Windows 8 will have both the new Metro-style applications and user interface and the traditional Windows 7 desktop for legacy applications, which kind of runs like an application. Since legacy applications have to be recompiled to run on ARM anyway, it’s always been a bit unclear if the ARM version of Windows 8 would include the legacy desktop at all – even Microsoft itself confirmed it wasn’t sure yet. Microsoft bloggers Mary-Jo Foley and Paul Thurrot have fresh rumours that Microsoft has now made the decision to remove the legacy desktop from the ARM version.
This would mean that you would have two truly different versions of Windows. Of course, Microsoft has a fetish for shipping 57349587 different versions of each Windows release, but with those, the differences were superficial. If this rumour turns out to be true, however, the ARM version of Windows would be cut off from all the legacy applications that make the Windows platform so attractive to many people.
This new ARM version is, however, the ideal opportunity to cut the cord of backwards compatibility. People probably don’t expect to be able to run legacy applications on their ARM tablets, and it would also position these ARM tablets more as competitors to the iPad than as competitors to PCs.
In addition, it would play into Microsoft’s supposed goal of converging Windows-proper and Windows Phone. At the moment, Windows Phone is actually Windows CE Compact Edition Embedded Standard Whatever, while Windows-proper is Windows NT. The idea is that Windows Phone 8 (or 9) will become Windows NT-based as well.
While cutting the legacy desktop from the ARM version of Windows 8 would certainly count as a vote of confidence in WinRT and Metro, I’m still not convinced Metro is capable of handling the complex applications and workflows of proper desktops. Especially window management is incredibly restrictive, and limits you to viewing two applications at once – and one of those two will display a more minimal UI. As a translator, I generally juggle a dozen or so windows around, and I know a lot of people who go far beyond that. While this My First Operating Systemâ„¢-approach to user interface design and window management works fine on limited devices like iPads and such, it’s hell when you want to get some actual work done.
I’ve said it before, but I believe the only vote of confidence that will prove Metro can do more than Twitter clients and weather applications is for Microsoft’s Metro version of Office to be just as full-featured and capable as the current ‘legacy’ version. This wouldn’t solve the lack of proper window management, but it would at least give me the confidence that Microsoft will eventually get to addressing that as well.
Microsoft expects us to use Metro on our desktops and laptops. They better give us the tools to actually do so, or else Metro is going to be a tough pill to swallow for people like me who actually want to get some damn work done.
Technically, this is a rational choice. I mean, this legacy desktop (i hate this word for it) is an System made for x86 PC – unless there is something like Rosetta for ARM Processors, there would no use in the ARM-legacy desktop.
But what are the push factors to use windows 8 on a tablet when it will be somehow a totally new desktop`? Most of the windows 8 Apps will be – i just guess – available for iOS or Andoid – because they have the bigger market. An PC Users will use the “legacy desktop” for the next 5 to 10 years (just a guess).
Nooo…what would be a RATIONAL choice would be to call it something like MSFT Tablet OS or even WinTablet but trying to get developers to develop for a lame duck ARM OS that will bomb just like WinMo AND WinPhone by trying to piggy back it on top of Windows, thus both burning developers AND customers who’ll bring back these “Windows tablets” when they find that Windows tablets can’t actually run WINDOWS programs is about as far from rational as one can get.
I’m sorry friend but Ballmer has been sitting in Redmond wearing an ‘I heart Apple!’ T-shirt and having naughty dreams about him and an iPad and thus rationality or even sanity was left about 4 exists back. This abortion is gonna make Vista look like Win95 and the most truthful statement I’ve heard about Win 8 Mistake Edition is from a little old lady, one of about 150 customers of mine I’ve shown the developer preview to (BTW NONE of them liked or wanted what they saw) when she said this: “My that’s a pretty looking cell phone on the screen, is that an Android? I’ve heard of those, its supposed to be nice…what do you mean Windows? Windows what? Well that is just stupid! Why would i want a cell phone on my computer?”
Its a bastard child of a cell phone and tablet GUI being forced onto the entire world because Steve Ballmer can’t stand the thought of people not buying winPad when the whole reason people buy Windows is for WINDOWS PROGRAMS which this won’t run. i personally think the engineers at MSFT have gotten sick of him and know the only way to get rid of Billy’s little buddy is to give him everything he wants so the OS is such an abomination the board will have no choice but to can him. I can see some engineers going ‘Oh sure Steve, a touch GUI even for non touch desktops and laptops? that’s brilliant!’ “snicker snicker” and Ballmer giving pep talks saying “And with this we’ll FINALLY be as cool and hip as Apple! Yes we will! We really really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!” followed by chairs flying out of windows. i’m just glad Win 7 is supported until 2020 because my customers and i are gonna avoid that pile of mess completely, no thanks Ballmer.
If you actually watch the Windows 8 intro video and developer video. For a developer (especially those that come from a web based background), Windows 8 is bloody fantastic.
One can write my apps either in XAML and C# or HTML 5 and JS, which hook straight into the WinRT API. I think you can even style the GUI using CSS … which is much easier than WinForms and Swing.
Windows 8 Preview is already pretty stable considering it is a tech preview.
However I would be sad if the Classic Desktop was removed completely, I have been dreaming of an ARM based netbook with Windows on since I saw the SoC demo near the beginning of the year.
It makes a lot of sense in terms of simplifying things for users. If the ARM version gave the option of the traditional windows OS, people (not us of course… but the general population) *might* be confused and try and install downloaded x86 version of software…
I’m assuming the install process would be through an app-store which would limit their choices to ARM applications, so there would be no confusion.
That sounds like an excuse you’d make if someone said “Quick, make an excuse” as opposed to an actual excuse.
That should be handled by the system manufacturers not Microsoft the same way Dell handled it when they were selling Ubuntu laptops. Let the idiots^H^H^H^H^H^H customers know that they might not be able to run TurboTax on it.
Actually i would think that it sounds reasonable.
Microsoft have learned the hard way that letting system manufacturers customise the desktop is bad.
