Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
Yeah, sorry for that.
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
I'm glad for you. But how is you liking it proving anything?
Not at all. I was just hoping that (in some scenarios) my points of view had not been seen by you - and that they might have been a reasonable explanation to the design choices behind Metro.
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
Notifications are awful as they're too easy to miss. Look at same thing in upcoming OS X or how it's been for a few years in Ubuntu -- there are notification counters and you can see what you've missed. And "theoretically," they don't replace progress bars as they're not visible at all times (but not much is anyway in Metro).
The notifications will stay as long as you don't move your mouse or your keyboard. In other words, when you're at your computer. Future computers (including desktops) will have approximity sensors, allowing the PC to detect your presence as well. Windows 8 supports this natively. There's an
old post full of leaks from years back which still holds so far. More specifically,
this part may be interesting to you.
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
And I just click the start menu, and, voila, there's my start menu. Actually, what you've mentioned is exactly one of the things that's wrong -- everything's hidden. From the clock to any taskbar indicator. Everything.
I understand this criticism entirely. Showing the clock might prove a good thing, or getting a status of something while in Metro. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. It's not something I've noticed though, since my usage of Metro apps are often in and out, just like on Windows Phone. You get the basic information through tiles, and once there's more you'd like to catch up on, you quickly go in, and back out again. That doesn't justify anything though, and I agree.
On Windows Phone, when you swipe your finger from the top of the screen to the bottom, a task-bar fades in, showing battery status, connection status and the time. Perhaps that'll be the same for Windows 8?
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
...or in the start menu. Plus you can still view your open app, no need to change views, like you have to to achieve anything in Metro!
See, this is quite interesting. I was thinking the exact same thing the other day, until a Neowin member commented "how often do you actually use the Windows 7 start menu?". I quickly realized that most of my stuff is pinned to the taskbar anyway, and when I want to find specific information, I never browse through a list - searching just makes more sense.
As for the full-screen interface, it is not at all needed. Using the charm bar's "search" button will allow searching while on the desktop, or using the Windows + W, Windows + Q or Windows + F hotkeys for the different search categories respectively.
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
You can't turn it off, at least not by a Microsoft sanctioned way. Btw, Metro still loads the desktop, so your argument's invalid.
Metro only loads the desktop with really low priority. This has already been mentioned in a news post (I think it was even on Neowin), and on the Windows 8 blog (Engineering Windows 8). However, the heavy loading only occurs once you make a desktop-based activity. This is made to decrease load especially on tablets and phones. Combined with hybrid-boot tech, it does this quite well.
As it is right now, there's an application inbuilt in Windows 8 called "Show desktop". It's an EXE hidden in the system. Putting it as automatic startup with the system causes Metro to disable during boot. There's been rumors that this will be an option later. There are also security policy settings that can be disabled/enabled to achieve the same effect. Not very user-friendly and intuitive, I know.
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
Not sure what this is supposed to mean? I can also click on an icon in the superbar, plus I don't have to confused by a gazillion animated tiles.
Yes, but you can't do it as efficiently, because your PC will most likely be busy booting up other programs, while you (most likely) just want to load one thing with full priority. Metro gives you that control. Also, the Metro interface can show way more tiles, and by differentiating things in color, named categories and custom positions, I doubt you'll be confused by
your own setup. Microsoft elaborated on their decissions on this
here, showing scientific results through heatmaps that describe how the average user doesn't even use the Windows 7 start menu optimally (focus on the images in the post if you're a TL;DR guy
).
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
Purely subjective, but I start the browser, email client, twitter app and possibly the music player the moment I sit in front of my computer. Later I add the programs I work in.
Interesting. I take it back then!
One could however argue that it would probably be wise for you to configure those to start up automatically.
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
Through the usual ways (as I also state), yes. Could you elaborate a bit more?
Syanide, on 14 March 2012 - 00:58, said:
Haha, are you high? "They just removed the noise that we thought was needed for centuries." Yeah, that pesky shut down button has been a rock in our shoes for centuries.
No, not last time I checked
. What I mean by noise is elements that aren't needed for the functionality to still be there.
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