
What the Heck is Happening to Windows? - amaks
http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/what-heck-happening-windows
======
beloch
"Windows was designed by a committee. The Mac, by contrast, often feels like
it was designed by a single person."

The Mac was apparently designed by a person I can't freakin' stand. I recently
spent a year with an OSX laptop, and it was a merciful relief when I was
finally able to get the hell out of iLand. My first love is KDE because it
_bows_ to my will like nothing else, as a good window-manager/OS _should_.
Win8 is also pretty malleable, even though it's not so good for those lacking
the chops to bend it to their will. OSX, by comparison, is a constant freakin'
PITA if you don't happen to be the "single person" it was designed by and for.

This might be a bit of a rant but I'm sick of people ragging on Windows for
its default settings. Windows is eminently _customizable_. If you aren't a
complete n00b you can bend Windows to suit yourself far more easily than OSX.
KDE absolutely spanks them both, but still... I would wholeheartedly recommend
OSX or iOS to my grandmother, because she's not so good at customizing things.
This blog is aimed at people who probably aren't running their OS on 99%
default settings. Customizability matters, and Windows _fucking_ _owns_ OSX in
that respect.

~~~
jinushaun
Developers live in Terminal and text editors, and regular people don't care
about customization? There's a reason why Linux on the desktop didn't pan out.
People don't want choice. They want to be told what to do and get on with
their life.

~~~
Flow
> They want to be told what to do.

Why degrade people like that? You sound like those hard-core Android fanbois
that never misses a chance to tell you they think iPhone users are sheep. :-(

No, they want the software and options to be thought through before released.

Why have 20 options for 100% of the users, when 16 good defaults and 4 options
is the better way for 90+% of the users? In OS X, I bet most of those 16
options can be changed using a terminal command.

~~~
anonymoushn
Unfortunately some of the defaults do not seem to have been thought through
and cannot be changed from the terminal. For instance, fat-fingering the
button right above backspace will pause your music and make you log back in to
keep doing whatever you were doing, and full screening YouTube videos will
sometimes trigger a soul-crushungly long transition to the needless removal of
all the contents of your other monitors.

~~~
x0054
Ok, the lack of power button options is silly, as is the location for the said
button. But there is a "fix" for it:
[http://binchewer.org/blog/index.php?id=1](http://binchewer.org/blog/index.php?id=1)

Live patching if not the best thing in the world, but it works.

~~~
anonymoushn
Thanks for pointing this out.

------
overgard
The problem with windows 8 is that from the start it wasn't designed to solve
anyone's problems except Microsoft's. Windows 7 appeal was obvious: a modern
version of windows that doesn't suck (ie: not vista). Windows 8 is supposed to
fuse desktop and mobile, but, that is a problem for Microsoft, not their
customers, outside of Redmond nobody needs that

~~~
jlgaddis
Indeed, Microsoft seems to have this belief that we must have the same look
and feel across our PCs, laptops, tablets, and phones. That is obviously the
answer because, hey, it worked for Apple, right?

There's only a handful of people I've spoken to that _like_ Windows 8 and
hardly anyone seems to share Microsoft's belief (above).

Meanwhile, Canonical has came along and pretty much came to the same
conclusion as Microsoft -- that a common experience across all of one's
devices is the way forward. And, just like Microsoft, they apparently fail to
realize that nobody wants this but them.

~~~
x0054
> That is obviously the answer because, hey, it worked for Apple, right?

The fact is, it really didn't work for Apple. Short of a few common design
choices, iOS and OSX are very different, and for a good reason. I am not sure
why it's not obvious to people. Mouse or keyboard driven UI can be much
smaller and tighter, with a lot less chrome, to allow more room for data.
Touch UI has to be chunkier by default. The simple truth is Metro UI works
amazing on a touch device, I love it. Windows 7 works just fine on PC. What
Microsoft really needed is 2 separate operating systems, just like apple. The
Windows line could have been updated with a fresh skin, more stability
improvements, and some core new features here and there. The Metro OS could
have been a separate OS for the Phone, Tablet, and TV markets. Instead
Microsoft now has 4 incompatible OS lines which all function very different,
but look identical, only adding to the confusion:

1\. Windows 8 - For PCs, Tablets, and God knows what else,

2\. Windows RT - For Tablets which are not as nice as the Windows 8 tablets
but can run some of the same software, but not all of it, and some apps which
work on the RT actually do not run on Windows 8 tablets, and, so ..... yeah.

3\. Windows Phone 8 - Exclusively for phones. For convenience, incompatible
with Windows Phone 7 and 7.5.

4\. XBox OS - Runs only on XBox, looks like Windows 8, but works very
different.

So, instead of 2 visually distinct operating systems, Microsoft now has 4
visually similar operating systems. I can see their logic, they wanted to
leverage their huge PC instal base to drag some users to their Tablet and
Phone products. Much like Apple is using iPods to sell people on iPhones and
iPads, and perhaps later, Macs. But the problem is, they are not really
achieving that goal, while pissing of their core PC customers.