For a while all the crap that the system manufacturers installed on the computers gave windows a really bad name.
I said it before and I will say it again. The Windows brand has no positive connotations with consumers. They only use it because the programms are there.
If MS cuts the cord to millions and millions of applications for some stupid fatty fingers apps then they are insane and Windows8 ARM sales will be even poorer than the abysmal Windows mobile phone 7.5 series sales.
People know where the apps are and by the time Windows 8 ships IOS and Android will be nearly unbeatable in that department IMO.
Setting up for failure is all I am saying.
I’d say that’s a positive connotation. “Hey Windows runs my favorite programs.”
That doesn’t make sense. ARM was never going to run legacy apps anyway, so keeping the Desktop shell around never really made any sense to me.
I reject the notion that touch cannot augment the mouse and keyboard instead of replacing it. It is perfectly reasonable to expect an Office class program to be rewritten using the Metro UI.
Windows operates on a scale that dwarfs even Android. The Windows App Store would be the most monumental money making opportunity for any app developer on the planet. Bar none. The install base of Windows is over a billion. If even a percentage of those people update their existing PCs … it’ll overtake Android and iOS.
With that momentum, the ecosystem will be there, and the tablet sales will follow suit.
There’s no way Windows 8 isn’t going to completely dominate, given abysmal Android tablet sales, and OEMs looking for an iOS contender.
No. Never on earth have I heard that. What I do hear is :
or
or
or
Point is people still think their monitor is their computer (probably because sometimes it is, and now we have tablets and smart phones where the intelligence and display are in the same package, but I digress), and don’t always understand where the OS starts and applications begin.
The easiest ( although not most ethical) way to get out of a tech support problem is to blame windows. People will nod their head in agreement and share one of their “F**king windows!” stories.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I hate F**king windows, but microsoft gets a lot more blame for things it doesn’t directly cause. And because of that, it doesn’t have a good rep with consumers.
Edited 2011-12-03 15:47 UTC
The thing is that people don’t blame Windows … they tend to blame the computer. Those who actually care about getting something a little better tend to look at Macs first if they can afford them … if not they ask someone else to help them fix it.
Unfortunately most tech support guys who are in PC World, don’t really know that much about fixing hardware or Windows. I know more than these guys and I rarely bother “fixing things”, mainly because I don’t need to.
Edited 2011-12-04 12:33 UTC
Well, in my experience, people blame windows. Even if they’ve never used OSX, they’re familiar with the wildly successful I’m a Mac, I’m a PC ads. Prior to those people were wildly disgusted with the idea of running a mac, now they sort of know that its kind of better but much more expensive.
I still don’t think they really know what Windows is tbh.
They absolutely do not know what windows is. But they blame it for all their computer ills.
Forgot to save a document? Windows ate it.
That’s sort of the original point I was trying to make people do not associate the name windows with quality software, the associate it with just the opposite: really crappy software.
Fair point, I see what you are saying now.
Edited 2011-12-06 04:23 UTC
You are contradicting yourself without realising it.
Windows Legacy operates on a scale that dwarfs even Android. Windows Metro does not. Obviously running Windows legacy applications is a massive feature and Windows Phone 7 shows exactly how dominating Microsoft is without their Legacy applications. Hint: not at all. Windows ARM thus has very little to offer anyone in momentum.
Android tablet sales are low, because currently there isn’t great consumer demand for a tablet that isn’t the iPad. That Windows 8 tablets are going to dominate because of poor Android sales is non sequitur. They are just as likely to become another also-ran.
You may not remember this, but Microsoft was actually in the tablet market before the iPad, and they failed abysmally. It was only when Apple entered the market with the iPad that people saw a tablet they were interested in, so even having legacy applications on a tablet is no guarantee to success.
People do quite well associate Microsoft Windows with Crashes, bad performance, etc. Especially when compared to Apple’s MacOSX and iOS (which people are familiar with), and most IT shops know that Unix/Linux/etc. performs better than Microsoft Windows.
And people probably have fewer “favorite programs” than you realize – especially “favorite programs” that have a more usable, performant alternative on other OS’s that they just not used yet.
Well, try Windows 8 ARM may not be able to run any Windows x86 -based application; but that doesn’t mean that developers won’t rebuild their existing applications for x86 for the ARM to run under the same “legacy” environment on Windows 8 ARM – it’s a cheap way to get sales and move/support customers to/on ARM.
By saying, we’re not even going to provide the ‘legacy’ interface on Windows 8 ARM, they are effectively cutting off developers from a smooth transition path between the two platforms, and severely limiting the initial set of applications for Windows 8 ARM from what it could be.
Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to expect an Office class program to be written under Metro UI; but that’s a different can of worms than simply talking about ‘touch’.
Yes, touch can easily replace the mouse – touchpads have been doing it for years. That said, iOS/Android/etc need some way of bring back the context menus and doing things more mouse like – e.g. double-clicks, etc. It’s been figured out for a touch interface with the touchpads, so it’s not impossible to do and would really help with the touch interfaces.
However, keyboards are more tricky. Yes, you can display a keyboard; however, once you start getting away from a small phone like form factor, and moving to a tablet form factor then you will want to use the displayed keyboard more like the keyboard on your laptop or at your desktop. And a pure touch interface makes that really hard unless you put divots/bumps on the touch interface which will only drive the user nuts in normal touch mode. Tossing an overlaid film on top (like that one Kickstarter project aims to provide) is one solution but still not quite sufficient.
And yes, I’ve tried typing on tablets. It takes my normally 100-200+ wpm to less than 20 wpm, mostly because I can’t feel where I am on the keyboard. Solve that and it’ll be great for typing.
Windows operates on a scale that dwarfs even Android. The Windows App Store would be the most monumental money making opportunity for any app developer on the planet. Bar none. The install base of Windows is over a billion. If even a percentage of those people update their existing PCs … it’ll overtake Android and iOS.
With that momentum, the ecosystem will be there, and the tablet sales will follow suit.
[/q]
Stop drinking the Microsoft Koolaid. You’re not in Ballmer’s office any more, so join the real world.
