'Gorilla Arm' Will Keep Touch Screens From Taking Over 610
Hugh Pickens writes "With Windows 8, Microsoft has made a billion-dollar gamble that personal computing is taking a new direction and that new direction is touch, says David Pogue. It's efficient on a touchscreen tablet. But Microsoft expects us to run Windows 8 on our tens of millions of everyday PCs. Although touch has been incredibly successful on our phones, tablets, airport kiosks and cash machines, Pogue says touch will never take over on PCs. The reason? Gorilla Arms. There are three big differences between tablet screens and a PC's screen: angle, distance and time interval. The problem is 'the tingling ache that [comes] from extending my right arm to manipulate that screen for hours, an affliction that has earned the nickname of gorilla arm.' Some experts say gorilla arm is what killed touch computing during its first wave in the early 1980s but Microsoft is betting that Windows 8 will be so attractive that we won't mind touching our PC screens, at least until the PC concept fades away entirely. 'My belief is that touch screens make sense on mobile computers but not on stationary ones,' concludes Pogue. 'Microsoft is making a gigantic bet that I'm wrong.'"
Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't need assistance from physiology. ;-)
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't need assistance from physiology.
True.
In fact, the un-discussed truth is that the interface was designed specifically around the physiology of Monkeyboy Ballmer, so gorilla arms are a feature, not a bug.
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Two observations: 1, W8 won't fly. 2, "gorilla arm" is something wimps and pussies fear. Know anyone in home construction? They not only have their arms in front of them eight hours a day, but those arms are holding heavy tools.
It isn't the physical discomfort, it's the inconvinience. Moving your hand from the mouse to the keyboard is bad enough, but reaching past the keyboard to the screen (which your arm now partly blocks) is worse. It's a really,k really stupid concept for a PC. If a device has a mouse a
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Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft simply has no idea what its customers want or need. Worse, they keep adapting what they have instead of building something entirely new. Please spare me the nonsense that one or another version of Windows was completely re-written from scratch. That's bullshit and we all know it. Even if it was re-written from scratch, it still does everything the same way it has for quite a long time with loads and loads of backward compatibility mucking things up and slowing things down.
And Microsoft still thinks it all about the user interface? Bright colors and all that? The problems are so complex it would be impossible for anyone to list them all here. But the failings are many but perhaps just a few in category: Trust, (perception of) Stability, Security, (broken new tech) Standards compliance, Exclusion of other devices and software, User Interface, Is unaware of customer needs. There could probably be a few other broad categories, but it's not hard to think of examples for each of the ones I thought of on the fly.
This is more than Microsoft can address with the new release of any one product. They are at a point at which they need to re-invent themselves. In my opinion, the only thing they have consistently done right is XBox but they keep making that slightly worse over time as they are making it all look, feel and act like Windows 8 as well. And surprise-surprise! They made an Android app to work with XBox Live! Crazy right?
It's past time for Microsoft to start over. They definitely need to dump Win32 and all that. Do it right instead of piling on thing after thing after thing for decades. Start with a hypervisor and build your new platform there and let things intermingle with Windows 7 running in another VM. DUMP DRIVE LETTERS for god's sake. Multiple file system roots is ridiculous and stupid. And please. No More backslashes!! We know why you did it. It wasn't good then and it's bad now. And it's not because I'm a Linux user I say this, it's because I support Windows all day long and I can NEVER get people to understand the difference between a backslash and a slash! And these people have been using their computers for decades. It's a failure. So when you make things all new again, don't forget to go to slashes.
Well there I go... ranting. Microsoft is simply failing and everyone else is excited about and using other things. They just don't know how to re-invest their billions and billions of dollars into themselves any longer.
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I always have to tell them the "key above Enter."
Many people's IQ drop 50 points when faced with Windows authentication dialogs.
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I use, "top leans to the left". So much so, that I can hardly say "backslash" without habitually adding the follow-up description.
Same problem with UNC paths.
I use a Das Keyboard you insensitive clod!
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Informative)
You will find that the right side of the keyboard contains a wide variety of layouts [google.com], not only in different regions of the world but also within a single country. Referring to key by its location is pretty risky, whereas referring to it by name seems to work for most people.
Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:5, Interesting)
A company that has a virtual monopoly can make money by deliberately abusing its customers. That's especially true when a product is complicated and customers don't have the time to become technically knowledgeable.
Many people who buy a Windows computer now will want to buy Windows 9 when it is released because Windows 8 is so weird. That tends to double sales, because customers don't pay an upgrade price, Microsoft requires them to pay for an entirely new operating system, even though there have been few changes between versions. Also, Microsoft has established multiple prices. Customers who bought Windows 7 because they didn't like Windows Vista paid far more per copy than computer manufacturers.