~~~
axilmar
Or Microsoft could have the same Operating System but different GUIs.

Remember that Operating System != GUI.

~~~
amaks
But that's what didn't work with Windows 8. For majority of consumers UI _is_
operating system. Hence the confusion with difference between Windows RT and
Windows 8. Hence the perception that Windows 8 has two isolated operating
systems in it.

~~~
x0054
I think what he means is more like iOS and OSX. Both run a very similar
operating system but completely different UI. The best approach would be to
have a common core with Windows and Metro interfaces, but separate them.
Desktops and Laptops run Windows UI. Cellphones, Tablets, and TVs run Metro
UI. This way you can maintain backwards compatibility on Windows side but
allow the Metro side to be all new.

------
jinushaun
Windows 8 is everything wrong with Microsoft Corporation as an organization
and how they go about developing product. I blame it on personas. When you
have designers, PMs and devs creating products for imaginary people instead
making something they'd be proud to use themselves, you're going to have
problems. It's fine to develop products and features based on market research,
user studies and metrics, but at the end of the day it should pass the "will I
use it at home" test. Otherwise you'll have a company full of people that go
home and use iPhones, Macs and Google Chrome.

The only group at MS I see right now making products for real people is Azure.
They're actually developing features to remove friction and make its customer
more productive and happier—even if it means supporting Linux, Git and Ruby.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Dog fooding is heavily encouraged within Microsoft and heavily practiced
(source: Microsoft employee). Whatever you think is wrong or went wrong, its
not because none of us used it. The criticism in the article, if I understand
it correctly, is that Microsoft is trying to please too many people.

~~~
bambax
I currently work with Microsoft and what you're doing isn't really "dog
fooding" as I understand it. Dog fooding should mean that people are making a
product that they themselves would _want_ to use, to scratch an itch they
actually feel.

What Microsoft does is "dog fooding at gunpoint" even if the result is
poisoning oneself. Microsofties carry Windows phones around... and hate it.
Openly. This isn't good.

~~~
com2kid
> Microsofties carry Windows phones around... and hate it. Openly. This isn't
> good.

Switched from my Android to WP, loving 95% of it, have a few gripes, but far
less than on Android.

For one thing, my phone no longer leaks memory. My start screen doesn't
randomly take 10+ seconds to load up. My dialer doesn't occasionally decide to
just screw it and not appear.

(I had those same problems across 2 different android handsets, a 2.3 model
from Motorola, and a 4.2 model from Samsung)

Couple features are annoying. Too many steps to turn off GPS is one, I liked
having a quick pull down drawer. But that is a minor nitpick. Compared to
swearing at my phone every single day for being a bloody POS like I was doing
with Android? WP is a great experience!

> What Microsoft does is "dog fooding at gunpoint" even if the result is
> poisoning oneself.

I also disagree with this, my group uses a variety of handsets, WP, iOS and
Android.

~~~
auctiontheory
_Switched from my Android to WP_

If only there were a third mobile OS for you to try, one that's actually well-
designed, one that even many Google employees use ...

~~~
com2kid
> one that's actually well-designed

Have you tried Windows Phone? I'm a bit biased, I spent 3 years working on it,
but I'll say that of the current crop of mobile OSs out there, it is by far
the best designed.

From the underlying infrastructure used by the development team (one of the
few teams at Microsoft I've ever been on that really believes every daily
build should be stable and reliable, and has the test infrastructure to ensure
it[0]) to the lovely UI to the outstanding performance requirements the team
places on themselves.

Back when I was on the WP team, a list of user frustration levels with wait
times was widely disseminated. It was something like " 50ms unnoticeable to
user, 100ms+, somewhat noticeable pause or skip, 250ms, interface begins to
feel slow, 500ms+, user satisfaction begins to drop, 5s+, users become overly
irritated" with a lot more detail and gradations of course.

