SwiftDeath
Member
Cool maybe I'll get windows 8 then if I feel the need to update soon
Microsoft backpedals: Windows 8.1 update hides tile interface by default
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EatinOlives
Member
Seems to me like mountains out of molehills. The only thing they're doing is ticking different options on/off by default.
All this faff about the Start menu is a moot point at this day and age anyway. In fact, I'm surprised people still use the Start menu at all. I've been hitting the Windows key + typed the first few letters of whatever I wanted to launch + hit Enter without missing a beat since Windows Vista introduced the search-bar-on-start feature. I only enabled the Apps view on Windows Key option because the giant Start buttons look way out of place on a large desktop screen. In other words, it's all aesthetic because I don't use a start menu either way anymore.
All this faff about the Start menu is a moot point at this day and age anyway. In fact, I'm surprised people still use the Start menu at all. I've been hitting the Windows key + typed the first few letters of whatever I wanted to launch + hit Enter without missing a beat since Windows Vista introduced the search-bar-on-start feature. I only enabled the Apps view on Windows Key option because the giant Start buttons look way out of place on a large desktop screen. In other words, it's all aesthetic because I don't use a start menu either way anymore.
IdreamofHIME
Member
I hate when companies and politicians get criticized for doing 180's and U-Turns.
You didn't like their original idea, but you wanna attack them for changing it and doing the thing you actually wanted?
The mentality behind it is nuts.
You didn't like their original idea, but you wanna attack them for changing it and doing the thing you actually wanted?
The mentality behind it is nuts.
Alx
Member
You still have the option to choose on or the other whatever your platform, they only changed the default setting. Calling it "backpedaling" is a big overstatement.
And I still think starting with the sart screen on default makes more sense, even on a desktop computer : you can have a global view of all your dashboard as soon as you start, and you'll probably need to go to the start screen anyway to launch your first application.
Did the people cheering know that they could already do it with a few configuration steps ?
I find it funny that people keep complaining about problems they don't know are already solved or never existed to begin with. In another forum, I had to explain to someone complaining about the lack of msconfig or desktop calculator that he could actually run them the exact same way he was doing it on 7. He just never tried to do it, but was somewhat convinced it wasn't possible.
CharminUltra
Member
Oh Microsoft. Never change.
I think I heard a couple of cheers around the office when this was announced.
I think I heard a couple of cheers around the office when this was announced.
Prophet Steve
Member
What about just giving a setting at the configuration? For tablet users it would be a lot more convenient to not have to change that first.
I don't get it - if boot to desktop is enabled by default, how is that "hiding" the tiled interface?
Surely The Verge understands that literally the second you click the start button to launch an application, it's back?
"Hidden" seems to imply that it'll be difficult to get back to it.
Surely The Verge understands that literally the second you click the start button to launch an application, it's back?
"Hidden" seems to imply that it'll be difficult to get back to it.
Oh please.
It means at least the people above you in Microsoft recognise that the WinRT framework is dead as a doornail.
The big shame is that six years of development that should have been spent on Win32 have been completely wasted.
Alx
Member
How so ? All the metro features are still there, exactly the same as they were at the beginning. Desktop and metro are not in competition with each other on a Win8 PC, they coexist in the same system. All they did was change the welcome page from start screen to desktop.
Wiktor
Member
Is there anything truly substantial to add there? Windows 7 already was pretty much perfect desktop OS. There might be some tweaks here and there you could do, but I don't see how putting those 6 years solely into Win32 would yield any huge jumps.
It's not like they could have attempted to revolutionize anything, as that would be met with just as much hate as Metro. People just hate changes on their PCs.
ambientmystic
Member
Under the hood performance upgrades are always good. People just want Windows 7 with Windows 8.1 performance, that's all.
They should've stopped messing around with the UI for desktops/non touch devices by 7.
Shove that 8/8.1 interface for touch only devices and excise it from the Desktop editions.
PetriP-TNT
Member
Oh noes Metro is dead because the remove single click-switch is on by default maybe M$$$ is not removign the desktops after all because I think that's dum if they think that peple use tablets only.
- said by no-one who has a mouse ever.
hipbabboom
Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
You managed to put together words that don't make any sense to me. Where are you losing all this time?
PetriP-TNT
Member
I assume trying to input the username and password with Microsoft Metro UI Keyboard because touch
I use a mouse. I believe that it's just better for Microsoft and the end users to have the option to just use the legacy desktop with the old start menu, etc and completely forget about the Metro interface.
