Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[bpalone]

JorgeA, on Yesterday, 01:26 PM, said:

dencorso, on Yesterday, 04:18 AM, said:

[...] Zamyatin's "We"? [...]

[...] Maybe it's time to read it again.

I'd say so. Penguin's got a 1992 translation by Clarence Brown that's really great, and easy to find. But I'm sure you'll find it much more depressing nowadays... although this is the right time to read it.

Just thought I would pass this on, I found it available at Amazon for$1.99 as a Kindle download. I don't know how their International distribution of Kindle books are, but for the U.S. I thought that was very reasonable.

bpalone

[JorgeA]

Don't expect too much real change before Windows 9. Windows 9 has been rumored to come at earliest 2015. More likely is that it will come in 2016 or 2017. If Windows 8.2 is really going to be developed in the future like some rumors indicate it won't really change much. Microsoft need time to see lost of plenty of money before they realise that current direction is wrong. And yes new MSDN forum look ugly and is in line with Modern UI.

By the way about start menu,yes it is better way in desktop and I prefer it over start screen as it way more natural and feels better when you use desktop PC. Start menu should indeed be option in future, however start screen should remain to be optional in future for those that want use it. Some people genuinely like start screen and don't want restrict others options like some hardcore Windows 8 fans.

I can wait 'til 2017 for Microsoft to fix Windows. But can Microsoft wait that long? By then they could well become the Blackberry of PC computing -- that is, the once-dominant player in the market, a shadow of its former self and struggling to stay relevant.

Not that I expect things to get quite that bad, for a variety of reasons, but markets have a way of giving nasty surprises to businesses that ignore customer preferences.

If the Windows fix involves giving users the choice of a real Start Menu or the Start Screen, that will be just fine!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Coming out of lurkdom to give my $0.02 on this 1984/internet discussion...

Welcome back!

The negative, part #1: I am fully disheartened by what the ability to comment anonymously behind an faceless keyboard does to people. I pretty much quit the world of online comments and forums years ago after being thoroughly disgusted; yes, I read this forum regularly, but I rarely comment...a few times I began typing a response to a few posts but always chicken out and discard it, even now I am dreading hitting the "add reply" button for fear of what kind of verbal burning-at-the-stake I'm going to receive (call it post traumatic cyberstress disorder).

I've often said the internet makes me like people less every day. Can you image if people spoke to your face what they say to you online? And this is what I want to know: How is this a "good thing?" To be able to call someone a [bleep] with no consequences?

Yeah, the distance and anonymity provided by cyberspace does seem to help some people feel "comfortable" enough to be really rude and nasty. Instead of engaging the substance of a person's arguments, their first (or only) approach is sarcasm, ridicule, and name-calling. That's definitely a drawback of the Internet, and it too has led me to quit a forum or two. The worst is when the so-called "moderator" leads the mob.

In this thread especially (and -- correct me if I'm wrong -- on MSFN generally) we've been fortunate to avoid that sort of nastiness. There have been some blow-ups, but I don't remember any point where the discussion has descended into insults and abuse. Most everybody here acts respectfully even when they disagree. So feel free to pitch in more often!

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

NuMicrosoft did it again, huge backlash over the new forums layout:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/2462915e-f7df-42e6-92f3-2ee60c90fe28/do-you-like-the-new-design-functionality-2

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/51f9d2d1-d0ed-424e-b3a6-b7a88d938534/forums-redesign

It's very Windows8ish: Complaints about fake telemetry, complaints about "change for change's sake".

I read in some othe post that, beta testing was done for this new look and some MVPs participated in that. I am surprised, has no one objected about this new look ? Can't they express what is right or wrong ?

Few practical MVPs didnt get invitation at all, did MS purposefully avoided their participation in anticipation of theirr frank feedback ?

I will not be suprised if my post (this post) is going to be deleted or edited or marked as abusive shortly after submitting and some one see this as offensive.

MS wake up !

And on this thread many MVPs are complaining that they haven't received any beta test invitations for the new forums:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/7a6a65ca-3a3c-4561-b627-ecea28f6f92a/beta

Edited June 21, 2013 by Formfiller

[JorgeA]

And on this thread many MVPs are complaining that they haven't received any beta test invitations for the new forums:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/7a6a65ca-3a3c-4561-b627-ecea28f6f92a/beta

*sigh* Sony/Xbone notwithstanding, their arrogance really does make them incapable of learning, doesn't it.

