Formfiller

The best thing about it is that ten years ago we were closer to this than now - Remember the rumours about the wonders of WinFS?

To be fair, this video on the site is promising: http://winfuture.de/videos/Software/Windows-9-Startmenue-geht-auch-ganz-ohne-Live-Tiles-12912.html So you can remove the live tiles from the start menu! It doesn't look that butt-ugly there. Hm: http://winfuture.de/videos/Software/Windows-9-Das-neue-Startmenue-in-Aktion-12906.html The start screen is still there, just hidden on default.

New ugly Windows 9 screenies: http://www.techbroil.com/2014/09/destiny-vs-yard-work.html?showComment=1410522196150#c3792145317375972527

Development productivity: Windows 8 brought almost no improvements on the table for non-tablets, and Windows 9 looks to be just Windows 8 without metro, so basically: Windows 7 = Windows 9. They spent the last five years destroying and recreating Windows 7.

Thurrot is truly the master when it comes to 180ing.

Blast from the past: http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/ols-master.html Epic 2014. Remember that? Now we are living in 2014 and it's funny how totally irrelevant the points in the video are nowadays. That time capsule has not aged well (despite just being ten years old). Total tech domination was supposed to happen through news and information! And now, in the real 2014, everyone is obsessed about touch toys, selfies and lolcats. Epic 2015 is even more gaudy viewed today: http://blogoscoped.com/videos/epic-2015.html It's also a good reminder how everyone thought Google would be the unstoppable behemoth.

He's back, and he's hardcore! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mriKM_39cfE

Problem is that even worsified desktop still handles better than anything metro.

I find child porn abhorrent, but scanning all email for possible crime right out of police-state 101. As Jaclaz said: Why not scan for murders while we are at it? I am sure some algorithm could be made to detect hitman keywords. And while we are still at it: Why not scan for fraud, theft, adultery as well? Once that cat is out of the bag, you won't put it back in anymore. I can already see the cascading arguments forming: "We need to scan for fraud, because fraud can lead to ruined existences, and ruined existences to murder". But on the other hand is almost like a fair collective punishment. The governments and corporations have spent tons of money on internet infrastructure and almost all the major websites are free of charge to boot, as are the cloud services. Yet the public took all these freebies for granted and never thought twice about the hidden cost of it all. Of course we gradually learn that all this wasn't so free after all. The morlocks deep down in the server-caverns now want their share of the surface dwellers and I almost can't blame them.

No need for the question mark. They did just that. I am not saying tablets will die, but they will be just one additional device more, certainly not the be-it-all, end-it-all as hyped two years ago. Microsoft Bob was born out of a short-lived fad too: The "living room" shell, that was somewhat hypy between 1994-1996 in consumer "multimedia" PCs (but got rejected fast). If the current MS leadership would have been in place back then, they would have replaced the Windows GUI with Bob.

"I think desktop computing on Windows and Macs will hang on much longer than anyone expects." Well, I always expected just that (just as many other non-fanboys did). As demonstrated a quantillion times, doing real work on a tablet, yet alone smartphone, sucks. And not in a fanboytastic "my stuff is better than your stuff"-way, but in a trying "trying to reach the moon with a train instead of a rocket"-way. The formfactor just isn't working for work. Of course, you can attach a mouse, and a keyboard and a external display to tablet.. but then you're on a desktop again, where a desktop UI is neccessary. When I hammered that down to the various boyz on channel9 and hardforums, Hal2020 etc. none of them could provide an adequate answer, except for "tablets are selling". Speaking of selling: http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/apple-earnings-strong-iphone-mac-sales Mac sales are up (aka PCs not infested with metro), iPad sales going down. The market saturation sets in and the tablet-hype is reaching it's natural conclusion, like any hypes do (only that Microsoft managed to destroy its own OS because of it though). (Semi)-New hype to watch for: http://www.neowin.net/news/to-combat-chromebooks-microsoft-is-pushing-netbooks-v2

New Channel9 candy: http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Satya-speaking/dd0d43037c6b4bb5b60ba36b013971d6 Some reformed, others are trying to be the last mohicans. By the way, what happened to Dotmatrix on Neowin? I completely lost the track there. Is he still active?

