I just recently recommended Win7 to my dad over Win8/8.1. I tried getting him to switch to Ubuntu but that just wasn't going to happen.
I've been testing our web apps in Windows 7/8 a lot and I can say that getting people to convert to Win8 is going to be a serious uphill battle for Microsoft. The hidden menu, missing start button, and general hodge-podgery of switching between tablet/desktop mode had me ripping my hair out in frustration. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to check my wireless network config in Windows 8 before I got trapped in the white settings screen with no way out. Apparently you have to hover to the top right of the screen for a second to bring up that hidden charms menu even from within the settings screen. Why there's no visible "close" button, and why [ESC] didn't take me out I'll never know but it seems like no one even used Win8 before they released it.
> Why there's no visible "close" button, and why [ESC] didn't take me out
W8 makes a lot more sense, to me, if you think of Metro applications as each running fullscreen in their own ephemeral virtual desktops. You don't "minimize" a virtual desktop; you switch away from it. You don't "close" a virtual desktop; you quit the program running on it, and it ceases to exist. (In other words, the solution in W8.0 is either "press Alt+F4 to quit the application", or "throw-your-mouse-toward/swipe-away-from at the top-left corner to open the virtual-desktop switcher.")
It's exactly the same as fullscreen app behavior in OSX, or Gnome; the only difference is that your "native" windowed apps are all limited to living on a single virtual desktop, rather than the user being able to spread them out across several.
In the upcoming 8.1.1 update (or whatever it's called), there'll be an additional UX: throw-your-mouse-toward/swipe-away-from the top of a virtual desktop, and you'll get a sort of title-bar with caption buttons for the virtual desktop itself. That's actually kind of brilliantly-obvious, once you see it, and I hope that idea spreads to every OS.
That may be nice and all, but I'm not on a tablet, I'm on a desktop. I know I'm speaking for myself, but I rarely like fullscreen applications in a desktop setting. It's why you infrequently see people using fullscreen mode in their browser unless they're watching videos.
The problem I have is that it feels like Microsoft is forcing me into that virtual desktop environment when I just want a regular desktop environment; and it's that aspect that I feel will turn people to Win7.
Fullscreen apps work great on a Macbook, and you only need to know two simple trackpad gestures: three fingers side to side, and three fingers up. And yes, you can break out of it by mashing ESC.
It's an interface clearly designed for a multi-touch trackpad, and it's a joy to use. It makes a 13" laptop screen feel a lot less cramped. Contrast to Win8 which is an overcomplicated mess, filled with interface decisions that are suboptimal for a mouse or trackpad interface.
Especially with the low screen resolution of the 11" MacBook Air, full-screen mode becomes essential. On a 27" 1440p display, not so much. I personally use full screen mode for iTunes (mainly so that iTunes is always a quick multi-swipe away) but not for anything else.
I think the animations on Mac OS make full screen mode great. Slide some fingers on the trackpad and you switch to the next full screen app or virtual desktop. On Win8 it's a jarring zoom in zoom out animation, without any ability to 'peek', at least using a mouse/keyboard interface on a desktop.
I actually quite like OS X fullscreening on my 15" rMBP. I usually keyboard back and forth between apps instead...I can never quite get the three finger swipes working reliably. It even works pretty well with multiple desktops.
But until Mavericks, it was horribly horribly broken and useless on multi-monitor setups and even now isn't all that great.
For me, the answer is "just don't use Metro". I have 3 computers running Win8, only rarely do I use anything in Metro.
Why use Win8, then? Well, it has some nice small core OS improvements over Win7, licenses were cheap, and it will be supported for longer going forward.
If you ever get lost or stuck with a mouse&keyboard, all you have to remember is to hit the "Windows" key on the keyboard until you get to the Metro home screen. From there, Desktop Mode is one click away. Also, Alt+Tab works in Metro, and can take you to any process- metro or desktop.
If you ever get lost or stuck with a mouse&keyboard. . .
