Windows 9: Microsoft’s Latest Effort to Stay Relevant

Microsoft will announce Windows 8′s successor, codename “Threshold”, at their annual build conference in April this year, and most likely release it as Windows 9 in April 2015.



First a little history lesson. After the poorly received Vista and popular Windows 7, and after having missed the smartphone and tablet boom of the Apple iPad and Google’s Android systems, Microsoft decided to muscle in on the smartphone and tablet market with Windows RT and Phone 8 operating systems. But Microsoft made the big mistake of forcing the Metro (“modern”) interface in Windows 8 onto every platform, including non-touchscreen desktop and laptop computers. This has confused and frustrated a lot of users, no matter how many expensive TV adverts Microsoft put out. Microsoft Surface and Windows Phones have not made much of a dent either.

First Microsoft already has a  minor fix for 8 called 8.1, which merely brings back the Start button as well as some other fixes. This is a mistake since users don’t only miss the Start button, but actually miss the Start Menu too. As I have said before, switching from the touch-friendly Metro to the not very touch friendly desktop and back again feels awkward. Doing that every time I want to search for an application gets old fast! Both Apple and Google have sensibly, generally, kept desktop and mobile devices on separate operating systems (OSX and iOS, ChromeOS and Android) although Android seems to have jumped to all-in-one desktops at CES2014. However Android with it’s many OEMs, is far more flexible than Windows when it comes to custom interfaces. With the right skin, Android could make some inroads into all-in-one or laptop markets.




As Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott states here, Windows 9 “needs to be everything that Windows 8 is not.” Although nothing has been set in stone yet, it will most likely have a windowed version of Metro that will work better on the desktop. This will supposedly make Metro apps, however few and little-used they are, integrate better into the desktop.

Microsoft’s backtracking fix to Windows basically makes Windows 8/8.1 the new Vista/SP1, but it might be too late for Windows to stay relevant for long. Google Chromebooks have outsold Macbooks in the US, and iPads are still leading tablet sales in the US. With Android dominating smartphones worldwide and making fast inroads into desktops and hybrid laptops, Microsoft Windows seems to becoming increasingly irrelevant. As Thrurrott put it, “Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.” With many home users only needing browser based web apps and social networking sites, a Chromebook or Android desktop/laptop/tablet could be all they need. Even in the usually Windows dominant gaming market, Steam boxes that run Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS could eventually replace Windows once enough games are available in Steam for Linux. In the corporate world, most businesses will probably stick with the familiar Windows 7 until mainstream support for it ends in January 2015 while planning a switch away from Windows to a more secure, flexible platform, be that Chromebook and server based apps, Ubuntu or other desktop Linux, Android or OSX. One thing’s for sure, Microsoft Windows has a treacherous rocky road ahead.

Sources: winsupersite Ibtimes Cnet SteamOS PC World

Thoughts On Convergence and Why Google and Apple Got It Right and Microsoft Got It Wrong

In a brief interview with Macworld to mark the 30th anniversary of the Mac, Apple's executive Phil Schiller (and his cohort Craig Federighi, I keep misreading his name as Ferengi...) affirmed that the Mac still has a bright future "as far as our eye can see." Federighi went on to say “It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience? We believe, no.” Obviously the Mac will stick around as it would hardly be practical to write iOS apps (or lots of other heavy desktop work) on an iOS device.

 

Now I may not be a massive fan of Apple and I particularly get riled up when it comes to their attitude to patents, but as far as the desktop computer is concerned, Apple have got one thing right. Despite the massive success of the iPhone and iPad, they have kept OSX and iOS seperate, with just a little convergence between the two. There is Dashboard, iMessage, trackpad gestures and the admittedly silly "Natural Scrolling" but that's about it. OSX is still a reasonably usable desktop OS, albeit a fixed, non-customizable one.

Microsoft on the other hand, have, in my opinion, got things very wrong! They basically shovelled the Metro (I refuse to call it "Modern") interface onto phone, tablet and, most annoyingly, desktop with Windows 8. Microsoft has confused and annoyed a lot of users with this abomination. Even 8.1 does not really fix things, it merely brings back the Start button rather than what a lot of desktop users actually want which is the Start menu. Windows 9 will supposedly fix things by putting Metro apps in a windowed app on the desktop but we shall see. By then though it may be too late and Windows will be irrelevant, perhaps it already is...

Google have ChromeOS and Android. They have, at least on their own devices, kept them separate. ChromeOS is aimed at laptops and desktops as the browser is the desktop to Google. Chromebooks are great for those who need a second machine for writing, browsing and other light work. Despite Microsoft's FUD, Chromebooks are actually useful offline too. Things have taken a slightly different approach recently with some OEMs like Lenovo and HP putting Android onto all-in-one desktops and laptops, presumably to take advantage of the huge amount of apps in the Play store. I am not quite sure how I feel about this yet, I have yet to see what they are like in the flesh. If, and that's a big if, they have skinned Android to make it more desktop-like, they might be onto something but I don't think Android is quite right in it's stock form for a desktop PC, at least as a work computer, though it would be great as a touchscreen jukebox or media centre.

