News - Microsoft Windows 8 hits RTM, MSDN downloads on the 15th

[HEXUS]

Whilst the rest of us must wait until October 26th, for others, Windows 8 has come early.

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[cjs150]

Thanks but no thanks. I use a desktop pc and have an HTPC. For the desktop pc I want a grown up OS not the "Big Ears and Noddy reading primer" version that is only suitable for tablets and for the HTPC as Windows 8 does not support out of the box DVD or Blu ray playback it is completely useless

[Moby-Dick]

Funny - when XP came out , people called the UI "fisher Price windows"

[maverik-sg1]

I'll wait a while before I look more seriously at this - that frotn panel is a joke, turning my pc into a smartphone, thanks.

If I were microsoft I'd be tightening my sphincter - Android is linux based and opengl satisfies both iOS and Android the linux/android/ios market is massive and growing whereas the pc market is flat in comparison...microsoft need win8 to fly on all formats else they're soon going to be outnumbered and outgunned by the Linux/Opengl combo.

For ubuntu/android and OpenGL they're no doubt entering a phase where we will see massive investment and development (so that cross porting from phone, to tab to console to PC and iphone to ipad to imac even is easy as 123) at an equally expedient rate.

So if windows8 fails to impact the phone/tablet market whilst retaining it's PC market share, all of a sudden there's an opportunity where Microsoft with directx/windows/bloatware will meet a crossroads and could acquire something to remain dominant, become more open to compete or become obsolete.

Selina Kyle said it best "There's a storm brewing......." the field of battle is set and it's gonne be great to see how this one unfolds.

[dangel]

Funny - when XP came out , people called the UI "fisher Price windows"

Yes I remember it well. I also remember how terrible the new taskbar was in 7. etc.

I don't think the Metro stuff is quite right yet but it doesn't get in my way so I don't see the point in getting upset. Whether MS are right or wrong with their new direction the underlying OS (and the traditional desktop) are much improved. I'll be upgrading on the 15th - currently on the RP build anyway at work.

As for everyone abandoning Windows - yeah, heard that before - not gonna happen. At worst people will stick with XP or 7. Interesting promoting cross porting given that's exactly MS' strategy..

[cameronlite]

Funny - when XP came out , people called the UI "fisher Price windows"

Don't forget "teletubby"

[aidanjt]

As for everyone abandoning Windows - yeah, heard that before - not gonna happen.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. In the past people had no other viable choice, and Windows is all they knew anyway. Legacy apps are going away as more of what you do is on the platform-neutral web. Now people are realising they do pretty much everything on their smartphone/tablet already. Google has internally switched to OS X and an internal variant of Ubuntu. Steam is supporting the same. The winds have changed, and Microsoft isn't nearly as relevant as they once were, and changing core focus to Metro doesn't help matters at all.

[cheesemp]

I remember those comments about XP being 'fisher price' and Windows 7 start menu being awful but I liked them both from the moment I started using them and didn't look back. I just don't feel the same with Metro. It makes working with a mouse a pain (unless they have radically altered it recently) and I just don't see the need to take the pain when Windows 7 does such a good job. I could see Metro doing a better job longer term if they heavily refine it but thats going to be Windows 9 or 10.

For record I've got full MSDN access so giving it a go will cost me nothing but I just don't have that rush to try it like I did with XP, Vista and Win 7....

[dangel]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. In the past people had no other viable choice, and Windows is all they knew anyway. Legacy apps are going away as more of what you do is on the platform-neutral web. Now people are realising they do pretty much everything on their smartphone/tablet already. Google has internally switched to OS X and an internal variant of Ubuntu. Steam is supporting the same. The winds have changed, and Microsoft isn't nearly as relevant as they once were, and changing core focus to Metro doesn't help matters at all.

