Computers are supposed to be labor-saving devices. But a few days of using Windows 8, and I’m exhausted.
It’s partly my fault. I’ve tried to test every feature of Microsoft’s latest operating system. And I’ve tested this unfamiliar software on a new machine —Microsoft’s just released tablet computer, the Surface.
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Microsoft's "hook" has always been "learning" how to do the unobvious and then believing that the hype from Apple users about ease-of-use was just silly fluff. It worked when price was a differentiator that favored the mass marketed pc platforms. It won't work this time. It's ashame that they aren't "all-in".
Apple's software never had "ease of use" unless most of what you were doing was graphic design--even then for only about ten years, until Windows-based design software caught up. For an experienced user of both Windows and Apple, as well as VMS and several flavors of Unix, it became clear that in typical office uses Apple would cost about 10 to 15 percent of productivity, compared with Windows--mostly from a "one size fits all" approach, forcing users into slow graphical commands instead of offering quick keyboard shortcuts like those most professional Windows users soon learned. When launching its software for small-screen devices, Apple sensibly invented new paradigms, good matches to the hardware environments. With Windows 8, Microsoft seems to be trying a backward and discredited "one size fits all" approach--maybe a good fit to none.
Over the years Apply users have continally and consistently found it necessary to criticize Microsoft and Windows, and treat Windows users as ignoramuses who don't know what they're missing. Maybe they have some need to make themselves feel superior since so many people bought PC's and got along perfectly well with them.
I, for one, happen to prefer windows for several reasons, among them the huge amount of available software and an almost unlimited choice of peripherals. The desktop and much of the operation of Windows can be customized in a myriad of ways.
Everyone with a Apple product has the same product. I can choose a computer from scores of manufacturers with varying capabilites, or I can buy a case, motherboard and other parts and put one together myself.
After hearing it for years, I'm sick of Apple arrogance.
A touch screen for a laptop or desktop setup is a fatally flawed concept. How long will it take consumers to tire -- mentally and physically -- of reaching across the keyboard to stroke the screen? Many experienced users don't even like to use a mouse, preferring faster keyboard shortcuts that require less hand and arm movement.
as an Apple fan in this battle I have to say this article is concerning. The Surface talet runs off an interface of Windows 8 called Windows RT, which is hardly the same program being ported onto computers. By lumpin an OS system review for Windows 8 through your experiences using the tablet, you hardly do justice to the real Windows 8 product. Its kind of lazy journalism for a tech review to assume they are using an OS just based off some looks right? While Windows 8 is far from what it needs to be the rewiews for the straight OS as compared to Windows RT are miles apart. Just do some basic research...
Like Windows Vista, Windows 8 looks to be a strategic error: trying to force all users into styles that suit only users of devices with very small displays. Many experienced users would need substantial retraining and lose productivity, gaining nothing in return. Apple may be about to start similar misadventures. [ Nick Wingfield and Nick Bilton, Apple shake-up could end real-world images, New York Times, November 1, 2012, at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/technology/apple-shake-up-could-mean-end-to-real-world-images-in-software.html ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Microsoft began to outpace much of the software industry in the mid-1980s, with productive use of color in early editions of Windows. Progress continued for about 20 years, through Windows XP, but then management discipline vanished. Over-reaching and under-achieving software managers and designers wasted five years on the disastrous Windows Vista, offering users little more than fancy decorations. The Windows Vista release soon led to higher prices for used XP computers than new Vista computers, as most business and institutional users and many individual users rejected Vista. Three more years had to be spent on Windows 7--a maintenance release to correct boatloads of mistakes.
This is the best and most useful review of Windows 8 that I've seen. While acknowledging the learning curve, insiders have been largely positive about Windows 8. Even you diss it somewhat apologetically, but at least you diss it. If you can't make it work, imagine what it's like for Joe Sixpack user! Apple has nothing to fear.
Once again, when will software engineers consider the needs of the customer/user over their own need to play with electronics? Most of us USE these machines, not PLAY with them.
Of course they take customer needs into consideration. Microsoft does considerable research in that area. Different people have different needs. What's intuitive to one person may not be intuitive to another. If you aren't happy with Windows 8, that doesn't mean others won't be. In fact, your opinion may be only a small minority.
It would be much more productive for you to give your personal opinion as such, rather castigating software engineers as if your desires are the only ones that count.
Don't forget that the iPad is "intuitive" because you are already familiar with it. For example, swiping up with four fingers to see running apps, or having to press and hold the one physical button until icons jiggle and then you can move them is no more intuitive than any Windows 8 gestures.
I find that once you know a very few basic actions in Windows 8 it's quite easy to use. If anything the gestures are more simplistic because, other than pinch to zoom, they all simply use one finger, rather than needing to remember if you need to use 1, 2, 3, or 4 fingers as in the iPad's family of gestures.
So far most people I know who have actually installed and are using Windows 8 are happy with it, and they're all still using mouse and keyboard rather than touchscreen. If you remember that on the touchscreen you gesture in from the sides, and if you using a mouse you go to the corners to bring up options then it's easy.
Arguments can certainly be made for or against specific decisions, but once you know a couple straightforward things then it's actually very simple to get around.