The team's internal requirements was that all UI elements in the OS respond in
less than 1 second, and even then, you'd better have a damn good excuse as to
why what you were doing took a whole second!

The UI flies. Animations are smooth and beautiful. Anything that does not
please or delight the user _does not get into the code base_.

The bar in Windows Phone is not "do we have this feature", the bar is "does
this feature make the user happy?"

All of this is of course not spoken as an MS employee. I'm just a lowly dev,
albeit one now in charge of a UI dev team, and I can tell you that our product
will sure as hell meet the same bar of smooth beautiful performance that
Windows Phone does. It is damn well going to be a matter of pride if nothing
else, and the entire management chain here is behind me on that!

[0] The Windows Phone division has over 4000 people in it, although I am not
sure how many of them are devs. Let's say 500 or so devs total (likely an
underestimate!) checking in code to what is a _huge_ code base. Now imagine
every single day, you can take the code that is committed and, without worry,
put it on your phone and expect it to _work_. Daily's aren't always 100%
stable, but they are dog-foodable and usable. One thing I miss about working
there is coming in every morning and flashing the latest code to my phone and
seeing the incremental progress that the team made on a daily basis.

Of course this ignores that many teams work off of branches which are then
tested and integrated. The overall engineering effort to keep that platform
moving is huge.

------
dredmorbius
For those thinking "oh, another piece of Microsoft bashing from some Apple /
Google / Linux fan" (my own initial thought), look at the byline.

Paul Thurrott's been covering Microsoft, almost always positively, for most of
(if not more than) two decades. He's been labeled one of the "notorious
Microsoft shills" by Daniel Eran Dilger
([http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/01/18/dan-lyons-paul-
thur...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/01/18/dan-lyons-paul-thurrott-the-
fake-and-the-phony/)) -- and that's not far from my own impressions of
Thurrott based on some of his earlier Linux commentary.

So -- yeah, the rats are, if not fleeing the ship, talking loudly about its
soundness.

~~~
bztzt
Thurrott has been bizarrely bipolar about Microsoft for a very long time. He
is pro-MS "on average" but will careen wildly between unwarranted hyperbolic
praise and unwarranted hyperbolic invective. Sometimes about the exact same
things within the span of a week or two.

~~~
vacri
It's even in this article. The first sentence is largely at odds with the tone
of the rest of the article: "I defended windows 8 from the outset" then "it's
been a massive cockup from the outset". There seems to be little self-
reflection that _all the other_ commentators were right, and Thurrot was
wrong.

The advice in the final paragraphs is just plain wrong as well. It should be
"Don't use one OS GUI for two different user paradigms", not "abandon an
entire market segment". Windows needs to go back to a traditional desktop, and
Windows Mobile should continue on as is.

~~~
r00fus
Given the rise of Nadella, I'm sure the new lockdown/home platform of
Microsoft is going to be their cloud services.

Following the Google/Apple model of having cloud profiles
maintain/inform/manage (depending on home/gaming/work platforms) all the
Microsoft devices seems the best approach.

It's also what people want - they want unified logins (note: plural, Google!)
so that they can get on with their work/personal/gaming needs and ensure that
new devices that are platform compliant "just work" with minimal/no config.

------
bitwize
Microsoft is in the same place with Windows 8.x that it was with Windows 2.x:
trying to migrate its userbase onto a new computing paradigm (GUI/mobile touch
apps) while still showing support for the old paradigm (DOS/traditional GUI).
Yes, it's going to be a force fit. In part because the paradigms are so
different, and in part because it's Microsoft and they don't know how to do
anything with any grace, at least at first.

But eventually they'll get it kinda-sorta right. And when they do, they'll
crush the competition. Especially when tablets and convertibles start to
supplant traditional laptops as daily driver devices. Apple probably hasn't
much to fear. The real loser here is Android. A light, cheap, powerful device
that can run full Windows like the Dell Venue 8 Pro has insane added value
above the equivalent Android device.

