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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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| RE: Comment by ephracis |
| By bassbeast on 2012-09-02 14:53:28 |
|
+10 That is EXACTLY what they need to do, although I'd argue that it needs to be split in THREE, not two. 1.-Windows Pro X86-64, a light business oriented release without any extra bling but with full DirectX support, similar to how they did with Win2K. This would let businesses have a nice conservative desktop (also performance gamers would probably choose this) without any extra fluff, just "get out of my way and let me run my programs" basically. 2.- Windows Home X86-64, this would be your consumer oriented more "family friendly" version, with your prettier desktop, appstore, plenty of multimedia stuff, very home user friendly. 3.- Windows RT, the ARM "Metro" look designed around cell phones and tablets, lots of appstore focus, all touch, no desktop mode. Sadly what we are getting those is MSFT throwing a "Hail Mary" by trying to force desktop users to use a touch UI in the hopes that if they "get used to it" at home they might buy a tablet with it. I don't think its gonna work unless Ballmer is willing to flush another billion by selling Surface tablets below cost, but that seems to be the plan. Oh and I'd say Mr Holwerda is incorrect, desktop mode isn't "just" for Office as frankly most of the deep level system stuff like file explorer and notepad and paint and the deeper system tools frankly aren't touch UI useful either so they really have no choice but to hang onto desktop mode. Remember the first versions of Vista, and how many programs still had XP dialog boxes and icons? We are seeing the same thing here, another rushed out release with a LOT of the low level stuff not converted over to the UI. Personally I think like Vista its gonna be another bomb, anybody who uses it for any length of time can feel how unfinished the whole thing is, but MSFT is getting curbstomped so badly in mobile they have to throw something out there to try to gain some share. What I think is gonna slaughter them is the carriers are royally p*ssed at MSFT for buying Skype and they aren't gonna allow WinRT units to get the subsidies like the others because Skype competes with their core business, gouging on minutes and SMS. |
 - Score: 4 |
| RE: Window opportuniry |
| By bassbeast on 2012-09-02 15:00:28 |
|
Not a chance dude, they'll just stick with 7 like they stuck with XP. As we have seen posted here lately there are just too many problems in Linux land that keep the software developers from supporting it, and without native ports of the software everyone uses it has ZERO chance. Joe Average simply isn't gonna deal with the flaming mess that is Wine, hardware roulette when it comes to shopping for devices that will work with his computer, dealing with the incredibly retarded breakages that happen like Pulseaudio crapping or the wireless getting hosed, and the general unfriendliness of the design. The simple fact is to get linux to get even OSX levels of adoption fundamental changes would have to be made to the way things are done and the devs are elitist ubernerds that think the entire world should do things THEIR way instead of conforming to the way the world works. As a wise man on one of the forums said "Linux is 3 years away from being ready for the masses. it was 3 years away 10 years ago, it is 3 years away now, and it'll be 3 years away 10 years from now" because the devs simply won't go along with the changes to the way they do things to get more people on board. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Grognardism |
| By Brendan on 2012-09-02 15:13:02 |
|
Hi, > 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. Tablets are good for some things; like reading a few web pages, keeping in contact with people while you're on the move, reading an ebook in bed, etc. They're complete useless for anything serious (like writing documents, creating software, CAD, modern 3D games, etc). Desktops are good for almost everything; except when the size is a problem. They're too big to carry around all day, and I'm sure I wouldn't want my full "dual 30 inch screen" setup for reading a book in bed. Obviously they're entirely different form factors, designed for entirely different uses. The idea that tablets will make desktop obsolete is completely idiotic - as stupid as thinking that Segway is going to make cars obsolete. What we have at the moment is developers trying to make desktop stuff work on tablets, or trying to make the same user interfaces work in both cases at the same time. My prediction is that this "first wave" of user interfaces will fail badly (either being useless for tablet, being useless for desktop, or being useless for both); and this failure is going to be an important lesson that forces developers to realise that different usage patterns require different user interfaces. - Brendan |
| - Score: 8 |
| fail... |
| By sarreq on 2012-09-02 15:26:36 |
| I really do believe that Windows 8 is going to be the new WindowsMe. Vista was at least usable. |
| - Score: 0 |
| RE: Grognardism |
| By Neolander on 2012-09-02 15:48:31 |
|
> 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. Can't tell if trolling... |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[3]: Tired warn out company... |
| By ricegf on 2012-09-02 16:19:48 |
|
Canonical has reported about 20 million desktop/laptop users (based on unique IP addresses to their update servers), but more importantly, they have a serious monetization strategy that includes: * An excellent store for both free and paid products (Software Center) built on apt that tightly links to their OS (e.g., Unity Dash shows both installed and available products matching my search, and purchasing and installing the available products is as simple as clicking the one I want) * An excellent cloud service (UbuntuOne) that sells media and offers automated off-site backups, highly customized multi-OS synchronization, collaboration, etc. * An active vendor affinity program for pre-installs * A cross-product strategy covering desktops/laptops, servers, tablets, smartphones, TVs, and other embedded opportunities. You can argue over whether they will succeed or fail in the long-term, but their founder has exceptionally deep pockets, extensive business experience, and a strong ideological commitment to "paying forward" the FOSS philosophy that he credits with enabling him to make is billions. I'm a paying customer, so you needn't ask on which side I would argue. :-) |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: Apparently you need to turn on the touch mode in Office |
| By Thom_Holwerda on 2012-09-02 16:32:33 |
| Touch mode IS on in The Verge video. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: Tired warn out company... |
| By marcus0263 on 2012-09-02 16:50:28 |
|
> A big problem with dumping money into the Linux desktop is that your competitors get the fruits of your labor thanks to the GPL. Red Hat has managed to get around this by selling a brand name and pricey support to enterprise but that same model doesn't work on the desktop (and Linux fans please note that the Red Hat CEO acknowledged this). Nope, company I work for we use Linux as our base. We do contribute back to the community but we also maintain some proprietary code. There is a fortune to be made in maintenance, support contracts and consulting for the Enterprise. That's were the real $$$ are generated. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[4]: Window opportuniry |
| By TechGeek on 2012-09-02 17:23:25 |
|
darknexus: I don't know what OS you normally use, but you seem to be talking about Linux from years ago. I run Fedora on the desktop, and while I have run into some issues, none of them were ever bad enough to keep me from being able to use the system. Part of the issue is that Linux is constantly updating. Linux is under continual advancement. Windows goes years between versions. OS X goes at least a year. About your concerns: -While X is certainly a bit old, it has enterprise features that other OS's still don't support, especially when it comes to multi user systems, which Windows and OS X are NOT. -I have used pulse since it was put in Fedora. In at least the last 2 years I haven't had a single problem. -Your kernel API's are going to change. Its a fact of life. They do in Windows and OS X as well. Your user space APIs are stable. I can run software that was produced half a decade ago with no problems. (like Loki games). I won't deny that Linux has some issues to work out to get to the desktop. But its not as bad as you make it out to be. Half or more of the problem you listed will never affect normal desktop users anyway. The key here is that if the user is going to have to learn a new system (ie WIndows RT) then they could just as easily learn a new Linux OS. |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE[2]: Apparently you need to turn on the touch mode in Office |
| By nej_simon on 2012-09-02 17:29:01 |
|
Really? When touch mode is on there is a small blue dot in the title bar. There is no such dot in the video by The Verge. http://cdn4.computerworlduk.com/... |
| - Score: 3 |
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