This is all true. But the fact that it's even possible to get so lost, and the fact that we don't feel feckless and asinine in sharing hints for how to get out of that situation on a forum for hackers. . . it still betrays a serious, disastrous user experience failure.
Having the user get stuck in situations where they don't know how to accomplish some specific task is probably always going to be an unavoidable risk. But to take the "I have no idea where I am and I have no idea how to get out" level of lost-ness experience that was previously only possible in command-line interfaces, and figure out how to re-create it in a windowed GUI. . . It's really a pretty impressive feat, when you think about it.
Honestly, I didn't want to rag on anybody, but I'm kind of surprised a forum full of hackers managed to get so stuck. Alt+Tab is something I would expect everyone here to know, and it was literally the first shortcut I tried when I got confused on my first foray with Win8. But I suppose use of the keyboard to navigate anything may be a dying art.
What might only be a few moments of confusion for nerds is a brick wall to many other people.
Perhaps that's also something to do with what happened in Redmond. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Windows 8's UI mess is at least partially a product of letting a bunch of technology people get too far inside their own heads.
I utterly failed at helping my aunt figure out metro. I did use alt-tab. But there were multiple other points of failure.
It's been long enough that I don't remember specifics, but I was utterly baffled despite being experienced with keyboard navigation.
This is the thing I had been hoping for more than anything else for Windows 8.1. And yeah, I will forget all my objections to Win8 after that, because when you get down to it that's really my only objection to Win8.
I've got no real complaint with Metro apps, as such. What I've got a complaint with is that they don't behave like every Windows application I've used since approximately 1990. Not because there's anything broken about the existing desktop PC interaction model that Microsoft had been incrementally refining for decades, mind you. No, it's really just that Microsoft : Captain Ahab :: iDevices : white whale.
> It's why you infrequently see people using fullscreen mode in their browser unless they're watching videos.
Anecdotal, but in every place I've worked or been with people running Windows, most people run everything maximized and switch between applications. MS probably just took the hint that people don't like fiddling with lots of half expanded windows and designed the OS around it. Unfortunately, they did it all wrong for the Desktop.
It's never really been a good experience in OS X so it's just never become part of the cultural workflow. Full-screen mode in OS X (and well, also Windows) is also not the same as maximize on Windows and until pretty recently (Mavericks) was quite broken anyways.
> Anecdotal, but in every place I've worked or been with people running Windows, most people run everything maximized and switch between applications.
Were their monitors small? That could be a contributing factor.
Maybe it is a personal preference, but I never liked fullscreen applications for anything - I'd only maximise if I was focused on one application's content, and it was large enough that scrolling would be reduced significantly if I did so. At any given time I probably have several other things running, and I like to see what the other apps are doing and/or refer to them. I'm also not really a fan of tabbed browsing, since I often compare and look at several pages simultaneously, and with only tabs, I would otherwise have to remember the previous page's contents as I switched between them.
For me it's usually applications with either lots of UI (Outlook, Visual Studio, Eclipse) or lots of content (browser, Far Manager, consoles) that are maximized. Although depending on how I use the latter they might as well be windowed if necessary. Two monitors help in not needing to window applications all the time just to see two of them at the same time, though. Sadly a third monitor doesn't work with the machine here :|
As you get further from a square, you get less screen area for a given diagonal. A 4:3 screen with a 19" diagonal gives you 173 square inches, but a 16:9 screen with the same diagonal is only 156 square inches. http://daleswanson.org/things/screensize.htm So it's all about picking the biggest possible number for the crummiest product.
Subjective, I know, but 4:3 was a lot more pleasant to work with, at least for me. 16:(9|10) might match movie aspect ratios better and thus would be better for watching them, but I do other things more often than watching movies on my computer screens (it's different for a TV, though).
Conversely, 16x(9|10) allows me to put 2x portrait documents next to one another comfortably. Alternatively, I can work on a document with a 2-page view.
I meant that rarely do I put the window in fullscreen mode, not maximize it. I frequently maximize too, but that still gives you the task bar. My problem was with 8/8.1's insistence on fullscreening the window.
