Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[Flasche]

You're correct, they're right up there too. The Ubuntu folks have made two of the same fundamental mistakes as Microsoft: grafting an ugly, ridiculous UI onto the desktop; and believing that all computing devices are equivalent.

You can hear it in the very first sentence spoken in the presentation that you linked to: "Convergence is the future of computing."

--JorgeA

Microsoft copied what Ubuntu did. http://features.techworld.com/operating-systems/3337293/eight-features-windows-8-copies-from-linux/ . Apparently Microsoft didn't realize Ubuntu was flamed for their outrageous changes. I guess history really does repeat its self.

EDIT: particularly the quote I was referring to

4. The Metro UI

The basic idea for the Metro UI appeared in Media Center and Zune hardware more than 5 years ago. When you use the Metro UI for the first time, you'll see that it's a very unique way of working with a device. But Microsoft didn't pioneer the idea.

Various Linux distros, such as Ubuntu, and the GNOME desktop environment, have tried to overhaul the user interface to fit the "one UI to rule them all" approach before Microsoft did. There's no denying that updates to the UI of Linux, especially Ubuntu, were made specifically with tablets in mind. But even the most ardent Linux users admit that touch support could by no means be called anything other than half baked.

The Microsoft twist

Microsoft is taking a very risky step in making the new Metro UI the default view of the new OS, but it's also much more comfortable to use either with touch or a pen.

Edited March 15, 2014 by Flasche

[TELVM]

Mozilla scraps Firefox for Windows 8′s Metro citing low adoption of the platform

Well, it looks like all that is left is the Wake.

... the company has “never seen more than 1000 active daily users in the Metro environment.”

^ Such a humongous horde!!!

[jaclaz]

Meanwhile in India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/MS-offers-Windows-Phone-OS-free-to-Indian-players/articleshow/31924651.cms

Desperate times call for desperate measures. With Windows Phone failing to make a significant dent in the market share of Google's Android and Apple's iOS in the last four years, Microsoft is waiving the licence fee and offering it to at least two Indian phone makers for free.

....

Multiple industry sources with knowledge of Microsoft's negotiations with Indian phone companies told TOI that it was in talks with local firms to produce affordable Windows Phone devices since last year. But the agreements were clinched only when Microsoft agreed to remove the licence fee it charges from phone makers for its OS.

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

You're correct, they're right up there too. The Ubuntu folks have made two of the same fundamental mistakes as Microsoft: grafting an ugly, ridiculous UI onto the desktop; and believing that all computing devices are equivalent.

You can hear it in the very first sentence spoken in the presentation that you linked to: "Convergence is the future of computing."

--JorgeA

Microsoft copied what Ubuntu did. http://features.techworld.com/operating-systems/3337293/eight-features-windows-8-copies-from-linux/ . Apparently Microsoft didn't realize Ubuntu was flamed for their outrageous changes. I guess history really does repeat its self.

EDIT: particularly the quote I was referring to

4. The Metro UI

The basic idea for the Metro UI appeared in Media Center and Zune hardware more than 5 years ago. When you use the Metro UI for the first time, you'll see that it's a very unique way of working with a device. But Microsoft didn't pioneer the idea.

Various Linux distros, such as Ubuntu, and the GNOME desktop environment, have tried to overhaul the user interface to fit the "one UI to rule them all" approach before Microsoft did. There's no denying that updates to the UI of Linux, especially Ubuntu, were made specifically with tablets in mind. But even the most ardent Linux users admit that touch support could by no means be called anything other than half baked.

The Microsoft twist

Microsoft is taking a very risky step in making the new Metro UI the default view of the new OS, but it's also much more comfortable to use either with touch or a pen.

Thanks Flasche, that was an interesting read. So basically the folks at MSFT are running out of good ideas and took to borrowing other people's bad ones!

I will say, though, that I find the Windows Media Center interface to be pleasing, understated, and classy -- totally unlike the garish, blocky horror picture show that's the Metro Start Screen. Instead of sharp corners, WMC buttons have rounded corners. The blue background serves perfectly as a background -- it neither screams for the user's attention like the psychedelic Metro wallpapers, nor does it clash with the (also blue) buttons. And the reason the WMC buttons can blend in with the overall scheme but still be located is because the buttons are in 3D , a concept that's been banished from the Windows 8 UI.

And finally, the WMC menu is hierarchical: you scroll around for a type of task to select, then click on it and it shows you specific tasks to pick from. Compare this to the flattened concept of the Metro Start Screen where all the application icons are presented at once to the user, without rhyme or reason, on the same screen.

The WMC menu may have served as the inspiration for the Start Screen, but when it comes to Windows 8 MSFT's UI geniuses kept tinkering with the model 'til they broke it.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

In privacy news:

Google Wants E-Mail Scanning Information Blocked

Google Inc (GOOG), the world’s largest Internet-search provider, is seeking to black out portions of a transcript from a public court hearing that includes information on how it mines data from personal e-mails.