I'll agree to disagree - the mainstream PC market is still massive and has many use cases where tablets/phones just don't fit very well. Whilst I agree that surfing facebook and flipboard on my iPad is nice it pretty much sucks for everything else and so I don't really use it for anything else. Google are a poor example - they're obvious pro-anything-but-MS for obvious reasons and as much as I'd like to have an alternate platform for gaming neither OSX or Linux are it for various reasons. Gabe comes off like an idiot when he talks about Win8 simply because his underlying motives are rather plain to see - a competing app store does not help steam much. They're still unassailable in the "post pc" World in their own market - this isn't actually good for us at all but in Phone and Tablet they're nowhere (and this is). I think they're being pushed to change by these new markets and I like it. A lot. Windows has got so much more interesting of late as a result and MS more so - their new tablet really interests me. I'll be taking a long look at the Pro version precisely because all that 'legacy' stuff will work - at the moment my tablets are much more of a compromise by comparison. I wouldn't count MS out - they've got a long history of getting into impenetrable markets. Xbox anyone?

Bear in mind i'm android phone, ipad/nexus 7 tablet and Windows on laptop/desktop - I am open to new shiny things

As a dev I will be building a Metro app for our product - it'll be interesting to see how flexible the ecosystem is and whether we'll end up sideloading our app as part of the installer to avoid any restrictions. I don't know much about it yet and i'd be interested to hear from someone who's had a go..

I remember those comments about XP being 'fisher price' and Windows 7 start menu being awful but I liked them both from the moment I started using them and didn't look back. I just don't feel the same with Metro. It makes working with a mouse a pain (unless they have radically altered it recently) and I just don't see the need to take the pain when Windows 7 does such a good job. I could see Metro doing a better job longer term if they heavily refine it but thats going to be Windows 9 or 10.

Here I largely agree with you - it's not an instant Win (ho-ho) is it? It's a transitional step (quite obviously) but I will say I do like the modern look of Metro apps and I can see the appeal to the casual user. I'm not sure i'll use them myself (that will depend on what's available for it) but I can live with a start 'screen' given I only ever launched apps by typing in 7 and even then very infrequently (versus the start bar).

Have you given everything else a go yet though? I'm really happy with the traditional desktop on 8.

[cheesemp]

Here I largely agree with you - it's not an instant Win (ho-ho) is it? It's a transitional step (quite obviously) but I will say I do like the modern look of Metro apps and I can see the appeal to the casual user. I'm not sure i'll use them myself (that will depend on what's available for it) but I can live with a start 'screen' given I only ever launched apps by typing in 7 and even then very infrequently (versus the start bar).

Have you given everything else a go yet though? I'm really happy with the traditional desktop on 8.

To be honest I tried the develop preview and consumer preview. Both times I got seriously annoyed trying to work out how to shutdown the PC (eventually found the magically hover area that causes the popup menu to appear). I also got annoyed when I installed an app with multiple shortcuts and they just all got hidden until I did show all and they just got spewed out in a horrible mess. At that point I just gave up. I can see how Metro will work on a tablet but it just feels like Microsoft has abandoned us traditional desktop + mouse users in favour of catering primarily for easy of use on touch screens.

[dangel]

To be honest I tried the develop preview and consumer preview. Both times I got seriously annoyed trying to work out how to shutdown the PC (eventually found the magically hover area that causes the popup menu to appear). I also got annoyed when I installed an app with multiple shortcuts and they just all got hidden until I did show all and they just got spewed out in a horrible mess. At that point I just gave up. I can see how Metro will work on a tablet but it just feels like Microsoft has abandoned us traditional desktop + mouse users in favour of catering primarily for easy of use on touch screens.

Ha! Yeah took me 10 mins to work it out (the first time I logged off first and found a power button that way) initially - then I read an article on what was new You've nailed one of my pet hates - the lack of logical/folder grouping for desktop apps on the start screen (i've said it before) is obviously nasty and needs fixing. Manually 'fixing' this via semantic zoom is horrible too.

[cameronlite]

I think Metro would go down better on a desktop if there was a tutorial at the beginning that instructed you how to use the computer... Kind of then emphasises the fact that it's not intuitive.