As they say, man is the only animal that'll stumble over the same rock twice.

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

*sigh* Sony/Xbone notwithstanding, their arrogance really does make them incapable of learning, doesn't it.

As they say, man is the only animal that'll stumble over the same rock twice.

And Ballmer is the only captain that will hit the same iceberg over and over again, not to mention hitting every other iceberg along the way.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Brutal, honest thoughts on this whole debacle ( Clifford Unchained 2013-06-20 )

Bleszinski: Microsoft Changed DRM Due to Sony, Not Fans ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-21 )

Interesting speculation about the Microsoft capitulation. This author's thinking is all about common sense and 800 pound Gorillas and other logical approaches. Check out the 747 and Space Shuttle poster at the link for a great example.

Microsoft: Xbox One family game share was never time limited ( NeoWin 2013-06-22 )

Article about Microsoft's supposed denial of the trialware aspect of the alleged Xbox One family sharing plan. Interesting point made by a commenter. To paraphrase: "If the alleged Xbox digital game family sharing was so wonderful and was such a benefit to consumers, how exactly can that help developers?" In other words, if the thing was as real and awesome as the fanboys are saying and crying about the loss of, just how could it do anything except reduce total game purchases and drive the costs up further? Pretty good point I think. This is exactly why the "trial" aspect of the proposed plan makes perfect sense now. Besides, what developers would really want to publish games for a platform that could cause 10 people ( besides the actual purchaser ) to not need to buy the game?

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Did Nokia's board hold an unscheduled meeting this week? ( NeoWin 2013-06-21 )

Now there's a report from Finland-based national broadcaster YLE which states that Nokia's board of directors met earlier this week. The TLE story states that the board met to discuss "key decisions on the future of the company." Those plans are rumored to be made official with, or perhaps before, Nokia's interim financial reports, which are scheduled to be released on July 18th.

This ought to make the MicroZealots blood run cold. You almost gotta feel sorry for them, because they are constantly living and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Windows RT Facing Same Fate as webOS? ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-22 )

Like I said. Blood. Run. Cold. It really hasn't been a great time to be a fanboy. FWIW, I have nothing against WP8 or RT, and I do hope that Nokia survives but I can't help but to have mixed feelings about it. No-one couldn't foresee this rocky road by jumping into bed with Microsoft and bringing Elop onboard. The Phone market needs real innovation and competition and Nokia is a really solid name. But listening to fanboys and effectively letting Ballmer decide your product line is not a smart plan. Nothing good will come of it and we told you so long ago. As for RT, it was the perfect vehicle for a mobile OS, except for the name using "Windows". Had they called it Microsoft Tiles instead, and kept it solely on Microsoft hardware it would have been fairly smooth sailing albeit with a small marketshare ( which you simply cannot force ). Instead the tact they chose was to inject it into the lives of billions of innocent victims of the Microsoft monopoly ( everyone except the MicroZealot and MetroTard minority that is ) and invited a holy war visited upon them. It was an evil decision and they deserve everything that happens now because once you decide to "leverage" something that is not really yours you are in fact evil.

Facebook exploit reveals six million identities ( NeoWin 2013-06-22 )

Wow. Another day another thunderstorm in the cloud. Check out this logic ...

Facebook is downplaying the severity of the bug, saying that while there were six million leaks, most of the data was only downloaded once or twice and that there doesn't appear to be any malicious intent. In addition, the data wasn't accessible to corporations and advertisers, although we can't be sure that an advertiser wasn't one of the people who downloaded the data.

Not one of those theoretical exploits that Microsoft is constantly patching, but a real leak. That cavalier comment about user data highlights the problem, they only state it that way because the vast majority of their "customers" are ignorant and self-absorbed and consequently not capable of holding Facebook accountable for truly epic sized problems. I suppose next to the vast and wide spying scandal this story is relatively tiny by comparison. But it is still very sad because the Internet is now being reduced down to the lowest common denominator, and I think nothing will slow the death spiral.

So the cloud cometh, and the people cheer even as their data gets taken, over and over again. We're gonna need a new Internet.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

NuMicrosoft did it again, huge backlash over the new forums layout:

Microsoft is proving one thing over and over again ... they no longer have any design skills, aesthetic or otherwise.

