Maximum PC

What were the Redmond guys thinking when they came up with that fugly looking GUI for Windows 8? I'm quite frankly in a state of shock over it. It looks like they had a knee-jerk reaction from listening to how Apple incorporated some elements from their iOS into Lion, and now they want to do the same for theirs. Isn't this what little kids do? Immediately and mindlessly imitate what others are doing? I'm sorry, guys and gals, but if Redmond thinks I'm going to use this new Windows GUI in the future, they're dead wrong. It is the ugliest looking monstrosity I've ever seen. I'm surprised no one has ever seemed to comment on this. I've used Windows for years, thick and thin, but this newest incarnation is where the buck stops for me.

I have a nice Windows 7 desktop and laptop, and a 17" Macbook Pro with OSX Lion as well as an iPad 2 (best tablet out there, hands down, no contest whatsoever). I'll tell you the truth, the way it stands now, the only reason I have a Windows desktop is for my gaming. If it weren't for that it, I'd have a Mac desktop, too. Macs just don't give me half the problems a Windows system does. I got a Windows laptop a couple of days ago to use for school and had to spend a few hours screwing around with it to get rid of all the crapware and to get it set up the way I like it. (Thanks to you guys, I knew all the programs and utilities to use to make this take less time than it used to!) My Macbook set-up time? Fifteen minutes, that's it. No crapware, bloatware, niggling little default settings, etc. It was a joy. I was asking myself after the quick Apple setup,"That's all? There's gotta be more, there's gotta be!" But there wasn't. I was productive with the Macbook almost right out of the box. But never with Windows. It always took time to setup so that I could use it properly.

And furthermore while this "touch me" fad currently going on may be cool for smart phones and tablets, it is NOT appropriate for full-blown desktops with big screens. It will cause too much fatigue on our arms over a long computing session having to grope around on a 20-something inch or bigger screen. The mouse and keyboard is still the only way to go for now. But Redmond wants to incorporate that stupid and ugly thing on their phones into their newest OS? I was at a loss for words over it a first, but now I'm just in a quiet rage over it. Does Microsoft have even one clue as to why their crappy phone OS is not selling worth a damn? Apparently not. For all that is holy, I hope someone pulls that ugly GUI out of there before it's too late, but I'm not holding my breath. Mac desktops will be in my future if this goes through. The only thing stopping Apple from taking over the desktop world are the prices of their machines and their rigid control over their hardware, but it certainly isn't their OS or the software that goes into it.

/endrant

Sorry, but I don't see the pictures.
If you mean the image on wikipedia, I think you could change the background from the horrid shade of purple. Also, on the subject of touch screens, how else am I supposed to exercise the parts of my arm not directly used in typing?

Give us a link to the pug-ugly GUI.

Nasty

Well, google's our best friend as the old saying goes, so here's a link:

googling of windows 8 gui

Well, now that I've seen some more examples of it via googling, Windows 8 might not be half bad. No, I'm not a luddite, it's just that tiling crap lifted from the windows phone was the fugliest looking thing I'd seen in a long time. But having seen some of the other images, I'll retract some of what I said in my original post here. But to repeat, that tile thing is a jarring dissonant image in what looks to be a pretty sharp looking OS.

Of what I saw in the collage of pictures, the GUI isn't that bad in my humble opinion. The part about win8 I don't like is the cloud computing aspect. I can't see any reason to put my files and programs on some ones servers and not my own hard drive...to me that is just plain stupid and asking for trouble. Actually there are a lot of things I don't like about the operating system and will probably only upgrade to win7 in the near future and skip win8 altogether.

Nasty

That is just the windows store that is taken from Windows Phone. I hope. Other than that, it is just the logical extension of 7, channeling Rainmeter and that interesting Acer Iconia wheel UI thingamajig.

Windows 8 and Mac OSX Lion all suck because the try to put a tablet experience in a PC. I'd like to use my PC AS A PC not a tablet, and I would not want cloud integration for anything other than backups (incase my HDD fails) but my Dream PC will use a SSD and have no hard drives so I don't have to wait for REALLY SLOW hard drives to load.