Reality is that even IDC is not expecting ANY upgrades on the Laptop and Desktop form factors from Windows 7 and earlier to Windows 8. That’s a big statement from a big, pro-Microsoft firm.
Reality is that the Windows App Store is only as big as the apps that are in it; and Microsoft has had a hell of a time getting developers to make apps for Windows Phone 7, so it’s really small compared to Apple’s AppStore, Google’s Android Market Place, or even B&N’s store. So if there are not many apps, people won’t use it. If people don’t use it then developers won’t go to it.
Yes, you’ll see an increase in its use by Windows-only development houses, but they’ll still probably be targetting either ARM or WinPhone7 devices, not Windows 8 in general.
Why the difference? Aside from Windows 8 ARM, and the various embedded versions, the full control of distribution for Windows applications has been by the Developers themselves. To use the Windows App store you have then share your revenue with Microsoft which leaves you in a dilemma:
– charge more for the App store version to offset the revenue sharing with Microsoft
– charge the same regardless and make less money on the App store versions
If charging more, then customers will go for the non-app store version as its cheaper (ala economic theory). If charging the same, then you lose revenue to Microsoft.
In either case, people are less likely to use the App store versions unless they are forced to (e.g. Windows 8 ARM and Windows Phone 7).
So that “big” app store is now more a liability than momentum to use to build up Windows 8 sales.
Windows 8 will dominate the same way Windows 7 did. Oh wait, Windows 7 didn’t dominate either – the sales numbers were fudged (by including downgrade licensing in them, double counting as users are sold one edition and have to buy another to get the functionality they want, volume sales for older software were counted as newer editions, volume licenses have to get two licenses – once for the target device and the one that came with it to ensure they are fully covered in their licenses), and Windows 7 while beating out Windows Vista’s market share which peaked at around 10-12% with its peak of around 20% is still not overcoming the Windows XP install base, which btw, doesn’t have access to the Windows App Store.
Now add to it that on the x86 platforms you’ll be constantly switching between MetroUI and legacy desktop mode, the confusion users will get when they click the ‘start’ button to try to start a “legacy” program and then get tossed back out to MetroUI, the confusion of people buying (downloading, whatever) an application for “Windows” only to find it won’t run on Windows 8 ARM,…
Yeah, Windows 8 is already hamstrung into oblivion. I have no problem believing IDC when they say that Windows 8 will be largely irrelevant.
BTW, here’s the link per the IDC info:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/12/05/idc_predicts_pc_users…
http://blogs.computerworld.com/19376/windows_8_will_be_an_upgrade_f…
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/windows-8-will-be-largely-irrel…
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=231593
And, BTW, Mary Jo Foley has been quite well known as being very pro-Microsoft. So it also speaks wonders when she reports something like Windows 8 will be largely irrelevant.
Windows 8 at first seemed like the holy grail of operating systems. A desktop when you need it to be, and a tablet otherwise. I just lost interest now that if you want that experience you have to go with the x86.
If I’m looking to buy a device, I want battery life so I’ll go with ARM. To me, an iOS tablet, an Android tablet, and a Windows 8 tablet are now all basically indistinguishable because there will be no “desktop” application. So why would I go with Windows when Android and iOS have been at it a lot longer and have more momentum.
Now is the chance for Android to go and do what Windows decided against. There should be a lightweight desktop environment (X or Wayland) for Android to run LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, XBMC, etc.
Just because it’s missing the legacy Windows UI does not mean it won’t let you hook up a mouse and keyboard. But honestly, when the option to interact directly is there I think it is more natural to do so–so the mouse wouldn’t get nearly as much use anyway.
I actually think this is a great development. It means that the user experience for people using tablets will *actually be optimized for touch*. No more tiny widgets that you have to guess whether you hit with your finger or not. For most people who don’t need some specialty programs that are available on x86, this is the way to go.
Well, the whole point of WinRT, if I get it right, is to introduce scalable UIs that work okay on both mouse and finger. Whether current Win8 pre-release achieve that goal is debatable, but it is certainly something worth trying.
If Microsoft reverted to a basic “touch-optimized” behaviour, as you suggest, then Windows 8 on ARM loses one potential great asset over its competitors, and becomes yet another boring tablet OS with oversized controls that are only suitable for content consumption. It then becomes dubious why people should try this new platform instead of well-established actors like iOS or Android.
Edited 2011-12-02 21:06 UTC
I disagree that “oversized controls” are only suitable for content consumption. For proof, just take a gander at the iPad versions of iWork, iMovie, GarageBand, and the plethora of other office and music production tools available for iPad. Just because iPad is marketed first and foremost as a content consumption tool doesn’t mean that touch isn’t perfectly capable of supporting content creation. Yes, in many cases a rethink of the UI is necessary, and yes, there will be many awkward experiments on the road to success, but I am highly skeptical that WIMP is “the one true way” and that touch is by definition crippled.
As for benefits over iOS and Android, see my comment below. Basically, Windows 8 will be the most open tablet development platform, with the most re-usable application code already out there, that has come to market so far.
Edited 2011-12-02 21:16 UTC
They are proof of one thing: that touch is a horrible, horrible interface for anything other than consumption. I actually have iWork for the iPad, and it’s the most useless piece of software ever devised. I’m not joking. It’s so incredibly user-unfriendly, cumbersome, clunky, confusing, arbitrary, and full of confusing modes, it’s virtually unusable.
Just because a few people can, with effort and compromise, use an iPad for creation does not mean it is actually suitable for it, in the same way that those Asian teenagers typing in in entire Harry Potter books with a numpad and T9 on their feature phones is not proof that numpad+T9 is a suitable input method.
Well, I did say “there will be many awkward experiments on the road to success”.
Just because one app doesn’t succeed in your opinion (that, it must be said, is one of the first to even try to solve the problems) doesn’t convince me of the general unsuitability. Can you name any particular reasons why a mouse is inherently better for such tasks than touch (potentially in combination with stylus for precision tasks), or do you simply not like the mappings of touch interactions that are used in iWork?
