Comment Whales (Score 1) 253
it's a few big spenders. In the game industry they call them "Whales". That and spyware/viruses selling scams that folks fall for.
I agree with most of what you said.
Type to search is usually faster than drilling through the Start menu with a mouse if you go more than a menu or two deep.
I don't understand why people say this is a great feature of Metro... It was present in Vista and IMO worked even better in Windows 7.
Throw in how some OS settings were only available in Metro
And visa versa too. How come I can only pair a bluetooth device from the Metro Interface, but can only enable it as a network device from the desktop version of devices and printers?
I really hope they fix it so that I'm either using the desktop or the metro interface whenever I want, and don't get forced to bounce between them.
If Microsoft is going to think everybody is running everything on a touch screen interface, instead of a mouse and keyboard
Actually based on current trends they would simply be watching the market. Desktop sales are plummeting. Laptop sales are stagnant and touch laptops / tablets / slates are increasing.
Windows 8.1 may be jarring to use on a desktop.
But Windows 7 was utterly unusable on a touch screen.
They've tried the one size fits all approach and failed. Now let's see how they go with their 2 UIs on the 1 OS approach.
What's the sudden (the last year or two) appeal with the super flat GUIs all over the place ?
What's the appeal of flat colours in marketing material? What's the appeal of companies changing their logos to flat colours? What's the appeal to kitchen tables in the local home centre all being almost perfectly rectangular with sharp corners? What's the appeal of ikea draws no longer having handles instead now have a bevelled edge to grasp? And why did we stop wearing bright blue suits to work?
The GUI is following the design trends of the day, nothing more. We now have the processing power to display what we want so the GUIs tend towards "modern" looks, and "modern" by all accounts of life is is flat with predominantly straight lines.
And business software users do not gain a damned thing from Metro. They gain a clunk interface which is useless to them.
What's your point? It's not like Windows 10 needs to ever see the metro interface for general use.
So, while Metro has its place for some people
And yet I see more and more people give up general laptops and desktops in favour of tablets. You are still right of course. I just don't think you're going to be right any more next year.
So Microsoft (and idiots like you) can keep pretending that Metro is a suitable interface for everything. Or Microsoft (and idiots like you) can actually realize that "one size fits some" isn't going to cut it.
You mean like the way Metro interfaces co-exist with the desktop, and how after the stumble that was Windows 8 every further update has so far shown that the two interfaces are going to co-exist precisely because one size doesn't fit all?
You sound like a whiny graphic designer who still doesn't understand that a GUI which doesn't suit the task is fucking useless.
You sound like the graphic designer who doesn't understand the task.
Yes, for many home users Metro will probably do everything they need. For for people with more demanding tasks, and most people in business
I can assure you, Metro is not all of "simple, clean, aesthetically pleasing, intuitive, and functional"
With a keyboard and mouse, on a large screen with no touch
So you can boo hoo about how the graphic designers will save the day. But if all they have is eye candy which impedes function compare to existing UIs
... agreed.
But people who use computers for grown up things will simply not benefit from Metro. Because it's the completely wrong interface paradigm for many things, and Microsoft (and idiots like you) whining it's the wave of the future doesn't make it a good universal UI.
This isn't about the interface for normal people and programmers
Disagreed. The paradigm has changed you just haven't seen it yet. Go and walk down the isle at wallmart and check out how many of those laptops are sold without touchscreens.
Now I'm not claiming metro is good. It's not, it's quite the abortion as it was released. But the Windows 7 interface alone is quite unusable on touchscreens, tablets, and slates (who the fuck came up with that, call them convertibles). Something had to change. I do hope it continues to change. Worst case scenario would be going for a full one-size fits all approach. But fortunately it looks like MS has realised this and is separating the metro and desktop UIs to interchangeably allow you to do everything from either.
Graphic designers focusing on pretty, but with no understanding of functional
Except that the opposite of what they've done. They've been focusing on functional, just that the modern view of functional has changed to a tablet interface. Windows 7 is utterly unusable on a touchscreen and Windows 8.1 is a great move in sort of the right direction. A ugly drunken walk which results in leaning on fences and occasionally dodging traffic as you stumble onto the road, but at least still heading in the right direction.