The Internet used to be largely gray, black and white ( and blue and magenta for links active and visited ) but that was the low bandwidth era with rudimentary HTML and prior to style sheets. Not to mention the fact that end-user equipment was pretty light in the loafers. In this day and age, when absolutely NONE of those things are true any longer, it is pure insanity. It is crazy time! Who would voluntarily select gray as the dominant color for an important forum on arguably the most important company website?

Putting the comment date/time ( in even lighter gray! ) and the commenter name AFTER the post in tiny fonts? This is pure retard.

Users that include a tagline have that posted also in the same font and color as the normal text ( after a HR line ) so an entirely unrelated tag line looks like it is part of the comment.

They use an impossibly light gray for the HR divider between posts, one that is actually fainter than the divider for the tagline ( but longer ) so there is ambiguity at a quick glance confusing separate posts from tagline blurbs.

Quotations also appear in a gray box, same font, no italics, no quote marks, same width, no indent, same font, same color. Not a professional appearance by any stretch of the imagination.

And ... can the "avatar" pictures be any smaller? This is as ludicrous as the tiny account images allowed on WinXP and later, only smaller!

The Margins and padding seem to be set okay given the circumstances, in reality it is the only thing they didn't screw up at first glance.

If these webslingers worked for me they would be so fired, I'd cancel the check and then sue them for incompetence and stupidity. If it was at all possible they should be stripped of their citizenship and deported to whatever country has the least amount of computers, or Mars, if they would take them. There are children in elementary school laughing at them.

EDIT: one of the good commenters at the redesigned ruined TechNet forums reminds us of an old website, one I hadn't seen in years and preserved but mirrored and frozen in time circa 2000 where it left off primarily critiquing Windows 95 era Microsoft and 3rd party application interface blunders. ...

The Interface Hall Of Shame

Direct links to some key pages ...

• Tabbed Dialogs
  
• Misplaced Metaphors ( i.e., proto-Skeuomorphism )
  
• Common File Dialogs
  
• Error Messages
  
• The Use of Color
  
• Windows95 Explorer
  
• Windows95 Find Applet
  
• Controls
  

A nice reminiscing of the journey Microsoft led us on. This site was a great example of what the Internet could have been used for, crowd sourced critiques to shame and humiliate idi0tic design. What is amazing is that almost nothing was ever fixed. That's right, they moved seamlessly from one thing to the other, sometimes abandoning the previous controls but never really fixing anything. And now with Windows 8 and Metro and horrific HTML regressive design we have entered an entirely new era of GUI sabotage, a simultaneous dumbing down of everything in sight while selecting color schemes that only a blind man can appreciate.

This is what is badly needed today, a website devoted to these crazy designs. There are lots of threads here that accomplish this in fits and starts, including this one, but a one-stop shop would be optimal. And practically everything that Microsoft has done recently would need to be described. For example, see the page about Common File Dialogs and fast-forward to the uber-fails of missing "Up" icons and the "Libraries" and "Breadcrumb" navigation seen in Windows 6+. They actually made things worse which is quite a feat indeed. ( the sensible option was to allow the user to select which ones to use - maybe none, maybe all - under the View menu they could have had Libraries, Breadcrumb navigation, Address Bar, TreeView, Expand Current, etc. Instead they foisted whatever was the flavor du jour, knocking out all the old ones. But I digress. Sorry ).

Anyway this whole thing with the MSDN redesign has now answered one question posed above - after the Xbox fiasco, who could Microsoft possibly anger next?

Edited June 23, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[JorgeA]

Facebook exploit reveals six million identities ( NeoWin 2013-06-22 )

Wow. Another day another thunderstorm in the cloud. Check out this logic ...

Facebook is downplaying the severity of the bug, saying that while there were six million leaks, most of the data was only downloaded once or twice and that there doesn't appear to be any malicious intent. In addition, the data wasn't accessible to corporations and advertisers, although we can't be sure that an advertiser wasn't one of the people who downloaded the data.

Not one of those theoretical exploits that Microsoft is constantly patching, but a real leak. That cavalier comment about user data highlights the problem, they only state it that way because the vast majority of their "customers" are ignorant and self-absorbed and consequently not capable of holding Facebook accountable for truly epic sized problems. I suppose next to the vast and wide spying scandal this story is relatively tiny by comparison. But it is still very sad because the Internet is now being reduced down to the lowest common denominator, and I think nothing will slow the death spiral.

So the cloud cometh, and the people cheer even as their data gets taken, over and over again. We're gonna need a new Internet.