Particularly in the area of music creation and image manipulation there seems to be a huge potential IMHO for directly using multiple fingers to quickly manipulate things (in the case of image manipulation there is of course drawing but also the live adjustment of parameters simultaneously while doing so, to adjust the size of a brush by using multiple fingers, to precisely zoom in/out and rotate with unprecedented ease, etc…. In the case of music there’s the potential to trigger multiple notes/sequences simultaneously and to tweak knobs and sliders simultaneously, which are just huge improvement over mouse-based interactions…)
And we haven’t even started exploring the potential of combining stylus and touch support. Check out this video (with an open mind, if you don’t already know it) to see the tip of the iceberg.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9sTgLYH8qWs
@moochan
Thats the future right there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9sTgLYH8qWs
Edited 2011-12-03 06:22 UTC
Neither Thom nor me criticized the use of a stylus. All we said is that touch alone is a horribly imprecise input method, and that all software that is inflexibly optimized for it is going to suck for anything but content consumption. Now, if you add more precise input peripherals such as touch with hovering haptic feedback (does not exist commercially yet, but we never know), keyboards, or styluses, then add strong support for those at the OS + app level, we can probably talk about doing more serious things with those 10-inch screens.
I don’t know… I’ve heard this argument before, but in practice, if I consider the way I naturally use real-world tools, this multiple input consideration always seems to ignore the fact that we only have one brain : our hands and fingers are not fully independent from each other, and we have a very hard time separating the sensory feedback from simultaneous actions in order to perform all of them efficiently.
Otherwise, playing musical instruments, which are one of the few example of real-world objects which do fundamentally require multiple simultaneous input, would not require so many years of training
Zooming and free rotation are indeed one of the few things that current multitouch technology does relatively right. There still are some problems to tackle though :
-For two-finger scrolling, free rotation, and zooming, manufacturers must abandon the idea that people want to do all of them simultaneously. It simply does not work. You always get unwanted rotation when you want to zoom, unwanted zooming when you want to scroll, etc.
-Zooming on large scales with two fingers is extremely tedious. Some sort of boxed zoom must continue to exist for this purpose.
As for manipulating multiple parameters at once, I believe that this is solving a nonexistent problem for the reasons stated above. In the specific case of dynamic brush size adjustment, good pen input does it very well and intuitively using pressure sensitivity, and if you do not have a pen at hand you probably do not want to get a brush that’s even more oversized than your fat finger
Indeed, musical instruments are one of the few real-world examples of devices which fundamentally require multiple simultaneous interactions. On the other hand, I’d argue that current capacitive touch surfaces are not very good for playing music either. They are too flat, both in terms of haptic feedback and in terms of the binary kind of input they accept. It’s like cheap digital synths from the 90s with their binary key response and elastic haptic feedback : you can do some basic stuff with them, but once you’ve tried a keyboard whose design has been better thought-out there is no way back.
I’m confident that in a few years, engineers will start to seriously tackle the problems of haptic feedback and pressure sensitivity on touchscreens though. Acoustic physicists are already doing some nice stuff in this area. The thing only needs more time and attention.
I think you should give audio mixing and mastering a try, for a few simple personal projects. This may change your opinion on how easy it is to adjust multiple audio parameters at once in a controlled fashion. If you do have tried and still defend this opinion, then your sound engineering skills deserve my deepest respect
I am not convinced yet. This may sound all good on video, but if you and I were put in front of this setup, without any explanation, what would we be able to do ? Most of the gesture interactions presented on this video are totally undiscoverable, in sense that if you don’t know that they are there, you will never find out about them. Is the future of GUI you’d want such a come-back to undiscoverable command lines, only with an even more esoteric vocabulary ?
Edited 2011-12-03 08:15 UTC
Are you seriously advocating that those nearly compete with the content creation power of a desktop or laptop ? That you would without question type a 25-pages LaTeX report on an iPad ? I know that some people have fun finger painting and that someone from Gorillaz made a song or two on an iPad, but that does not mean that the tool is nearly as well-suited to the job as alternatives…
Touch OSs ARE WIMP. They just deal with hardware that has a smaller screen and a much, much more imprecise pointer, which in the end means significantly less controls that are not hidden behind several of levels of menu indirection.
On a side note, I do not believe that tablets are fundamentally incompatible with more serious content creation, if more capable input peripherals are attached to them. This is why I closely watch stuff such as Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer and the HTC Flyer : I believe this is the kind of initiatives through which tablets could rise beyond the status of expensive toys, though OS and application support is obviously not there yet.
Edited 2011-12-03 07:17 UTC
Your horizon concerning ‘content creation’ is too limited: there is other content then large LATEX documents or 10000 lines of source code. It’s just that traditional PCs / Laptops where never used for certain content creation stuff because they were unsuitable for the job. You can’t measure ‘content creation’ by setting it equal to ‘content created with PCs’.
E. g. think about photography: would you use the PC to take a picture? No, you would use it only for ‘post-creation’ because the camera is not good for that (to little cpu power, unsuitable interface). Now imagine having a device like a tablet with a bigger display than a camera and enough cpu-power to do photo editing / enhancements ‘in-situ’. No need to carry a heavy laptop with you in most cases ..
Same goes for live music as already mentioned above.
Or think about SMS/Twitter/.. . this is content, too and it works well enough in mobile situations on touch devices (or at least way better than carrying a Laptop/PC around).
The cool thing about the ‘post PC’ era are new opportunities for creative developers and this includes media creation, too. Just because people (and hence developers) are more often consumers than creators and hence more creative applications for consumption than creation are developed does not mean that there are no media creation solution suitable for touch / tables input.
But I can reasonably state that current PCs are much more suitable for heavy content creation (as opposed to writing < 1000 char mails or cropping photos) than current tablets.
You have a point. However, before this actually happens, transferring photographs between a camera and a tablet must be made much more seamless than it currently is, as an example by equipping more tablets with USB ports or SD card slots.