[Spud1]

If I were microsoft I'd be tightening my sphincter - Android is linux based and opengl satisfies both iOS and Android the linux/android/ios market is massive and growing whereas the pc market is flat in comparison...microsoft need win8 to fly on all formats else they're soon going to be outnumbered and outgunned by the Linux/Opengl combo.

I presume that this is a joke, right? We are at least 5 years away from the mass market even starting to turn away from Windows, and I expect at least 10 years away from large enterprise (the biggest market for Microsoft) to migrate away, if it ever happens.

It might happen sooner in the consumer market - and Microsoft are really really not helping themselves here by starting to move away from "traditional" legacy windows applications which, whilst they are full of their own problems, does enabled Microsoft to keep a stranglehold on the desktop PC marketplace. Legacy software keeps Microsoft in business!

I hear so much drivel these days from people saying that Android/Linux is going to take over the world (again, how many times have we heard this?) ,but it's never happened..just because Android is selling well doesn't mean that people are going to Abandon Microsoft and jump to open source/free software..it just won't happen. Android sells well because it does what its supposed to at a very low price, and there isn't any real competition apart from iOS.

The fact remains that at present there is nothing on the desktop that offers a general user experince better than Windows, with OSX being the only contender. The biggest reason being the choice and support of applications - which comes back to why Microsoft starting their own App store being a pretty bad idea commercially. This idea that we'll all abandon PCs/Laptops in the near future is a bit rubbish too - Can you imagine trying to play World of Warcraft on a Galaxy Tab or iPad? Writing up your disseratation whilst also researching and listening to music and chatting on MSN, on a tablet (even on a transformer style thing)? Not much fun..and even if I do like the idea of convergence in this space (so a tablet + PC can be one and the same thing), we're not at that point yet..even Windows 8 doesn't ge tit right, as the tablet version does not have a full implemetnation of windows, and we're yet to see the powerful x86 versions that we need.

Anyway back OT - this is good news as I am still on the CP and am looking forward to seeing this appear on MSDN so I can finally upgrade to a newer version I want the metro UI on my second screen!

[dangel]

I think Metro would go down better on a desktop if there was a tutorial at the beginning that instructed you how to use the computer... Kind of then emphasises the fact that it's not intuitive.

I agree. But I'd also point out I needed that when I got my first iOS device - the iPad 3. I just didn't know about multi finger swipes at all (for example). To be fair to MS the Windows help is fantastic - nobody reads it mind but it's really good - in 7 it opens telling you about the differences right away. OTOH removing the start button? Odd.

[Brewster0101]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. In the past people had no other viable choice, and Windows is all they knew anyway. Legacy apps are going away as more of what you do is on the platform-neutral web. Now people are realising they do pretty much everything on their smartphone/tablet already. Google has internally switched to OS X and an internal variant of Ubuntu. Steam is supporting the same. The winds have changed, and Microsoft isn't nearly as relevant as they once were, and changing core focus to Metro doesn't help matters at all.

+1 - If some big game developers jump into Linux (Ubunta) then I think we could see a real swing from windows. Lets face it, Ubunta can do pretty much anything Windows can now , generally better - games is the missing part of the puzzle.

[cameronlite]

I agree. But I'd also point out I needed that when I got my first iOS device - the iPad 3. I just didn't know about multi finger swipes at all (for example). To be fair to MS the Windows help is fantastic - nobody reads it mind but it's really good - in 7 it opens telling you about the differences right away. OTOH removing the start button? Odd.

Agreed, I have yet to play with an OS that is actually intuitive - sometimes it's fun to discover things, other times it's just painful trying to figure something out. I just feel that without a tutorial, people will instantly hate it as they won't know to go:
- mouse in top right hand corner
- settings
- power

Xp is not intuitive either, nor was 7 nor are any of Apple's products. No tutorial = no sales/lots of returns/downgrades to 7. 7 didn't need a tutorial because it was so similar to vista/xp but can you imagine using Windows 7 as your first OS though?