Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#31

Post by Samuel_Michon »

wmeredith wrote: post #16
jpreiland wrote: post #12

Search: "It is the modern version of the command line!" While the search feature they're describing sounds cool, I'm curious as to what they mean by a "modern command line".

This sounds like a "faster-horse" feature to me. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/15297-if-i-had-asked-people-...

When he came up with the Model T, people already had trains, trams, electric cars, and bicycles at their disposal. One has to wonder whether the world wouldn’t have been better off without Henry Ford’s gasoline automobiles.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#32

Post by freehunter »

workbench wrote: post #7

In what world could scrambling and backtracking backwards on decisions be described as "Continuing the vision"

How are they scrambling and backtracking decisions? How is that what you took from this?

Sure, they added a start button, why not? But they also made all the PC settings available from within the Metro environment. If the start button is a step backwards in direction, pushing further away from requiring the desktop is ten huge steps forward toward that vision.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#34

Post by Samuel_Michon »

orf wrote: post #25
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“seems like Windows 8 might have been the biggest beta testing project ever” Gmail, Facebook, iCloud and Siri have way more users than Windows 8 does. The last two are in their entirety beta products. The first two have introduced major changes that didn’t turn out great. Even when Google rolls out a new version of Gmail in phases, it easily covers more users than Windows 8 (which has about 60 million users).

Largest doesn't always mean largest user base. I'm sure a lot more money, people and other resources went into Windows 8 than the re-skinning of Gmail.

Daigoba66 wasn’t talking about the product itself, but the stage of beta testing. How many people it took to program the software has nothing to do with the beta testing effort. If it takes 10,000 programmers to build an app, but afterwards they only let 10 users beta test it, that’s not a big beta testing project. However, if you build an app alone and then have 1 million people beta test it, then that’s a big beta testing project.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#35

Post by drdaeman »

kimagure wrote: post #4

under the section "PC Settings" seems to a description for being able to actually use the settings screen in your start menu that will reflect between your start menu and desktop? i've been waiting for this... my start menu will be in japanese even though i set my default keyboard to english and try to set all the language settings to english, so that i'm stuck with a stupid half english/japanese environment. even no…

Why use something you hate? Are you forced to stick with Windows for some particular reason?

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#36

Post by potatolicious »

Tomdarkness wrote: post #18

For me, personally, none of these changes interest me, perhaps with the exception of IE11. I've had Windows 8 installed on my desktop PC since it came out as I took advantage of their cheap upgrade offer from Windows 7 (I'd not of paid full price for it). So here are my thoughts on the improvements in Windows 8.1 as someone who uses it on a desktop, with a keyboard and mouse. Personalization: The only time I ever see…

> "I don't get it, they seem to be ignoring their whole previous customer base; those who used Windows on their non-touch desktops and laptops."

This is what frustrates me also.

I've had Windows 8 installed since (almost) day one on my desktop. I also have a Surface (that hasn't been touched in months, oops).

MS was accused for years of advertising Windows' touch capabilities without actually putting any real thought into them. Windows 7 had some vaunted touch-compatibility changes which really just amounted to increasing the spacing between some buttons. This made them very hard to touch accurately, instead of impossible to touch accurately. Needless to say, people who were hoping for a touch-capable Windows were sorely disappointed.

And now it looks like the pendulum has swung fully the other way. We have an OS that works great on a touch device, and basically doesn't work on a traditional mouse + keyboard device.

No, seriously. I've met people who used Win8 regularly who didn't know that each app had a bottom bar - and how could they, there's zero discoverability around it, even though critical app functionality is often contained in that bar. (It's Windows+Z btw, that or a magical incantation of mouse movements).

On a touch device it's a simple swipe up from the bottom. Beautiful.

It still befuddles me every day that MS was willing to ship something that was so fundamentally unfriendly to mouse and keyboard users. How anyone at MS could look at the mouse gestures to trigger critical UI elements and call them acceptable... I just don't know.

It seems to me that MS has bought fully into the doom and gloom re: the future of computing. The zeitgeist is that in the long run laptops and desktops will stop existing entirely and almost everyone will be using tablets instead. The sales numbers for both iOS and Android tablets support this, but it's hard to say where the equilibrium point will fall.

It makes sense that, strategically, MS wants to transition Windows from a mouse-first to a touch-first UX, but this transition is awful.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#37

Post by pdubs »

>aggregated view of many content sources

I hope this means that the main Start Screen search will now search across programs and settings. Makes it much easier for things that may or may not be settings or apps (Control Panel, Device Manager, Event Viewer, Disk Administration). That's been my #1 gripe with Win8 from day 1; they got rid of universal start menu searching.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#38

Post by drdaeman »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #20

I had to get a new laptop for my wife, and I had no interest in educating her how to use Windows 8 (or figuring it out myself). The only way it's been usable for her was to install Start8. ( http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/ ). It's what MSFT should be adding into 8.1 I have no financial interest in StarDock.

There's also http://www.classicshell.net/, which is free in both senses.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#39

Post by arrrg »

jpreiland wrote: post #12

Search: "It is the modern version of the command line!" While the search feature they're describing sounds cool, I'm curious as to what they mean by a "modern command line".

It's a text-based interface for browsing files and launching programs. You know, what many people used to do with a CLI when they had it.

I assume they mean nothing more than that.

Re: Continuing the Windows 8 vision with Windows 8.1

#40

Post by MatthewPhillips »

Tomdarkness wrote: post #18

For me, personally, none of these changes interest me, perhaps with the exception of IE11. I've had Windows 8 installed on my desktop PC since it came out as I took advantage of their cheap upgrade offer from Windows 7 (I'd not of paid full price for it). So here are my thoughts on the improvements in Windows 8.1 as someone who uses it on a desktop, with a keyboard and mouse. Personalization: The only time I ever see…

You're definitely able to save to SkyDrive already.
Post reply on HN