The unofficial Windows 8 thread

I love your enthusiasm but you need to stop and look at what is the actual reality and not dream about the future. I love tablets. For certain they will be the death of netbooks. But as cool as the Asus Transformer's battery pack/keyboard is, it's an extra item that you don't want to take with you all the time. If I've got a satchel or something, great, love it. But the design of a tablet, the entire reason for tablets, is simple, minimalist convenience. A tablet that pretty much requires a keyboard attachment to be as useful as a laptop, is called a laptop.

If you give me a piece of paper and tell me to write something, I have to ask you for a pen. You give me a tablet and I can write something without biting off the end of my finger. No other tool is required and that is the point of it. Just because it's possible to use a stylus, just because you can find one with a usb port, or wrestle one into printing on your printer, or contort enough to conceivably function with whatever tool I ask for, doesn't mean that's what it was intended to do. Your bold new evolution in computing isn't quite here, and some of us think it might not go the way you are expecting. You give me a pen with that piece of paper and then ask me to write a novel, I'll going to ask you for more tools. It's the same with tablets.

I think a general argument over tablets, PCs and everything can be interesting but I'd ask for someone to make a separate thread for it so this one can be used to discuss/praise/bury Windows 8.

Mr. Bear, you've got a reply off in that what tablet thread, which seems at least vaguely appropriate, and hey, walTer bought his tablet, so he doesn't need it for the original purpose.

I've worked for a couple of extremely large companies, so I've got a good idea of how slow and wasteful they can be, even without Microsoft's notorious bureaucracy. For that matter, I've written a calculator in WPF for a different project, and it literally took an hour and a half. There's absolutely no way you're going to convince me, short of a straight-from-the-horse's-mouth document, that it was simply an oversight.

But like I said before, the example of the Calculator doesn't matter; it's one of several applications that still use Desktop versions (including Office). The question is whether Microsoft is phasing the Desktop out of Windows, or if that's an overreaction that people are assuming because of Microsoft's clear and obvious push for Metro development. There's going to be no definitive answer in this thread unless someone's got genuine insider information, or until we all wait 4 or 5 years to see what Windows 9 looks like. I still say that getting rid of the Desktop altogether makes absolutely no sense for Microsoft, it doesn't fit with anything they've been doing for years, and that even in the extremely unlikely event that consumer desktop Windows goes completely "walled garden," it won't be for a decade or so. By that point the market will almost certainly have changed so completely -- as it has with the explosion of mobile development -- that it won't matter as much anymore.


As for the resizing/split screen Metro apps thing from earlier: it's almost certainly not a technical limitation. The whole push for WPF -- I haven't done Metro development, but from what I understand it's fundamentally similar to WPF if not a direct superset -- was to make apps that aren't limited to a fixed screen size and can flow into differently-sized containers on differently-sized displays. I can only assume that during Microsoft's hours of focus-testing and usability studies, somebody came to the conclusion that it was easier for people to deal with fixed dock sizes. (And if that's so, I'd assume it was mostly for touch screens). If I were to place a bet, I'd guess that it gets "fixed" in one of the service packs, and made to work more like Windows 7 & Windows 8 Desktop: panels snap to quarter screen, half screen, full screen, etc.

If I can rest a legal pad on it, it fulfills my needs.

(Disclaimer: I work at MS, but not on Win8, tablets or PC)

I thought it might be related to trying to get battery life in check. If the user can't snap seventeen apps on the screen all crying for cpu usage, the device can keep itself down to just using the minimum amount of cpus, and sleep whatever programs aren't snapped.

Totally agree; I was making the assumption that you'd still be limited to two (or at most three) apps running at a time. I'm just trying to figure out why the SIZE of the two concurrently running apps is fixed, when everything in XAML seems to be saying "abandon any notion of fixed-size windows."

Oh yeah that part did mystify me as well, as WPF/XAML handles that really well. Javascript/HTML5...not as well, at least from my brief experience with it. I have a feeling you are correct and it's mostly to make it easy on people to code/design it.

Does formerly-known-as-Metro use Javascript & HTML 5? All this time I've been assuming that it was strictly WPF/XAML only, and have been too lazy to read up on it.

