Rants on Windows 8 build

desktop

I was quite impressed by the mockup of Windows 8 in an internal Microsoft presentation around eight months ago. Thanks to Windows team’s hard work to make the preview version public available, I can rant my thoughts without violating the NDA.

Windows 8 is Microsoft’s answer to the post-pc era: touch takes the central stage; the traditional desktop has to wait to be summoned in the backstage. It is a disrupted transition for desktop users to focus more on content consumption than content production. For old school user, Metro is even less useful than screen.

Though Metro has achieved global recognition in the design industry, it has not won the hearts of customers. It is really adventurous if not reckless to bet the fate of the corporate major cash cow with such uncertainty.

The Drag-n-Pin in the Metro allow user to optimize screen real estate in finer-granularity than the notification model. This is cool, but not new. According to my bumpy experience with awesome in Arch, It is hard to make tiling windows manager works as expected and it is annoying when it just not works. I look forward to Windows team’s solution.