~~~
leoedin
Perhaps the problem is that the new paradigm is not so clearly superior to the
old one. GUIs have huge advantages over text based computers for productivity.
Does touch actually have that many advantages over a mouse and keyboard for
someone sitting at a desk? I'd probably choose a touchscreen over a laptop
touchpad, but I'd definitely choose a mouse over a touchscreen for most of the
actual work I do.

~~~
wolfgke
> GUIs have huge advantages over text based computers for productivity.

Then why prefer many programmers to work using the command line for many
tasks? ;-)

~~~
leoedin
I think if you're doing the same task a lot then a command line based workflow
can be very productive. However, the big advantages GUIs have is that they
allow the discovery of new functions. Reading the man page for a command line
application is complex and often quite confusing, while a well designed GUI
will often allow you to easily find the functionality you want with a tiny bit
of trial and error.

------
hetman
I just don't understand what the fuss is about.

I'm primarily a Windows user (but I run Linux on some of my devices as well).
I'm also tend to be quite particular about my UIs getting things right. Saying
all that, I've felt next to zero impact in moving from Windows 7 to Windows
8.1. Windows 8.1 feels a bit snappier. Some options have been moved around a
bit. That's about it.

I just don't understand all the polemicising. Especially with statements like:
"The specifics of what's wrong in Windows 8 don't really matter". They matter
to me, because after reading all these articles about how terrible Windows 8
is, I still can't figure out what those specifics are! I would love to be
enlightened about what I've been missing (or how I've been using Windows 8
wrong).

~~~
yaeger
Want one example? Fine. It's Fuck Ugly. There. There's your reason.

You said yourself you are fickle about your UI of choice. And yet you can't
see how many people would be just like you but unlike you they can't stand
Win8 UI? It's just like a car, the design matters about as much as the
performance of the vehicle. Sure, some people look at cars as tools and don't
care what they look like as long as they have 4 wheels and can get them from a
to b.

But for many people, the car they buy has to have a great design. It is about
as much about lifestyle as function. And the same goes for a desktop OS.

And I for one find the Metro Tile fest that is Windows 8 to be just that. Fuck
Ugly. No other way to sugar coat it. And that isn't just the Metro side. Nope,
also the desktop with its sharp 90 degree corners and flat 8 Bit color pallet
window blinds looks horrible. Like a complete step backwards looking at how
the desktop used to look under Win7. And on Win7 you could even change the
themes if you wanted to something more to your liking. Good luck trying to do
that on Win8.

So, add that to the fact that Win7 filled a need the consumers had and Win8
just filled a need that Microsoft had and you have ample reasons why Win8 is
where it is today. Even if there are people like you who apparently can't
imagine other people might have a different take on what a great UI should
look like.

~~~
hetman
Sounds like you're really fishing for a reason to hate it if that's all you
can come up with. Swearing for dramatic effect doesn't sure up an argument as
much as you think it does.

------
Aloha
Quote from the linked comments.

"The problem is that Microsoft is like a broken record. No matter what the
question is their answer is always the same. Windows.

Need a phone OS? - Windows Need a Tablet OS? - Windows Need a Desktop OS? -
Windows Need a Server OS? - Windows

Windows, Windows, Windows. It's supposed to be all things to all people. And
it just doesn't work anymore. You're right, on the desktop nothing beats
Windows. Even on the Server Windows is fine. But when they try to force
Windows on to phones and tablets everything starts to fall apart. It isn't
suited for mobile devices. It's too big, to bloated for mobile. And it's
interface is terrible for mobile, but great for the desktop. So they come out
with a new interface that's fine for phones but sucks on a desktop.

JUST STOP THE INSANITY.

You are exactly right. Focus Windows on productivity and the corporate market.
If Microsoft feels that they have to get into mobile fine, come out with a
mobile OS. But don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Leave the damn
desktop alone."

In short, Windows 8 solved no real pressing problems for users - it solved -
or was supposed to solve problems for Microsoft - which is to say a lack of
penetration in what all the kids these days (and pundits) say is the
environment of the future - mobile.

Microsoft has, and will have the enterprise and most of the desktop market
locked up for the near future - for all the apps out there for whichever
mobile platform, they pale in software for PC and the overall power and
usability of the traditional desktop/laptop computer paradigm - and likely
will for the foreseeable future.

------
Mikeb85
I actually like Windows 8 more than any other version. I'll never use it full
time (Linux user, right now SUSE with Gnome Shell) for reasons that have
nothing to do with its design, but I really like the Metro interface.