Ouch: http://recode.net/2014/07/17/ax-falls-at-microsoft-as-company-looks-to-cut-18000-jobs-this-year/ 18.000 job cuts. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-2014-7 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced plans to cut 18,000 jobs, the largest in history.In a memo to employees Nadella, said the majority of the cuts — 12,500 — will come from newly acquired Nokia. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-2014-7#ixzz37jGRjXUGMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella announced plans to cut 18,000 jobs, the largest in history. In a memo to employees Nadella, said the majority of the cuts — 12,500 — will come from newly acquired Nokia. I am tempted to say it's the fruit of the crazy strategies the last two-three years, but it looks more like they are basically ejecting almost the whole former Nokia workforce. It's certainly more than what Google cut at Motorola. Isn't it cozy when companies take over other companies only for the brands?

Unexpected turn of events on Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Metro-on-the-desktop-is-a-done-deal/db20a65d4e2c4c91b31fa35c011e712c It reminds me of back in the day I dogfooded an early pre-release build of Win8, and struggling to find the hibernate and logout buttons when I went home one night. The next day I went and spoke to one of the guys in the Windows UX team and said "I want to hibernate my machine, but I can't find out how to do it". He showed me on his screen: "Oh, you swipe here and click here and click here". I remember saying to him: "No. You don't get it. I want to turn my machine off, and I can't find out how. If you have to tell me how to find a feature that I want, your UI is broken". ... Compound on that the dual killers of giving people the opportunity to continue developing as before (with the language, APIs, libraries and institutional knowledge they have learnt over decades) and the direct business reasons not to upgrade (Win8 apps only work on Win8, Win7 apps run on both, oh and by the way we'll take 30% of your profit), and you don't need a crystal ball to tell that Windows8, as released, was always going to fall flat on its face. ... But Microsoft is in a dangerous new place where it seems to not really get either developers or users. Metro, but also Silverlight and XNA signaled really serious problems at Microsoft with understanding what developers want, and probably did more in those three things than the entire of the rest of the open-source community in getting developers to abandon Microsoft in favor of "open" standards that weren't going to die for no reason because of an organizational shuffle in Redmond. That's from the guy who defended Windows 8 (and the whole of NuMicrosoft) to tooth and nails there, back when I was sparing with them regarding W8 (click here for the whole experience). Now that Microsoft itself is abandoning Windows 8, the shills (Thurrott) and employees (see above) are free to say how much it sucks. They got clearing from the mothership and are now able to admit the obvious, "we were never at war with.."-style.

So much for the metrotard vision: http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-threshold-the-modern-ui-takes-a-backseat-for-desktop-users While it is still a little unclear if the Threshold update for PCs will be called Windows 9 or something else, what is starting to become known is how that OS will deviate from Microsoft's [metro] past. For mouse and keyboard users, Threshold will be the update many have been waiting for as Microsoft continues to move away form the Sinofsky vision of hybrid OS. Threshold will be a further move away from the Modern UI environment for desktop users. In some builds of Threshold, the Modern UI is disabled by default. You have to manually turn it back on but this is situation dependent, if you wish to access the live tile environment. If you are on a tablet, the Modern UI is still present and takes precedence over the classic desktop but on traditional PCs, the Modern UI is no longer utilized by default. This is where some of the confusion comes in that we had been hearing about a 'decentralized' use of the Modern UI but this is device-specific; for tablet and hybrid device users, the touch-focused UI is still a focal point. The biggest changes are in store for users of desktop-class systems. ... We have also been hearing that the UI is 'visually distinct' too, meaning that when you see Threshold, it's easy to tell that it is not Windows 8.1. http://www.zdnet.com/windows-threshold-more-on-microsofts-plan-to-win-over-windows-7-users-7000031070/ Users running Threshold on a desktop/laptop will get a SKU, or version, that puts the Windows Desktop (for running Win32/legacy apps) front and center. The Desktop/laptop SKU of Threshold will include, as previously rumored, the Mini-Start menu — a new version of the traditional Microsoft Start menu, an early concept of which Microsoft showed off at the company's Build developers conference in April. It also will include the ability to run Metro-Style/Windows Store apps in windows on the Desktop. Will it turn off completely the Metro-Style Start screen with its live-tile interface, as Neowin is reporting, and make the tiled Start Menu a toggleable option from the Mini Start menu? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised. ... Microsoft is basically "done" with Windows 8.x. Regardless of how usable or functional it is or isn't, it has become Microsoft's Vista 2.0 -- something from which Microsoft needs to distance itself, perception-wise. At this point, Microsoft is going full steam-ahead toward Threshold and will do its best to differentiate that OS release from Windows 8. Looks like metro is gonzo. On the tablet front, it looks as if they will remove the desktop there completely. Not a big deal honestly, since it's an inadequate form factor for the desktop anyway. I can't believe it: Finally some sanity from Microsoft?! Have they cleared the water in Redmond?

