[Tripredacus]

Thunderbolt 2864, on 06 November 2012 - 02:58 AM, said:

Why did Microsoft got rid of Aero in Windows 8? I really liked it, made Windows Vista/7 look prettier, yes I know it reduces performance (Does it?) but why get rid of it? Not liking the default theme of Windows 8, at all.

My guess is that they wanted to streamline all their products across the line, and there is already some confusion about RT and Desktop (such as people saying they will be buying a Surface and put an i5 into it).... So I am going to guess they got rid of Aero to save on GPU power usage... which is a consideration for battery life in the portable devices.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Tripredacus, on 06 November 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

Thunderbolt 2864, on 06 November 2012 - 02:58 AM, said:

Why did Microsoft got rid of Aero in Windows 8? I really liked it, made Windows Vista/7 look prettier, yes I know it reduces performance (Does it?) but why get rid of it? Not liking the default theme of Windows 8, at all.

My guess is that they wanted to streamline all their products across the line, and there is already some confusion about RT and Desktop (such as people saying they will be buying a Surface and put an i5 into it).... So I am going to guess they got rid of Aero to save on GPU power usage... which is a consideration for battery life in the portable devices.

[ This rant is obviously not aimed at you Tripredacus! ]

Yes, that pretty much sums it up. We have often called this catering to the lowest common denominator.

Here in the States we have usually had at least two separate lines of automobiles produced in Detroit ( well, when they made lots of cars ). The normal car, and the California car with its ultra-stringent emissions and other heavy-handed regulations. If you were a performance motorhead lookiing for a used car, you did not go near a California model. Microsoft has essentially shutdown the 'normal' production line and only produces California cars.

I have a few laptops and netbooks using Win7 and Vista. For some strange reason power savings is of no concern to me because they are usually plugged in to power supplies. This is a concept that is suddenly unknown to the Microsoft geniuses as they have chosen to ignore such a scenario and conceptualized their new fangled Windows 8 as always running on neutered, low-powered, unplugged devices. It's as if their collective knowledge base has shutdown, and all the research they have completed on power management ( sensing when plugged in, boosting display, CPU, etc ) was suddenly flushed down the toilet.

I have more than a few "desktops" in various states of assembly using Win7 among other OS's. Interestingly, none of them use a battery for mains power. Nevertheless, if I were to install Windows 8, the OS would not be smart enough to detect this circumstance and utilize the full visual bells and whistles of Aero glass because those bells and whistles of Aero glass were amputated by bureaucrats in Redmond.

This perfectly describes "catering to the lowest common denominator". It can also be classified as a "death spiral" because they will end up chasing the most inferior devices into the abyss.

It also happens to be what drives many of us crazy when we hear MicroZombies say: "but the desktop is still there, it is exactly the same". That is downright insulting, and of course a complete lie.

Microsoft has chosen the path of inferiority over excellence now. They have shifted from a moderately exciting interface ( which still needed work ) to pandering to handheld toys of moderate battery life. They went from being an above-average restaurant to McDonalds or Dominos fast food overnight. Willingly. Gleefully. Completely of their own choosing.

I'll leave it to the actual softies to rationalize how it is impossible to accommodate both scenarios ( unplugged on battery versus plugged-in with no power limitations ), how they have decided to unlearn what they have already learned and perfected. After all, in Vista and Win7 no-one was forced to leave Aero and glass effects enabled, and they could not even use it under certain minimum specifications. So they must have decided that since some devices out there cannot use it, therefore, none of the devices out there shall use it.

Microsoft now obviously believes that "interface unification" is equal to "catering to the lowest common denominator". Congratulations Microsoft on your fall from excellence into mediocrity. You must be so proud. If Apple had set out to destroy you, they could not have done a better job than Sinofsky and his team of Windows destroyers.

[Chrysalis]

vinifera, on 03 November 2012 - 09:19 PM, said:

Chrysalis, on 02 November 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

I am sticking with windows 7 but I do fear the fast drop of software support for the OS, Microsoft already indicating no SP2 for it, and 3rd party vendors I think will flock to windows 8.

So for that reason incase I am forced to change OS

you're too paranoid

yes devs will make apps for win8, win7 won't be abandoned for a long time

the worst that can happen is that devs start massive making metro apps, which are actually very much crippled comparing to desktop/win32
which in other words again backfires to how win8 sucks

and even if SP2 for win7 don't come out, hotfixes will
hell win7 is proven to be next best OS after XP
so why would they shoot themself in legg over tablet OS

pfff

hotfixes are not a great substitute it takes effort to find them all as well as installing them plus install media gets very big when integrating them.

Dont get too confident on the 3rd party apps either.