It may be even worse than they're admitting to. A ZDNet columnist reports that,

Anger mounts after Facebook's 'shadow profiles' leak in bug

The personal information leaked by the bug is information that had not been given to Facebook by the users - it is data Facebook has been compiling on its users behind closed doors, without their consent.

According to the admissions in its blog, posted late Friday afternoon, Facebook appears to be obtaining users' offsite email address and phone numbers and attempting to match them to other accounts. It appears that the invisible collected information is then being stored in each user's 'shadow profile' that is somehow attached to accounts.

Facebook explained in its post that the bug shared information about a user that had been scraped from a source other than the personal data the user had ever entered into Facebook about themselves.

[emphasis added]

This data is being gathered by Facebook about individuals through their friends' information about them - harvested when a user grants Facebook address book or contact list access.

Facebook did not specify which app or contact database tool was utilized when collecting and matching offsite-sourced data about users.

The social network said that it was harvesting and matching the offsite-sourced data to user profiles - creating these shadow profiles - "to better create friend suggestions" for the user.

Facebook users are deftly reading between the lines. One commenter on Hacker News observed wisely,

The blog says the fix was made in the DYI tool. That means they would continue to maintain "shadow profiles", but would stop letting others know that FB has a shadow profile on you.

In addition to the general totalitarian aspects of this Facebook practice, the writer (a woman) notes that

What it means for me is that even though I've been very careful not to give my phone number to Facebook or the men in my "friends," the guys I've 'friended' might have gotten my phone number anyway, regardless of my consent. I did not know they may have been able to get my phone number throughout the course of a year, and now I have no way of finding out who might have gotten my phone number.

I am glad I've never used a Facebook app or allowed Facebook access to my contacts in any way whatsoever. (Yay paranoia.) The private numbers and emails of my friends and colleagues should remain exactly that: private.

This appears to be the first time Facebook has publicly admitted that users' shadow profiles contain more than native data (such as posts or information you deleted but are retained by Facebook) and also contain data that Facebook has harvested.

--JorgeA

EDIT: In the comments section, the writer adds:

Your comment makes me realize that people are making the same jokes about Facebook/Zuckerberg as the NSA right now. This doesn't make me feel any better about it all:

Facebook's Former Security Chief Now Works for the NSA

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/facebooks-former-security-chief-now-works-nsa/66432/

Lovely.

Edited June 23, 2013 by JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

While at ZDNet reading the article Jorge referenced I decided to check out what the others there are up to. No surprises really.

First Windows, now Xbox: Why Microsoft is listening to the masses ( Mary Jo Foley ZDNet 2013-06-19 )

Mary Jo Foley ... still writing fluff pieces slightly more neutral than her buddy Paul Thurrott. She is running cover for Microsoft by continually repeating this: "At the same time, Microsoft needs to continue to curry favor with its sizeable installed base. Microsoft wants to keep Windows users in the fold. That's why there's going to be a Start Button in Windows 8.1.". Yes, a Start Button that points to Metro! What God-awful drugs did these people stick into their bodies that caused neurons to vanish from their brains? How does a Start Button that points to Metro "keep Windows users in the fold"? They keep parroting this vengeful Microsoft kick in the nuts as if anyone ever asked for it!

How did mainstream media get the NSA PRISM story so hopelessly wrong? ( Ed Bott ZDNet 2013-06-14 )

U.S. government loosens gag order on security-related data requests ( Ed Bott ZDNet 2013-06-15 )

Don’t let NSA paranoia destroy your productivity ( Ed Bott ZDNet 2013-06-19 )

Ed MicroBott ... ( mentioned earlier ) ... has been busy pooh-poohing the huge spying story of the past two weeks. Those were his last three columns prior to a new one a couple of days ago called As the Do Not Track standard unravels, privacy alternatives emerge in which he ends with this: "The bottom line is widespread consumer confusion. At this point, maybe the best thing that could happen for the privacy movement is to let the Do Not Track standard die a painful and public death and turn the task over to the companies that actually connect people to the web.". I think it's pretty clear that Ed isn't close to being a friend of privacy. When you add in his endless shilling and defense of everything Microsoft, I think it is safe to say he is also no friend of the Consumer in general.

