Windows 8 Animated Evaluation at YouTube

[SuperTweaker]

This is how many people feel about Windows 8.
http://youtu.be/WTYet-qf1jo

[BC_Programmer]

Absolutely everything stated is complete nonsense coming from somebody who evidently only used the OS for 10 seconds. Arguing that "A lot of people think X, so it is the correct response" is a Ad populum fallacy.

[SuperTweaker]

Denial is strong by anyone and wants something different than what the older generation is using. W8 is not a good operating system, period.


@BC It appears that you and I will have to agree to disagree on many topics. 

[BC_Programmer]

Denial is strong by anyone and wants something different than what the older generation is using.

This sentence makes no sense. How does denial "want" anything?

W8 is not a good operating system, period.

Begging the question. You cannot just assert nonsense and tell everybody that disagrees they are in denial. When valid refutations are provided you need to actually respond to them, not reiterate your original points and ignore it; and if refutations are invalid, you need to state why.

@BC It appears that you and I will have to agree to disagree on many topics. 

No. I will not agree to disagree. I will not eat up nonsense and pretend it's is Chocolate cake. saying "I guess we need to agree to disagree" is an incredibly lazy tactic and is among the pantheon of self-defeating and dishonest statements made in lieu of an actual counterpoint.

It's lazy because all it is is mutual recognition of disagreement. But the fact is that the existence of a conversation, debate, or argument sort of shows that there is already mutual recognition of disagreement on the subject, so it's entirely moot. It's only valid for subjective cases.

It could be argued that whether somebody likes or dislikes an Operating System or Piece of software is subjective. I could agree with that.

But No. You decided it was an objective truth :

W8 is not a good operating system, period.

And that, my friend, is where we have to disregard attempts to acquiesce the existence of an argument by "agreeing to disagree" because now you are using that term not to indicate the obvious presence of mutual disagreement, but instead to try to say "we are both equally right and both equally wrong". It's a dodge, and is nothing more than the most ludicrous type of relativistic equivocation imaginable.

And to make matters worse, you aren't saying "we agree to disagree" at all; you are in fact saying that I am outright wrong about something. For example, I rather like Windows 8; I certainly find it no worse than Windows 7 for my purposes, and rather like some of the changes made. You however have unilaterally declared, in an objective fashion, that "W8 is not a good operating System period" And I'm calling you out. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Prove your case that Windows 8 is not a good operating system, and do not deflect the argument with subjective relativistic nonsense. Present citable, reproducible information about how the OS works compared to previous versions that provide an objective measure that the new one is in all cases less suited than the previous implementation. Otherwise, your claims are nonsense assertions that could be buried in a matchbox if given an enema. I refuse to pretend that a poorly-argued position which in this case started with an exceptional if difficult to parse ad-hominem against anybody that would disagree, holds sufficient validity to even request being put on the level by agreeing to disagree. I do of course know people that do not like WIndows 8. The difference is that they fully acknowledge the subjective nature of the discussion, and they fully realize that it could very well be their own personal experience and what they are used to influencing their conclusion. Your statement here however- Objectively declaring that "W8 is not a good operating system, period" is NONSENSE because you've backed it up with absolutely nothing. Even a subjective argument at least has subjective anecdotes. You've done nothing but assert something, provided absolutely no reasoning behind the claim, made a mild if not entirely sensical personal attack ("Denial is strong by anyone and wants something different than what the older generation is using.") and then essentially asked to "agree to disagree".

No. I will not.

[camerongray]

I have to agree with BC on this - The reason many people hate Windows 8 is due to it being a big change from 7 and other previous editions.  When I first tried 8, I absolutely hated it, swapped between 7 and 8 3 times before I forced myself to use 8 - After using it for a while I got used to it's differences and now honestly say that I actually prefer it to previous editions.  You can't just use something for a short period of time and instantly declare that it's terrible, some things just need getting used to!

And I'm not a "Microsoft Fanboy" in fact, I use Linux as my day-to-day OS yet whenever I do use Windows, I definitely prefer using 8 to 7.  And no, none of my Windows 8 machines are touch screen or tablets.

[BC_Programmer]

The reason many people hate Windows 8 is due to it being a big change from 7 and other previous editions.