Most of the naysayers are simply unwilling to accept change, the same
naysayers that whine about modern Linux DEs.

~~~
nzonbi
Instead of relying in random comments, It would be great to see in an actual
poll, how many people hate the new Windows 8 UI. In my personal opinion, the
new UI is mostly fantastic. Perhaps I find it so, because I have strong visual
memory, and usually adapt to new UIs in minutes. If it were available for
Linux, I would consider it for my day to day use.

It is unfortunate, how it seems that so many people resist to UI advances.
Even more so, on a place like HN. This kind of stubborn rejection seems pulled
from something like a geeksquad forum. Another example is Ubuntu, which has
collected massive hate, on considerable less groundbreaking UI changes.

~~~
Mikeb85
Yup. Never understood the Ubuntu Unity hate either. While I prefer Gnome
Shell, Unity is still an improvement on Gnome 2, and has some very interesting
features of its own (like lenses and the HUD).

~~~
dragontamer
I hate the new Gnome, but am more or less pleased with Win8 Metro.

Its the technicals of Win8 Metro that I can't stand however (sideloading
licenses, the locked-down nature, etc. etc.)

------
alexcason
While I agree that the Windows team needs a singular vision about what they
want their product to be, the advice given by the author is starkly
reminiscent of the strategy adopted by Blackberry when they realised consumers
weren't interested in using their products any more.

For Microsoft to abandon the consumer market and solely focus on a sub-section
of 'doers' would be to set in motion an unstoppable slide into obscurity, as
it did with Blackberry. Increasingly people only have one device and they're
not going to choose a product which is only good for 50% of what they want.
This mythical group of people who only care about using products for business
just doesn't exist.

What they need to do is to make the product better so that people in general
like using it again. It's that simple.

~~~
jinushaun
Even Jobs himself used the car/truck analogy to compare OS X to iOS. I think
he's right. These are separate products. One is for work, the other one is
more general purpose. There will always be more cars than trucks, but there
will always be a need for trucks. You're not going to be hauling manure or
towing a boat in a car.

The question for MS is will they be OK with selling trucks in a car world?
Will they be satisfied with how much money they would make selling only trucks
to farmers and construction companies?

I say MS needs to make cars and trucks. They need to make the best trucks out
there without compromises. The best cars without compromises. Not this weird
car/truck hybrid.

~~~
alexcason
I agree. As with most bad products and failing companies, the problem here is
focus.

Microsoft need to have a vision about what products they want to create and go
about making them with a singular focus on producing something which customers
will love. It's not about abandoning consumer software or business software,
it's about making something great, regardless of it's purpose.

------
nameel_f
If you look at the evolution of OS X, the changes from version to version are
minimal. In give or take 13 years it _changed_ relatively little. It matured
over 13 years to become a (love it or hate it) polished OS. However each
Windows version has been completely different from the last version. Each
release XP->Vista->7->8 Microsoft demands a lot of adapting from both their
power users and their 'casual' users.

I've always felt that if they would have kept polishing XP or W7, diligently
building on each version, they would've had a strong OS with a strong
following. Maybe they should stop trying to do a "revolutionary redesign"
every new release and just stick with one approach for a couple of years?

~~~
x0054
Totally agree. Between XP and W7 they moved a ton of settings around for
absolutely no reason what so ever. Now they have done it all over again. There
is no reason why "Add Remove Programs" should have been renamed to "Programs
and Features." I am not saying that one name is batter then the other, just
saying they should pick one damn name and stick with it, and polish the rest
of the OS.

~~~
varkson
The change makes sense, considering no one actually adds programs from there
anymore. To be honest, I don't remember a time one actually did. Still, I do
miss it, even today it kinda trips me up not being able to look at the top
left hand corner of the control panel.

------
higherpurpose
Problem #1, where everything is starting to break down: Microsoft trying to
put "Windows on everything". That may not be a huge problem if it was only the
core base (although needing 16GB of space, something that's still the default
for "high-end mobile devices" today, just for Windows alone, still sucks), but
it gets much worse when they also want to have the "same UI on everything",
which just doesn't work and never has. Even on the web, we still get to talk
about "responsive design", because the same UI doesn't work on mobile devices,
and it needs to be adapted for that form factor.

Problem #2: Having basically 2 operating systems in one, and _forcing_ the
user to switch from one to the other, by nagging him with all sorts of bad UX
elements (charms on the desktop has always been a terrible idea to me, for
example, and the UI looks completely out of place, too).

Problem #3: Price. I don't know if they're "feeling" this yet or not, but I
think they are. If Windows for tablets cost $90 to license, then Windows
tablets are simply not competitive from the get go. Yes, you may see some $300
Windows tablet, but it usually has much worse specs and quality than a $300
Android tablet. As I said, not competitive. This may be the reason why
Microsoft may exist the consumer market eventually (3-5 years from now), and
focus on enterprise, where they have much more lock-in and it's a lot more
profitable/unit.