Why is Microsoft obsessed with live tiles, and why doesn't Apple care? ( Matt Baxter-Reynolds ZDNet 2013-06-14 )

MBR ... Column contrasts the approaches taken for the end-user GUI from both companies. He also points out something about the default Metro screen seen on almost all demo and advertising Windows 8 computers: "That's right. The screenshots are the same. In fact, the screenshots from all of the OEMs are always the same. It's always Friday 8, you've always just got an email from Wendy Teo, and it's always 77 degrees Fahrenheit. And it doesn't matter whether it's a desktop, a tablet, a hybrid, an all-in-one, or anything. It's always the same image.". I guess I just never cared enough to magnify the images. But about the "Live Tiles", this should have been easy. We have always had the OPTION to add and enable gadgets since Win6. The same goes for many SysTray icons for a much longer period. Heck, we can add performance or resource meters and other optional realtime task manager components at will. The key word here is OPTION. So the question should be, what idi0t removed that word from all the dictionaries up in Redmond?

Two Microsofts: Mulling an alternate reality ( Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols ZDNet 2013-06-18 )

SJVN ... ( OMG the MicroZealots just hate this guy ) ... His column is fun speculation of what would have happened if the recently deceased Judge Jackson had succeedded in breaking Microsoft into separate companies. I think he is pretty close in some of his scenarios, but not quite getting it right. That Judge had it exactly correct, split the Windows OS division off. This would firewall off the portion that writes the "Operating System", software that serves many masters, NOT JUST Microsoft. This is the core problem that should be front and center today with the "Windows Store" included in the OS that steers people right to Microsoft's walled-garden where they are the gatekeepers to what software is ALLOWED on the computer ( once the desktop is gone, this will be certain ). They have designed the future to be the Metro walled-garden, they have said so. How much clearer can this be?

Anyway, I am more optimistic than SJVN. If the Windows people were a completely separate company NOT answering to Microsoft they would be responsive to developers anywhere and everywhere. They would not be designing a walled garden and would be going through great effort to crush bugs that break software from working correctly and would no doubt be preserving absolute backward compatibility. Needless to say, this separate Windows company would also have to control the file system IP, as well as other platform components like Direct-X and anything else with APIs and similar standards. That is the perfect scenario. He also speculates that Ballmer and Gates would have jumped to this branch, but that is where I would have drawn the line. Neither of these creeps should be allowed near such an important division, especially one that is supposed to be neutral and must play nice with others. They do not fit that description at all.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Update: As Microsoft Restructuring Nears, Top Execs Fret Over Their Fate ( All Things D 2013-06-23 )

'Major' Microsoft reorg expected by July 1st as Ballmer contemplates single 'Windows' division ( The Verge 2013-06-23 )

Microsoft reportedly nearing restructuring ( NeoWin 2013-06-23 )

Ballmer is reportedly considering a new structure that would create four separate divisions: enterprise business, hardware, applications and services, and an operating systems group. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the OS group could be jointly led by Windows Phone chief Terry Myerson and head of Windows engineering Julie Larson-Green. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed to The Verge that the new structure would see a significant focus on further aligning the Windows and Windows Phone operating systems. Microsoft moved to a shared Windows 8 kernel in October for Windows Phone, but applications that run on both platforms still need tweaking by developers, and the two Windows stores remain separate.

Yeah but don't anyone get their hopes up though. I would call this yet another Mojave Experiment, this time aimed at Wall Street in hopes of creating a firebreak under any potential fall of their stock price in the coming months as Summer through October is always a risky period. The entire market has been in quasi-crash mode for the last two trading days and there is really potential for a huge correction to the recent irrational exuberance.

Alternatively, this simply could be yet another endgame strategic move by Ballmer to shuffle around and eliminate some of his "competition" for the big chair.

Anyway, there is some ironic phrasing in the source article ...

The impending changes — and the lack of information about them — has made for some level of discomfort inside Microsoft, where many high-ranking managers have been at the company for a very long time.

“It feels like it is going to be titanic — that Steve is doing this change for his legacy,” said one person close to the situation. “And it’s the first time in a long time that it feels like that there will be some major shifts, including some departures.”

Certain ship metaphors might prove very accurate if they keep following the current path.

( Image Source )

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

More about the TechNet forum adjustments.

I've been reading through some of the threads at social.technet.microsoft.com. And it is like Formfiller said, mostly negative. This had to be expected though, because who could really find the changes and the new look anything except butt ugly!

Well I found one. ~sigh~ The threadstarter for an official topic called: Love the new Forums UX !!! ...

