I, honestly, have no idea why people defend the start menu. It's a PIECE OF CRAP. So they replaced it with a fancy new UI and the ability to run newer Modern UI apps. The beauty of Windows is that you don't have to use them at all. You can use keyboard shortcuts for everything you want to do. Want to tab between Metro and desktop? just hit your Windows key. Want to run a search? Press winkey+s Want to run a program? either search and type in the program name or press winkey+r for the runbox Want to run admin command prompt? winkey+x, then a There's no reason for the hate. You don't have to use metro. Nobody is forcing you. You are just upset about tablet users. It has nothing to do with Windows.
That's simply because it's a requirenment for an app to get submitted to the store => It has to be usable with mouse and keyboard.
Which is my whole point in a nutshell. Microsoft has a standard for ModernUI apps that go into the Store - and enforces it. A lot better than the TOS for developers on Google Play - which has gone largely unenforced (except where it benefits Google's own apps and services - witness the ongoing spat between Google and Microsoft) all in the name of driving app count. What the heck good is it to have a large number of apps in your app store if most of them suck? Also that very requirement severely, if not completely, undercuts the touch-only (never mind touch-first) argument made over and over by the critics of ModernUI (most of whom admit that they relied rather heavily on VM usage).
I think Windows 8 is a knee jerk, by the previous incompetent management, to Microsoft's stagnation in the mobile sector. Buying Nokia is, I guess, supposed to be Ballmer's legacy. Maybe the next administration will have more commonsense than to try closing doors when the horse is already miles away. Maybe they may even see the use in consolidating their desktop share with a proper product rather than this hybrid flop called Windows 8.
In other words, Windows is not allowed to either evolve OR change. The problem is, Windows had to do either one or the other, or watch itself be nibbled to death by ducks (Android and iOS) - that is quite aside from smartphones. On the smartphone side, despite Windows Mobile and even despite Kin, there is still an opportunity in the smartphone space. Not at the cheap end, but between Android and the various iPhone models. Windows Phone is a value play primarily - not necessarily a low-price play. The two-pronged assault that is Windows 8/RT is both an evolution of Windows itself to move beyond the same-old same-old - basically, believe it or not, business as usual, in addition to being another value-play, squarely targeting iPad. When was the last real evolution of Windows (the core desktop OS)? If anything, an evolution of Windows is way overdue. Windows 8 (and now 8.1) is a superset OS (similar to the old XP Media Center Edition) - it has the compatibility with the Win32 software library from Windows 7 and Vista, along with the hardware compatibility from the same two OSes, along with the capability to run simpler and more concise apps derived from RT (hence ModernUI). Both RT and ModernUI are intended to complement the Windows desktop - not replace it, in the short, medium, OR long term. RT itself is aimed more at that subset of users (and uses) where the full Windows desktop UI is neither needed or wanted. It's not a completely clean sheet of paper - why would Microsoft throw backward-compatibility completely away? (Even if it were to try, the existing user base would revolt - even more than it has just by Microsoft getting rid of the Start menu.) While it can take advantage of new features on newer hardware, it can still run just fine on almost all of the Windows 7 hardware based, if not the Vista hardware base. Even on hardware that ran Windows 7, you really don't lose anything in terms of either hardware OR software compatibility vs. 7. Are we, as users, so entrenched with how Vista and 7 have done things that the only alternatives we are willing to accept are the clean sheets of paper (with no real compatibility with our software whatever) that are Android and iOS, whose only real attraction (other than price) is that they aren't from Microsoft? If that is the case, then it wouldn't matter WHAT Microsoft did. However, Microsoft did, and does, need to stem the bleeding - if Microsoft did nothing, users would flee out of sheer boredom. (That is usually what happens when an OS goes without an evolution for too long - it gets dull.)
LOL.. good one EFA11 BTW ... Tell a high production corporate user... You'll be banished to the ends of the universe forever...
