8 years ago I left behind .NET development and gaming PCs as a hobby for Ruby development on a Mac.
I got into crypto-currency mining last year. As that became less profitable I decided to sell most of my mining hardware, keep one R290, and build a gaming rig.
"Metro" (aside from forced full-screen) is the clean break Windows needed IMO. There were/are definitely usability issues with it, but mostly on the feature/app level IMO (it's difficult to know how to find the tool you're looking for in the new "Control Panel", it should not take minutes to figure out how to turn the computer off, etc).
The biggest problem with it was that it was inconsistent. Steam is a "Desktop" app. For no reason besides MS apparently didn't force developers to go Metro. That results in a really awful experience for users.
So this... bowing to the same crowd that said they'd never leave DOS for Windows '95. Or '95 for XP, or XP for Vista, and on and on... this is a huge mistake IMO. MS recommitting to a UX that's never really worked all that well, and at this point extremely dated.
> MS recommitting to a UX that's never really worked all that well, and at this point extremely dated.
At least a billion people have used and are experienced with the UX you claim as not working.
I'd say that is probably the best metric of a working UX. And the lack of Windows 8 adoption is another testament to that.
It doesn't matter if you think your next generation UI is an improvement, because there is one thing you can guarantee - if you are making radical UX changes, your userbase will not think it is an improvement. Change pisses people off, especially when they perceive it as unnecessary, and the Windows 8 UI mess came off to the vast majority of their userbase as unnecessary breakage of a 15 year UX their users came to expect.
More people have used and experienced CRTs. That doesn't make them superior. Just the state of the art for their time.
You're right. It doesn't matter that I think that. It matters that OSX can get people to convert because Windows is stale and it's desktop doesn't work well.
I didn't say "doesn't work". I said "well". Which is pretty subjective I guess, but I did qualify that it was an opinion so...
OSX has made changes. Some successes, some failures. The only real constant is that it does tend to change (at least to a greater degree than Windows IME).
Sure, MS may have the GM of operating systems on their hands. And there are a lot of GM fans with little Calvin & Hobbes stickers on their vehicles.
That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement, and I'd be a lot happier as a PC user who only uses it for gaming if I never had to see the Windows Desktop experience again.
But I guess I'll be waiting for SteamOS for that to happen.
I mean, how many Xbox users want their much more Metro-like experience replaced with a standard Windows desktop?
I never argued it wasn't disruptive to goto Metro. As someone who uses BSD (OpenBSD load balancers), Unix (SmartOS VM hosts), OSX, Ubuntu (VMs) and Windows routinely, I just place good, intuitive UX above familiarity. It's the reason why Ubuntu is one of my least favorite distros with their alternative user-space tools and /etc design, and why the Windows Desktop is easily my least favorite GUI environment.
I got into crypto-currency mining last year. As that became less profitable I decided to sell most of my mining hardware, keep one R290, and build a gaming rig.
"Metro" (aside from forced full-screen) is the clean break Windows needed IMO. There were/are definitely usability issues with it, but mostly on the feature/app level IMO (it's difficult to know how to find the tool you're looking for in the new "Control Panel", it should not take minutes to figure out how to turn the computer off, etc).
The biggest problem with it was that it was inconsistent. Steam is a "Desktop" app. For no reason besides MS apparently didn't force developers to go Metro. That results in a really awful experience for users.
So this... bowing to the same crowd that said they'd never leave DOS for Windows '95. Or '95 for XP, or XP for Vista, and on and on... this is a huge mistake IMO. MS recommitting to a UX that's never really worked all that well, and at this point extremely dated.