

Daring Fireball: Ice Water Enthusiast - guywithabike
http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/ice_water_enthusiast

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terhechte
I find that Windows users are not really known for their progressiveness. Lets
divide them into three groups:

Business users, who have no choice anyway since IT installs their machines. As
businesses are actually the main force behind Microsofts keen upholding of
legacy code, there is little reason for them to get excited about a new
interface. So here we have a very low adoption rate.

Non-Computer users: The kind of people who almost accidentally bought their PC
at Walmart, still run Windows XP (maybe even 98SE), and mostly use the system
to print ugly birthday flyers or play Solitaire. They would probably enjoy
Win8, but they won’t ever notice it exists until they go and buy a new PC at
Walmart. Here, we have another low adoption rate.

The enthusiast Computer user: These are people that grew up with Windows, know
(and sometimes love) all of it’s kinks and quirks, and use it for a variety of
tasks. They’re its avid defenders in Engadget comment threads and tend to be a
tad regressive, since Windows has always worked for them quite well and as
they fear loosing the high investment in Windows knowledge that they
accumulated over the years. The less regressive, the higher the chance that
this particular person has already switched to Mac or Linux. The more
regressive, the higher the chance that he/she would actually reject or even
despise radical Windows interface changes as it deviates too much from her/his
well known Windows. The adoption rate should be pretty solid, but this market
segment is also heavily courted by the alternatives.

For Microsoft, and for two out of these three groups, backwards compatibility
is of uttermost importance. And that's why most energetic Windows users will
love the Windows 8 approach of having everything, and this is also why most of
them won't understand the complaints of Gruber et al: Because they like the
looks of modern ui like iPad (or Windows 8 for that matter), but they love
their 25 years of cruft.

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pavlov
_Newman is saying it’d be nice to have it both ways. I’m saying you can’t have
it both ways. He’s definitely right — it would be nice. But I’m pretty sure
I’m right, too — that it can’t be done._

Strange how this whole argument seems like a step-by-step repetition of "GUI
vs. command-line", a quarter of a century ago.

On one side, we have the beautiful new Apple system with no backwards
compatibility. On the other side, there's the "industry standard" provider who
has announced plans to extend their existing system with a cool new
interaction layer while retaining full compatibility. (In 1986, this role was
played by IBM with OS/2, but the GUI software was Microsoft's.)

Gruber even mentions DOS drive letters as an ugly wart of compatibility. This
same argument could have been made in support of the Mac back then...

These fundamentally aesthetic points seem pretty weak in face of the appeal of
backwards compatibility. If Windows 8 can make the "convertible tablet"
finally work, it will sell.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
One difference is that the command-line and DOS applications didn't require
more CPU and memory resources. Another difference is that the mouse didn't
remove the main input device for the command line - the keyboard. Yet another
difference is that extending the command-line into GUI didn't coincide with a
switch to an entirely different system architecture.

The argument is not that personal computer OSes and mobile device OSes won't
be converging down the road. Actually that's the big thing with Lion, isn't
it. And I'm sure it will be a similar thing with iOS 5. The argument, though,
is that they will never meld completely because it is impossible (or at the
very least very, very unlikely) to have both full backwards compatibility and
full and proper casual computer, or tablet if you will, experience.

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cleverjake
Doesn't this seem a bit... conceded? A point by point refutation of another
sites refutation of a general opinion of a group based mainly on two
individuals in saids' group individual blog posts. Simply because gruber and
snell didnt say it doesnt mean no one said it. I felt that Newman's article
was a fairly well rounded argument for windows 8, and this article a lot more
fluff.

~~~
mooism2
"Conceited"?

~~~
cleverjake
con·ceit·ed/kənˈsētid/ Adjective: Excessively proud of oneself; vain.

My point was that he was making a response to a general feel from a group of
people specifically about his individual response, and saying things in the
authors article were wrong/misleading because he himself did not say them.

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rkwz
>> _And so what happens to the version of Excel that’s running in the
background when you unplug the mouse and keyboard and go back reading an
e-book on the device as a tablet? Does it somehow stop consuming resources?
The difference between iOS and Mac OS X is far more than touchscreen vs.
mouse-and-keyboard. It’s an entirely different set of rules and expectations
for what an app can do, when it can expect to be running, and how much
resources it can consume._

The only useful part in the whole article.

~~~
mooism2
And I'm curious to see what Windows 8 does in this situation.

(I'd like to be able to plug a keyboard+monitor into my phone and get a
Chrome-esque environment, but I'd also like it not to drain my battery or
otherwise irritate me...)

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steele
I find this shallow and pedantic. _monocle_

~~~
ryall
+1 I like the part where daring fireball complains about being called an
"apple enthusiast"...

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msie
MS has done tablets before. How is this going to be any different? Maybe
timing? MS is hedging their bets as always. Not wanting to fully abandon their
Windows OS. (Except maybe in the case of XBox and Zune.) I wish they did move
forward with Courier. Windows 8 will be a jack of all trades and master of
none.

Update:

Just saw a video of Windows 8 and it looks great but I still have worries
about trying to combine the old with the new. Interface looks great until you
run one of those old windows apps (ughhh). And when will be ever rid of those
drive letters? ;-)

Update 2:

There are two skills that will not go out of fashion: windows/x86 programming
and HTML/JS.

~~~
wahnfrieden
This is pretty different from their previous tablets in at least clear way:
it's not a stylus-based interface.