Let's see the most simple and probably most frequent case. You have windows open, let's say a browser, Word, Excel, Photoshop, whatever. You need to quickly open My Computer or the Control panel. What can you do? 1. Pinned to the taskbar. By default it'll open to libraries, which is a pain in the ass. You can make a custom shortcut, but what if someone doesn't pin programs to the taskbar. (Or simply is a noob and can't do it...) 2. Desktop shortcut. You have to minimize all your windows to access it. 3. Hotkey. Opens to libraries by default. Pain in the ass. (Except in 8.1 - the only real improvement in the OS?) 4. Start screen. It covers your whole screen, you lose your whole working area. If it's not pinned, you have to search. Also a pain in the ass. 5. Resurrected Quick Launch or custom toolbar. Actually a useful feature. Doesn't mess up button order like pinning does. 6. Click SM and MC. You can keep most of your screen depending on the size of SM, which is actually customizable. 7. Maybe it's included in the Win+x menu, but I bet it opens to libraries... I'd wote for 5 or 6 anytime. Maybe 3, if it wasn't for those f**********ing libraries. You say SM is crap. A question: Why? Everyone tries to reason logically, writes arguments. You just throw here it's crap. No argument, no logic, only personal feelings.
Again, you don't have to use the metro. You could probably run word by opening search box with "winkey+s" then typing "word" You'd have to play around with that. I don't have Office installed to test things like that. You can pin things to your taskbar. You just have to first pin them to start. Why I say Start Menu was a piece of crap: 1) Recent Items - and recording things you do (still happens in win8 btw, though I'm not where where you see them) 2) You navigate through a bunch of poorly designed sections to find things (Seriously? have to run command prompt through a folder called accessories?) 3) It doesn't speed anything up. It is just a crutch for people who don't want to learn keyboard shortcuts, but are too afraid to play with the metro ui. 4) It's ugly. Just for the record, I don't like either. I use keyboard shortcuts for a reason. But technically metro is better since it can run modern ui apps.
And you can still Runbox (which I did in 7 for Office, since no version of Office since Office 2003 creates ANY desktop shortcuts by default; even Office 2000 created only a desktop shortcut for Outlook) - in short, no learning curve at all. In other words, I have greater application choice - not less. Further, it's still entirely up to me - not Microsoft. QuickLaunch pinning (and Taskbar pinning) are still options - the excision of the Start menu didn't take away either.
It would be better for the users, not better for MS. The big money is getting users into all online software as a service, firing ads at them, and other monetizing schemes. The result is complete control for MS and no control for the users - permanent DRM, and a constant vast revenue stream. MS are doing whatever they can to push their users that way - via the metro stuff. That is why it is on the laptop/desktop devices. Only a few million windows tablets sold, so that doesn't get many people. Around 320m pcs are expected to be sold next year. It is that 320m MS are targeting. The author of the linked article is absolutely correct.
AGAIN, you don't have to use it. Nobody is forcing people to spend all day using the Modern UI. Learn how to live without the start menu, it won't kill you; I promise.
To open "My Computer" in Windows 8: Click on pinned Explorer, select "Computer" on the left (you don't even have to do that in 8.1 since Explorer now defaults to the "My Computer" view). It's two clicks at most, same for Windows 7 (click Start, click Computer). To open Control Panel in Windows 8: Right-click Start button/tip, select "Control Panel". It's two clicks, same for Windows 7 (click Start, click Control Panel). You won't see the Start screen/Modern UI at all. Nothing's better, nothing's worse (crap), just different.
MS will have considered that. They probably think there isn't anything that can step in and take over the mass market. If they thought there was a serious danger, they wouldn't be using this approach. MS may have miscalculated somewhat. If it does open the market up for for competition, even in a limited fashion, that will be a good thing.
