Windows 8 Consumer Preview
So, I've been messing with the new Windows 8 preview and thought it was time to give my thoughts about it. In case you don't know anything about Windows 8 or the new features it brings, you can watch this creepy-looking Uncle Fester dude show you how it works. The big changes coming from Microsoft's desire to expand their OS for a better tablet experience.
So first things first. Windows 8 installs and starts up quickly and seamlessly on my VM, which is a vast improvement over stepping through a configuration window. If the late Steve Jobs has accomplished only one thing in his life, it's that "It Just Works" has now become a mainstream philosophy. Speaking of Jobs, Windows 8, much like Windows 7, has a number of notable things that were shamelessly nabbed from Apple, but we'll get into that later.
The first thing that you see after starting up is Windows' brand new Start Screen, using the Metro interface. At first glance I thought, "Oh, this is just Microsoft's response to Launchpad." However, appearances are misleading and I was surprised to discover it is a really good, innovative new approach to an application launcher. Widgets and apps are blended together in a nice way to give you the information you need and tools to do the stuff you want in a "wall of blocks" interface, and it is customizable. As other bloggers have mentioned, it is a little odd that it scrolls left to right instead of top to bottom like webpages (and most everything else). However, it's not unusual for Microsoft to have an inconsistency like this. I'm sure some of you have used Windows Explorer in "list" mode (which used to be the default back in Windows 98)? Well it always bugged the shit out of me that it scrolls left to right, which makes me go "Huh? Where are my files? Oh wait, what? It's scrolling right... oh" every single time. On the other hand, it's probably more natural for tablet users to scroll left to right than top to bottom when in landscape mode, and Metro is allowed to break the rules a little because it is a totally new interface, right? Well, that brings me to my next thought: Theme.
Microsoft did a great thing with Windows 7 by giving it a huge makeover with transparent glass windows, shadowing, and overall making it look like a modern OS. Windows 8, particularly in Metro, went in the totally opposite direction and now use lot of square blocks and primary colors. It reminds me of the way Google went with their web apps. When I look at it I think I'm using the "Sleek color" theme on my Linux box from 2001 that contains 3x3 pixel icons. However, the most atrocious looking things of all are the scrollbars. They look exactly like DOS minus the green. I don't see how this is going to look good on even tablet computers. Nobody needs scrollbars that big and blocky. It's not simple, and it does not "get out of the way". Touch screen users won't even be using them.
There is also a noticeably huge difference switching between the Metro interface and the Windows interface. Push the Windows button while in the Start Screen and BAM, you're looking at an exact replica of Windows 7. However, there are two immediately apparent differences: one, that there is no Start Menu (which I will get to in a bit), and two, windows are square blocks. Yes, that's right, they got rid of the rounded corners on all windows. Why? I'm guessing to fit in with Metro better, but the two interfaces are so dramatically different why bother? Remember back when XP came out around the turn of the century? It was considered so much more stylishly modern to have rounded corners (which Mac had already had for several years) that Microsoft implemented exceptionally round corners on all XP windows! It stuck all the way up to Windows 7 even though they weren't quite as round. I'd like to emphasize that there is no reason to choose square corners over round ones except to dumb down the aesthetics! Bah, I could go on and on about rounded corners for hours, but I think you get my reaction.
So, anyway, what was that about no Start Menu, you ask? Well, you see, that cool new Start Screen you just had fun playing with, that's its replacement. Without getting into the fact that the Start Screen has no "Run Command...", file search, Control Panel, or even shutdown button, it has one serious flaw: the Metro interface keeps you in the Metro interface. If you launch IE, for example, inside the Start Screen you are stuck with a stripped-down full-screen-only version of IE without a taskbar. If you start IE elsewhere, you get the normal windowed IE. As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn one into the other. Compare this to Apple's OS X Lion, where a full-screen iOS-like app can be turned back into a window simply by hitting the escape button, and a window can be made full-screen by clicking on the full-screen icon in the title bar. Also, in Windows 8's Metro mode there are no close boxes, taskbars, menus, or any other familiar Windows interface elements. Everything is stripped down to the bare and redesigned. Metro's interface looks like it will be great for touch screens, but it's a very poor interface for mouse-controlled desktop computers.