About the appearance ... First of all, that is a 1:1 capture. That avatar image really is 44 x 33 pixels. When you insist on using the same code to output on everything from a tiny phone to gigantic display something has got to give. Our eyesight. ~sigh~ The capture gives a taste of some of the things I mentioned a few posts back: all the gray, the light HR between posts, the darker HR between comment and tagline WITHIN a post, the same font used for both, the miles of white, the miniature fonts for the date/time and identification. Now hear this! I hereby charge Microsoft with an Eighth Amendment violation of the U.S. Constitution.

About the content ... ( Note, I didn't blot out the name as usual because it is obviously right at the link ) As you can see, he is a Softie and is also the lead tester for the re-design. He has a vested interest in this! Talk about no shame. You know, I've seen this before at a place I subcontracted for, an even larger mega-Corporation with all kinds of politics and infighting. People did this kind of thing for posturing ( internally, there was no Internet yet ) . This is how you can pad your Résumé. The technical term way back then was called "brown-nosing", these days it is called "Using Social to raise your Visibility". Later on, the middle-management suits will comb through this stuff to see who is with the program. It makes sense since Résumés or CVs will be less differentiating between current employees, the hiring process ensures that fact.

Sure enough, our tester here hits all the propaganda points, right to the letter ...

• - Fast
  - I can search relevant results and still in the same experience
  - I love how fluid the UI looks like
  - It's easy to use

... how transparent can you be? Will Microsoft managers really take that seriously? Are they so far morphed into a bureaucratic monster that this is how the Office operates? I imagine so. It is what has been described at Mini-Microsoft blog over and over again. Not to mention the famous Vanity Fair article: Microsoft’s Lost Decade. Ah well, I don't work there, but good luck to those that do.

One more thing, the poster did NOT use any smiley or some other hint that this thread was even semi-humorous ( if that was the case I would have skipped this "content" critique ). Now the fact that it is titled: Love the new Forums UX !!! is hysterical IMHO, and I did a double-take thinking it was a humor thread ( I'll bet I wasn't the only one ). No, it was an entirely serious post and is implicitly asking for comments to it. So be it. Nothing personal against this person is meant. But when huge GUI aesthetic screw-ups are made ( that forum style sheet ) all we can do is pound it into the ground. It is our civic duty. And when it is this bad, a retro jump back to 1991 ( or worse really, because of the tiny fonts ) they need to be shamed into submission.

There is a great reply to the thread ( still there currently, but who knows ... ) ...

Love the new Forums UX !!!

Is that an opinion, or a command?

Because it sucks.

You can't tell who started a thread.

Who last replied.

When it started.

Where or in which forum it started.

What's with each posts' two-sentence-content snippet now cluttering up the Thread List?

Did anybody ask to see anything besides the Subject Title there?

Is there no way to close that list of chicken scratches there on the left?

That's the visual beautification you would dedicate 25% of the screen to?

With no way to turn that off? 1980 era b&w checkmark glyphs?

This editor still is bug infested.

I didn't even get to complete this one post without losing text while typing.

Click this.and this. and especially this.

(thanks for banning my one-minute-old account for posting this scorcher, great sportsmanship).

We sure can see what the priorities were. Truly in the spirit of W8.

Just watch the usage plummet.

This does truly suck.

I love that first one: "Is that an opinion, or a command?"

EDIT: typo(s)

Edited June 24, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[JorgeA]

Why is Microsoft obsessed with live tiles, and why doesn't Apple care? ( Matt Baxter-Reynolds ZDNet 2013-06-14 )

MBR ... Column contrasts the approaches taken for the end-user GUI from both companies. He also points out something about the default Metro screen seen on almost all demo and advertising Windows 8 computers: "That's right. The screenshots are the same. In fact, the screenshots from all of the OEMs are always the same. It's always Friday 8, you've always just got an email from Wendy Teo, and it's always 77 degrees Fahrenheit. And it doesn't matter whether it's a desktop, a tablet, a hybrid, an all-in-one, or anything. It's always the same image.". I guess I just never cared enough to magnify the images. But about the "Live Tiles", this should have been easy. We have always had the OPTION to add and enable gadgets since Win6. The same goes for many SysTray icons for a much longer period. Heck, we can add performance or resource meters and other optional realtime task manager components at will. The key word here is OPTION. So the question should be, what idi0t removed that word from all the dictionaries up in Redmond?

That article was quite a devastating critique of the whole Metro Tiles concept, blowing away the rationale for it:

..."OK," you may think, "I can glance at my phone and see that headline dashboard information."

But is it? Is anything shown on a live tile actually helpful within the context of why you've accessed the device in the first place?