Dorsal Axe
Member
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
Even though a huge portion of the world is abandoning PC/desktop for more modern mobile devices and interfaces?
We see the PC hardware sales going down every quarter and the tablet sales going up every quarter. Considering the price difference it won't be long before tablets are outselling PCs.
I think Microsoft needs to figure out how to make their app store competitive and attractive to developers otherwise Windows is going to be as relevant in computing in a decade as Windows Phones are in mobile today. That desktop interface will be the slow death of the company. If they don't figure a way off of that desktop island the water is just going to keep rising and the island will keep getting smaller. I know so few people who actually need a PC anymore. It is mainly just hobbyists and technical professionals. Even in the Windows camp a lot of students have been buying Surface RT for college.
Prophet Steve
Member
Well, it is confusing as in that is pretty impossible to select on a touch device, so these are options only for mouse users. Having options there that are not meant for you can get pretty confusing.
But maybe it is the desktop version of a metro app, so to say.
real_slime
Banned
I like windows 8, it's pretty slick.
I don't think WinRT is going anywhere, it's very important to MS to get a modern application platform up and running, one that doesn't have to distinguish between ARM and X86. I think what we'll see first is WinRT apps running on the Desktop in windows, and then what really needs to come next is the ability to install them without using the Store.
Once they have those things I think RT is set. Having live tiles, lock screen icons and desktop notifications become extras developers want to work with instead of being bargaining chips to try and force people into the Store.
Once they have those things I think RT is set. Having live tiles, lock screen icons and desktop notifications become extras developers want to work with instead of being bargaining chips to try and force people into the Store.
It needs a coherent notification framework and a lot of under the hood modernisation.
There are a lot of things that Devs have wanted for the last decade where the answer was "use WinRT rather than the legacy Win32 framework".
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
The issues with the Windows desktop are structural fundamental issues. Everyone talks about the UI differences of Metro vs. Desktop, but there are far more important problems with why the desktop is no longer viable in modern mobile computing. Even something seemingly trivial like adding a 4K monitor is going to be a nightmare to use in Windows desktop mode. Watch trying to use the Yoga 2 Pro (which is sub-4K resolution) in Metro vs. Desktop. Most legacy programs cannot scale in Windows desktop which means they need to be rewritten individually or they'll be unusable. The interface becomes unusable due to touch points becoming too small and just moving your barely visible mouse cursor across the screen takes forever. The desktop environment (forget the UI) cannot competitively make the jump to a mobile computing world. The amount of manual tweaking it takes to make the desktop even functional on a high resolution display is a pain on Windows desktop and usually involves lowering or sacrificing the resolution of the display you paid for.
If you don't have a unified store then you don't have traffic like you get on other platforms (iOS, Chrome, Android) which means no exposure for developers, few reviews, no design standards, etc.
Installing apps without a store also means no rules on how much background resources and power the apps will drain after you install them. That means Windows OS will never be viable competitor on a mobile device because power hogging apps will kill the battery faster than a locked down platform like iOS.
It also means no unified ad platform which means the developers will make money by charging high prices and/or through freeware in unscrupulous ways as we've seen...
Have you actually installed apps from a place like Download.com? Every free piece of software now bundles software, toolbars, hijackers and adware that you never wanted. You can't even install Flash from Adobe's website without them trying to trick you into installing Chrome by accident. Installing/Uninstalling apps from the store is a dream compared to the desktop.
And of course for businesses they have to deal with the costly nightmare of employees downloading viruses and malware on the Windows desktop. This just continues to push them towards iOS which is already leading in app development and business deployment.
If you don't have a unified store then you don't have traffic like you get on other platforms (iOS, Chrome, Android) which means no exposure for developers, few reviews, no design standards, etc.
Installing apps without a store also means no rules on how much background resources and power the apps will drain after you install them. That means Windows OS will never be viable competitor on a mobile device because power hogging apps will kill the battery faster than a locked down platform like iOS.
It also means no unified ad platform which means the developers will make money by charging high prices and/or through freeware in unscrupulous ways as we've seen...
Have you actually installed apps from a place like Download.com? Every free piece of software now bundles software, toolbars, hijackers and adware that you never wanted. You can't even install Flash from Adobe's website without them trying to trick you into installing Chrome by accident. Installing/Uninstalling apps from the store is a dream compared to the desktop.
And of course for businesses they have to deal with the costly nightmare of employees downloading viruses and malware on the Windows desktop. This just continues to push them towards iOS which is already leading in app development and business deployment.