Google, fighting a lawsuit claiming its interception of e-mails amounts to illegal wiretapping, asked U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in a filing yesterday to redact “confidential” information from the transcript, without being more specific. The main revelation at the Feb. 27 hearing was the existence of “Content Onebox,” used by Google to intercept e-mails for targeted advertising and to build user profiles, Sean Rommel, a lawyer for plaintiffs, told the judge at the time.

The quote says it all...

Cars could soon monitor our EMOTIONS: Device reads facial expressions to prevent road rage

Car manufacturers are always looking for ways to make driving safer.

And in the future, dashboard emotion detectors could search for signs of irritation in a bid to identify the first signs of road rage.

A prototype of the device is able to read a driver’s facial expressions using a tiny embedded camera.

Scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, have developed the system which identifies which of the seven universal emotions a person is feeling: fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, surprise, or suspicion.

Fantastic, just imagine the possibilities. That tiny camera could watch your reaction while a tiny microphone -- also installed for safety reasons of course, to check for distracted driving -- takes in the station you're listening to. (No no, it wouldn't actually RECORD what you're listening to, let alone what you're saying, rest assured that it would only capture the metadata of station call letters and time of day.) A shill for a future president comes on and your face starts twisting in fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and suspicion. The camera duly records these reactions... Oh, what could possibly go wrong with the use of this technology??

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

To supplement Charlotte's trove of XBox news:

Will Microsoft’s XBox One survive?

Microsoft’s XBox One is in a far more dire situation than people realize. Why? In a word, demand. That and the fact that the developer community is already talking out loud about it not surviving.

The reasons for Microsoft’s predicament are quite clear, they botched the XBox one like SemiAccurate said almost a year ago. We detailed why it would lose to the PS4, mainly because Microsoft architected an anti-user revenue stream rather than a gaming console. Management didn’t care about gaming, it makes them almost no revenue compared to the rest of the console so they ceded gaming to Sony and the PS4.

In short they made a nickel-and-dime you to death box that is second best at everything other than retail price. Their purported killer app, Kinect, is one that users are at best apathetic towards, few devs support, and everyone resents the price.[...]

The details are hidden behind a paywall, but the general analysis is amply presented in the for-free portion (which contains much more than I quoted above).

If the XBox One does go the way of the dodo, then maybe Windows Media Center (which has seen no improvements or flaw fixes in years) may start getting some attention again from its parents at Microsoft.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Mozilla scraps Firefox for Windows 8′s Metro citing low adoption of the platform

Well, it looks like all that is left is the Wake.

... the company has “never seen more than 1000 active daily users in the Metro environment.”

^ Such a humongous horde!!!

Not very impressive at all. But what I was wondering about is, how would Mozilla even know how many Metro Firefox users there are at any given moment?

--JorgeA

[Flasche]

Cars could soon monitor our EMOTIONS: Device reads facial expressions to prevent road rage

Car manufacturers are always looking for ways to make driving safer.

And in the future, dashboard emotion detectors could search for signs of irritation in a bid to identify the first signs of road rage.

A prototype of the device is able to read a driver’s facial expressions using a tiny embedded camera.

Scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, have developed the system which identifies which of the seven universal emotions a person is feeling: fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, surprise, or suspicion.

Fantastic, just imagine the possibilities. That tiny camera could watch your reaction while a tiny microphone -- also installed for safety reasons of course, to check for distracted driving -- takes in the station you're listening to. (No no, it wouldn't actually RECORD what you're listening to, let alone what you're saying, rest assured that it would only capture the metadata of station call letters and time of day.) A shill for a future president comes on and your face starts twisting in fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and suspicion. The camera duly records these reactions... Oh, what could possibly go wrong with the use of this technology??

--JorgeA

How about the Nissan Pivo http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/PIVO2/ .

This little robot car has a robot inside it that constantly tracks and analyze your every facial expressions so it knows your moods. --- video quote

[JorgeA]

How about the Nissan Pivo http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/PIVO2/ .

This little robot car has a robot inside it that constantly tracks and analyze your every facial expressions so it knows your moods. --- video quote

That concept car manages to be cute, cool, and creepy all at the same time!

I hadn't heard of this project.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Meanwhile in India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/MS-offers-Windows-Phone-OS-free-to-Indian-players/articleshow/31924651.cms

Desperate times call for desperate measures. With Windows Phone failing to make a significant dent in the market share of Google's Android and Apple's iOS in the last four years, Microsoft is waiving the licence fee and offering it to at least two Indian phone makers for free.

....

Multiple industry sources with knowledge of Microsoft's negotiations with Indian phone companies told TOI that it was in talks with local firms to produce affordable Windows Phone devices since last year. But the agreements were clinched only when Microsoft agreed to remove the licence fee it charges from phone makers for its OS.

