Building the Windows 8 UI
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 by Island Dog | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Microsoft has a huge blog post from the head of the user experience team for Windows 8 about the UI changes and some ideas behind them. It’s long, but an interesting read.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/18/creating-the-windows-8-user-experience.aspx
“So what is the role of the desktop in Windows 8?
It is pretty straightforward. The desktop is there to run the millions of existing, powerful, familiar Windows programs that are designed for mouse and keyboard. Office. Visual Studio. Adobe Photoshop. AutoCAD. Lightroom. This software is widely-used, feature-rich, and powers the bulk of the work people do on the PC today. Bringing it forward (along with the metaphors such as manual discrete window sizing and overlapping placement) is a huge benefit when compared to tablets without these features or programs. It is an explicit design goal of Windows 8 to bring this software forward, run it better than in any previous version of Windows, and to provide the best environment possible for these products as they evolve into the future as well.
We see our approach validated time and time again. On one hand, the makers of tablets and phones are in a race to add “PC capabilities” to their devices: support for peripherals like printing, remote access, high-resolution screens, or classes of new APIs for developers that already exist in Windows. At the same time, we also see consumers demanding features in these platforms that have existed for years in Windows—from things as mundane as full support for the keyboard and mouse, to things as complex as support for multiple monitors, background processing, or third-party accessibility tools.”
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Reply #22 Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:12 PM
The thing that sticks in Ballmer's craw is that Apple is so much more profitable on that much smaller share.
And this pretty much confirms the hard-on they have (and the blinders):
Reply #23 Thursday, May 24, 2012 7:11 PM
I haven't loaded the beta so I have very little experiance with Windows 8. That being said, am I correct in my understanding that if a user wants to run Windows 8, none of their existing software will be compatible?
If this is true, does Microsoft really think the average user can afford to replace everything they already own?
I suddenly get the feeling that Microsoft is being run by this guy...
Reply #24 Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:03 PM
No, Win7-compatible software will be 'compatible', just painful to use in the manner to which you've become accustomed.
And, no, 'that guy' would likely do a better job.
Reply #26 Thursday, May 24, 2012 11:17 PM
No...they profit through price-gouging local markets.....just as IKEA does.
With IKEA a chair can cost 3 times as much in Oz as it does in the US....and no, it's not made in the US.....it's made in Malaysia.....and guess whose market is closer to the source of manufacture?
Reply #27 Thursday, May 24, 2012 11:25 PM
That's true, talt, but it's an 'accident of history' that Apple stayed largely hardware-centric and MS stayed OS-centric, Zune notwithstanding. And I'm just wild-ass guessing what might be stuck in Ballmer's craw, of course, but envy is almost certainly a factor.
Apple practically gives their PC OS away. Still, however you slice it, MS wants in on Apple's game, to the extent they can given where they are coming from.
Reply #28 Friday, May 25, 2012 1:27 AM
It is very odd that nobody seems to point or care that bullshit lack of sliders on this shitty new interface layed on desktop computers : even on a phone or a tablet it is just pain in the ass swiping on and on to scroll through a blog page for example, without the help of a slider allowing to position oneself nearly instantaneously anywhere in a page !
This will be the future of the new apps running on that ugly interface...
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Reply #21 Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:30 AM
This is pretty much it. They think "wow, if we combined our marketshare with apple's closed system policy we would be swimming in even more money!"
Not for a moment do they realize that the reason apple has 15% in US and below 10% globally is because its a closed system.
MS windows is the de-facto standard because most programs are windows exclusive. And most programs are windows exclusive because it is an open easy to develop platform... and because its the de-facto standard too.
But the latter cannot carry them through such a transition alone.