As for touch screens, I do like the gestures they show in the video on how to control Windows 8 using your fingers. Swiping in from the left to get the application switcher is much nicer than iOS's method of double-tapping the home button. Swiping from the top to bottom to close an app doesn't seem particularly intuitive at first, but I'm sure tablet users will become familiar with it easily. There is also a side panel that shows when you swipe in from the right, which has Settings in it to change how Metro looks and works and a couple of other things. Inside the settings, there is an option for "More PC Settings". One would think this is the Control Panel, but nope! It's just a stripped down Metro-style screen to change some basic personalization stuff, wireless network, and Windows Update. Mostly it just changes settings within Metro itself -- kind of like what you would expect on a simple tablet. So why two different control panels? Why not redesign the Windows Control Panel into a Metro-style app? Why confuse your users like this so much?
Microsoft has, in the past, proven that if developers can be lazy, they will be lazy. That's why in Windows Vista there were administration controls and installers that looked and behaved as if it were still Windows 95, and developers that would rather write sloppy code using the previous OS's frameworks instead of updating them. The same will be true in Windows 8. If you want to get anything done correctly, you won't be able to avoid jumping out of Metro and into the classic environment to do what you want. Developers will just say "Oh, just escape out of Metro, run this command, enter in some text, click a few checkboxes and buttons, and voila problem solved!" instead of creating an actual Metro front-end to get that done, and that ruins the experience of a tablet computer. Not to mention that some things are just harder to get done on a tablet computer that a mouse and keyboard can easily solve, so allowing a fallback to an older OS is a cop-out that will be frequently used when the developer just can't think of a gesture-based replacement to solve their problem.
Microsoft could have also designed Metro to be able to run inside a window and changed their whole OS's theme to match. Then the difference between Metro and classic Windows would only be whether it's full-screen or in a window. Then users have a choice whether they want to be in windowed mode or not, use gestures or a mouse, and not have this crazy hybrid-switching-back-and-forth system.
So in summary, despite the fact that I like the Metro interface, particularly the Start Screen and gestures, all the new features seem to favor touch-screens at the expense of losing usability with the mouse. As it is, many of the Metro gestures are mimicked by the mouse using corners, which isn't very intuitive, and relying on that makes using it in a VM very troublesome even in full-screen mode. The hybrid system, while having the strengths of a full desktop computer on a tablet, suffers from feeling too much like there are two separate OS's sitting on top of each other both competing for your attention. The inability to avoid Metro, and the confusion this will likely bring to 90% of all desktop users, is why I predict Windows 8 will not be well received outside of the tablet market. Unless Microsoft implements a ton of changes to unify the two interfaces, and/or ports a crapload of old Windows 7 controls and apps to Metro, it may even fail in that market, too.
Microsoft has some good ideas, but I don't think what we've seen is enough to merit this OS any cookies. Not just yet.
So first things first. Windows 8 installs and starts up quickly and seamlessly on my VM, which is a vast improvement over stepping through a configuration window. If the late Steve Jobs has accomplished only one thing in his life, it's that "It Just Works" has now become a mainstream philosophy. Speaking of Jobs, Windows 8, much like Windows 7, has a number of notable things that were shamelessly nabbed from Apple, but we'll get into that later.
The first thing that you see after starting up is Windows' brand new Start Screen, using the Metro interface. At first glance I thought, "Oh, this is just Microsoft's response to Launchpad." However, appearances are misleading and I was surprised to discover it is a really good, innovative new approach to an application launcher. Widgets and apps are blended together in a nice way to give you the information you need and tools to do the stuff you want in a "wall of blocks" interface, and it is customizable. As other bloggers have mentioned, it is a little odd that it scrolls left to right instead of top to bottom like webpages (and most everything else). However, it's not unusual for Microsoft to have an inconsistency like this. I'm sure some of you have used Windows Explorer in "list" mode (which used to be the default back in Windows 98)? Well it always bugged the shit out of me that it scrolls left to right, which makes me go "Huh? Where are my files? Oh wait, what? It's scrolling right... oh" every single time. On the other hand, it's probably more natural for tablet users to scroll left to right than top to bottom when in landscape mode, and Metro is allowed to break the rules a little because it is a totally new interface, right? Well, that brings me to my next thought: Theme.
Microsoft did a great thing with Windows 7 by giving it a huge makeover with transparent glass windows, shadowing, and overall making it look like a modern OS. Windows 8, particularly in Metro, went in the totally opposite direction and now use lot of square blocks and primary colors. It reminds me of the way Google went with their web apps. When I look at it I think I'm using the "Sleek color" theme on my Linux box from 2001 that contains 3x3 pixel icons. However, the most atrocious looking things of all are the scrollbars. They look exactly like DOS minus the green. I don't see how this is going to look good on even tablet computers. Nobody needs scrollbars that big and blocky. It's not simple, and it does not "get out of the way". Touch screen users won't even be using them.
