News Microsoft's Windows Blue plans hinted at in job ad

KDE5, Gnome4. Man, are you living in future ? We are at KDE4.10 and Gnome 3.

Ok, so you like unity, but dislike Windows 8 start screen ? That doesn't make sense at all. How is this different than the W8 start screen ? On W8 start screen you have tiles, in Unity you get the list of recent apps and files. You can search by typing - in both Windows 8 and Unity, or you either right click in W8 and then select All apps in Windows or click on one of the bottom categories in Unity. If you wish to search elsewhere, you select a different search category in both.

The only real difference i see between W8 Start screen and unity are :
- in Unity you see the sidebar all the time, but that can be compared to the Start screen itself with the tiles.
- in Unity, you can see the system tray, in Windows 8 not.
- in Unity you can see the application behind through transparency, in Windows 8 not.

Sorry, but i am confused, how can one person hate one and love another UI, when two are nearly identical.

 

I never said i dont like the start button thats just ur assumption, what i said is that they done one UI (metroUI) for the front and kept the old one in the back, which is lame specially if u have a tablet or a touch screen.
And the theme goes accross the whole OS, which is my main issue, if u read my first rant, fragmentation accross the UI, where there is two UI's metroUI and the old windows7 ui and buttons.

That is my main issue, which doesn't happen with unity and kde, since both kept their ideals across the interface, and applications were re-written to focus on these aspects.
Unity to me as a unique advantage over Windows and that is almost the sole reason to why i like unity, the unified search function to applications, i like my keyboard, and that function really speeds things up. I also like the application launchers.

Also i dont recall saying that used kde 5, i used up Kde4.4 with arch (but i gave up because it was buggy dolphin crashed all the time and network interface was buggy had to remove kde wireless network thing and do it through /etc which was annoying on the laptop, the gnome one didn't like kde:S), but interface wise i was happy with it), i did mention gnome4 but that was a typo which i fixed it. Now I have dual boot windows 7 and Ubuntu with unity.

My main point with this, and it was what I have being going on about is that MS wanted to release windows8, the whole interface should have been re-designed, not just the start button and a few selective apps to show up on the commercials, i understand that the learning curve would have been bigger, and maybe unacceptable to some users, but it would be better than just half-bake two interfaces together and expect people to get on with it.

Look at apple I used to like apple UI, now they are putting skeuomorphism everywhere, sometimes works, a mostly doesn’t, however they attempt to unify the UI experience. which gives the user clues to how to use it.

Look at android UI before Matias Duarte gone to android, it was a stupid mess and provided an experience similar to windows 8, things just didn’t made sense, the experience was hacked and not unified.
With gingerbread a whole new process occurred and everything was unified for best and for the worst, but at least users knew what to expect because the UI was uniform.

Windows 7 does exactly this, the UI is uniform and well layout, windows8 doesn’t because it uses two different interfaces that have little relation with each other.

MS could have done two things with windows 8 integrate it slowly or integrate completely, half bake something just shows that they don’t know what the user wants and they are just trying to make noise.
And considering that MS has the highest ammount of devs i think it is a complete failure.

 

Not impressed at all. Not at all! M$ is brain dead, long dead. :/

 

True it seem M$ vision for moving forward is to force a full screen start menu on desktop users, they dump something that is there when you need it for something that takes over the hole screen.

And the reason these options to bring back the start menu are there is because the vast majority of users don't want to use a phone centric full screen start menu OS on there desktop.

M$ may well have a vision for moving forward, but ignoring your customers is not the way to realise that vision, History is littered with company's and people who had a vision but ignored the general consensus.

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/17/introducing-the-team.aspx

You are way oversimplifying what amount of work goes into a windows release.

 

I wonder how many people who complain about W8 have actually used it on a device that is designed for it (touch screen and keyboard). I have used it (or rather, the RT version) on a Surface RT and on a Lenovo Yoga 11 and on both it makes perfect sense. Metro for touch screen/tablet mode, and desktop for keyboard and mouse/trackpad mode. Metro for on-the-go casual acttivities and media consumption, and Desktop for serious productivity and system hackage. It works for me.

Yeah, the two modes feel a bit disjointed (although not quite as disjointed as Google Chrome OS), but Windows is a huge OS to give a make-over. The next version will be more polished.

Listening to customers? Listening to this forum in 2010 had iPad pegged as an abject failure. On the other hand WebOS, one of the finest mobile OS's ever crafted, died a quiet death. Perhaps that is why Apple does not exactly have a track record of listening to customers either. We are now on the 6th version of iOS, and we still cannot toggle Airplane mode from the home screen. We still have not got a USB port on the iPad, or an SD card slot on the iPhone.

EDIT: Point made on Silicon Republic:

 

Amen! And if your like me and you use the keyboard as much as possible, then the only thing different is when I press the windows key and start typing program names the start menu takes up the whole screen instead of just a corner.

 

I guess it is another typo then.

 

I agree with the first two (theres 2 2nd points btw)n, they weren't original, but it still takes time and expertise to make it happen.

However, you really cant compare iphone os 1.0 to windows 8. 1.0 was basically a standard feature phone OS with a web browser. No cross compatibility, app app store (bar cydia) and had basically nothing to prove. Win8 on the other hand would be criticised whatever it did. If they stuck to the tried and tested OS strategy, people would turn to apple for simple cross compatibility. Also 1 OS means only one learning curve not multiple.

