I good quote about the way Apple innovates. "Good artists know how to copy, Great artists know what to steal".
I was good to see Microsoft finally thinking about "stealing concepts" from non-computer oriented domains, thinking about humanities and ergonomics. A step in the right direction IMHO,
However, to make this viable as a tablet platform, they have to give up this idea of running all of the legacy apps and supporting legacy design assumptions. File System Browsers and management, On screen multitasking, etc. Get over it guys... open your minds a bit more.
This was from Anandtech?"Microsoft also showed that you've got full access to the underlying file system regardless of whether you're in standard Windows mode or the new tile based start screen with lighter weight HTML5 apps."
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!
I use 3 devices, and Microsoft wants to reduce that to 2 by making my tablet as powerful as my computer. Kudos to them for that. How well they can execute is another story and there are still too many unanswered questions. Still, it would be funny to think that we could potentially sync an iPad to a Windows 8 tablet. Although iOS 6 will probably be out by the time Windows 8 launches, by which point Apple would have rid the iPad's dependence on iTunes.
Don't like the fact that it's Windows underneath all of the cosmetics though, both a blessing and a curse but shows that Microsoft hasn't quite moved with the times. Hopefully they'll properly optimise it so we don't get any slowdown and lag on the tablet side, which did look quite zippy. People expect tablets to be quick and responsive so Microsoft have task ahead of them.
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.
I would be surprised if Steve c.s. would pay a lot of attention. Only if they haven't enough to tell on their own.
But if they do, maybe it is good to recount the history of Cairo and Longhorn. Because whenever Microsoft announces something in consumer space, history shows there is only a chance of some of it actually ending up in consumer's hands.
The only really new ideas I saw there were the idea of app icons being huge and live, and the way you can have multiple full-screen apps on screen at once by squashing them side by side. Everything else I have already seen on other products. But it's still good to see Microsoft trying to shake things up.
This was from Anandtech…"Microsoft also showed that you've got full access to the underlying file system regardless of whether you're in standard Windows mode or the new tile based start screen with lighter weight HTML5 apps."
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!
My point wasn't that tablets are incapable of filesystem browser/management due to lack of CPU performance. iOS devices definitely have a filesystem, just like Mac OS X.
My point was that times have changed and most users no longer care to do file system management for themselves nor do they particularly want Apps to be presented with a raw filesystem view. For most consumers, providing them with a tree like organization structure is more information then they really want to deal with. Grandma... to open the photo go to the folder "a" then "b" then
"c" and then "d" and then open file mno.jpg". Seriously? this is the best we can do?
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.
So.. Windows 8 can show you the physical filesystem and allow you to manage files for yourself. Just like MS-DOS. The question, however, is this a selling point for the modern day device designed for non-techie consumers?
I use 3 devices, and Microsoft wants to reduce that to 2 by making my tablet as powerful as my computer. Kudos to them for that. How well they can execute is another story and there are still too many unanswered questions. Still, it would be funny to think that we could potentially sync an iPad to a Windows 8 tablet.
The developments seem to go to the cloud for syncing and iOS, Mac OS X, etc. as front ends for cloud services. No need for iPad - Win8 tablet syncing.
Quote:
Although iOS 6 will probably be out by the time Windows 8 launches, by which point Apple would have rid the iPad's dependence on iTunes.
Either iOS 7 will be out or Windows 8 will be watered down if history is any guide.
Quote:
Don't like the fact that it's Windows underneath all of the cosmetics though, both a blessing and a curse but shows that Microsoft hasn't quite moved with the times. Hopefully they'll properly optimise it so we don't get any slowdown and lag on the tablet side, which did look quite zippy. People expect tablets to be quick and responsive so Microsoft have task ahead of them.
And if they are moving to ARM for the tablet, they will leave WinTel legacy firmly behind. I don't know if they are willing to do that.
Microsoft used to be strongest in having a good strategy. In the early days, their tech was always mediocre or bad (or decent, but acquired), but their strategy was always ahead of everybody else. Gates was the first to see that PCs would become ubiquitous and cheap and built the entire company on top of that brilliant insight. But Microsoft has always been very bad at technology. Their products were mediocre and often stale. Their futuristic ideas (like everything AI-like) were naive (gates can be blamed here, he never understood it). They never were decent designers (both outside and inside of systems). Then they lost their strategic capability, somehow (being in a monopoly that has to be defended might have something to do with it, or maybe it was just one single brilliant insight). It is quite of funny: Apple was an innovation-oriented company with poor strategy that then lost its design capability. Microsoft was a strategy-oriented company with poor innovation skills that lost its strategic capabilities (maybe because there was never need of them for a long time, they just atrofied).