Like you, I hardly ever maximize windows. I have Win8.1 on my work laptop and the only reason I didn't reformat it is because of StartIsBack. With StartIsBack, I basically get all the benefits of Win8 with very few of the drawbacks.
Well, the main difference between OS X's full-screen mode and Windows 8's Metro apps are that OS X's full-screen mode is opt-in. You can't get to it except by pressing the full-screen button in the top right of the window, which hints that leaving full-screen mode is also in the top right. In addition, the Dock and the menubar are visible in normal usage, hinting that hovering on their corresponding screen edges will make them reappear (with a visible leave-full-screen button on the menubar). In contrast, the Windows taskbar can't be pulled up by hovering over the bottom; there's no "switch to windowed mode" button at all; and Metro uses screen corners rather than screen edges - which are less discoverable, and with the exception of the Start button in 8.1, the screen corner menus in question aren't visible in normal usage.
There's also a difference in terms of the keyboard shortcuts: in OS X, Cmd+W is "close tab/window" and Cmd+Q is "quit application", and they're relatively commonly used (and easy to use). In Windows, Alt+F4 is much less user-friendly (most laptop keyboards these days don't even let you use F4 without Fn), as evidenced by the fact that users keep on trying to use Esc and being frustrated when it doesn't work.
In Windows, Alt+F4 is close application and Ctrl+F4 is close tab. It's been that way for decades (granted most users don't know Ctrl+F4, but Alt+F4 is almost as well known as alt+tab).
I'm guessing you're probably on OS X where multiple windows per app is normal. But it's odd in Windows and most apps are designed not to have lots of little windows floating all over the place. As a result, most people on Windows maximize their applications.
It's not quite full-screening, and Microsoft made a mistake with that, but it is a notable different in the two environments.
Windows 8.1 makes even more sense since Metro apps can run side by side with a desktop full of windows on the same screen at the same time...you could already do this with dual monitors in Windows 8. Metro is not an either or interface and the learning curve is really pretty shallow if anything other than trial and error is used.
I continue to be surprised that HN consistently upvotes comments with this criticism of Windows 8. The start button has been present since Windows 8.1 was released last October. The analogy would be criticizing Ubunto for a feater missing from 12.04.
Having largely transitioned from Windows to Linux in the past few months, I'd never have made it if I abandoned Linux every time I encountered fifteen minutes of configuration WTF? and compared to figuring out how to remove the installation media from yum's list of repositories learning the charms bar [before the start button and Windows 8.1] was a piece of cake.
Most HN contributors wouldn't have trouble using Windows 8. True and fair. However, the context of the parent comment was recommending an OS for his (presumably less tech savvy) parents. I couldn't agree more in this regard. I recommend either OSX or Windows 7 to anyone in the family who asks.
The missing start menu may not be a current issue, but it's a fair example of what's wrong with Windows 8 from a UX perspective. That is to say - abandoning almost everything that is familiar about the Windows UX in favor of a new and largely unproven desktop interface.
On top of it all, it's a touch-centric interface that feels (to many people, at least) out of place in a desktop. I personally can't imagine jabbing at my desktop monitor with my finger. What works on a tablet in my lap becomes really awkward when the screen is a full arms length from my face.
If the monitor in question isn't a touchscreen, then what's left is a really unfortunate mess that most less tech-savvy users are going to have a tough time getting rid of.
Since upgrading to 8.1 I never see the touch interface, boot straight to the desktop (which will soon be the default on no touch devices) and it just isn't an issue.
I've been using Windows 8 and I'm pretty happy with it, but the first thing I did when I installed it was install Start 8 and configured the system to login directly to the desktop, and hide all the "metro" apps from the start menu and disabled all the stupid charm stuff. (Which is pretty simple, it took about 15 minutes, although granted it took some third party software). I haven't even seen metro in months. Once you do that, it's basically a faster version of windows 7.
I think the improvements to the core os and the desktop are worth the upgrade, but jesus, metro is stupid on anything but a tablet.
