The MarketWatch reviews the latest release of Windows 8, and it isn't pretty.
John Dvorak from MarketWatch recently uploaded his review of the current Windows 8 Release Preview, calling the upcoming OS an "unmitigated disaster" that could possibly hurt the company and its future as an OS provider. While this opinion may sound a little harsh regarding an operating system still baking in the oven, many of his comments echo remarks made by other journalists in their hands-on reviews, past and present.
"The real problem is that it is both unusable and annoying," Dvorak writes. "It makes your teeth itch as you keep asking, 'Why are they doing this!?' First of all, the system-software product is mostly divorced from all the thought and trends developed by Windows over the years, as if to say that they were wrong the whole time, so let's try something altogether new. No business will tolerate this software, let me assure you. As a productivity tool, it is unusable."
He goes on to point out that the blocky Metro interface is both more useful and wanted on a smartphone or tablet than a PC. Granted that AIO PC's sell rather well and sport touch-capable screens, do consumers really use this feature on a daily basis? Dvorak for one doesn't like finger smudges on his screen, thus preferring the old-school mouse-keyboard combo assumingly loved by most desktop users.
He also points out that there are issues with trying to use one GUI across every platform, and that perhaps not everyone will want a unified experience. Both Apple and Google have already pointed out this specific issue, saying that separate form factors need their own operating system due to their specialized hardware-based benefits.
"This is insanity, plain and simple. It’s even more nuts knowing that nobody is waiting in line to buy Windows Phone in the first place, and the tablet is untested in the market. So the company jumps ahead to the desktop?" he writes. "The potential for this OS to be an unrecoverable disaster for the company is at the highest possible level I’ve ever seen. It ranks up there with the potential for disaster that the Itanium chip presented for Intel Corp. It’s that bad."
Dvorak predicts that the public and enterprise sectors will demand Windows 7 throughout 2013 until Microsoft abandons the "soulless Metro interface," and hires on a new design team fast.
To read the full evaluation of Windows 8 Release Preview, head here. For the record, he does admit that the Metro UI is "refreshingly slick-looking and modern," but then adds that it's "without any charm whatsoever."
EDIT: Apparently the new versions of win8 after Developer preview has disabled this registry trick to disable Metro? That's pretty stupid of Microsoft.
You could only do that in the Developer Preview. Microsoft took the trouble to make sure you can't do that anymore. Think about why they would do that.
Mac OS X Lion has had loads of iOS forced into it - the launchpad sits unused on most desktops and the castrating of Expose to make it work better on ultra low resolutions displays has forced them to add back functionality from Snow Leopard. Several Linux distros have created even worse solutions than Metro with Ubuntu, Fedora etc forcing UIs that are only barely suitable for netbooks onto high resolution desktops.
Alas, Microsoft has the worst to move from this kind of forced GUI change. Apple's Lion didn't go too far and is stepping back a little in many areas with Mountain Lion - besides which, they can basically do no wrong in consumers' eyes. Linux can benefit from this kind of change as their main area of growth PC wise are low powered netbooks with low resolutions. Microsoft has a lot of corporate users who will dig their heels in. Not only that but an uniformed buyer looking for a new computer in a store could well be put off by Metro and lean more towards an Apple computer - purely because Mac OS X's GUI is more familiar looking to a Windows user than Metro.
I figure that the "Metro" part of windows 8 will flop, while the desktop part will flop less. On the off chance that metro actually succeeds, we're screwed.
8 is the next Vista. It's the next ME. I don't want my desktop to behave like a Windows Phone. I don't want full screen apps. I don't want UI solutions that take up more space than they actually need because they assume I'm not utilizing it. I can see myself sticking to Windows 7 like I did with XP. If 9 doesn't fix the problems with 8 then I'm jumping ship. I will jump ship to Chrome OS or even Mac OS. I already had to switch desktop environments in Linux due to what the idiots at GNU have done with Gnome 3.
8 is the next Vista. It's the next ME. I don't want my desktop to behave like a Windows Phone. I don't want full screen apps. I don't want UI solutions that take up more space than they actually need because they assume I'm not utilizing it. I can see myself sticking to Windows 7 like I did with XP. If 9 doesn't fix the problems with 8 then I'm jumping ship. I will jump ship to Chrome OS or even Mac OS. I already had to switch desktop environments in Linux due to what the idiots at GNU have done with Gnome 3.