Cost. Maintaining a common UI code between products.
It's a horrendous idea, an abortion of an idea, but that's the explanation and it makes sense as to why they did it.
Change just for the sake of change is stupid, especially if the change is a step backwards in functionality.
Change for the sake of change is something spouted out by people who simply don't bother researching the change or understand the use case behind it. Change costs money and it's always driven by something. Sometimes it can be simple such as "redesign the UI and rev up the version so we can sell the next product", and other times it's more complicated.
The current trend towards "ugly" is driven by the user requirements, not by marketing. New icons emphasise the usable space on which to click them (hence square rather than round). Window borders are larger (and uglier) but easier to click on. And the whole metro interface was driven by one simple fact:
We are in the world of touch. You can deny it, but I walk down my local electronics store and more than half the laptops there have touch screens. Half of those again are transformable into a tablet style. The Windows flagship product (Surface Pro) is one of the most non-PC like PCs released, and that is what is driving the whole UX design these days.
Is the current product perfect? Heck now. It's the product of a retarded mind that should not have made it past early alpha testing, however it is attempting to solve a very real problem which is that Windows 7 is utterly unusable on a touch screen. I can't wait for Windows 10... eeerrr lets say I can't wait for Windows 11 because I get the feeling Windows 10 won't have solved the many issues in Windows 8 yet.
UI trends are following marketing all around the world. It has nothing to do with UX experts. The designs are all about not wanting to be the person walking to work in a bright blue suit in the 90s after everyone has moved on.
The entire world is changing to a flat look, not just advertising and company logos, but also physical things (tables, chairs and even whole houses have modern styles which emphasises flat colours and straight edges). The UIs are simply catching up with what the rest of the world is doing.
For some fun, do a quick google search for 90s house décor, 2000s house décor, and modern house décor. You'll get a lovely progression from a bland look with lots of patterns, through sparsely set out houses with lots of rounded edges and strange styles, to the modern square and flat look that dominates current style magazines which closely matches what we see on the computer.
Those "screenshots" are only 600x375. They're more on the side of being huge thumbnails than actual screenshots.
I like the fact that an article that talks about the recycling bin icon actually hides the recycling bin icon under some stupid overlay when you open the oversized thumbnail.
Sub question: Would you care if you lost a few blocks of data? Bit rot is a serious concern but the problem is an isolated one. If I lost a single photo on my computer I may be lightly upset, but no where near as upset as losing all the data on my drive.
Actually, the other poster's suggestion of using a NAS drive makes a lot of sense too.
Only if it's not always online, doesn't continuously backup, or isn't located on the same premises as the primary drive, otherwise you'll find your NAS will lose data at the same time when your PC gets nuked by flood, fire, theft, lightning, virus etc.
Unless he is a tester for Uber or reported it stolen, the list of possibilities is pretty short for it to be where it is, and I would be surprised it if had been there very long at $2/hr.
Ahhh so we'll prosecute people on the assumption that they may have committed a crime?
Interestingly I was at the mall only an hour ago. My car was parked in the carpark, but I'm currently injured and unable to drive. I physically can't operate the gearstick right now, but somehow my car and I made it to the mall? How could this be? It is a mystery.
The other part of the mystery is that I don't know where my car is at the moment. It's not in my garage.
Gasoline doesn't explode, it burns
Oh wow. Just plain wow!
I'm not a resident expert on IEDs. But I did do physics in grade 8 and you're right. I'll assume you knew that gunpowder only burns too right? As does a vapour cloud of LPG.
Did you know that anything that burns can be made to explode violently killing everyone in the area? Like... corn starch, and hay?
Well in Australia where we are forced to vote we voted with hate against the previous government's policies. Now the current government is implementing policies we don't like. Best of all the erosion of our rights is not a partisan issue and all major parties supported the data retention laws except the greens who are bat shit crazy and shouldn't be in power either.
Tell me again who I should vote for?
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. - Kahlil Gibran