~~~
bitwize
I recently bought a Windows 8.1 tablet for about $250. Specs-wise it's a lot
_better_ than my 2013 Nexus 7. 2 GiB RAM, a quad-core Atom, and 64 GiB of
onboard storage.

And it runs full Windows.

Hell, I put VS on it and started writing C# apps with it. It's pretty nice.
The two different GUIS are pretty jarring if you're running a desktop PC, but
they make perfect sense with a touchscreen laptop or tablet.

The tablet game is about to change. Android may find itself crowded out of the
mobile computer space.

~~~
higherpurpose
Did it have a 1080p high-quality IPS screen, too? As I said, either the specs
or the _quality_ of the specs/materials suffer, to account for the Windows
license.

~~~
bitwize
It has a 1280x800 high-quality IPS screen.

~~~
josteink
_Specs-wise it 's a lot better than my 2013 Nexus 7. 2 GiB RAM, a quad-core
Atom, and 64 GiB of onboard storage._

Followed by

 _It has a 1280x800 high-quality IPS screen._

So spec-wise, it has more storage, but apart from that, it has the same amount
of RAM, and a display completely inferior to the 2013 Nexus 7.

I don't know about you, but I would trade storage for display anytime. You can
always download/stream content from the cloud, but it's hard to stream a
better display.

~~~
bitwize
More storage and a more powerful CPU. Those actually count for a lot. I don't
actually notice the low resolution of the display unless I look hard.

~~~
mercer
I think this clearly shows that different people have different needs, and
that perhaps Microsoft needs to pick a crowd.

Most 'regular' users I know care a great deal more about a great display than
storage. My mom would pay a premium for the former (although perhaps she
specifically would actually not care and just want an intuitive interface so
she can get to her games and email).

------
pygy_
A crazy misfeature of windows 8.1 is that the Skype user is tied to the
Windows user account.

You want to use Skype on someone else's PC?

No problem, just create a new Windows user (and watch Windows crash twice in
the process while the person you're supposed to call is waiting).

~~~
peroo
Or you can just install Skype for Windows Desktop. Metro makes perfect sense
when you consider a tablet formfactor like Surface, it just shouldn't be used
for regular computers, which is where they screwed ujp.

~~~
pygy_
Thanks, I didn't know that there were several versions.

I'll install it.

Metro and explorer are completely different worlds. There are even two
configurations systems and I've yet to find how to reach the standard control
panel without using search.

~~~
ygra
Win+X, P

or open Explorer at "Computer". There is a big "Open Control Panel" button in
the ribbon (reachable via Alt+C, C).

That being said, search brings me exactly where I want, while the control
panel is not my end goal, so I didn't have to open it in quite a while (both
on Win 8 and Win 7).

------
mistercow
I thought that it was pretty well established that Windows is in an
alternating cycle of good and bad versions. Everyone freaks out during the bad
part of that cycle, as Microsoft takes a bunch of bold risks, many of which
don't really work out, and then a few years later they prune many of the bad
decisions and release something reasonably solid.

(Man, it feels weird leaving this comment as a Linux user and reformed Mac
zealot)

~~~
jinushaun
I think this doctor has run out of regenerations. Not the same world as
before.

~~~
amaks
I think Windows 9 (or whatever it's going to be called) will be a complete
pull back into the classic desktop. By the time it ships there will be Modern
UI only OS hybrid built with Office for the Modern UI finally caught up. They
can all have the same underlying base OS (whatever it's going to be called)
with different shells on top. But, I'm not sure how programming model is going
to look like, unless they allow classic desktop Windows to run apps built for
Modern UI in windowed mode (which seems to be the direction they are heading
towards).

------
hiphopyo
Does Windows 8.1 still suck with the Classic Shell enhancement?

[http://classicshell.net/](http://classicshell.net/)

------
yuetuf
Posting this with a throwaway as I don't want it to be associated with my
named account.