It seems that abuse is deliberate Microsoft company policy. Yes, Microsoft management is incompetent, but also knowingly destructive. For example, a court case established that a Microsoft manager had said before Windows Vista was released that it was not ready to be released. Knowing that, Vista was released anyway.
Microsoft has been alternating bad and good versions of operating systems since the days of DOS. For example, DOS version 3.0 had serious bugs. DOS version 3.1 fixed the bugs. Customers who owned DOS 3 were required to pay the full retail price for DOS 3.1, even though there were few changes.
Re:Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:5, Insightful)
You make it sound like Windows 8 is a stroke of marketing genius instead of a case of user interface design stupidity. I’ll put my money on stupidity.
Re:Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:5, Interesting)
To Microsoft, Win8 isn't broken. It's just a difficult step on the path from to 'Closed Windows'
Re:Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not accurate. It's that Microsoft blindly follows metrics and doesn't care that it makes assumptions about them. I had a conversation with the UX designer of Windows 7 and he explained some of the decisions that went into Windows 8...
Full Screen as an example. The metrics told them that users spent 95% of their time "in full screen". By this I think he meant maximized. This is why metro apps are full screen. This seemingly minor distinction between maximized and full screen apparently means nothing to Microsoft, but has a lot of implications for the user.
Maximized you have access to a fair amount of information and control:
- Clock
- Start menu
- System tray icons (volume control, network status, battery state, IM messages, etc)
- Start bar (program state info [think Skype or file transfer progress], program switching control without the need to touch the keyboard, etc)
- Minimize/Exit control
- Desktop peek/minimize all
Full screen gives you the benefit of...
- maximized space for apps?
And what about the remaining 5% of the time?
I could go on but it's really pointless. Metro isn't about touch, it isn't about making more money on the next version of Windows. It's about apps. Microsoft wants a successful app store so that they get a piece of every software sale on their platform. They make apps "easier" to use (or access) than desktop "programs" and try to force people to convert. The more difficult they make it for open source software, the easier they make it to buy apps, the more money they will make without having to put in expensive hours developing a product.
Re:Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:4, Interesting)
Heh, the irony being that what they should have taken from "users spend 95% of their time with one maximised app" was "we don't do a good enough job of supporting lots of windows of lots of different sizes". Mac users for example are perfectly happy with windows spread all over the place, and I can identify a few things (even in windows 7) that are the reason:
1) Less crufty window border stuff everywhere –maximising a window in windows is a good way of getting rid of all the extra padding they add around windows when they're not maximised.
2) Menu bar at the top, always –meaning that again, tons of screen real estate isn't taken up by duplicated menu bars if you have loads of windows open, and meaning that for those that do use the menus, that mousing to them is easier.
3) The "zoom" button making windows as big as they need to be, rather than simply full screening them, encouraging users to think "what can I get next to this".
Re:Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for the double reply, but I'm getting really annoyed by people who make the distinction between "apps" and "programs". There's no difference at all. The word "app" is a shortening of "application", i.e. what Mac OS calls a program, or executable. Apps are not inherently small, or less fully featured things than programs, it just happened that the first platform to call them "apps" all the time lent itself to small programs, not giant ones.
Re:Does Microsoft make bad versions deliberately? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry for the double reply, but I'm getting really annoyed by people who make the distinction between "apps" and "programs". There's no difference at all.
Remember Java Applets? They were smaller programs (typically, because bandwidth wasn't / isn't as plentiful as drive space), I called mine 'Java Apps' for short vs Java Programs or 'Enterprise Java Solutions', for... short... in Java terms. One could argue that "Apps" could be a shortened form of "Web Apps", a term I used long before Apple's "App Store" was created. "Web Apps" is shortened form (in my case) of "Java Web Site Applets" -- Applet itself inferring a smaller application, in the same sense that cigarette does in relation to cigar. Thus depending on who you're conversing with (in this case, me) "apps" and "programs" would mean different things -- The latter are typically smaller / less resource intensive than full applications, in my vernacular.
Language changes over time. I think it would be understandable if the commonly understood term for "app" ends up meaning a typically lighter-weight version of a program due to apps typically running in environments with less resources -- gee, just like the damned Applet, or "app" for short, eh? -- It's too bad Sun dropped the ball and didn't make Java Applets use a lean mean VM to save us from the cluster fsck that is HTML(5) + JS or Flash web apps.
I understand your frustration. We all know what you mean. It's just like when folks say "Our security got hacked by a hacker", but they mean their security was cracked by a cracker, who may or may not be a hacker... Life's too short to be "getting really annoyed" at anything. Besides all of that is, just like, your opinion, man.
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Remember Java Applets? They were smaller programs (typically, because bandwidth wasn't / isn't as plentiful as drive space), I called mine 'Java Apps' for short
You were in the minority.
