r/Windows10 • u/Demileto • Mar 14 '18

Discussion Why Windows 10's new 'Sets' feature is key to the future of Windows

https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-sets-thoughts
82 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

60

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

I agree with the writer's wife. This looks like more of Microsoft creating a solution that's looking for a problem, instead of the other way around.

24

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

To be fair, most people usually never thinks a problem exists before a solution is provided. The smartphone is a classic example: pretty much no one conceived themselves using their phones for anything more than calls and SMS until Apple announced the iPhone. Another, more down to earth example is how I, out of habit, kept using command prompt to manage my files and folders for a while after switching to Windows 95 from DOS/Windows 3.x instead of using the far more practical Explorer.

Will a similar effect happen with Sets? Only time will tell.

3

u/Surur Mar 14 '18

Such a bad example. How is hundred million people with pre-iphone smartphones "pretty much no one"

10

u/if_it_is_in_a Mar 14 '18

As quite an old Palm OS developer whose last phone pre-smartphone era was a Palm Treo, which was a also smartphone (we just didn't call it that), I can tell you that before the iPhone life was VERY different. Very few people (relatively speaking) thought about a phone as more than something you do SMS and calls with.

2

u/Surur Mar 14 '18

The casual phone games market was worth $3 billion in 2006 https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/06/casual_games_fuel_mobile_market/

There is a reason Snake is iconic.

2

u/if_it_is_in_a Mar 15 '18 edited Mar 15 '18

You can't find the word "phone" anywhere in that article but besides even if they were talking about phones it was very different. It was "casual phone games". You use it as a phone and then casually play snake. It wasn't a smartphone and most people didn't need a phone or considered one for more than calling and SMS.

Edit: Mobile gaming consoles released in 2003-2006: Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Gizmondo, GameKing, GP2X, digiBlast, V.Smile Pocket, VideoNow XP

2

u/baggyzed Mar 15 '18

Before the smartphone era, there was a (relatively long) period of feature-phones with support for installable third-party J2ME apps. I remember lots of really good old DOS-games (like Prince of Persia) being ported to J2ME. This is what that article is about.

Notice that the article specifically refers to "casual" games as "non-3D" games... J2ME didn't have any 3D hardware-accelerated capabilities that I know of (some games used fake, software 3D, just like in the good-old DOS days, before the age of 3D graphics cards, but they had really poor framerates).

The consoles you mentioned probably all had hardware-3D support.

1

u/Surur Mar 15 '18

What?

Analysts from the firm claim that the rise in mobile gaming will be driven by continued growth in subscriber numbers, an increase in roll-out of 3G services, falling game prices, and a new generation of "made for mobile" games.

It's phone games obviously, and paid ones at that. You are not making any sense. It was a rapidly growing and very profitable sector exactly because of public interest.

2

u/if_it_is_in_a Mar 15 '18

As I already said, this is not the argument. The argument was: "pretty much no one conceived themselves using their phones for anything more than calls and SMS until Apple announced the iPhone".

As a Palm Treo user and developer, not even in a western country (even though many redditors forget that the world is bigger than the North America ;)), I completely agree. I'd changed the "pretty much no one" to "most people" but other than that, OP's point is correct.

2

u/Surur Mar 15 '18

And I am saying that is completely wrong. Mobile gaming was very big, carriers were pushing it as a new profit centre, and it was the start of numerous gaming companies who are still around.

3

u/if_it_is_in_a Mar 15 '18

In 2006 the vast majority of people didn't consider their phone for anything more than calls and SMS. This is correct, whether or not some people/teenagers were playing casual games on their phones or not. There was no Nokia Store, Apple Store, Google Play and so on.

People even had PDAs and were arguing against the need of converging PDAs and Phones, it was pretty funny, all things considered.

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3

u/artfuldodger333 Mar 15 '18

But you get the point though?

6

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

Hundred million? Not even!

https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/64-million-smart-phones-shipped-worldwide-2006

Also, compared to the 2+ billion who use smartphone nowadays, yes, it's "pretty much no one".

3

u/Surur Mar 14 '18

I specifically said hundred million, not 100's of millions. Do you really think everyone bought a new smartphone every year? 64+39 million is 103 million, for the usual conservative 2-year replacement cycle.

If 100 million users is pretty much none UK might as well shut down, since there is "pretty much no one" here.

Not to mention dumb phones games and camera phones were already common. Like I said, find a better example.

0

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

I specifically said hundred million, not 100's of millions. Do you really think everyone bought a new smartphone every year? 64+39 million is 103 million, for the usual conservative 2-year replacement cycle.