Yeah, Metro apps can be made in a native/XAML combination, .Net/WPF and Javascript/HTML5 with some MS extensions to make life easier.

(Oh, you can also do straight native/c++/directX)

Metro/WinRT has nothing to do with WPF except for adopting the XAML format. WPF is the .NET desktop UI library. When you use .NET to write Metro apps you use managed adapters for the native WinRT API, not WPF.

This is slightly weird: I'd assumed that the Metro-ized version of IE wasn't showing up simply because I'd had the desktop version pinned to my toolbar when I did the upgrade to Windows 8. But even when I un-pin the desktop version from my Start Screen, and check All Apps, and do a search, I can't find the Metro/Live Tile version of IE. Plus I can't find any way to install it, via the Windows Store or Windows Update. It is included in Windows 8 and not just RT, right?

Should be. I've definitely accidentally started it instead of normal IE, which always annoys me.

Yeah, if you make IE or Chrome your default browser the Metro equivalent will show up on your Start screen (or will be listed under all Apps).

I had a weird issue last night. Windows claimed I didn't have Internet access even though everything was working fine. I tried going to the Windows store and that didn't work. The weather app was also not updating. It turned out that everything on the Metro side could not access the Internet while everything from the desktop side could. A reboot cleared everything up.

Yeah, my brief affair with Win8 is over. While I can appreciate it's cleanliness it doesn't offer me anything I'm interested in. More than a mix of oil and water I think the ex-Metro UI will at times get in my way. I had network issues cause ex-Metro to flip out twice and another time ex-Metro went unresponsive and I couldn't access the desktop. If there are ever some "Apps" worth using Win8 could be a good alternative to iOS or Android, but right now it's Win7 with a obnoxious and unwanted tag-along for desktops or an incomplete also-ran for tablets.

I've been using Win8 a couple of weeks now. The new start menu took some getting used to. I don't EVER see myself using the metro apps, however. It's just win7 with some slight improvements to things like progress bars and such to me.

One thing this seriously drives home to me is why Apple, who seem to have flirted with iOS on OSX compatibility, haven't followed through with it. Don't forget that OSX did indeed put a "mission control" menu that replicates the iPad's icon layout. Nobody uses it. Now win8 has tried the same thing, but they actually make it a required part of the workflow - so people will use it "only just enough" or will replace it with Start8 or another start menu hack.

That metro shit is failsauce. It's almost like having a "tablet emulator" running, and as soon as you have it you realize you don't really have any use for it.

The one thing I though was neat was the Xbox Live integration. I'm able to see which of my friends is online, mess with my avatar, etc. What I'm shocked at is that I cannot actually SEND MESSAGES to friends. Wait... I'm sitting at a PC and I have a KEYBOARD so you're not going to let me type messages? But I can go in the living room and pick up my gamepad and go into the same view and... ugh, I'm dizzy.

You can send messages at xbox.com which makes that weird that they left it out.

This blog seems to be a good gathering of useful info on Win8
http://everythingwindows8.blogspot.com/

In particular, I learned how to make an actual Power Off shortcut and about the Secret Power User Menu.

I don't think the Metro tablet emulator is failsauce. I never use it, of course, except to goof around sometimes when I'm bored, otherwise it's WIN+D and straight to the desktop. But like it or not, it's the future and in ten years, it will only be grognards like us who care.

I was reading an article on Ars Tech yesterday - a review of the new Retina13" Macbook. It doesn't have a discrete GPU - it uses the Intel HD4000 IGP - so the reviewer went to the Mac store and downloaded some iPhone racing game. Oh hell .... ok, it was this one here, Real Racing 2

IT'S A FUCKING iPHONE GAME! The fact that your $2000 itty-bitty laptop can play this, AN iPHONE GAME, kind-of-ok, is not a validation of your laptop purchasing choices.

But again, that's the grognard grumbling. People who play iPhone app games are gamers and there's no functional reason why games like Dishonored can't work in the app store milieu. Steam is, functionally, an app store and Gabe Newell is right to be scared that the new Microsoft app store is going to shut him out. The point is not that he chose a shitty game to show off the laptop, it's that he went to the app store and bought a game with a click of the button. In ten years, that's going to be the way games get sold.