So Windows 8 IS GOOD Would it have been a better decision for MS if they had stuck with a dying ecosystem. Everyone knows that tablets are the future and the desktop is dying more or less fast for the mass market? Windows 8 is a way to transition the desktop user to tablet and reduce the confusion about changing UIs in the future. In a few years Apple would be asked why they kept the somewhat computed power restricted iOS at all cost and empraised the difference and less power computing of the tablets and didn't go the way of Windows 8 (or 9, or 10) and brought the processing power to the OS. In a few years the proccessing power of a tablet will be nearly equal to a desktop PC and then a OS didn't need to be restricted for tablets.
eydee: That part of the article was lame. He changed the default program to open his picture, then changed the start screen to a start menu, and then because he didn't use the old default for pictures to launch the picture editor, he claimed the start menu was more efficient. He could've just changed the default picture program with the start screen for the same effect, or if he had sense, just left clicked the picture while in explorer and clicked 'edit' to open paint in the first place. But since you put it like that, Win 8.1 is really fewer clicks. Once you have all your apps on the start screen, it is two clicks to open any app. While you can open apps in two clicks if they are pinned to the start menu in Windows 7, you can only have 10 such apps, where as Win 8.1 allows like 150 on screen at my res. Even if you do not have your app pinned, opening an app from All Programs on Win 8.1 is 3 clicks, vs. 4 in Windows 7. You don't have to see folders you don't use in Win 8/8.1 as you do in the Win 7 start menu, you don't have to scroll (unless you have 150+ apps in which case you will be scrolling all day in Win 7 too.) People just assume it is worse, and that an OS that works on tablets must not work better with mice/keyboard, but that is naïve.
And Apple - not to mention Google and Adobe - are not doing the same thing? In other words, the author of the article is faulting Microsoft for doing what is best for the company, for their stockholders (since I am a Microsoft shareholder, that includes me), and for less cyclical revenue. Microsoft - like Apple and Google - is a publicly-traded company. (In fact, all three are NASDAQ NMS-listed; Apple and Microsoft are part of the Dow Jones Industrials as well.) What have historically been the drivers for Microsoft's revenues and earnings? Three things - OEM licensing, enterprise licensing, and developer licensing (tools, MSDN and TechNet subscriptions, etc.). Any and all are subject to the whims of an often fickle economy - if anything, the success of Windows 7 made that painfully obvious to Microsoft. The "retail" side of Microsoft means amazingly LITTLE when it comes to either earnings OR revenue. Services and subscriptions are a steady revenue stream that doesn't depend on the economy - why else are Apple and Google into both? Software-as-a-service (again, not just Microsoft, but Adobe as well) reduces the effects of economy-based whipsawing - it's the same reasoning behind fee-based revenue streams (financial-services companies, including banks and insurance companies); that is the REAL "alpha" that companies of every sort are looking for today - earnings and revenue stability regardless of the economy. And that is the REAL problem the author has - every company wants the same thing; therefore, more companies are adding or increasing their fees. The author gets it - the author just doesn't like it.
Android and IOS were nibbling Windows ?! Are you serious ??!! On the PC the only thing that can nibble at Windows is Linux, and that's too fragmented to be a serious threat. Mac is a waste of time in their little walled garden called City 17. On the smartphone front Microsoft have been absolute crap. You know why they are crap! They have no vision or patience. Most of their developments as a company have been through acquisitions, much like Apple. But in the smartphone sector they have been clueless, Kin is a prime example along with Windows RT. I fell sorry for Nokia they have been cannibalized and will get thrown in the garbage pile when Microsoft's experiments fail. Now Ballmer in all his stupidity took their cash cow, the desktop OS, and decided to flip flop with it and make it a whatever they have now a Touchtop muddled mess of an OS called 8. To support this muddled mess he abandoned 7, which is probably going to end up being more successful than XP. If Ballmer had any commonsense he could have: a) Given support for 7 by releasing an SP2 and made it the legacy OS going forward; b) Then developed a true touch OS for phones and tablets with all the time and money wasted on 8; c) Later on down the road they could have created a new legacy free OS for the desktop. But well I guess putting all your eggs in one basket is how he knows how to run a business, into the ground that is ...