Comment by tjoff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tjoff | Hacker News Reader

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I'm sorry, I don't get what everyone is on about.

The first thing a power user will do is to go to the old-desktop and stay there, basically not interacting with metro at all. There is no point, it's about as useful as the winkey+tab is on Vista/W7. "Cool" but useless for real work.

And there seems to have been numerous improvements to the windows experience (outside metro), the ability to pause file-copying etc. proves that they still have some focus for the enthusiast.

For everyone but the average Joe the new "metro-UI" is nothing but a bundled application that you will only use when you want to demo something or for some very light use (on a tablet for instance).

Just as Media Center is today!

How does a bundled application make the whole windows experience clumsier? If it is clumsy, close it! Sure, the start menu is different but who uses the start meny on windows today? All apps that you actually use are pinned to the task bar...

And that is how everyone that does real work will use their windows 8 machine, just as they do today in windows 7. And no. MS will not phase out the "regular windows", that's just moronic. Contrary to popular belief but people will actually do work in the near future as well, not floating around in a fluffy cloud with touch devices.

You read it here first. The mouse and keyboard are not dead.

Curious to see how broken the metro is on a multi-monitor setup is though. Any UI that doesn't scale well to multiple monitors has failed miserably in my eyes (hello OS X + Unity + Metro(?)). And that's not an edge case (at least it shouldn't be for anyone favoring productivity).

The first thing a power user will do is to go to the old-desktop and stay there, basically not interacting with metro at all. There is no point, it's about as useful as the winkey+tab is on Vista/W7.

I don't know if you're trying to troll or you're just incredibly short-sighted, but I'll bite.

Windows 8 is clearly designed as a hybrid OS, in the same vein that Ubuntu on Android is, even if Microsoft's marketing team don't outright say it. It's fills the use case of "I love my iPad, and I love my Mac, but I really hate that I have these two devices."

Within a year, you're going to see probably about 30% of the new machines being manufactured as tablets, with docking stations. Run the machine in tablet mode, and you get Metro, perfect for reading web pages and flinging Angry Birds around in bed. When it's time to go to work, you pop your tablet into the docking station, and up pops the Desktop for productivity apps. Metro is not going to disappear like Media Center did. It's integral to the whole thing.

The iPad is not a machine to do large amounts of work on, but you'd be surprised how many people are trying to. Have you been on a plane recently? A good half of the iPads I see are actually jammed into some horrible looking keyboard dock. Consumers seem to really want a machine that will do this. That's what Windows 8 is.

The problem with this logic, IMO, is that they are still ignoring that, in spite of consumers wanting a single device that supports multiple interfaces, they're still trying to cram two very different experiences into one unified experience.

To me, Microsoft and Apple should realize that once you plug a keyboard/mouse into a tablet, it becomes a notebook, and the user should be presented with a new experience -- because it now has a new interface (keyboard/mouse vs. touch screen only).

If they could figure out how to intuitively transform your experience from a tablet experience to a notebook experience without jarring or confusing the user, then they could have an OS that could work with both devices -- or a single device that supports both interfaces.

So that should still work right? As long as there is a tablet that has a good keyboard stand, As a tablet, you mostly stay in the metro world and once docked you can use the keyboard/mouse. None of the metro apps I saw were not hard or non-intuiitive to use with mouse/keyboard.

For a legacy laptop, most of the work is done in the desktop anyways no matter how much Microsoft is touting the cool metro UI, I doubt the users of older laptops are going to spend much time in metro land. So that experience does not change much anyways.

So its like you do have two devices in one. Use the one which you prefer.

The idea of a single device that does both mobile and desktop work well is a nice idea, but in practice the few attempts at this have failed, mainly at the hardware level. See the Motorola Atrix, previous Windows Tablet Laptops, etc.

If Microsoft was serious about building this as the future computing experience, they should have built the hardware and controlled both the hardware and software. But then they'd be no different from Apple and they'd alienate their hardware partners.

"but in practice the few attempts at this have failed, mainly at the hardware level. See the Motorola Atrix, previous Windows Tablet Laptops, etc"

I am typing this response on an ASUS Transformer laptop, which I don't see as a failure at all at the hardware level. The only downside of the ASUS Transformer is that the Android software ecosystem has a long way to go to catch up to the idea of being run on a laptop-like device. This is something Windows 8 should have a big advantage on, which is one of the primary reasons I'm really looking forward to Win8.