Apple has (obviously) re-established its innovation-orientation between 1996 and now. It has also improved markedly in strategic skills. I know Microsoft has been trying for years to improve their design skills (trying to get the best of the field, but they all seem to get smothered in the Microsoft culture).
My iPad has 155 applications plus quite a few bookmarks saved to homepage icons this all fits nice in 9 screens. The first two screen for favorite apps, third for news apps fourth is all folders (reference, utillitys, etc.) the fifth screen is tv and video apps, 6 & 7 are my games and 8 is educational apps for my two year old and the last screen is a collection of the Dr. Seuss book apps ( I hope they make them all). How is that UI with such big tiles going to handle so many apps ( I'm sure some have many more than this too).
[QUOTE=MauiJoe;1873967]My iPad has 155 applications plus quite a few bookmarks saved to homepage icons this all fits nice in 9 screens. The first two screen for favorite apps, third for news apps fourth is all folders (reference, utillitys, etc.) the fifth screen is tv and video apps, 6 & 7 are my games and 8 is educational apps for my two year old and the last screen is a collection of the Dr. Seuss book apps ( I hope they make them all). How is that UI with such big tiles going to handle so many apps ( I'm sure some have many more than this too).[/QUOTE
My guess is it will be done in a similar way to WP7. You would enable tiles for your favourite apps. For the rest you would have an apps tile that would take you to a long list or set of icons. This would provide the best of both worlds.
The developments seem to go to the cloud for syncing and iOS, Mac OS X, etc. as front ends for cloud services. No need for iPad - Win8 tablet syncing.
Assuming we're not still using iTunes.
Good points, I'm slightly more optimistic than yourself although they're still sticking to the tried and tested 'Windows everywhere' strategy. The question is, will Windows 8 launch before the iPad matures to the point it can act as a primary computer. Also interesting is the fact that Microsoft seem to be phasing out Balmer. He wasn't around announcing Mango last week or introducing Windows 8.
It seems that MS developed its own style without the blatant copying it's always (and most of the time rightly so) accused of. It seems that the ripoff copying is now Android only.
I must say it actually looked good and seems to be in some ways the next step for touch computing. Maybe MS finally knows what to do and dropping propriety software like Silverlight and adopting HTML 5 is the way to go. It is possible however that MS is betting on several things at the same time and that one moment of bad judgement (on Balmers part for example) could kill the whole thing. But I must say kudos to the developers, I hope they have a good time developing and refining this interface.
Another thing is that it isn't important if it is a layer above older software. For the end user perspective it only matters if it runs smooth and presents the right paradigms in a fluent way.
More using HTML for something it wasn't designed for. It was designed for creating documents with hyperlinks. It was never designed for applications. It has always been very clunky in the creation of web apps. We need javascript shared libraries, javascript bytecode format, and (although canvas/webgl is a good first step) need a way to create widgets that doesn't require strange hacks that reuse html elements.
Hopefully just the little windows are html and the entire thing isn't. Otherwise I can see the next generation of windows malware inserting html tags in this table to mess up the formatting of everything. I've seen it enough times in non-malicious software. Web mail messages that mess up the web mail UI for instance.
This is garbage. MS is flailing at this point. Feeble attempts at announcing something more than a year and a half away...the UI makes no damn sense. Its confusing, does not blend with the Windows 7 UI at all, and what's worse they are trying to convince people "apps" are just web sites. If you have to tell me "this blends well with Windows desktop" and show the ACTUAL Windows desktop ONCE in the whole damn demonstration; you're flatly lying to me and everyone else.
There's nothing of use in this whole damn OS beyond legacy software. If flipping through a bunch of idiotic tiles is useful then the "ribbon" fits in well w/ this blunder as class A 1 great crap.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this company, and its angering me. The money could be used to do so much more like building a gold house for Ballmer, curing cancer, making a giant Master Chief statue made of silly putty. But no, alas, here we are watching some pasty bald dude from the last decade talk about a "collage" of ideas. Yeah, the talent has left the company like D.E.D. stated.