 

Exactly. Everybody is saying the same thing, W8 is limited/unproductive/crap compared to W7. But then you ask for specifics and you get no answer, except the same old "they forced metro on us".
I just don't get it, it takes me a fraction of a second to get to desktop and i practically never have to see metro if i don't want to. It's a joke to complain about that when you consider the time you gained over W7 when booting.
Seriously i'd welcome someone to give me genuine reasons as to why they don't like W8, i want to know in what way was it a step backwards compared to W7.
In my usage scenarios at least, i don't miss W7 one bit.

 

Getting rid of the old Start Menu - fantastic decision by MS. Perhaps this'll put me in the minority, but I did all I could in past releases of Windows to avoid using the Start Menu - whether it was tons of desktop shortcuts, or menus on the taskbar, or (finally) Launchy.

In terms of my own "work"flow, having the Start Screen is a huge advantage. I don't have a touchscreen, but whether I'm clicking through with a mouse or using the keyboard to narrow the tile selection, it's a far more pleasant experience than previous versions offered.

One little gripe - right clicking a tile and then having to mouse down to the bottom of the screen to unpin/open file location/etc is a bit of a faff, particularly given that almost everywhere else in Windows, right-click gives you a contextual menu.

And what's more, Microsoft have given me a pretty great reason to consider a Windows tablet/phone. There's no accounting for taste, but I'm seriously impressed by Windows 8, Start Screen and all, and having the same interface on desktop/phone/tablet makes a lot of sense. It'll take some decent hardware (and reasonable price) to pry me away from Android, but it will definitely feature heavily in my next buying decision.

 

W8 is not crap, it's just not suitable as a W7 replacement, is all.

W8 was made for touch-use and to unite the user-experience between smartphones and PC's and basically making the line between those a blurry one. That can be a good thing, if you mostly just play around with your PC, hanging around on Youtube 10 hours a day and stuff like that. Yes, you can add some start-menu functionality but that is not the point. The start-menu replacement screen is neat, yes - but again, this was all made for fun and giggles and most of all, for touch-use!!

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer using my mouse a lot. It's just the way it works best for me and how I have a workflow that is best for me and how I work. And while you can circumvent that with shortcuts and the like, this doesn't work for everyone. I want to be able to be effective with my mouse as well and with metro in w8 that is just not possible, compared to w7.

And yes, this is a big issue! I have two PC's running with W8 and especially on my some-what old notebook I love the much smoother performance. The boot time is neat too, albeit irrelevant. The task manager is nice as well, but hell, how often do you need that? I access my task manager once a month, at most.

Having to resort to third-party software of similar hacks is just no acceptable alternative. It would be a step in the right direction if MS supplied an option with a Service-Pack to get the old user interface back, however that doesn't change the fact w8 was developed for touch-use from ground up.
One could actually compare the progression from w7 to w8 with the progression of Windows Mobile to Windows Phone. Except that with the smartphones, it was actually a good idea, for a replacement.

Maybe, in the future, when/if touch-screen monitors are a common thing, the new metro would be a blast. In fact, I can't wait to have a similar geeky experience as in Minority Report, using the UI just by my hands, moving stuff, typing on a projected keyboard (or even just a wireless one). But untill then, regular use is by mouse & keyboard and for that purpose, w8 just doesn't work as well as w7 does.

TLDR: Big YES to w8 - as an ALTERNATIVE to w7, with laptops / netbooks / ultrabooks / tablets or tablet/netbook combos. But as a complete replacement, for regular work-use? BIG NO-NO.

 

Yes it was i kde4 in all the other posts....:S....

 

If there wasn't the issue of the Windows Marketplace still feeling like a one-legged dog. At least once I week I curse badly because I discover a neat app that as usual, is only available for Android or iOS. As soon as my contract is over, I'll be switching back to an Android phone. However I will add, that as a work-phone, where apps are often not even allowed, I'd love a Windows Phone. I think this is where WP7/8 really shines. Really a shame that contracts with decent internet data are still very expensive, otherwise I might just use two phones. That'd be sweet.

 

Windows Blue.... Screen of Death Edition *chortle*

 

Greetings!

Microsoft doesnt need to "find their sense".
Only needs to offer no alternative to Metro\StartScreen\Charms in the next couple of "Windows" versions for it to be seen as a success in some years.
They have enough weight to make it work and since there is no clear alternative in universities and enterprises to Windows\Office they will succeed on imposing Metro\StartScreen\Charms.
There will be an entire generation that will not know anything else.
Scary, isnt it?

 

No.

We learned DOS, we learned Norton Commander, we learned Windows 3.1, we learned Windows 95, we learned Windows XP, we learned Windows Vista/7, we learned various iterations of Android UI, iOS, Symbian, various versions of XBOX or Playstation UI, some of us learned KDE/Gnome/XFCE/E17, ...

You guys act like removal of the start menu is the end of the world as we know it and it will bring the Armageddon.

 

If you cannot write an AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file, you have not yet earned that opinion, grasshopper.

 

We've also managed to learn how to control the radio, lights, and climate controls in every new car despite the buttons and knobs turning to touchscreens and voice.

Every time I hear someone complain about being forced to switch to a newer windows version it's always the same... "But XP is so good! It's the best!", "I heard Windows Vista/7/8 was terrible!"

And I always ask well have you tried it?

They almost always, 95+% of the time it seems, say "No."

At this point XP is nearly 13 years old, get over it, move on, get rid of the horse and buggy and get a car already!!

 

I hope you are not writing that to me. I left XP sometime in 2006 for KDE & Linux because i was sick of Luna theme