The boot time is definitely faster. I think removing aeroglass also helped a bit with energy consumption and window rendering speed, although I have to admit I miss it. They also updated a few small things that aren't a big deal but are kind of nice (the file copy dialog is WAY better).
Why do people even need to use Start button? I use Alfred on my Mac and it's significantly faster to type the name of the application instead of navigating the Start Menu. Granted, I haven't used Windows since XP.
Why not have a hierarchical menu and a search box? Sometimes I can't remember the name of a program I haven't used in a while, so I click around until I find it.
I really like the way KDE does things: favourites list with search box above, with an applications list a click away.
After a year of using Win 8, it still takes me a few tries to get the charms menu to display (it pops up all the time when I don't want it to). I hook a 2nd monitor to my laptop a lot, and trying to get the mouse in that "charm bar sweet spot" without crossing over to monitor 2 is a complete pain. I was really hoping that 8.1 would fix these usability issues, but it doesn't seem like Microsoft was really listening to users' complaints.
This weekend I put together a PC for a less technical friend of mine. He had bought windows 8.1 online and had it ready for me, downloaded and burned.
Hardware build went fine, installed 8.1. The install went great actually. It was much quicker than I thought it would be!
...except it was 32bit.
"Dang! Must have missed a drop down."
Hours and hours of reinstalling, pouring over every screen, calling tech support, getting transferred around from department to department eventually landing on someone who was able to tell us that the downloader for windows 8.1 will pick, without option, the bit width of the machine you run the downloader on. WHAT?!
I had to drive home to my 64 bit win7 install, download, burn, drive back, and reinstall. The engineering in win 8 is great but the UX and product choices surrounding the engineering is a nightmare.
tl;dr had to find a windows 7 machine to install windows 8.
one would argue that UX and installation are part of the system engineering. Small screw ups like these leave sore impression of the system and make it unusable.
I've used Windows 8 for as long as it's been out and it's my 'get things done' OS via bootcamp on my MBP.
I work at a place stuck on 7 and I want 8. Many little things and a few bigger things are just better in 8. Task manager?! Search?! Snapping the metro apps (music/skype/etc) into the little slice along the edge of the screen on one of my monitors?
I've only used it on desktops and laptops and it's better than 7.
What I keep seeing is "serious" computer people who aren't Windows users, fans, or enthusiasts flailing - much the same way I flail with linux or OSX when doing the 3-5% of tasks that are not well-supported. Finder? F#&$#&$ finder? How do you organize your files on OSX?
So I see someone who feels that they should just "get" a new interface because they know how to use a "from-the-corner" menu system, etc. and they don't get it (because they didn't watch Scott Hanselman's Win8 bootstrapping video). So, obviously nobody should be able to get it... psh - LOSER operating system alert!!! Even number FAIL! Check out the penguin tattoo I got. Linux til I die.
Here's the thing. My kids get it. They aren't 10. Their mental plasticity and lack of ego enabled them to be mad functional right quick. They jump in and out of desktop mode without a whine or cry for help.
We've got 20+ years of a model of thought around approaching the machine. Someone disrupts the model, and the champions of disruption crowd roll up in a ball?
Um, that is quite proving the point that Win8 is not for productive users. It is for kids. All this wishy washy gestures with the mouse, two UIs in one kind of thing is more play than anything else. Of course kids dig that.
And also, ego has nothing to do with it. Your kids are just exposed to their first OS is all.
Wait what they'll do if you put them in front of a Unix system. See how long that takes until they can do things without a cry for help.
Once they are used to do things a certain way I will guarantee that they'll be pissed if they suddenly have to rethink their habits. And now add these 20+ years to that and you have your answer why win8 in its current form will never be a competitor to 7.
I manage to keep emotions aside most of the time, I am cool working with Win/Linux/OS X. I have preferences but I won't cry if I have to work with something which is not my top preference. And I am a happy user of Win8.
I believe, most of the criticism is also because it's Microsoft. You know, just like PHP or VB6, it's an easy joke. And hardly anyone will give you weird looks for hating MSFT. Good luck with publicly hating Apple. Of course, there is some good criticism. But only some of it.