There is also a noticeably huge difference switching between the Metro interface and the Windows interface. Push the Windows button while in the Start Screen and BAM, you're looking at an exact replica of Windows 7. However, there are two immediately apparent differences: one, that there is no Start Menu (which I will get to in a bit), and two, windows are square blocks. Yes, that's right, they got rid of the rounded corners on all windows. Why? I'm guessing to fit in with Metro better, but the two interfaces are so dramatically different why bother? Remember back when XP came out around the turn of the century? It was considered so much more stylishly modern to have rounded corners (which Mac had already had for several years) that Microsoft implemented exceptionally round corners on all XP windows! It stuck all the way up to Windows 7 even though they weren't quite as round. I'd like to emphasize that there is no reason to choose square corners over round ones except to dumb down the aesthetics! Bah, I could go on and on about rounded corners for hours, but I think you get my reaction.
So, anyway, what was that about no Start Menu, you ask? Well, you see, that cool new Start Screen you just had fun playing with, that's its replacement. Without getting into the fact that the Start Screen has no "Run Command...", file search, Control Panel, or even shutdown button, it has one serious flaw: the Metro interface keeps you in the Metro interface. If you launch IE, for example, inside the Start Screen you are stuck with a stripped-down full-screen-only version of IE without a taskbar. If you start IE elsewhere, you get the normal windowed IE. As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn one into the other. Compare this to Apple's OS X Lion, where a full-screen iOS-like app can be turned back into a window simply by hitting the escape button, and a window can be made full-screen by clicking on the full-screen icon in the title bar. Also, in Windows 8's Metro mode there are no close boxes, taskbars, menus, or any other familiar Windows interface elements. Everything is stripped down to the bare and redesigned. Metro's interface looks like it will be great for touch screens, but it's a very poor interface for mouse-controlled desktop computers.
As for touch screens, I do like the gestures they show in the video on how to control Windows 8 using your fingers. Swiping in from the left to get the application switcher is much nicer than iOS's method of double-tapping the home button. Swiping from the top to bottom to close an app doesn't seem particularly intuitive at first, but I'm sure tablet users will become familiar with it easily. There is also a side panel that shows when you swipe in from the right, which has Settings in it to change how Metro looks and works and a couple of other things. Inside the settings, there is an option for "More PC Settings". One would think this is the Control Panel, but nope! It's just a stripped down Metro-style screen to change some basic personalization stuff, wireless network, and Windows Update. Mostly it just changes settings within Metro itself -- kind of like what you would expect on a simple tablet. So why two different control panels? Why not redesign the Windows Control Panel into a Metro-style app? Why confuse your users like this so much?
Microsoft has, in the past, proven that if developers can be lazy, they will be lazy. That's why in Windows Vista there were administration controls and installers that looked and behaved as if it were still Windows 95, and developers that would rather write sloppy code using the previous OS's frameworks instead of updating them. The same will be true in Windows 8. If you want to get anything done correctly, you won't be able to avoid jumping out of Metro and into the classic environment to do what you want. Developers will just say "Oh, just escape out of Metro, run this command, enter in some text, click a few checkboxes and buttons, and voila problem solved!" instead of creating an actual Metro front-end to get that done, and that ruins the experience of a tablet computer. Not to mention that some things are just harder to get done on a tablet computer that a mouse and keyboard can easily solve, so allowing a fallback to an older OS is a cop-out that will be frequently used when the developer just can't think of a gesture-based replacement to solve their problem.
Microsoft could have also designed Metro to be able to run inside a window and changed their whole OS's theme to match. Then the difference between Metro and classic Windows would only be whether it's full-screen or in a window. Then users have a choice whether they want to be in windowed mode or not, use gestures or a mouse, and not have this crazy hybrid-switching-back-and-forth system.
So in summary, despite the fact that I like the Metro interface, particularly the Start Screen and gestures, all the new features seem to favor touch-screens at the expense of losing usability with the mouse. As it is, many of the Metro gestures are mimicked by the mouse using corners, which isn't very intuitive, and relying on that makes using it in a VM very troublesome even in full-screen mode. The hybrid system, while having the strengths of a full desktop computer on a tablet, suffers from feeling too much like there are two separate OS's sitting on top of each other both competing for your attention. The inability to avoid Metro, and the confusion this will likely bring to 90% of all desktop users, is why I predict Windows 8 will not be well received outside of the tablet market. Unless Microsoft implements a ton of changes to unify the two interfaces, and/or ports a crapload of old Windows 7 controls and apps to Metro, it may even fail in that market, too.
Microsoft has some good ideas, but I don't think what we've seen is enough to merit this OS any cookies. Not just yet.