Fun idea: stop trying to mimic your enemies with crap ass catch up and half-assed touch UIs. Develop what you got and stop trying "unify" the damn planet. How about making your mobile platform stand up on its own two legs first before cramming it into "big boy shoes" like some bad parent?
Either way; no one will remember this garbage after next week.
In closing: too much crap.
Geez. Cranky much? </kidding!!> I agree with you for the most part!
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
Microsoft product users are a fairly uncritical lot when it comes to usability, so the poor, beaten down masses will glom onto this like a pitbull on peanut butter.
With a deep sigh, I have to agree with you. Windows users have come to accept malware, buggy, crashy software, security vulnerabilities, etc. as part of the "reality" of the computing experience. I actually had someone tell me several years ago that Macs aren't "real" computers, because they don't get viruses!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova
- "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.
I feel like I'm blaspheming to say this (gosh, me giving kudos to a Microsoft development? say it ain't so!!!), but the thumb keyboard is pretty genius. In the video, the guy talked about how the standard on-screen keyboard takes up too much space. Decent point. A better justification for a "thumb" keyboard is, as you suggested, ergonomics: it works better with the way you hold your tablet. With the current on-screen keyboard design (which is what the iPad has), the most viable way to use it is to have the tablet in your lap or on a desk or other flat surface. If you're sitting on a train or a bus, you can't easily secure your tablet (well, there's always a couple inverted loops of duct tape, but then there's that gummy, sticky mess afterward, and what a pain that is!!) while you're typing. The bus hits a big bump, or brakes suddenly, and your tablet goes flying. With the "thumb" keyboard, you necessarily have to grip the device securely by the lower corners in order to thumb-type. And muscle memory will make thumb-typing very easy to do after not too long.
Quote:
- Is there a style guide for the new touch oriented app SDK? Or will it just be the wild wild west free for all?
I would not be surprised if Microsoft jumps on the "Open vs Closed" bandwagon, and in order to set themselves apart, they'll paint Apple as "closed" and "draconian", while Win8 is "open" and "free" and, "hey look, a pony!!"
Quote:
- 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.
The trouble with free-for-all multitasking is, it will basically encourage users to leave a gazillion applications open and running, which will over-tax the processor, memory and virtual memory, and will kill battery life. And, similar to what you said, I think the average user will get confused with all the applications running, and lose track of what it was they were trying to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
The only really new ideas I saw there were the idea of app icons being huge and live, and the way you can have multiple full-screen apps on screen at once by squashing them side by side. Everything else I have already seen on other products. But it's still good to see Microsoft trying to shake things up.
The trouble with "shaking things up" is the average Windroid* user. I'm a full-fledged Mac user, and avoid Windows as much as possible?(and I wash my hands afterward!</snark>) The only time I use Windows is when I'm helping someone with their computer. The question I get most often is: "I saved the file, now where is it?" And that's with XP, which has been around for what, nearly 10 years? What I expect when Win8 launches is, users will turn on their computer, and will see the weather thingy and sports scores and a couple photos, and they'll say, "WHERE THE HELL IS MY GRANT PROPOSAL???" And they'll call ME in a panic, because they can't find the budget report which is due tomorrow!!!
* this is kind of off-topic, but I said "Windroid" because I'm gonna guess that a lot of Windows users reflexively will choose Android devices because, like my one friend, they'll erroneously assume that you have to have a Mac in order to use an iOS device (not true!)
I dunno. I use Windows to do Visual Basic programming in Access, and I like things to be stable and predictable (meaning my interactions with the OS and software) to maximize my productivity. Is this an interface change for the sake of change only, or is this somehow supposed to make my life easier?
That said, sure, it looks cool. But coolness doesn't really do much for me.
To me this is exactly what I want a tablet interface to look like. I like the iPad but whenever I see it I just think the home screen looks wrong. The space between app icons makes it seem like a streached iPhone (which it is) and generally a bit of a let down when you consider how amazing their other products we're on release.
Building in HTML5 also makes a nice slap back at Google and its Chrome OS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MauiJoe
My iPad has 155 applications plus quite a few bookmarks saved to homepage icons this all fits nice in 9 screens.
Seriously you think 9 screens is nice! That's 8 swipes and a press just to get an app. 4 would be my absolute limit.