Innovation is about failing until you find something new that works. Microsoft took a risk by offering something new, this time it didn't pay off. Microsoft people are not toddlers and they were aware of that. Yes, that kind of dashboards is not something unseen to human kind, but it's new having something like that as the first screen after OS loads.
Metro is a good example of good idea, shit implementation. I really like the idea of a screen where everything in one place. It's something refreshing in desktop OSes. And the design of Metro apps looks visually appealing (e.g. Skype). But the implementation, default content is pretty bad. It's just not something I might need. And most of the things requiring MS Live account (even Calendar) killed any desire to explore.
I think Windows 8.1 is a lot closer to the classic Windows experience than Windows 8 for e.g. If you select the option to boot directly in the Desktop mode.
My mother (55) recently switched from XP to Windows 8.1. Except for 1 - 2 days of initial hurdle she didn't needed my help at all. She is by no means a computer person ...
I've had a similar experience with mine. Literally struggles with copy and paste, but has taken to windows 8 (and modern UI/metro) extremely well, and has no problem with the various swipe gestures for working things. Many things- like printing- have been much easier. That said she does have a touchscreen, which I think is essential to get the benefits of modern UI-- although I still don't believe it is bad for a desktop user; just live in desktop mode all the time and only use the start screen from metro. Items are so much more discoverable in windows 8- that is, much less functionality is hidden behind context/sub-menus.
It's kind of funny that people accept Net Applications' metrics for operating system market share when we're talking about Windows XP/7/8 without making a peep but refuse to accept the fact that Net Applications also shows that IE is the dominant web browser by a large margin (IE @ 58%, Chrome @ 17.5%, Firefox @ 17.3%, Safari @ 5.7%).
I get downvoted to 0 or below on Hacker News every time I point it out along with the fact that Net Applications is more accurate because it measures visitors instead of hits. It's likely some of the same people who downvote and refuse to believe that every character of every URL in Chrome is sent to Google with prediction on (the default).
It's funny, some people desperately need to believe that Chrome is the most popular browser and does no wrong just because they use it.
That article uses the same data from Net Applications (via NetMarketShare). The Chrome 'true believers' will find some way to explain it away because it doesn't fit their world view. I wonder if they believe if evolution? :)
I work for a reasonably large company that is now in the middle of transitioning all its Windows XP PCs to Windows 7. I imagine that it's the same for many businesses that support a large population. Windows 8 represents a larger retraining burden and hasn't been around long enough for the IT support to be comfortable with it. This report doesn't surprise me at all.
Yep, same here. I expect a massive surge in Win7 adoption over the next few months. Remember that Win7 (and Win7 only) ships with XP Mode - the perfect last ditch solution for people with legacy apps or hardware that won't run any other way. So it's an incredibly attractive solution for anyone stuck with a gazillion WinXP boxes to upgrade.
Isn't there a huge opportunity here for a stable, modern operating system?
Or for some system to run complex Windows apps in Linux? (Wine is great but for many apps, such as Adobe Lightroom or Sony Vegas it just dies silently during install.)
If there was some container that would let one run complex, modern Windows apps in Linux I'm sure people would pay for it. I would pay for it.
Honestly, I think that stable, modern operating system is Windows 7. I was at Best Buy looking at computers recently. I asked if I could get one with Windows 7. The sales associate was practically grinding his teeth telling me that no, I could not. "So what if I want a computer that works well as a laptop rather than an extra-bulky tablet?" "Well if you're interested in Macs, we have a lot of nice options over here that fit that bill..." Ouch.
I'm sure there is, but it's a bit like looking at the power grid and saying "Isn't there a huge opportunity here for cold fusion?" Stable, modern operating systems don't grow on trees after all, and if part of the problem is inertia relating to a few perfectly good, stable, modern operating systems, yet another new one doesn't seem to add much to the bargain.
You mean something like the Windows Runtime that used to come with some apps that I've since forgotten? I'd find you a link to what I'm talking about but...no, not that Windows Runtime, Google, the other one from the late 80s or early 90s.
