[iamadesigner]

I dislike the direction Microsoft is going with this "open dialog" scheme.

"We’ve talked in depth about building Windows 8, including the features, the designs, and the background behind these. We’ve done so in over 70 posts totaling over 500 pages if printed out and 34 videos totaling over 90 minutes"

It's like, if you asked people what they wanted in a car, they would have said a faster horse.

This is going to a huge kitchen-skin, designed-by-a-committee disaster.

[hackinthebochs]

Other companies don't have the legacy that windows does. For windows 8 to be successful, they need the buy-in of consumers in all the various use-cases of the OS. Apple never had that legacy to deal with so the comparison isn't fair.

Determining what the general public wants is a crap shoot. the only reason we're even talking about Apple is because they got lucky a few times. What about the countless companies that were creating the future only to fizzle out for lack of interest? Microsoft can't take those sorts of risks on their core cash cows.

[iamadesigner]

Yes but what happens when everyone wants different things? How can you be bold when you have to keep your foot in the past, the present and the future?

[hackinthebochs]

That's a good question. Microsoft's solution in the past has been to simply not try to be bold. It's worked well for them so far and it probably will for the foreseeable future. Metro UI is their attempt at being bold, but they also can't risk alienating their core users in the process. Whether or not they will accomplish this, seeing how hard they're pushing the new UI, remains to be seen. But I understand what they're trying to do.

[recoiledsnake]

>It's like, if you asked people what they wanted in a car, they would have said a faster horse.

>This is going to a huge kitchen-skin, designed-by-a-committee disaster.

Err what? You're taking the PR spin at it's face value. The reality is that people have been hollering for the old Start menu and MS just went with what they think is right and the put up a few blog posts after they implemented things as they liked.

The blog posts are really explanations of what they alread designed. Look at how they started appearing only after the Beta came and not for the 2 years Windows 8 was actually being designed?

[streptomycin]

They managed to turn a file manager into something like http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/images/17/2011/08/xlarge_... when something like http://www.muktware.com/sites/default/files/images/applicati... would work just as well. Yuck.

[hackinthebochs]

People who talk trash about the ribbon simply have no idea how average people use their computers. There is immense value for most people by having available functions in your face. If an option is hidden, only the most adventurous users will ever find it. UIs should be functional first and pretty second.

[streptomycin]

I thought it was pretty well established that average people don't like a huge number of buttons and widgets and colors and icons shoved in their face, particularly if most of them are rarely used. People get confused and overwhelmed easily.

[drivebyacct2]

The ribbon is collapsed by default, come on now. It's there for tablet users and I'm sure you noticed the equivalent in Ubuntu is not tablet friendly at all.

Also, nautilus is easily the worst file management utility on any platform currently, most especially the gnome3 variant. Let me know when the Favorites, you know, actually work the way they do in every other file manager (including the gnome2 variant)

[streptomycin]

What's wrong with the Bookmarks?

[drivebyacct2]

Try using them as a drop target. Just try.

I'm used to Marlin, I mean "Files" (in Elementary), and Finder's column view. The Bookmarks that most file managers have make the lack of column browsing a bit more tolerable, but it's still lacking in a great number of ways. But no, not Nautilus's.

[streptomycin]

Apparently you can't use them as drop targets. I had never noticed. Hopefully they fix that soon.