Asides from windows 8 been newer the other changes this time are also an app store and this will tie in with mobile devices, look at the huge developer support android has compared to windows.

Windows 8 is a developers dream I think. Because they will sell much more software on it.

[CoffeeFiend]

Chrysalis, on 07 November 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

Windows 8 is a developers dream I think.

I'll make a wild guess and say you aren't one. Because it's the *complete* opposite as far as I'm concerned. To me, Win8 is the beginning of the end. By itself, it's a good enough reason to abandon C# and the .NET framework for something that can also run on other OS'es which are still usable on a desktop (keeping support for Win7 obviously), and if mobile is attractive at all, even port easily to devices that actually sell i.e. Android or iOS based. With MS making the desktop a 2nd class citizen, and making WinRT incompatible with 100% of what we're using (all desktop and x86 apps) and making that laughable "replacement" model (Metro garbage, or whatever it's called this week) only work on Win8, it's a good reason to never bother with it. Doubly so when MS deprecates and abandons its newer development technologies so fast. I see zero interest in all other devs I know to make Metro apps either (in part because none of them want to be stuck using it on their desktop). And with MS making Win8 such a terrible OS on a desktop, I don't those sales exactly increasing either, which is just yet another reason to consider developing for iOS and Android instead.

TL;DR: Win8 is a developer's nightmare.

[MagicAndre1981]

CoffeeFiend, on 07 November 2012 - 04:31 PM, said:

TL;DR: Win8 is a developer's nightmare.

[Chrysalis]

CoffeeFiend, on 07 November 2012 - 04:31 PM, said:

Chrysalis, on 07 November 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

Windows 8 is a developers dream I think.

I'll make a wild guess and say you aren't one. Because it's the *complete* opposite as far as I'm concerned. To me, Win8 is the beginning of the end. By itself, it's a good enough reason to abandon C# and the .NET framework for something that can also run on other OS'es which are still usable on a desktop (keeping support for Win7 obviously), and if mobile is attractive at all, even port easily to devices that actually sell i.e. Android or iOS based. With MS making the desktop a 2nd class citizen, and making WinRT incompatible with 100% of what we're using (all desktop and x86 apps) and making that laughable "replacement" model (Metro garbage, or whatever it's called this week) only work on Win8, it's a good reason to never bother with it. Doubly so when MS deprecates and abandons its newer development technologies so fast. I see zero interest in all other devs I know to make Metro apps either (in part because none of them want to be stuck using it on their desktop). And with MS making Win8 such a terrible OS on a desktop, I don't those sales exactly increasing either, which is just yet another reason to consider developing for iOS and Android instead.

TL;DR: Win8 is a developer's nightmare.

I hope you are right and I agree that they abandoning newer technologies ridicously fast as well.

Unfortenatly windows 8 is having decent sales figures at the moment and sites like this I see various tech heads running windows 8 already on their desktops. Already also dev's making apps for windows 8 and going to profit from it as well, stardock with their start menu app and start is back.

[jaclaz]

Chrysalis, on 08 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

Already also dev's making apps for windows 8 and going to profit from it as well, stardock with their start menu app and start is back.

Mr. Ford selling his model T without steering wheel in order to have third party steering wheel makers rich?

As a matter of fact somthing like this happened , but not because there was NOT a perfectly working steering wheel supplied with the car, but because some users were too fat to get into the car:
http://www.modeltfor...tem/3503TW.aspx

The dumbified version of Windows interface will undoubtedly make a market for undumbifiers, but you are seemingly missing the point about the actual differences between Windows 8 (and it's "normal" underlying working, exception made for the N.C.I.) and the Windows RT that has a completely different "codebase" underneath (while it has the same N.C.I. on top).

jaclaz

[CoffeeFiend]

Chrysalis, on 08 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

Unfortenatly windows 8 is having decent sales figures at the moment

If it really was (I don't see anyone who even plans on buying it anytime soon), we'd hear a lot more about it.

Chrysalis, on 08 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

and sites like this I see various tech heads running windows 8 already on their desktops

Tech heads are like less than 1% of the population, and they tend to mostly stay current to be able to support it. They're also the group (which is where the fanboys are) that ran Vista even though it's pretty much synonym with "catastrophic failure" to 99%+ of the population. That means very little. And when you look at surveys that were done previously on Win8-heavy sites, the vast majority of the users claimed to prefer another OS.