Java applets were so called because they were small apps. Just like a booklet is a small book, a cutlet is a small cut (of meat), and a piglet is a small pig.
Even back then, app was short for application, and if you meant a small application you needed a new term – hence applet existing as a word in the first place.
And yes, language changes over time, but this doesn't mean that "app" means "small application". There are plenty of "apps" in the Mac App Store which are in no w
Type checking and lack thereof (Score:3)
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Studies show that on average people use doctors less than 5% of the time during their lives. So clearly we don't need doctors anymore.
Cynically speaking, Microsoft did not get rid of the start button/menu because studies showed that no one used it. The studies were only used to justify their stance. The real reason is that Microsoft wants all users to use the metro page at least some of the time. The more who use it the more who will get used to it. This means more customers who find Windows phone UIs
Re:Broken Window Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Broken Window Fallacy" is about the overall economy, having windows to repair is good for the window repairer.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft simply has no idea what its customers want or need.
I don't think this is true. I think MS has heard plenty of what customers want or need. I don't think they care in the case of Windows 8. Many here think that MS is completely inept but I think MS has a strategy. The way I see it most consumers don't upgrade Windows until they replace their PCs. A few of them actually purchase a new OS but I don't think most consumers really do that.
What is plaguing MS and the computer industry these days is that people simply are not replacing their PCs as often as did in the past. Part of the cause is that their older PCs work fine for most tasks; upgrading new hardware is not going to give most people a noticeable boost when they are surfing the internet. Part of the cause is that smart phones and tablets are starting to supplement a consumer's need for computing. Since most consumers really need basic functionality like Facebook, email, etc, most are turning to more mobile devices to supplement what they have already. I think MS understands this trend; the problem is that their competitors had products in the market for this need while MS fumbled around for years on their lackluster offerings.
So realizing that they would be very late to the game when it came to changing their mobile devices, my contention is that MS isn't incompetent; they are just being evil. They know that if they had designed a new separate mobile OS (like iOS or Android), they could not have competed. They do offer some differentiation but like their Zune product (and their WP7), it may not translate to wide adoption. So rather than have their tablet/mobile UI compete on its own merits, they decided that they will force the new UI on consumers so they will have no choice. Later when these consumers buy tablets, they will already be familiar with Metro/Modern.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:4)
So you're saying that "change for the sake of change" is no longer in practice? That people no longer believe "the newest is the best"?
No, that's not what he's saying at all. People still change for the sake of change, and still believe the newest is the best. It's just that now, the newest is tablets, and not the next big desktop or the next big laptop. I've seen people typing papers on an iPad with a little bluetooth keyboard when they've got a full-size laptop sitting right next to them. Talk about change for the sake of change, rather than using the right tool for the right job.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
If only they appreciated the fact that users can use different interfaces for different purposes. If Microsoft had their way, motocycles would have steering wheels just to make the user interfaces consistent... good idea or really bad idea?
Metro "might" be a good UI for phones and handheld tablets. I say "might" because I personally don't care for it. I find it to be too simplistic and not flexible enough... but I'm a techy geek and not a good sample of what the public might appreciate. Also, my vision is excellent. I love detail. I can't speak for the rather large percentage of the population who have vision problems.
But Metro is NOT good for the desktop. It's just not.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
It's past time for Microsoft to start over. They definitely need to dump Win32 and all that. Do it right instead of piling on thing after thing after thing for decades.
The only problem is that "Win32 and all that" is exactly what keeps people at using Ms Windows. It's less now for ordinary people because they spend most time on the web playing flash games and on Facebook. But at work they still need to be able to run their Win32 software.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Interesting)
So run that shit in a virtual machine. FFS, the real operating system doesn't have to be compromised by decades old libraries and executables that are full of exploits.
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In which case the viruses/trojans will just infect the VM. Sure, the "real" OS wasn't compromised, but the bad guys still got your credit card numbers, private pictures, bitcoin wallets and whatnot, and loaded your VM up with ads, porn and toolbars.
So long as the Win32 apps need access to the user's data, that data is not secure.
And VMs have been compromised in the past to allow root access to the host system (even through bugs in the *hardware* hypervisor).
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Lol. I've even written (simple) VMs.
My point is: you have to do *some* work from the VM, what else is the point of having one. And whatever data is needed in there is at risk.
Most of the home users don't have the desire or the knowledge to keep their "stuff" separate. They just want it to work. If they find a setting to share their whole system disk with the VM, they will use it, because it makes things easier.
Don't browse or do e-mail in the VM? Good luck keeping users from opening trojan attachments that
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple only targets a small subset of novice consumer users. It does that well enough but that gets unjustifiably projected to everyone. Microsoft is not just limited to one small segment. As others have said, they even have conflicting use cases.
