application window to a secondary monitor, your top menu remains on primary monitor. Very odd

3. Another example: you trying to login to OS and you Caps are Locked.
Windows will tell you right away: Mac OS won't

4. Windows Library folders. In a library, you can collect files of various sorts without moving them from the folder where they're stored; libraries can even collect files from different disks. It's easy to create these collections of whatever you'd like and pin them to the left-hand side of the window.
Mac OS can't do this.

5. Windows is more keyboard friendly offering more keyboard shortcuts.

and the list can go on 6, 7, 8... I don't like MS Office ribbon though.

You are, of course, 100% correct.

Or maybe more like 99%. We don't have to wait to see if "time will tell" because it makes sense for new users. No "ifs" or "buts" about it.

This ribbon stuff is a small productivity version of what Job's did with the iPad. People will complain and say what they want, but the key is to give them what why need, and Microsoft have a long history of telemetry data showing the productivity increase after moving toward the ribbon.

Personally I'll probably just stick to context menus and shortcuts... but even for me there is something in this as after minimizing the ribbon there is considerably more vertical resolution available compared to Windows 7.



The most interesting part of the blog post for me was how Microsoft are de-emphasizing Explorer as a media manager.

IMO this is what most "normal" consumers are doing with their PCs, which means Microsoft are essentially de-emphasizing Explorer itself.

I think it will end up that what the Windows Live group (which has been rolled into the Windows group under the direction of Sinofsky) is working on will be far more interesting than a change in the Explorer UI.

1) You can resize a window from any edge in Lion.

2) There is no Maximize button in Mac OS X, it's an Optimize button.


Seems to be a common enough complain but I've never understood why someone would want to have their Menu Bar on a non-primary display. That's just backasswards.



That's a bald face lie.

You can pin anything you'd like to the sidebar in Finder. You can pin things to the Dock.


Do you not understand the concept of a keyboard shortcut. You see you enable/disable, change the keys, and add/remove items right from System Preferences.

Aha, you are right. I never knew those options were there. I agree that might make more sense to novice users.

Microsoft thinks that adding 19 buttons to every window makes the interface more "streamlined?" I am a Windows guy and even I think that sucks.

Agreed.

Things like copy/paste/rename/select all do not need dedicated buttons. Even my mum knows to use ctrl+c etc. Why do they need to take up so much space with visual clutter?

But the tabs are really what kills the ribbon. Why not just allow drag and drop customisation of a single menu bar? Power users should be able to take off the training wheels and have all the tools they actually use a single tap away instead of having to juggle back and forth between nested menus.

Tool you need not on the Home tab? Well you could sit there for ten minutes internally pondering the conceptual reality of whether the task is more a view task or a page layout task but its probably just quicker to blindly page through all the tabs until you find what youre looking for.

Older versions of Word at least had a mechanism, albeit convoluted, for customising the menu bars. It was a pain, but once it was set up my productivity skyrocketed.

The role of the OS should be to fade into the background and allow the users content to stand out. But good design can train people to adopt an efficient way of working. It seems like they always chase the lowest common denominator of computer user. High-contrast, Fisher Price colours.

Even the way Apple labels buttons with [Save] [Quit] [Cancel] is so much more efficient than Microsoft dialog boxes, which always read something like:

Are you really sure you dont want to cancel quitting the program without saving? Warning: Moving your mouse on the screen may expose your computer to malicious software. [Yes] [No] [Cancel]

You mean like allowing a power user to customize the Quick Access Toolbar and minimize the ribbon?

They did that.

Your mom doesn't represent to majority of the world. My mom knows them too but unfortunately now she's a stroke victim and is paralyzed on her left side. This new interface would actually be easier for her because most of the buttons are big and clearly labled. I also know plenty of people who don't know any keyboard shortcuts. You don't have to use the ribbon, you can collapse it, but it doesn't mean it isn't useful for other people.

Lets just be honest here guys. No matter what MS does with Windows 8 you will say it is terrible. But if Apple added the exact same feature into OSX you would praise it as revolutionary.

These things are just operating systems some people like OSX some like Windows, both have their advantages; does it have to turn into a war?

Not meaning to be harsh but I'm often.

1. Moot point as of Lion. Also, expose and spaces means that window sizing is a "set once and forget" activity.
2. Agreed. Macs or not optimised for dual monitor set-ups. Though in all other instances having the menu bar at the top of the screen (rather than in the window) makes it much faster to access drop down menus (because targets at the top of the screen have an infinite height).
3. Doesn't the login screen just ignore Caps Lock regardless of whether it's on or off? That's even more elegant.
4. It sounds like a search folder but I have found spotlight search on an as needed basis is more efficient than manually archiving stuff.
5. Such as? Spacebar to quicklook a file. Command+space type then enter to search or open any application. So useful. Command+, to access preferences for any program. Neat.

I think Windows Explorer looks better than Lion Finder from a distance. Mainly because Apple took all the colour out, and I never liked the combined title bar/tool bar look anyway.

But the Finder is undoubtedly easier to use, I find ribbon apps hard to learn in general. And as the article states, who really cares anyway, because Apple is de-emphasizing the file system. That will be the ultimate Fix The Finder - make it irrelevant.