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Creating the Windows 8 user experience

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Re: Creating the Windows 8 user experience

#31

Post by lusr »

glhaynes wrote: post #11
sliverstorm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"too much memory consumption" is pretty low on the list. The reason it isn't high on the list is because they already tackled that for Win7. You may not remember, but it was a growing problem before 7. They aren't saying here that they need to reduce memory consumption further; they are saying that they will do the same thing with battery life for Win8, that they did with memory for Win7.

I think you've misunderstood my point which was that Microsoft engineers are very capable of reducing memory usage if charged to do so (and, as you say, history bears this out) and that I would expect them to likewise be able to reduce power usage [within the constraints provided by environment and hardware requirements].

There's a big difference between reducing memory pressure/performance (which kind of solved itself once applications stopped increasing memory usage faster than the price/Mb dropped, and the move from 32-bit to 64-bit helped a bit too; handling stupid things like XP swapping everything out to disk overnight were easy wins as well) and improving power efficiency (requires application and OS redesign, which Microsoft have done and judging by the moaning about WinRT in this thread by developers the uptake will be a challenge; even then if you improve efficiency people just keep using the damn devices even more so it's really difficult to win whereas with memory there's a typical usage value that changes safely relative to RAM increases as applications grow over the years, whereas battery capacity isn't improving as rapidly).

I'm throwing another 12GB of RAM (making 24GB total) into my system tomorrow when I install Windows 8. Together with my new SSD it'll help crunching through some large data sets so that I can hit 100% CPU utilization. It cost me $100 USD to do so in a country where we often pay double for electronics. Few "normal" people can utilize all of that during the normal course of using a PC. Memory pressure is an easy problem to solve.

Re: Creating the Windows 8 user experience

#32

Post by drivebyacct2 »

rbanffy wrote: post #30
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a geek type, and one who accepts that technology changes and different != automatically awful. The fact that everyone said the same thing about Unity and are now coming around to it, proves my point. I happen to love Gnome-Shell. I don't mind Unity and I think Win8 is great after you take some time to get used to it.

Your generalizations are incorrect. While a lot of people were very vocal on their opposition to Gnome shell and Unity, I wouldn't say "everyone" opposed them. In fact, I didn't. I considered the move risky, of course. I think Metro for desktops and notebooks makes very little sense unless you use a multi-touch pointing device like Apple's trackpad. With a mouse, it's painful.

Yes, heh, I did not mean literally everyone, but even much of HN is still full of Unity hate. I managed to get down to at least -8 or -9 by my calculations the other day for trying to combat nonspecific Unity hate-rants. I understand skepticism, like I said, I really just roll my eyes at the "it sucks [with no reasons]" that are evident even in this thread.

And it doesn't completely answer your criticism but many Synaptic touchpads for a looong time are multitouch capable, they're just not utilized. It's different, I'll grant that, I didn't think it was painful, but I adapt quickly and I don't mind scrolling with the wheel to move horizontally. (The proverbial) You get used to it.

Re: Creating the Windows 8 user experience

#33

Post by drivebyacct2 »

bitwize wrote: post #29
metrop0219 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way are they screwing developers? I feel that the three avenues for writing apps (C#/xaml, c++, and html5/js) are actually pretty good for us.

By giving you a crippled, nerfed WinRT API to develop to instead of Win32. Apple's iOS APIs are crippled, too, but the iPad is so much cheaper, niftier, and more pleasant to develop for (seriously, Cocoa APIs are pretty awesome). The key advantage of Windows -- backwards compatibility with prior versions of Windows -- is going to be to some significant degree, lost with WinRT. In short, Microsoft is going to have a h…

You're just all over the place aren't you? WinRT APIs are available on ARM, so the devices will eventually reach price parity. Otherwise, WinRT APIs are neither that crippled given their target usage (Metro apps), they're designed to be power friendly from the start and you can choose any language that there are projections for.

Re: Creating the Windows 8 user experience

#34

Post by rbanffy »

sliverstorm wrote: post #23
rbanffy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason it isn't high on the list is because they already tackled that for Win7 It's not tweaking memory management that solved the problem - it's that our computers started coming with 4 gigabytes of RAM.

I dunno, Win7 runs just fine on 1GB, and while XP can be installed on 128MB I'm not sure it will run that well.

> I dunno, Win7 runs just fine on 1GB

That's not what I experience with VMs. Unless you restrict yourself to the desktop and Windows Explorer, it doesn't feel good.

Re: Creating the Windows 8 user experience

#35

Post by gbvc »

Windows 95 Media Player could do more than play wav files, you could certainly watch videos.

Also there was a lot of evolution between Windows 95 and XP that gets glossed over, as the internet became more important. XP, with some minor tweaks, could behave like a stabler version of 95/98 (I must admit that I stripped much of the chrome away for a few months, till I got more comfortable with the slightly different look and feel of the menus and task bar).

The also ignore one significant trend-following dead-end from the 95/98 era: Active Desktop- Vista wasn't the first time they headed up a blind UX alley.

Even with Windows 7, I think they overstate the differences with its predecessors: the Start Menu remains as important as ever.

Re: Creating the Windows 8 user experience

#36

Post by sliverstorm »

rbanffy wrote: post #34
sliverstorm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, Win7 runs just fine on 1GB, and while XP can be installed on 128MB I'm not sure it will run that well.

> I dunno, Win7 runs just fine on 1GB That's not what I experience with VMs. Unless you restrict yourself to the desktop and Windows Explorer, it doesn't feel good.

Dunno if VMs are the ideal reference case.
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