Well software needs a platform like Steam or an App store. The problem is that "Apps" are this bizarre state of neigh-uselessness. The creative geniuses behind these one click marketplaces are too busy clutching pearls over skeuomorphs to offer actual useful no frills plain and simple software as an "App." Sometimes good software is ugly, but ugly doesn't make it to App stores.

There's nothing about an app store platform that prevents good, no-frills, software. And there's nothing about good, no-frills software that prevents it from having a modern interface.

I mean, have you looked at the app store? Most apps do one thing, and one thing only. And thanks to Metro, you don't even need transparency or curved surfaces in your app's graphics. You can mostly do it in text, if you want. Hell, you barely need an icon.

Attractive software has always sold better than ugly software, which is why we have GUIs in the first place. You can't blame the appstore for that.

Yeah I ran into this one. Got to be one of the biggest Fuck Yous from our friends at Microsoft.

No. Just no.

Sorry but if you think attractiveness had absolutely nothing to do with the switch from command lines and dos and the hideous WordPerfect blue screen, then you're kidding yourself (even stipulating that relative "attractiveness" in 1980's terms was something quite different than what we would consider it today.)

It's human nature. We gravitate toward shiny visual objects.

I never said that.

You're not really saying anything though.

GUIs don't exist to be pretty.

I was disagreeing with his point.

In the vaguest terms possible.

Well the post is one screen scroll away, I thought it was all self-evident.

Let's examine the problems:

1. Your initial point wasn't about the switch from command line to GUI, it was about the reasons for the development of GUIs.
2. Your phrasing in the first post is indicative of a single reason, or the primary reason.
3. I disagreed with your first post. Your second post makes a different point (it actually changes two points), therefore not one the post you quote could represent my position on, because you hadn't actually stated this view yet for me to respond to.

It's evident that you're disagreeing, it's just not clear on what grounds.

On the fact that the GUI wasn't invented by a marketing department? They came about to improve discoverability, ease-of-use, etc.

The success of the GUI is not due to its looks, if it were the web would be entirely based on Flash.

So I finally bit the bullet after clearing enough space to do a full system backup and upgraded to Windows 8 Pro w/ Media Centre (go go free codes!)

Definitely a mixed bag.

The upgrade went reasonably smoothly, much better than my Vista to 7 upgrade (which simply failed). Realtek Ethernet adapter wasn't working though, so I had to go through another machine to get the driver direct from Realtek to fix this. Activation quietly succeeded in the background and I went on to add my free Media Center pack. Minor niggles would be that monitor 1 and monitor 2 were reversed, so my Spyder2Express configuration was broken, and that my second user account was unusable. Not sure if it had ever been used however. Oh, and my PC didn't put anything on the display after resuming from sleep following setup completion, though that might be an issue with the drivers installed out-of-the-box. I've updated them all now.

I have a Windows Phone 7 so Metro (or Modern UI) is not new to me, and I've always been keen on the idea of the full screen Start Menu. I like both it and the new lock screen because they finally provide useful information to me. I wish the lock screen could display more than one detailed item, I mean my screen is huge compared to a tablet, but just being able to see some basic weather information is nice. Also, lock screen custom picture gets a thumbs up.

This definitely feels like the first OS to fuse Metro and the desktop together though, there are some clumsy join lines. Issues like Metro apps being listed ahead of desktop apps, but dumping you to desktop for various functions. Likewise, desktop versions lacking some of the new functions present in Metro apps (like linking a user account to your Microsoft account). Other things like the desktop User Accounts app showing account pictures which aren't seen in the Metro app, nor in fact anywhere that I can see. The separation of programs and system stuff into categories on the Start Screen is also annoying, especially when it insists on keeping Apps displayed even if it has zero results for Apps.

I liked that after dragging a Metro app to my second monitor that all metro apps proceeded to open there. It is irritating though that I have to open a metro app to do this first and that I can't drag the Start Screen over, nor assign this as a permanent configuration. Also, if a Metro app is going to drop me to desktop with a window open, could it please do it on the same monitor! Really, I just want more control here, I want the Start Screen on monitor 1 but the Metro apps on screen 2.