I imagine they will have a scrolling list with the jump list functionality to skip down to a letter, like WP7. A lot of people don't like this but to me it seems the best way to fill your device up with apps you hardly ever use without them getting in the way.
When the guy talked about how Win8 is gonna do everything for everyone, (including build you a kitchen sink!!) I thought about the future of iOS/Mac OS X, and I came up with this prediction/wish:
the iOS store will be decoupled from iTunes, and will become a subset of the Mac App Store. Coincident with that, iOS devices will sync from directly within the Mac OS(/iCloud??), with iTunes taken out of the synching process. iTunes will go back to just being a media player. Even music/tv shows/movies will be purchased via the Mac App Store, and will download directly to the iTunes library?without opening iTunes. The next time you open iTunes, it will update its library to show your newly purchased media. (I never liked the idea of having to open iTunes to purchase media, or to sync my device?syncing my media library is fine, but syncing iCal and iPhoto via iTunes? always felt silly to me.)
While iOS is necessary as a device OS?distinct from Mac OS X, I could also see OS X subsuming iOS for Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook. Lion is already gonna use a lot of iOS "look-and-feel" interface elements. Why not go further and incorporate full touch capability, while retaining cursor-based input as well? Not that I'd wanna use a touch interface full-time on a screen that's mostly vertical, but there would be times when it would just be more intuitive to "touch" or "move" an object directly. A touch interface would not be very useful for writers and programmers who spend most of their time tapping away at a keyboard, but for designers, illustrators, photographers, engineers, architects, and artists, a touch interface?with a screen that could lay at a shallow incline, like an architect's work surface?it would be a huge intuitive leap forward; ironically, by going back to the way they all used to work before all these new-fangled computers came along!
Maybe this could be the future of the Mac Pro?all the guts married to a touch screen (three versions: 20", 27" and 36"*); though it would be thicker than an iMac, because you'd still need room for for four hot-swappable drive bays, swappable power supply, graphics slot for cards up to 4 GB, memory slots for up to 64 GB. No more need for PCI slots, however, thanks to Thunderbolt. And the whole thing would be on a mount that could tilt from vertical to almost horizontal, depending on how you prefer to work. And yes, it would still include a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I/O ports? 4 USB 3.0, 4 Thunderbolt, 1 FW400, 1 FW800/3200 (y'know, just for the fun of it!)
* The 36" version would include an extra slot for a video card to work in tandem with the original card, to drive the built-in display, as well as push video through the four Thunderbolt slots, as needed. Yes, the 20" and 27" would also be able to push video through the Thunderbolt ports, just at lower performance rates, as they'd have to share with the built in screen.
"The new HTML5 layer of Windows 8 works like the Dashboard layer of Mac OS X, although rather than only supplying quick assess to simple widgets, the new "Windows 8 apps" are intended to supply a layer of highly animated, full screen, touch-based apps capable of competing with native apps running on Apple's iPad."
Now was he trying to say access or asses? Hmmm? I mean, it is Windoze we're talking about.
Microsoft's own efforts to build a cohesive development environment for both the Windows CE-based Windows Mobile 6 and its desktop Windows XP/Vista/7 platform initially revolved around the company's .Net APIs before shifting Windows Phone 7 to use Microsoft's Adobe Flash-like Silverlight as its mobile app platform.
So they shifted from using .NET to silverlight which is a cut down version .NET. Think someone should have checked what silverlight actually is before trying to write about it in an article.
Comments
Just Windows with a tablet skin running on top. I "get it", because it still allows you to run the entire Windows catalog, but I'm still unimpressed.
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 good quote about the way Apple innovates. "Good artists know how to copy, Great artists know what to steal".
I was good to see Microsoft finally thinking about "stealing concepts" from non-computer oriented domains, thinking about humanities and ergonomics. A step in the right direction IMHO,
However, to make this viable as a tablet platform, they have to give up this idea of running all of the legacy apps and supporting legacy design assumptions. File System Browsers and management, On screen multitasking, etc. Get over it guys... open your minds a bit more.
This was from Anandtech?"Microsoft also showed that you've got full access to the underlying file system regardless of whether you're in standard Windows mode or the new tile based start screen with lighter weight HTML5 apps."
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!