Apple doesn't have to deal with any of that. They have chosen a much easier task for themselves.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an Apple fan but I don't agree that Apple only targets novice users. Maybe you can make that case for iOS devices, but not OSX computers. There are plenty of advanced and technical users. I know plenty of engineers and techies who prefer Macs. I prefer Windows because that is what I grew up with and many of my computational modeling programs only work on Linux and Windows. But to suggest that only novices use Macs is silly.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary – apple's biggest market share gain of recent times was getting techies who wanted a good solid UNIX with a UI that works, and a bunch of useful commercial apps to adopt their platform.
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Personally, I prefer samba's smb://sserver/share –why microsoft thinks they should use a not-URL for something inherantly URLy in modern terms I have no idea.
Case insensitivity is tricky (Score:3)
Whoever thought that it would be a good idea to have multiple files with identical names but different cases should be shot.
When you establish user-friendly equivalence classes between sets of code points, you have to be careful. Even if the mapping from lowercase to uppercase is one-to-one and onto in ASCII, it's not the case in general in Unicode. For example, should the German letter "ß" be counted as equivalent to the letters "SS" or "SZ"? Should the Latin letter A and the similarly shaped Greek and Cyrillic letters be counted as equivalent?
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Case sensitivity is fine. But SPACES in filenames are another matter completely.
How many otherwise simple shell scripts and the like have either broken or end up being twice as long due when you have to account for spaces in filenames...
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Insightful)
"It doesn't need assistance from physiology. ;-)"
Indeed. Also, over 30 years now am I fighting with my human arms to hit people's arms away from my monitor who want to touch my screen to 'show me' what they mean with their fatty fingers.
I don't want somebody to touch my PC screen and I'm sure not touching it myself.
Cleaning those damn tablets 20 times a day is bothersome enough.
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you have PC sales down 13% over the same 4th quarter year before last, even though the economy was worse which clearly indicates the reason that sales are plummeting is Win 8 is a DO NOT WANT.
PC sales may be down, but pinning it on Windows 8 is wrong. Let's take a look at what NPD has to say [npd.com] about holiday sales of consumer electronics:
+Overall sales declined 7 percent
+Windows notebook holiday unit sales dropped 11 percent
+Notebook computers and flat-panel TVs both exceeded $2 billion in total dollars sales, while no other single segment accounted for over $1 billion in revenue.
+Sales of Windows notebooks under $500 fell by 16 percent while notebooks priced above $500 increased 4 percent.
+
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Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Sorry, but you're wrong. I'm fairly fit, if less fit than I was 20 or 30 years ago. I routinely perform "strenuous" labor. And, I've done so all my life. Arms simply aren't designed, or meant to be held out in an extended position for long periods of time. If I exert myself, I can lift a fifty pound sack of feed, and hold it out at arm's length. It isn't going to stay there very long, because the entire body is entirely off balance, and the arms are straining to hold it there.
Almost 40 years ago, a high school shop teacher challenged some of the jocks to hold a broom out at arm's length, and extended in a horizontal position. They held it there for only short periods of time, like 15 to 45 seconds. Big, strong boys, who were the epitomy of health. Most of the time, the wrist gave out first, sometimes it was the elbow.
I've tried this at work. Half a dozen guys standing around, nice examples of healthy human specimens, I challenge them to hold a broom out. Carpenters generally do better than others, but even though they have developed quite strong wrist muscles, I've never seen anyone hold that broom out, level and steady, for more than 90 seconds.
We simply aren't built to hold our arms out horizontally for long periods of time. That is why metro-type GUI's will never replace more traditional desktop environments. That is why the Linux world has forked Gnome2, and many of us simply abandoned Gnome3.
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"Why is mouselessness seemingly so important to people who are sworn off Windows anyway?"
Because the Linux distros are moving in that direction as well. Two new desktop environments have been created for Linux, to revolt against the touch GUI's. I'm currently in Mate right now. Cinnamon doesn't really appeal to me. Enlightenment is the other option, but it's still not ready for prime time. I've abandoned Gnome3 and I had already left KDE when version 4 came out.
The two desktops that I am most familiar,
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This. Someone needs to tell this "David Pogue" about blackboards. Somehow we managed with them for centuries without this so-called "gorilla arm" mumbo jumbo ever being a factor. The real problem is that people (I'm looking at you Americans) have gotten fat and lazy
We never did depend on the blackboard as much as we do now on computers, and for most of the things we use the computers for, we used other things like the Abacus [wikipedia.org], and most if not all of them are used by placing them flat on an horizontal surface...you know, like a Surface Tablet.
Re:Windows 8 Is Failing on It's Own (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember blackboards. Teacher would stand in front of the blackboard, spend maybe thirty seconds scribbling something, wipe her hands, then wander around the room for two or three minutes, while blathering away on the importance of what she just wrote. Then, she would return to the blackboard, blather for another minute and a half, turn around, and write something new up there. Rinse and repeat for maybe 30 minutes, then sit at her desk, read off an assignment to the class, do something obscure in her books, and the bell would ring to signal that it was time to go to another classroom.