Yep. When I first heard of Windows XP and saw screenies and the changes that were being made, I hated it. I avoided it for years.

When I finally upgraded the windows 98SE machine I was using to XP (I forget why I decided to do so),  I continued to dislike it.

The first thing I did was change everything to be as close to Windows 98SE as possible. I disabled all Luna themes, and I set the start menu to "Classic". One may strike a parallel to this with Windows 8 and people using aftermarket Start-Menu tools. Over time I came to discover that the newer start Menu actually had several benefits such as pinned applications, so I switched to that style. I also realized that despite my misgivings, painting a few bitmaps was not the "memory hog" that I originally chided it as, and switched to the XP Theme (Silver if memory serves, but eventually Royale Noir).
What changed with Windows XP from the time I originally used it to the time that I came to use it as my everyday OS? Absolutely nothing. The only thing that changed was me, and the only thing that changed me was cold hard facts, and I like to think that is the only thing that changes my mind about things now. Which is why I look at new Operating Systems and ways of doing things not with scorn, but with wonder. Windows Vista got the same treatment, since I had come to realize the "error of my ways" to turn a phrase. I bought a laptop with Vista preinstalled and had some issues with it, but I reinstalled Vista fresh and found that experience about a bajillion times more favourable, thus I learned that manufacturers were probably to blame for a lot of the complaints. I was thus quite quickly aware of how blatantly misinformed a lot of the anti-Vista posts and opinions really were. Then I watched a dramatic shift as those same people said how great Windows 7 was, and how it fixed everything wrong with it, when it hardly changed anything- it was just a re-release so that people could like Windows 7 and still hate Vista rather than admit they were wrong about Vista, because they are pretty much the same OS with a few tweaks- certainly nothing worth changing the minds of millions of people.

When I first learned of Windows 8, I had my concerns. However I also realize that the people creating teh software in question are not stupid. Despite what any idiot youtuber may try to say, they are not professional designers. I'm not a professional designer. But Microsoft has a lot of them. I considered that the changes were done for a good reason; rather than dismissing the changes as being done out of malice and responding in kind, I assumed they had very good usability reasons for the changes, and did my best to embrace those changes and merge them into my workflow.

Now I have no issue moving back and forth between Win7 and Win8. Eve nin Win7 I found the win8 UI style useful, as some of it carries over in Office 2013.


I think maybe some of the problem is that while most such changes require a bit of effort, relearning, etc. people expect the improvements to be for free; or, they expect simply incremental improvements to what was already present. The problem is that such an expectation only leads to a messy System that has a bunch of features and capabilities stapled on, while not actually addressing the usability concerns of previous versions.

This isn't to say that such attempts at improving usability are always good. For example, Office 2000 introduced "Smart menus", which had numerous UI oversights that Microsoft silently acknowledged by removing that feature (or at least disabling it by default) in later versions past Office XP.

In order to really understand the direction, you have to understand the problems with the Start Menu as implemented.

Now, as we all know, it was added in Windows 95. The design purpose was to make the components and installed programs easier to access while also centralizing a lot of thee system to a system-based menu. In this goal it succeeded. Detractors claimed that Program Manager did that just fine. Arguably, they weren't wrong, but the Taskbar was quite a novel introduction and made Windows computing easier, since running programs were always visible. It was like "Cool-Switch" (Alt+Tab) being available at all times. And the Start Menu was sort of like a "program manager flyout".

Naturally this paradigm pretty much stuck through to XP. XP reworked the start menu a bit  to try to improve usability and of course add some glitz.

Vista is where we see the paradigm start to break down as computing changes. With massive hard drive we started to be capable of installing hundreds of applications. With XP and earlier having this many applications installed absolutely destroys the ease of use of the start menu, as the menu is forced to either create multiple columns, or scroll.

Thus Vista's Search was created. It was more or less an extension of available Desktop Extension tools (Windows Desktop Search, I believe) but built into the Start menu. IMO this is the single biggest usability improvement ever added to an OS. It found it's way into other systems like Linux Distributions too.

Very few people that use Windows 7 probably use the All Programs Menu. and if they do, they are going slower than they could be. Start Search is usually the way to go.