Guess this won’t be a standard feature of Apple’s tablets anytime soon, maybe Android users will have more luck.
What do you call live music in this context ?
You are talking to the wrong person for that. I am a heavy texter (~1000 texts/months), and even the most basic keypad-based cellphone out there is better for texting than my current touchscreen-based phone. I bought it in March as an experiment to see if I can finally understand the touchscreen fad, and the answer is clear : I do not. It’s just horrible. I’m definitely going back to candybar keyboard-based phones for every future purchase. I know that some people manage to put up with them, though, and I’m happy for them, but I, personally, need something more serious.
Well, again, I do not dispute that statement if you equip those with more serious input devices, such as an optional keyboard or stylus that seamlessly integrates within the tablet’s design.
Edited 2011-12-03 13:10 UTC
I know some Art teachers that are loving the iPad because they can actually Paint on it. That is as much content creation as creating blog/Latex/whatever.
Like most computing devices, an iPad is a tool. PCs with keyboard and mice are good for certain things, other input methods (touch and before that Wacom Tablets).
Some in this thread seem to be trying to compare a Hammer to a Torque Wrench.
Personally I would loved to have a tablet and used that as a notebook in lectures.
I can imagine people using large touch based screen for Cad and Cam … in fact the best bit of the Iron Man movie was when he was using the holographic interface to design the first suit.
Also even Jean Luc Picard used an iPad/Kindle for some stuff and what was blatently a netbook (though I can’t find the images).
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/08/how-star-trek-artists-ima…
Edited 2011-12-04 15:54 UTC
Yes, I would. I’ve written long documents in Pages on my iPad. Honestly.
I’ve also recorded demos on my iPad in GarageBand. For GarageBand, you can start a project on the way home (lay down some drums and synths) then import the project in to GarageBand on the Mac and finish off with live instraments. But, I’ve also done 100% on my iPad, and iPhone as well. Having GarageBand on the iPhone is mind bending. A tascam portastudio 04 used to be £300+ as a stand alone in the 1990’s. 4 tracks. GarageBand will do 8 tracks, and costs next to nothing. Yeah, you have to buy the phone/device, but if you have it anyway… Well…
Oh – and iMovie. Since iOS 5, my Kodak zi8 is supported out of the box, so I can record video and edit “live” and have it on YouTube/Vimeo right away. Again, game changer for me.
Oh, and I replied to this on an iPad 2 using the virtual keyboard. So, I stand by everything I’m saying and living by my words.
They are some of the best examples of touch screen content creation tools out there. But they are still toys compared to their desktop counterparts. They have a great deal of awkwardness that they still need to overcome. Some tasks benefit from multitouch… but for those tasks that require high precision, a mouse with an unobstructed view of the content still works better.
I make a living doing content creation. I have found some interesting tools on the iPad that let me do some design concepts in an ultra mobile format. There are a even a few iOS clones of apps as complicated as Illustrator that show promise. But overall, touch UI’s are optimized for consumption. They are not refined for creation and would cause a great deal of fatigue to use for day to day content production in their current state.
I would love to see a pro tablet that finds a balance that rivals the desktop for pro content creators. No one has it yet. It is not the current incarnations of iOS, or metro, and It certainly is not legacy windows desktops. Apple could cater to pros with a pro iOS line (but they seem to want to go for the low hanging consumers these days) and MS seems set on following Apples lead on consumption focused UI’s. It would be a great nitch for a linux distribution to fill, since the big players making their beachheads on a distant shore. That is, if we are not locked out of our hardware by anti consumer practices.
Edited 2011-12-03 21:44 UTC
I hope it’s Wayland in that case, and not X.
Edited 2011-12-02 23:08 UTC
If all that Windows 8 has to offer ARM and other tablets is the Metro interface and metro apps, then I’ll pass. Metro is definitely not superior to what Android and iOS have to offer at this point. If Microsoft intends to push Windows 8 out the door without a traditional desktop or desktop apps for tablets, then I think it will backfire on them. They’ll continue to be a third rate player in the tablet/mobile markets as they are now with Windows Phone, behind Android and iOS. The attraction to Windows 8 for most people is the promise of robust, tried and proven applications that we have on our desktops running on our tablets too. Without that, well, I see EPIC fail.
On the contrary, I think people will expect to run their “legacy” apps on it. They’d probably only BUY a Windows 8 tablet for the ability to run all the same stuff they were on the desktop. I already have reservations that the gap between x86 executables and ARM executables might not pass the Grandma test, but what about things that are more platform agnostic? If something fails to run, or doesn’t behave appropriately all because the entire window/desktop paradigm has been trashed, that wouldn’t even pass muster for an enthusiast!
I, for one, won’t be buying Twitter OS.
If we’re talking about the grandma test, well, look at it from the other perspective: how would grandma feel when she’s able to run a legacy program on her tablet, but can’t use it because the widgets are all too small for her fingers?
It seems pretty simple to me: Market software as “for tablet”, “for desktop” or “for tablet or desktop”. Or something like that. If it’s being downloaded through the app store (as granny is wont to do), there’s no chance of downloading a wrong architecture anyway. And anything developed in a higher-level language (read: everything other than C/C++) these days will run anywhere anyway. Problem solved.
Edited 2011-12-02 21:27 UTC
Moochman,
“And anything developed in a higher-level language (read: everything other than C/C++) these days will run anywhere anyway. Problem solved.”
ANSI C/C++ are among the most portable languages in existence. Nearly every cpu/controller built today has a C compiler to support it. Most high level languages only achieve any sort of portability because they’re written in C code which can then been recompiled for each target.
Edit: If you had said “class library framework” instead of “language”, then I’d be much more inclined to agree.
Edited 2011-12-02 22:08 UTC
I think you missed what I was getting at. When I said “run anywhere” I didn’t mean “compile anywhere” I literally meant “run anywhere” as in it just runs on any architecture. This is true of anything that runs on a virtual machine, be it Java, C#, Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript….
Even if you market “for tablet” you won’t solve the problem as people simply see “for Windows”. They’ll also expect their existing software to operate – and in some cases that will be a big hurdle in itself.