The lack of consistency in the top-left hot corner is annoying me. If you don't have any metro apps open, or have one open but it's on another screen, the corner does nothing. This is bad because firstly it means behaviour of the corner is not consistent, and secondly because it's another way of accessing the Start Screen and now you need to specifically remember to use the bottom left for that but only if no apps are open, otherwise the top left can be a catch-all. As a keyboard user that's not going to impact me much, but it's every so slightly annoying.

Accessing hot corners on a multi-monitor setup has been okay. As I suspect I'll be dealing mainly with keyboard shortcuts it's not a worry really.

Having Metro apps show on my ALT-TAB view is a little disconcerting as they're otherwise invisible. It was at this point I understood why I might want to close them after all, where as before I'd been squarely on the Microsoft side of the argument.

The desktop is ugly. The Aero Glass theme in Windows Vista was the first good theme I'd seen in Windows. I really liked it. I actually thought the transparent menu bars on maximised windows was a step back in Windows 7. The Windows 8 theme though is just flat, ugly and boring. Even the taskbar seems uglier somehow, it might just be the colour. I tried having it adjust the colour with the wallpaper, but that becomes too extreme. I haven't been able to find a way to control border thickness yet either, Google seems to suggest the option is hidden in the registry now. I mean, it was obscure before, but seriously?

I wish I could link my local account to my Microsoft account, rather than having to log into it directly. This is a minor personal niggle as I prefer to setup all my online passwords via LastPass and make them complex and random. Not to mention Microsoft have their stupid -- no shorter than 8, no longer than 16 -- requirements.

Need to finally start memorising short-cuts. Win-W and Win-I are the new ones I'm using thus far, though because of the way it divides what's an App and what's a Setting I'm not sure I'll be using Win-W much.

A mainly smooth transition though and nothing that's really making me grit my teeth. I hope app updates are linked to automatic updates somewhere, if I have to constantly go to the store to update basic apps that's going to get old, fast.

Yeah, that mirrors my impressions. Like I said, it feels very much like a transitional OS. There are lots of rough edges, but also some things that I like a lot. Some things, like the fact that you have to go to the Desktop to access many (but not all!) basic control panel functions makes it feel a bit like a school assignment that was completed hastily the night before it was due. I look forward to seeing where they go with it, though.

You know you can force password rotation on your own Microsoft account? Stupidly this can only be set to 72 days, despite this being the company which in their own Windows Security Guide recommends a 90 day rotation for an eight character password length, and higher for higher lengths.

I don't like the Messenger app. I cannot see any way to sign-out of Messenger, it's not clear whether I'm also signed into Facebook chat, and the general layout of screens confuses me.

Yeah, the Messenger app sucks, and is made somewhat redundant (at least as far as Facebook is concerned) by the People app. The People app has some unintuitive UI wonkiness as well, but actually works really well as a Facebook reader once you figure it out.

I like the Mail app a lot, in terms of UI, except for a few fatal shortcomings. For one, it provides no way to insert inline links into an email. Which might be fine if we were living in 1995, but here in 2012, linking stuff is a pretty common activity. It also doesn't seem to use or recognize any special formatting for quoted text, so if you want to insert comments interspersed with quotes from the email to which you are responding, you are out of luck. Pretty basic stuff, that, and it's a shame because otherwise the Mail app's UI is fantastic. A wonderful step back from the ribbon-adorned madhouse that was the previous version of Outlook.

I also find the new version of Chrome to be crashy. It craps out almost every time that my PC goes into standby mode.

I'm curious what MS's approach will be in maintaining Windows 8. The rough edges could be addressed in updates/patches/service packs/whatever the cool new lingo might be or MS could stick to its usual security fixes and hold off on actual OS/UI improvements until Windows 9 -- whenever that may arrive.

I'm hoping for the former but we'll see.

I've not noticed a way to update apps except through the store but it's dead simple to do so (even easier than in iOS) so I'm not sure that's a problem.

As for me, I've grown accustomed to most of the quirks and flaws in Win8 now, though I still occasionally get caught by some things. I went to print out a page from a PDF using the Reader app and couldn't locate any way to do this. I was determined to not just do a Google search on 'lol how d u print in win8 reader' so I pretended I suddenly had no Internet access and poked around, discovering the print function is located in the charms menu under Devices. Now that I know this is a convention I'm fine but it's another example of how the OS can be needlessly obscure.