Sure, but you still look like a complete idiot if you claim a bunch of functionality is not there when, in fact, it is. Also, most (or pretty much all except for the "Start" button thing) of his rant is in regards to metro. Now I didn't have a problem figuring out everything in metro inside of an hour, which I know is maybe a bit too long, but once you find it, the hinting issue is gone. Most of what was there I was able to access on the first try. Maybe I'm just smarter than him. Maybe he's just whining and trying to make a video that is amusing like those on The Escapist's Zero Punctuation, which means it's more for comedy and entertainment than actual content. He fails pretty badly in that regard. Really, there is no excuse for him.

Also, in that particular case where I said, "The guy didn't even notice that..", was a case where there is no excuse. Windows 7 backup is not hidden. It's available via the desktop interface, and appears if you just search for "backup", choose backup and file history, then use your eyeballs to read what's on the screen, where you see "Windows 7 File Recovery" as a link at the bottom left.

I'm not arguing that, I'm agreeing with it. What I'm saying is that because he couldn't find it, he went online and posted a video about how it's not there, when in fact, it is. His claim that the functions are not there is completely false. Them not being there is a completely different issue than them being hidden. Sure, "hidden" is bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as "gone". That is why this video fails.

You can shrink the size of the tiles, but I think it would be a disadvantage. I can use a higher mouse sensitivity because I don't have to be anywhere near as precise when I actually click on those tiles. I can completely mitigate the gesture size, and use a mouse sensitivity I like. I see there is also an option to fill my large monitor (settings->show more tiles), which actually gives me an array of 8x12 tiles if I use the smaller setting for each tile - 92 icons I can access without navigating submenus or scrolling on a 2560x1600 monitor. That's actually not bad. I like flat structures, they are fast.

That said, I rarely have to use the start screen. I stay in desktop mode. I've pinned my commonly used applications, about 15 or so, to the taskbar. I never need to open the start screen to access them. It's how I used 7. The start screen comes in to play when I search, and I now access it using win+F intead of just hitting the windows key.

I've seen the actual "start" tiled interface a few times this month because I had something specific to do on it. I'm not even trying to avoid, it's just the way I use windows tends to avoid it. I would still prefer to have the old style search back - flat, and tucked down in the lower left, as it should be. In short, the new start screen is not the end of the world. As for gesture size, I don't care, because it's fairly silly to call an OS bad because of that, especially when a highly efficient type-to-launch system is in place. Win7's start menu needs more precise aim, but I never ran into that limitation because I never used my mouse to find and launch programs.

What I do agree with is that functionality is hidden. The problem with the video is that it claims that the functionality is not there at all first, then says, "actually it's hidden". Hidden is bad, but manageable. All the same shortcut keys work, so for keyboard users like me there's really no difference. The guy didn't even notice that the old windows 7 backup feature is still there, which would have allowed him to restore to an SSD. The video is pretty much completely un-researched, and while it makes one good point - don't hide features - it's a failure in every other sense. The person who made it should be embarrassed. He's also contradicting himself: In the past he claimed Vista was unusable, now he's claiming otherwise.

Yes. Win8 has problems, but this video is a piece of crap. The editors of /. need to pay more attention to the content before allowing it in. This video is an embarrassment to /. as well as it's creator.

Just because people have found ways to make Win8 more usable, or more like Win7, doesn't mean they are "promoters". They have spent the time to figure things out and are making suggestions. The common rhetoric that win8 detractors use is to call those who have learned to use it "promoters".

Unfortunately he presents one thing as another, a classic bait-and-switch: Features are hidden, not removed. Hidden is bad, but no-where near as bad as removed. Perhaps he could have taken the time to figure that out. Close any application (metro inclusive)? Alt-f4. Quick access to the desktop-based control panel? Right click the lower left corner instead of right. If you're a power user, it takes more time to get to use Win8 than if you're a complete novice. The reason? Our use cases are completely different. The rest of the video is more of an aesthetic rant. Whether or not icons have borders or your interface is skeuomorphic (an often badly executed idea these days) does not break an OS. Being able to figure things out at a glance (he of course chose common OSX icons vs. quite uncommon Win8 ones - I recognized every single stock win8 app by their icons instantly.

All that said, I certainly do not want to become a second-class citizen on my desktop, but at the same time I kindof hope that Win8 fails enough to oust Ballmer and kick MS in a better direction. I also hope it will really give rise to desktop Linux, but I know that's a bit of a stretch. The alternative to windows or Linux is icky, boring, and depressing.

TL;DR; of the video: He spent less than 30 minutes using the OS (apparently). He couldn't find his way around. Gave up.

This video is horribly flawed. While there are things to complain about in Win8, he not only misrepresents several things (ie. he ignores the fact that the desktop is still fully functional), but he start conflating ignorance about the interface with the lack of features in the interface. Sure, it's good to have hints about what to do, and MS failed that one, but they do at least have the ability to perform all the old functions. Tucking them away is not a great idea, but it's is not removing them entirely. I'm also having a hard time reproducing his trackpad problem. I get where he's coming from, but it somehow is not making my (or anyone else who I know) computer "unusable". Lastly, his "icon" comparison - why would he have icons somewhat familiar common apps on OSX compared to obscure icons on Win8, and especially not using the video medium to show that the Win8 icons are animated... So much fail in this video.

He is right though. The negativity against Win8 has gone way overboard, even for /.

I've at least used it for a good period of time now (a year.). The start screen is ok at work, on my dual 30" monitor set-up because the desktop is always visible, but it's jarring on my home system. I'm also not a fan of the non-flat search. This is all solved by using classicshell or start8 or some such thing - which I have done at home, at least for a month or so, and then I just slowly got used to the "new" way of doing things. It's tolerable. I spend >99% of my time on the desktop, so really I can't be too loud about where I spend

The first game came out in 2000, and recently went f2p. Most of those people went over to PS2. It's a very busy game, and quite fun, so I don't see it going away any time soon.

By millions you must mean hundreds of thousands. Only the apple app store has passed 1 million recently. The Play store is around 800k. I think the play store has about 200k fart apps fewer...

Usually it should be the compiler that handles auto-vectorization to use such extensions. However, manual assembly only makes a port to x86 non-trivial. All they need is appropriate #ifdefs and for x86 can probably just write the code in C/C++, as it would be plenty fast and the compiler, especially ones from MS and Intel, have no problems generating code that is more than fast enough.

Maybe. I have yet to hear of such a library though. In order for it to be ARM only it would have to have ARM machine code. However, that doesn't make it hard to port, it just makes it non-trivial.

Fair enough, however the graphics environment on windows is really quite good. I work on Windows, and I work on Android. Android is still a gong show when it comes to GPU support/stability. Fortunately Samsung phones are all quite reliable, and targeting them gets most of the market.. MS also provides a decent number of testing tools to catch potential problems with submitted apps. Also, any iOS or Android based game will not have graphics needs that would tax even 4-year old intel integrated graphics, so the likelihood of an iOS or Android ported game not running well on a PC is almost 0.

iOS is not code-level compatible with OSX. Windows RT is API level compatible with Win 8/Pro on x86 for metro apps.

I look forward to being able to buy an app or game on WinRT or the Xbox, and then have it available to my other devices. MS is not preventing them from getting into the store, what they are doing is incenting and rewarding those who do things properly and try and support more architectures. The dev already spent $20k to get the game working on WinRT, all he had to do was compile it once for ARM, and again for x86, then submit both executables. MSVC already has these things preset for you when you get it set up. I'm trying to figure out how this dev could have possibly not been able to compile for both platforms, and I'm coming up blank - it's all preset. It's all kindergarten-level easy.