Like a Sith to a Jedi, a Cylon to a human, an Apple to a Gordon Mah Ung, every good thing said about Windows 8 seems to be matched by an equal and opposite reaction: Something bad. To trade in our angel wings and prop up our Google Hangout devil horns for a moment, there's plenty about Windows 8 that you just aren't going to like.
Unless you're one of those stalwarts still clinging to Windows XP as if it was a stuffed animal from your childhood that you need to squeeze just to sleep at night, the announcement of a new Windows operating system usually summons up one singular question: When can I upgrade?
Note, we said usually. For Windows 8's errors are so flagrant and its annoyances so widespread, this might be the first operating system in your Windows lifetime that you're going leave right there on the retail shelf. That's right. We said it. Microsoft's not only created a new operating system; the company has also created a healthy amount of doubt in the minds of potential purchasers.
Here are some of the main ingredients that make up our tasty Windows "8-erade:"
1. Bring on the Advertisements
Because Windows 8 comes on the back of a bird with the word "apps" spray-painted on its side, you'll find that Microsoft does plenty to integrate its virtual storefronts into the OS at any cost – go figure. We'd expect nothing less from Redmond, or Apple, or Google. But here's the kicker: Microsoft's implementation is just downright ugly.
Case in point? The Video app. Not only does this thing struggle to play videos that Media Player itself can handle (why the app doesn't correctly integrate your system's codecs, we'll never know), but the first thing you see upon launching it is not a gallery of your videos, or a top-20 list of local videos you've watched, or anything like that. No, you get a spotlight of all the quote-unquote awesome content you can purchase from Microsoft directly – your videos require you to scroll a full screen's width to the right just to access, and all you get is a big box for the video you've most recently played and a "show more" button that lets you check out other videos in your User folder.
Yuck we say to that, yuck we say to the similar treatment found in Microsoft's Music and Xbox Companion apps, and yuck we say to Microsoft putting its paid-for content blatantly front and center.
2. Where the Heck Am I?
Since Windows 8 is like Windows 7 with a fancy new tablet design bolted onto the side (we'll get to that later), Microsoft has done an amazing job of splitting important content and options between the two different environments. And by amazing, we mean not-so-amazing.
For example, your standard Control Panel sits in what we'll call the "Windows Classic" environment – same ol' Control Panel you should be used to using by now. You can jump to the main Control Panel shortcut from Metro, but not its individual components. Similarly, you can't use the Control Panel to edit the individual settings found within Metro – that requires you to go to Metro's PC settings application, which can be found quasi-buried in Metro's general Settings sidebar.
Got it?
In essence, you set up your system settings in two different settings locations. And while we see how that might work on paper – Metro settings follow Metro, Desktop settings follow Desktop – this walled garden approach is unnecessary. Settings are settings; If you can't adjust Metro in Desktop, Microsoft should at least give users a better way to access each environment's settings options from the settings panels of the other. One scant link in the Control Panel's "Users" menu doesn't cut it.
3. Strapping a Bomb to a Monkey
We brought it up, so we might as well finish the thought. The Windows Metro UI could not feel any more like its own operating environment that's been strapped, rather crudely, onto the back of Windows 7.
Sure, there are a few cosmetic upgrades to the classic desktop – many we like, in fact. That doesn't remove the disjointing effect of having to constantly shift your focus between a svelte, common experience and a graphical monstrosity. From clearly understood data and organization to pictures! Huge, pretty pictures with small amounts of text and lots of square graphics! From the good ol' Windows we've come to love over the years – one you can truly navigate with just the click of a mouse – to a storm of giant panels that can't be closed or minimized unless you start mashing your keyboard or start dragging your content all around your pretty solid-color display. From awesome and easy file management in Windows Explorer to… whatever the heck you consider the process of selecting files within, say, SkyDrive and the Metro UI.
Shoot, plug-ins aren't even supported on the Metro version of Internet Explorer. You have to select the "View on the desktop" option, hidden beneath a wrench icon near IE's Metro address bar, just to watch a freakin' YouTube video. Come on.
There was really nothing Microsoft could have done to prevent this mash-up: It was destined to happen as the company tries to push more than a decade of collective user experience toward a completely new kind of interaction. We just wish Microsoft did it better. Or, heaven forbid, gave users the choice to abandon Metro entirely and run Windows 7+, er, Windows 8's "Desktop mode" if they wanted.
4. Pooping on the Power User
We, at Maximum PC, love the ability to tweak, customize, and control our gadgets, hardware, and software however we see fit. It's the Maximum PC way. What isn't the Maximum PC way, however, is Windows 8's Metro UI.
Is it really that hard, Microsoft, to allow advanced customization within your smorgasbord of squares? Sure, you can make some tiles take up two horizontal spaces, and you can shrink some of these larger tiles back to a single tile's worth of space. And yes, you can grab tiles and slap them into new columns – yippee! – but that's about it.
You know what would have been amazing and incredible to see in the Metro UI? At least the same level of customization that one could find on (or hack into) one's smartphone.
Why not give users the option to set their tiles to any square size they want? If Metro is supposed to be a tablet interface, why can't you mash multiple tiles onto a single "group" tile that expands when clicked or tapped on? Why do some tiles carry live information, but tiles that should display data or act as visual hotspots in theory (like, say, the tile for your Video app, or Messaging app) just exist as naked icons?
Why can't you select and shuffle around multiple tiles at once? Why can't you use a gesture to "paint" tiles to select them, instead of having to right-click everything? Why do Metro windows only scroll horizontally? Why can't you edit the color, title, or icon of individual tiles? Why can't you quick-launch into applications from your lock screen (what good is a mere icon), or highlight over these icons for a quick look at whatever new tidbits might be lurking within your OS?