As I said, make it an option. I never said that has to ditch the Metro interface but at least make it an option for those who do not want it to disable it at least. If you're on a tablet, then it's fine to use that tile interface but since I'm on a computer using a mouse and a physical keyboard, have me the option to just use the legacy interface (classic start menu, etc).
This is the terrorists law.
I have my surface to boot to metro first, and my desktop boot to...the desktop. I use both environments though on each. I like the next step that is heavily rumored where they will add the option to run metro apps in the desktop in windows. More options the better. Best OS out there imo. Just need a few more quality metro apps like mlb.tv. The one in the store is a piece of shit. Good thing i can still use the browser but i would prefer a ios/android type app.
It boots in like 5 seconds...
Which is hilarious. People complain that 8 is too different from 7 sooooo they move to completely different OS like OSX. Makes no sense.
Ha yeah i had to do that the other day, could not find that option anywhere so i went to cmd. It was there in 8 but removed in 8.1 for some dumbass reason, needs fixing.
I don't think you've thought that through - Android has a default application store, but it still allows you install applications outside of that store. Which is exactly what the person you quoted was talking about.
The Faceless Master
Member
i remember when some people said that we just had to get used to it and this is the way things were going.
Those are all great reasons to have a store, none of them are good reasons to force me to develop for it it. As a developer who deploys applications specifically to businesses, the Approval process, the store listing, all of it is a complete waste of time because no one outside of my clients office is ever going to use the application. Big businesses have dozens and dozens of custom Win32 applications that will never be updated to WinRT because the store model isn't the catch all solution Apple & MS make it out to be.
And for the developers who have successful Win32 apps out there like Tweetdeck or photoshop, what's your incentive to move to RT? Other than giving up 20% of your revenue right off the bat, you'll lose control of your deployments (even for updates), you'll lose direct connection with your customer from point of sale, you'll lose backwards compatibility with Windows 7...for what? An app store that shifts 1 million apps (mostly free, does 1 million paid apps a month) a day compared to 70 million on iOS, MS isn't in Apples position, if it wants people to care about WinRT it has to at the very least not make it less desirable than the previous offering.
Much like with Xbox One, with WinRT Microsoft made business decisions that ignored their competition, and ignored the choices consumers and developers now have.
Wiktor
Member
The sad thing is, most people don't realize just how much we'll be fucked if this happens. Generations that grow up with mobile devices will be a sad pale shadow of the ones that grew up with computers when it comes to engineering, programming and other tech-related activities. Even if those people decide to finally pick up PCs to do all that, they will still be incredibly behind the times as they lost their best talent development years to mobile devices.
Good. Previous versions of Windows didn't release with the start menu open by default, 8/8.1 should be no different.
Same could be said about the mouse when it was introduced. People lost all of their keyboard skills and wasted their best talent development years using mice instead of keyboard shortcuts.
Same could be said about the mouse when it was introduced. People lost all of their keyboard skills and wasted their best talent development years using mice instead of keyboard shortcuts.
*shrug* it was going to happen anyway as computer hardware and software got better at adjusting to humans rather than the other way around.
Is our generation fucked because we, outside of enthusiasts, barely know anything about how cars work compared to our parents who had less advanced cars and actually had to know what the hell a transmission is to keep a car running?
Kids who care will search out desktops and teach themselves just like kids who care about cars today can still go out and build their own hotrod.
"All you have to do is change the default setting, right?
Why complain? I mean... It's just a one time options change"
You can already disable the charms bar. Check the taskbar properties.
Oh man - I'm an idiot. Thanks for the tip!
I only have Win8 on 1 machine that does not get used very often (I stick to my Win7 machine, mostly). Maybe I need to pay more attention.
I'm an expert
Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Oh man - I'm an idiot. Thanks for the tip!
I only have Win8 on 1 machine that does not get used very often (I stick to my Win7 machine, mostly). Maybe I need to pay more attention.
This post sums up everything about the average 8 user lol..
Oh man - I'm an idiot. Thanks for the tip!
I only have Win8 on 1 machine that does not get used very often (I stick to my Win7 machine, mostly). Maybe I need to pay more attention.
No problem. I still agree that the classic start menu should make a return.
Dorsal Axe
Member
This only disables the top-right hot corner. Sadly, there is no setting to fully disable the charms bar (which is annoying since the bottom-right hot corner would arguably be the more useful one to disable).
Wiktor
Member
That analogy makes no sense.
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