You beat me to the punch. I was going to post the following piece, which is based on the TOI article but then adds its own analysis:

Microsoft starts giving away Windows Phone for free, to compete with Android

[...] It will be interesting to see if Microsoft extends free Windows Phone licensing to other markets — and also, whether it ultimately makes economic sense to give the OS away. There’s obviously the long-term hope that it will make the money back on services, such as Skype and OneDrive — but just look at Google. Despite Android being present on upwards of a billion smartphones, Google’s Android-derived revenues are minuscule — on the order of millions of dollars, not billions. Microsoft has a long, long road ahead of itself to try and replace the billions of dollars — per month! — that it makes from Windows and Office licenses.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Here's a visual tour of the (mostly measly) changes Microsoft is introducing with Windows 8.1 Update 1:

Deep inside Windows 8.1's spring update: New changes in pictures

The most significant improvement is on Slide 2 --

If Windows 8.1 does not detect a touchscreen input on your device, it'll boot directly to the desktop to keep keyboard-and-mouse types away from the finger-friendly Live Tiles. The operating system then tosses up this new tutorial prompt to tell you how to find the Metro Start screen.

If this works as advertised, it'll be a halfway step toward the type of choice-of-UI concept that we've been calling for (where the user could decide which UI or UIs, Metro and/or Desktop, to install on his machine).

--JorgeA

[Flasche]

If Windows 8.1 does not detect a touchscreen input on your device, it'll boot directly to the desktop to keep keyboard-and-mouse types away from the finger-friendly Live Tiles. The operating system then tosses up this new tutorial prompt to tell you how to find the Metro Start screen.

If this works as advertised, it'll be a halfway step toward the type of choice-of-UI concept that we've been calling for (where the user could decide which UI or UIs, Metro and/or Desktop, to install on his machine).

--JorgeA

Windows 8 = windows 1

windows 8.1 = windows 3

windows 8.1 u1 = windows Chicago build?

Its fun watching Microsoft trying to reinvent the 95 UI. At the pace their going to reinvent in time for windows 9.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Flasche

[ZortMcGort11]

Being the cynic that I am, I'm wondering if Metro wasn't just one huge plot to destroy Mozilla. Or at the least, drop Firefox's market share even lower. Scorched earth policy

.

To be clear, you can still run Firefox in the traditional desktop environment in Windows 8. Mozilla is simply killing the touchscreen version of its browser for the Windows 8 app store.The announcement is a major blow to Microsofts vision for Windows 8, which desperately needs killer software in its app store or at the very least, apps that take advantage of Windows 8s touchscreen focus. Google, for example, has a Windows 8 mode in its Chrome browser, which makes it function like a full-screen Windows 8 app.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/15/mozilla-kills-metro-windows-8-firefox-plans-claims-interest-has-been-pretty-flat/

But wouldn't it be a blow to Firefox if their browser isn't supported? Last time I checked, Mozilla doesn't have a desktop operating system of their own. They have to rely on Windows.

What if Windows 9 is incompatible too? LOL. Brilliant!

Edited March 17, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[ZortMcGort11]

From another article,

This leaves us with a hard choice. We could ship it, but it means doing so without much real-world testing. That's going to mean lots of bugs discovered in the field, requiring a lot of follow up engineering, design, and QA effort. To ship it without doing that follow up work is not an option. If we release a product, we maintain it through end of life. When I talk about the need to pick our battles, this feels like a bad one to pick: significant investment and low impact," Nightingale said.

I disagree. Who's to say that Windows 9 won't be completely Metro! Or some other terrible thing which isn't compatible with Firefox. Brilliant!

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/4450/20140316/mozilla-pulls-plug-on-windows-8-metro-version-firefox-days-before-release-flat.htm

Edited March 17, 2014 by LostInSpace2012

[bphlpt]

Being the cynic that I am, I'm wondering if Metro wasn't just one huge plot to destroy Mozilla. Or at the least, drop Firefox's market share even lower.

...

But wouldn't it be a blow to Firefox if their browser isn't supported? Last time I checked, Mozilla doesn't have a desktop operating system of their own. They have to rely on Windows.

No, no. There are, or at least were, two different version of Firefox for Windows. The traditional version, which still exists, that runs as it always has and is accessed through the Start Menu, or the desktop environment in Windows 8.x, and the touchscreen version which runs as a "Metro" app. Mozilla is just killing the "Metro" version, which just means one less app available in the Windows 8 app store. (I won't get into the discussion about the changes in later versions of Firefox that "improved" its usability. )

I'm not sure, since I don't use any computer with Windows 8.x on it and wouldn't use "Metro" even if I did have a choice, but I'm not aware of how many "Metro" versions of other browsers there are available. Are there "Metro versions" of Chrome, Opera, Pale Moon, SlimBrowser, Maxthon, etc?

With MS's current backtracking, it seems they are making a bigger emphasis on desktop apps in future versions of Windows and less on Metro ones. I have not even seen hints that MS is directly trying to make any browser unsupported. If they did, I'm sure there would be at least as big a backlash as they had with Windows 8. Rather, the obsolescence of older browsers seems to be driven by websites only using features available in newer browsers without leaving fallback mechanisms in place so that they can still work with browsers that don't have those capabilities.

Cheers and Regards