Why, why, why?
On the next page: Letting users pick third-party tie-ins, Our epic list of That Which Windows 8 Broke, and cloud complaints!
5. Let Users Dictate Services
It's great and all that Microsoft has made an attempt to integrate third-party services directly into Windows 8 – in fact, the feature (found in both the People and Messaging apps, to name a few) made our list of "8 Things We Love About Windows 8."
What we don't love, however, is the fact that Microsoft's the one dictating which services get invited to the Windows 8 party and which are left sad and alone at home. We envision a future where we can only use Windows 8 to manage a handful of social networks and instead have to use Internet Explorer – or, more likely, a browser that isn't horrible – to catch our friends elsewhere. Or perhaps some other third-party apps: You're not going to find your Steam contacts within Windows 8's contact list, nor your AIM, Yahoo, or Google Chat friends within Messaging (as of right now within the Consumer Preview), et cetera.
We would have much preferred Microsoft to make a handshake instead of a closed fist. Why not offer an easy method for giving third-party apps and services the ability to organize a data stream that could then be pulled into Windows 8's big apps? And then, if users wanted, they can go about setting up their Windows apps almost like an RSS reader, adding the services they care about instead of integrating third-party services Microsoft thinks they should care about.
And heaven help the person who runs more than one Twitter account or checks more than one Gmail account– you can currently only tie your Windows apps to a single account per Windows user account.
6. Why Break What Worked Great?
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself." – George Bernard Shaw
Or, to say it another way, there's no need to fix that which wasn't broken. Worse, that which Windows users were familiar with (and fond of) based on their experiences with operating system's many versions over the last many years.
Here's a "brief" list of things we miss, having made the (temporary) switch to Windows 8:
- Closing apps without always having to use our keyboard (Metro).
- Being able to run more than one app or window on a screen at a time (Metro) – and, no, pinning an app to a one-third sidebar doesn't count.
- How our keyboard's Windows Key used to pull up a handy list of applications and other shortcuts (Start Menu) instead of just opening up a portal between two diametric interfaces (Metro).
- When operating systems were more about delivering data and information to the user (Desktop mode) than graphics and pizazz (Metro).
- Being able to quickly see all the programs that we're running by glancing at our desktop (Desktop mode) versus having to perform semi-precise actions to reveal what our operating system is doing (Switch List).
- Being able to scroll over thumbnails and click to access content – thumbnails now disappear on Metro's hot corners when you try to do what you've previously done for so very, very long.
- Having applications that scrolled vertically instead of horizontally (Metro), which often leads to more wasted white space that could otherwise be filled with useful data.
- Being able to use our mouse wheel to scroll vertically (Metro), and the consistency of knowing that down was always down, not right (Metro), and up was always up, not left (Metro).
- Normal font sizes instead of giant, header-like text everywhere.
- When a PC's operating system was designed for a PC, not a tablet.
- Being able to log onto our systems without having to "unveil" the damn password box, the digital equivalent of a sweeping bow and a trumpet fanfare.
7. Puff up the Cloud
Now that Microsoft is playing in the cloud – giving users the ability to transfer their files and settings across any Windows 8 systems they log into with their Microsoft Account – it's time for Microsoft to up the ante when it comes to the security options it offers its accountholders.
We'd love to see at least some information on the Microsoft Account website to indicate which systems a person has logged in on using his or her Microsoft Account – better still, some way to block that login from being accepted on a particular PC if you don't want that system or its user to have access to you any longer. Cooler still would be some kind of two-way authentication factored into Microsoft's login process (we know, we know; more security steps) to ensure that even an attacker with physical access to your system and all your credentials will still have a heck of a time breaking into your Window 8 account.
In a perfect world, Microsoft would even give Windows 8 users a nuclear option: The ability to set a previously registered computer for a complete and full format the next time Windows 8 boots. While an Internet-based kill switch might be a little drastic, it's a pretty big deal that Windows 8 is tying so much of one's life into the cloud. If we live in a day an age where we can safely eliminate all of the information on our missing smartphones via a website, surely it's time to build a little more peace-of-mind into Windows 8's cloud security.
8. No Obvious Reason to Upgrade
We touched on it in the intro, but we'll etch it in stone in our final point: Windows 8 presents no compelling reason for a user to upgrade, period. If it seems as though we spent a lot of time critiquing the look and feel of Windows' new interface, and for good reason: At the end of a day of Windows 8, that's all you're left with. Minus a few fun features here and there (Storage Space, File History, Shutdown Hibernation, et cetera), there's little more than window dressing to inspire users to flock to their local Microsoft stores upon Window 8's final release. Windows 8 is, for lack of a better word, a new makeup kit for Windows 7.
Touchscreen systems aside – you're really going to want Windows 8, given that Metro was made for you – the quote unquote improvements built into Windows 8's Metro apps definitely appear pretty. And there's no question that the future, full-screen Metro treatment of third-party apps like Facebook, or Twitter, or Angry Birds will surely be something to see. But we don't think that cosmetic trumps functionality in every occurrence: A huge-font Twitter app with one user profile per screen swipe pales in comparison to what you get from the best Twitter apps already available on Windows 7 today, for example.
In other words, Windows 8 is going to give a lot of pretty people plenty of new methods for interacting with their information in a prettier way. It's also going to confuse the bejesus out of them if they've used Windows at any point over the last, say, ten years, and we don't think that Microsoft's latest OS is going to deliver best overall user experience. Prettier, yes. Better, no.
Coming tomorrow: 8 Must-Have Apps for Your New Windows 8 Installation!
For more from David, former Maximum PC editor and Windows enthusiast, follow him onFacebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).
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