Don't like the fact that it's Windows underneath all of the cosmetics though, both a blessing and a curse but shows that Microsoft hasn't quite moved with the times. Hopefully they'll properly optimise it so we don't get any slowdown and lag on the tablet side, which did look quite zippy. People expect tablets to be quick and responsive so Microsoft have task ahead of them.
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.
I would be surprised if Steve c.s. would pay a lot of attention. Only if they haven't enough to tell on their own.
But if they do, maybe it is good to recount the history of Cairo and Longhorn. Because whenever Microsoft announces something in consumer space, history shows there is only a chance of some of it actually ending up in consumer's hands.
This was from Anandtech…"Microsoft also showed that you've got full access to the underlying file system regardless of whether you're in standard Windows mode or the new tile based start screen with lighter weight HTML5 apps."
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!
My point wasn't that tablets are incapable of filesystem browser/management due to lack of CPU performance. iOS devices definitely have a filesystem, just like Mac OS X.
My point was that times have changed and most users no longer care to do file system management for themselves nor do they particularly want Apps to be presented with a raw filesystem view. For most consumers, providing them with a tree like organization structure is more information then they really want to deal with. Grandma... to open the photo go to the folder "a" then "b" then
"c" and then "d" and then open file mno.jpg". Seriously? this is the best we can do?
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.
So.. Windows 8 can show you the physical filesystem and allow you to manage files for yourself. Just like MS-DOS. The question, however, is this a selling point for the modern day device designed for non-techie consumers?
I use 3 devices, and Microsoft wants to reduce that to 2 by making my tablet as powerful as my computer. Kudos to them for that. How well they can execute is another story and there are still too many unanswered questions. Still, it would be funny to think that we could potentially sync an iPad to a Windows 8 tablet.
The developments seem to go to the cloud for syncing and iOS, Mac OS X, etc. as front ends for cloud services. No need for iPad - Win8 tablet syncing.
Although iOS 6 will probably be out by the time Windows 8 launches, by which point Apple would have rid the iPad's dependence on iTunes.
Either iOS 7 will be out or Windows 8 will be watered down if history is any guide.
Don't like the fact that it's Windows underneath all of the cosmetics though, both a blessing and a curse but shows that Microsoft hasn't quite moved with the times. Hopefully they'll properly optimise it so we don't get any slowdown and lag on the tablet side, which did look quite zippy. People expect tablets to be quick and responsive so Microsoft have task ahead of them.
And if they are moving to ARM for the tablet, they will leave WinTel legacy firmly behind. I don't know if they are willing to do that.
Microsoft used to be strongest in having a good strategy. In the early days, their tech was always mediocre or bad (or decent, but acquired), but their strategy was always ahead of everybody else. Gates was the first to see that PCs would become ubiquitous and cheap and built the entire company on top of that brilliant insight. But Microsoft has always been very bad at technology. Their products were mediocre and often stale. Their futuristic ideas (like everything AI-like) were naive (gates can be blamed here, he never understood it). They never were decent designers (both outside and inside of systems). Then they lost their strategic capability, somehow (being in a monopoly that has to be defended might have something to do with it, or maybe it was just one single brilliant insight). It is quite of funny: Apple was an innovation-oriented company with poor strategy that then lost its design capability. Microsoft was a strategy-oriented company with poor innovation skills that lost its strategic capabilities (maybe because there was never need of them for a long time, they just atrofied).
Apple has (obviously) re-established its innovation-orientation between 1996 and now. It has also improved markedly in strategic skills. I know Microsoft has been trying for years to improve their design skills (trying to get the best of the field, but they all seem to get smothered in the Microsoft culture).
My guess is it will be done in a similar way to WP7. You would enable tiles for your favourite apps. For the rest you would have an apps tile that would take you to a long list or set of icons. This would provide the best of both worlds.
W8 = wait
W9 = whine
WI0 = why, oh why
WII = written by Nintendo
The developments seem to go to the cloud for syncing and iOS, Mac OS X, etc. as front ends for cloud services. No need for iPad - Win8 tablet syncing.
Assuming we're not still using iTunes.
Good points, I'm slightly more optimistic than yourself although they're still sticking to the tried and tested 'Windows everywhere' strategy. The question is, will Windows 8 launch before the iPad matures to the point it can act as a primary computer. Also interesting is the fact that Microsoft seem to be phasing out Balmer. He wasn't around announcing Mango last week or introducing Windows 8.
