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Metro

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Re: Metro

#111

Post by kijinbear »

eropple wrote: post #92
kijinbear wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense on laptops and other small devices, but not so much if you're sitting 2-3 ft away from 2-3 large screens. Which is not uncommon for programmers and designers these days. Right now, from where I'm sitting, I can't touch my desktop monitor without leaning forward uncomfortably. Even if large touchscreens become cheaper over the next few years, my arms aren't going to get any longer, and my field o…

The other practical problem I see: fingerprints. I never touch my laptop screen because I'm looking at it all day and even at full brightness you can see previous fingerprints.

Haha, you're right. I have dry skin, so I make heavy use of hand cream... which doesn't play nicely with touchscreens at all. The smudges are especially annoying on glossy screens.

Re: Metro

#112

Post by steele »

sambeau wrote: post #10

Metro is really nice. It's great to see Gruber praising it like this: it is very praiseworthy. Also, it's easy to forget that Gruber is first-and-foremost a design geek.

I thought he was an Apple shill first and foremost.

Re: Metro

#113

Post by masklinn »

eykanal wrote: post #67
crenshaw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, photoshop isn't going to be going Metro anytime soon, and neither is Matlab, or Autocad, or Excel, or video editing software, or any "Pro" program (for lack of a better word). I'd actually be surprised if there isn't a fully staffed team working on a Metro version of the Office suite.

But what would it look like? Consider Powerpoint. There needs to be a way to switch slide layout, add elements to the slide, work with animations & transitions, reorder slides, etc. And that's just some of the things that users will want to do all the time, on almost every slide. There's just no way to have that sort of rich interface in Metro. Heck, there's not even a menubar . Remember, we're talking about regular…

> But what would it look like? Consider Powerpoint.

http://itunes.apple.com/app/keynote/id361285480

> There needs to be a way to switch slide layout, add elements to the slide, work with animations & transitions, reorder slides, etc. And that's just some of the things that users will want to do all the time, on almost every slide. There's just no way to have that sort of rich interface in Metro.

See link. It's perfectly possible to do all that without a classical menu bar. Does it do everything the desktop version does? No. Can it do pretty much everything useful of it? Sure.

Re: Metro

#115

Post by robrenaud »

gbog wrote: post #84
alex_c wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we'll be seeing a more and more pronounced split in computing and, therefore, interfaces. On one side (the majority) will be "consumers": web, email, Facebook, maybe some light photo editing. On the other side will be the "producers": people who use Photoshop, or Matlab, or AutoCAD. Office falls somewhere in the middle... Office itself may eventually be divided along those lines, with a lightweight, tablet-…

I don't like these ideas Gruber and friends are repeating and repeating again. In the article, it is carved in marble: "the advantages that come from NOT allowing you to do so many [things]". The reasoning behind is that Steve Jobs or other said genius should be choosing for you what you are "allowed" to do. It feels awfully 1984 for me. I live in China and I can tell you it is painfull, sometime, when someone else c…

I feel like if I was reading a Gruber article from 1995 he would tell me that I'd have to choose either a responsive, efficient system or a system capable of running with pre-emptive multitasking, but not both.

He is so incredibly apologetic to the corners that Apple engineers cut that I wonder if he really believes himself.

Re: Metro

#116

Post by evinfinite »

technoslut wrote: post #79
alex_c wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we'll be seeing a more and more pronounced split in computing and, therefore, interfaces. On one side (the majority) will be "consumers": web, email, Facebook, maybe some light photo editing. On the other side will be the "producers": people who use Photoshop, or Matlab, or AutoCAD. Office falls somewhere in the middle... Office itself may eventually be divided along those lines, with a lightweight, tablet-…

I'm not power productivity suite user but I would have to believe close to all of Office's features can be implemented with the proper UI with the advanced features of the apps hidden away from the eyes of the average user. If it's a question of specs or software maturity then it really is just a matter of time.

It is at this point that I feel obliged to point out that Apple already ships an office suite for the iPad and, bizarrely enough, even the iPhone: http://www.apple.com/apps/keynote/ - http://www.apple.com/apps/pages/ - http://www.apple.com/apps/numbers/

Re: Metro

#117

Post by Tichy »

toddmorey wrote: post #20

I think metro is very minimal and very clean. But it's also... cold. A bit too austere. The goal for an interface isn't to impress--it's to connect. Somehow, I've never felt a sense of connection with the Metro interfaces. It feels like design borrowed from the annual report of a faceless international corporation. All design; no personality. I like simple and clean. And I like minimalism. But I also think you have t…

That is why Apple is using fake wood backgrounds all over the place? I think they are very cheesy - prefer a "cold" interface, like a command line. Then again, maybe it would cheer me up to configure my shell to use Comic Sans...

Re: Metro

#118

Post by saint-loup »

Tichy wrote: post #117
toddmorey wrote: post #20

I think metro is very minimal and very clean. But it's also... cold. A bit too austere. The goal for an interface isn't to impress--it's to connect. Somehow, I've never felt a sense of connection with the Metro interfaces. It feels like design borrowed from the annual report of a faceless international corporation. All design; no personality. I like simple and clean. And I like minimalism. But I also think you have t…

That is why Apple is using fake wood backgrounds all over the place? I think they are very cheesy - prefer a "cold" interface, like a command line. Then again, maybe it would cheer me up to configure my shell to use Comic Sans...

It is beyond me how Apple, most of the time, designs minimalist products and interfaces, and suddenly comes cup with really kitsch stuff (iCal, Address Book, Photobooth in fullscreen mode, Time Machine). It's like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Re: Metro

#119

Post by lloeki »

pbz wrote: post #46
silverlight wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He later goes on to suggest that perhaps there will be no "traditional" Windows on the tablet, only Metro, which he discusses having the same sorts of backgrounding-and-suspending capability iOS enjoys. From the article: It’s worth noting that Metro is more than just a new look, and more than just putting touch first. Metro apps have similar restrictions to iOS apps. According to Jensen Harris, for example, Metro app…

"He later goes on to suggest that perhaps there will be no "traditional" Windows on the tablet, only Metro, which he discusses having the same sorts of backgrounding-and-suspending capability iOS enjoys." Which, again, proves he didn't watch the keynote. At one point they brought up the scenario of using a tablet on the couch and then, after finding a bug, being able to pull up Visual Studio on the same device. Even…

It's an Intel tablet. Gruber envisions a possible scenario where Metro-only is on ARM tablets.

Re: Metro

#120

Post by lloeki »

beloch wrote: post #21

From the article: "you can’t give iOS apps even the option to run continuously in the background without sacrificing battery life and foreground app performance. But that’s how Microsoft has positioned Metro for tablets — a modern touch interface that carries the full CPU and RAM consumption of Windows as we know it. That have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too attitude is what I didn’t get with Microsoft’s positioning Metro a…

To me, "you can’t give iOS apps even the option to run continuously" is precisely the same as "discarded applications will continue to stay open [...] but unable to schedule CPU time" indeed.

At no point the article says Metro would not have such a feature. The point is merely that you can't have outstanding energy management with runaway background processes, which is the way desktop apps work today, so having a full-blown desktop running legacy apps on a mobile experience is compromising power management.

Side note regarding "you can leave a torrent downloading in the background": see task completion API on iOS, which fills the use case while eliminating undue battery use.

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