Thurrott is full of shit. I call for him to step down and shut down
winsupersite and to generally shut up. He's not a windows user -- merely a
critic. This is about spinning hits than a valid critique of windows. All he
is doing is damaging the company and the industry by recycling this shit over
and over again.

There are those of us who use windows both for our own personal use and
business use. It suits us well simply because there is nothing else with the
broad scope that Microsoft offer. Windows 8, whilst not a great success, is
exactly what people asked for. The tech news sites spewed how the future was
tablets and closed ecosystems powered by app models ao they dived into the
consumer market with exactly what people expected. Unfortunately they
discovered that the consumer market (which didn't really exist) is just a
bunch of fashionista journos' wet dreams and fanboys.

Now I'm a Unix guy who saw exactly the same thing happen in the 1990s when
Microsoft kicked in the Unix vendors. However they did it through actually
providing products people wanted and providing long support lifecycles rater
than disposable trinkets and rapid change.

Give them a break and look at your 2 year life throwaway trinket phone and
tell me that's what you want for the future? That's what you asked for, that's
what you got.

~~~
poolpool
Thurrott is one of the biggest fanboys on the internet behind the crackberry
forums. For him to backpedal like this maybe says theres something seriously
wrong with the execution of Windows 8?

~~~
gtirloni
If you don't trust his opinions on MS because his is obviously not rational
when it comes to them (often biased in Microsoft's favor), why would you trust
it when he abruptly changes them?

That's the problem with fanboys and people obsessed with these things, they
tend to obsess with other things as well.

I usually read them with my filters set on maximum level.

------
keithpeter
_"...That's mostly business users, but even when you look at the consumers who
will use Windows, that usage is almost entirely productivity related. Windows
should focus on that. On getting work done. On an audience of doers. Job one
should be productivity."_

Won't that imply support for legacy applications (which Windows is good at)
going back some years? Hence maintenance of features required by those
applications?

------
hiphopyo
Microsoft should start from scratch and make Windows2 Desktop, Windows2 Mobile
and an OpenBSD-based Windows2 Server.

Cram thousands of users into a hall using all sorts of versions and
customizations of Windows along with A/B testing, heat maps etc. to figure out
the fastest and easiest way to get a thing done. This way users won't have to
spend hours trying to customize their Windows (read: disable all the new
stuff).

Also maybe throw a world-wide design contest to find the best suited man /
woman to be responsible for a new Windows2 design.

Like they say, "perfection is achieved, not when there's nothing left to add,
but when there's nothing left to take away".

------
ekurutepe
Interesting and apt use of Steve Jobs's truck vs. car analogy at the end:

"Maybe Windows needs to be more like GMC, the part of GM that only makes
trucks (and truck-based SUVs). After all, while many people choose to use a
truck for basic transportation, they're really designed and optimized for
work. You know, as should be Windows."

~~~
jinushaun
Don't forget that Apple makes cars and trucks, _and_ they keep them separate.

------
nelmaven
Microsoft should take Windows and split it in two: Desktop and Tablet. Because
it's just too weird right now.

Windows 7 is a great OS and they could refine it to be even better.

On the Tablet side they should just pick the good pieces of Windows 8 and go
from there.

Do one thing at a time and do it well Microsoft!

------
hackaflocka
At least he's not late to the party. /s

------
xname
It's not just Windows. Microsoft has a virus design team. Look what they did
to visual studio. The new visual studio flat design (from 2012) is really
awful. All caps in menu. No color in icons. Everybody hates those changes.

Don't know what they are thinking!

~~~
stinos
Well at least the VS desgin team has to listen when there's enough
complaining: Visual Studio 2013 has been available for a while and it fixes
all problems you list by undoing those changes.

~~~
josteink
_Visual Studio 2013 has been available for a while and it fixes all problems
you list by undoing those changes._

That's not entirely true. Some things fixed, while others are not.

(CAPSY MENUS, I'm looking at you)

~~~
DrJokepu
Of course, everything in a Microsoft product can be customised by changing or
adding a registry key somewhere. The all-caps menus in Visual Studio are no
exception.

~~~
gtirloni
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17413001/disable-all-
caps...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17413001/disable-all-caps-menu-
items-in-visual-studio-2013)

------
fleshweasel
Some hilarious Windows apologists on the comments over there.