And OSX Lion is very unstable and hard to use, based on reviews from everywhere, and I think Windows 8 will fail. I will still be using Windows 7 on my next PC (or I may just go to linux) but my parents want me to get a Mac (I dont know why?) but I think that apple is the thing these days. Every day I hear something about Apple, whether it is fake apple stores in china, or steve jobs' medical condition. Apple used to be a company everybody made fun of, now they are a company everyone wants to be.

Don't answer that, it sounds like whatever was under the bridge is trying to come out.

Not ME! I am not in love with windows but it is by far the most versatile operating system out there. Mac blows.

Nasty

Honestly, the reason why Windows went with the GUI for 8 is simple; they're trying to catch up. Though I may have to credit MSFT for this one as they are incorporating javascript and html5 as a means of developing apps in Windows 8. It looks like they're really working hard to simplify the API, which is great for developers.

OS X 10.7 is okay, I'm using it now on my Macbook Pro (15" 2009, Core 2 Duo w/ 8GB of RAM) and it's decent. Lion has a lot of neat UI tricks like fullscreen which I like. Since I'm mostly on Terminal and TextMate, being able to switch between using gestures is a nice feature. However, Lion has its fair share of stuff I don't like. For example, spaces? gone. Mission control is cool, but still doesn't beat Spaces. I also don't like the new iOS way of display apps. A little annoying, IMO but considering it's a pinch gesture makes it real nice.

I probably will upgrade to Windows 8, though I have to see the development model for it.

Good for you. I love my Mac. After having been a Windows user for so long, 10.6 opened my eyes to the Mac world. I do like the new Windows 8 GUI, but until I play with it and until I know how it affects my productivity as a programmer, I can't say.

Uh... it's the exact same GUI as Windows 7. I mean, you can just activate tablet mode if you're not on a tablet, but I don't see the point. What you're doing is basically looking at Windows Media Center and saying Aero sucks.

I've spent too much on Microsoft Windows 7 already. I won't be switching to eight when it is released. The cloud can be found on other operating systems already. I'm personally moving more toward Linux. In some ways I wish programmers would merge projects to utilize precious resources better. One of the upsides of Linux is there are so many choices, but that is also a downside. If more programs used the full potential of OpenGL, I'd be more inclined to use it on a regular basis. That would benefit Mac systems too. Windows eight, in my opinion, is coming out too soon and they should have simply released these updates in a patch. Let me guess, still using Windows NT Microsoft?

Here's a thought for those nice people in Redmond in reference to Windows 8 (or 7.0 or 6.2 or 6.5 or whatever the REAL version will be,) instead of adding features and bloat that usually goes with a brand spanking new version of Microsoft's flagship cash cow, how about focusing heavily on making it work correctly with a smaller footprint?

Now I'm no software genius, so I couldn't tell you what is brewing in the millions (maybe Billions) of lines of code that makes Windows tick, but is there a specific reason why version after version gets bigger and bigger and bigger and occupies an even LARGER memory footprint? You're meaning to tell me that there is absolutely no way to streamline the coding to the point where loading the OS takes less than 15 seconds from power up to zero HDD (or SSD) mashing?

I understand Microsoft's perspective of keeping their products...."fresh." But in this market where we as consumers demand our information to be in our faces faster and faster, why do we STILL need to wait 10 minutes for Windows to load?? Is there a reason why 90+ processes that are next to useless for us to open up Firefox (or Chrome, or *shudder* IE) still load?? Is it possible to consolidate these services to at most 10 windows-specific files and leave the rest of the memory space alone?? It wouldn't surprise me that all that garbage running behind the scenes is the EXACT reason why we have to format our machines every 6 months to get that new PC performance we love.

Edit: I know I haven't touched on the security side of this issue, which we usually delegate to McAfee or Norton or Eset or whatever you use as a security suite, but less crappy exploitable code in use just might make a better product.

/rant

The fact that they want it to scale down to tablets seems to imply that.

I hope you are correct. Microsoft's track record has been hit and miss when it came to software that occupies a small space and does what it needs to do with minimal downtime.

7 seems like it was a step though, because my laptop booted in around 45 seconds under Vista on a fresh install, and when I installed 7 back in 2009 it took around 15 seconds, so I'm hoping 8 takes even less.

Them folks in Redmond are learning, ain't they!