Yet the workflow on your newest monster machine is exactly the the same as on the XP machine in 2005. Desktop computing peaked with XP - since then nothing new came to the table (same will happen with tablets and smartphones pretty soon, don't worry). That was my point: Once stuff peaks, the improvements sound nice on paper but the the actual results are very negligible. The improvements you cited (cores etc) didn't change a thing on how you work on it. I am pretty sure the thermoplastic of today's cups is not the same as the thirty years ago, but you don't notice it. Are you really more productive on Office 2013 now than on Office XP in 2001 on a P4? Your example about internet usage: That's actually one thing that had the least improvements the least 10 years. Websites today are indistinguishable from the ones ten years ago. Sure, new firms appeared, but MySpace offered the same stuff Facebook does, just with uglier CSS (which was no tech issue). Let's not forget we had real regressions, too: Shae has a very good point about DOS. DOS in 1992 booted faster than Windows 8.1 on the newest machine. The whole system was indeed more predictable and speedy, and you could easily backup a certain program, which is almost impossible today. Sure, we had also lots of improvements in other areas thanks to Windows, but there were undeniably some regressions. Let's not forget that the desired future of the industry is actually a dumb terminal connected 24/7 to the internet, where you need to be subscribed to use even the simplest of programs (even the OS). Your data won't belong to you anymore and if something happens to the connection, you're SOL (as seen recently with the Adobe Cloud). Now that would be a regression of monumental proportions (and which is only possible because of faster internet connections - so the improvements in broadband availability had a price tag attached to them, a price tag that only recently became visible).

Things moved very fast, but we are now in the phase of stagnation. Compare the speed increase of computers between 1995-2005 and between 2005-2014. Working on a 95 PC in 2005 was unthinkable, working on a 2005 PC now not so much. Same with cars: Using a car from 1920 in 1950 was almost unthinkable, but using a car from 1990 today isn't such shock. New technologies develop fast, but once they reach certain phase, stagnation sets in - often even regressions (*cough* Windows 8 *cough*). Same is true for new art forms: There is an undeniable improvement between film making from the 20s to the 70s, but between the 70s and the 2010s? Not so much. Even the first generation CGI feature films (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park) look better than newer CGI FX. Compare the dinosaurs of JP with the one in King Kong. The stagnation phase for computer games came incredibly fast: Many classics from the 90s/early 2000s are considerably better (gameplay and atmosphere) than the newest iterations. We are talking only about 10-20 years here until the stagnation/regression phase was completed.

Well, the Windows 8 front is very quiet now. There is not much to say until the supposed start menu update.

Coming from the guy who said the desktops needs to die. I know I say nothing new, but Paul is such a weasel. He's the cardboard character of a snitch and turncoat. Good thing he's some comp journalist in the USA of the 21st century. In other times or circumstances he would be most likely hanging from the gallows already.