So where does win8 come in. well, it's a two-pronged approach to changing technology. First off, it's obvious that Touch-screens are coming around and going to be on desktops in the fairly near future, so it makes sense to start designing in a way that is compatible with that technology. Additionally, it addresses some obvious problems with the Start Menu architecture. Since it is most productive when used as Search, it is limiting that the results are confined to the menu itself. The Start Screen shows these results in full screen, allowing for far better utilization of the available space for both changing search options as well as organizing results.

That is really all there is to it. The Start Screen is a better Start Menu.

[SuperTweaker]

Do you really have to write an essay each time you post?  rofl!  No one wants to read all that rhetoric. Brevity is always best, but to some - a meaningless concept.

KMA BS-BM.  You've been here long enough to have taken the roost.  But you get no kowtow from me.   

[BC_Programmer]

Do you really have to write an essay each time you post?  rofl!  No one wants to read all that rhetoric. Brevity is always best, but to some - a meaningless concept.

KMA BS-BM.  You've been here long enough to have taken the roost.  But you get no kowtow from me.   

I get this response frequently. It's always from somebody who has no arguments.

[Allan]

Okay guys, time to settle down please. Thanks.

[Geek-9pm]

Arguments?
If you can not convey an idea, there is no argument.

I watched the YouTube video. He made his point. Windows 8 looks too much like a flip phone  screen. Nothing is intuitive. You just have to play around.

[BEGIN RABID SARCASM]
Metaphor. Automobile makers do not changes things like the steering wheel, brakes gas pedal an other things people already understand. Now my metaphor.
If Microsoft was Ford and Windows 8 was the new 2013 model, we would see:

• Steering wheel replaced with oars.
• Brake pedal gone, use the radio volume control.
• Gear shift lever is now part of the headrest.
• Speedometer replaced by stink bomb. Go fast, it farts.

Windows 8 will be recalled by the DOT.
[/END RABID SARCASM]

The point is that if people can not use it, they will not.
And after they don't use it, they will never recommend it.
Therefore Microsoft will have to put over 10 per sent of gross revenue into heavy advertising to convince people they really like Windows 8.

[BC_Programmer]

The point is that if people can not use it, they will not.
And after they don't use it, they will never recommend it.
Therefore Microsoft will have to put over 10 per sent of gross revenue into heavy advertising to convince people they really like Windows 8.

Early May Windows 8 had 100 million licenses sold, which has been about on-par with the number of Windows 7 licenses sold in the same time frame. It's actually interesting because Windows 7 was cited as a success because of it's very open Beta, but Windows 8 had an open Preview and unlike Windows 7, people claim that it's "failing". Based on the aforementioned sales it's hard to really substantiate that, but there is no doubt that opinions on the OS are mixed. I'd put them about the same as Vista about the same time after it's release. The Vista hate didn't really go away until Windows 7 was released, and Win7 was really popular. It's probable that Windows 7's popularity was actually just a spring-back effect from Vista hate. Additionally, people who had from the beginning decried Vista as being- for example- "Criminal" couldn't easily reverse course on the issue, so they avoided using it or only used it with malice, in an attempt to avoid liking it and bring on cognitive dissonance. Windows 7 allowed those users to like everything they liked in Vista without admitting they were wrong. Eg, positive Windows 7 reviews after a scathing Vista review wouldn't raise as many questions as a positive Vista review following a scathing one.

[soybean]

The point is that if people can not use it, they will not.

That's an overly simplistic statement.  People buying new computers get Win 8 now, so what do you think they going to do with their new computer if their initial reaction to Win 8 is one of frustration?  If they are smart, they'll get some help and learn how to use it.  And, once they get on the right track, many will change their initial feelings and gain a much more positive opinion about it. 

I watched the first 8 minutes of the video in the 1st post here.  It simply reflects ignorance and stupidity.  It's an absurd, silly rant by an idiot.  Several times, he said the Weather app opened and he had no idea how it opened.  And, then he says he could not figure out how to close it.  His ignorance is even more amazing in light of his claimed knowledge of many OS.  Did he not think about getting a reference to tell him HOW to close an app that is opened in the Start screen?  Unbelievable!

[ImnoGuru]

If you listen to his ranting, on the video at about 40 seconds in, you will realize that he is just another out of work blogger advertising his work to anyone that will view the video.