Chrysalis, on 08 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

Already also dev's making apps for windows 8

I see none of that happening anywhere right now, save for a few exceptions, mostly being popular angry birds-style games (which will do well on any platform)

Chrysalis, on 08 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

going to profit from it as well

That's a big and fairly common misconception. App stores are filled with garbage, and it's typically hard to find the real gems (less money to make in a crowded market), besides the popular apps. Those popular apps (like angry birds) are just about the only ones making money, some say that the top 20% (which unfortunately will be somebody else) makes 97% of the money, other says that the bottom 80% (most people) shares 3% of the profit, others remind us that the vast majority fail hard, and there's almost no money being made on the Android store comparatively (Apple's app store made 6x as much last year). TL;DR: Angry birds-type of popular games will make money, others... not so much!

And here we're talking about money being made from extremely popular devices (iOS and Android), not WinRT which will likely fail as hard as the Zune, or Metro apps on Win8 which most users seem to avoid like the plague... Nobody wants to develop for a userbase approaching zero.

Chrysalis, on 08 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

stardock with their start menu app and start is back.

Start menu replacements will likely be the most common app to run on Win8, yes. jaclaz's steering wheel analogy says it better than I could.

[JorgeA]

CoffeeFiend, on 08 November 2012 - 08:14 PM, said:

App stores are filled with garbage, and it's typically hard to find the real gems (less money to make in a crowded market), besides the popular apps. Those popular apps (like angry birds) are just about the only ones making money, some say that the top 20% (which unfortunately will be somebody else) makes 97% of the money, other says that the bottom 80% (most people) shares 3% of the profit, others remind us that the vast majority fail hard, and there's almost no money being made on the Android store comparatively (Apple's app store made 6x as much last year). TL;DR: Angry birds-type of popular games will make money, others... not so much!

I have to say, that's one impressive compilation you've put together there. It reminds me of the saying that expertise lies not necessarily so much in knowing information, as in knowing where to look for it. Wow.

--JorgeA

This post has been edited by JorgeA: 09 November 2012 - 07:11 AM

[CoffeeFiend]

JorgeA, on 09 November 2012 - 07:11 AM, said:

I have to say, that's one impressive compilation you've put together there.

Thanks!

The point was we now know that the "app bubble" won't make you rich unless you're very lucky. Developers know this. There's just not much of a reason to bother IMO. Doubly so when it's an app store for a platform with almost no users. I mean, iOS is on over 400M devices and Android on over 500M, with 1.3M new devices activated everyday. We know that Win8 has sold a measly 4M licenses, but we have no idea how many of those are sitting on shelves of stores or warehouses (MS is well known for counting many things like that in their Vista sales to inflate the numbers), we have no idea how many of those were sold to MS (just like they did to inflate their Surface sales, by counting their purchases of their own product for their own employees), how many bought it because it was a $15 downgrade and quickly realized that it wasn't worth that and promptly reinstalled Win7, how many are using it on a desktop while avoiding metro like the plague (those people won't be buying metro apps either) and so on.

TL;DR: Why develop a Win8-only Metro app, when Win8 has almost no users and that Metro apps are avoided by Win8 users, and when you're unlikely to make money even when there are hundreds of millions of users?

And since we're talking about deceptive, misleading and creative ways to measure Vista sales... We can only assume they're doing the same with Win8. But when you look at numbers that reflect reality... Like the market share of each OS which are hitting large amounts of websites, you quickly realize that Windows 7 beat it in early adoption rate five to one. And still, that's disregarding that 75% of Win8 users actually prefer to use another OS in the first place (twice as much preferring Win7 over it). It's not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.

Meanwhile, WinRT is getting some pretty mixed reviews (how surprising!), its main advantage (MS Office) can't actually be used in businesses and doesn't include Outlook (not that most people care for an office suite on a tablet), half the space so far is taken by the OS (13GB used on a 32GB tablet) and updates will only make that worse, and since we're talking about updates, WinRT isn't exactly the impenetrable fort knox of security (oh, did you think you were buying a secure and hassle-free device?), and two weeks after Surface is out MS is already acknowledging hardware problems (I totally didn't expect that in a first generation MS device! RROD, anyone?) People also recently discovered that the sucktastic built-in Metro apps have ads (in a product you paid for!), but that shouldn't be surprising since they've done the same to the Xbox dashboard recently (who cares if you bought the console, the games, and are paying for Live! too? You're *still* getting ads!)

Win8 is one huge bag of fail.

[jaclaz]

Well the good news:
http://www.zdnet.com...lem-7000007189/
are that they are aknowledging the:

Quote

Microsoft acknowledged the issue in a statement sent to ZDNet on Friday.

"Microsoft makes every effort to ensure our customers receive a high quality product. We are in active contact with our Customer Support operations and are aware of a small number of instances of material separation," the spokeswoman said.

the road to actually admit the "mental separation" from user base and reality is still long though...

