Microsoft, here is what will make your next OS the most successful in histo


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The last thing I'd want would be for Microsoft to reintroduce the Start Menu. I'd much rather see it work on improving the usability issues with the Start Screen and Metro apps, which could be easily addressed by a) making the taskbar always visible and displaying running Metro apps, and b) allowing Metro apps to run in a window.

The taskbar would need significant overhaul to be more touch accessible before that happens. The clock and tray area more specifically. As I see it now, I wouldn't hold your breath.

I also foresee usability issues since the bottom edge of the screen is needed for touch users to swipe up to access app options.

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The taskbar would need significant overhaul to be more touch accessible before that happens. The clock and tray area more specifically. As I see it now, I wouldn't hold your breath.

The taskbar itself is already well-suited to touch - it's only the system tray and clock that aren't. The system tray could easily be Metro-fied (in a similar way to the Network options), while the clock options would simply need to be enlarged. Those changes would be very easy to implement.

As for your concern about usability issues, that wouldn't be any different to the desktop on tablets as it stands. And the taskbar icons have already been optimised for touch, which is why you can click / touch and drag up to bring up the jumplist. The problem with Windows 8 is that the two interfaces?Metro and the desktop?weren't properly integrated due to the rushed nature of development. The hot-corners were especially bad and were added very late into development.

Microsoft simply needs to find a way for the two environments to co-exist, as neither will be going away in a hurry. Going back to the Start Menu isn't an option.

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As for the mouse, there are technologies battling the mouse for supremacy: touch, drawing tablets, motion, voice commands, etc, which will all work their way into mainstream use. Touch and drawing tablets already have for the most part.

None of those input methods you mention are actually battling (competition) with the mouse as a primary precision input method for mainstream computing. Even on notebooks without touchpads people want a portable mouse. The one that's not even in the theoretical ballpark is voice. It's not physically realistic for voice to become a primary input method. They are all specialize (even touch is primarily for mobile devices and consumption, that's its specialty) and/or complimentary. Trackballs, touchscreens, track pads, styluses, voice commands have all been around for decades and none of them have come anywhere close to supplanting the mouse and none will. The mouse itself may evolve, or even be replace, but it won't be replaced by one of those.

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I don't hate touch. I think touch has a place. For instance, drawing on a computer. Drawing on a tablet, touch or otherwise compared to a mouse is a great improvement. Another place touch has a place is in phones, it makes much more sense to touch your hpone than to use a pen. Same goes for a tablet on your lap. That is were I think the usefulness ends.

if a user is at their desktop computer, even at just a foot from the screen, a persons arm would get fatigued after a very short time if they had to keep it extended to touch the screen as the only means of navigation.

That being said I think gestures on a track pad are useful. At the moment i'm typing on a recently acquired 2011 Macbook pro and the gestures on the touch pad are silky smooth, such as scrolling with 2 fingers. That's useful.

So i'm not a total hater of touch. I just don't think it makes sense everywhere like some people would like to have you believe.

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Whether you like it or not, metro isn't going anywhere.

Maybe not, but many of their customers are, I've seen countless customers opt for a $1500 mac over a $700 windows 8 machine because it had windows 8 on it.

I've seen many others bounce back and forth from the apple side of the store to the windows side looking for options, most of those who end up buying a windows 8 machine are very reluctant to make the purchase and many of those who do buy one end up returning it.

I highly doubt mac will ever overtake the windows 8 machines purely out of the cost difference but just seeing customer reactions in person every single day it's easy to see they are not at all happy with the windows 8 machines that are out there and are desperately looking for options.

This whole hatred and contempt attitude toward their desktop customers is already costing them badly, their image has reached new lows and getting lower every day and it serves them right, the fact that the windows 8 adoption rate is far lower than Vista was is already proof of that.

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You don't actually know Microsoft's plans, so don't talk as if anything is set in stone. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Start Menu return in Windows 9. The opening poster's point is a good one and plenty of us would like to see it happen.

I love it when the vocal MINORITY assume they speak for all of us, you don't you are a minority that needs to get over it and adjust to progress, just because to you it isn't progress means nothing in the greater schemes of things and Microsoft's overall goals for Windows

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I love it when the vocal MINORITY assume they speak for all of us, you don't you are a minority that needs to get over it and adjust to progress, just because to you it isn't progress means nothing in the greater schemes of things and Microsoft's overall goals for Windows

Progress... lol. The most misused word in this thread indeed.

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Progress... lol. The most misused word in this thread indeed.

Just because you and a few others refuse to adjust doesn't change anything I said, Windows 8 is completely usable without a touchscreen, and is as efficient or better than the old never used by me Start Menu

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Just because you and a few others refuse to adjust doesn't change anything I said, Windows 8 is completely usable without a touchscreen, and is as efficient or better than the old never used by me Start Menu

I stand by what I said. I wonder what kind of progress you actually do with such an interface, not counting mobile devices that is.

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I love it when the vocal MINORITY assume they speak for all of us, you don't you are a minority that needs to get over it and adjust to progress, just because to you it isn't progress means nothing in the greater schemes of things and Microsoft's overall goals for Windows

And I love it when the vocal zealot minority claim to know what's going on with "progress" and basing their claims soley on microsoft stats and opinions and general internet zealotry while at the same time being completely blind and clueless to what's going on out there in the real world.

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Touch is a dead-end technology, command line interfaces are the future and you all just need to adapt.

If you disagree with me then you're wrong and just need to adapt.

- Ink Jet

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[Thread closed]

This seems to be going the same route as most other threads of this type do. Please use an existing open topic to discuss whatever the thread was supposed to be about.

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