For example, people doing genealogy recording using FamilyMaker and such don’t typically go out and buy a new version for their new PC – they just move the data over and install it. They’ll want the same thing under Windows 8.
Also, expect to Windows 8 ARM in netbooks and laptops too where manufacturers want to market the long battery life functionality. They won’t care that you have to use the Windows App Store to get software to run; but users will care when they can’t run their existing software.
So yes, expect it to carry a stigma far greater than the stench most people associate with WinME and WinVista.
What Grandma unless her name is “Grace Hopper” (yes I know she passed away 20 years ago), is going to care about backward compatibility with previous Windows programs?
It seems strange … many Linux advocates say that Grandma could use Ubuntu or DistroX to replace windows … but then When Microsoft shun backwards compatibility on chipset that doesn’t guarantee it unlike Intel … apparently it will no longer pass the grandma test.
MAKE YOUR MINDS UP.
I don’t think that it’s the same individuals saying those two things.
Old, mouse-optimized apps and the legacy desktop on a tablet never made sense anyway. As countless reviews have already mentioned, the legacy desktop on top of Metro is an ugly hack that provides a disjointed experience, and above all, one that is not conducive to touch. I applaud Microsoft for embracing the future and ensuring a uniform, consistent user experience for tablet users with this move. They may still have some kinks to work out with multi-tasking and app tiling, but make no mistake–classic, manual window resizing and positioning, along with finicky, tiny hit targets that defy Fitt’s law are finally being buried, after years of causing users more headaches than they were worth. Good riddance I say!
And btw, for those of you saying “this can’t compete with Android/iOS”–you just don’t get it. It doesn’t matter that legacy Windows apps don’t run. What matters is the ecosystem of developer tools that are capable of creating Windows apps. In most cases ARM versions of the most popular apps are just a recompile away. And not just for Microsoft’s own development tools–we’ve also got Java/JavaFX, Qt, Gtk, XUL, Adobe Flex/AIR–everything you expect from a desktop machine. It’s the most open tablet platform yet in terms of developer support, plus it’s got a huge code base of existing apps which just need a few UI tweaks and a recompile to get them ARM/Touch ready. That’s a huge, huge advantage.
P.S. As a bonus there’s a built-in pen API, and applications that use it, way ahead of anything available on Android or iOS. This alone will mean massive sales in a number of important (albeit niche) markets.
Edited 2011-12-02 21:04 UTC
I love the way you put this, Thom and I completely agree with your points which I find highly accurate.
I would be as irritated as you, but – thankfuly – I left Windows many years ago and I’m now BSD/Linux/Haiku/Solaris user and I actually see no need to run Windows in any form never, ever again. I don’t see the point of running MacOS too, since it doesn’t give me anything more than I already have [I actually get much, much more with tools I choosed to use].
I hope you’ll make your wise decision when the time will come, Thom. I also hope that Windows will loose most of its “pro” audience, but not because it’s hate-based relationship, but because it’s just bad at so many fields.
I am actually shocked that they still use it, but heck … it’s not my business afterall.
Edited 2011-12-02 22:01 UTC
Cool Story Bro.
Edited 2011-12-04 16:01 UTC
Not maintaining legacy x86-centric APIs on ARM makes a lot of sense, given that the likelihood of an application which runs on x86 Windows being recompiled on ARM working properly is not all that great. Endian issues alone could be fatal, let alone what other assumptions were made based on x86. And fixing all of those APIs so that they work as they’re supposed to on ARM? That’s likely to be a nightmare, and the API functions’ implementations are even more likely to be x86-centric than the code using them, since they’re generally lower level. So, it makes a lot of sense to just say that legacy apps won’t work on ARM – especially when most ARM devices are going to be tablets or smartphones rather than PCs where the legacy applications would actually be used.
The question is whether they’ll be forcing ARM to be metro-only. If that is where they’re going with this, then that is bad. I do not want to see metro take over the desktop, given how tablet-centric and stripped down it is, and the fact that it’s being pushed for the desktop is a really questionable decision IMHO, much as metro may be fantastic for tablets. And while ARM may be primarily for mobile devices at this point, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used in desktops, so restricting Windows on ARM such that it can’t use the classic desktop instead of metro would be bad.
So, as far as the APIs themselves go, this is arguably a very solid decision, but if this means that they intend to force Windows on ARM to be metro-only, then this is a horrible decision.
I think the ideal outcome is that over the next few years, there are no more “pure laptops” anymore, just “laptablets” (laptops with touchscreens/tablets with keyboards) and tablets. If that’s the case it shouldn’t be any great loss to have Metro as the sole Windows UI on ARM.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Win32 was designed to be fairly platform-agnostic (Remember; NT was on multiple architectures in it’s early days). Endianness shouldn’t be an issue, as ARM is little-endian by default (Though, capable of big-endian operation).
Plus, there is always .NET.
I think the main issue hinges on whether or not Microsoft expects manufacturers to attempt ARM desktops. If they don’t expect any, there’s no reason to support the legacy desktop, as touch-driven apps will be all users will want/experience.
This!
Completely agree. I personally would love a 12inch SoC Notebook running Windows and Visual Studio … massive battery life and I could develop in the coffee shop (I have flexible working arrangements with my employer).
Iirc, ARM has both big and little endian modes (selectable per process/thread). It’d be a bit stupid not to use the little endian mode for recompiled x86 applications.
If you download Windows 8 now and try that out.
You wouldn’t expect the “legacy” desktop UI to go away, because the control panel and network settings and so on don’t have an equivalent in the Metro UI yet.
Obviously that can all be different in the final version.
Paul Thurrott mentioned this repeatedly on Windows Weekly at the TWiT network months ago.
ahh they are already planning on releasing win8 as the new “vista”.. That will fail, but then win9 is released short time after fixing all problems, and they basically sell 2x licenses to everybody.. (instead of fixing the win8)
This is a great way of selling junk to gullible people!
And probably even 2x licenses for each jerk lol
People must be really dumb. Funny that even so called “techies” are fooled this way.
