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I did a little digging to find out why it looks so retarded.

Windows 8 appears to adopt Mac OS X Lion's monochrome, iPad-like icons
By Daniel Eran Dilger
http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/ ... like_icons
A video demonstrating a new feature in Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 also appears to out
a bold new design decision by the company to closely copy Apple's
controversial shift toward monochromatic, high contrast icons.

Why am I not surprised?

@heartbone
No, I think this time it's the other way round. With "Metro" Microsoft introduced a fresh and new design concept a couple of years ago. It's radically different to the 3D/shiny design Apple made cool around 2005 (I don't have the exact years though) and you can slowly see that a lot of (tech) websites, applications etc. are adopting it. Although still a little ahead of time, it's obvious that its appearance does clearly serve the current desire for more tidiness and simplicity...
In my eyes this was really clever from Microsoft, because this time they have invented it and got the ball rolling.

c4s wrote:@heartbone
No, I think this time it's the other way round. With "Metro" Microsoft introduced a fresh and new design concept a couple of years ago.

It's neither fresh or new. It's simpler.

It's radically different to the 3D/shiny design Apple made cool around 2005 (I don't have the exact years though) and you can slowly see that a lot of (tech) websites, applications etc. are adopting it.

Although I normally see quite rapidly, I do get your message.

Although still a little ahead of time, it's obvious that its appearance does clearly serve the current desire for more tidiness and simplicity...

Your characterization is quite the opposite of the throwback (simplified/dumbed down) characteristic that I see. AFAIK the desire for tidiness has ALWAYS been present.

In my eyes this was really clever from Microsoft, because this time they have invented it and got the ball rolling.

Could it be that retro metro look is now being pushed by Microsoft because their competition (especially Linux) has created competitive modern desktop icon styles and they need product differentiation?

Nowadays more and more it seems that style over substance gets the consumers.

However if Microsoft can induce the herd to buy into this new style, I will be surprised because it is such a counterintuitive use of the 32-bit display desktop environment.

Thanks for the reply c4s.

After working with WIN XPpro for years, it was time to do some updates.
So, a few weeks ago I did the upgrade from Win XP pro to Windows 8,
a few seconds later I installed a downloaded start button.
and 3 days later I was back on Win XP-Pro

I was a little bit disappointed.

Marc,

I consider my wife to be a good indicator of how new hardware and software will be received by the rest of the world. She runs her own business and has been using computers for many years. She thinks most software is crap and is designed by nerds who have no concept of what happens in the real world. And her views on GUI's are best not repeated in polite company.

The move to touch screens and hand waving for desktops has convinced her that MS and others are completely mad, and they are making changes for no other reason that it's different. Her belief is reinforced when she reads that manufacturers of Pads and Tablets now offer mice and keyboards as optional extras.

I switched both our companies to Linux a few years ago (currently Linux Mint), so at least my wife is protected against the worst of the current trend.

It will be interesting to see how the latest trends play out. Of my customers using Windows, most are still with Win XP Pro and a few are using Win 7. They are all giving serious thought to making the move to Linux.

I had a Windows Phone 7 for 2,5 years and just yesterday I changed my mobile phone contract
to include 2 Windows Phone 8 Nokia Lumia 920 phones, for me and my wife. One cyan and one yellow color.
We are 36 (me) and 38 (my wife) years old, quite different from BorisTheOld's situation, and we just
love the Windows phones. We tested Win8 RT tablet and are waiting for Win8 Pro surface tablets
(should be available in Germany summer 2013, don't know why it takes so long). We love Win7/8 phone
and Win8 surface tablets. It is so easy and intuitive to use.
Myself, being a developer, I also want to buy a MacPro in 6 weeks, so I can run Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise
*and* MacOSX on it. I also tested Apple iMac 27" and MacBooks (Air) 15" today. Apple has very cool notebooks,
I think only Acer Aspire S7 would be an alternative for Windows 8 notebooks. On the other side, 27" displays coming
from Apple are round about 850,-Euro each, LED and Thunderbold Cinema versions. Other 27" displays are
round about 200,-Euro cheaper. Makes a difference, because I need two 27" displays.
So for me/us it is Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8, which is really cool, Windows Surface Pro Win8 tablet,
and maybe MacPro/IMac 27". The iPad 4 and iPad4 mini also look good, so the definite decision of the mix
has not been made yet.

