They worked their assed off, but made some really bad decisions. Now, sales are looking like a disaster - in their core revenue generator. Microsoft is beginning to feel like a cornered animal. It does still have claws, and hopefully the board will understand just how badly steveb has executed, once it sees the bottom starting to fall out. 2013 will be an entertaining year seeing how Microsoft scrambles. I'd start with a tutorial that wasn't a 2 hour hack job.

It's not good enough, yet. It being distracting is evidence of that. Make it better, and it'll join color, high definition, surround sound, and other technological advances in their it-doesnt-make-movies-better-but-it-doesnt-hurt status. As always, story telling and character development will and always matter most.

Apps with fun colors, shapes, animals, funny sounds. All good things.

2 girls and a cup videos, snuff films, Al-Queda training videos, Halloween scare apps, not so good.

Actually, at that age they have absolutely no idea what they are looking at. If something unsavory happens to appear, I wouldn't panic. That said, there really isn't a difference between fun, colorful shapes in a browser and fun colorful shapes dangling above their crib. Yes, I would limit it, if only to play it safe. But people overly freaking out about a little screen time.

My twins absolutely loved watching electric sheep screen savers. Today, they are wonderful little kids. It didn't make them crzy,smarter, weirder, or creative. It was just fun.

It's not that real world code in particular sucks. The world sucks. The code is in it. If nature provided practically unlimited general computing power really easily, code would be frickin beautiful. Computing power is woefully constrained, so code, the tools the process it, and the systems that execute it are woefully constrained. So, bad code becomes easy to write.

One day, if you work hard enough and get your stuff done, if you impress people with dedication and skill all the while letting the unimportant things flow as water under the bridge, you will get to make the rules. And when you do, I hope to see you asking Slashdot in a new context.

I agree, though "Funny" isn't quite the right mod.

I find that usually when one whines about this kind of thing, the important things the developer should be concentrating on (e.g. how to make things more efficient, how to solve problems, how to maintain better overall code organization, etc) escapes them entirely.

It's the same thing as that annoying C++ dude going around asking other C++ why their code isn't employing functional paradigms more - all the while the product has serious burning issues.

It's big on platitudes, but fails to actually deliver on substantive problems. Like the "goblins farting in your face" thing. I'm sorry, but the weather application does *not* suddenly pop up over things when you are typing. That must have been some kind of stuck key or something. Otherwise, can someone please provide the actual repro steps, because that sounds like a plain old bug. Again, I've *never* seen a metro nor desktop app decide to just suddenly pop up. It feels more like this author made that sh*t up completely.

He confuses his own terms "Control" and "Conveyance". He complains he can't navigate away from Weather as an issue of Control. Bullshit. Upper left corner. Lower left corner. Windows key. Alt tab. Drag from top to bottom. There are tons of ways to navigate. Issue with "Conveyance"? Maybe. Not one of Control. Now that I know how to navigate Win8, I've never had any issues.

I *have* had issues with discoverability. Win8 is definitely bad in this regard. They botched the tutorial : "swipe in from the left" -> nothing happens because the tutorial is shown during OS bootup - ????? yes, that's idiotic. But once I learned the ropes, actual navigation is *easy* (not easier, but definitely not hard).

I really couldn't get through this video. Despite what he says, if he couldn't figure the OS out, yet I could, then he *is* dumb. The OS isn't unusable. It's poorly understood, Microsoft's user education is a total fail, and Microsoft missed so many opportunities to make the UI way, way better. Once you actually get it, it's not bad. I wouldn't pay $99 for it, but it's not preventing me from getting work done.

zacharye says "shipped" while quoting the article, which says "sold". Which is it, because there's a huge difference.

Also, Microsoft doesn't sell through Best Buy or Amazon. I think that means the numbers are actual sales to customers. Many companies claim X million shipped - meaning Best Buy and Amazon get stuck with a huge inventory.

No idea what his hate is you're talking about. Most touchscreen laptops I've seen have been oriented at an angle. Never all-in-ones can angle further down. Newer laptops can swivel open 180 or even 360 degrees (e.g. Yoga). In other words, the hardware is evolving towards making the touchscreen work well. Maybe it's not there, yet, but it will be. My mouse in 1990 was pretty crappy compared to what I use today. So was my monitor. Sadly, however, my keyboard back then was to die for.

I invoke the "rewind to 1985, replace 'touchscreen' with 'mouse', and reread this response argument.

Don't BS us, either. Metro mode doesn't require you to touch the upper right or left of the screen. Swipe in from left - lower left works just as well. Swipe in from right - lower right works as well, and all the "charms" are centered vertically. The only top-gesture that is required is used to close apps, which is not a common use case since background apps are suspended.

If you're talking about apps with UI elements on the upper left or right, then that's pretty much any app on any platform, touch or non-touch.

Microsoft has a serious issue with really shitty program management. The worst thing about program managers is that their ability to talk out their ass is the skill that Microsoft values, and they usually mistake it for insightfulness. It was their incredible skill at program management that let them ship the Kin *after* their focus group told them it was a disaster of a phone. It was the same kind of personality that butchered all the decent decision making in designing metro.

I use Win8, and I honestly think it is ok. But there is immense missed opportunities here, and a sense that this thing is not quite mature. The ire Microsoft draws and its missed sales targets is well deserved. They need to look in the mirror and understand that their fitness function for good program managers is woefully broken.

Annoying bugs with their web UI. For example, when you click and drag, it often things you've flicked when releasing the mouse, causing further map panning. It's nowhere near as solid as Google or Bing. Also, their tile loading latency is a bit high. Sounds like they need to throw more hardware at it. Otherwise, it looks like a really solid entrant, complete with street level views, 3D, and really nifty features. I particularly like the shopping / restaurant heat maps in major cities.