Windows 8 Metro Theme Created For Rooted Android Tablets 116
MikeatWired writes "Now here's a cool one for you tablet users that like to tweak the appearance of your UI! XDA member BroBot175 has created a Metro UI theme for all tablets running Honeycomb or ICS! The theme is a fully functioning replica of Windows 8 that allows you to create your own tiles, and organize them however you want."
Cool? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Now here's a cool one
Mimicking Windows is cool? Not from where I'm sitting.
What problem does this solve? (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole tile madness is driven by commercial reasons. Since MS can't make a phone to be as capable as the desktop, they want to dumb the desktop down to the level of the phone. Then, they think, if everyone is trained to love the bomb ^W the Metro interface there will be more software for Windows phones, and more money for MS.
A tile (as shown) is nothing but a small application window that can't be arbitrarily resized, and that has no Z ordering. The demo on the linked page is totally confusing - my Galaxy Tab has exactly the same stock configuration of installed applications; the only difference is that all application icons are of the same size (so more fit on each screen.) I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.
Euwww! (Score:4, Insightful)
The last thing in the world i would want on any phone is Metro. To be frank, it sucks. The UI is clunky, unusable, inflexible and really just a try in making something diffrerent, not better.
The nerd in me says, cool a testament of just how flexible Android is, but why the worst UI in the world?
Re:Ummm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unity is actually quite nice on a mobile phone. Its on a Desktop it sucks. The same cant be said about Metro because that baby sucks anywhere.
Cool? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean fool or tool
Making Android look like Windoof is about as "cool" as sprinkling dry dogshit on your cappuccino.
Next we show you how to make your Ferrari look like a Hyundai. Oh. wow.
Re:in b4 lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)
As a tablet or smartphone UI, actually it's pretty good. I still prefer Android, but I can understand why people would like Metro. A lot of the texting, e-mail, etc. widgets that people use on Android would not be necessary on Metro, because of the way it presents the tile for an app. (basically, no icons, everything is a widget).
As a desktop UI, you have to ask what the hell they were smoking. Something designed for touchscreen input on a 4" device does *not* scale to a 24" screen with a keyboard/mouse. While it's usable, it would be very counter-productive to anybody who's comfortable with the mouse, because they would have to scroll through pages of tiles to find the one they want. I don't think it's going to be the unmitigated disaster that everybody says it's going to be, but I do think that "how to turn Metro off" will replace porn as the number 1 Google search for a while after it launches.
Re:in b4 lawsuit (Score:1, Insightful)
That's kinda not the point, a theme is a theme, you can make it look like anything, it's still Android underneath. The draw was the unified UI on both the Tablet and Desktop version of Windows 8, and beyond just appearance. It's kinda retarded when you think of it, it's like when people though skinning KDE/Gnome to look like OS X magically made it OS X.
Microsoft's war horse is that it's Windows through and through, on any device, on any architecture. It's nor iOS -> OS X, or Android Linux, but precisely the same OS, with the same apps (where Metro is concerned, at least - and this is the draw of Metro) on any device.
Just as skinning the Desktop to look like OS X didn't accomplish or change anything, making ICS look like Win8 isn't going to magically make it provide Windows' functionality or run Windows apps, not even the Metro apps.
Or we can ignore that and pretend Microsoft is run by complete amateurs and banked the next 4-5 years of their business on a theme, and derp and herp about how superior we are because replicated the aesthetics and now they're doomed.
Re:Euwww! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:in b4 lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)