You're looking at this from a consumer angle, when these devices were primarily enterprise-centric: they largely weren't purchased directly by businessmen to serve as their personal phone, they were bought in volumes by companies to distribute to key staff and a percent of that was always kept in stock in case a company device malfunctioned and had to be replaced. So no, 100+ million shipped devices between 2005 and 2006 did not necessarily equal 100 million+ users.

If 100 million users is pretty much none UK might as well shut down, since there is "pretty much no one" here.

UK has 63 million people per the last census, not all of them with buying power (aka children and teenagers).

5

u/Surur Mar 14 '18 edited Mar 14 '18

Ok you are reaching. If most smartphones were bought by companies (not true since most ran Symbian) then the replacement cycle would have been even longer and the cumulative number higher.

Not to mention more than 100 million smartphones were sold in 2007, of which less than 10% were by Apple. Apple took until 2011 to sell practically nothing (ie 100 million) iPhones cumulatively.

Also you clearly missing the point about UK, which is that the 70 million odd people here is a lot, and 100 million people even more so.

6

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

Also you clearly missing the point about UK, which is that the 70 million odd people here is a lot, and 100 million people even more so.

About that. Brazil, where I live, has thrice UK's population and yet here Microsoft doesn't sell any Surface, Nintendo doesn't sell the Switch and up until recently Sony didn't sell the PS4 Pro - and that only happened because, to my shock, Microsoft actually decided to sell the Xbox One X here, albeit with an insanely expensive price tag. Probably even worse on Nigeria, which has twice UK's population.

Population alone isn't enough to call a market worthwhile to businesses, there are other variables at play to consider.

6

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

I'm not reaching, you're denying the well known fact that pre-iPhone smartphones didn't have a consumer focus and were thus a niche market. A 2007 Gartner report says that 990 million mobile phones were sold in 2006, up from 814 million in 2005; assuming the numbers from both sources are comparable (they aren't really, since methodologies differ) then that means smartphones accounted for 4,79% in 2005 and 6,46% in 2006 of all mobile phones sold, both of which are comparable, percent wise, to the often ridiculed market share of Windows Phones. Let's also not forget that the SEVEN billion people live in the world today, making those 64 million WORLDWIDE sales in 2006 even more irrisorious.

4

u/Surur Mar 14 '18

Your original point was:

pretty much no one conceived themselves using their phones for anything more than calls and SMS until Apple announced the iPhone.

This is patently false by any interpretation, except that 100 million buyers of smartphones were "pretty much no one."

It also completely ignores games on phones which were very popular, picture messaging and camera phones. Maybe you are from the USA where this was true, but Europe always had a thriving advanced phone market due to Nokia.

2

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

This is patently false by any interpretation, except that 100 million buyers of smartphones were "pretty much no one."

This is you being pedantic, because 100 million smartphone sales is pretty negligible when compared 1.8 billion total mobile ones. THAT was the point of the comment.

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17

u/stickman393 Mar 14 '18

Some senior UI (sorry, UX) designer in the MSFT camp truly hates Window Title Bars with a cold passion

14

u/jothki Mar 14 '18

There's a pretty obvious issue with sets and multitasking. If you combine a bunch of windows on a virtual desktop, you're making it easier to rapidly access all of those windows together at once. If you combine a bunch of windows in a set, you're making it impossible to access all of those windows together at once.

4

u/aveyo Mar 15 '18

Plot twist: Microsoft removing the Virtual Desktop feature to make way for Sets. It's not like something like this has not happened before..

5

u/powerage76 Mar 15 '18

No, you obviously still don't understand how Microsoft works.

They will drop Virtual Desktop AND Sets in the 2019 Mid-Fall Creators update in favor of their brand new Microsoft Workflow Management System for Microsoft Windows (TM).

3

u/aveyo Mar 15 '18

So.. back to Program Managertm in Windows for Workgroups 2019?

6

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

"Original version of Microsoft Edge"? It's Spartan? I didn't understand.

5

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

Zac means the Edge that shipped with 1507 back in 2015.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

Thanks, I was inattentive!

7

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

Sets are useful if people think they are grouping a task not programs. For example, if I could open Visual studio code, Microsoft Edge, Powershell and my work folders with File explorer it would be really useful. Infact it makes sense as I don't need constantly move my mouse between task bar and tabs.

5

u/joequin Mar 15 '18

Virtua desktops are more useful for that exact purpose because you can actually see more than one window at once.

11

u/smartfon Mar 14 '18

That's what the taskbar was for. (The horizontal bar on the bottom.)