Judging from the comments at the bottom, they have their work cut out for them: This comment from the article is also quite good:

I know it's no news, but looking at Neowin it's somewhat dumbfounding how blatantly they are a Microsoft outpost. A few years ago they at least tried to appear somewhat independent, now that site looks like a blog on blogs.technet.com. Sure, other "fansites", like AppleInsider.com, have their loyalties too, but Neowin has even mastered the typical corporate-speak to the letter. They should be just done with it and let MS officially acquire them.

Well, yes, but the true revelation of the Snowden-leaks is that the NSA has unfettered access to the servers of Microsoft, Google and Facebook. As I said, Echelon was known before and the "massive spying" reveal really isn't that of a big deal, but most people in the field assumed that the intelligence agencies get their information from monitoring data streams and hacking (it was assumed they have access to internet cables and satellites and extract the data from filtering the stream). That they have all the major IT companies under their belt and can access their servers without any kind of data-filtering effort is a new info. Not THAT earth shattering given the prior knowledge, but new nonetheless.

No. "Prism" is basically just Echelon, and Echelon is known to critical authors outside of gossip, tits and a** since at least the 90s and it was never US limited. https://web.archive.org/web/19980206220544/http://www.caq.com/CAQ59GlobalSnoop.html That article is from 1998. Another one from 1998: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/ivo$20skoric$2Bechelon$20surveillance/soc.culture.croatia/ETGuPs3azw4/hYEGF8RbC7AJ All the Snowden-stuff is old hat. Read the linked articles, it is know since over a decade! And as I said, I came across onto such articles for years and years. Book from 2006: http://www.amazon.com/Chatter-Uncovering-Echelon-Surveillance-Eavesdropping/dp/0812968271/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397135104&sr=1-3&keywords=echelon "I'm even more disgusted that EU doesn't even do s*** to bash NSA and US for such arrogant behavior instead all I saw in news was "yes France president talked to Obama bla bla bla... all is fine" "German prime minister (what ever her stupid name is) is p***ed off on US bla bla bla", and 2 weeks later "she will talk with..." whoever and there ended the whole angry story" Well, they are so relaxed because they knew about it all along. There was even an official EU-inquire about Echelon in the early 2000 and the EU parliament had papers about it in the late 90s: https://web.archive.org/web/20020808141049/http://cryptome.org/stoa-atpc.htm (search for "Echelon" in the page) EU/US consultations regarding Echelon, among other topics: https://web.archive.org/web/20051216200357/http://cryptome.org/ep091498-1.htm How could they not know now when it was known 16 years ago? Either they have amnesia or they are just stupid. I am pretty sure the European politicians made various deals back in the days already, and their outcry over the Snowden "reveals" (there were no reveals, just insider-confirmation) was just show. Note how annoyed they are talking about it. Their "shock" is not sincere. Stuff like the talk about an EU-net are just show acts.

As I said here already - I wasn't surprised in the least. Maybe I am too cynical, but I have expected this. Massive internet surveillance was something "conspiracy theorists" were always talking about, and it sounded to me logical, absolutely non-crazy that, especially after 9/11, the various intel agencies would try everything to monitor internet traffic. I am not condoning it, mind you, but I always assumed that the boys and girls could not pass that chance - wasn't that the point of the Patriot Act and all the other "acts" in the first place? I can remember the soundbites about Echelon, Patriot Act etc. going on for years. Some Yahoo thread from 2009: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090708064411AAzS9aT Fox News, 2005: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/12/19/bush-addresses-patriot-act-nsa-spying/ TheRegister, 2005: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/16/echelon_in_your_backyard/ I don't want to sound like a wise guy, but I was hearing about NSA stories like these for well over decade. When the Snowden-leaks happened I was actually surprised what the big deal was, wasn't I reading this stuff for years already? By the way, I am pretty certain that phone calls get recorded too. A compressed voice stream is taking little space on the hard disk...

Oh man, that was blatant!