My home is without gates or windows. its also iClean, and I’m loving it,, my wife too.
Linux and freeBSD only.
Except Vista was only junk initially, and only because hardware manufactures used the limited driver availability to try to force people to buy new hardware, rather than update drivers for previous generations of hardware.
Well, that, and some developers were still designing software by making assumptions that they should have stopped making 10 years prior (such as having write access to the program directory)
Vista sucked because Microsoft was unable to get hardware and software companies to play along initially, not because of bad software design.
Drumhellar,
“Except Vista was only junk initially, and only because hardware manufactures used the limited driver availability to try to force people to buy new hardware, rather than update drivers for previous generations of hardware.”
Actually, you may not be aware of this, but microsoft deserves most of the blame for driver incompatibilities in vista. Technically, all of the XP drivers would still work under vista if microsoft hadn’t made a policy change to reject unsigned/self signed drivers in the window kernel. I experienced this first hand with my own windows file system drivers.
In XP years, if you recall, even large manufacturers released two versions of their drivers, the windows certified ones, and the latest official (yet uncertified by microsoft) drivers. For end users, it always made sense to install the latest drivers, but MS would remove that option in Vista.
Third parties did provide end users with a means to bypass microsoft vista driver restrictions. These tools were genuinely useful as they allowed end users to install xp drivers for older hardware on vista, but microsoft didn’t like users overriding their policy, and they revoked the tool’s certificates.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/10/ati_driver_snafu/
“…Atsiv, a tool designed by Australian developer Linchpin Labs, as part of a research project into driver signing. Microsoft responded to the creation of Atsiv by revoking its certificate and classifying the utility as malware, much to Linchpin Labs’ chagrin. Atsiv had evolved into a project that allowed users of legacy hardware to use their kit on Vista without signed drivers.”
Whatever MS’s reasons to reject user’s control over their own systems, the net effect was quite devastating for independent/OSS developers like me who had been writing our own windows kernel drivers. Needless to say, I’m no longer inclined to waste my time improving windows only to be kicked out by microsoft.
Signed drivers are a good idea, I won’t install any driver on my system if it isn’t WHQL.
People forget how bad Windows 2000 and Windows XP at RTM … I held off until Service Pack 2 of Windows XP.
Vista while initially had some problems was fine after Service Pack 1.
The latest version of Vista is pretty much Windows 7 underneath and Vista UI on top.
As for the OP, saying Win8 will be another Vista … The Platform Preview is pretty damn stable considering it isn’t even Alpha.
lucas_maximus,
“Signed drivers are a good idea, I won’t install any driver on my system if it isn’t WHQL.”
Drivers can be signed without WHQL. At least it was your prerogative back then to choose the Microsoft certified drivers over the latest stable drivers available. For all we know, your choice may have been partly responsible for your windowx xp instabilities, I certainly experienced problems with WHQL drivers that were fixed by updating.
Anyways I think you missed the point of my post, which was that vista had poor hardware support not because of lack of compatible drivers, but because microsoft policy was to forcefully disable them on user machines.
Edited 2011-12-06 08:46 UTC
Err it was more like XP is dated as hell, and I was noticing the cracks after using something better,
I get the point of most of your posts which are to discredit Windows at any opportunity you can.
I find it funny since I used Linux for 10 years now, IRIX for 6, MacOSX 3 yeras and OpenBSD for 4 years … that people still think I am biased for liking Windows First … guess what it has it problems … but most of them are a right click away … not editing text files.
lucas_maximus,
“I get the point of most of your posts which are to discredit Windows at any opportunity you can.”
It’s not the intention of my posts to discredit windows. However I will criticise microsoft when they deserve it. And in the case of Vista hardware drivers microsoft deserves more blame than anyone else.
“I find it funny since I used Linux for 10 years now, IRIX for 6, MacOSX 3 yeras and OpenBSD for 4 years … that people still think I am biased for liking Windows First”
I don’t judge anyone for what desktop OS they prefer. I was a long time windows user, but they weren’t doing enough to cater to users like myself and I’m thankful that there were alternatives. It wasn’t an easy switch, but in retrospect, seeing the direction Microsoft has taken, it was the right move for me.
“guess what it has it problems … but most of them are a right click away … not editing text files.”
Use whatever makes you feel comfortable. It doesn’t really change my own relationship to windows though.
Microsoft apparently does think there will never be ARM desktops and that it will only ever be used on low-cost servers, development boards of various kinds and mobile devices. As such their decision does make sense: most mobile devices are too limited anyways to really benefit from a full-blown desktop, so why go through the extra work to include it at all?
Personally though, I think that’s quite short-sighted. While ARM is at the moment The Mobile Processor Architechture it doesn’t mean that there will never be ARM desktops. Especially if Windows 8 ARM-version indeed did also sport a traditional desktop I could definitely see a good market-gap for ARM-based desktops; Windows just happens to be such a well-known OS and everyone — even non-geeks — are familiar with either Microsoft or Windows. Not to mention that I still think sooner or later someone will build a tablet-like device that you can just slap in a dock and the mouse, keyboard and a proper 20+ inch screen connected to it would come to life, transforming the tablet to a desktop.
Of course, nothing is stopping Microsoft from delivering the full desktop-environment to ARM Win8 in an update and I believe they’ll eventually end up doing exactly that, whether they want to or not, but the problem is that not having it available from the get-go is going to limit its usefulness for gadget manufacturers and thus hamper early adoption. And since Win8 is a completely new player in ARM-field early adoption is inherently important and can make or break its future.
Tablet mode – Metro. Plug in a keyboard and(/or?) mouse – desktop mode becomes available.
Why are you always mentioning this? You don’t need full featured Office in Metro, period, now stop it! Who is gonna write the next great American novel on a Tablet? Seriously, I am not interested in doing a V-Lookup on a Tablet. I am not gonna do a relationship, create queries, forms, mail merge when I am on a Tablet in Metro mode in Windows 8. I am certainly not gonna create a 60 deck slide on a Tablet, but I might want to view one. So I don’t need “FULL FEATURED Office on a Tablet”.