While there was a blackboard in every room, the teacher who spent more than fifteen minutes writing something on it was the exception, rather than the rule.
Remember, writing something like "I will not pick my ass in class" on the blackboard a hundred times was PUNISHMENT, not a reward
"Gorilla Arm" is thought up (Score:3)
I remember blackboards. Teacher would stand in front of the blackboard, spend maybe thirty seconds scribbling something, wipe her hands, then wander around the room for two or three minutes, while blathering away on the importance of what she just wrote. Then, she would return to the blackboard, blather for another minute and a half, turn around, and write something new up there.
That corresponds to how people use touchscreen gestures on a desktop/laptop. You don't touch the screen all the time, just reach every now and then.
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In both high school and college, I had some teachers/professors who did a lot of writing throughout the class. These people did NOT use blackboards for this; they used overhead projectors. With these, they sat down in front of the projector, and wrote on it, as it has a horizontal surface.
Pain (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pain (Score:5, Insightful)
Why must we consider our input devices to be mutually exclusive? We didn't ditch the keyboard with the introduction of the mouse...
On the desktop I can see a touch screen complimenting my current setup - it won't replace my keyboard and mouse any time soon but I would certainly get some use along side them.
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Why do we consider the monitor vertical to be the only way to position a monitor?
You have a keyboard and mouse pad, lying on your desk. why not a second monitor as well?
MSFT surface tables could easily be integrated into many businesses.
Can you imagine an architect you can lay out blueprints on a large drafting table monitor? Where many people can stand around it?
While windows 8 is a mistake from user interface, it is only because it takes away choice. a simple service pack could easily fix those issues.
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Indeed - that's pretty much exactly how I'd like it.
On the desktop it's more of an input device than a display - the display part just makes it oh so much nicer.
Re:Pain (Score:5, Insightful)
While windows 8 is a mistake from user interface, it is only because it takes away choice. a simple service pack could easily fix those issues.
The correct approach would've been to make the Metro as an option; not a compulsory interface. A simple Service Pack will not fix the issues which MS has created.
MS created Bob, was it cured / rectified with a Service Pack?
MS imposed the 'ribbon' interface on Office users; many cringed and complained; but had to bite the bullet and be less productive.
If users are FORCED to use the Metro shit, and Developers build apps that are ONLY Metro enabled, then how can a Service Pack cure that ailment? In many situations, such as typing a post on Slashdot, the on-screen touch keyboard is no substitute for the real $1 thing that is attached to the PC. So the problem is too big and profound to be cured by a Service Pack. And seeing as Ballmer is stubborn in imposing this silliness and cutting off traditional interfaces; this will be the end of Windows totally in many situations.
Nobody is interested in making the hardware for Linux devices, but Google's Chrome-books are already making a big impact. The iPad and Android tablets have taken over the higher and lower ends of the touch based tablets market. MS has been driven out of the touch paradigm, and making it compulsory on the desktop will kill the desktop rather than create motivation for developers to build for the new interface that nobody wants on a desktop.
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I actually like the ribbon. Basically all it is, is a pictorial, long text menu. The dialog boxes it brings up are the exact same ones found from the menus. If you weren't a power user(like 95% of Office users) you could find features faster with the ribbon.
Metro on the other hand works poorly,(try installing an old game where they put 12 shortcuts for everything in their menu). touch is an important part of all future interfaces. However Metro isn't user friendly.
Re:Pain (Score:5, Insightful)
No you can't.
Ribbon takes a layout which can fit a wide range of tools, and shrinks the total usable space, in the interest of - for some mysterious reason - drawing attention to the most common set of features which everyone uses, despite the fact that everyone already used them.
It does this at the cost of being able to keep multiple features on screen at once - with Ribbon I can't have styling and fonts, drawing, and reviewing all on screen at the same time whereas in Office 2003 I could and it worked perfectly well.
Instead with Ribbon I have to click between multiple tabs to reach the same features, all for the benefit of making - again - features I already knew existed and could easily access, bigger and more prominent.
This is a user-interface revamp so big you can make money selling products that give the old functionality back.
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know. Why not just delete them from your damn product if you think they're that unimportant? What they managed to do instead was sit down and say "I think our business users are not the core demographic which does productive work".
Re:Pain (Score:4, Insightful)
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know.
I agree - to show how useless the statistics are, consider the huge paste button, and the smaller cut and copy ones. Why is Paste so much bigger? Its because the statistics show that paste is used twice as often as copy, and twice as often as cut. Therefore its twice as important.....
