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| Windows 8 desktop mode, Office 2013: touch-unfriendly |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-09-01 21:15:21 |
| The Verge published a video demonstrating how desktop mode and Office 2013 - a desktop application - work on Windows RT, the ARM version of Windows 8. The video showed a desktop mode that clearly didn't work well for touch, and even Office 2013, which has a rudimentary touch mode built-in, didn't work properly either. It looked and felt clunky, often didn't respond properly, and even showed touch lag. |
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| wacom for the rescue |
| By SeeM on 2012-09-02 07:33:51 |
| This thing just needs a stylus, like older Windows Mobile. |
 - Score: 4 |
| RE: Youre right |
| By oper on 2012-09-02 08:30:18 |
|
> I can envision the Desktop being obsoleted It's difficult, to say the least. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: Tired warn out company... |
| By oper on 2012-09-02 08:33:29 |
|
> your competitors get the fruits of your labor thanks to the GPL Some fruits, not all. And you get some fruits of the labor of your competitors thanks to the GPL. This way your company is not forced to develop a whole operating system and its applications. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Apparently you need to turn on the touch mode in Office |
| By nej_simon on 2012-09-02 09:09:36 |
|
See this video by ZDnet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G... It's a bit odd that the touch mode is not enabled by default on a Windows RT tablet and it's obvious that it's still not optimal for touch. But it seems to be somewhat better than the interface The Verge tried out. Edit: Lol, it seems the ZDnet guy actually failed to enable touch mode too. This is how you do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2... Edited 2012-09-02 09:16 UTC |
| - Score: 6 |
| What if I want desktop office? |
| By Stubbs on 2012-09-02 09:15:29 |
|
OK so touch may not work really well in desktop mode BUT I for one want full office even if it means using a keyboard and mouse when I use it. In fact i couldn't imagine writing a long document on a tablet without a keyboard. Lots of people seem to agree because you just have to look at the popularity of VNC / RDP type apps on iOS and Android and also the number of BT keyboards being sold. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[2]: Window opportuniry |
| By No it isnt on 2012-09-02 10:22:39 |
|
Hardly anyone is telling commercial developers to GPL everything. At least, far more people are complaining about that kind of behaviour than there are people actually behaving that way. It's a very trollish point to make. Simple software updates don't break the login screen. The only time I've seen this happening was in OS X, where an error in a WLAN library made the login splash screen hang indefinitely with no error message. No Linux distro offers that kind of unneeded complexity. FreeBSD is years behind Linux on the desktop. At least if you include things like ditching X for Wayland, never mind that FreeBSD is years behind Linux with X development as well. But yeah, it does have OSSv4. It's not really all that much better than ALSA + Pulse in all configurations (certainly didn't work for me), but if you prefer the FreeBSD fantasy to the Fantasy of The Year of Linux on the Desktop, then just go right ahead and dream on. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Tired warn out company... |
| By Colonel Panic on 2012-09-02 12:38:11 |
| OS X can run on any modern Intel equipment. Case in point I'm running Lion right now as I post this. It does NOT have to be on Apple HW, just Intel. I wanted a OS X box that sadly Apple either doesn't want to sell or is phasing out so I built my own. Whether that's legal or not I don't care, I have what I wanted. Plus my point is that OS X will run on other HW other than strictly Apple's. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: Window opportuniry |
| By foregam on 2012-09-02 12:54:45 |
|
> * Ditching X.org for a working graphics stack (Wayland does look promising) * Fixing the audio subsystem (ditch ALSA, Pulseaudio, and the rest of that mess and put your resources into OSS 4 which actually works) * Providing API and ABI compatibility (yes, the Linux lovers say it's unnecessary but it damn well is necessary for commercial software) BS. Ditch X.org for Wayland? I have very few good words to say about X, but ditching a thoroughly tested and working, though somewhat aged and quite clunky, system for some vapourware is plain stupid. Pulseaudio is a bitch, right, but no-one is forcing you to use it. OSS is already ditched for ALSA, so the chances that ALSA be ditched for OSS4 are quite slim. Re: ABI compatibility, it's right there. Install the libraries you need, load the modules you need and stop whining. I have, and occasionally run, programs from every incarnation of libc: a sourceless ZMAGIC roguelike, some Loki games, a commercial tape backup program from the 2.0 kernel days, some really old version of ApplixWare. That's pretty damn good for me. If you want to say something about GCC ABI compatibility, well, I feel your pain. APIs stay mostly compatible within those projects I track, can't say anything about the general trend. > * Stop trying to tell every commercial developer that they need to GPL everything or open source their drivers * Thoroughly test all updates to insure that a simple software update won't result in the login screen of death * Document all system APIs in a consolidated mannor and publish that for third party developers Nagging vendors for open source drivers is actually useful in the long run — most of them eventually got the message, even Broadcom. The last two are good points, but this is not a single team with a single policy. Edited 2012-09-02 12:57 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: Comment by zizban |
| By vaette on 2012-09-02 13:00:11 |
| It does, it is just fixed to just run Explorer and Office since porting Office to Metro was too large an undertaking and a good file browser is simultaneously important and a bad fit for the tablet face of things. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Grognardism |
| By Shadowmane on 2012-09-02 13:42:18 |
|
You know, this whole issue of tablet vs desktop is becoming a fight of the grognards vs the innovators. Its cross-platform. With Windows, it seems to be the Metro vs Desktop versions of Windows. With Linux, its Gnome 3 vs Gnome 2 clones. Everywhere you go, you have one group designing for the future, where tablets and phones will dominate, and another group, who hate change, who want to design for 1980's technology. I have no dog in this hunt. I like it both ways. But for God's sake, if you're going to design something for tablet/multi-touch computing, then do so. Stop trying to cross-dress applications. If Windows wants Office for its Windows 8, then it needs its Office team to design a version of Office specifically for it. At the same time, it should keep its old design for the grognards who resist change. Windows 8 will stand or fall on its own. Office needs to be able to go either way, because it makes more money for Microsoft. |
| - Score: 2 |
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