I do need Office on Windows 8’s Start screen, but just the fundamentals for basic annotation and editing. Maybe you just want to add a sentence to a document, add a clip art, move around some text, do a little cut, copy and paste. Nothing more. Maybe you want to update some numbers, insert some basic charts, basic formula functions, but you are not gonna be using every formula from Excels function library.
As Steve Sinofsky said, if you are gonna do a lot of things that require the precision of a mouse, the desktop is there for that. People do no sit down with there Tablets like they are tied to their desktop with a PC to begin with doing boring office productivity.
If you are really gonna be typing something like the following:
= IF(VLOOKUP(A3, A2:D6, 3, FALSE) >= 20, “Markup is: ” & 100 * VLOOKUP(A3, A2:D6, 4, FALSE) &”%”, “Cost is $” & VLOOKUP(A3, A2:D6, 3, FALSE))
You probably have a laptop already or you are gonna be using the desktop app version of Excel. The scenarios for Office on Windows 8 Metro will be casual.
I see developers creating two versions of their apps, casual and full desktop app.
So, you will have full Photoshop and Express Photoshop.
Full QuickBooks and Express Quicken
Full AutoCAD and Basic AutoCAD
Basically, versions for on the go experience.
You do know that Metro is going to be the interface for desktops and laptops as well, right?
So basically…
if (ARM)
win8 = WM8;
else
win8 = WM8 + Win7;
I must have missed something…
I’m with you. Maybe it’s because I haven’t followed it that closely but it seems pretty confusing. Is MS just throwing out ideas to see how the public reacts and then predicating their strategy on the response?
Is it that hard to get it? The whole legacy desktop stuff probably acounts for 25-50% of Windows code. That’s bloat if you don’t need it, since MS is clearly thinking ARM = tablet. Also, porting all that code to ARM may run into various problems, they don’t want to deal with.
Coming early 2014: The Windows Desktop
<strike>ARM on the desktop</strike>
… is available right now, today.
http://dot.kde.org/2011/11/30/plasma-active-archos-g9-tablet
Plasma Active on Archos G9 tablet
Plasma Active and the Mer OS have been installed successfully on the ARCHOS G9 tablet.
Mer is Free and Open Source Software being developed in the open based on work from the Core section of the MeeGo Project. It is optimized for HTML5/QML/JS and provides a mobile-optimized base Linux distribution for use by device manufacturers.
ARCHOS G9 tablets feature Texas Instruments ARM Cortexâ„¢ A9 based OMAPâ„¢ 4 smart multi-core processors along with GPS, WiFi and the ability to add a standard PC 3G stick.
Plasma Active is a tablet OS with the power of a full-featured desktop.
http://plasma-active.org/
Plasma Active will work with Calligra Active.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MADKdbN8nyY
Enjoy.
Enjoy what? We’re talking about ARM desktop and you spam us some links to a tablet?
It is an ARM tablet with a tablet GUI making it capable of handling desktop applications. Add a keyboard and perhaps a monitor via the USB and HDMI ports respectively, and you instantly have a capable ARM desktop.
Just because neither iOS, Mac OSX nor Windows 7 or 8 can achieve this doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Edited 2011-12-05 13:49 UTC
That’s not a desktop, it’s a tablet with a desktop OS slapped on it. I can’t think of anything worse.
And I don’t want a desktop with a tablet OS slapped on it either. As 99% of the people who actually work on their desktops do.
But the point here isn’t about “a” desktop OS, is about Windows/Office. No classic Windows/Office = no desktop market of any decent size (unless you’re Apple). And even having it isn’t enough to grant you success – think PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, and Itanium. Today it may be a little different, but not _so_ much.
Plasma Active is not a desktop OS. Calligra Active is not a desktop Office suite. They both have desktop-level power and functionality but are used via a tablet GUI.
OTOH, Plasma desktop is a desktop OS. Calligra Office is a desktop Office suite. These are designed to be run using the classic mouse, keyboard & large screen desktop-style setup.
These things are achieved via a core application and having desktop and tablet variations on the final GUI. No other desktop system or Office Suite has equivalent flexibility and adaptability.
http://www.osnews.com/story/25226
Meh. If your mindset is that there is no real alternative to Windows/Office as a desktop OS, then there isn’t much that can help you. You are hopelessly locked in to a terrifyingly expensive and constraining experience for as long as you use computing devices, I’m afraid.
I am forever grateful that I am not as helpless as you in this regard.
Edited 2011-12-05 14:07 UTC
Except that my main computer is a MacBook with LibreOffice.
I’m wondering if Windows on ARM is going to be worth it for most consumers. The reason most of us use Windows is the legacy – we have a big backlog of software. On an ARM machine, it won’t run anyway, so Windows would really be sold on its actual merits… and that’s the scary bit for Microsoft!
People certainly don’t buy Windows for interface or reliability… or cheapness, or… (I could go on).
In car terms, I guess it’s a bit like BMW, Audi, and Mercedes competing in the same small car segment that Toyota, Honda, Mazda, and so on, all have down pat. A scaled-down Mercedes A-Class is expensive, unreliable, and not at all cool. Most of us will take the Japanese makes, and likewise, in the computing world, most of us will take Android or iOS in the small chip segment. I’ll take Android.
What I’ve never understood about all this is how a developer takes the leap into a legacy free windows 8.
In the past, suppose you wanted to target some new feature in Windows 7. You could release one binary that does that and runs on all Windows 7 devices, but falls back or disables that feature, and would run on 99% of the existing windows desktops, whatever the windows version.
Now, to simply get a program that runs on all windows 8 devices, I’ve got to accept an entirely new programming model, and the fact that this program will not run in Windows 7 or below? So to delivery my product I have to deliver two entirely different binaries.
What Microsoft needs here is a Windows 8 “player” for legacy machines. This could be installed seperately, or embedded as an executable run time, and would allow developers to code to one API and deliver applications that run on all Windows devices.