Demystifying Windows 8′s changes, additions, and features | Hacker News Reader

Demystifying Windows 8′s changes, additions, and features

extremetech.com

> Windows 8 will be the most secure Microsoft OS ever.

Ever. Never again will Microsoft create any software product as secure as Windows 8. It will be the pinnacle of human software engineering and it's all downhill from there.

Seriously though, 'ever' is such a strong word...

I'm surprised they let that slip by too. I would have expected 'to date' instead.

That's a common usage though, right? Apple's press release for the iPhone 3GS claimed it would make gaming "better than ever" and taking pictures "easier than ever." Sometimes, it's made explicit that we're talking about the past ("you've never seen anything better"), but even without making it explicit the meaning is clear.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/06/08Apple-Announces-th...

They are actually using future with 'ever'. As far as I know, the future 'ever' is relating to all future events. In contrast, Apple is using the present tense or the past tense 'ever', which would relate to all past events.

I guess you could use the two versions interchangeably without confusing too many people. Then again, good writing probably wouldn't.

The most fundamental flaw of this stupid idea is still trying to merge Desktop and Tablet features. It's what makes Unity suck beyond saving grace, it's what makes Lion the most colossal fail in the history of fails from Apple, and it's the same thing that will break Metro.

You don't put Tablet features on a Desktop OS. You don't put Desktop features on a Tablet OS. Either way is doomed to fail because they are completely different input paradigms and entirely opposed areas of usage (tablets being communication devices with multimedia functions, Desktop machines being where actual work gets done).

I see this entire thing as Microsoft's last desperate attempt to get into the Tablet market - where they've already lost to UNIX (Android and iOS) - and I doubt it's going to get any better. And since the Desktop market is going to shrink tremendously in the future in terms of multimedia usage for the everyman, eventually leaving only the power users on the Desktops, they've pretty doomed to eventually loose the shrinking Desktop market as well, as power usage is the territory of GNU/Linux, whether you like it or not.

But oh well, it's going to be funny to watch from the sidelines.

“… it's what makes Lion the most colossal fail in the history of fails from Apple …”

What? What?!

The only 1:1 ported tablet feature I know of is Launchpad (and it does suck, don’t get me wrong) which is, however, completely optional and doesn’t even get in the way.

Launchpad does not make Lion a colossal failure. That’s impossible.

Other stuff might, but it has little to do with trying to bring tablet concepts to the desktop. Apple clearly hasn’t attempted to do that, at least not 1:1.

Sure, Apple added fullscreen apps but those have been a staple of Windows forever, I don’t think dragging tablets into this makes any sense whatsoever. And you might not like the new simplified Spaces and Exposé but they do not have any tablet equivalents. They are all desktop, all the time.

Auto saving, resume and Versions are obvious features for any operating system, the tablet/desktop distinction doesn’t make any sense when looking at those features. Operating systems should support them, no matter the device. That’s it.

So what’s the problem? People have been complaining about bugs and some don’t like Mission Control or the way fullscreen apps are implemented. I see little relation of those complaints to Apple trying to bring iOS to OS X. (I also want to note that Lion has received a large number of positive reviews. Your claims of it being a colossal failure are definitely a minority opinion.)

The Metro interface is the center of the user experience on ARM tablets, so there shouldn't be much in the way of desktop artifacts lingering around there.

If you use your desktop in the normal "Classic" interface, the Metro interface will appear only as a replacement for the Start menu -- which has been utterly broken for a long time now. It also takes the basically broken idea of Windows having desktop widgets -- that are always hidden behind your apps since most people either maximize apps or split the screen between multiple apps -- and replaces them with tiles that you can make appear when you pop up your start menu.

Finally, it creates the possibility of having a third category of device, similar to the Samsung tablets distributed at Build -- tablets that can go native-tablet when you carry them around, but also dock to become your desktop PC, with keyboard, mouse, etc. Or that let you use a pen with digitizer for applications that require greater-precision input than normal finger-buttons do.

I find this latter category really intriguing, especially if someone makes one that works like the Asus Transformer (where it docks with a keyboard to become a clamshell-style laptop). All your data and everything you use is on your one device, and you interact with it in whatever mode is convenient at the moment. If someone can make the right device, I seriously want one of these.

Has anyone come across any benchmarks as far as battery life or performance go yet? I know benchmark3d has been including the leaked versions in their game benchmarks.

http://benchmark3d.com/benchmarks

If I remember correctly, the Windows 7 pre-release license agreements included a clause forbidding you from benchmarking the operating system. Is there a similar clause in the Windows 8 ELUA?

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