Of course now it would be a specialized, stripped down VM, which Microsoft would never sell you because licenses. So if you're willing to pay for it, it's called (your VM software of choice) + a Windows license. Not optimal, I know, and way overweight but that's what we get right now.
I remember that -- it was shipped back in the Windows 2.x days. This is when most people ran Dos, and Windows was an app that ran on top of Dos. I remember it coming with Pagemaker for one thing -- it installed very similar to regular windows, but you didn't get any type of shell or other desktop apps -- just a command to launch the target app under it.
This is one thing I would like to see developed again, but in reverse -- a Linux runtime for Windows. There was already a Linux kernel that would run as a user process under Windows (colinux, I think it was); combine this with an X frontend, and file system sharing, and you would be able to package up any Linux app for Windows.
Can you go into some more detail about what kind of product you have in mind here?
EDIT: Are you talking about a company that would develop a new operating system and sell workstations running it? Or a company selling pre-configured Linux workstations, of which there are several? Or a company selling pre-configured high-end Windows workstations, of which there are several?
I am thinking about what it would look like if Canonical bought System76 and launched machines on which there was a developer focused OS where the manufacturer of the machine was also driving a standard distribution/api/eco-system. Let's call it 'Moon Microsystems' but what I'm thinking about is a company that sells desirable hardware to developers, and can provide solid developer support to software companies trying to sell to those developers, and most importantly assurances a road map and a migration strategy and durable APIs that last for years rather than months, and don't change at the whim of a couple of disgruntled folks unable to reach consensus. Where 'Moon' compatibility is a Thing and you can count on it.
The economics are in this area aren't at all good for someone new to come in. The price of the OS is trending towards zero and even the completely free to the end user linux hasn't made significant ground into the general desktop market for all the effort that has gone into it in the past 20 years.
Supporting everything is such a massive problem and it is hard to gain mainstream traction before people can plug in any combination of hardware, use almost any app they might want to and play all the latest games.
Canonical has been trying to do that with Ubuntu. Unfortunately they and open source community haven't gotten along well enough and they haven't managed to apply enough polish to the UI.
The "container" I run my Windows apps on in Linux is, amusingly-enough, a VM running Windows XP.
I think Microsoft would be very smart to release a multiplatform replacement for W7/8's Windows XP Mode. Presumably it'd be an even-more-stripped-down version of Windows Embedded 8, with no shell, and all background services configured to only start on request.
It's just missing a way to easily add shortcuts for the contained software into the container DE.
But I think that if Microsoft releases a multiplataform replacement of XP mode, they'll turn the slow fade of Windows into irrelevance into a tremendously fast fading of Windows into irrelevance. Yep, that'd be great, and maybe even good for Microsft (they could focus on software that people actualy want - they have some), but I don't think they want it.
If you are talking about built-in Defender being the tipping point to compel you to move to Windows 8 from Windows 7...
That is a non-reason, reason. MSE is 100% free and the same damn thing. The phishing filters and other BS is part of IE, which is also present in Windows 7, not Windows 8 specific. The ASLR, et al are in both versions.
There is really nothing tangible which compels an informed PC user to 'upgrade' to Windows 8 from Windows 7.
My conclusion does not stem from articles. It comes from actually using it next to 7, doing the same user and admin tasks I usually do. Without third party software to reign-in Metro it dominates and cripples the experience for a PC use case.
The ONLY thing I wish 7 could steal from 8 is the task manager...
I've been testing our web apps in Windows 7/8 a lot and I can say that getting people to convert to Win8 is going to be a serious uphill battle for Microsoft. The hidden menu, missing start button, and general hodge-podgery of switching between tablet/desktop mode had me ripping my hair out in frustration. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to check my wireless network config in Windows 8 before I got trapped in the white settings screen with no way out. Apparently you have to hover to the top right of the screen for a second to bring up that hidden charms menu even from within the settings screen. Why there's no visible "close" button, and why [ESC] didn't take me out I'll never know but it seems like no one even used Win8 before they released it.