I also hate that the Print button is hidden away off the ribbon, its a poorly designed interface. However, consider the bright spot in all this - Microsoft can change it, and then sell you another new version of Office! Another win for Microsoft...
Re:Pain (Score:5, Informative)
Ribbon takes a layout which can fit a wide range of tools, and shrinks the total usable space, in the interest of - for some mysterious reason - drawing attention to the most common set of features which everyone uses, despite the fact that everyone already used them.
No, the purpose of the ribbon is to bring more functionality to within 2 clicks. The number of features that are up front and visible to the user is drastically increased from Office 2003. I've had people tell me they like the new features in Word 2007 like bibliographies, various layout tools, footnotes, captions, etc. Those features have been in Word for a long time, but buried in menus. The quality of documents I've seen over the years has increased as a result.
It does this at the cost of being able to keep multiple features on screen at once - with Ribbon I can't have styling and fonts, drawing, and reviewing all on screen at the same time whereas in Office 2003 I could and it worked perfectly well.
You can do this in the ribbon as well. Either pin your favorite functions to the quick launch menu or make your own custom ribbon.
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know.
What features exactly are harder to access?
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And since you mentioned space, the ribbon is easily hidden if you feel it's taking up too much room. It can be retrieved with a single click. How do you hide all your toolbars and retrieve them in a single click?
Why would I ever hide all my toolbars? They're toolbars - filled with tools I expect to use frequently. I will literally never need to take them away on any specific computer.
There might be other reasons to hide all the tools - I don't know. I can't imagine them. But if I'm working on something, I will never ever want to hide all my toolbars. That would be silly since I'm in the middle of using them.
This should headline my opinion on your other comments: I don't want the user interface deciding what is and
Re:Pain (Score:5, Funny)
MS created Bob, was it cured / rectified with a Service Pack?
Bob was killed outright, and as punishment the project lead ended up marrying Bill Gates.
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Why do we consider the monitor vertical to be the only way to position a monitor?
You'd need a much bigger desk to mount it horizontally.
Re:Pain (Score:5, Funny)
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because staring down at the desk is likely to cause strain to your neck.
Re:Pain (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why do we consider the monitor vertical to be the only way to position a monitor?"
Because while sitting at a desk it is extremely not ergonomic to be staring down to your keyboard or anything flat on your desk. That is why your monitors (should be) eye level, vertical and facing you.
Also that is why laptops are commonly complemented with external screens (also screen real estate), stands (so they cool better and they get into your eye-level zone) and external devices ( because a lot of laptops come with a crappy keyboard and a tiny touch pad - well, not MacBooks, but still I am typing on one with an external keyboard, 1080p screen and a touchpad )..
Tablets are great when you are on your sofa, lying down on the grass in the garden or in the hammock. Hey, even the toilet or the bus. As soon as you have to type long mail or document or write code: you are screwed with a virtual keyboard.
Because of my neck (Score:5, Informative)
We have the monitor sitting where it does because it is easy and non-stressful to look at. You keep your neck in a neutral position and can see what you are doing. Your mouse and keyboard are then on the desk for the same reason with regards to your hands. If I move the monitor down to the desk, I'll suffer from neck and back pain in a hurry, because I'll be working hunched over.
Also, if you make your input and output device the same device, then you have the problem that your hands are blocking a large part of your output device. My keyboard is pretty large and my hands block off most of it from view when I type. Why would I want to do that with a display?
You could have two displays, but then the question is again why. Keyboards are mice offer excellent tactile feedback because they are physical devices. I can touch type at 80wpm+ on a physical keyboard, literally with my eyes closed. I can't come anywhere near that on a touchscreen.
Touchscreens are useful only in some situations, mainly where you have a limited amount of space and as such your display and input devices need to be the same. There is just no reason to want them on the desktop. They are more expensive, and less usable, than what we already have.
I think people forget that touchscreens are NOT new. They've been around for a long time, yet there's been no interest in bringing them to desktop computing on a large scale. There are plenty of reasons for it, ergonomics top among them.
Re: (Score:2)
1) UX fairies and their lame-ass cult of aesthetic simplicity.
2) cost
Hey, I just love that wallpaper!
Re: (Score:2)
No it doesnt. not if you have it placed right. Let me guess you are doing something dumb like putting it up on a Desk like a TV screen. Mine is on the desk laying there like a piece of paper.
Wacom Cintiq and DTU's are standard tools for graphic artists and CAD people who use them for hours on end every single day. And have been doing so for the last 5 years now.
Re: (Score:3)
It also goes beyond touch. Metro is basically one full screen application... so basically WordPerfect 5.1 or Lotus 1-2-3. These were superseded for a reason; there were better way to do things. Basically the "two full-screen apps and switching between them" was done in
The premise - are you kidding me? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what large vertical desktop displays even have touch screens? Sounds like they are talking about hardware that shows absolutely no sign of happening.