I must say it actually looked good and seems to be in some ways the next step for touch computing. Maybe MS finally knows what to do and dropping propriety software like Silverlight and adopting HTML 5 is the way to go. It is possible however that MS is betting on several things at the same time and that one moment of bad judgement (on Balmers part for example) could kill the whole thing. But I must say kudos to the developers, I hope they have a good time developing and refining this interface.
Another thing is that it isn't important if it is a layer above older software. For the end user perspective it only matters if it runs smooth and presents the right paradigms in a fluent way.
J.
Hopefully just the little windows are html and the entire thing isn't. Otherwise I can see the next generation of windows malware inserting html tags in this table to mess up the formatting of everything. I've seen it enough times in non-malicious software. Web mail messages that mess up the web mail UI for instance.
This is garbage. MS is flailing at this point. Feeble attempts at announcing something more than a year and a half away...the UI makes no damn sense. Its confusing, does not blend with the Windows 7 UI at all, and what's worse they are trying to convince people "apps" are just web sites. If you have to tell me "this blends well with Windows desktop" and show the ACTUAL Windows desktop ONCE in the whole damn demonstration; you're flatly lying to me and everyone else.
There's nothing of use in this whole damn OS beyond legacy software. If flipping through a bunch of idiotic tiles is useful then the "ribbon" fits in well w/ this blunder as class A 1 great crap.
Billions of dollars are being wasted on this company, and its angering me. The money could be used to do so much more like building a gold house for Ballmer, curing cancer, making a giant Master Chief statue made of silly putty. But no, alas, here we are watching some pasty bald dude from the last decade talk about a "collage" of ideas. Yeah, the talent has left the company like D.E.D. stated.
Fun idea: stop trying to mimic your enemies with crap ass catch up and half-assed touch UIs. Develop what you got and stop trying "unify" the damn planet. How about making your mobile platform stand up on its own two legs first before cramming it into "big boy shoes" like some bad parent?
Either way; no one will remember this garbage after next week.
In closing: too much crap.
Geez. Cranky much? </kidding!!> I agree with you for the most part!
Microsoft product users are a fairly uncritical lot when it comes to usability, so the poor, beaten down masses will glom onto this like a pitbull on peanut butter.
With a deep sigh, I have to agree with you. Windows users have come to accept malware, buggy, crashy software, security vulnerabilities, etc. as part of the "reality" of the computing experience. I actually had someone tell me several years ago that Macs aren't "real" computers, because they don't get viruses!!
- "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.
I feel like I'm blaspheming to say this (gosh, me giving kudos to a Microsoft development? say it ain't so!!!), but the thumb keyboard is pretty genius. In the video, the guy talked about how the standard on-screen keyboard takes up too much space. Decent point. A better justification for a "thumb" keyboard is, as you suggested, ergonomics: it works better with the way you hold your tablet. With the current on-screen keyboard design (which is what the iPad has), the most viable way to use it is to have the tablet in your lap or on a desk or other flat surface. If you're sitting on a train or a bus, you can't easily secure your tablet (well, there's always a couple inverted loops of duct tape, but then there's that gummy, sticky mess afterward, and what a pain that is!!) while you're typing. The bus hits a big bump, or brakes suddenly, and your tablet goes flying. With the "thumb" keyboard, you necessarily have to grip the device securely by the lower corners in order to thumb-type. And muscle memory will make thumb-typing very easy to do after not too long.
- Is there a style guide for the new touch oriented app SDK? Or will it just be the wild wild west free for all?
I would not be surprised if Microsoft jumps on the "Open vs Closed" bandwagon, and in order to set themselves apart, they'll paint Apple as "closed" and "draconian", while Win8 is "open" and "free" and, "hey look, a pony!!"
- 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.
The trouble with free-for-all multitasking is, it will basically encourage users to leave a gazillion applications open and running, which will over-tax the processor, memory and virtual memory, and will kill battery life. And, similar to what you said, I think the average user will get confused with all the applications running, and lose track of what it was they were trying to do.
The only really new ideas I saw there were the idea of app icons being huge and live, and the way you can have multiple full-screen apps on screen at once by squashing them side by side. Everything else I have already seen on other products. But it's still good to see Microsoft trying to shake things up.