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

CoffeeFiend, on 10 November 2012 - 09:04 AM, said:

Meanwhile, WinRT is getting some pretty mixed reviews (how surprising!), its main advantage (MS Office) can't actually be used in businesses and doesn't include Outlook (not that most people care for an office suite on a tablet), half the space so far is taken by the OS (13GB used on a 32GB tablet) and updates will only make that worse, and since we're talking about updates, WinRT isn't exactly the impenetrable fort knox of security (oh, did you think you were buying a secure and hassle-free device?), and two weeks after Surface is out MS is already acknowledging hardware problems (I totally didn't expect that in a first generation MS device! RROD, anyone?) People also recently discovered that the sucktastic built-in Metro apps have ads (in a product you paid for!), but that shouldn't be surprising since they've done the same to the Xbox dashboard recently (who cares if you bought the console, the games, and are paying for Live! too? You're *still* getting ads!)

I noticed in ZDNet's Win8 security flaws post, that

Quote

Among the flaws, a few patches will be delivered for Internet Explorer that will fix a flaw that allows drive-by attacks on vulnerable systems, such as if the user visits a malicious Web page through the browser. Older versions of Internet Explorer, versions IE6, IE7 and IE8, which run on Windows XP, will not be patched.

Of course this continues the campaign to get people off XP, but the way the post is written, it's not entirely clear whether the lack of a fix for IE8 will also apply to non-XP users. For example, me on Vista and IE8.

Digging further, a check of the security bulletin indicates that the fix will not be offered for IE8.

This s*cks. IE8 was the last browser version with a fully functional (informative) status bar, which sadly not even the Classic Shell folks have been able to restore completely. Not that Firefox is any better in that regard -- I kept version 3.6 until Norton stopped supporting it. The mind-boggling trend is toward giving the user LESS information.

--JorgeA

[Aaaaa]

Reason not to buy Windows 8: because paying money for it or even using it (increase market share) rewards Microsoft's stupid decisions
I'll even go out of my way to not only make sure people I know don't buy windows 8, and if they get a laptop that comes with it, get a refund from Microsoft.

Sure, there are some nice things about Windows 8. But Microsoft needs to stop this nonsense. And it seems money is the only thing that will convince them at this point.

[JorgeA]

Aaaaa, on 13 November 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

Reason not to buy Windows 8: because paying money for it or even using it (increase market share) rewards Microsoft's stupid decisions
I'll even go out of my way to not only make sure people I know don't buy windows 8, and if they get a laptop that comes with it, get a refund from Microsoft.

Sure, there are some nice things about Windows 8. But Microsoft needs to stop this nonsense. And it seems money is the only thing that will convince them at this point.

I'm with you on every count. Sales (or the lack thereof) are the ultimate judge and determinant.

I am tempted to walk into a computer store, stand in front of the Windows 8 screens, and get big eyes of (mock) wonder and really loudly say something like, "Wow, I feel like I'm in kindergarten again!!"

--JorgeA

[Phenomic]

Try Linux Mint 13 MATE, has classic start button & customizable taskbar. My current uptime is 26 days and no more Windows BSODs.

[Laurence]

I thought the author in the following article provided an interesting perspective:

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users

regards,
Laurence

[jaclaz]

Laurence, on 19 November 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

I thought the author in the following article provided an interesting perspective:

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users

regards,
Laurence

Yep
Also commented starting here:
http://www.msfn.org/...ost__p__1019066

jaclaz

[Laurence]

Quote

Yep
Also commented starting here:
http://www.msfn.org/...ost__p__1019066

jaclaz

Indeed; and I find it interesting there as well.

regards,
Laurence

[Tripredacus]

Phenomic, on 19 November 2012 - 07:57 PM, said:

Try Linux Mint 13 MATE, has classic start button & customizable taskbar. My current uptime is 26 days and no more Windows BSODs.

Just so you know, using uptime as some sort of feature of Linux is an invalid argument.

[jaclaz]

Tripredacus, on 20 November 2012 - 08:27 AM, said:

Phenomic, on 19 November 2012 - 07:57 PM, said:

Try Linux Mint 13 MATE, has classic start button & customizable taskbar. My current uptime is 26 days and no more Windows BSODs.

Just so you know, using uptime as some sort of feature of Linux is an invalid argument.

NOT really .
The point is the actual AMOUNT of uptime.
I have some NT 4.00 and 2K running 24/7 since 2002 or 2003 only switched off/rebooted a few times to replace disks and/or PSU's, that is some "uptime", not 26 days, uptime starts to be of *some* relevance when you start counting it in years.... and of course a lot of things depend on the actual usage the machine has.


jaclaz