Re: (Score:2)
Mine. 32" Touhcscreen. I have 2 of them on my desktop.
Re: (Score:3)
The disgusting ones with the fingerprints, food, boogers and what not.... Took me some time to accept that laptop screens (if you really carry them) get dirty, dusty, sometimes scratched and what not. Then it was even harder to digest that unless I am constantly cleaning my iPad screen it will have smudges that have all kinds of funky colours in sunlight....
I have zero tolerance for dirty screens. In fact when working at an office I often end up with a sign on the top of my monitors : "Look! Please don't
I don't want crap smeared on my screen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not going to flash my monitor to wipe off my burger grease.
And that's why they are gonna patent windshield wipers...on computer screens!
Re:I don't want crap smeared on my screen (Score:4, Funny)
Those are called "windows(tm) wipers" From microsoft.
It's not just gorilla arm that will do Metro in (Score:5, Informative)
It's just addative, not a replacement (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem would be that windows 8 makes the touch interface a default from what I see. So touch interface that allows for mouse and keyboard?
And yes I know it's not that bad, but I do think the default for a desktop pc is wrong.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that Windows 8 has largely broken the existing interface.
I just bought a Windows 8 laptop without a touchscreen. Regardless of what the mindless hoards think, I realize that a touchscreen doesn't add to the usability of the computer for the tasks I wish to do. (FYI, I spent almost a decade designing and developing Point-Of-Sale software for touchscreen computers, so I have plenty of experience with them.)
It took only a few hours to realize that Windows 8 couldn't make up its mind about whether my g
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This!
I've been using Windows 8 on a touch enabled ultrabook and I LOVE it. I regularly stretch my arm to my regular desktop monitor and remember that it does not have touch. Of course I do not use only touch. I use keyboard and trackpad but some operations (specifically scrolling and zooming in the browser) are so much easier with touch than they are with the trackpad. Sometimes I even start and close apps with touch. I am not even talking about metro apps (which are mostly useless at this point). I am talk
Don't touch my screen! (Score:5, Insightful)
I already get irate if someone feels the need to molest my screen with his greasy, grubby paws. Now these imbeciles should have an excuse for it? No way.
Seriously, that's more a reason to avoid touch screens at all cost more than gorilla arm syndrome could.
What is gorilla arm? (Score:3)
Is it like the sweaty Ballmer's Arms? Or would that be Monkey-Arm?
Why would Ballmer be taking such a big risk to destroy Windows completely? Is he insane, or just way too much over-confident that whatever shit he imposes on his billion-strong user base, they will just lap it up for ever? Why not make 'touch' an option for those who like it, and continue with the Classic keyboard-mouse interface for the rest of the sane computing world?
bollocks (Score:2)
I've used touch screens on stationary devices for ages. Think things like information kiosks, "whiteboard" like situations and similar. Oh wait, you mean personal stationary devices?
OK, I'm sure that there are many applications for stationary touch screens on 'personal computers'.
Example: Two designers manipulating something on the screen. There's only one mouse, and sometimes it's easier to just turn things around using a finger or stylus rather than pass the mouse across.
Example: Sometimes I'm reading so
"Compliment" (Score:3)
Add complement/compliment to brakes/breaks, lose/loose, rein/reign, toe/tow and all the other illiteracies spelling checkers have foisted on us.
What touch screen? (Score:2)
Mouse over drop downs (Score:5, Informative)
The lack of mouse over messages is a problem with icons as well. If I don't know what an ambiguous icon does, the only way to find out is to poke the icon or wade through documentation.
Are they goddamn mutants? (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
It will happen once costs are marginalized... (Score:2)
I'm fairly certain touch will become a stock feature on any display once the cost of adding it has become marginal. That does not mean it will be the only input source, or even the main input source. It does not need to be as long as it does not cost (much) more to have a touch-enabled screen - which it won't once the feature is embedded in the actual display panel/controller combination.
Article is pure postulation. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's some articles from people who actually USED Windows 8:
Surprisingly, touchscreen laptops don't suck [theverge.com]
Touchscreens and the Myth of Windows 8 ‘Gorilla Arm’ [time.com]
Re:Article is pure postulation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users [nngroup.com]
Completely missed it (Score:2)
Microsoft could probably care less if touch doesn't take off. It's Kinect that they want to flourish. Why smear across the screen when you can switch between apps with the wave of an arm
At least 3rd wave (Score:2)
what killed touch computing during its first wave in the early 1980s
The PC era stuff they're talking about is At Least the third wave.
The first wave was in the 60s/70s very fuzzy was not there to see it.
The second wave was around 1980 in the pre-PC era. Basically, light pens. The end user need not be informed nor know the difference nor need the UI be modified to "touch" vs light pen.
