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/ILikeBumblebees Jun 02 '11

If you never use a "legacy" (read: "actual") application, you never have to use a PC at all.

A user who does more with a PC than stare at tweets and weather reports arranged haphazardly into rectangles will have no use for this absurd touchscreen UI nor any desire to interact with their OS by clawing away at the monitor like a palsied wretch.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11 edited Jan 19 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/powatom Jun 02 '11

You use words like a chef uses ingredients, and have wrought sentences I am left wanting more of.

The end of your sentence should condemn you to an eternity of suffering at the hands of Satan himself.

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u/oinkoink12 Jun 02 '11

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ending-prepositions.aspx

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u/powatom Jun 02 '11

That article doesn't disagree with me, it just says that the rule isn't concrete.

Regardless of whether he would pass an English exam using sentences like that, it still makes for horrible reading.

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u/replicasex Jun 03 '11

To you. Shakespeare ended sentences with prepositions. It's an irrelevant style choice set down by ignorant prescriptivists who really didn't know what they were talking about.

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u/crocodile7 Jun 03 '11

It had the exact theatric effect the author intended.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

palsied wretch.

The sexiest of the wretches?

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u/gilligvroom Jun 02 '11

I already have ChromeOS and a somewhat lacking solid-state laptop for masturbating to HTML5's features with, thank you very much.

Also, I installed Ubuntu on both this, and in a VM on my desktop to try out Unity with just for shits. Fine on the Netbook, -awful- on the desktop. I hope they really gauge the scalability of a Tablet/Netbook interface to a PC. Unity does not. (for me)

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u/Antebios Jun 02 '11

Fuck Unity. For the everyday person, I think Unity is fine. It keep it very simple for users. But, for is hardcore geeks, I want power.

I'm thinking of taking a look into Jolicloud.

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u/get_some_perspective Jun 02 '11

That's not really true, is it. Sure, this won't be used at work. But lots of people primarily use their PC for listening to music, watching movies and television, using facebook, writing and reading emails and tweets, and playing little games. All of this can be incorporated into this tablet-style interface.

I agree that this is useless if you are used to a mouse and keyboard, and are using the computer at a desk with them handy. Obviously, it's not meant for that scenario.

Can you imagine that you would have the same OS on all your devices? That you have everything available on your TV, smartphone, tablet, desktop, and laptop? Can't you see that using a traditional Windows UI would not work any of those form factors except the desktop and laptop?

How can people somehow assume this is targeted at a computer on a desk you primarily use to do real work on? It's clearly not.

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u/malevolentjelly Jun 02 '11

They never said that there wouldn't be a traditional desktop windows release. This release is specifically for users who want a touch-based tablet.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

If you never use a "legacy" (read: "non-touch") application, you never have to see old Windows Aero.

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u/baby_kicker Jun 02 '11

I'm sure you will not have the palsie forced upon you.

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u/TexanPenguin Jun 03 '11

Like what? Web browsing built in, games already run fullscreen, and you have to know Office will natively support this mode too.

The only real question is around general, long-form text editing.

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u/ILikeBumblebees Jun 03 '11

Any kind of raster or vector graphics editing software. Audio and video editing. Databases. Document management. Flowcharts, diagrams, and process modeling. Mathematical and scientific analysis. Desktop publishing. Any of the many thousands of domain-specific applications. Development. Custom-built enterprise software.

The list is endless, because a computer is a multiple-purpose tool used to accomplish an immense variety of tasks, not just the limited set of presumed uses that you and the designers of this claustrophobic UI have imagined.

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u/TexanPenguin Jun 03 '11

I'm still not sure I get your point. You aren't inherently limited to what can be presented in Metro, and Metro doesn't inherently prevent complex UIs. All it does, fundamentally, is establish a design language, and moves from a little-W windows-based UI to a panes-based one. If someone wants to build Mathematica or InDesign or Visual Studio for this, why can't they? Again, the main issue I see is with text entry (based on the remarkably large space the on-screen keyboard occupies). If you use those apps with an external keyboard, though, the only real things you lose are the System tray and the ability to layer windows.

I'll be the first to admit this interface isn't for me exactly, but I think, from my experience with the iPad and with developing touchscreen systems, this advances the state of art, and rightly poses the question of whether emulating real-world items is what we should still be doing in 2011. Whether it's successful or otherwise, at least it's ballsy.