The trouble with "shaking things up" is the average Windroid* user. I'm a full-fledged Mac user, and avoid Windows as much as possible?(and I wash my hands afterward!</snark>) The only time I use Windows is when I'm helping someone with their computer. The question I get most often is: "I saved the file, now where is it?" And that's with XP, which has been around for what, nearly 10 years? What I expect when Win8 launches is, users will turn on their computer, and will see the weather thingy and sports scores and a couple photos, and they'll say, "WHERE THE HELL IS MY GRANT PROPOSAL???" And they'll call ME in a panic, because they can't find the budget report which is due tomorrow!!!
* this is kind of off-topic, but I said "Windroid" because I'm gonna guess that a lot of Windows users reflexively will choose Android devices because, like my one friend, they'll erroneously assume that you have to have a Mac in order to use an iOS device (not true!)
That said, sure, it looks cool. But coolness doesn't really do much for me.
Building in HTML5 also makes a nice slap back at Google and its Chrome OS.
My iPad has 155 applications plus quite a few bookmarks saved to homepage icons this all fits nice in 9 screens.
Seriously you think 9 screens is nice! That's 8 swipes and a press just to get an app. 4 would be my absolute limit.
I imagine they will have a scrolling list with the jump list functionality to skip down to a letter, like WP7. A lot of people don't like this but to me it seems the best way to fill your device up with apps you hardly ever use without them getting in the way.
the iOS store will be decoupled from iTunes, and will become a subset of the Mac App Store. Coincident with that, iOS devices will sync from directly within the Mac OS(/iCloud??), with iTunes taken out of the synching process. iTunes will go back to just being a media player. Even music/tv shows/movies will be purchased via the Mac App Store, and will download directly to the iTunes library?without opening iTunes. The next time you open iTunes, it will update its library to show your newly purchased media. (I never liked the idea of having to open iTunes to purchase media, or to sync my device?syncing my media library is fine, but syncing iCal and iPhoto via iTunes? always felt silly to me.)
While iOS is necessary as a device OS?distinct from Mac OS X, I could also see OS X subsuming iOS for Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook. Lion is already gonna use a lot of iOS "look-and-feel" interface elements. Why not go further and incorporate full touch capability, while retaining cursor-based input as well? Not that I'd wanna use a touch interface full-time on a screen that's mostly vertical, but there would be times when it would just be more intuitive to "touch" or "move" an object directly. A touch interface would not be very useful for writers and programmers who spend most of their time tapping away at a keyboard, but for designers, illustrators, photographers, engineers, architects, and artists, a touch interface?with a screen that could lay at a shallow incline, like an architect's work surface?it would be a huge intuitive leap forward; ironically, by going back to the way they all used to work before all these new-fangled computers came along!
Maybe this could be the future of the Mac Pro?all the guts married to a touch screen (three versions: 20", 27" and 36"*); though it would be thicker than an iMac, because you'd still need room for for four hot-swappable drive bays, swappable power supply, graphics slot for cards up to 4 GB, memory slots for up to 64 GB. No more need for PCI slots, however, thanks to Thunderbolt. And the whole thing would be on a mount that could tilt from vertical to almost horizontal, depending on how you prefer to work. And yes, it would still include a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I/O ports? 4 USB 3.0, 4 Thunderbolt, 1 FW400, 1 FW800/3200 (y'know, just for the fun of it!)
* The 36" version would include an extra slot for a video card to work in tandem with the original card, to drive the built-in display, as well as push video through the four Thunderbolt slots, as needed. Yes, the 20" and 27" would also be able to push video through the Thunderbolt ports, just at lower performance rates, as they'd have to share with the built in screen.
Yeah, keep wishing, Future-boy.
A simmer approach, you gotta love it.
"The new HTML5 layer of Windows 8 works like the Dashboard layer of Mac OS X, although rather than only supplying quick
Now was he trying to say access or asses? Hmmm? I mean, it is Windoze we're talking about.
Microsoft's own efforts to build a cohesive development environment for both the Windows CE-based Windows Mobile 6 and its desktop Windows XP/Vista/7 platform initially revolved around the company's .Net APIs before shifting Windows Phone 7 to use Microsoft's Adobe Flash-like Silverlight as its mobile app platform.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
So they shifted from using .NET to silverlight which is a cut down version .NET. Think someone should have checked what silverlight actually is before trying to write about it in an article.