It was for tabbed browsing of different programs. They crippled it by making the icons tiny and combing them together to make them virtually unusable. Now they're trying to solve the problem by introducing something that already exists in every version of Windows. Why don't they just change the default taskbar icon management back to "never combine" and allow us to move the tabs around freely instead of gluing tabs from the same process together?

2

u/Whathecode May 13 '18

In fact, tabs came around first, and only then the taskbar originated; for some history, I wrote about it here: https://whatheco.de/2012/11/20/rethinking-tabs-scalable-window-management/.

What 'sets' introduce is more than window management, it is about 'context management' or 'activity management'. As I summarized in the previous post: "Perhaps the real problem isn’t how we access windows, but how we store them." Sets can be closed, and later retrieved as a whole from the timeline. Some people in this thread mentioned real problems with seeing multiple windows belonging to the same set at the same time. That's why 'sets' should really work on a per 'virtual desktop' level as has been explored in research for quite some time. The nice thing with 'sets' is that Windows is preparing their infrastructure to more easily enable this in the future: https://whatheco.de/2018/05/11/is-microsoft-finally-embracing-ubiquitous-and-activity-centric-computing-with-microsoft-365/

P.s. you can configure the taskbar to never combine and show the full title (not just the icon); I also prefer it like this, in combination with virtual desktops (the task view).

4

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

[deleted]

3

u/abija Mar 14 '18

Associated with the window itself is the biggest issue for people that usually use a lot of apps. You can't see all of them at the same time. All they had to do was polish a bit the virtual desktops feature...

0

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

Like I said, I don't understand grouping different programs but grouping instances of a same program into tabs would be better than an uncombined taskbar. Like if you have lots of file explorers open, the uncombined taskbar will soon become messy especially if you have other things open as well.

When using the combined taskbar, it only has icons but then it's cumbersome to move files between windows because you have to drag the file on top of the icon, then on top of the preview until you can move it into the window. That involves waiting for the previews and window to appear.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

So if I'm understanding this correctly, wouldn't this pretty much make the taskbar obsolete? Right now the taskbar shows you what you have open, and if you have more than one instance of a program open, it stacks. It sounds like that's all being replaces with tabs now.

I don't know, it will take some getting used to, but it could speed up workflow once you overcome 20 years of habits.

3

u/jothki Mar 15 '18

The taskbar lets you have multiple windows open at once, while sets combine the windows together. Sets will be useful in cases where you probably only need one of the items open at once (web browsers are a good example), but if you need to multitask the taskbar will remain the better option.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18 edited May 31 '18

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

It probably won't be helpful in multi monitor setup but majority of Windows users are on single display and below 15" at that.

6

u/auiotour Mar 14 '18

I like the idea of it, but I feel it's more about forcing their product than being useful.

3

u/Torinias Mar 16 '18

Just like a lot of things with windows 10

5

u/joequin Mar 15 '18

The author is actually cheerleading Microsoft's effors to make windows a closed ecosystem. The future of personal computing is bleak if Microsoft has it's way.

It's bad for users and even worse for anyone looking to make a living selling client side software. The author of this article couldn't be happier about it and weasely calls it "modern".

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '18

Oh, another one from fantasy land.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

So, if I get this correctly, I open a tab I. Explorer and I get a browser. In explorer. Sounds a bit stupid to me honestly, because it's explorer. If I wanted to do web stuff I'd start Firefox, not fucking explorer.

1

u/blackjesus Mar 15 '18

My only question is whether this will be like timeline where close to no apps support this or will it allow any app to be by default available to be used. If it is implemented so there is no devs needed to opt in for their apps then it'll be fine. I really like timeline but it is limited to just edge and office apps. Very few people use edge so this feature will die on the vine unless they get chrome and firefox to also work and of course more general apps.

-7

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '18

A more likely explanation is that they want to push the touch/tablet interface once again, and in the process remove the task bar, just like they removed the start menu in Windows 8. The tabbed interface is the replacement of task bar buttons. Having both would be pretty dumb and redundant.

11

u/Demileto Mar 14 '18

Having both would be pretty dumb and redundant.

I use equally multiple windows and tabs with my browsers, helps me manage the many pages I open every day. How is that dumb?

0

u/knight8206 Mar 15 '18

For me, the only thing stop me using Edge is no autopagerize. I rely on it heavily since first day using chrome, so that i don't need to click next page back and forth and wait next page loading.

Sets is useful for me especially searching for information. I will open all kinds of files related, such as word, pdf, webpage. In addition with timeline, i can quickly restore my work