If you're using it on a PC, frankly who cares about live tiles? A PC is about focused work. The reason why you're sitting in front of it is to do something, and unless what you're doing is a watching-paint-dry-like activity such as actually waiting for live tiles to update, you're going to blast through Metroland to get to the actual, useful, usable part of your PC.

Take the email tile. That's utterly useless. What's the point of showing one email? If I'm checking my email I need to know the totality of what's outstanding. The only useful information the email live tile can show me is that "I have zero emails."

The problem with the dashboard approach on post-PC devices is they rail against the "monochronicity" which is central to what makes those devices usable. Monochronicity means "one thing at a time," and puts front and centre this fact: the reason why you access your smartphone or tablet is to drive down into an app. The shell should, in monochronistic operating systems, which all post-PC operating systems are, fade into the background.

This is the central thrust of Wes's article that I called out earlier and why, I believe, Apple ignored live tiles and widgets in their iOS 7 reboot.

My only quibble is to point out that on a real (i.e., a powerful enough) PC (with a real multitasking OS) you will be, as often as not, actually focusing on two or three or four really important things at once -- say, you'll have a spreadsheet open to feed numbers into the PowerPoint presentation you're working on, and a calendar to schedule it and an e-mail blast to the team to coordinate. (So despite what the writer said about "monochronicity," fans of limited-tasking Metro-style computing can't use that idea to argue for Win8 on a PC.) There is no place for a news or stock tile in the workflow, and no benefit in disrupting it to go into the Metro screen to check them. And even here, Vista and 7 are superior to 8 -- if you really want to keep tabs on the stock market while work is getting done, you can keep your 3, 4, or 5 windows open and still have the stocks Gadget show you what's going on in the corner. Whichever way you go in this type of scenario, Windows 8 serves no purpose that 7 and even Vista don't do better.

--JorgeA

Edited June 24, 2013 by JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Weekend Roundup of some loose ends ...

ConnectED initiative promises schools +100Mbps Internet in 5 years ( TechSpot 2013-06-07 )

Microsoft offering Surface RT to students for $199 [update] ( NeoWin 2013-06-17 )

And we taxpayers are screwed ... again. I defy anyone to explain what a school needs any internet for? I mean any at all? What, to train kids to visit websites? And Microsoft figures they will get them hooked on Windows, just great. The schools and are kids are becoming targets of the Big Technology cabal. You know what, if the stereotypical case of a drug dealer showing up to hand out free samples to get them hooked merits those special "drug-free zone" laws we have, then I say it's time for a similar law to ban recreational computer use at schools. Most of the commenters at the TechSpot thread get this, but there is always one ...

I go to a school of 1,200+ students, fairly decent size. Our total bandwith is 25Mbps. They have to ban websites that allow us to watch videos because if 9 students decide they want to watch 720p videos, they entire schools internet comes to a hault. It's terrible. We need this 100Mbps now, not in 5 years. In 5 years regular homes will have 1 Gbps while schools will still be stuck at 100Mbps...

First of all, assume it is a student. In that case he just demanded we taxpayers ante up so he can watch freakin' videos. I got a better idea, give the kid a pencil and have him complete the square and write out the quadratic formula. After that move on to spelling and grammar, neither of which will be learned through Internet access ( quite the contrary ). But if you think he really is a student, you are probably wrong. We have a wicked education lobby here running up our school taxes each and every year by doing this same thing each budget season, and our local papers ( no really, the ones made of paper ) are loaded with similar stories of whining brats going on about school lunches and other things ( while wearing $100 sneakers and blabbing on cellphones ). And the voters often fall for it. This is the captive "market" that Apple and Microsoft and countless OEM computer makers plunder. Excuse me while I go vomit.

Jony Ive Redesigns Things ( JonyIveRedesignsThings.tumblr.com 2013-06-10 )

This is hysterical. A website that went up around the time of the iOS 7 announcement, which features among other things, gradients ... lots of them! They are posting page after page full of images of things that Jony Ive could have "redesigned" with gradients. It really is funny! ( Credit: I think I saw this first mentioned somewhere over at TechBroil ). I think they're having as much fun hammering Jony Ive as we have had with Sinofsky.

6 Features iOS 7 Took from Android and Other Operating Systems ( Maximum PC 2013-06-19 )

Comparisons of some new iOS features against the places that they were "borrowed" from. Mostly Android and WebOS naturally.