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The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#41

Post by trollbridge »

havblue wrote: post #36
ux266478 wrote: post #15

Hot take: I liked Windows 8. It used less memory than Windows 7, increased battery life, the file manager and task manager were much improved, I could mount ISOs without third party software, among other things. In truth, I didn't even mind the start screen. And I certainly liked Metro as a UI paradigm much more than Aero. Of course it was still Windows at the end of the day, but 8.1 was my last Windows. The laptop I…

I was one of the few people that thought people would like it. That is, why shouldn't it be better to have a bunch of tiles on your desktop that have the most important information and then you choose the one you really want to concentrate on full screen? Well, of course the problem is you aren't using a tablet. It's trying to fix something that never needed to be fixed. But yes, Linux is great now and most people on…

It also suffered from a lack of relevant applications. The apps I used were a terminal emulator, a web browser, Word, Excel, Project, and a few other old Win32 type apps - none of which were going to become "modern" apps in any useful way.

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#42

Post by trollbridge »

usermac wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic but I super enjoyed the UI on the Windows Phones at the time. Only topped by the WebOS from Palm even before it I recall.

Yeah. The Windows Phone was an amazing piece of technology. It's a tragedy it did not win at all in the marketplace.

In particular, it was pretty easy to write apps for, unlike the other two big giants.

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#43

Post by trollbridge »

joe_mamba wrote: post #27
usermac wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic but I super enjoyed the UI on the Windows Phones at the time. Only topped by the WebOS from Palm even before it I recall.

Same for me. Windows Phone was super smooth even on budget phones with 1GB/512MB of RAM while Android would have been choppy as hell on such hardware. Also, the Windows 8 tablet mode had better touch and swipe UX than the current Windows 11 when put in tablet mode. What a joke Microslop has become. Nadella needs to clean house or step down. The only thing he executed well was the cloud/hyperscaler side of the busines…

It's a major problem. As present trends continue, eventually nobody is going to need any Microsoft products anymore. I'm already watching clients gradually shift away from Office to simple using Google Workspace, and eventualy they'll do the same with Windows.

AWS is the dominant player in cloud hosting. What, exactly, does anyone need Microsoft for anymore?

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#44

Post by RattlesnakeJake »

joe_mamba wrote: post #27
usermac wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic but I super enjoyed the UI on the Windows Phones at the time. Only topped by the WebOS from Palm even before it I recall.

Same for me. Windows Phone was super smooth even on budget phones with 1GB/512MB of RAM while Android would have been choppy as hell on such hardware. Also, the Windows 8 tablet mode had better touch and swipe UX than the current Windows 11 when put in tablet mode. What a joke Microslop has become. Nadella needs to clean house or step down. The only thing he executed well was the cloud/hyperscaler side of the busines…

I had a Lumia with 512MB of RAM. The OS ran great, but the web outpaced it. I couldn't open a lot of JS-heavy sites without Internet Explorer crashing.

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#45

Post by ranger207 »

usermac wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic but I super enjoyed the UI on the Windows Phones at the time. Only topped by the WebOS from Palm even before it I recall.

My first smartphone was a Windows phone with half a gig of RAM and it's still the best phone I've ever owned in terms of software

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#46

Post by azinman2 »

ranger207 wrote: post #45
usermac wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic but I super enjoyed the UI on the Windows Phones at the time. Only topped by the WebOS from Palm even before it I recall.

My first smartphone was a Windows phone with half a gig of RAM and it's still the best phone I've ever owned in terms of software

What made it so great?

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#47

Post by BoxOfRain »

ux266478 wrote: post #15

Hot take: I liked Windows 8. It used less memory than Windows 7, increased battery life, the file manager and task manager were much improved, I could mount ISOs without third party software, among other things. In truth, I didn't even mind the start screen. And I certainly liked Metro as a UI paradigm much more than Aero. Of course it was still Windows at the end of the day, but 8.1 was my last Windows. The laptop I…

My converse hot take is that I actually really liked Aero, I've always had a thing for translucent UI elements and glowing things.

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#48

Post by BoxOfRain »

kgwxd wrote: post #4

"Modern" = something that ruins perfectly good stuff in the never ending pursuit of "progress". UI doesn't need to change every few years. It should have stopped changing almost 30 years ago.

> [UI] should have stopped changing almost 30 years ago

In some ways it did, modern CLIs haven't changed that much fundamentally from their older counterparts. You can do more things but someone using a CLI 30 years ago wouldn't be phased by modern ones; the interaction model has barely changed.

They're all emulating the video terminals of yore too, which themselves were descended from even older teletypewriters.

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#49

Post by deltoidmaximus »

ux266478 wrote: post #15

Hot take: I liked Windows 8. It used less memory than Windows 7, increased battery life, the file manager and task manager were much improved, I could mount ISOs without third party software, among other things. In truth, I didn't even mind the start screen. And I certainly liked Metro as a UI paradigm much more than Aero. Of course it was still Windows at the end of the day, but 8.1 was my last Windows. The laptop I…

I didn't care for the UI at all which is the most common complaint about it. But it was the least offensive complaint to me, the existence of the Microsoft Store was had me looking for the exit. I guess I overestimated Microsoft's competence because the store remains an irritating tumor that hasn't yet metastasized.

Unpopular opinion: Windows 10 is worse. You could still control updates and uninstall or never install the telemetry packs in 8/8.1. And the UI problem could be solved with 3rd party tools. Windows 10 had the spyware baked in and got more annoying over time. But poor adoption of 8 and Microsoft abandoning it meant that in practice driver and software support for 8.1 often disappeared before even Windows 7.

Re: The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern"

#50

Post by ranger207 »

azinman2 wrote: post #46
ranger207 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first smartphone was a Windows phone with half a gig of RAM and it's still the best phone I've ever owned in terms of software

What made it so great?

The OS was smooth and worked well, and the design philosophy across basically every app was extremely coherent. Everything worked well, and everything felt like it fit together. Really its only problem was the lack of apps due to companies intentionally not supporting Windows Phone (Microsoft had a YouTube client that Google made them kill off, and Google never bothered to release a replacement IIRC)
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