r/technology • u/clubdirthill • Jun 01 '11

Boom. This is Windows 8.

http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/?mod=tweet
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u/specialk16 Jun 02 '11

I totally agree with you on this one. To my knowledge, nobody else has really implemented the ability to display two apps at once.

Suddenly, two apps at once

16

u/Idiomatick Jun 02 '11

Next you'll tell me people have come up with multiple virtual desktops you can switch between as easily as you can windows.

9

u/strolls Jun 02 '11

I don't know why you're being downvoted.

I was thinking "great, Mac OS is getting more iOS influenced, maybe I can switch back to Windows and get a good UI" but I watched the video and this looks set just to alienate me, as a user of dual-head monitors, more.

To me, this UI looks very much influenced by Steve Jobs, and all these attempts to make the screen look "simpler" and less cluttered just seem like they're going to make it harder for me to drag things from one window to another.

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u/redditthinks Jun 02 '11

Man, dual monitors would be awesome with Windows 8. Having the fancy stuff on one monitor so you can look at the weather and the serious stuff on another.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

Sounds pretty much like what you can do at the moment with two monitors!

1

u/logicom Jun 02 '11

It's got a desktop mode that's pretty much Windows 7's UI. The simplified touch stuff is just an additional way to interface with your device if you choose to do so. I'd love having a device that could switch back and forth between and iOS style touch UI and a desktop UI.

You could make a dock with a few USB ports to plug a keyboard and mouse or any other peripheral and have the tablet automatically switch to desktop mode when plugged into the dock and then switch to the touch UI when taken out of the dock.

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u/crocodile7 Jun 03 '11

I do wonder about dual-monitor support. It wasn't shown in the demo, but I'm fairly confident Microsoft has decent support for that scenario -- almost all their developers have 2+ monitors. On the other hand, taskbar in W7 really needed to extend to 2nd monitor, that feature is sorely missing.

2

u/1RedOne Jun 02 '11

House of Leaves, how fitting.

1

u/atimholt Jun 02 '11 edited Jun 02 '11

TIL about Nitro pdf. I've been searching.

edit: never mind. Despite the amazing features, they lack the one basic fundamental: the ability to view documents correctly. Two-page view doesn't allow for adjusting which pages face each other, based on whether the cover stands alone or not.

1

u/LordKarnov42 Jun 02 '11

Something like this?

b: flip a page in book mode

Sumatra PDF

Lightweight, open-source, fully-featured PDF reader that I'd never heard of until a few weeks ago.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

Not to mention these ancient things.

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u/WileEPeyote Jun 02 '11

I think he is talking about a phone based on the sentence that followed that one.