Both sides, Windows 8 stuff (Desktop, Phone, Tablet), and Apple stuff (iMac, iPad (mini)) are incredible good, to our two opinions.
My final decision of the mix has not yet been made for the desktop/notebook mix, only Win8 Phone is already ordered and fixed.
If the decision goes to Apple MacOS stuff, it is because we can run Win8 Pro/Enterprise on it, too. A mix of both worlds seems to be good atm,
for professional / cross-platform / PureBasic use.

Windows 8 for desktops was designed so Microsoft could control the software market and cut out competition. Microsoft wants to control the software on desktops the way Apple does on the Iphone, so you will have to go to Microsoft's Apps Store to purchase any software, even Purebasic would have to register.

It didnt work. People got pissed and wrote them about it. Dont believe me?, google it!
Unless of course, Microsoft got politicians to finally vote Microsofts way and made it illegal to download anything from anywhere else on windows 8? I'll have to check...

But the control freak issues aside, Its just plain ugly as hell!!,

it's ok on a phone or small tablet, but on a desktop it looks like something made for a Fisher Price Computer made for children.

Microsoft has to come up with a reason every , lets say 4 years, to get people to buy a new OS or their stock starts to fall.

If 7 lasts too long, Windows loses money because people buy 7, use it, and never need to buy another copy!

So with Microsofts lack of insight, they decided Desktops should look just like their small cousins, the tablets. I for one say NO!

"Give me a Start Menu and regular Icons or give me Death!"

By the way, I own a droid Tablet for the very reason that I dont like companies telling me what I can and can not install on any of my machines . I refuse to own an Apple tablet for the reason they control every aspect of the machine, and you can only install whats on their store.

I have at least 3 App stores installed on my droid tablet and as many as 4 browsers, On the Iphone and Ipad, you can only use safari based browsers as I am to understand it.

So you can keep Windows 8 and Microsofts vision of a world total controlled by one central entity. I'll take Windows 7 for the win Alex. Or Raspbian on my Raspberry.

Oh and does anyone else find it funny the Company (Apple), who back in 1984, made a famous commercial about IBM controlling Peoples minds with PCs and how Apple gave you freedom! And now they, Apple, control everything you do on an Iproduct, funny, aint it?, how big brother has found a new home! jk

The World`s programming community needs to jump on ReactOS and bring it up to scratch to give us a windows compatible "OpenSource" alternative
W8 is abysmal aesthetically and appalling to use on a computer or laptop, w7 to the bitter end and then linux.

http://www.reactos.org/

Zebuddi.

Zebuddi123 wrote:The World`s programming community needs to jump on ReactOS and bring it up to scratch to give us a windows compatible "OpenSource" alternative
W8 is abysmal aesthetically and appalling to use on a computer or laptop, w7 to the bitter end and then linux.

http://www.reactos.org/

Zebuddi.

7 was fine till they removed service packs to do product lock.. Now there are staggering roll-out issues in SOHO and enterprise environments...

Who with talent is going to go argue with arrogant people on a repository all day for no pay? Besides people who try to exploit economics around Linux and BSD support licensing?

ReactOS does look good -yet isn't it going to invite an almighty law suite from Mr Microsoft?

IdeasVacuum wrote:ReactOS does look good -yet isn't it going to invite an almighty law suite from Mr Microsoft?

Doubt it. It's been around for many years now without a peep from Microsoft, and it uses none of Microsoft's code, so there's no copyright infringement.

IdeasVacuum wrote:ReactOS does look good

ReactOS development started 15 years ago, and it is still in version 0.3.x Alpha state.

@Zebuddi, I thought that Linux + Wine was the Windows compatible "OpenSource" alternative.

Danilo wrote:

IdeasVacuum wrote:ReactOS does look good

ReactOS development started 15 years ago, and it is still in version 0.3.x Alpha state.

UBUNTU looks better.

I agree with many here that most of today's apps are incredibly bloated.
The numbers/calcs in many of my spreadsheets from Lotus 123 or Excel for finance/mortgage/taxes hardly change.
But OMG! How ridiculous the GUI's and prompts to continue from a slowly loading splash screen?
Or proclaiming file incompatibilities from version to version. Somebody needs a kick in the arse!

An OS should evolve to match the utility of its audience.
To date, I still have 2 hands available for input(keyboard and mouse) and yet my feet sit idly by untapped.
I could make gross movement or double-clicks with either foot.
And what of elbows and gestures.

Microsoft is trying to kill off the old WIMP approach and anything 'classic desktop' related, all in favor of the Metro style UI. Did you ever try to find your (active) window on a classic desktop, with multiple windows open, on Windows 8? If there ever was a 'bright' idea it certainly did apply to Microsoft's choice of Windows 8 colors!