For things like photo and video editing, music production though I would rather have a full OS such as a 'proper' Linux distro, my personal preference at the moment being Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop. With Linux, and pretty much any desktop, I like a top panel with the usual indicators, a searchable menu on the left and a dock at the base of the screen on one monitor, the great thing about Linux is it is so customizable!

Again I am not really keen on Ubuntu's Unity or Gnome Shell as I think it gets in the way of what I want to do, I don't like massive fullscreen menus covering almost a whole screen, which is one reason I hate Metro on Windows 8. And one day Ubuntu Touch might work well on phones and tablets but I just cannot get on with it on the desktop and I really have tried to like it. One thing I would (or would have liked) from Canonical is Ubuntu for Android, it would be great to take my phone, dock it to a HDMI monitor, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and have Ubuntu instantly load up on the monitor and still be able to use Android apps in a window on the desktop. This would be cool for travelling light for cubicle people.

I love having a (reasonably) powerful, multi-monitor desktop for AV stuff, Steam games etc, then switching over to a laptop for late night blogging and browsing. My Nexus 7 is great for light browsing and casual gaming and my Galaxy S3 is my camera, on-the-go browser, info-finder and above all, phone! Firefox syncs browser history and tabs between all three devices and my files are never far away with Dropbox or Copy or Linux home server on the LAN.

I have also been using PushBullet to receive Android Notifications on the desktop from phone and tablet. It's also good for quickly sending links between devices. It works OK but I wish there was a proper, fully formed desktop app on Linux that would do it better. Something like KDE Connect, but not so tied to KDE, would be great. Overall, I like having different devices and form factors for different purposes but with some synchronicity between them.

Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.04 Beta On a Dell Latitude XT

I have acquired a slightly faulty Dell XT convertible tablet/laptop, the screen no longer stays up in laptop mode and it's also lacking it's pen stylus. Specs-wise it's similar to my Latitude D430, a Core2Duo CPU at 1.33Ghz, 2GB RAM, except this has ATI X1250 graphics instead of Intel 950 and an 80GB 1.8" hard drive instead of a 60GB 2.5" drive. I am unsure as to how to get multi-touch capabilities in either Windows 8 or Ubuntu, in neither does it work out the box, perhaps the Windows Vista drivers may work in Windows 8.


Windows 8

When it was new it would have come preinstalled with Windows XP or Vista. Since the Windows 8 'Consumer Preview' had just been released I decided to have a little play with it on the XT. I used the docking station's DVD drive to install it and it took about 30 minutes. Single finger touch works out the box.


















Windows 8 feels clunky to me, like Windows 7 with the ugly Metro interface bolted on the front. Switching from the touch-friendly Metro to the not very touch friendly desktop and back again feels awkward, and doing that every time I want to search for an app gets old fast! I'd much rather use an OS that is built for touch screen mobile devices from day 1, such as Android, iOS etc. I did like the on-screen keyboard, but for web browsing it wouldn't pop up for Firefox, only IE, although apparently there will be an 8-friendly version coming soon.

Ubuntu

After a brief test of Mint with Gnome3/Cinnamon (which I can't get on with, not keen on the menus and the Mint hijacking of the Search Add-ons), I formatted it and installed Ubuntu 11.10 64bit liveCD. Then I upgraded to the latest 12.04 beta. Although I'm not that keen on Unity for the desktop, in this case it does suit a tablet and has improved a bit recently. Having said that I still don't like Global Menus and would prefer to be able to easily disable that feature. Again, the single-finger touchscreen works out-the-box. Unity is still not touch-friendly enough (grabbing those overlay scrollbars is tricky for instance) but feels and looks a lot nicer than Metro and the MyUnity tool is very useful too if you want to tweak Unity settings. Sadly, ATI dropped support for the X1250 graphics card, which means I can only use Unity 2D and some 3D games/apps don't work very well.

















 

For touch use, I've found it best to disable auto hiding of the launcher (Settings, Appearance, Behavior). Ubuntu's default onscreen keyboard is called Onboard. It's OK once you resize it so you can actually use it with your fingers, though I wish it would automatically pop up and hide for dialogue boxes, like Caribou does. Enable the onscreen keyboard from Settings, Universal Access Preferences. Onboard should also appear on the LightDM login screen too. If you have upgraded from an earlier version of Ubuntu that used the GDM2 login screen (or if LightDM is trashed and you have switched to GDM), you can make Onboard appear by adding "onboard -s 684x200 -x 170 -y 568 &" to /etc/gdm/Init/Default between the last 'fi' and 'exit 0' as shown in this how-to. No need to change any other settings as shown on there though. Update: The only really frustrating thing about Unity is the dock which on this device is far too easy to accidentally open apps when trying to scroll the dock!




















Overall Ubuntu 12.04 works fairly well on the XT, despite the lack of proprietary graphics drivers. With a bit more improvement, Unity could be a good touch friendly desktop, though I still don't plan on using it on my main dual-monitor desktop or other laptops and desktops where I prefer Gnome Classic or XFCE (Xubuntu). And despite the odd bug here and there which should be fixed by it's release, 12.0.4 should be a decent LTS.