>If Microsoft was serious about building this as the future computing experience, they should have built the hardware and controlled both the hardware and software. But then they'd be no different from Apple and they'd alienate their hardware partners.

Windows On ARM tablets do exactly this.

>> It's fills the use case of "I love my iPad, and I love my Mac, but I really hate that I have these two devices."

It's an interesting point, but if this is the target, then I think it's hopeless. Indeed, I don't think that people are ready to ditch there Mac/iPad setup for a unified windows setup. And if MS wants to conquer the tablet market, then I'm not sure that the "unified" argument is a key selling point. People won't buy any tablet over the iPad just because you tell them: "hey, you can find everything you (don't) like about windows on your tablet too!"

Note: I'm sorry if I sounded anti-windows, that's not the case, although I'm not a big fan either

Nobody is forcing you to use the things you don't like about windows. Which you haven't bothered to list... A tablet can be a pure metro experience and a pretty cool one at that.

I don't see how that goes against what I said.

Of course the metro UI has advantages on a tablet, my post was mainly centered around the workstation. Whether you take your workstation with you at the end of the day or not is irrelevant for the work you do on it when it is being used as workstation.

If you feel the transition between the two isn't smooth enough that's another point but my first reaction to this is positive. I do not want that transition to be smooth, to me that's like trying to mimic the feel of a nice heated leather car seat while skydiving. If either was any like the other at least one of them would be worthless (probably both).

Realizing that that is impossible and separating them is the key to my heart and both windows 8 and unbuntu for android seems promising in that regard (but since I haven't used any of them that is just my initial impression). Apple on the other hand seems to be taking small steps in the opposite direction with mountain lion, which is of course fine for most but I don't think that that will cut it in the long run.

If you haven't even seen Windows 8, please don't comment on it. It's clear from even a quick look at Windows 8 what awkward transition between "tablet" and "desktop" he's talking about.

Unfortunately, that's not going to happen unless we will see some x86 tablets. WOA will have Metro-style apps only.

And I doubt we'll ever see x86 tablets

Just an FYI Intel has announced new chips and future strategy for the mobile market. We will definitely see x86 tablets. AMD wants in as well.

I may have 8 main applications pinned to the taskbar, everything else I do is through the start menu. Frankly, all I really need is the taskbar + start menu.

The experience does not change. Either you type windows buttong and start typing the name of the app (just like in wondows 7) Now if only you could pin a desktop app like word to the start screen, then I don't see the difference in experience.

I think my only objection to that is how the new start screen comes up in a jarring Desktop > Metro transition.

But then again I disliked the Windows7 Superbar until i'd been using it a while, so I'll reserve my judgement until I've used the Consumer Preview for a month or so.

I'm wondering if you've tried this new OS out yet.

The "Start-Menu" has now gone, no button - nothing. Metro is the start menu. That means to launch apps you've not created desktop shortcuts for yet, or pinned to the taskbar, you need to launch Metro. I find it quite jarring switching between the two, but I could get used to it.

Also, to bring up things like "settings" for a given item, you need to hover over the top-right corner and then move your cursor directly down. This is just plain weird for me, and I fear what a less confident computer user would make of this. Effectively things they may need are completely invisible, unless they know where to look.

My biggest concern is that sometimes you can be using a screen in the old way, e.g. network preferences - select an option, and then a completely different style of screen appears out of the right hand side for you to action on. It's just plain weird and confusing, and needs to be sorted before launch.

It seems to me that in an effort to simplify the OS they've made it way more confusing.

And here is the thing, Majority of users ARE average-joes. That's why iPad has been an incredible success. It's a power user's nightmare,and yet look at how it has fared. The average-joes are the ones who will dig Metro, and that's a vast, overwhelming majority.For power users, there is regular desktop. However, Gradually, as an eceosystem of apps starts thriving, the power users will start to discover that are okay with giving up a little of that power for well-designed Metro apps that make their lives a whole lot easier and will start shifting away from desktop to Metro. Just as content writers, programmers, musicians etc have started taking to the iPad for their day-to-day work. I say W8 is a win-win for everyone !

Have they? I remember an article on HN a few months ago of some guy doing all his programming on an ipad. Beyond that most of what I see ipads used for is browsing and watching movies.

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