Having lived thru it, there were three classes of light pens around 1980. One was exotic mhz class light sensors that "watched" the phosphor and the video waveforms, and correlated them toge
Hey Microsoft, human factors ALWAYS come first. (Score:3)
The fact that Microsoft missed something this *basic* doesn't exactly bode well for the future of the company. HUMANS matter. Machines don't.
Hung fire for forty years? REALLY? (Score:3)
Vertical desktop touch screens have been with us since at least 1972. The University of Illinois' PLATO project didn't just deploy them on a significant scale, it exposed impressionable students to them.
Since then, many perfectly good touchscreen technologies have been available, commercially, and have been widely deployed e.g. in kiosks. And GUI software support behind them, e.g. Windows for Pen Computing, GO, etc. has been around for two decades.
Meanwhile, successful deployments of touchscreen technology have been widespread since, let's say, 1997 and the Palm Pilot--but always on small, handheld, horizontal-screen devices.
If large vertical touchscreens are really usable for sustained periods of time, and if they really add something of substantial value to mouse point-and-click GUI's, I find it very, very hard to believe they wouldn't have already gained traction.
I'd add that if multitouch gestures are really a significant improvement, I think it's at least as likely that they will take the form of detached, horizontal trackpads like the Apple Magic Trackpad. Horizontal surface, small-muscle coordination.
Re:Hung fire for forty years? REALLY? (Score:5, Insightful)
If large vertical touchscreens are really usable for sustained periods of time, and if they really add something of substantial value to mouse point-and-click GUI's, I find it very, very hard to believe they wouldn't have already gained traction.
all you need to know is that large touch overlays can easily be more expensive than the display itself, at least as an add-on product. even if they have substantial utility, people won't buy it if it costs too much. Indeed, they do have substantial utility, but the cost benefit ratio is shit compared to a three dollar mouse.
I have had touch computing for decades (Score:5, Insightful)
Now
And explain to me why you decided that bigger icons on my desktop were a good idea, especially since most of the time I have these things you call 'windows' up and can't really see any of them when they are active so what's the purpose?? I have dual monitors, and most of the time I have windows open on both and most of my desktop is hidden. I'm doing this thing called 'work'. The little pop-up notifications that pop-up then fade away work just fine and are much more useful.
Windows 8 is not on my list of upgrades. If you want me to upgrade, give me something that is a reason to upgrade, like runs faster. I don't care about boot or standby times, my PC is on 24x7 and I rarely reboot. In fact, the only time I reboot is when you need to install updates because you haven't figured out how to do that without rebooting, like UNIX has done for decades you idiots.
Really not a problem in practice (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone who spends that much time with their tablet probably already has a 'Gorilla Arm'. At least one.
This isn't rocket science. (Score:5, Insightful)
Issues with touch vs mouse (Score:4, Informative)
Obfuscation: Where the mouse pointer does cover 'some' pixels on the screen, a finger, and its attached hand and arm will obfuscate a much larger part of the view, which requires the user to remember what was under his finger before touching it. If this happens too often or a UI changes rapidly (eg a web site), this could lead to frustrations. Especially with subjects like the elderly.
Precision: You lose precision, even with a perfectly healthy human being, a fingerprint has a bigger surface than a pixel-perfect pointer, therefor your UI needs to be a lot more spacious to allow for users to "aim" correctly and allow for some correctional margin. If the UI design did not take this into account, this too can lead to frustration (mis-touching).
Windows 8 is a half-assed execution of some good ideas, the signature Microsoft symptom since Ballmer took over.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using a touchscreen with my laptop for 8 years. I use a combination of mouse, trackpad and screen touch.
I also find myself tapping my desktop monitor frequently, expecting it to work... So yeah, I'd love a touchscreen to augment my access.
It's very convenient that way.
GrpA
Re: (Score:2)
Sore finger from PDP-1 light pen (Score:3)
Actually, I used a light pen on a PDP-1 and my problem was that I got a sort spot on the pad of my index finger. Normally, there was a shutter closed over the sensor, and you had a slide a little spring-loaded slide to uncap it. The spring was probably stronger than it should have been, and the slide had little ridges on it to give a better grip.
My finger didn't actually get blistered, but close. It got sore and painful enough to make me realize I needed to avoid using it for a day.
Re:Touch will come... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's actually quite a market for tablets, in case you haven't noticed.
That's a different market. Tablets are for content consumers. Mice and keyboards are for content producers.
Most of the people I see with tablets use them to read or view content, with only occasional interaction. When they start doing significant input, they invariably adapt some sort of keyboard/mouse combination to the tablet. With varying degrees of success.
The people doing significant content creation don't put up with mini keyboards and cheap track pads happily. There's still quite a market for the old IBM clicky keyboards among this group for a reason.